Psychology of Fat Loss

It's funny how sometimes ideas need time to fully take hold, and turn from concepts into tangible actions.  I've spent countless hours reading about nutrition, and studying what other people do, not to mention the time I've put into experimenting on myself.  I've just recently started to really get things right.

The process

During the twelve week challenge I did last summer I lost a lot of weight and was looking pretty thin by the end of it.  So what was the problem?  Firstly, I became a neurotic fool, thinking about food all the time, counting calories, weighing food, avoiding social situations where I would be "forced" to stray from my path.  Secondly, by the end of it I felt too thin.  In fact, one of my good friends commented on my "Christian Bale look"...sadly, he may have been referring to the Christian Bale from "The Machinist" look.

Lessons Learned

The way I see it, the whole problem with counting calories, and obsessing over details, is that it put me into a mindset of "what can I get away with?"  Knowing that I could eat x-amount of calories led me to try to find creative ways of eating as much as I could without going over my "calorie limit".  Dieting boils down to eating less food. Counting calories  led me to try to eat the maximum amount within the confines of the diet.  These are conflicting thought processes, and it is a recipe for failure.

Feeling too thin, was a good problem for me, but it was a problem nonetheless.  My body changed fast, and my mind was not able to keep up.  I've been a bigger guy my whole life, and suddenly feeling very thin was a strange experience.  After the twelve weeks were over, I gained back a bit of weight, but remained leaner than before the start of the experiment.  I have maintained that size very easily since, and just recently have decided to focus on losing fat again.  I think that this mental aspect of losing weight is often overlooked.  Imagine someone going from obese to lean in a short amount of time.  This is going to require a complete lifestyle overhaul.  Habits will have to change, the way you think about food will have to change, and you will have to get used to looking at a new person in the mirror.  Even if this new person looks good, you still need time to recognize that the new person is you.

What Next

I have gotten used to seeing a thinner Dave in the mirror, and finally feel mentally prepared to see a super lean Dave.  I've also built a decent amount of muscle in the interim, which will hopefully mitigate some of the "scrawny" feelings I had before.

Later this week, I'll post details about what I've come up with to lose weight without spending my free time drooling over low carb dessert recipes...because that is just not cool.

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Experiments

I'm still not sure why, but the post I wrote about being a fat loss scientist continues to be the most popular thing on this blog. It's an idea that I really believe in. Taking control of your own health and fitness, and not relying on other people's experience for everything. It's your body after all.

Experimenting with different foods and ways of eating is fun, and also a great way to find out what makes you feel your best. My latest experiments have included bulletproof coffee, and eating paleo. I hate that name, by the way, so let's just say eating real food.  One was an epic fail, the other a huge success and a big help in reaching my goals.

Bulletproof Coffee

Bulletproof coffee was the fail. There is a good reason why though. When you read about bulletproof coffee, it's presented in a way that claims that the rules of caloric balance don't apply to grass fed butter, and coconut oil. The fact that I bought into this is slightly embarrassing, to say the least. I gained a lot of fat super fast. Something to the tune of 1kg per week.  But here's why. People are losing weight with bulletproof coffee because they are using it as a stepping stone into the world of intermittent fasting. Replacing breakfast with fatty coffee. This lets you consume fewer calories, and more than likely you would be replacing processed carbs (aka healthy breakfast foods) with good healthy fats. That's a perfect switch. In my case though, I went from completely fasting to drinking a 500 calorie cup of coffee. Not such a great trade. The rules of caloric balance apply, the nice new layer of fat on my stomach is proof.

I still think that the concept of replacing breakfast with a cup of fatty coffee is a wonderful idea for the majority of people.  The effect of most breakfast foods on your body is less than desirable, and most people aren't eating enough healthy fat.  But, you have to remember that at the end of the day things need to balance out.

