Start it up. Stop it again. Join the gym, stop
going, forget to cancel and you're paying for it 12 months
later. What do you put in your shopping at the grocery store?
At least some of it isn't in the "recommended foods" lists.
So what happened? We were in such good shape in
high school, better anyway, and now... Mostly it's probably
because we forgot that ...
Health And Fitness Is Not
A 12-Week Program
By Tom Venuto,
NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.burnthefat.com - Related Articles
 Not long ago, one of the
members of my health club poked her head in my office for
some advice. Linda was a 46 year old mother of two, and
she had been a member for over a year. She had been
working out sporadically, with (not surprisingly),
sporadic results. On that particular day, she seemed to
have enthusiasm and a twinkle in her eye that I hadn’t
seen before.
"I want to enter a before and after fitness contest called
the “12 week body transformation challenge." I could win money
and prizes and even get my picture in a magazine."
“I want to lose THIS”, she continued, as she grabbed the
body fat on her stomach. “Do you think it’s a good idea?”
Linda was not “obese,” she just had the typical “moderate
roll” of abdominal body fat and a little bit of thigh/hip fat
that many forty-something females struggle with.
“I think it’s a great idea,” I reassured her. “Competitions
are great for motivation. When you have a deadline and you
dangle a “carrot” like that prize money in front of you, it can
keep you focused and more motivated than ever.”
Linda was eager and rarin’ to go. “Will you help me? I have
this enrollment kit and I need my body fat measured.”
“No problem,” I said as I pulled out my Skyndex fat caliper,
which is used to measure body fat percentage with a “pinch an
inch” test.
When I finished, I read the results to her from the caliper
display: “Twenty-seven percent. Room for improvement, but not
bad; it’s about average for your age group.”
She wasn’t overjoyed at being ‘average’. “Yeah, but it's not
good either. Look at THIS,” she complained as again she grabbed
a handful of stomach fat. “I want to get my body fat down to
19%, I heard that was a good body fat level.”
I agreed that 19% was a great goal, but told her it would
take a lot of work because average fat loss is usually about a
half a percent a week, or six percent in twelve weeks. Her
goal, to lose eight percent in twelve weeks was ambitious.
She smiled and insisted, “I’m a hard worker. I can do
it”
Indeed she was and indeed she did. She was a machine! Not
only did she never miss a day in the gym, she trained HARD.
Whenever I left my office and took a stroll through the gym,
she was up there pumping away with everything she had. She told
me her diet was the strictest it had ever been in her life and
she didn't cheat at all. I believed her, and it started to
show, quickly.
Each week she popped into my office to have her body fat
measured again, and each week it went down, down, down.
Consistently she lost three quarters of a percent per week –
well above the average rate of fat loss – and on two separate
occasions, I recall her losing a full one percent body fat in
just seven days.
Someone conservative might have said she was overtraining,
but when we weighed her and calculated her lean body mass, we
saw that she hadn’t lost ANY muscle – only fat. Her results
were simply exceptional!
She was ecstatic, and needless to say, her success bred more
success and she kept after it like a hungry tiger for the full
twelve weeks.
On week twelve, day seven, she showed up in my office for
her final weigh-in and body fat measurement. She was wearing a
pair of formerly tight blue jeans and they were FALLING OFF
her!
“Look, look, look,” she repeated giddily as she tugged at
her waistband, which was now several inches too large.
As I took her body fat, I have to say, I was impressed. She
hadn’t just lost a little fat, she was “RIPPED!”
During week twelve she dropped from 27% to 17% body fat, for
a grand total of 10% body fat lost in three months. She
surpassed her goal of 19% by two percent. I was now even more
impressed, because not many people lose that much body fat in
three months.
You should have seen her! She started jumping up and down
for joy like she was on a pogo stick! She was beaming… grinning
from ear to ear! She practically knocked me over as she jumped
up and gave me a hug – “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“Don’t thank me,” I said, “You did it, I just measured your
body fat.”
She thanked me again anyway and then said she had to go have
her “after” pictures taken.
Then something very, very strange happened. She stopped
coming to the gym. Her "disappearance" was so abrupt, I was
worried and I called her. She never picked up, so I just left
messages.
No return phone call.
It was about four months later when I finally saw Linda
again. The giddy smile was gone, replaced with a sullen face, a
droopy posture and a big sigh when I said hello and asked where
she’d been.
“I stopped working out after the contest... and I didn’t
even win.”
“You looked like a winner to me, no matter what place you
came in” I insisted, “but why did you stop, you were doing so
well!”
“I don’t know, I blew my diet and then just completely lost
my motivation. Now look at me, my weight is right back where I
started and I don’t even want to know my body fat.”
“Well, I'm glad to see you back in here again. Write down
some new goals for yourself and remember to think long term
too. Twelve week goals are important, but fitness isn’t 12 week
program you know, it’s a lifestyle - you have to do it every
day, for the rest of your life.”
She nodded her head and finished her workout, still with a
defeated look on her face. Unfortunately, she never again come
anywhere near the condition she achieved for that competition,
and for the rest of the time she was a member at our club, she
slipped right back into the sporadic on and off workout
pattern.
Linda was not an isolated case. I’ve seen the same thing
happen with countless men and women of all ages and fitness
levels from beginners to competitive bodybuilders. In fact, it
happens to millions of people who “go on” diets, lose a lot of
weight, then quickly “go off” the diet and gain the weight
right back.
What causes people to burn so brightly with enthusiasm and
motivation and then burn out just as quickly? Why do so many
people succeed brilliantly in the short term but fail 95 out of
100 times in the long term? Why do so many people reach their
fitness goals but struggle to maintain them?
