While typing away for a few clients, I was listening to some good old Zig Ziglar stuff, which I hadn't listened to for a while, but man is he ever the best.
I’m a huge fan. God rest his soul, he’s since passed, but his material is priceless and timeless.
The phrase that triggered this newsletter was this:
“If I choose to overeat today, I choose to be overweight tomorrow.” Zig Ziglar
Talk about cutting to the chase. That's such a good phrase to repeat to yourself over and over...
Have you ever lost 1000 pounds? If you yourself haven't personally, I bet you know someone who has. For someone of 40 years of age, that's only 25 pounds of fluctuations a year.
Heck some of us go up and down 5 pounds MORE than 5 times a year, which is one heck of an accomplishment, losing that much weight!
I've concluded that almost everyone knows how to lose weight. Nearly everyone has lost 5 pounds at some point in their life. The challenge, I'm noticing, is keeping the weight off.
I mean, let's say you push really hard, go absolutely nuts, for one week and lose 5 pounds. Now take a week to relax a bit, but maintain that 5 pound loss.
Then, pump yourself up and go hard for another week and drop another 5 pounds, I mean come on, you've had a week off!
Now maintain it for a week. Then giver and drop another 5... You get the point...
In one month that's 10 pounds lost, which is definitely something to be proud of.
When my studio was running weight loss challenges, the results were always very amazing and motivating in the first few weeks but for many, by the half way mark the progress stopped and, in fact, sometimes would reverse.
If at the very least you maintain that weigh you lost not only would your body thank you for it (we all know how rough it is to yoyo) but it would make it that much easier, and motivating, when you are ready to give it another push and drop the next 5 pounds.
It can get quite discouraging having to lose 5 pounds over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over... and over again.
Now, I'm not going to leave you empty handed, here's a few ideas I just came up with while typing over and over and over and...
And I say "ideas" because my new thing is testing and this is something you should test, and if it works for you, keep it, if it doesn't, scrap it and move on to the next idea.
My idea is to alternate dieting with working out.
Meaning, on the week where you are busting your butt in the gym, eat normal, whatever you would normally eat (maybe just cut out the fast food) and on the week that you are maintaining, eat clean. Then, when you are back to your "workout week" go back to eating more or less like you normally do, then when you are back to maintaining, eat properly and diet.. etc...
This may also help in two other ways...
1 - eating more or less normal while working out will actually improve your eating habits because we tend to eat a bit better by default when we are working out so dang hard.
2 - Dieting for only a week at a time may keep you from losing your mind and binging out like crazy
Give it a shot, try it out and let me know if this worked for you!
to your success,
Al