Lean For Life

Change of heart and news update!

2010-03-09T01:38:00.000-08:00

Having been advised to go to Wordpress, I have decided that I do not like it as much as Blogger so have decided to come back here. Hopefully this gets to all those lovely people who had decided to followed my original blog and that they are still here!

Lots been happening in my life so it has been a little difficult to keep up!

Firstly, like many other people I have been subject to the dreaded 'R' word - redundancy. It is not nice and I would not wish it on anyone, but what happens happens and all I can do is respond tht situation.

Sometimes though it does not seem so at the tme things that happen to us can be blessings in disguise. Having to re-think my future is one of those occaisions, and I have decided that I am no longer going to depend on others for my future security but will rely on my own resources. This means that I have to do things and offer to the world services that will be of value to others. While I have a number of ideas that I am progressing the one that s relevant here is the launch of 'Lean For Life'.

Lean For Life is a number initiatives that will give people the opportunity to make lifestyle changes which will result in fat loss and a leaner halthier body, in a way that can be maintained for a lifetime not jus for the next few months.

As I have said this will be done through a number of initiatives:

Website: www.iwillbeleanforlife.com

The site will have articles and information and I would be very pleased to hear from guest contributors. So if you would like to write an article please visit the site and send me an email.

Seminars: It is intended to run a series of seminars where peole can get experiential learning of how to change the way they think which will help make change easy and sustainable which they can take away with them and use on day to day basis.

Ongoing email coaching: Changing body composition does not happen over night and it is not divorced from our day to day lives so situations will arise when maintaining compliance to a new way of life becomes more difficult to follow. Having attended a seminar it will be possible (for a small monthly subscription) to have access to email coaching as and when required.

So that is what I am up to, I would like to take this opportunity to give a big public thank you to Pearl who ishelping me to make the most of these new methods of getting known on this here internet. Thanks Pearl, you are a diamond!

Moving House!

2010-02-25T08:09:00.000-08:00

I am moving to Wordpress!

I am told (see I do take advice!) that this is a much better way of blogging and if you would like to go visit me there you will see some news of the plans I am making to turn the Lean For Life words into action.

So please do follow me on my trip across cyberspace to my new home at http://www.gotowillsblog.wordpress.com

If only moving house in the physical world were this easy!

Will

Isn't the human body amazing?

2010-02-23T06:27:00.000-08:00

This post is prompted by someone who emailed me after my last blog entry wondering whether they could have a real influence on how the body re-builds itself given what has been put in in the past.

My answer to that is without a doubt. Our bodies have largely evolved to respond to the environment and to what we are doing with them.

If we lift heavy weights they tend to build muscle (certainly for men), if we sit around and do nothing our muscles tend to waste away and our joints seize up.

I just wanted to recount my own experience to illustrate this. Not that I am in anyway remarkable as a specimin, anyone is capable of doing similar but it does go to show that we do hold a good deal of influence over how our bodies constantly remake themselves.

Six months ago (August 09) I was just on 16 stone and totally unfit, my body fat % at that point was 36% fat. I could not run without stopping to our nearest shop (500 meters). If I had taken no action at all I would by now have billions of new cells in my body but my body would have been little different to look at or if it were measured.

However I decided to change that. I now weigh around 12.5 stones and have a body fat % of around 12. Last night I went out for a run, intending to do at least 5K (awful day at work and didn't feel much like it) but at various places decided to take the long route and ended up doing 10.5K. Ironically my Runkeeper App told me that I had done 10K just as I passed the shop I could not run to 6 months ago. I must admit I chuckled to myself as I lengthened my stride and gave it a last push for home (10K time was 58 mins 55 secs for anyone interested, not Olympic standard but not bad for an old git of 51!).

As I say nothing special about me but there is something special about this physical body we all possess that it is so forgiving for all the years of abuse and misuse that with a bit of cajoling and effort it can remake itself into something which can pass for decent!

Moral of the story for me is that it is just never too late to do something about it and that time will pass anyyway so if it takes six months or a year so what, in six months or a years time you will be that much older, the question is 'how' do you want to be? We are constantly instructing our bodies as to how we want them to be based on what we put in and how we use them. Makes you think doesn't it?

Weights

2010-02-20T01:56:00.000-08:00

'They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks' or should that be that 'There are none so blind as those that will not see'.

I have been weight training off and on for 30 odd yeas now (more off than on it has to be said!) and while I have known all along it is better to use less weight and better form, I am not 100% sure I have really applied this until recently but now know without a shadow of a doubt that this is the truth.

How can I be so sure? Well if you take squats and lunges for example I have dropped a fair bit of weight off the barbell and really relly concentrated on form, both in keeping my back in the correct position and getting the 'drop' in both exercises as far down as I can while retaining good form and balance. Result DOMS in my legs for two days that I have not had before (and bear in mind that I have been doing these exercises for some months before) and in the case of lunges my heart rate was hitting plus 170 which certainly never happened before.

So my conclusions are two fold, firstly that I may have known something logically for years but it wa not until I really experienced it did it finally become a belief and secondly that there is no fool like an old fool!

Also would add that a good steady 10K run (this ime on the treadmill due to snow and ice) is a great cure for DOMS!

With the weekend here and nothing to get in the way intend to do a Shoulders, Chest and Triceps session this afternoon, and a Legs,Back, Core, Biceps session tomorrow.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

How does your fare. fare?

2010-02-18T06:59:00.000-08:00

We are what we eat. It is true and there is no getting away from it. Our cells are renewing themselves at the rate of billions per hour and they can only do that from what we take in as food. Therefore to argue that our bodies are not affected by the quality of that food makes no logical sense to me at all. If you put poor fuel into a highly tuned engine it will run but not as well as it might. So it is with us.

The argument that is trotted out that a ‘calorie is just a calorie’. It is in it’s most simplistic sense for sure. But if you are going to stop there I think you are in danger of totally misleading yourself with such ‘flabby’ thinking.

Our bodies are much more than just energy! Our experience of life is much more than ‘can we stay alive?’ Our experience of life is a very emotional one, it is about how we feel, both physically AND emotionally and one often feeds the other.

This to my mind is where the question of food makes SUCH a difference.

Not all the food we eat is created equal. Some of it should probably never be created at all!

I have been thinking about this a good deal recently and came across a way of thinking that divides up foods in 5 grades A,B,C,D, and F (I know E is missing but F stands for Fail in my book!) What follows is influence by that but adapted to my own requirements.

Grade A: Is food that is consumed as close to how it came out of nature. Take the shell off a Brazil Nut or peel a pineapple and you have grade a food. These are the foods we are most evolved to eat and which often carry the highest nutritional density.

Grade B: Close to nature but undergoing a certain amount of processing, which adds nothing and takes as little as possible away, an example would be whole wheat bread. It has to be milled, it has to have yeast and water added but that is all it needs to make it bread.

Grade C: A process has taken place which alters the food significantly by either the addition of what was not there or the taking away of what was. A good example would be many commercial white breads. The wheat germ has been removed and other ingredients have been added to make it last longer or taste more palateable.

Grade D: Highly processed foods that still bear some relationship to the original but are highly processed with the addition of fats, sugars and other additives with the sole intention of making them ore palatable.

Grade F: Foods that bear no relation to anything found in nature. (Have you ever seen a naturally occurring Quaver?) Many of which have little or no nutritional value or worse still can be harmful.

To illustrate what I mean let us look at the humble apple. As it stands it is Grade A. It comes off the tree you eat it nothing added nothing taken away. Would unsweetened apple sauce be grade A? I would suggest not. For a start the skin has been lost and there are nutrients in the skin, secondly it has been boiled and heat affects the vitamin content. So it is Grade B still good though!

So we sweeten it with sugar it becomes Grade C.

Fruit juice (which means that much of the fibre is taken out is Grade D.

It ends up in one of those nuclear zapped apple pies from MacD’s the ingredients of which most of us have no idea of without searching them out on a website and this has to fall into the Grade F category.

Of course there is no ‘official’ grading of foods. Perhaps there should be but believe me folks it is never going to happen, The big food conglomerates have way too much power to ever allow ‘GRADE F’ to be plastered all over their products!

Here are some examples of what I would regards as Grade A – F

Grade A

Leafy green veg
Root vegetables
Mushrooms
Tomatoes
Peas, sweet corn and other legumes (fresh or frozen)
Fresh fish
Lean red meat
Chicken
Nuts
Seeds
Fresh Fruits
Potatoes
Unrefined Oats

Grade B

Wholemeal flour (including simple breads)
Canned fruit and veg
Natural Yoghurts
Brown Rice
Cous Cous
Quinoa
Snack bars with 100% natural ingredients
Canned fish
Cheese
100% whole grain cereals (such as Shredded Wheat)

Grade C

Dry Cured Bacon
White Rice
White flours made into simple additive free white breads
Ready meals and sauces with few or no ‘chemical’ ingredients
Butchers quality sausages
Tea
Coffee
Non Wholegrain cereals

Grade D

All processed food masquerading as ‘real food’ i.e. you would hope to find the main ingredients in nature but by now have been so highly processed and messed about that they would be barely recognisable.

Supermarket bacon
Low quality sausages
Ready meals with a long list of additives
Potato Crisps
Shop bought cakes
Biscuits and cookies
Rice Puddings in a pot
All 'Lite' foods

Grade F

Rubbish. That is food so highly processed it really does not deserve the title food. That has been chemically enhanced to make ingredients that would be unpalateable.

Low value burgers
Packet snacks (Quavers/Monster Munch )
Sweets
Fizzy drinks
Cheese Straws

I stress this is MY list and not any sort of official classification, nor is it exhaustive you can add or change anything you want..

My suggestion to you is that if you are serious about your well being, use the classification above to look closely at your own food choices and see how they rate. No one is telling you to change them, no one is saying you should do this or do that, you may even want to finesse your own definitions of the various grades.

However I am saying that in my experience the more Grade A and B foods I eat the better I feel. It affects my mood, my self esteem and my ability to exercise. If I feel better I exercise more if I exercise more (up to a point) I feel better. It is a virtuous circle.

I have also not made judgements in terms of fat or calorie content in the grading because that can be taken into account with regard to amount consumed within overall limits. 1 brazil nut is MUCH higher in calories than the equivalent weight in Haribo but I know which is better for my well being!

What amazes me having been a member of Weightlossresources.com and now of a different calorie logging website is just how few people make the connection between high grade food and wellbeing.

Indeed part of the reason I was booted off of WLR was that I dared to say that you would get better results if you were critical of your diet. We have evolved to eat mainly grade A foods (for hundreds of thousands of years that is all hominids ate). It is only in the last 10,000 years that we have started to introduce Grade B and C foods and only really in the last century have we seen the massive increase in Grade D and F foods.

So if you are reading this and are serious about your physical well being I really do suggest you have a look at the quality of the foods you eat, it does make a difference believe me, and I make no apology of being an advocate of high grade foods.

Purpose

2010-02-15T06:11:00.000-08:00

It's funny isn't it how a number of things crop up around the same time and if you are lucky you see the pattern and make something of it. If you are not tuned in the moment passes and is lost.

Such is the case with me. For a couple of weeks now this whole question of purpose has been cropping up, and in a way refuses to go away.

Let's go back a bit first to put some persprective on it and then it may (I hope) become clear what I am rambling on about.

Many years ago my brother gave me a copy of a book by Tony Robbins called 'Unlimited Power'. If anyone reading this knows the work of Mr Robbins they will attest that he is a very charismatic and powerful man. He stands about 6'5" built like an athelete and one of the world's best known success coaches. This is a man who knows about power.

Have a look at his web site, if you follow the Robbins approach there is nothing that you cannot achieve. And you know what, he is right, if you want it enough you can have it, but the trick really is in knowing what you really want.

Indeed most of the 'motivational' and 'success' coaches will put great emphasis on material success. They will have you writing lists and making picture boards with all sorts of 'things' on them. I don't mind admitting when I first discovered this world and the power of it that was what I did as well, but I never seemed totally motivated to follow through on it.

I now realise where I was going wrong. I did not want all that stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I like nice things, but not enough to do what was needed to do to get lots of them.

My dear wife once said to me some years ago "The difference between having a car and no car is huge. The difference between having a 10 year old BMW and a new BMW is really not that great." How wise is that? Think anbout it. The difference between having a 37 inch flat screen TV and no TV is huge. The difference between having a 37 inch and 42 inch not that great. You can carry this on across all sorts of material things.

Though this is not the case in relationships. The difference between having one loving relationship or no loving relationships in your life is enourmous. The difference between having one and two equally loving realtionships is well....double!

