(Compare to 6/18/09)
5 rounds for time:
run 400 m.
50 walking lunge steps
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Be Perfect
By Neil Anderson
Wanna know how I know when a person is cheating on their
diet? It’s easy. When I ask them, “how are you doing on your
meal plan, they will say something like, “Good,” or “Great,” or “better than
ever.”
Seriously. Anytime I
hear one, any, or all of the above, I automatically know two things about the
person making the statement:
1.
This
person is cheating on their diet, and/or
2.
This person hasn’t a clue what they shoving into
their pie hole on a daily basis.
How do I know this? It
is simple. When a person is REALLY being
perfect on their diet, they will answer my question in a VERY different
manner. Instead of giving me a simple
cookie cutter answer like, “good” or, “great.”
They will usually look me square in the eye. Take two steps toward me. Grab me by the collar and in a low raspy
voice that sounds as if it were conjured up from one of the hounds of hell they
will say,
“I am FRICKIN
PERFECT with my diet.”
For you to be successful at weight loss through proper
nutrition there is absolutely NO ROOM for error with your diet. You can’t guess. If you are guessing you are FAILING.
A lot of times you can be doing “good” or “great” and
although it is better than you have done with your diet in a long time, it won’t
be enough. THIS is where the frustration
lies with dieting for you. This is also
where you are most likely to give up on yourself. The scenario looks like this:
You decide to do something about
your health and appearance (for WHATEVER reason). You start doing a little better with your
diet by cutting back on the things that you know aren’t good for you. You may even start cutting back calories,
exercising and eating foods that you don’t find all that comforting. You do this “pretty well” for a week. You figure
that you know you are doing “pretty well” because you are “always hungry” and
you have been more uncomfortable (through cutting back and exercising) than in
past weeks. So, it MUST be doing you
some good, right? Then, you jump on the
scale at the end of a week or two of this and it hasn’t budged! Not at ALL!
This is the point where you are most likely to quit. This may also be the point where you figure something
is wrong with you. You figure it CAN’T
be that the effort you put into your last couple of weeks was
insufficient. So, it MUST mean that
there is something wrong with your metabolism…, or your thyroid…, or maybe it
is your age… Hell, it has got to be something hidden and sinister, right?
Wrong! It is the obvious.
You are simply cheating and YOU
know it.
I had a lady challenge me on this point once. She said she “guaranteed” she NEVER cheats. And that it is her specific body type that
prevents her from losing weight.
I said, “That’s a bunch of malarkey.” “I bet you are cheating.”
She said she could prove she wasn’t. When I asked how, she said she would bring me
a list of EVERYTHING she eats for a week.
I said, “No dice.”
Those log sheets (although helpful and necessary) are pretty
easy to fudge. Instead of arguing with her
further, I decided to issue the following challenge. What follows is our conversation as best I
remember it.
The Challenge
After she went on a pretty long rant about how her “body
doesn’t change” despite being perfect with diet and exercise, I simply smiled
and said,
“I doubt that.” “My
experience is that EVERYONE who eats and exercises perfectly can be successful.”
She got huffy. “It is
absolutely NOT true in MY case.”
Not wanting to belabor the point I challenged, “Why don’t
you put your money where your mouth is?”
“Huh...How?” She asked cautiously. It is
funny how a very pointed question can take a person from being outspoken and
ranting down to two word sentences.
I continued…
“I’ll tell you what…I’ll follow you around 24/7 for the next
7 days. I will weigh and measure ever morsel
of food and/or drink that passes over your lips. I will also make sure you are working out for
EXACTLY 20-30 minutes per day doing one of my workouts that follows my
programming methods.”
“After 1 week of having me in your hip pocked making
absolutely, positively sure that you get EXACTLY the amount, food and exercise you
need to lose weight and get more fit and healthy, I GUARANTEE you will lose 3-5
lbs. of FAT.“
“And if I don’t?” She asked smugly.
“Well, here is the thing:”
I said. “I charge you $35 per
training session. Each session lasts
20-30 min.”
I pulled out my cell phone and opened the calculator app and
started doing some math.
“I figure a week of my services 24 hours/day would cost you
$11,760.00. So, the challenge goes like
this: IF I am right, and I can help you
lose weight through constant supervision and support, then you will pay me that
amount at the end of one week.”
She started to gag so I continued…”HOWEVER.”
“IF you are right and you really are an anomaly of science,
and you DON’T lose weight despite yours and MY best efforts at the end of the
week – I will pay you that amount.”
She didn’t even hesitate to say, “NO WAY.”
Even funnier…this challenge was just the kick in the pants
that she needed to lose 13 lbs over the next 5 weeks.
Would you have taken me up on this challenge?
If you would have, you should know…I did NOT intend to lose
this challenge. I would have been no
further than 3-4 ft away from her at any time during the day or night. I would have checked the bathroom for
contraband and frisked her before she went in each time. I would also have torn her room apart looking
for food before each night that she slept, and I would have slept at the base
of her bedroom door to ensure compliance with my STRICT eating plan. Trust me – she would not have gotten her
hands on ONE morsel of food that didn’t meet with my direct written
approval.
You should also know, her workouts that week would have been…let’s
just say…INCREDIBLY effective.
How about it? Would
you have been up to that challenge? Could
you put your money where your mouth is? If
not, or even if you hesitate…you may want to rethink your story.
OK fine. So, there
ARE those people in life who can lose weight by simply making minor changes in
their eating and exercise habits. We
have ALL heard of that guy or gal who has simply stopped drinking soda and lost
20 lbs. I have NEVER met one of these, but I heard
about it on T.V. once. Frankly, I don’t
believe it. Even if it WAS true… so
what? Big deal! Life is unfair. By now it ought to be painfully obvious this
isn’t YOU! Let it go. The sooner you can face this, the sooner you
become more fit and healthy. It IS what it IS and THAT is what you have to
deal with.
