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So that's something that I really want you to think about, is those beliefs that you
had in your head so� The fourth reason that most people yo-yo with their weight loss�
Now I forgot the reason.
Sweety, I'm heading to the grocery store. Is there anything we need?
Vegetables. Nothing but vegetables. Hon, we are going on a veggie diet.
Okay.
Mmm. Oh, god. Isn't this great?
Mmhmm.
So you ready for dinner, sweetheart?
Yes, I'm kind of hungry.
Vegetables again, right?
Kind of have to eat the vegetables, huh?
Well�
Sweetheart, I'm going to the grocery store. Is there anything we need?
So I read that carbs are bad for us, horrible for us, so veggies are out. This week all
we're doing are lean proteins and nuts. So that means fish, chicken, and nuts.
Fish, chicken, and nuts? Okay.
Mmm. Gosh. This is great. Don't you just love it?
Hey, sweety. I'm going to the grocery store. Fish, chicken, nuts again? Vegetables? What
is it this week?
You are going to love this one. Burgers, candy, cookies, chips, cake. You can eat whatever
you want. As I read, as long as it fits in our macros we can eat it.
What the heck is a macro?
Well, heck if I know, but it sure sounds good to me.
Okay. Junk food. Mmm. Donuts.
What's this?
Well, we kind of met most of our macros for the day.
We're out of macros.
Are you stuck in a fat trap where you yo-yo with your weight loss, you are on the seesaw,
a diet dilemma, up and down the roller coaster. I mean, we have all sorts of names for it.
It's when we get on a diet and we either get off of it within a few days or few weeks or
we actually achieve our goals and then we go right back to what we were doing before
and, slowly but surely, gain all that weight back and sometimes even more so. I watched
my mom on this roller coaster for most, if not all, of her life. So why does this happen?
Why do we go on these diets and we're all gung-ho, we're ready to lose the weight, we're
tired of being overweight, we're tired of being fat, we're tired of feeling crappy,
so we're all gung-ho and we start to lose weight, or we lose a significant amount of
weight, or we even achieve our complete weight loss goal, and then we go right back to what
we were doing before and gain all the weight back. And this really perplexed me, so I started
doing a whole bunch of research to find out the top reasons why we do so. And then I'm
going to give you all sorts of tips on how you can stop this roller coaster ride, stop
the madness, of the diet trap. Truly, the one that perplexes me the most is when individuals
actually do achieve their weight loss goals and then they go right back, and, candidly,
that is pretty consistent. There are very few individuals that actually achieve their
weight loss goals and then keep it for life. Is it genetics? Are some of us just plagued
to be fat? We just don't have any control over that whatsoever? Is it age? There's some
magical number out there that our metabolism slows down over time and just gets harder
and harder for us to actually lose weight and keep it off? Or is a lack of discipline?
Are there just some people that are more disciplined than others and have that magic formula that
they're able to not crave junk food and not crave all the typical American diet stuff?
So you probably already know I'm a perpetual student, so when I start thinking about this
topic for this FABulously Fit Friday, I did all sorts of research about "Why we are on
this diet trap," "Why do we yoyo with our diet and roller coaster with our weight?"
"Why don't we stick with it?" and then came up with all sorts of ways that you can make
sure that you don't get on that roller coaster again, once and for all. So, first, let's
talk about the typical reasons that we believe that we can't lose weight or keep it off.
Number one, and one of my favorites, is the fat gene. Fact or fiction? There is a gene,
or a set of genes, out there that makes us predisposed to gaining weight and keeping
it on. This one, much to my surprise, is a fact. But what's interesting about this argument
about the fat gene: yes, there are studies that have taken two individuals, gave them
the same amount of calories, the same types of food. One individual gained something like
600% more fat than the other one, and the other one pretty much stayed the same. So
researchers have found is that there's certain genes that make this one individual, that
gained the 600% more fat, predisposed to gaining fat when they are on an increased caloric
diet and they're eating a bunch of crap. So what does that mean for you? If you happen
to have that fat gene, well, yeah, you're not going to be able to eat a bunch of crap
and not gain weight. But is that an excuse? Does that mean that you're never going to
get into shape, you're never going to lose that weight and feel great? Well, absolutely
not. So the fat gene can not be used as an excuse. I imagine I've got that fat gene.