This was the blinding flash of inspiration that has been dawning on me for about the last 5 years,(I never said I was quick on the uptake)it really is not things that make me happy (don't get me wrong, I would rather be comfortable than poor) but people. Indeed it is not even people that make me happy it is 'me' that makes me happy, when I know I have interacted with someone that is of value to us both.

Now I have to be careful here in sounding just too 'mom and apple pie' but I am beginning to discover that working at getting as many interactions in my life as right as possible will pay me back with huge dividends, it makes me feel good and I like feeling good!

We are after all pretty selfish creatures, even our altruism we do because it gives us a feeling that we want.

What has this got to do with being 'Lean For Life'? Well I have been wondering over the past few weeks why I write this Blog.

I started it full of evangelical fervour when I found a way to change my body composition easily and effectively, which I have to say some other people seemed unable to do.

I blogged intermittently as I really only wanted to blog when I really had something to say, but the feedback I got was that some people enjoyed it and looked forward to my posts.

Since getting my marching orders from WLR I wondered what was the purpose of it? Though there were other calls on my time over the last couple of weeks I thought should I carry on? Would anyone miss it? When I got emails from two people asking how I was and why I had not been around I took that to mean that there are people out there who feel a benefit from what I have to say, which is great. I will therefore be very happy to give what I can, to anyone who feels they can make something of it.

Which dovetails in with two other projects I have going on a present, both in very very early stages, and if anyone would like to comment on they should just fire away.

The first is that I feel the whole area of fatherhood has been devalued in our society and consequently we have a lot of young men (particularly) that have suffered from lacking the sort of older male role model that I was fortunate enough to have. I would like to get something going by which men like myself who have been though the process of bringing up children, (especially boys) and who would like to give something back by mentoring youngsters who want to make something of themselves but are possibly finding their energies directed in a less than positive way.

The working title for this project is "Just one is a success". Which I think encapsulates what I am thinking of, if I could help just one person turn their life around and follow a path that they would never have found to a happy and productive life then I would count it a success.

The other is similar but not quite the same in that I was talking to two business owners in the building that I manage and it became clear that they may benefit from having an outside person to ask them questions and possibly suggest different strategies for them to achieve what they want. I have offered to help them in anyway I can.

So to me it is becoming clear what my purpose is, it is to be a mentor. Someone who creates the space in which others achieve all that they want and all that they are capable of being.

What is a Mentor? I have looked up a few probably the best easily accesible one of which is " a wise and trusted guide and advisor". Personhally I prefer Robert Dilts's version "someone who creates the space for others to be come all that they can or want to be".

I don't even know if you can just say, 'I want to be a mentor', but then again I suppose you have to because there is really no mechanism set up for others to come along and tap you on the shoulder and suggest you do it. Perhaps it is a bit like The Field Of Dreams - 'build it and they will come' well perhaps if I just hold the space and I am ready for it then those that I can help will find me.

If you have got this far, I apologise that this blog has strayed a little from what it was a few weeks back, but hey nobody has to come read it!!! There is an element of musing in it and as you might guess all the thoughts are not fully worked out as yet.

I would be really appreciative of any feedback that anyone is willing to give.

Did I say the going was getting tough????????

2010-02-15T04:02:00.000-08:00

I really wasn't joking! You may have noticed that I have not been around much the past couple of weeks, indeed a couple of lovely people even emailed me to see if I was OK!

To say it has been a trying couple of weeks would be a bit of an understatement.

Firstly the spectre of redundancy stalks where I work like a great big stalking thing, and when that happens you tend to get your head down and try to make yourself as indespensible as possible, no? So it is probably true to say that my head has been elsewhere!

On top of that my car went in for an MOT two weeks ago (today) and I only just got it back yesterday. A part they needed had to be ordered from Germany and when it came it was the wrong one! In the end the girl there managed to work her charms on the examiner and get it though on a repair rather than a replacement! It just goes to show how much we take personal transport for granted.

On top of that I suffered a minor tear in my calf while out running two fridays ago so had to rest up. Which would not have been a problem if I could get to the gym but not having the car and Mrs F working different hours to me made things a bit of a problem!

On top of that we were having work done at home in the bathroom which needed re-decorating this weekend!

So I am still alive and kicking but have been fighting fires in other areas!

On the Lean For Life Front, I am just starting to get my head around being aware of what I am eating and how much but not counting every calorie that I eat. I really don't want to count every calorie for the rest of my life and think that I have a sufficient handle on the whole thing for it not to be a major issue in the future.

Part of being lean, fit and happy must be being able to maintain the right sorts of balance in life. I know I have a tendancy towards the obsessive and it is something I really need to guard against.

Yesterday was a case in point. Two months ago (while still losing) I would have stuck to my calorie quota. Yesterday as it was Valentines day I decided that I could be a little more adventurous and cook something nice for myself and Mrs F. She deserved it after really putting in a shift with the paintbrushes and rollers over the weekend. So on the menu was :

Roasted tomato, anchovy and prawn salad.

Free range breast of chicken with breadcrumbs, parma ham and rosemary (it is all chopped finely and stuck together with butter then stuffed under the skin and roasted)

This was served on a bed of crushed new potatos and leeks with a side dish of frech beans tossed in garlic butter.

Dessert was one of the little Gu Chocolate Banoffie Pies (cheating I know but we were busy doing other things!)

1 glass red wine.

Now looking at that it is not something I would normally have eaten during my fat loss time but most of it is whole foods (the Gu aside!) and it was thoroughly enjoyed by all concerned.

I also felt better about going a bit OTT because I did get out and do a 5K run setting a new PB of 28 mins 10 seconds (that is 1 minute 20 better than previous best!

So I think the corner has been turned on this difficult period (and it wan't all that difficult now was it!) so you should be getting a bit more from here in the coming days!

One last request, as I am no longer on WLR please feel free to leave a comment so that I know you have dropped by. This is particularly true if you think I can help in anyway or you would like me to address a particular subject in this blog.

You know what they say............

2010-02-05T01:01:00.000-08:00

When the going gets tough, the tough get going!

I doubt that there are many of us who find January and February great months. I little winter snow can make the place look beautiful and the kids like it for a while. However to my mind it palls fairly soon after that. February is little better but it does have the redeeming quality of being mercifully short! March I can handle. The world is waking up and things are starting to grow, the feeling of renewal is beginning to spread.

But there are things all of us can do now to make sure that we are best placed for the better weather when it comes.

I know dragging my sorry carcass out to the gym on a dark rainy night is more difficult than leaving work in the light with perhaps a bit of sunshine to travel in.

For those of us who run outside the prospect of lighter nights and warmer weather must be eagerly anticipated.

However much as it is tempting to hibernate for the rest of February there are rewards to be gained from pushing on through and getting the 'hard yards' done now.

Not exercising is not just neutral. It is not as if doing nothing for the whole of February will leave me where I was on the first. The nature of the human body is such that if you do not use it it slowly deteriorates, especially as you get past the dreaded 50!

If you weight train missing out too many sessions will set you back there is no doubt about that, and while not many people will see the changes you have made under layers of winter clothing time will come around when it is just T Shirts and jeans or sunner dresses when all that work pays off.

If you are a runner stamina is lost of you don't run, gained if you do. Many people (myself included) have entered runs and races in the coming months and it will be the miles put in in January and February that makes finishing the run possible in April May and June.

So am I writing this to motivate others or myself? The truth is both. If we are having trouble motivating ourselves to do something, the more compelling reasons we can find to do them, the easier it becomes. So for my part I am thinking forward to the half marathon that I have entered and standing on the start line knowing that 13 and a bit miles is within my capability. I am thinking about being able to wear whatever I want to wear in the summer without my belly hanging over my belt, if feeling confident and healthy in my physical body.

So whatever it is that is de-motivating at the moment, put to one side, look forward and imagine the rewards of the efforts you are putting in now. It makes following through and taking action so much easier.

So the world moves on.............

2010-02-04T10:01:00.001-08:00

Found a new site today that does much of what WLR does called nutracheck.co.uk. I have signed up for a free 5 day trial. I had thought of doing without, as Chocolatebutton said I should know enough about what to eat by now and she is probably right however having that bit of dicipline 'imposed' on me where I know I will have to record what I eat is no bad thing.

It means I can put the whole WLR thing behind me. What irks me a bit is that there are stll nasty little people having a dig when I am not even able to defend myself!

Still that is between their ears.

Really pleased about the response to the facebook page and want to say a big thank you to Tina for helping out with some of the admin and generally giving the page a shot in the arm.

Also a big thank you to all who have come along and joined. I realise now I should have made it a 'group' rather than the page I did then everyone would be a member rather than a 'fan' but I suppose there is not much wrong with being a fan of beng Leaner For Life.

The ethos is really discuss whatever you want there and certainly clean eating HIIT and increasing protein is not barred nor will you have anyone jumping down your throat for it!

As for me today, it is a rest day exercise wise and with the bathroom a bit upside down due to having a new shower put in just a case of holding the line on food and looking to get out there and get some miles under my belt tomorrow.

Wow! Blown away!

2010-02-04T01:04:00.000-08:00

Wow guys, I will admit I went to bed last night feeling a tad low. So many amazing people that I was in danger of losing touch with all because I am a bit impulsive and hot headed!!!

I was even beginning to wonder how would I keep my motivation going to stay the way I had become (let alone do the really hard part which is the last 10%)

Then when I got to work I looked at my hotmail account and there was a message from Jo (JAG) saying that she had joined the facebook page. Oh well I thought if it is just me and her, who better to share a corner of cyberspace with!

So I logged on to Facebook and it seems 30 of you little rascals have already got there nad joined up!!!

To say that I am chuffed would be an understatement. But this is not about me it is about providing something for people that does not exist elsewhere.

I would like the Facebook page to be a place for people who have got past the foothills of the process and know that to climb the mountain the you have to be in control of your own feet.

That does not mean we do not all need a bit of help from each other from time to time but it does mean an acceptance of the fact that change has to come from within.

To get some better idea of what I am saying I would urge anyone in doubt to go the the facebook page and look at the discussion initiated by Marianne 'Why are we here' I could not have put it better so I won't try.

What I do know is that as a group we are stronger than as individuals and I for one would love to be able to continue sharing this journey with other people.

My main question now is what do people want from the Lean For Life facebook page? I have started a discussion there so please feel free to put your thoughts.

Also anyone who is adept at getting the most from facebook please let me know as I am a bit of a novice, the page does allow me to make others 'admin'.

My my this page has been busy!

2010-02-03T09:28:00.000-08:00

I have just checked my stats and it seems that there have been something like 6 X the pervious highest number of views of my blog page than the previous busiest day!

Thank you to all those who have looked in be they the curious, the supportive or just the downright happy to see me gone from WLR!

As dear ol d Oscar Wilde said "There i sonly one thing worse than being talked about.....and that is not being talked about!

Now what can I do tomorrow to get those sort of numbers again. perhaps the towel shot without the towel!!!

Lean For Life

2010-02-03T08:02:00.000-08:00

In the course of todays events someone said why don't you set up a facebook page. well I have done just that and have called it 'Lean For Life'.

It is not in anyway in direct competition with WLR as I just do not have anything like their resources, but it seems to me it might be nice where people who have had a certain amount of success with what they are striving to do and have tended to stick to the clean food/cardio/ weights message can have a place of their own and on which they can discuss their way of doing things .

I have no idea what it might become but it strikes me that as much as I got into trouble for saying it on WLR there were a number of people for whom the penny had dropped and this seemed to be making a huge difference to their results.

So I have set this facebook page up as a place where those of a like mind can help and encourage others without some of the 'periferal' stuff that goes on on WLR. It costs nothing so I thought it worth a try.

Blogs can be promoted shamelessly and any photos that are OK with Facebook are OK with me!

Can be found on: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Lean-For-Life/288223610955?ref=ts

Drawing a line and moving on

2010-02-03T06:04:00.000-08:00

Had time to consider, and what has happened with my fall out from WLR is probably for the best. Clearly my sensibilities and some people on that site are not the same, and not having been there for years and years I suppose I was bound to get the smelly end of the stick.

Perhaps there was some resentment of the fact from those who saw fit to complain that I had managed to do in four months what they it seems were still struggling to do after years of trying. It takes all sorts.

However I don’t go away that easy and anyone who is interested in how I am doing can follow on my blog as I will now change it to being a little more like some of the others which are more a kin to an online diary of how I am doing.

One thing I am absolutely sure of is that I will not let this derail me in the slightest.