Real Food

Eating real foods, and thinking about the way people ate thousands of years ago has been a great revelation.  This concept gets a big thumbs up in my books.  My take on it differs slightly from the hardcore paleo people though.  There are two major differences.  

The first is this.  Just because a food is "natural" doesn't mean it's natural to eat frequently or in large quantities.  The best example is nuts.  Almonds are healthy, and natural.  But, when in history have people been able to go out and buy large bags of pre-shelled roasted almonds?  If you had to shell them yourself, you'd eat three, give up, kill a bear, and chow down.  Killing a bear would probably be easier than cracking those damn things open. Being so easy to eat makes them incredibly easy to overeat.  I will have some now and then, but view them more as a treat.  A delicious, addictive treat.

The second difference has to do with realistically looking at my goals.  I want to look amazing, and be as strong as humanly possible.  Paleolithic people didn't care about squatting heavy weight and having low body fat. I care about these things.  So, I make exceptions.  After I lift heavy weights I eat lots of carbs.  These carbs could be from sweet potatoes, jasmine rice, or even evil-gluten-laden-bread from time to time.  These are not "paleo foods", but I don't have "paleo goals". It makes sense to me.


I think that experimenting with food choices, and even dabbling with "fads" like bulletproof coffee is great fun.  I learn more and more each time I try something new.  The funny thing is, the more I figure out, arguably the hard way, the more I realize that eating meat and vegetables, and throwing in some carbs after heavy weight lifting sessions, is what makes me feel the best.  There is nothing fancy or cutting edge about this.  Don't buy into the idea of super foods, or fast fat loss diets.  Just eat real food, and be healthy.  I truly believe that it's better to think of fat loss as a by product of good health.  Eat real foods most of the time, and be conscious about what is truly a healthy food choice.  I assure you that if you eat a bag of 'healthy" almonds every day you will get fat.  In my case it's the cashews I have to watch out for.  I will eat the whole bag.

My challenge for you is to experiment.  Try something, anything really.  Take bread out of your diet and see how you feel.  Or try to eat two cups of leafy greens every day, see if you start poopin like a champ.  Just try something different, and see what it does for YOU.  Let me know what you try, and how it works.

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Did I Do It All Wrong?

I'm changing things up again.  By now you must be thinking that I'm the most scatterbrained guy around. That's probably partially true, but I promise I have my reasons for switching things up.  I've come to realize that I made some mistakes with my 12 Week Challenge, and it's time to set things right.

For the past few months I've been working hard to lose fat, in the healthiest way possible. Being healthy has always been a big part of this for me. Lately I've begun to question my approach though. I have focused on restricting calories and exercising as much as my recovery would allow. Is this really the best way?

Something I read the other day made me rethink this whole concept.  If you are thrown off by all the talk of caveman diets, and paleo nutrition, I apologize, but bear with me while I explain my thought process. If one of our caveman ancestors (I like to picture Bam-Bam) was suffering from a lack of food (during the winter, or other times when food was hard to come by) would he be more active or would he be trying to preserve the energy he did have?  By exercising hard on a calorie deficit, this is exactly what we are doing.  There is no way little Bam-Bam would be out running hill sprints unless absolutely necessary.  This is the modern approach to fat loss though.  Reduce calories and exercise more.  How does our body respond to this situation?  Well, first it takes energy away from what it considers to be non-essential, like the reproductive system, and gives that energy to the brain.  No need to be making babies if you don't have enough brain power to maintain sensible thoughts...memories of Saturday night? The second thing the body does is hang on for dear life to the fat stores you do have left. There is a hormone called leptin that takes messages from our fat cells and controls fat storage accordingly.  When body fat gets low, and there isn't much food coming in, leptin freaks out and goes into fat storage mode.  By pushing yourself too hard while not eating enough, your body is going to start making all kinds of hormonal changes that you will not like.

