Category: Scoop

I swear it’s a magic trick. It’s something I overlook too often, and find myself smacking myself on the forehead about every time I finally remember. It’s something that slips out of habit easily, and when it does, it wreaks havoc on my weight loss. What is this elusive magic trick? Sleep.

You read right; it’s sleep. Getting a good, solid 8 hours is one of the biggest factors in weight loss. I know there are scientific reasons listed as to why sleep is so important for weight loss, and I could spell it all out for you here, but that’s not what my site is about. I’m all about the mind tricks, motivation, and perseverance. In this case, the mind trick is getting enough sleep to allow your body to fully process and lose the weight, and for your mind to clear for you to be able to keep your head clear and in the game for the coming day.

With sleep, not only will your body fully and properly process the food you’ve taken in the day before, but your mind will be clear so that you can resist the temptations, handle the false appetite, and push past cravings that are only there due to boredom. Whenever I find myself in a plateau, the first place I look is how much sleep I’ve not been getting, and sure enough, I find that I need to increase my sleep amounts.

I know: you’re busy. We’re all busy. But sleep is something we all aren’t getting enough of. From what I understand, the vast majority of Americans are sleep deprived. We feel like there’s so much to do and so little time to do it in that we sacrifice our sleep to get more in. I totally get it; I do the same. But for my body health’s sake, and for my mental health’s sake, I force myself to get sleep. I’m not perfect at it, but I continue to take stock of my sleep amounts, and when I find it lacking, I get to bed early. More often then not, I’m thankful for the extra sleep, and ultimately, what I gave up for the sleep ended up not being so important in the long run. My health and weight loss, on the other hand, mean a lot more to me!

Try to increase your sleep duration. You will find yourself feeling much better, and more likely, you’ll find yourself weighing less in the mornings.

When people talk to me about embarking on their own health journey, they go to lengths to tell me about their plans for fitness. It’s as if somehow, they aren’t truly sincere unless they add exercise to their plan. When I tell them that it’s not necessary to work themselves to death to lose weight and get healthy, some people actually get sad or even a bit upset with me. “That can’t be true!” “That’s not what my trainer/coach/workout buddy/friends/etc told me!” “But… but… but…”

Sigh.

Here are facts about losing weight and getting fit:

• If you want to lose weight, change the makeup and amount of the food you are putting into your mouth.
• If you want to get fit, exercise.

It literally is that simple. As for what diet you want to use to lose weight (coupled with reasonable amounts of food as servings), that’s up to you. My site is called PaleoMarine.com because I am on the Paleo Diet (although I started with a Whole30 and also do some Keto every now and then), so I recommend it based on my own positive experiences and success on this particular diet, but I would be remiss to dismiss other diets that people have achieved success through.

The bottom line is eat right. Eat the right food in the right amounts. What’s the right amount? Eat slowly until you start to feel full. Then stop. It’s harder than it sounds and takes practice, but your body is really good at telling you when you’ve had enough. You just have to listen carefully.

Something people don’t consider strongly enough is just how much of getting healthy and fit is in their head. Most people assume incorrectly that if they do enough exercise, they will lose weight. They also assume that they can eat anything they want as long as they do so in moderation. If moderation worked, nobody would be overweight because it would be so easy to execute!

The most important thing for anyone undertaking a healthy lifestyle is to erase negativity. Thinking about or focusing on the things you can no longer or should no longer be eating is negative thinking. Instead, here are some things I’ve done to erase negativity and embrace my healthier lifestyle:

• Make a list of foods you CAN eat. You’ll be surprised at how much food you love and already eat you can continue to eat while losing weight and getting healthy.
• Stock your pantry and refrigerator with good foods and whole ingredients. Having snacks or food that’s good for you to begin with make it easier to focus on the positives of cooking healthier foods.
• When you have a craving or false appetite, think of something you enjoy that is a healthier option: nuts, fruits, or even some jerky or a slice of bacon will often do the trick.
• Fake it until you make it. If you find yourself being negative, literally pretend everything is okay and that any negativity you are feeling is fake and force yourself to think happy thoughts. This sounds corny and ridiculous, but it works! This is how I got myself to enjoy running. Every time I would feel the dread of an upcoming run, I would instead force myself to be happy about it. I didn’t even think of positive aspects; literally, just forced myself to be happy. The craziest part: it worked.

Your mind is your strongest asset when adopting a healthy lifestyle. It’s up to you to make yourself succeed by having a positive mindset to push through and persevere. Getting healthy isn’t easy, but it can be made easier by having a good attitude.

You can’t do sit-ups and make the fat on your stomach go away while the fat on the rest of your body remains. Losing weight and reducing your body fat percentage works the same as deflating a balloon. The fat goes away from your body as a whole, not from certain areas.

I thought about how this myth got started, and I can only imagine that it began with people who work out exercising arms, chest, or legs. When you exercise those parts of the body, the muscles get bigger. This makes any fat on them appear to go away, when in reality, the muscles underneath are creating more volume which in turn creates more surface area which spreads the fatty layer out more, making it appear thinner. So, without really understanding what’s going on under the skin, an easy observation to make would be that fat goes away when you exercise a certain area.

But it doesn’t work that way.