Should anyone want to stay in touch or would like any help with anything you can get in touch at williamfreeman@hotmail.co.uk

Oh and Suzie? Never was anyone so misnamed.

Laters people!

Farewell to WLR

2010-02-03T03:07:00.000-08:00

I had quoted it as a favourite website but it seems it is not one where freedom of speech has any place. Following unexplained and undiscussed complaints they summirarily terminated my membership.

This is a shame because I met some very good people there but it seems we are living in an increasingly sanitised world where is you deviate from the accepted norm you can no long er be tolerated.

Me today who next?

Cut the crap!

2010-01-12T06:40:00.000-08:00

On my very favourite website I see a lot of people going through the rigours of sorting out their eating issues. I am making absolutely no judgement on this as we all have to find our own path to where we want to go. However I thought it might be useful to include a few thoughts on here about food. More specifically the quality of food.

Now I am a self confessed foodie! I love food I think it is one of the great delights of life, especially when mixed with good company and good fellowship. However my preference is for GOOD FOOD and good company. If I can only have the good company I will settle for a lower standard of food but if there is no company why would I compromise on the quality of the food?

What I am saying in my roundabout way is this. On Saturday night we are eating out with friends. I will go where we go and eat what I want from whatever is on offer. What sort of person gets precious about what they are eating in those circumstances?

However that is a once or twice a month thing for me (and I suspect for many of us) the rest of the time I am eating for me. To put fuel in my body and to give my body what it needs to be healthy.

Therefore my question is why would anyone eat most of the crap that is on offer these days? Highly processed industrialised food that has been added to tampered with and generally mucked around with until it often bears no resemblance to what it started out as!

If you are looking to get lean and stay think, think and think again about what is going into your body.

It is true that the calories in v. calories out is the ultimate equation but is that really where it ends?

For the first three months of my new lifestyle I was conscious of what I was eating and by most standards I aat well. Since I have come back from my holidays I have stepped it up a bit and really started to look at my diet and see where I can eliminate any remaining processed foods.

Let’ start with breakfast. In the winter porridge is I believe one of the finest foods available to us. Just rolled oats, nothing added nothing taken away. Slice a banana on there and a drizzle of pure runny honey. Gorgeous. At the weekends a couple of free range egs and some smoked salmon!

Bread. I have looked at what goes into commercially made bread and have decided, thanks but no thanks. I don’t each much bread but what I do will be homemade with flour yeast and water and any other seeds or grains I decide to put in.

Snacks are easy! Lean protein with some of last nights veggies or seeds or nuts or fruit with natural yoghurt.

Evening meals are easy. Lean protein and veggies (just got a George Formby type grill and I have to say I am converted!). This does not have to be boring, there are plenty of ways to make it interesting with sauces using chillies, lemon grass, ginger, garlic, tomatoes etc. etc. The key being I know what is going in not some food scientist in a lab somewhere.

Last meal for me is usually some fresh fruit diced up and taken with a dollop of Greek yoghurt and a drizzle of honey, perhaps some quality granola for crunch and carbs if I have been to the gym.

At the weekends there is a bit more chance of varying things because time is at less of a premium.

So what is the result of this? Well I thought I felt good before Christmas but to say there is a tangible improvement about how I feel day to day would be an understatement!

Now I am not saying anyone else has to eat this way, all I am saying is that for me it works. I feel better, I never wake up tired, while all around me are coughing and spluttering I seem to be immune, I have more energy than ever and it seems more ambition!

Is this just me bigging up me? Well maybe but who cares? What I am saying is you want to feel better? Look at the quality of the food you are eating. You don’t have to eat out of the health food store or be taking all sorts of weird and wonderful supplements. Just spend more time in the fresh foods and produce section of the supermarket than all the junk food aisles!

I know a few people will be reading this a bit horrified thinking I am some sort of holier than though health freak. I can assure you I am not I have just discovered that I can feel much better for much longer than I ever did when I was eating junk, and that is good enough for me. Give it a try what is the worst that will happen?

Paying the energy bills.

2010-01-11T06:13:00.000-08:00

People have asked me whether having cut calories back when trying to lose weight it is important to compensate for additional calories that have been ‘spent’ through exercise.

Firstly let me make it clear if your body needs say 2100 calories a day to live and allow you to do all the things you are asking it to do (run your brain, breath, move, digest food, eliminate that food, constantly re-build cells etc. etc.) and you only give it 1100, it has to have that energy from somewhere. It runs contrary to the laws of physics for it not to have to take that energy from somewhere.

So in ‘the economy’ of your body evolution has coded three different types of energy, that which you are earning and processing, a i.e. your food intake in it's various forms which it always uses first, the energy involved in your active infrastructure (muscles, skeleton organs etc.) and that which it has stored in the bank against hard times – fat..

Fat is natures energy store. Every gram contains 9 calories as opposed to 4 in every gram of protein or carbohydrate. It is (as far as survival goes) like gold.
So why not if we have too much just eliminate it out of the poop chute?
The reason is that we evolved in a world where food supply was not constant and in winter particularly, those who had been able to store up excess energy from the plentiful times had a greater chance of survival (and therefore were more likely to re-produce) than those who could not.
There was no advantage to be had in getting rid of precious energy you may need during the hard times. It is this evolutionary fact (which we see in operation in many many other animals), that gives us the problems we now have.

The difficulty we now face is that we now have no times of famine (well most of us do not) and we are surrounded by shelves of supermarket groaning with energy dense foods. Trouble is evolution is glacially slow and ours has not had time to adjust and has not yet caught up.
So back to the original question. Let us suppose you embark on a sensible calorie restricted diet where the intake needed to maintain your body and the activities you are doing is 2100 and you aim for a loss of say 2lb per week aim to take in 1100 calories per day. This is quite a drastic change from the say 2500 per day you were consuming.

Being dedicated and focussed you take yourself off to the gym and having strapped on your trusty heart rate monitor you exercise to the tune of 600 calories. In effect you have just robbed you body of 600 calories as your normal maintenance level has gone from 2100 to 2700.
This is something of a shock to your system as you are now actually 1700 short on the day.
Now unfortunately as yet the body has not evolved a direct line from your conscious mind to your cybernetic regulatory system. It is no good saying don’t worry I am only doing this for a week or two, feel free to use up my fat stores normal service will be restored as soon as I am X stones Y pounds.

What your ‘evolutionary body thinks is “cripes! The food (income) has run out I have energy bills to pay (the deficit you have created) and I have to pay it and quickly."

Now (aside from where it is needed to perform certain functions in the body like protect nerves etc.) fat really only has one main purpose and that is paying the energy bill. But it is very good at that. However it is not the only substance in your body that can pay the energy bill. Your muscles, organs and skeleton can too.

But let us look at muscles for a moment. In evolutionary terms these are the earning sections of your economy. They allow animals to run, jump, walk to where the food is, to hunt food down, lift rocks and branches to find grubs etc. So while they can pay energy bills they can also be employed to keep the income coming in - call it your earning infrastructure.

We know that if you work muscles with physical exercises and particularly heavy weight exercises your body would rather repair them and keep them in good working order than it would use them to pay the energy bills. Of course it would if they are there you can eat if they are not you cannot.

This makes evolutionary sense. Those early humans who had the muscle power to hunt and gather, got more food than those who did not.

Consequently your body responds differently to say a 1000 per day deficit if you are accounting for and eating those additional calories than if you are not. It registers that the muscles are being used that energy volumes are increased even though there is still a deficit. Exercising and increasing intake is sometimes called 'high energy flux'.

What we know is that if you are in high energy flux and your deficit is the same as if you were just in calorie depravation your body reacts differently.

In high energy flux your body knows it has to maintain it’s investment infrastructure (the muscles and skeleton etc) as they will be needed to keep the income flowing in therefore it pays the energy bills out of it’s fat reserves.

If you force it into what is sometimes called ‘starvation mode’ by going on very low calorie intake (wether by choice or by creating that state by exercising and not increasing intake) it tries to hang on to it’s ‘gold deposit’ of fat as it has no idea how long the famine will last and after all it is not using it’s infrastructure anyway so it can sell a bit of that off.

What does this mean to people trying to lose weight? It means that if you send your body into energy deficit but do not use your infrastructure you lose a higher proportion of muscle than you do fat. This in turn decreases the need for calories (after all the investment infrastructure cost more to maintain than the fat deposits) which makes sense really seeing as there is a shortage of food. Thus decreasing your need for energy.

You will lose weight by starving! But what happens when you have had enough of starving yourself and the will power goes? You have sold off some investment infrastructure (muscle and skeleton) and the amount of energy you need to stay alive has fallen from say 2100 calories per day to 2000.

But no body gives you an accurate read out and you return to your previous eating habits and consume 2500 calories a day. So even though you have lost weight you are now putting it back on at a rate greater than you were before because the level needed to maintain your physical body has fallen. So now rather than being in excess to the tune of 400 cals per day you are in excess to the tune of 500 calories per day.

Not only that but unless you make efforts to re-build that investment infrastructure that excess will be laid down against either another famine or when you next decide to go on a starvation diet. No wonder the fat piles back on.

If you are looking to lose fat, strive for a state of high energy flux. Let your body know it needs all the infrastructure it has to maintain these levels of energy input and let it be confident in using up some of it’s fat stores. That way lies the lean fit you I suspect you want!

Stress and how to deal with it!

2010-01-07T03:51:00.000-08:00

I thought it might be useful to look a bit closer at the whole question of stress.

Stress is a response we have evolved and developed over millions of years so it is with us to stay and is not 'just' imagination.

Cortisole is produced in the adrenal gland and as many know adrenaline is the most powerful of stress responses to be used in fight or flight. However adrenaline is not useful for longer term 'stresses' or what could be termed challenges, as it causes an immediate physiological response.

Cortisole is triggered by our brain dealing with input from both bio-feedback mechanisms in the body and by stimulus from outside changing the way we think. To explain further if you are hungry that is a bio-feedback it is telling you to start thinking about finding some food. If you don't cortisole is employed to start providing the body with more glucose.

However it is quite possible to trigger the stress response by the way we 'choose to think'. If we go to the supermarket and find the shelves empty even though we may just have eaten it is likely that there will be a stress response because we are thinking forward about how we might have no food to eat!

Often we stress ourselves through our own imaginings. If loved one is late home we imagine flashing blue lights and emergency rooms much more than we do seeing them enjoying themselves and losing track of time!

So this is the easiest 'stress relief' tip you will ever get! If you find yourself stressed, ask yourself this simple question 'How can I think about this differently'. There are several sub-strategies that I know work or you can make them up as you go along. What you do does not really matter as long as you can change your focus and the way you are thinking.

My chosen response to stress is always to develop a strategy to deal with whatever it is. This winds my OH up no end!!!

When I ran training I used to invite people to write down all of the 'work stuff' that was running around in their heads, you know all the stuff which is 'crucial' (not!) and would if I left it there distract them all day. I then got them to seal it in an envelope and sign the back. They then gave the envelope to someone else in the group they trusted or to me. At the end of the day they got them back.
What this did was dump that stuff for the period of the training but they knew they would have it back at the end of the day. I have though had people at the end of the training say they would not bother taking the envelope back!!

Others quite rightly suggest distraction. If you are stressing over something you probably have too much 'thinking time' on your hands. Go do something else. Listen to some music on headphones, do the ironing, go for a walk with your OH there are thousands of things.
The point is that in modern life many of our stresses are very perceptual.

The great thing is that if you change the thinking you change your bodies physiological response. For instance it is known that laughter decreases cortisole levels in the blood stream! So put a Blackadder DVD on (it always makes me laugh!).

Of course exercise is without doubt a really really good way of getting rid of stress.
Once you have done it once notice what difference it made, how and where your body felt difference.

Stress is natural, in fact it could be argued it is an essential part of being human, it is how we DEAL with it that will determine if you are it's mater or it's slave.

Being sold to

2010-01-06T10:21:00.001-08:00

It strikes me that people trying to do something about their weight/fat are a somewhat vulnerable group when it comes to being targeted by the rapacious ‘diet’ industry. It seems everywhere you look there is someone promising you an easy way to lose 40lbs of unwanted belly, or ‘eat this and you will be healthy for life’.

Let me just say one thing. If any of these things worked we would all be lean lithe and lissom and some fortunate inventor would be sitting there counting his (her?) billions. There would be only one thing to buy and we would all use it wouldn’t we?

But there is not just one miracle cure is there, whether it is a super abs twister or a super fat burning goji berry shake!