Well, I've got to work at it a little bit, but I'm not going to use that as an excuse
to eat a bunch of crap and just say, "Well, I've got a fat gene so I'm going to give up
altogether." What I'll also tell you is that to get into amazing, awesome, sexy shape it
is really hard to eat junk food and accomplish that kind of body, whether you've got the
fat gene or not. So don't let the fat loss gene be an excuse for you not to work on fitness,
not to get into amazing, incredible, awesome shape. The second reason many of us believe
that we can't lose weight and can't keep it off and stay in great shape is age. This is
one that I love as well because, if you've been following FABulously Fit Friday, if you've
been following me on Figure & Bikini, you know that I'm going to be 43 years old in
just a few weeks. I'm in the most outstanding shape of my life, and I didn't get there by
spending endless hours in the gym and starving myself. And, certainly, years ago I tried
techniques like that and I didn't get the results that I was looking for so it took
me awhile to learn how to really do it properly, and now that I know how to do that, I can
sculpt my body any way I want to. I'm not starving, I'm not spending endless hours in
the gym. I love my life, I love the way I feel, and I love the way I look at--almost--43
years old. So is it fact or fiction that age can affect your metabolism and how easy it
is to lose weight and keep it off? Well, the simple answer to that is, yeah, it's fact.
But I, again, I'm going to say, you can't use that as an excuse because metabolism does
slow over the decades. The average percentage that it's slowed is by 2 to 3% per decade.
When you think about that, by the time you're 50, you may have had a slowed metabolism by
10%, and what's that? 160 calories by 50. So all that means is that you've got to rev
up your metabolism, do a little bit more exercise to keep that weight off. But I don't think
that's the problem. I'm going to be very candid here. I think the problem is, as we get older,
we naturally are less active than we were when we were younger, so we think that it's
age and our metabolisms slowing down, but you know what? Our metabolism doesn't slow
down enough to create the weight gain that most people are seeing. My bet's going to
be that you're less active and you're eating more. That combination is just simply going
to make you gain fat pounds. The third reason that I often hear is that, "I don't have enough
time." Here's another one. If you've been following me you know that this is a biggie
for me. You know, we all have 24 hours in the day. It's how we use that 24 hours that
makes the difference. I'm a very busy individual, but I make sure that fitness, and eating clean,
and getting to the gym for my resistance training is a high priority. I take care of a house,
I have a corporate executive job that demands a lot of my time, I've got a son that I'm
raising, and I do this kind of stuff. So I'm a pretty busy individual, so if I can find
time to do this, most of you can too. So don't let time be an excuse. What the excuse likely
is, and we have to be real with ourselves about this, is prioritization. If you're spending
time watching TV, if you're spending lots of time on Facebook, or you're playing around
on Farmville, you have time to get to the gym and you have time to precook your meals.
So if you think time is an excuse, make sure that you're being realistic about that. The
fourth reason that I often hear that people believe that they can't lose weight and keep
it off is that they're not dedicated enough. And this is another one. It all comes down
to priorities. It also comes down to that whole pain and pleasure argument. You know
what? If something gives us a lot of pleasure, usually we're going to do it. Or if something
is going to avoid pain for us in the future, we'll often do that as well. A great example
is brushing your teeth every day. I imagine that most of you do that and it's not because
you enjoy brushing your teeth usually. You want to have fresh breath because you don't
want your partner to smell something that's going to make them pass out, and you don't
want to have cavities. You want to go to the dentist, you don't want to pay for a drilling
and you don't want to go through that pain, so we brush our teeth religiously every day,
hopefully, twice or three times a day. Same with taking a shower. We don't have to take
showers every day. Americans, we do. Around the rest of the world, sometimes they don't.
But we do so because the cultural norms and because we don't want the pain of somebody
telling us we stink. You are dedicated to doing many habits every day, even if that
habit is getting out of bed and moving down to the couch and flipping on the TV. You have
the dedication to do so, so it comes down to, again, priorities. You just got to shift
your priorities around. If you have that dedication to do some things, you definitely have the
dedication to do other things. Individuals like myself are no dedicated, no more disciplined
than anybody else. It's just become a priority, it's become our way of life.
(alarm rings)
And do we struggle sometimes? Is it really hard for me to get out of bed in the morning
and get on the treadmill to do my cardio? Absolutely. Sometimes I really just don't
want to get out of bed, and sometimes I don't want to go to the gym. I'm too tired after
I get home from work, but I try to. I'm not always perfect, but I really try to get my
butt in there because I know that I'm going to feel better about myself later. I know
that carrying extra fat pounds is really not desirable for me. There's a lot of pain associated
with that. The pleasure of having a muscular, tight, energetic body way outweighs that temporary
discomfort that it takes me to get to the gym. And then the fifth reason that I often
hear about is that, "I just don't know how to do it. I've tried everything and nothing
works." You know, there's so much information out there and especially in the age of the
Internet. You know, you can find just about anything about diet and there's all these
new fad diets: low fat, high carb, low carb, high fat, high protein. I mean, there's so
much information out there. "Do this exercise or that exercise." It can be absolutely overwhelming
and confusing. So this is one that I truly believe is an issue. So if you feel like you
don't have the knowledge to get into and stay in amazing shape, well, you're not alone.