The other problem I've noticed about restricting calories and focusing on macro nutrient targets is that I am becoming food-focused.  Eating should not involve math.  That's the bottom line.  We are supposed to eat healthy, natural foods until we feel satisfied, and then we stop eating.  I haven't gotten to the point of dreaming about cakes and cookies, but I think that I'm wasting a lot of mental energy on diet.  Also, a big part of hormonal health is stress control, and constantly thinking about food can result in a lot of underlying stress that I don't want or need.

You know that I'm always down to try something new and experiment on myself, so that is exactly what is going to happen.  The best part is that I already did a lot of the leg work during the 12 Week Challenge.  I have a pretty good idea about what kinds of food make me feel the best.  When I was doing the high fat/ low carb diet, I was killing it.  I had great energy levels, wasn't a moody jackass, and had the libido of a thirteen year old at the Playboy mansion. So, I'm switching back to that style of eating. No more tracking macros and weighing chicken breasts. I will still pay attention to the carbs that I eat, because they seem to have the biggest impact on fat loss (for me at least), but I am going to eat protein and healthy fats until I feel good and happy.  This may take some fine tuning, but that's part of the process.

Learning about nutrition is silly sometimes, because there are four thousand experts with ten thousand different philosophies.  It gets extra confusing because you can certainly get a great body without being healthy.  There are all kinds of nutritional experts who talk about treating body builders and other physique competitors after their shows.  In a lot of cases these people completely wreck their metabolisms, hormone balances, and develop eating disorders in an attempt to get down to super low bodyfat levels.  I'm not interested in becoming a train wreck with abs.

My thinking, and I may be completely wrong about all this, is that fat loss and muscle gain will happen naturally as a result of the work I do in the gym. I just need to change my focus to being healthy and start really listening to my body.  I will be sure to share everything I find out with you.  If it doesn't work, and I wind up a big fatty, you may not want to copy me on this one.

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Wasting Your Time is Awesome!

I'm at the gym the other day waiting patiently for the one and only squat rack.  Don't judge, you North Americans, I was lucky enough to find a gym with one good squat rack.  The squat rack at my previous gym was more like something that got ripped out of an elementary school playground sometime in the eighties.  Anyways, I finished up my deadlifts, and was hoping to do some front squats before going home.  This big guy (not good big) had been busting out set after set of squats, and I realized that he was not giving up that squat rack anytime soon.  I conceded, and hopped on the leg press.  I finished my workout, did a little finisher, and was packing up to go when I asked super squats if he was getting tired yet.  He'd done squats non-stop for the forty five minutes that I'd been there, and who knows how long he'd been at it before I got there.  He was starting to look like grossly bloated marathon runner staggering over the finish line.  He replied that he was tired, but still had three hours to go.  

"Wait, what?!  Three more hours?"  I asked. 
"Yeah, I've gotta do four hours everyday.  I'm too fat, and need to lose weight." he said. I started to cry on the inside, but managed to blurt out,
"Don't you have a job?"

Where do these insane ideas come from?  The more I try to learn about fitness and nutrition, the more I'm blown away by the absolutely insane information that is so readily available. 

Have you ever heard of the 80/20 rule?  It states that in any endeavour, 80% of the effects will come from 20% of the causes. Your job is to find out what causes you can focus your attention on to maximize the effects.  For fat loss, what are the different causes you can focus your effort on?  Weight training, cardio, diet, eating so called super foods, praying to the ab gods, etc.  Which one of these will give you 80% of the results?  The answer is diet.  If your diet is spot on, you can lose fat without doing anything else.  To maximize your rate of fat loss from 80% to 90% add some cardio.  To build some muscle, or at the very least prevent muscle loss, train with heavy weights.  

Diet is the cause that will yield 80% of the results.  Once you let this sink in, you can start to take all that misplaced effort and focus it on meeting your dietary targets.  This is why fat loss is so excruciatingly painful sometimes.  We are hard-wired to want to do more, to make things happen faster.  I'm sorry, but it doesn't work like that.  The only thing that you can do more of is eating less, and being more patient.  Four hours of squatting is not going the answer.