The fact is there really is no short cut. The fact is that most of us have eaten an exccess of calories for years. We decide we want to change in a moment but we also the results in a moment. There is a fundamental mismatch here.

I am of course open to argument but as far as I can tell there is no easy way to get lean. It is about changing behaviour. No longer eating without thinking what is going into the body and why, it is about moving more than perhaps you have done for years. It is about re-discovering where food sensibly fits within a balanced and happy lifestyle.

None of these things are made any easier by being bombarded by ‘marketeers’ (snake oil salesmen) purporting to have the easy cure to all your body shape issues.

So I have a few recommendations:

If the product is ONLY aimed at dieters run, run in the opposite direction. You do not see ‘diet’ cabbage or ‘diet’ Swedes. There really is no need for diet foods just good proportions of good foods. There is no prescription of only a few foods to eat, food CAN be enjoyed so work out how much of the food you enjoy you can eat.

There are no pills or potions that will do the job for you. If there were the NHS would be giving them out for free. Obesity is costing us millions now and will cost us billions in the future.

Any exercise contraption that promises to make you lean lithe and lissom from one body movement should be avoided like the plague. THEY do not work. Those buff and beautiful models they have on them are just that models, they are being paid to look that good, and they look that good because they do the hard work of looking after their nutrition and exercise in the kitchen and the gym.

Of course there are people who will profit from helping us along the way, those who provide gym facilities, for example. No problem with that they are offering their facilities to everyone not selling their gym as a miracle cure. People who have ‘been there and done that will often write books about their experience’. As long as they are not selling snake oil I see no problem with them making a living by sharing their knowledge.

You no doubt can think of other examples. I am by nature a free market person but I also think it is incumbent on the consumer to educate themselves to avoid being taken in by these rouges.

That is the purpose of writing this blog piece. The sooner we ALL wise up and realise that there is no ‘quick fit – get ripped in 4 weeks’ answer the better!

Is it really that confusing?

2010-01-04T14:20:00.000-08:00

I went to a friend of my daughter’s to pick her up last night and bumped into the friend’s mum, a lady of similar vintage to myself. She had not seen me for some considerable time and remarked on how much less of me there was. She said she too would like to lose weight but it is all sooo confusing. How had I done it?

That got me to thinking. It is confusing, but why so?

Call me a cynic but I think the whole ‘diet’ thing has been made confusing by the fractured and self interested nature of the diet industry. Each part of that industry (and it is enormous) is interested in pushing forward it’s solution as THE solution.

Let us examine a simple proposition, one that has worked for me, it has transformed me from a fat, sluggish 51 year old that was deluded in thinking that he was just big boned into a more realistic leaner, healthier, fitter 51 year old, who is under many fewer illusions.

The proposition is that in essence getting lean is actually quite simple and straight forward. The problem is that there really is not a great deal of money to be made from selling ‘products’ this way. How so?

The first building block to a leaner life is in your own head. Get that sorted and you are well on your way. True it may be that you have to spend a few bob on a good book or two but if you really want to you can glean huge amounts of information from the good old interweb. You must be prepared to sort the wheat from the chaff but it is out there.

Secondly eat well (with a calorie deficit while trying to lose fat). By eat well I mean good food, quality food. Not specialist foods, not diet food just the best quality food your budget will allow. If you are reasonably well off by all means eat fillet steak, if you cannot stretch to that slow cook some shin of beef, it will end up falling apart tender and taste better than the fillet. Vegetables are plentiful all year round and if you choose those that are in season they will not cost a fortune. Trouble is for the ‘diet industry’ there is no way you can process a vegetable to make it more healthy. Why because it is usually pretty damn perfect as it is. Learn how to make good bread. You will find that you need eat less of it because it is denser and more satisfying. No need to eat the ‘diet’ variety. In fact I would go so far as to say that there is no need to eat any ‘products’ of the ‘diet’ industry.

Thirdly. MOVE!!!! Part of the reason we have such an obesity problem is that we have not evolved to do what I am doing now, sitting at a PC typing! Our bodies were evolved to move, to work, to run, to walk to where the food is. So to get lean we HAVE to move more. That means cardio vascular exercise, running, cycling, swimming, walking. No need for any sort of diet industry here.

Fourthly. Re-build lean mass. If you have a temporary calorie deficit (what is often referred to as dieting) your body will to a certain extent catabolise it’s own lean mass as well as some of the fat that is stored.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I am a rabid advocate of maintaining lean mass. Why? Simple really lean mass (muscle and organs) takes a lot more calories to stay alive. Therefore if you maintain your lean mass while losing fat your metabolism will be higher than if you lose of lean mass along with the fat.

So given that anyone in deficit will lose lean muscle, the body has to be encouraged to ‘re-build’ it’s muscles. This is done by doing resistance (weight) training that take the muscle to the point of hypertrophy, which is where the micro fine fibres are broken and need to be repaired. It is the repaired strands that strengthen and re-build the muscle.

Again there is good evolutionary reasoning for this. Successful early humans would have lifted rocks carried branches and done all manner of other things. Those that maintained and repaired muscle well did better than those who did not. Evolution in action.

But again not something the ‘diet industry is going to tell you about’ is it? True, gyms do well out of it but there are many many things that can be done at home at very low cost.

So is it really confusing, this getting lean business? Get your head straight, eat quality fresh food whenever possible (in the short term at a deficit to your energy needs). Move. Get the heart pumping, encourage the body to burn off excess fat. Re-build the lean muscle being loss through weight bearing resistance exercise.

How confusing is that, the rest is just detail?

These are the secrets that the diet/nutritionist/supplement industry does not want you to know, because there is nothing in it for them. They are desperate to sell their supplements and diet magic. In past day they had a name for these people – snake oil salesmen.

Ask yourself one other question do turkeys vote for Christmas? Why then would the diet industry ever come up with a product that worked? If it did it would go out of business.
If one person reads this blog and starts to think differently it will have made my year because it will be one more person delivered from the grasping clutches of the diet industry.

Why fight millions of years of evolution (Notes from downunder)

2009-12-05T00:26:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking (and reading) recently about how our bodies process food and react to how we treat them.

Aside from a few loony religious fundamentalist creationists it is now widely accepted that we are as we are, through a process of evolution over millions of years. Homo Sapiens is thought to have started walking the earth around 60,000 years ago and our precursor species for millions of years before that. In terms of our experience of time even 60,000 years is almost impossible to get our heads around let alone millions of years!

The relevance of this to fat loss and fitness is that we have to put our current challenges into some sort of evolutionary context.

For roughly 55,000 of those 60,000 years mankind was a nomadic hunter gatherer (as indeed were whatever precursor species that came before,) which meant they got food where they could, followed the meat on the hoof and gathered berries and nuts at the right times of year.

Of course anthropologists and only guess on detailed lifestyles of early man but what is I think safe to say is that hunter/gatherer early man was not all the time surrounded by an excess of foods. Yes there will have been times when there was abundance but we can be sure that it was not year round.

We also know from the study of natural selection that it is those parts of the species that can survive though to reproduction age and successfully pass their genes on to the next generation. The rest die out.

So if you are early homo sapiens and your body contains a mutation that means you are more resistant to famine (i.e. your body is better at keeping valuable fat stores) you have much more chance of surviving hard times than someone with a genetic make up that does not store fat as well.

The same is true with those whose bodies are adapted to respond well to times where food is available but where it needs to support the finding that food through the production of muscle in order to run, hunt, throw, lift boulders etc, those people had the best chance of survival.

So my ‘guess’ is that we have inherited bodies that are ideally adapted to doing both of these things as it will have been those early men/women that could do this that would have survived through to adulthood and reproduced.

Fast forward to 5/6 thousand years ago when mankind started putting down roots and farming. Yes, we did start to have a little more control over our food production but due to climatic and other natural conditions we were still subject to periods of famine and most people had to put in a great deal of physical effort into keeping ourselves alive. For the vast, vast majority of mankind there was not a permanent surplus of food.

Fast forward further still until just 30/40 years ago. In the developed world we have been subject to a huge (and many would say dangerous) fundamental change to our food/lifestyle. For the vast majority of the developed world there is NEVER and shortage of calories. We are surrounded by a total overabundance of food energy. Even the ‘poor’ in the developed world have access to an abundance of ‘cheap’ calories.

At the same time many many more people are earning their daily bread by how they think and how they communicate rather than by the physical sweat of their brow.

Now I am NOT making a judgement here. What is, is and I am a great believer in playing the pieces on the board as they stand not as you would wish them to be.

However I think it is hugely useful to recognise that our surroundings (in terms of calorie availability) and lifestyles have changed beyond all recognition since WW2 but our bodies just cannot evolve in that space of time. Consequently we are creating a constant problem for our bodies to process levels of input that they are just not (for many of us at least) evolved to handle.

Does that mean we have to eat and behave like cavemen? To an extent I would say yes. Our bodies have evolved to process a certain amount of protein, natural fats (albeit that the animal type would not have been in overabundance, though nuts and seeds would have been at certain times of year), and carbohydrates from naturally occurring grains veggies and fruit.

What we know we have NOT evolved to do is process a constant excess of any food, nor have we evolved to be able to process large amount of process grains or sugars.

I am not suggesting that anyone puts on a loincloth and runs around hunting the local wildlife and gathering berries! However my experience is that life is a whole lot easier without conflict, and that is what modern eating patterns have created in our bodies – constant conflict with our evolved physical nature.

The same is true for physical activity. We have not evolved to sit in front of PCs TVs and computer games! We have evolved the need to use and develop our physical bodies, that need has not suddenly changed in the last 50 years!

Take from this post whatever you wish but the more I think about it the more I realise that if I respect my evolutionary imperatives I am working with my body not against it and that seems like the way to go for me.

GETTING TONED (OR NOT!)

2009-11-15T12:13:00.000-08:00

Lots of people who are trying to lose weight/change their body composition talk about ‘getting toned’. Often in terms of lifting some light dumbbells two or three times a week! The purpose of this blog entry is to spell out in no uncertain terms that no such thing is possible! I don’t say that in any way to dismiss what people want but knowing that what ‘getting toned’ means and how to do it takes a good deal more work and knowledge and thinking about that would make much more sense than scoffing over the language.

What do most people mean when they talk about getting toned? For the purposes of this entry I will assume that what ‘getting toned’ means is where you can see more muscle definition and thus look leaner (because you usually are) and fitter (not always the case but likely!).

For most people definition is a combination of low (or very low) body fat and muscles that have sufficient size to create contours between them. The lower the body fat and the bigger the muscles the greater the definition will be.

Before getting into the physiology I want to give a real world example of why just building muscles will not automatically lead to greater definition.

Imagine a sheet of corrugated material such as is used for certain roofs. On it’s own it is clear what it is. It’s visual contours are easily apparent. So it is with muscle. If we took our skin and subcutaneous fat off, we would all look ‘well defined’.

So what happens when you put a two inch thick sheet of foam rubber over your corrugated plastic? If you stuck it down to the contours I doubt your would have much idea of what is underneath. What about a one inch thick sheet of foam rubber? You might see some definition but some would have been lost. Now imagine that same corrugated plastic with say a huge sheet of cooked lasagne, or a sheet of cling film!

That is what definition is all about. Subcutaneous fat (the stuff under your skin) acts on the contours of your muscles like foam rubber would on a sheet corrugated plastic, the more you have the less you will see of what is underneath.

What about the other side of the equation, muscle size? Well in many ways the extent of definition is not determined in any way by muscle size. Visit any ‘normal gym’ and go to the free weight area and you will see guys there that have built quite huge muscles but have little or no definition. Now I don’t know if that is what their objective is, I know some guys (doormen etc.) like to just have bulk so that they look a bit more forbidding, others will be working their little socks off lifting heavier and heavier weights and wondering why they are not getting better definition.

As Arnold Schwarzenegger famously said great abs are made in the kitchen. So it is true of a defined body, you cannot get it in the gym alone, it MUST be done in conjunction with a good nutritional regime.

A good way to think in terms of what you might like to look like and how you will need eat and train to get there is look at certain types of athletes and how they train to get a steer on how you can do it.

What you need to do will be determine what outcome you are after, some things are easier than others:

The lean look with little muscle bulk:

This look is going to take lots and lots of cardio. Sufficient cardio burns fat but will take with it lean muscle. Take a look at competitive marathon runners. They will carry very little body fat but legs aside they will not have much in the way of muscle bulk. So yes, Paula Radcliffe has a six pack but is probably not what most people think of in terms of ‘toned’. No disrespect intended to ANY marathon runner as they have my total admiration!

