Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Moderation, my ass.*

“Everything in moderation”.

How many billion times have you heard that one?

I’m here to tell you folks, it’s complete B.S. to all but a very few people.

First of all, “moderation” is a relative term.  A cocktail “every now and then” to one person means every other month.  To another person it means every other trip to the kitchen.

Secondly, moderation is for people who already have what they want.  As I said that’s a VERY small group of people.

Specifically with regards to people trying to lose body fat, it’s an infinitesimal group of people.  I’ve spent a good chunk of my life working with people trying to lose body fat and almost nobody looks at their body and says “Nope.  There’s no extra fat/skin anywhere on my body thatI wouldn’t like to trim down and tighten up.”  The next person I hear say that will be the first.

So put the above together and what do you have?

Moderation is a good way to NEVER get to your fat loss goal. 

Moderation is for AFTER you get to your goal and you’re OK with “maintaining” until you decide what your next goal is.

But as I mentioned, that’s very few of us.

If I’ve learned anything in the decade plus I’ve been doing this, I’ve learned you will never lose body fat being “moderate”.

Be bad ass.  Be hard core.  Pick a fight with body fat and kick its ass.

If you got in a real fight would you say “Moderation is the key, here.”?

Hell no, you would fight HARD!

Same with body fat.  Set a goal and be 100% committed to it until you get there.

Start exercising correctly and take the crap out of your diet.  If you aren't sure what those things are, ASK.  Don't be ashamed - have you looked around lately?  Most people don't know what those things are...

It doesn’t have to be forever. 14 days, 3 weeks, 28 days - something like that.  (Why do you think most diets and weight loss contests are around those lengths of time?  Because it’s long enough you can reach a goal but short enough you can be compliant.)

And those lengths of time are really not that hard to commit to.  Unless you are SERIOUSLY weak minded and weak willed - you probably aren’t.  Unless you won the lottery of weak willed, you can go a few weeks without (insert food) and (insert drink) in your diet.

Give it a shot.  Get serious about it.  When you reach your goal, then you can reevaluate “moderation”.



*I got the idea for this blog from Dan John and Thomas Plummer, two of the most well respected people in the world of health and fitness.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

This is a waste of time:

I’ve written about this before but it bears repeating:  Monitoring how many calories you burn during an individual workout is a complete waste of time.

That is akin to counting your calories at one meal but ignoring how much you eat the rest of the day.

If the goal is fat loss (it should be – I’ve never met anyone who wanted to gain body fat), then the focus shouldn’t be on the caloric expenditure of your workout.  The focus needs to be on your resting metabolic rate (RMR).  This is how many calories you burn at rest over 24 hours.

The point of an individual workout, and exercise in general is to raise your metabolism so you’re burning more calories 24/7/365.

That is a crucial point about health, fitness and fat loss that many people just don’t get.  Many people still focus on how many calories their workout expends with no concern for whether or not their exercise selection is ramping up the metabolism.

This is why (again) you can’t lose body fat by performing long duration “cardio”.  It’s not intense enough to raise your metabolism so your body stops burning calories as soon as you stop exercising. 

And unfortunately you’ll never be able to out exercise or out cardio your food intake.  Jogging two miles burns about 300 calories.  That’s a very small meal that just wiped away the caloric expenditure of your jog.


Make sure you choose exercises and workouts that raise that metabolism so you become a calories burning machine – you won’t need to count calories from individual workout.  And remember, genetics do play a role in your metabolism, but whatever yours is can be improved.  Your metabolism, to a certain extent, is a choice.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Great Tip For Back Health Part 2

If you missed part 1, don’t worry, you can read it below J

“Your back has a finite number of bends.” – Dr. Stuart McGill

I’ve heard some great advice during my years in the fitness business.  That line is in the top three, easy.

It was spoken by Dr. Stuart McGill, who is generally considered a leading researcher and practitioner in the field of low back performance and injury prevention.  Keyword: “Practitioner”.   He actually applies his research to real people to see if it holds up.

In addition to reading two of his books, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing him speak in person on two occasions.  If you’ve ever trained with me or even if you’ve only followed my advice, you’ve been heavily influenced by Dr. Mcgill, as well.

And his quote above and that point in general, is a great one.

Your lower back is not supposed to bend.  It only can – very slightly – as a defense mechanism, similar to how a skyscraper bends slightly in the wind to prevent cracking.  But if you keep doing it over and over, eventually it will crack.

We all have a number of bends in us that our backs can handle.  Some of us, not many perhaps.  Maybe we’ll have back issues early in life.  

Some of us may be lucky and get tens of thousands of bends before tells us “No More.”

But make no mistake about it:  At some point, your back will bend and your body will say “No more” and it will be an unpleasant experience.  It may be when you’re 18 it may be when you’re 80.

It doesn’t really matter.  

What matters is that you realize that you didn’t hurt your back when you picked up your kid, were gardening, playing with your dog etc. – you set it up to fail with thousands of bends prior to the event and that action was the final straw.

So keep this in mind as you lean, slouch and bend over to pick things up.

Keep this in mind when you exercise.  When you squat and lunge and push up.

Does your spine bend when you do those things?

Do your best to prevent it.  There are countless ways to do this through exercise.  If you have questions about how to do so, let me know – we’re here to help.


Jon