I recently had this conversation with a client – it went like this, “Why can’t I lose these last 5 pounds around my midsection?” I didn’t say anything I just nodded. He continued on, “Well I guess I ate a cupcake yesterday and then I had to take an hour nap because I couldn’t keep my eyes open.” I nodded and we both went about our day.
This seems to be where most Americans live. Over-stressed, toxic, insulin resistant, riding a sugar rollercoaster, and obsessed with weight and body image because of Gold’s Gym, Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson. Yet, the most aesthetically pleasing individuals especially in the body building world may be grotesquely unhealthy and have a ton of psychological and physiological problems. We generally see these people in images or videos, which means they probably do not walk around looking that shredded. There may be the genetic few who can eat sloppy joes and buckets of queso and wake up with wash board abs, but that is not the vast majority of our population.
I understand everyone wants to look better. But weight and bicep size are bullshit indicators of health and in the end are fairly easy to mimic in the short-term (depending on how far gone health is) and at some point we have to realize that flexing in the mirror isn’t going to fix this problem.
Deprivation, fasted cardio, and grueling anaerobic conditioning intervals on three leaves of lettuce and a greek yogurt aren’t the bullet-train to long-term results or health. Anybody can write that diet and workout plan. Anybody can make somebody eat paleo for a month and pile on as many AMRAPs as possible. That’s why everybody does it - but it doesn’t work long-term because it was never sustainable. As a researcher I have heard many very well-funded and well-respected scientists say we should focus all our efforts on children and prevention, because people losing weight long-term is a lost cause. I can’t not accept that at the micro and individual level we cannot turn this ship around.
Yet, it all comes down to breaking free of our image paranoia. Long term results follow health. Period. It is just like anything else if we really want to make change we have to look at causal factors. The reason you are toxic, fat, or unhealthy didn’t happen in a day, it is the culmination of your life up until this point, so to think that we are going to fix that in 6 weeks is unreasonable. Could we see some fantastic results? Hell yes. But really really fix anything and get you looking like Ryan Gosling or Penelope Cruz? Nope, and definitely not if you want to keep it long term.
Let’s take fat loss for example. Everyone thinks this shit is easy – eat less, exercise more, eat even less, exercise even more, and poop more. But you don’t lose weight as feces – you lose weight as carbon dioxide molecules through exhalation, however most of us live in a hyperventailated state and never really exhale. But that’s for another day - back to Fat Acumulation which is so much more insidious than what the media leaves us to believe and it can have so many more causes. For example, the thyroid could be dysfunctional secondary to adrenal fatigue tertiary to a boss everyone hate. This person may have gained weight over time because their metabolism slowed and they ate the same amount or even less. That same person feels lethargic and tired all the time and self- medicates with caffeine, but you want them to exercise their face off to stoke a fire that isn’t burning. We can make lists for days, so let’s go with another one – you have client who has partied hard for a couple decades and bogged their liver down with toxins. Once the liver is clogged you store toxins you can’t clear in fat. And guess what metabolizes fat – the liver. So you’re telling me a little more chicken breast and some thrusters is going to fix that hard earned feedback loop of dysfunction. Nope. If you want me to keep going just email.
What many people need isn’t some new fat loss secret, new diet or new exercise program, They need a wakeup call that their health is far more imperative, in fact it is the most important and without health and well-being all this six pack ab and silicon barbie shit is worthless.
We need to stop poking, prodding, and weighing, and we need to start treating people as people and not math equations. We need to start collecting real indicators of cardiac, detoxification, digestive, oxidative, and hormonal health and start building function back from the ground up.
Recent Comments