Straighten your diet out.  Figure out where your energy is best used, and use it there. I hate spending time on something and getting very little in return, and I know you feel the same way. So, back to super squats.  I told him about my quest to learn as much as possible about fat loss and nutrition, and that I personally have lost around 20 kg in the past three years.  I asked what his diet looked like.  No fried foods he said. If I had asked about his squat program I'm sure I would have gotten a run down of a fancy template designed to increase volume exponentially week by week in order to blah blah blah.....but, for diet the answer was no fried foods.

Please don't misplace your efforts.  Focus on the causes that will give you the most results. 

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Goals, Goals, Goals

The jaw on that guy is something else eh? Do you think he could get a Big Mac in with one bite?  

One of the most important things I learned during the 12 Week Challenge is the power of goal setting, and in particular, the power of publicly announcing goals. It's amazing how much more focused you can be when you have clear goals, and deadlines.  I can't recommend this enough.  Imagine yourself in one year.  Where are you?  What are you doing?  What would make you happier than anything else?  Write down every answer you can think of.  After you've written them all down, order them from the most important thing that will have to greatest impact on your life, to the things that would be nice to do, but are not as essential.  Take the top five goals and write down every possible action you can take to make these things happen.  Then take these actions and make schedules and deadlines to complete them in.  If you take fifteen minutes to sit and write this down, I promise you that it will make a big difference in your jaw...er, I mean, life.  

This will be a new tradition on this blog.  I would love to have other people post their goals on here as well.  Putting your goals out for everyone to see is a great way to guarantee success. Here are my goals to be accomplished by October 31st.

1. I have visible abs at a bodyweight of 75kg.
2. I can squat 115 kg for five with perfect form.
3. I can deadlift 140 kg for three with perfect form
4. I can bench 90 kg for three with perfect form.
5. I can overhead press 70 kg for one with perfect form.
6. My work capacity is good enough that I can lift weights four times a week and also sprint three times.
7. My arms are 14 inches around.
8. My legs are 22.5 inches around.
9. I have started to introduce more carbs back into my diet, and am focusing on gaining muscle while remaining lean.
10.  My ankle and hip mobility are much better, and I can sit in a deep squat for ten minutes comfortably.

To clarify, the weight lifting goals all refer to weights and reps within the Wendler 531 program that I'm doing, not just walking into the gym and hammering out three reps. That's it.  These are the three month goals that I set for myself at the end of July.  I reread them everyday, and make sure that each and every day I am taking steps to achieve them.  The interesting/frustrating thing about fitness goals is that they really can't be rushed.  The biggest factor in achieving these goals is having a well designed plan, and sticking to it without question.  Patience and persistence are a must when you are getting into shape.

So, what do you think?  Will I accomplish these goals?  I bet that simply by clicking publish on this post, I will be further along on my way.  Join in.  The comment section below is open for you to post your goals, and make things happen.  The more the merrier. I'm also really curious to see what sorts of goals people have.  If your goals are completely unrelated to fitness that's great too.  Post them anyway, and watch when in three months you've accomplished all of them!

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My Top Five Fat Loss Workouts

I recently moved, and so switched to a new gym.  But, before I left my old gym I had a really funny encounter.  I noticed a guy whom I'd chatted with from time to time, giving me an awkward up and down, so I gave him a nod.  He walked over to me, and told me that I'd gotten noticeably taller.  I told him in my haphazard Chinese that at 28 years old, it seemed unlikely that I'd had a noticeable growth spurt. I mentioned that I'd been losing fat, and he agreed that I looked thinner, but urged me to go and check my height, guaranteeing that I'd gained a few centimeters.  We agreed to disagree and the conversation turned to what I was doing to lose fat.  He was shocked to hear that I never once stepped foot on a treadmill or went jogging.  Those are the only real tried and tested ways to lose fat right?  