This is not a way many non athletes would go to get a really toned look as it takes considerable dedication to get to that level as you are by losing muscle bulk decreasing your metabolism. Not a problem if you are training real hard and creating a need for calories in the way that distance runners do but for us in the real world the likelihood is that it will not be possible to get down to the levels of body fat required to look really ‘toned’ by this method.

The lean look with some muscle bulk:

This is probably the approach that most people who are interested in this subject from an aesthetic point of view will and to come at it.

If you want to lose body fat you will need to lose body fat. This can be done by a combination of running a calorie deficit, burning off the body fat you already have and maintaining/building your muscles. OK more detail:

How much Cardio? I am not sure there is a specific answer to this but certainly 30/40 minutes 4/5 times a week will (combined with good nutrition and resistance training) will see a measurable effect on body fat.

What sort? Again there does not seem to be a definite do this or do that. Research seems to point to working the body to the point where heart rate is raised to a reasonably high level and that activity is maintained for at least 30 minutes. I also believe it to be true that too much cardio exercise can be counter productive as after a certain point the body stops burning fat and starts catabolising muscle. Not a problem for long distance athletes but probably not what most readers here are after.

So having done your running/cycling/cross trainer what then?

If you do nothing else then you will lose muscle mass and while you might get a lower body fat and get more definition than you had you will not have much in the way of contour to be apparent, which is where progressive weight training comes in.

Progressive weight training is as the name implies ‘progressive’ on either number of repetitions and/or weight. Let us assume you start on dumbbell curls with 5kg in either hand. How many repetitions should you do? The consensus seems to be somewhere between 8 and 12 where it is becoming impossible to lift the weight fully on the 11th and 12th reps. (Lower reps higher weight will build more strength and muscle bulk, higher reps will build less muscle bulk but more endurance).

What you are aiming for is muscle hypertrophy, which in simple terms is stressing the muscles sufficiently that microscopic fibres ‘snap’ and need to be rebuilt. It is this ‘snapping and re-building’ that means the muscle gets stronger and under certain circumstances bigger.

If you are ‘failing’ at the 6th or 7th rep you might want to decrease the weight, once you get to the point where the 12th rep becomes ‘easy’ it is time to increase the weight.

The objective of progressive weight training is that you never let your body become used to what you are asking it to do. As soon as it can do what you ask it to do you ask it to do more.

One other vital note here the amount of weight you use should always be the maximum with which you can maintain good form. It is better to do the exercise properly with a lower rate than to do it poorly with a heavier weight. That way lies injury and poor results.

So you are happily burning off fat and weight training for muscle. But may women will say ‘but I don’t want to build huge muscles and look like a body builder’. Which is fair enough, however, if you are thinking that way let me put your mind at rest by pointing out three important points:

1) If you are in calorie deficit (and you certainly should be if you want to lose body fat) it is highly unlikely that you will build any appreciable amounts of muscle. Building additional muscle takes a good deal of energy and as you are not giving your body enough to maintain it’s current composition it is not going to find it easy to build more.

2) Muscle building require certain hormones the major of which is Testosterone, which women on the whole have much less of than men.

3) It takes a lot of very hard work with heavy weights over months with a very strict dietary regime of bulking and cutting (more of that later) to get a ‘bodybuilder’ physique. You will NOT wake up one day looking like Arnie!

What about the diet?

Anyone who knows anything about it will tell you that in terms of losing weight it is a matter of calories in calories out, which is true. You could just eat a Mars bar a day and lose weight. You would not be very healthy.

If body composition is what you are interested in then it is not that simple. In terms of body composition all calories are NOT created equal. If you are looking to get better definition and maintain/build muscle you WILL need to wise up on what to eat and when (now is not the place for that). As every I would recommend Tom Venuto’s Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle as an excellent guide on how to achieve your goals.

In terms of sporting role models, footballers will often have a lean but muscular physiques, think David Beckham or Daveed Ginola with their shirts off. For female examples 400 metre runners such as Kelly Holmes will have low body fat but will need decent upper body strength so are likely to have reasonably developed core, shoulder and arm muscles.

What about the very muscular very lean look?

Well if that is what you want (though personally though I admire those guys dedication it is not a ‘look’ that I particularly like’), you are going to have to put in a great deal of very hard work and dedication. Body builders go through periods of ‘bulking and cutting’. Bulking is a period of calorie excess where they will look to put on as much muscle as possible, but accept that at the same time they will also put body fat on as well. They will then go through a period of ‘cutting’ when through a combination of diet and cardio they will look to lose as much of that excess body fat as possible.

Examples? Any major body builder or the mens 100 metre runners will be an example.

So what is a healthy level of body fat?

We all have to have a certain level of body fat to stay alive, it serves a number of essential functions. It differs between men and women and will differ with age. But absolute minimums would be 2-4% in men and 12% in women. Healthy range in males would be somewhere around 15% for men and 22% for women.

So, still want to get toned? It can be done but it DOES take a good deal more time effort and attention than just doing 200 reps with a light dumbbell in the gym.

Is it worth it? Only you can know that but speaking as a 51 year old that can now wear tight fitting t shirts without looking like the Michelin man I would say yes!

2009-11-06T11:05:00.000-08:00

Follow up to the Lean or Light debate.

I thought it might be useful to explain in a little more detail about what happens when we deprive our bodies of calories. Most people who look even superficially at the whole problem of weight loss/getting lean will have hear of the term ‘starvation mode’ and will have some idea of it’s effects. However starvation mode is really only a prolonged catabolic state. Catabolism as the article below explains is happening all the time, as is anabolism, it is really all about which gets the upper hand.

First some science. The following is reproduced from newsletter by Analytical Research Labs of Phoenix Arizona. I am not saying their information is any more or less accurate than others but the basic thrust of what is reproduced below is in agreement with much of the other research information available on the web, and as far as I can tell it not in dispute among the scientific community:

Article extracts start:

Anabolism And Catabolism

Metabolism, the sum of the chemical processes of the body, may be divided into two phases. Anabolism refers to chemical processes which are constructive, or synthesizing of body tissues, enzymes and other body components. Catabolism generally refers to those processes in which body tissues and components are breaking down into simpler metabolic constituents. These two processes always coexist, although one may dominate at times over the other. For example, at night during sleep, anabolic processes tend to dominate, while catabolism tends to dominate during the day. Childhood is a more anabolic time of life, while old age in general more catabolic.

Causes Of Catabolism

Anabolism and catabolism can become quite involved. Dr. Emanuel Revici based an entire metabolic typing system on these two aspects of metabolism. His system is somewhat similar, but not the same as Dr. Paul Eck's distinction of fast and slow oxidizers. When we refer to a catabolic state we are referring to a specific condition in which catabolic processes are dominant. The main cause of this is a prolonged stress response. In response to stress, the body secretes epinephrine, norepinephrine, cortisol and other hormones. The glucocorticoids (such as cortisol) have a catabolic action. That is, they suppress the synthesis of protein, glycogen and triglycerides. Instead, these are broken down into fatty acids, glucose and amino acids and mobilized from storage. This process is necessary to counteract a stress. However, if the process is prolonged, the resulting catabolism is very damaging to the body and causes excessive tissue breakdown. Also, a prolonged stress response suppresses the immune system, the digestive organs, growth hormones and other important body systems. There are numerous causes for a prolonged stress response. They include attitudes of fear, guilt, worry, resentment, frustration and hostility. Another cause is nutritional deficiencies. These can lower one's stress threshold and impair the production of cellular energy within the cells. When a body is not able to properly metabolize sugars, starches and fats for fuel in the glycolysis and Krebs energy cycles, it will digest its own tissue proteins in order to produce energy. Also, fatigue and other health conditions may cause a catabolic state.

Catabolism And Health

A catabolic or tissue breakdown state can affect any organ or body system, depending on one's particular weaknesses. For example, if excessive tissue breakdown occurs in the joints, the result may be painful joints or arthritis. If excessive tissue breakdown occurs in the stomach, the result may be an ulcer. If it is in the heart muscle, cardiomyopathy can result. Similarly, tissue breakdown can affect any organ or system. Correction has less to do with the particular affected organ and more to do with reducing stress and improving cellular energy production so that the tendency for catabolism or cannibalizing tissue can be reversed. This involves dietary and lifestyle changes and the use of nutritional supplements to help restore energy production.

Correcting A Catabolic State

Correction includes getting plenty of rest and sleep, learning to accept and trust what life brings and letting go of fears, guilt, worries and resentments. Diet can play an important role. Many people, for example, place great stress on the body by eating excessive carbohydrates and not enough protein. Natural therapies may also be very beneficial. Specific supplements are often critical to raise the threshold for stress and help improve cellular energy production. Often Limcomin will be recommended for a catabolic state. It contains zinc, an important nutrient for protein synthesis and manganese, important for cellular energy production. In addition it contains vitamins A and C, magnesium and vitamin B6. These are very important for energy production as well. Finally, it contains lymph, thymus and spleen glandular substance to support the immune system. Immune system dysfunction is common in the catabolic state. Copper and iron may also be added to the program, as these are important for the electron transport system, where most energy is produced. In addition, digestive enzymes are recommended to facilitate digestion and the absorption of nutrients.

End of extract.

What is clear that catabolism does not only occur when we go into ‘starvation mode’ . The body will become catabolic if any of us goes too long without food. Which is why missing out meals may be superficially attractive (as it saves calories) but will mean that catabolism has the upper hand for a while. This is particularly true of breakfast. As the article states sleep tends to be an anabolic time, which id why any athlete or body builder knows it is vital to get rest and sleep to let the body do it’s ‘repair’ work. Once we wake up and start moving around this stops and if there are no available calories around the body will go catabolic and start hunting for them from bone organ and lean muscle!

What is also interesting is that mental stress promotes catabolism therefore those that stress about weight loss are likely to become catabolic easier than those that do not.

I would also like to put right a misconception; it is almost impossible to build muscle while in a calorie deficit (before anyone argues, it IS possible but it is really not easy and you would have to work very hard at it with carb cycling).

So the aim is to be as anabolic as much of the time as possible and as catabolic as little of the time as possible.

What promotes anabolism? Clearly sufficient sleep, as little stress as possible and proper nutrition with sufficient macro nutrients required for anabolism. If you are promoting anabolism through weight training this will mean having sufficient protein available to your muscles while re-building is taking place.

Regular eating seems to restrict catabolism, as your body is in effect 'kept busy' with digesting food every three hours. All the evidence I have seen is that people have more success in losing body fat byeating between 5 and 6 smaller meals a day.

Such a method of eating also has the beneficial effect of meaning that you are never hungry. If you are trying to lose body fat hunger is to be avoided. the desire to eat (anything!!!) can more easily override the more sensible 'conscious' choices that we 'should' make.

Though I have not seen any specific research I would not be at all surprised if water comes into this. A body that is de-hydrated is stressed and more inclined towards catabolism. Proper hydration removes that stress.

Weight training is by it’s very nature catabolic as it stresses the muscle, however properly approached and with good nutrition the resulting anabolism will replace that lost muscle. If I can maintain my lean mass while losing fat I will be one happy bunny.

From a weight loss/leanness perspective what is important is that lean mass burns around 8 times more calories than fat!

From my point of view I have no doubt, I want my metabolic rate to be as high as possible because I am really not into being hungry! The higher my metabolic rate the more of the things I love to eat are available to me while maintaining a healthy body composition.

As that nice little meerkat in the advert says ‘simples!’

Lean Not Light!

2009-11-05T07:17:00.000-08:00

Some of the threads on weightlossresources.com have moved me to write this blog entry for two reasons. Firstly there seems a lot of confusion out in the big wide world about the whole subject of weight loss, and more than a few mixed up ideas about how it all works.

Anyone who read this blog knows that I often refer to Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). One of the things that John Grinder (one of the first developers of NLP) discovered was the effect that language and the language we habitually use has the way we create our ‘map of the world’ and how we interact with the world.

Which brings me to the word ‘weight’! Indeed the very site I use (and thoroughly recommend is call WEIGHTlossresources.com!

But is it weight we want to lose? If that were the case it would be easy we could hack off a limb and immediately be many pounds lighter!

Is it weight that is an indicator of poor health to come? I suggest not. I have seen no evidence whatsoever of increased heart problems or incidences of diabetes among bodybuilders and figure athletes, rugby union players, male sprinters all of which would be considered over weight by any conventional measure.

I suggest that what we want to be rid of is FAT. Certainly speaking personally my goal is for the first time in my adult life to be lean. I really don’t give a hoot what the scales say!