Millions, and millions, and millions of people feel the same way and it's due to the overabundance
of information and, candidly, really savvy marketers that want you to buy their stuff
so they give you a whole bunch of crap that's truly not true. So the big thing about those
five excuses that we tell ourselves why we can't take off the weight and why we can't
keep it off, well, is that we've oftentimes sabotaged ourselves before we've even started.
We've got that belief in our head. We're already doomed. We'll start on a diet program but
as soon as we trip up just a little bit, we have a bad day, we're going to say, "Oh, yep.
See. I can't do it because I'm too old," "Because I have the fat gene," "Because I don't have
enough time." Because, because, because. We'll make up any excuse to prove ourselves right
because, you know what? Human beings don't like to be wrong. We like to be right, so
we've got this belief in our head, we're going to convince ourselves that are right. And
if you don't believe me about that, think about it. Have you ever, ever in your lifetime,
argued something until you're blue in the face even though you know you're wrong anyway?
All of us have because we don't want to be wrong. It's against human nature to want to
be wrong. So when we start a diet program or we start a new lifestyle and we trip up
a little bit, if we have those beliefs, any of them or a bunch of them in our head, we're
going to say, "Oh, see. Can't do it. I was right." That's something I really want you
to think about, is those beliefs that you have in your head that really are going to
sabotage you before you even get started, which brings me to the reasons that we do
yoyo, and seesaw, roller coaster--whatever you want to call it. So, first, just like
I talked about, we don't want to be wrong. And this is linked to the second reason which
is this all-or-nothing attitude. If you ever started a diet and then you tripped up just
a little bit, you had a piece of cake and you're like, "Oh, I screwed it up so I might
as well just binge for a day." Well, that all-or-nothing attitude really comes back
to those beliefs that you have inside your head that say, "I can't do this because�"
The third reason that people typically seesaw or yoyo with their weight loss is because
they're not prepared to handle the new situations that they're going to face when they change
their lifestyle. This could be social situations, it could be work meetings, it could be vacations,
it could be a whole bunch of things, but if you're not prepared to handle, "Okay, well,
how am I going to deal with this when I go out to a restaurant with my friends and they're
pushing me to eat lasagna or something that is really not healthy, it's not on my clean-eating
diet?" If you don't have a strategy ahead of time of how to handle that, oftentimes
you're going to trip up and then off you go. But if you've prepared for your meals for
the week and you have strategies on how to handle those situations, which I really talk
about in FAB University that equip you with all those strategies to handle vacations,
eating out, work meetings, traveling, you know, pretty much any situation that you're
going to come across�
If you have those strategies in place your likelihood of success goes up exponentially.
Without them, your likelihood of failure is huge. The fourth reason that most people yoyo
with their weight loss is because their support group, their peers, don't change as they take
off the weight. Now, think about this. Before you've taken off the weight, likely a lot
of the people that you've surrounded yourself with are on the same journey that you are.
Typically, they love to eat, they love sweets, most of them are probably not in the best
shape. But as you start to lose weight, at first they may be really supportive, but truly
what happens is oftentimes they don't want you to truly change, and it's not because
they don't love you. It's not because they don't care about you, but it's because by
you losing weight, by you keeping it off, it actually points out their own flaws and
it makes them feel bad about themselves. So if you don't surround yourself with new friends,
with new individuals that will support your journey, oftentimes that alone will trigger
you getting back into your old eating habits, back into your old non-exercise habits. What's
really interesting about this, I saw this just recently with an individual that I worked
with. This individual had 40 pounds that they wanted to lose and the people that they surrounded
themselves before shared in the unhealthy, non-clean lifestyle. But as this individual
kept dropping weight more and more, they realized that they need to surround themselves with
individuals that support that lifestyle, that sharing that lifestyle. And, now, what's interesting
that happened, that individual did that--surrounded themselves with individuals that support that
lifestyle strongly--and now the pressure is actually the other way, which I love to see.
