Guest article by Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.burnthefat.com
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 18% 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 (more…)
Continue reading about Health And Fitness Is Not A 12-Week Program
This is the time of year that many people already start to give up on their New Year’s Resolutions. In response, I’ve written this post:
Not getting to your destination? Having trouble achieving your goals? You may have a problem that you haven’t considered.
When you are doing everything you (more…)
Continue reading about How to Always Achieve Your Goals, 100% of the Time
[Editor's note - a different version of this post came out two years ago from Jason, but I (Darrin) have years of experience managing teams of professionals and so I've added my experience with how people can achieve their goals. So this is a pretty major rework...]
This is the time of year that many people already start to give up on their New Year’s Resolutions. Especially fitness goals. Don’t be one of those people!
Not getting to your destination? Having trouble achieving your goals? You may have a problem that you haven’t considered – how you set them in the first place.
When you are doing everything you possibly can to achieve your goals, but just can’t quite seem to reach them, the problem might be that you are setting the wrong type of goal. Here’s a real-world example that you might see in business:
My goal is to increase company sales this year.
What’s wrong with this goal?
- “This Year” is too long a timeframe to measure progress. You can easily lie to yourself each month you fail to see higher sales, by saying “I’ll make up for it next month”.
- You don’t directly control company sales. Most likely, you aren’t in a position to control company-wide sales. Even a director of sales doesn’t technically “control” sales because customers must buy something for sales to increase, and you can’t control the customers. You can only take actions that will influence their decision to purchase.
- Not measurable. How will you measure your success here? “Increase” could mean just $1 more revenue when you really meant much more.
You may have heard of SMART goals: specific, measureable, actionable, realistic, and timebound. Good advice in theory but in practice, the average person gets so confused by these 5 criteria that their goals become convoluted and dysfunctional.
MT Goals
So forget the “S”, “A”, and “R” for now and just focus on the “M” and “T” – make sure your goals are Measureable and Timebound (you do this right, and the S, A, and R will come along for the ride). And since you are the only person that you have complete, direct control over, you are the only person that your goals should ever focus on. You will only set yourself up for disappointment if you create a goal that you can try your hardest to achieve and still fail at.
[I've known this for many years, after struggling with teams and individuals going into contortions to set up goals. All that really matters is that they are measurable and timebound. But the first time I heard the phrase "MT" goals was from the guys at http://www.manager-tools.com/ . For further advice on MT goals, see Better Smart Goals.
Your Workout Goals – Outcome vs. Process
You don’t have direct control over your body composition either. If you did, you would just add 10 pounds of muscle or lose fat whenever you want.
Instead, you have to take the specific actions that influence your body to look the way you want. You don’t just lose fat… you increase your metabolism, run hard, and eat clean food, and then your body may or may not lose 10 pounds of fat.
So setting a goal to lose 10 pounds of fat is an outcome-based goal. Outcome-based goals are fine and usually the place people start. And they are an important part of goal setting. But they don’t tell you what to do – what action to take. If you don’t know what the best mix of diet and exercise is most likely to lose 10 pounds, no amount of goal setting will make it happen. You need to have some more experience before you can set outcome-based goals.
The solution to these problems is (more…)
Continue reading about Goal Achievement For Lazy People – Start With The Right Goals
Remember when we asked you to Take Your Worst Picture Ever? Well it’s time to take it out. If you haven’t taken it yet, or are new to World Fitness Network, we’ve got reminders at the end of this post…
What Do You See?
That old picture of yourself – is that what you still look like? Have you made any progress? Have you made enough progress? I’m not here to lecture you – I’m here to help you lecture yourself.
If you think you’ve made good progress, skip to the Take a New Picture section and then compare.
If you haven’t made progress, do these things right now:
- write down every excuse you can come up with; don’t hold back!
- now rank those excuses by their “power”; the stronger their power over you, the closer to the top of the list they go
- for each of your top 5 excuses (more if you have the gumption), write down at least one action you are going to take to eliminate it as an excuse moving forward
- take your top 5 excuses and share them with someone who cares about you; ask them for their advice on how they think you can eliminate those; don’t share the previous step with them – you want original ideas
- take the combined list of approximately 10 ideas to combat your 5 major excuses, and tape the list to your bathroom mirror
- every day (especially on your workout days) recite that list out loud; if you get embarrassed reading it out loud, good! you’ve got to break through some barriers if you want to eliminate those excuses
- now act!
And time to take a new picture:
Haven’t Taken Your Picture Yet? Or Need To Take A New Picture?
Did you fail your self-evaluation? Or are you just now planning to get in shape, but haven’t quite started yet?
Or even if you’ve made progress, you now need a new benchmark – a new picture.
Go into your room and take all your clothes off. That’s right, strip down to nothing but your briefs, your Spiderman Underoos, your boxers, your lingerie, whatever you are wearing underneath. (more…)
Join the forum discussion on this article, or comment below.Continue reading about It’s Time to Look At Your Worst Picture Ever, And Take A New One
- Don’t delay getting in the best shape of your life…
Are you waiting until January to get serious about fitness?
I’m already starting to hear a phrase I absolutely hate: “After the holidays I will… [fill in the blank]“
For some it’s “After the holidays I’ll get serious about eating right (more…)
How will I ever find time to workout with my busy schedule?
It’s a question that anybody who exercises regularly has had to deal with. Finding time to workout is not easy, it’s unlikely, and quite frankly, you shouldn’t even try to find time to workout.
What kind of advice (more…)
Continue reading about The Only Way You Will Ever Have Time To Workout
Earlier this year I was really focused on gaining strength. I set specific goals around 3 particular lifts and set a deadline. To accomplish them, I had to adjust my training plan and mental rehearsal framework. I had to read about elite deadlifters. I had to watch videos of heavy (more…)
I’ve officially had it with fitness pros who tell people cardio is bad.
I wish I were kidding. But I’m not exaggerating here. There are fitness guys saying all cardio is bad for all people.
In fact, as a result of one of my (former) affiliate partner’s recent blog posts on his site, I am now totally dropping him. Even though he has some great products, I can’t recommend him any more because his approach is so far away from my philosophy. I don’t want to make this personal, so I won’t name him, but you can count on me not promoting his products anymore.
What am I so angry about? (My first draft of this article was so filled with venom that I had to edit it down heavily…!)