So what is the difference and why does it matter?

It matters because of all the research indicating obesity will lead to health problems and possibly premature death not one study I have seen indicates that an excess of lean mass is a problem.

Our bodies have not evolved to be fat! We evolved over hundreds of thousand of years to live in times of scarcity and then relative plenty. Therefore we have evolved mechanisms to both conserve resources (fat stores) in times of famine and lay fat stores down in times of plenty (just like many other species do). Our problem in the developed world is that in the last 40 years we have moved out of anything approaching that cycle into an era of super abundance! We are surrounded by calories! You cannot put fuel in your car without walking past racks of fuel for your body! However this has happened (in evolutionary terms) in a twinkling of an eye and there is no way we can evolve quick enough to adjust.

So consequently people are laying down more and more fat as we sleep walk through this eternal autumn of plenty into a train wreck of obesity in the future.

Luckily many have woken up. They know too much body fat is not good, either from a health or an aesthetic point of view. So what to do?

Firstly understand a little of how the body works. The body likes to store fat and it likes to hang on to it for as long as possible. It is programmed by evolution to do that.

Many people’s first thought when wanting to lose weight is to drastically cut down the intake of calories as after all it is an excess that is causing the fat isn’t it?

The problem with this is our evolutionary programming has equipped us with a mechanism so that when famine comes we give ourselves the best chance of survival. That is the processes of the body slow, neuro transmitters are produced that make us feel tired and lethargic so that we slow down activity and save our resources. The mechanism also releases a hormone that seeks to make up the deficit in our energy intake/output from our lean mass. After all if you are going to crawl into a corner and wait out the famine you won’t be needing all that muscle.

Also fat is natures energy store. That is why nuts and seeds are so calorie dense it is also why squirrels and birds like them so much! Nature stores what it needs the most.

And here is the kicker muscle is much more metabolic than fat. So every ounce of muscle we lose we lose some ability to burn food. Your needs go down and your ability to create a deficit goes down!

So if you do the standard ‘diet’ you will lose weight, of course you will! But what are you losing? Fat or lean?

Who is going to be healthier a 200lb man with 120lb lean mass and 80lbs fat or a the 260lb man with 240lbs lean and 20lbs fat (assuming the same height). I know which I would rather be.

What is the alternative? THINK LEAN!

I believe we need to have a radical shift of how we think about obesity and take ‘weight’ out of the conversation. Re-address goals. Rather than find out how to lose weight find out how to get lean! Rather than spend every day on the scales see how the clothes are fitting. Follow a PROVEN strategy for fat loss. The best people in the world for losing body fat are competition body builders and figure athletes. Not that I would go to the extremes they do, if only from an aesthetic point of view (it is just yuk!) However they can write the book on how to take fat off. So why not borrow a bit from these guys?

As I see it, if you follow the three paths of: cardio to burn fat, weight exercises (heavy enough to cause muscle hypertrophy) and nutrition such that you have a smallish calorie deficit but concentrating on giving your body the best nutrients you can there really is no way you will NOT get lean.

On this positive side of the coin our bodies have also evolved the mechanism that allows us to retain our lean mass and use up our fat if there is an adequate supply of food (even though it might be in deficit to our needs) as long as we are also using our muscles. In this circumstance a very different hormone is produced that allows the deficit to be made up from fat.

However I can almost hear people saying, but I am not a competitive body builder or a super fit athlete! To which I reply there is no need to be. I am not Jimi Hendrix but if I learn from the master a bit about guitar playing I will be a better guitar player!

We do essentially all have the same physiology. It is not as if when I take in excess energy it turns to fat and with someone else it turns to lemonade, is it? Of course there are different genetic types and some find it easier to be lean than others. However as one well known body builder was heard to remark “the more I work at it and the better I eat the better my genetics get!”

So let’s hear it for lean! Let’s get a bandwagon going ‘Lean not Light’.

There is a theory of memes which says that ideas can evolve spread and mutate like genes. I think this is a meme that we should set lose into the world!

I see so many people working themselves into a stew over a pound not lost this week, when I suspect it is not really even what they want. I suspect what they want is to be leaner, look better and feel better about themselves! And nothing wrong with that say I!

Of course the funny thing is if you do concentrate on getting lean, retain your lean mass and lose unwanted fat you will get lighter!

Getting ripped in 4 weeks!

2009-11-02T03:40:00.000-08:00

Is anyone else sick and tired of seeing these ads all over the web? Virtually every page I load has spurious before and after pictures of a blob turned into six pack heaven!

There is no way known to man that will turn a blob of tummy tat into ripped abs in 4 weeks. If there was we would all be doing it.

As Arnie once said great abs are made in the kitchen not the gym.

Muscle tone is all about how much fat obscures the muscle shape. Imagine a piece of corrugated iron such as you might find in an old shed roof. Now cover it in a 1 inch thick layer of foam rubber. Even if you stick the foam as lose to the metal as possible much of the detail will be lost. Now cover the same metal with cling film. I think you get my drift.

The same is true across the rest of the body. At the gym I attend there are quite a few guys that lift quite prodigious weights but have little muscular definition. I wonder how much attention they are paying to their nutrition. Of course they may just want to look 'big and smooth' in which case good luck to them, but my guess is they are wondering why are not getting the definition they thought they would get from weight training.

Of course the asthetics of body building are highly subjective. Personally I am aiming for a lean look without huge muscles. I ahev never thought the extreme bodybuilder look is a particularly desireable one, but hey that is just me.

Strategies

2009-10-28T04:25:00.000-07:00

I have to make a confession here! My journey to a happier healthier me has been quite an easy one, largely because I am male and I think in a very ‘male’ way.

Men tend to think in terms of strategies, that is to say there is a problem we need to find a way to fix said problem. (Classic Mars as someone put it!) I know it drives my OH crazy sometimes!

Where as women tend to think in a different way often with a more emotional content. (Classic Venus I suppose).

Now before people start putting barbed comments at the bottom, this is not invariable and it does not mean because you are a man you think that way or vice versa. Women can learn from men and men from women, and the greater the range of thinking processes you have the greater your chance of success. (The law of requisite variety)

But what I can say is that in terms of getting from A to B (i.e. when trying to get leaner and fitter) some of that strategic thinking really helps.

Firstly we all have them, (strategies that is!), though often we will not be conscious of them. If we go into a restaurant and are given a menu, we have to make sense of it. We have to differentiate between the dishes on offer, therefore we will have to access our memories and represent them to ourselves.

Some people will picture what they are thinking of, some will talk to themselves and tell themselves how much they enjoyed a particular dish last time, others will conjure up a representation of the taste, smell or the texture of a dish they have had before.

There is no right or wrong way, but it might be useful to get curious about how you do what you do!

What is your strategy for getting motivated to exercise? What is your strategy for convincing yourself that eating a bar of Dairy Milk is the best way of serving your long term goals (gotta say on that one that some people have brilliantly honed strategies for self-deception!). What is the process that happens internally when confronted with food choices?

Now once you have started to unpack the ‘how do I do what I do’ question, it becomes much, much easier to implement new more effective strategies.

Let me illustrate with one of my own examples.

I do not deal with hunger very well! When I get hungry any really rational strategies go out the window and I will override any rational thoughts of what is good for me in order to lose the feeling of hunger! Thus I would in the past eat very bad choices in order to lose that feeling. My strategy was very ‘feeling’ driven, I didn’t like the one I had I wanted to replace it with another (being full) and I really didn’t worry too much how I got there.

When I read Tom Venuto’s book ‘Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle’ and it came to the part about 5/6 meals a day I thought about my hunger strategy and realised that this new strategy of never letting myself get to that hungry stage is a much better way to go. So now the first signs of hunger are usually just a prompt to say that 3 hours have past and it is time to stoke up the boiler again! I am much more aware of and respectful to my hunger signal. I never ignore them or push them away, and unless there is just no way of getting something good to eat I never not act on them.

I could list many other examples. However the key is this. Humans do not act randomly. They act out of a sense of wanting something. If you have a behaviour you want to change as you don’t feel your current one is supporting your longer term goals, get curious about firstly what it is you are trying to get by doing what you do.

Get curious about what ‘strategy’ is in place that allows you to continue this behaviour. What process do you go through internally before the behaviour happens, because although you might not be aware of it and though it might be very quick you do go through a process.

If you want to change it that existing strategy slow it down, your thought processes, notice what you are doing to get to a certain action. Once you are aware of that you can ask yourself certain questions like: ‘what could I do differently that will give me the outcome that I want’ or ‘how can I get similar feelings in the short term with better results in the long term’. Please, do not ask questions, like ‘what do I always do this?’ If you ask ‘why’ questions your brain will deliver justifications, if you ask ‘what could I ‘ questions your brain will deliver you options and strategies!

We are all totally responsible for our own actions, however many of these actions are as a result of ‘auto-pilot’ programming and while they may have served a purpose once may not be serving what we want now. So switch out of automatic and on to manual for a while you might find it making life a whole lot easier!

OK I admit it I have been remiss!

2009-10-19T10:16:00.000-07:00

Having been told off by two people on WLR for not updating my blog here I am as instructed!

I suppose I didn’t update as in the past I have tended to do it when something specific came up, and not much has in the last six weeks so perhaps it would be good for me to just update how things are going on my personal journey.

I will admit that I have had something of a re-appraisal of my goals. When I started out at nearly 16 stones I set my goal at 11 stones. Why because some chart said that this was the ideal weight for someone of my height!

So I had a re-think on goals. In fact my question to myself having got this far was ‘how would it be if I lost no more body fat/weight’ the answer is that it would not make much difference at all. So what should I do give up and go back to my old ways/lifestyle? Not on your Nellie!!!

So that prompts the next question “what would it be like to maintain my healthy eating and exercise for the rest of my life?”

The answer is that it would not be difficult, I am eating better than ever before, I am fitter than I have been for years and perhaps most importantly I am feeling better (in terms of my overall health) than at anytime I can remember.

So no going back from here, whatever the outcome from here in terms of fat/weight loss the goal now is to maintain the very healthy eating I have adopted (for most of the time there will be times when it is just not right to be to over fussy about food) and more importantly continue enjoying the exercise!

Finally a promise not to leave the next update another 6 weeks!

Do we think on more than one level?

2009-09-03T06:43:00.000-07:00

Earlier today I unleashed something of a firestorm (or was it a storm in a tea cup?) on Weightlossresources.com by suggesting that those looking to a healthier lifestyle found it easier once they had changed their beliefs about the sort of lifestyle they want to lead.

The purpose of this blog is to give some background about the power that beliefs and the higher levels of our thinking have on the way we behave.

The anthropologist Gregory Bateson first posited the model of the Neurological Levels in the late 60’s and a good deal of work has been done since particularly by Robert Dilts.

What are the Neuro Logical Levels?

It is a model allowing us a structure to understand the ‘levels’ on which a particular thought is taking place. Is it infallible? No, but I think as I explain further it is a useful tool in allowing us to determine where the ‘blockage or problem’ is that needs to be changed or removed before we can get to where we want to be.

There are essentially 6 levels:

Environment – that is time and place is determining our thoughts and actions.

Behaviour – What we do and how we behave

Capability – what we are able to do

Beliefs and Values – What is important to us and what we believe to be true in the world.

Identity – Our sense of self

Beyond Identity – our sense of purpose and our impact on the wider world.

This is sometimes shown as a pyramid, with purpose at the top.

http://www.brefigroup.co.uk/acrobat/neurolog.pdf

There is very good reason for the levels being in the order that they are in that the higher levels have the greater influence over the lower levels.

For example someone who does not eat meat might say ‘I am a vegetarian’ which is an Identity Level statement. Therefore it is unlikely that if you taught them how to cook and eat meat it would change their behaviour!

On a belief level someone might say ‘due to the my religion I do not eat pork’ so it is likely that though they are perfectly capable of that particular behaviour they will not do it, even at a time and place where it would be quite acceptable.

Where it gets really interesting is when you are trying to get someone to perform a behaviour, or they themselves are trying to get themselves to consistently perform a behaviour which conflicts with a higher level!

I have been involved in sales training quite extensively in my life and I can tell you that teaching a salesperson to do cold calls will NOT mean that they will now happily do them (in the vast majority of cases).

In much the same way teaching people which foods are healthy and which are not will not mean that they only eat the healthy ones!!!

In the first example (the cold calling) it is usually (though not exclusively) a question of the person having a value that says I do not like to be rejected, and a belief that a rejection from a prospective customer is personal!