So because that peer group is really supportive of that lifestyle and lives that lifestyle,
this individual that I worked with does not want to go back to the old ways because it's
actually peer pressure to keep the new ways going. This individual doesn't want to go
into the gym 20 pounds overweight and face the questions from their friends of, "What
the heck happened to you?" So not surrounding yourself with supportive people and not creating
a new peer group can certainly impede your success. The fifth reason is not having a
sustainable lifestyle. You know, I see a ton of individuals that come to me that say, "I've
been on this diet plan from my trainer. They put me on 1,200 calories and I've been losing
weight, but I find myself wanting to binge and I don't know what to do afterwards. Kristin,
can you help me?" I see this all the time and it breaks my heart because what happens
is, you know, they've got a diet plan from a trainer and it's a well-meaning trainer.
I'm not slamming trainers out there because trainers are well-meaning, but oftentimes
not teaching their clients how to sustain a clean-eating lifestyle. Handing somebody
a diet plan is not teaching them about how to eat clean for the rest of their life. Well,
that's another thing that I teach in FAB University. I'm not handing out a diet plan. I don't believe
in that. I believe in teaching you how to get to a sexy, amazing, incredible body, but
you get there by learning all the ins and outs of how to do it yourself. And then the
second piece of that is, okay, once you've been on a calorie restrictive diet, in order
to lose the weight, in order to take those fat pounds off and get into an amazing, incredible,
sexy body, well, then what? Most trainers are missing that piece as well. The sixth
reason, one of my favorites about why people roller coaster with their weight loss is they
have what I call F.L.M.L., fat loss memory loss. We've lost a bunch of weight, and then
when we're tempted by cake, or cookies, or something that's off our clean-eating plan,
we say, "Yeah, I can do that," because they've totally forgotten what it feels like to be
overweight and they've totally forgotten why they started in the first place. They forgot
how crappy they felt and the motivators, the strong motivators, for them to get on their
new clean-eating plan in the first place. It's a form of amnesia. And, I'm telling you,
it happens all the time. And then the last reason that I see oftentimes that people stay
on this yoyo or roller coaster is that they set a goal and that because a finish line
rather than just a goal as a score in the game. And what I mean by that is we get to
our fat loss goal. We look great, we feel great, and we go, "Whew. Okay. I'm done. I
can rest now," and then we slowly go back to our old ways of doing things that got us
all those fat pounds in the first place. This is extremely common. So now that you know
all the reasons that people do get on this roller coaster and stay on the roller coaster,
what can you do to make sure that this doesn't happen to you at all or again? First, be prepared.
Prepare your meals, be prepared for those social situations. You have to be prepared
to handle what inevitably is going to happen when you start losing weight or when you take
it off completely. Without preparation, you're likelihood of success drops exponentially.
Second, cure that fat loss memory loss. Keep progress pictures in front of you all the
time. Keep reminders around of what it was like when you felt crappy. Next, set yourself
goals but not just a big fat loss goal. "Okay, I want to lose 15 pounds," or 20 pounds, or
50 pounds, or whatever it is that you're setting for yourself. You've got to have intermediate
goals even after that. So, for myself, I use competitions to do so to keep me on track.
But, for you, it might be a wedding, or a photo shoot, or maybe even a vacation that
you're going to go on. But have those intermediate goals so that it is not a finish line that
you're going to where you say, "Okay, I can relax now," but that this is a lifelong lifestyle
and the more you do it, and the longer you do it, the higher your likelihood of success
for life. And, next, make sure that you surround yourself with individuals that support you
and share in your goals and lifestyle. That doesn't mean that you have to clean out all
your friends and replace them with other friends. What it does mean is that you're probably
going to have to get out of your comfort zone a little bit and meet new individuals that
share in your goals, dreams, and lifestyle. They will help you to stay committed. And
then, finally, get yourself educated with the right education. You know what? If you're
on a meal plan and it's not working for you, either you feel like you don't really know
what you're doing, you're just given a plan, or, if you are doing something and it is working
but it doesn't feel good, well, then it probably isn't good. If you don't have the tools to
be successful for life, then you're probably not going to be successful for life, so I
highly encourage you to get educated and not just get a meal plan from somebody. So that
wraps it up for this FABulously Fit Friday, and if you liked this episode go ahead and
hit that "Like" button below because that tells other people that this episode is really
valuable. And if you want a deeper dive into how to get into crazy, sexy, awesome shape
make sure you head over to FigureAndBikini.org and check out FAB University where I share
everything. If you want to see more episodes of FABulously Fit Friday, make sure you hit
that "Subscribe" button on YouTube here and you'll be notified of each episode as it's
released. I'm Kristin Shaffer, founder of FAB University and FigureAndBikini.org, and
I hope to see you at the next FABulously Fit Friday. Hey, gals. FAB University is open.
Head to FigureAndBikini.org to check it out.