YOU are going to have to be PERFECT to make this
happen. So, why not just start there?
How to be
perfect
1. Make a plan
You should have a plan for every scrap of
food and drink that will pass over your lips tomorrow. You should also have a plan for how you will
exercise. If you don’t have a plan for
both of these, then your chance for success already has one foot in the grave.
The more detailed this plan is, the more
likely you are to be successful with it.
To me, making a detailed plan is much like making a down payment to yourself
for your own long term health and fitness success. Have you ever wondered why the bank makes you
put money “down” on big loans? It is
simple. They want you to have some “skin
in the game.” You are less likely to
walk away from a commitment to them if you have some flesh (money) on the
table. Know what I mean? It is psychological. You are apt to work harder to pay them back when
you have contributed (invested) something valuable to the process.
I ask you, is there ANYTHING more valuable
than your own time and effort? If you
have ever grumbled about your paycheck, then you have to answer “NO,” to this
question, right? Well, how about getting
some “skin in the game” when it comes to your health and fitness? Not only will great planning give you some
iron clad direction, it will also give you a psychological boost that you will
need to pull this off, over the long haul.
Simply put, “If you Fail to Plan, you are Planning
to Fail.” – nuff said.
2. Weigh
and measure
When it comes to diet and exercise…GUESSING
is CHEATING. Wilderness survivalists
will tell you, if you get lost in unfamiliar territory – STAY PUT. Just simply SIT DOWN and wait. You actually have more chance of surviving if
you don’t wander around. The same is
true with diet and exercise.
Even IF you think you KNOW how well you are
doing…Even IF you are “fairly sure.” Thousands
if not millions have come to their demise employing this tactic in the
wilderness and millions upon millions have failed to become healthy by sticking
to these same methods.
Through the years we have tried just about
EVERYTHING there is to avoid weighing and measuring. We realize this is a pain. We realize it is inconvenient, to say the
least. Unfortunately, through bitter
experience we have found there is NO OTHER WAY.
Unless you know exactly what it is going into your body, you simply
cannot gauge or measure input in order to predict success. This
principle applies to the experienced dieter and exerciser as well as the
inexperienced.
Not to worry though. This principle is only an utter pain for 1-2
weeks. After a couple of weeks your need
to measure will decrease as you gain more experience with eyeballing common, reoccurring
foods in your diet. After that you will
still need to weigh and measure, but this will be limited to the less common
foods you eat.
3. Log
your results.
Thomas Edison is famous for saying,
“I never failed. I only found ten thousand ways
that it would not work.”
Can you imagine where we would be if Edison
was not keeping track of his failures? I’ll
tell you where we would be – in the damn DARK.
If you have tried and failed at becoming healthy, especially if you have
done so more than once, you may very well be in the dark simply because you
have not been keeping track of your successes and failures.
The thing to realize here is that there is
success in every failure. If you are not
logging every aspect of your experience (dates, times, weights, etc.) you have
very little chance of learning what it is that works and what it is that does
not. This leaves you with a ONE SHOT
chance of getting it right. In other
words, if you don’t get it right the first time, you will have to start all
over. And you must do this without the
benefit of CLEAR hind sight, unless you are logging all aspects of your experiences.
There are many other reasons to log results
(see “log it all” in the troubleshooting section of this site) suffice it to
say, logging results gives you the best chance at not having to redo, what you
have already done wrong. For that reason
alone it is worth the extra time.
There are tricks to logging results that you should be aware
of. Success with logging results will
vary from person to person. It takes
some experimenting, but with time you will find what works for you. Once you find what works best for you, stick
with it for the long term making only slight changes to suit your individual
logging style. The best way to start is
with the basics. Here is an example of
one of Marcus’ logs from a workout.
Last max was 145lbs, today I put up 195lbs. I
could not lock out 205 up top, but feeling stronger.
His post says it all
1.
Time and date.
I am constantly in pursuit of the best time of day (for me) to workout. Logging helped me figure this out. It is also important to me to know the date
so that I can figure out which days should be work days and which should be
rest.
2.
What his numbers were.
Times, weights, reps etc should go here.
The more specific you are about this the more useful the information
will be for you in the future.
3.
Reference to past performances.
If you keep these on a string, you won’t have to do a lot of back
searching.
4.
How he
felt.
Though most often overlooked, this info is key to diagnosing problems. You should have an explanation for every
change which is recorded. Some days you
will be feeling off – If you are getting several of these in a row, you can go
back and see what the cause is. Maybe
you feel GREAT one day and set a bunch of PR’s (personal records). Next time you do that workout or lift you
might not set a PR, but if you knew you were feeling GREAT, that might explain
why you fell short. It also may help you
figure out how to duplicate that GREAT feeling and performance.
Some other things you might put in your post are:
·
Personal successes
·
Your weight
·
Your measurements
·
Meal log
·
How you ate before the workout
·
Aches and pains
·
How you avoided an ache or a pain
·
Form analogy
·
New things you learned
·
Workout strategy
·
Messages to other readers
·
Testimonial
In the end, PERFECT is PERFECT. The virtuosity of what you are doing through
your FZN efforts demand perfection to yield results. Slack off if you want to. Only YOU would know it. But, my question is this, “Why would anyone
do even 1 rep of 1 set of 1 measly workout unless they intend to make positive
lasting changes to their health and fitness?”
The principles of this type of change are steadfast and unyielding. They demand perfection. More often than not, if you are experiencing
half-assed results, this is almost always the product of same-said effort.