On the healthy eating front people know the right behaviours to practice, but often there are some very deep seated and conflicting beliefs held about food (food as comfort, food as a means of control, the value of immediate pleasure certain foods can give etc. etc.)

What generally results is we want to carry out a particular behaviour and we know this on a conscious level but ‘something’ stops us. Generally this is because there is a conflicting belief which is exerting more force on our actions.

However Einstein said ‘a problem cannot be solved on the level on which it was created’. Therefore you have to go to a level ‘above’ that on which the problem exists in order to help resolve the conflict.

While this is not the right place to solve all problems, in many many cases the conflict between beliefs and behaviours can be resolved by going to the levels of Identity and Purpose.

In the negotiations between the ANC and the Nationalists in South Africa the talks were deadlocked until one of the facilitators ‘chunked up’ the problem to the higher level and got both sides to agree that what they wanted was ‘peace, security and prosperity for all the children of South Africa and all the following generations’ Once this had been achieved there was clear purpose and when any conflicts arose at the lower levels they could be referred back to this highest purpose.

The same is true of individuals, if you are clear on purpose and how you want to be in the world conflicts between belief and behaviour will be much easier to resolve, you just go back to find which of the conflicting belief best serves your true purpose.

When you align all the lower levels with your purpose you achieve congruity. (Though I would hasten to add few people are fortunate enough to be totally congruent all the time and I am certainly not one of them!)

That is to say there will be no conflict within you about what you think you want or don’t want, and your behaviour will flow from the ‘alignment’ of your upper levels.

OK some will poo poo this and say it is ‘self help’ clap trap, but is it?

Think of anyone you know well who seems ‘sorted’ look at them closely and I think you will find they are congruent in themselves, What they do and where and when they do it is guided by their capabilities, which is guided by their beliefs and values which is guided by their sense of self, which is all ultimately guided by their sense of purpose.

Does this men there is only one way to do things? Absolutely not it means that there are as many ways to do things as there are people, however those who seem to do things effortlessly and successfully seem to be the most aligned and congruent among us.

How do we all get more congruent? Start at the top and be clear on purpose, if that is not clear then really nothing that follows is likely to be easy. Is the purpose in line with your sense of self, your beliefs and values? Do you have the capabilities to carry out your purpose and manifest the behaviours that will serve your ultimate purpose? And lastly do you do those behaviours in the right time/place.

Personally I have found this model hugely useful.

People ask why I have undertaken this course of weight loss and getting fit the answer is that for the last ten years or so my purpose has been very much to enjoy life and family as much as I could, with little real consideration for health and fitness. That has changed and it is now to enjoy life as much as possible for as long as I can, which means to achieve this purpose I have to be aware of what will keep me healthy and fit..

Comments welcome.

A strong, strong recommendation.

2009-08-18T06:55:00.000-07:00

One of the people on WeightLossResources.com put me onto the Ebook, Burn the Fat Feed The Muscle by Tom Venuto. (BTFFTM)

Having read it cover to cover (do you do that on an Ebook or should it be top of screen to bottom I can only say WOW!

This guy has it covered. Firstly he is not selling anything, (apart from his books of course!) as far as I know he is not marketing protein shakes or any other sort of gadget, gizmo or lazy man’s (or woman’s!) way to leanness.

Secondly he tells it like it is, that there is no magic bullet to get healthily down from 19 stone to 11 in three weeks. It takes time perseverance self discipline and exercise.

He explains the science (and gives references) about the evidence for his BTFFTM system. Indeed he is honest enough to say it is not his system just the threads of scientific evidence and his own experience as a champion body builder drawn together in an easily understandable way. If you want to know how do do something ask someone who clearly is successful at it!

For those that have never seen the book (apologies to those that have) There are four main areas that he concentrates on:

Goals and motivation, drawing heavily from NLP he is quite right in saying if your goals are not big clear and compelling you will find success harder.

Nutrition. A good chunk of the book is given over to this. Think of your body as a performance engine, why would you put duff fuel in it? He also details why those who seek to have very low body fat eat at least 5 times a day! He also covers in detail why water is so important to us.

Cardio for fat burning – he explains the science behind what happens when we take our heart rate up

Resistance training to keep lean mass as high as possible during a calorie deficit stage.

I started this phase of my life about 3 weeks ago and while I knew about body fat % and BMI etc. I was probably as focussed on weight as anyone else. Since I read BTFFTM my focus has changed completely. My focus now is to maintain as much lean mass as possible during this fat loss stage. Consequently I have cleaned up my diet, sworn off alcohol entirely and have started to plan meals and eat 5 times a day.

What can I say? It only works. While I have not been near a scale for nearly a week, I feel better, brighter, with more energy, no cravings for any rubbish. My goals are big clear and real to me.

Unfortunately it has got me into a bit of trouble for being a bit evangelical on WLR. I have been told this is not the only way people can achieve their goals.

That is true.

There is more than one way to cross the road.

You can do it with your wits about you taking into account as much information as you can take in. You could ask someone who has been successfully crossing the road for years how they do it. You could close your eyes and hope. You could walk backwards with your eyes tight shut. All of these methods could get you to the other side.

I have a very simple way of looking at it - which gives me the greatest chance of success? Thank you Mr Venuto for doing all the hard work for me!

Big, clear, objectives!

2009-08-06T04:05:00.000-07:00

The funny thing about the human being is that if they really really want something they will go after it and get it.

I don’t care who you are it is true, whether it is positive (say sporting or business success) or negative (a junkie in need of another fix) if the desire is great enough we move heaven and earth.

So how come we sometime have difficulty in motivating ourselves to get something we know we want? The answer is we just don’t want it enough!

So do we just give up? Not on my watch matey!

There are some very simple and very easy techniques that can be used to make that goal more compelling.

Firstly, if you have read any of this blog before you will know that beliefs play a huge part in human behaviour.

So I would say choose your belief and ‘act as if’.

To expand on that a bit if I tell my self I can’t do something my body acts to fulfil that belief. I will give up easily as I have already accepted I won’t succeed. Which, surprise surprise is why people with a can do attitude tend to succeed in life.

So if you want to be leaner, tell yourself you are going to be leaner!

If you want to succeed at least give yourself the chance by telling yourself you are going to succeed. Then act ‘as if’ you are going to succeed. It may feel a bit strange at first (a little unnatural and you may have doubts, however believe me the more you tell yourself and the more you act as if the more your body will ‘somatise’ that belief and take it on board.

Now get clear on your objectives. Now once again regular readers will know I am not a great one for obsessing about scales. My guess is that what virtually everyone trying to lose weight wants is not to lose weight as such, but to be leaner/fitter/healthier/happier. Am I right?

So if those are your objectives be clear on them!

We all make sense of the world through our five senses (and for the purpose of this next section we are going to deal with just three) Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic (feeling). We represent the world to our brain through these sense. Without going into too much detail (I got told off for that the other day!) different people prefer to use these senses in different proportions.

It will soon become clear to you which is your preferred system when we get on the next sep of the exercise.

So having thought about your objective, what would it be like when you achieve that goal? Take a moment to imagine, what you will look like, what you will hear others say or what you will say to yourself, and imagine how you will feel!

NOW TURN UP THE IMAGINATION!

If you are visualising how you will look make the picture bigger, make it brighter and make sure it is in colour!

If you are hearing what people are saying or you are congratulating yourself, put some more enthusiasm in that voice even add some cheering and clapping to the sound track!

If you are imagining how you will feel when you reach your objectives, intensify that feeling really ramp it up! Notice where it is in your body and what the nature of that feeling is.

If there is any negative self talk going on about ‘well chances are I will never get there’ ignore it. This is imagining you have. You can imagine whatever you like!

The key is in intensifying whatever you imagine to the point where it becomes compelling and something you can go back to at any time if your resolve starts to weaken.

Locus of control, where is yours?

2009-08-03T11:55:00.000-07:00

If there is one thing that has affected me more than leaning about where I decide my locus of control to be I'm not sure what it is!

What i s a 'locus of control'?

Without going into the full psychological explanation it really means do you control your world or does your world control you?

I wrote a piece about this on WLR when I first joined about cause and effect. It is essentially the same thing.

Those whose locus of control is internal believe that how they feel (so by definition how happy they are is determined by themselves (internally). Those who have an external locus of control believe that events beyond them determine their state of mind.

Stephen Covey in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People describes it as three concentric circles the first one being very small. This is us and it is where we have most influence (control?). A little further out there is another circle which is our immediate world (family, work ect.) and beyond that there is a much bigger circle which is the rest of the world.

It really does not need a genius to work out the further away you are from the centre the more powerless you will feel.

I can honestly say that I have never met someone who has a very external locus of control who is generally happy. Because they are trying to control a world which is way beyond their control, and the more they try the more powerless they feel.

Remedy?

Spend more of your time 'closer to home'. Deal with the world from a point of cause rather than effect, as at cause you have the greatest influence and therefore the greater feeling of power.

Sade on WLR asked me to relate more of this to my own experience. So here goes..........

I first came across the idea of living at cause or effect/locus of control when I was studying NLP. It made so much sense I really just took it on board and started to 'live out of that belief' and noticed the difference it made to me and those around me. My studies also (in a round about way led me to the philosophy of Taoism, which almost takes this idea to an extreme!

Essentially every experience I have had since learning about cause and effect has underpinned what I now know to be true. I am happier knowing that I work at controlling my world not the world.

Interesting day!

2009-08-03T11:19:00.000-07:00

It has been an interesting day with a bit of negative feed back on the WLR site where I sometimes post, though it is nice to know that the positives come in at about 5:1. So on balance I would assume there are people who are benefitting from these posts and this blog.

It does surprise me to an extent that anyone should have a problem with what someone is posting on a web site forum, last time I looked it was not compulsory to read anyone's posts!

One of the members on WLR asked me to post something about 'Locus of Control' which I am happy to do so watch this space!

What is happiness? (part1)

2009-08-02T13:48:00.000-07:00

How do you do happiness?

Do other things/people make you happy? Or is it you that decides what makes you happy or what does not?

Not easy questions are they?

The older I get the more I am adjusting my ideas about what makes me happy. There was a time when I thought was money and possessions, but when I think it through what that was really connected to was me wanting the world to see me as successful! But life has taught me that (with the best will possible) most of the rest of the world really does not give a toss if I am successful or not! Those who really care about me do so because of who I am not because of what I own.

Don't get me wrong, I do like the finer things in life, and I am not one of those that wants to wear sackcloth and ashes. But what I have learnt is that once you have enough, what you get on top is marginal and not always worth the extra effort.

My wife (the wise Mrs F) summed it up nicely with this piece of wisdom "the difference between having a car and no car is huge, the difference between having my little Fiesta and a big BMW is not so great". The difference is certainly not doubled!

This could be applied to anything shoes, food, houses, etc, etc, etc.

What it does not transfer to is relationships. Of course the difference between having one loving relationship in your life and no one who cares is huge. However having two people who love you is a doubled and a third means it is trebled.

So give me the choice between money and wealth and those who are important to me and I know which I would choose every time.

The paradox is that I do not and cannot own any of those that bring me such joy, so I own nothing that is important to me but I have so much of it.

The funny thing is for years and years I had know idea it was that way around!

Change of title!

2009-08-02T12:55:00.001-07:00

I have changed the name of this blog because I am going to concentrate on exploring ways in which people can lead a happier healthier life.

That does not mean that I know exactly how to do it, I am still finding my way like everyone else, but I do know I have learnt a few things along the way that mean that I have reached place in my life where I can say, yes I know how to be happy, and I know how to deal with most of what life throws at me.

Now the last thing I want to do is come across as smug! But when I joined weightlossresources.com it was clear that there are quite a few people that might appreciate a little help.

So..... this blog is not about look at me and what I have done it is about what I have learned along the way of my journey and if by passing some learning on I can help just one person then it makes any effort worth while.

I think the truth is I like happy people, I like to be around them. I like positive people they are able to give without diminishing themselves. I like kind people, they know that to be kind does not cost them indeed they gain from it.

Not really sure how often I can add something or indeed how much effect it will have on anyone, but so far I have had some good responses so who knows!

Feedback Loops

2009-08-02T07:39:00.000-07:00

(No they are not the latest breakfast cereal!)

What are feedback loops?

One answer is that they can be the most powerful motivational tool you have.Start with the basics.

The human being is a very very complex cybernetic system. That is it takes in information and adjusts it's behaviour according to the information taken in. It then checks that adjustment to see if it has reached the desired state and adjusts again if not.

An easy way to think of it is a central heating system - when it is turned on the boiler fires because the thermostat tells it that the water is not at the required temperature then continues to turn off and on depending upon whether the required temperature is reached.