It seems that many people are at a loss when it comes to challenging and fun ways to burn fat. I want to share my favorite fat loss workouts with you.  These all take less than half an hour including a comprehensive warm up and cool down, and most take more like ten minutes. The principle for all of these workouts is that by exercising really intensely for a short time, you will increase your metabolic rate, and burn calories through something known as EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption) or the so called "after burn" effect. So here are five challenging and intense, but also fun workouts.

Sprints

I've mentioned sprints before, and truly believe that they are the best cardio possible.  The only problem is that they suck.  If you truly push yourself when doing sprints, you will probably finish within ten minutes, and will need to lay on the ground begging for oxygen for another ten minutes. To have a good sprint work out you have to warm up properly.  If you don't, you WILL pull a muscle, I promise.  Jog for five minutes, do some high knee raises, butt kicks, squat jumps, side shuffles, and then some stretches for your hip flexors, hamstrings, and calves.  Pick a 40 or 50 meter path, and do two or three easy sprints, slowly increasing your speed.  Once you feel ready to push yourself safely, do your first sprint.  Keep the distance limited to 40 or 50 meters.  Sprint, immediately walk back to the start, and go again.  Do ten to fifteen sprints, gasp for air, walk for a few minutes and then go home. If you are feeling ambitious do ten burpees after each sprint, this is a great test of mental toughness.

Barbell Complexes

You are going to pick up a medium weight barbell and do three to ten different exercises without putting the bar down.  The number of reps will be the same for each movement, and should be between five and ten.  You will do all the reps on the first movement, then move on to the second movement.  After completing all the movements rest thirty to sixty seconds and then go again.  Repeat four or five times. The first time you try this only do three different movements, and add more as you see fit. The first time you will also want to be very conservative with the amount of weight you use.  The first round might be easy, but by the time you've done five rounds it won't be.  If you choose a weight that is too heavy, and the last round takes five minutes to complete because you keep dropping the bar, you have missed the point of this style of workout. Here are a couple of examples.

Beginner

Deadlift x 10

Power Clean x 10

Front Squat x10

Advanced

Deadlift x6

Shrug x6

Power Clean x6

Front Squat x6

Push Press x 6

Back Squat x6

You can program these yourself with a bit of common sense.  Arrange the movements such that you are working from the floor to the roof, and if you want to really go for it, work your way back down to the floor again.

Bodyweight Conditioning

This has always been one of my favorites because it's just so easy to do.  I often run out to the park, think of what I can use to workout, and then get at it.  My favorite style of programming for park workouts is to choose four or five different movements, start at a certain number of reps, and then subtract one rep each round.  For example

Round 1

Box Jumps x 12

Chin ups x 12

Lunges x12 per leg

Dips x 12

Round 2 is eleven reps of each, Round 3 is ten reps, etc. until you are down to only one rep.  It seems like it would get easier as you go, but because each round is faster you get less time to rest before doing the same movement again. With this style, try not to rest between rounds if you can. Get out to the park, take a look at what you have to work with, and get at it.

Jump Rope

Muhammad Ali did it, I rest my case.  This has been a main conditioning tool of successful athletes for a long time. If you can't jump rope efficiently now, just be patient.  It really takes no time at all to get proficient enough to burn fat.  My advice is to keep your elbows tucked as close to your body as you can, and really try to feel the tension on the rope.  You should be able to do it with your eyes closed. When jumping rope for fat loss, intervals work really well. Jump rope for one minute, rest for thirty seconds, and go again.  Repeat for ten to fifteen rounds.  My favorite jump rope workout is one minute of rope work, followed by ten burpees, then straight back to the rope.  You can replace the burpees with dumbell swings, jump squats, dumbell cleans, whatever you can think of.  I think the jump rope with burpees may be almost as tough as hill sprints, if you can push yourself and avoid resting after the burpees.  Catching your breath while jumping rope as fast as you can is intense.