The answer is simple:
Health and fitness is for life, not for "12 weeks."
You can avoid the on and off, yo-yo cycle of fitness ups and
downs. You can get in great shape and stay in great shape. You
can even get in shape and keep getting in better and better
shape year after year, but it's going to take a very different
philosophy than most people subscribe to. The seven tips below
will guide you.
These guidelines are quite contrary to the quick fix
philosophies prevailing in the weight loss and fitness world
today. Applying them will take patience, discipline and
dedication and they will put you in the minority. Just
remember, the only thing worse than getting no results is
getting great results and losing them.
1) Don’t “go on” diets.
When you “go on” a diet, the underlying assumption is
that at some point you have to “go off” it. This isn’t just
semantics, it’s one of the primary reasons most diets fail.
By definition, a “diet” is a temporary and often drastic
change in your eating behaviors and/or a severe restriction
of calories or food, which is ultimately, not maintainable.
If you reach your goal, the diet is officially “over” and
then you "go off" (returning to the way you used to eat).
Health and fitness is not temporary; it’s not a “diet.”
It’s something you do every day of your life. Unless you
approach nutrition from a “habits” and “lifestyle”
perspective, you’re doomed from the start.
2) Eat the same healthy foods consistently, all year
round.
Permanent fat loss is best achieved by eating mostly the
same types of foods all year round. Naturally, you should
include a wide variety of healthy foods so you get the full
spectrum of nutrients you need, but there should be
consistency, month in, month out. When you want to lose
body fat, there’s no dramatic change necessary - you don’t
need to eat totally different foods - it’s a simple matter
of eating less of those same healthy foods and exercising
more.
3) Have a plan for easing into maintenance.
Let’s face it – sometimes a nutrition program needs to
be more strict than usual. For example, peaking for a
bodybuilding, figure, fitness or transformation challenge
contest requires an extremely strict regimen that’s
different than the rest of the year. As a rule, the
stricter your nutrition program, the more you must plan
ahead and the more time you must allow for a slow,
disciplined transition into maintenance. Failure to plan
for a gradual transition will almost always result in a
huge binge and a very rapid, hard fall "off the wagon."
4) Focus on changing daily behaviors and habits one or
two at a time.
Rather than making huge, multiple changes all at once,
focus on changing one or two habits/behaviors at a time.
Most psychologists agree that it takes about 21 days of
consistent effort to replace an old bad habit with a new
positive one. As you master each habit, and it becomes as
ingrained into your daily life as brushing your teeth, then
you simply move on to the next one. That would be at least
17 new habits per year. Can you imagine the impact that
would have on your health and your life? This approach
requires patience, but the results are a lot more permanent
than if you try to change everything in one fell swoop.
This is also the least intimidating way for a beginner to
start making some health-improving changes to their
lifestyle.
5) Make goal setting a lifelong habit.
Goal setting is not a one-time event, it’s a process
that never ends. For example, if you have a 12 week goal to
lose 6% bodyfat, what are you going to do after you achieve
it? Lose even more fat? Gain muscle? What's next? On week
13, day 1, if you have no direction and no long term goal
to keep you going, you’ll have nothing to keep you from
slipping back into old patterns. Every time you achieve a
short term goal (daily, weekly and 12 week goals), you must
set another one. Having short term goals means that you are
literally setting goals continuously and never
stopping.
6) Allow a reasonable time frame to reach your
goal.
It's important to set deadlines for your fitness and
weight loss goals. It's also important to set big,
ambitious goals, but you must allow a reasonable time frame
for achieving them. Time pressure is often the motivating
force that helps people get in the best shape of their
lives. But when the deadline is unrealistic for a
particular goal (like 30 pounds in 30 days), then crash
dieting or other extreme measures are often taken to get
there before the bell. The more rapidly you lose weight,
the more likely you are to lose muscle and the faster the
weight will come right back on afterwards. Start sooner.
Don't wait until mid-May to think about looking good for
summer.
7) Extend your time perspective.
Successful people in every field always share one common
character trait: Long term time perspective. Some of the
most successful Japanese technology and manufacturing
companies have 100 year and even 250-year business plans.
If you want to be successful in maintaining high levels of
fitness, you must set long term goals: One year, Ten years,
Even fifty years!
You also must consider what the long term consequences
might be as a result of using any "radical" diet, training
method or ergogenic aid. The people who had it but lost it
are usually the ones who failed to think long term or
acknowledge future consequences.
It's easy for a 21 year old to live only for today, and
it may even seem ridiculous to set 25 year goals, but
consider this: I've never met a 40 or 60 year old who
didn't care about his or her health and appearance, but I
have met 40 or 60 year olds who regretted not caring 25
years ago.
Burn The Fat, Feed the Muscle (BFFM) is a fat loss program
which acknowledges the simple truth that going "on diets,"
entering "Fitness challenges" or competing in "Transformation
contests" without having long term goals and a lifestyle
attitude, is a recipe for failure. Don’t let yourself be part
of the latest fitness dropout statistics: visit the Burn The Fat website for
more details on how to change your lifestyle... and keep the
change!
About the Author:
 Tom Venuto is a lifetime
natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal trainer
(CPT), certified strength & conditioning specialist
(CSCS), and author of the #1 best-selling e-book, "Burn
the Fat, Feed The Muscle.” Tom has written more
than 200 articles and has been featured in print magazines
such as IRONMAN, Australian IRONMAN, Natural Bodybuilding,
Muscular Development, Exercise for Men and Men’s Exercise,
as well as on hundreds of websites worldwide. For more
information on Tom's Fat Loss program, visit: Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle
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