So....you now all know about cybernetics!

How does this apply to becoming a 'healthy me' ? To put it very simply (and this is very simply) in behavioural terms we humans get into what are termed positive feedback loops or negative feedback loops.

Example of a positive feedback loop in this context: You go to the gym in the morning, you feel good about yourself, yours self esteem is boosted, your resolve is boosted, at work someone offers you a doughnut but you politely decline, you tell yourself that was a brilliant thing to do, your self esteem goes up, you smile more, someone says to you you are looking well, yours self esteem goes up, so you make good food choices at lunch time, so you feel good all afternoon........... I think you get the picture.

Example of a negative feedback loop in this context:

You eat something you you know it would be better not to eat, you feel bad about yourself, so you tell yourself you are rubbish a worthless human being, so you are in a bad mood, because you are in a bad mood you snap at a colleague which leads to a row, so you feel down and reach for your old friend chocolate bar, which picks you up for a bit but as soon as you have finished you are telling yourself you are not only bad but stupid, which makes you feel even worse..........familiar?

And surprise surprise all this happens without really thinking about it as we do not need our conscious minds in order to do all this.

What can we do about it?

Firstly be aware of the power of feedback loops and take control of them! You are now!

Consciously start your own positive feedback loops by asking the question what could I do today that might start a positive feedback loop? It need not be anything strenuous, just resolving to smile and say hello to everyone you meet is likely to start a positive feedback loop as others will be nice back and that will start you feeling good about yourself!

Be aware if you are slipping into a negative loop and break the pattern. You can do this by changing your thinking or changing your physiology. You can just say to yourself when you see a familiar negative pattern emerging "no I am not going to do this again, I am going to do something different, not sure what yet but it will be different, what can I do to get the outcome I want"
(Always frame outcomes in the positive - i.e. what you want not what you don't want).

Hope that is useful, you are living in feedback loops whether you know it or not, much better to know it and take some control eh?

2009-08-02T07:29:00.000-07:00

The difference between objectives and goals

I notice that some people get a little down because they are not seeing their weight change quickly enough (which is of course understandable) you have set a goal and want to achieve it.

However the amount of weight a body loses in say a week or month is not directly in our control. We can of course influence it and there is nothing wrong with setting a long term goal. However setting very short term goals and not hitting them can be very de-motivating.

It is not a question of setting ourselves up to fail but it is putting success outside of our direct control in the short term. Therefore if the goal is not reached we often tell ourselves we have failed!

So what about instead, setting short term objectives that really are in our control and will lead us to the long term goal such as:

This week I will:

go to the gym 4 times

I will do X minutes cardio and Y weight routines.

I will eat my target number of calories and I will stay within my nutritional guidelines +/-X%.

I will weigh all foods as accurately as I can whenever I can.I will not beat myself up.

I will ask myself 5 good questions every dayetc etc.

Tip. Always set objectives in the positive i.e. I will do ABC. NOT this week I will not do XYZ. The brain works in whichever way you point it, so point it to the positive!

These objectives can be whatever you want them to be, but I hope the distinction is clear between objective you can set and control as opposed to goals that you have set and move towards. If we set ourselves objectives which perhaps stretch us but which are totally within our power to achieve imagine how good we will feel when we achieve those objectives week after week! As for the goals they will follow as sure as eggs is eggs!

‘Weight’ frame or ‘Healthy Me’ frame?

2009-08-02T07:21:00.000-07:00

What do I mean by ‘weight frame’ or ‘Healthy me’ frame.

Well first let’s start with frames and filters.

Whatever happens, happens. It has no meaning until we ascribe it. The human being is a meaning making machine, we ascribe meaning to everything. However we do not always give the same event the same meaning. If my team loses I do not feel the same about it as a supporter of the other team!

In order to create this ‘personal reality’ we use what are called ‘filters’ or ‘frames’. That is we use the filter of our experience, beliefs, values and sense of self to ascribe meaning to everything that happens.Therefore the filters we use will have a massive effect on our experience of life.

If you have the belief that people are on the whole good and kind you will have a very different experience to life than if you believe that people are inherently nasty and out to do you harm.

On a more light hearted note have you ever noticed if you have bought a new car you suddenly notice how suddenly there are many of them there are on the road! Of course that is not true you are just filtering for them.What we focus on will tend to determine our experience of life.

So what does this mean in the context of becoming a 'healthy me'?

There are some who think in a ‘weight frame’. That is everything is focussed on what the scales tell them, and if the scales do not tell them the right thing it can have a very negative effect on their mood.

I am not saying this is wrong as such however I wonder if it gets people to where they really want to be.

If I were to ask anyone here ‘what would you get from being your goal weight’ the answer might be something along the lines of; ‘I would get a great deal of satisfaction’ or ‘I would feel I had achieved what I once thought impossible’ or even ’I would start to like myself again!’

What is for sure no one here is trying to lose weight just for the sheer fun of it.

We are all doing it for what it will give us and ultimately that will be an emotion.However the ‘weight frame’ is a very narrow frame. It means that someone using that frame will be ecstatic when the lose and often very down when they do not! But is this really the best frame to use?

An alternative would be the ‘Healthy me’ frame. This frame filters using the basic question ‘does whatever I am doing take me closer to being the ‘healthy me’ I want to be? This frame can prompt some very useful questions:

What really is a ‘healthy me’?

What would a ‘healthy me’ look like, sound like, feel like’

How would a ‘healthy me’ deal with setbacks and disappointments?

What sort of food choices would a ‘healthy me’ make.

What sort of exercise would a ‘healthy me’ do? And how often?

What sort of a relationship would a ‘healthy me’ have with myself? And with others?

What sort of weight range would a ‘healthy me’ live in?

There are plenty more but this gives just a flavour of the questions someone who lives in a ‘healthy me’ frame.

Of course I am not telling anyone how to think, everyone is free to live using whatever filters and frames they like. What I do know having used both is that narrow succeed/fail frames tend not to be conducive to a happy stress free life. In fact only this morning my wife told me that I am a much nicer person to know than I used to be. Whichever way anyone has been in the past does not mean that they cannot be different in the future.

If you are one of those who having being living in the weight frame and not enjoying it much, there are alternative ways to be that will make a life a good deal more enjoyable with fewer grey moods!

Beliefs

2009-08-02T05:24:00.001-07:00

Have you ever stopped to think how much what we believe about the world affects our behaviour?

Beliefs are essential to us as without them we would have to learn the world a new each day and from an evolutionary point of view this would not work. You have to believe going too near the edge of the cliff is dangerous if you are going to get to breed!

Our beliefs are also inextricably linked to our values, and together these things have an enormous effect on our behaviour.

Let us look at avlues first. Most of us value the feeling of being loved, it is something we seek from our very first breath and it never really leaves us, we might value honesty, integrity, fun, warmth, comfort, acceptance all manner of things.

On the other side of the coin their are values that we do not like that usually we move away from such as pain, humiliation, hatred, embarrassment, discomfort.

If you stop and think about it everything we do is to either get or avoid these things, and in the end that all comes down to a feeling, an emotion that we are either seeking or trying to avoid.

The belief part is the 'if' part of the 'if, then' evaluation that we are subconsciously going through all the time.

To give an example, if I am approaching a door that has a lever handle, (even though I have never been through that door before) I have a learned belief, which is that if I push that handle down then I will be able to get through the door into the toilet beyond which lies a feeling of comfort that I am looking for!

Or I believe that if I stand at the right bus stop the right bus will come along which will allow me to get to my significant other, and when I do I will feel soooooooooo good!

So I do a certain behaviour because I believe if I do I will get a feeling I want or avoid a feeling I do not.

Of course we do not think these things consciously as we go about life or we would bearly be able to funcition. I use the examples to show that it is our beliefs and values that underly all our behaviour.

Indeed I have a belief that no human behaviour is random everything we do has a positive intent. Now some people will be saying 'OK Will I have been with you until now but not all human behaviour is positive'. That is not what I am saying the key word here is 'intent'.

Excessive drinking or drug taking is definately unhealthy and negative for our well being but people do it with a positive intent, though it often starts out with that intent to get the good feelings such substances can give, it often ends up being done usually to numb the pain that not having the drink or the drugs brings.

So how does this relate to healthy eating?

Well our beliefs about food will have a huge effect on how much we eat and what we eat. I once new a woman who only really ate boiled chicken and steamed veg. It wasn't that she was slimming or anything it was just she did not like food very much. Consequently she was stick thin but a bit boring!

Now speaking personally my beliefs about food have definately led me to where I am today! As a child money wasn't plentiful so clearing my plate got me praise from the two people whose approval I sought above all else - mum and dad!

I also grew up with the belief that generosity was a value worthy of aspiring to that to feed someone was an act of friendship, even love, and that small portions were mean and meanness was without doubt to be avoided.

So perhaps you can see what I am getting at here we all have learned beliefs that lead us towards certain behaviour in many areas of our life not least with food.

To complicate matters we do not just have single beliefs on any particular subject we can hold many, some of which can be very much conflicting, and that is where the problems really start.

Take our old friend chocolate. Many people reading this will hold the belief that eating too much chocolate is not a healthy thing to do. However those same people will probably also hold the belief that eating chocolate is extremely pleasant and enjoyable and makes me feel feel good while I am doing it!

So what can you do???

Firstly become aware. The key to success is calm awareness. I say calm awareness as if you are in an aggitated or upset emotional state you are unlikely to make good choices on food or anything else.

Secondly, don't beat yourself up about what you have done in the past. everything you did was with a positive intent even if it gave you a negative outcome!

Thirdly take some time to sit down and write down ALL the beliefs you have about food and link them to the value you will get by doing that behaviour.

e.g. eating chocolate is pleasant (belief) as it gives me a real buzz when I am actually eating it (value).

The more you can write down the better.

Then look at if any of these beliefs are conflicting. I suspect there will be a few.

Now there are techniques that can deal very effectively with conflicting beliefs but it is not something I can take you through on here.

However I believe that by just bringing your beliefs and values into your awareness is a big start.

Once you are aware of the effect that your beliefs have on your eating behaviours you can start to develop strategies to make you choose the healthy option rather than the unhealthy when it appears before you.

If anyone want to know more on this subject or any of the others covered on here please do not hesitate to let me know.

What is a Healthy Me?

2009-08-01T09:48:00.000-07:00

To be honest there is no one answer to this question as we will of course all have our own evidence about what constitutes healthy!

As a fiftysomething realistically I cannot set health goals at the level of say my son who is 25. Or can I perhaps I cannot reach his fitness levels but perhaps 'health' is not something that is determined by age.

Also is a 'healthy me' determined only by fitness or by how much I weigh? I'm not even sure the medics would say it is. To me being healthy is having a good relationship with myself, both physically and mentally, also can I really consider myself healthy if I do not have healthy relationships to those close to me and to the wider world.

Perhaps it is true that it does not matter how 'fit' I am if I have an unhealthy or abusive attitude to myself, those around me or to the wider world.

The more I think about it healthy is much more than fitness or good food (though those things help!).

So if these ideas interest you bookmark this page and I will add more thoughts as they occur!

Hello all

2009-08-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

Some of you visiting here might have read some of my posts on weightlossresources.com (wlr)and know that one of my interests in life is helping people understand how they get the results they get and how if they want to get different results they have to do something different!

Now although I have used 'they' in that last sentence it applies to me as much as anyone else.

Thought that doing a blog might give me the chance to do more of these thoughts (without clogging up the wlr message board) and also they would remain accessible for those that want to view them again for longer than on the message board.

You will have to bear with me but I am a bit new to this bogging lark so I will be learning as I go. Still I do believe that if you have stopped learning you have stopped living!

Why the title 'Healthy Me'?

It comes from a post I did on wlr that contrasts what it is like living in a frame that focusses on how much you weigh as opposed to living a healthy life.

I have always had an interest in sport and exercise but like most people my devotion to a healthy lifestyle has waxed and waned often in line with what is going on in my life. Interestingly the times when I have exercised less and eaten badly have been connected to bad times, when in fact that is the time when it would be better to take more care of myself!

Oh well lesson now learned.

So I am back at the gym and back making sure that I only put good fuel into the engine. So yes I am now thinking more about a 'Healthy Me'.

This blog will be part a journal of what I am up to and partly my thoughts as to how others might reach some of their goals because I believe that none of us are counting calories or doing exercise for the sheer fun of it we are doing it as we would like to feel better about ourselves, and if I can help in any way at all that is alright by me!