Crossfit

Crossfit posts a new workout almost every day.  Go on their website, find a workout that appeals to you, check the times that other people are completing the workouts in, and go beat those times.  It can be humbling to see how fast some people are able to bang out some of the workouts on there.  My only advice here would be to pick workouts that fit into your workout plan.  If strength training, or building muscle is your goal and tomorrow is going to be a heavy squat day don't pick something that is going to fry your legs and prevent you from giving it your all on the squats.  Remember your priorities.  

This post ended up being far longer than I intended, but hopefully some of these ideas appeal to you, and have given you something new to work with.  With this kind of training, intensity is the key.  If these workouts take you longer than fifteen minutes (excluding warm up) then you are not going hard enough. As always, don't overthink this stuff.  Go out and do something.  You never know, something here may even make you taller, just like it did for me!

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What Now?

The Twelve Week Challenge is over, so have I reverted back to my old bad habits?  Actually, I've stepped it up a notch.  During those twelve weeks, I wanted to show with a sensible diet, weight training, and some sprinting you can both lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, and most importantly, without killing yourself.  I believe that my progress shows that it is possible to make a lot of good progress through moderation, in terms of both diet and exercise.

The thing is, I still have not reached all my goals.  I am not as lean as I would like to be, but at the same time I also want to build more muscle.  Quite the conundrum.  Is it possible to get to single digit body-fat (visible abs) while also gaining muscle?  I don't know either, but I'm working on it now. I've changed my approach slightly, and from what I've accomplished over the past two weeks, I now believe that it is possible.  The missing ingredient is, hard work.  If I look honestly at the premise of the Twelve Week Challenge it was basically to get as much as possible with the least amount of work.  This breaks the universal law of reaping and sowing.  If you put in moderate efforts you get moderate results, not extraordinary results.

Like I said, I'm stepping it up a notch.  Everyone these days talks about how if you exercise too much, or have too much volume in your training program you will become "over-trained".  Tell this to an Olympic lifter who is doing two squat training sessions every day of the week. Or to Ironman participants, who spend upwards of twelve hours training everyday in preparation for that event.  The bottom line is that you get out only what you put in.  

As a side note  I spoke with my father the other day about my new training plan.  When he was younger he was a big strong dude.  He got there by doing pullups, pushups, and situps everyday.  No fear of over-training  no scientific programming. He just did those three exercises everyday, and put full effort into it each day.  This is not to say that there aren't more efficient ways to train, but it illustrates the point that the attitude with which you train is more important than the actual program.  People who push themselves will succeed.

After two weeks of really working hard.  I'm happy
 with the results so far

I have gone back to a powerlifting based program, called Beyond 531.  It is an awesome program for increasing strength in the four main lifts: squat, deadlift, bench press, and overhead press.  This is the foundation of what I'm doing now.  Everyday I follow this program for one main lift.  After that I choose an exercise that is related to the main lift, and work up to a heavy set of three to five reps.  Then I immediately work my way back down in a huge drop set to get a lot of volume, and also get the "pump".  This is basically a combination of powerlifting and bodybuilding approaches. This style of training is really fun, but also super challenging.  After lifting really heavy weight, the last thing you want to do is push yourself to absolute fatigue with lighter weights.

For my condition work, after upper body workouts I do a high intensity "finisher" to burn fat and get my metabolism firing. This could be as simple as doing 100 burpees as fast as possible, or it could be a series of barbell exercises done back to back without ever putting the bar down.  Finishers are a great way to work on conditioning, burn fat, and develop some mental toughness.  They are challenging, but are also fun way to end a workout. On squat and deadlift days, I do a sprint workout 8 hours later in the evening.  On rest days, I do another high intensity finisher, and go for a long walk.  I'm really pushing myself hard now.  I'm choosing to work incredibly hard in order to get incredible results.  I'm choosing not to buy into the fear of "over-training".  It's just another experiment, and you will find all the results here and on facebook.

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