I spoke to a co-worker who told me she was doing sit-ups to get rid of tummy fat. I told her what I said above, and she seemed saddened by it. I told her the good news is that she doesn’t have to do a bunch of sit-ups (which are really bad for your lower back anyway), and that instead, all she has to do is eat right. Of course, that wasn’t good news to her, because she says she doesn’t like vegetables.

You can lead a horse to water…

You lose weight in the kitchen and get fit in the gym or on the track. Not the other way around.

Losing weight. When you first start to lose weight, you lose pretty quickly. The first 10-20 lbs, as long as you’re doing the right things, comes off easily enough. Then, however, things change and it gets more difficult to drop those pounds. I’ve found that when I track my weight (which I have been doing since I started in September 2015), my weight drops like steps on stairs rather than in a nice, linear fashion (like a slide).

I held steady at 179-180 lbs for the past two weeks. Then, in one day, I weigh 176 lbs. How did that happen? I have no idea. I’ve read theories as to why that is: fat cells get flushed after 30-45 (I’ve also read it’s up to 90) days of non-use. So, if you can keep from allowing those fat cells to store fat, the body will decide that they are excess and let them die. Is this actually what happens? Maybe. Maybe not. Did they over simplify it for us non-medical people? Perhaps. Either way, the fact remains that in my experience, my weight has dropped in steps, and I don’t lose weight little by little, day after day.

It’s important to make note of these trends when you are trying to keep yourself motivated and having to stick with a diet when faced with temptation and options that are not healthy for you. When you know what to expect, and you know that there will be many days when your weight doesn’t actually change, you know that you have to just keep doing the right thing, eat right, and wait for it. The drop will come. It’s a matter of when, not if.

You are not alone. It’s aggravating, and sometimes no matter how perfect you are doing everything, results don’t show up immediately. You have to wait. You have to trust the process, be patient, and just keep doing the work. Besides, when the drope does come, you will feel so much more accomplished because you waited it out. You stuck with it, and you persevered. Nothing easily gained has value.

OK. I know a lot of people are desperate to lose weight and to get healthy and they are always on the lookout for some shortcut or easy way to drop some weight and to lose some fat. There are as many products out there designed to steal your money help you lose weight and fat as there are colors in the world. There’s one huge problem with these products: the vast, overwhelming majority are nothing but lies.

Just this morning, I saw an ad on Facebook for a fat flush. Allegedly, if you drink this concoction, it causes fat in your body to somehow be flushed from your body. If only stuff like this actually worked!

Products like this ignore science, and prey on those who are desperate to make progress in losing weight. These people are the ones who have been lied to by educators, by friends, family, the medical profession, nutritionists, and the government. These people have tried so many other methods that have all failed that they’ve lost nearly all hope of losing weight in a healthy or safe manner. If only more people realized that sugar really is the root of obesity and so many health problems, and not fat.

Is there such a thing as a fat flush? No. There is not. I wish it were illegal to advertise fraudulent products like this designed to literally steal money from people, but somehow, it’s not. All they have to do is say that their results have not been confirmed in a lab or study and somehow that makes it legal. Let’s not point out the fact that the print that says so is often very small and visible for only a few seconds. But I digress.

Don’t fall for the products. Lose weight and get healthy the right way: through diet (and exercise, if you also want to get fit). I have laid out the basics, and the Internet is full of sites that can help you do it the right way. Remember: if something seems to good to be true, it usually is. Fat burners, fat flushers, and weight pills/powders/products are all nothing more than elaborate schemes to empty your wallet and to fill someone else’s.

I have no idea how it happened, but this is something I used to experience back when I  first embarked upon my journey to better health, and it’s something I never quite got used to: plateaus and jumps. This morning, I realized a jump of three pounds lost.

Wow.

What did I do different than the past few weeks? Well, I ate food my wife made, I ate proper portions, and I didn’t drink any alcohol. I didn’t run after work as I had intended due to impending bad weather (which, incidentally, never came but threatened menacingly for hours after I got home), and I’ll be unable to run tonight due to a dinner engagement with my wife, but I plan on getting back to running for the first time in nearly two weeks. I hurt a nerve in my lower back stretching while I was on annual training, and it’s taken a week for it to stop hurting. I should be okay to get back to running. I can’t believe how much I miss it. Not the work or the running itself, but how I feel afterward.

So… don’t despair. Keep doing the work, keep eating right, and stick to the plan, and eventually, your body will get the hint and drop the pounds. At least, that’s how my body works.

Motivation is like the tide; it ebbs and flows. Sometimes, I find it hard to get going on a run, while other times, I look forward to it all day. The same holds true for eating right. There are days when I feel like I can conquer my appetite or any cravings that come my way, and there are other days where I feel like I will succumb any moment. How do I keep riding the Motivation Express?

I do lots of things.

First of all, I try to do lots of things (see what I did there?). Keeping my mind occupied helps me get past cravings and false appetite. As long as I’m doing something, I find that eventually, the craving will pass.

Second, I get out and do some exercise. Even when I don’t feel like exercising and I’m looking for just about any excuse to not run, I run. Exercise has the double effect of being good for me (cardio is good for my heart, and running keeps my run times fast for the National Guard) and when I run, any cravings or appetite I had fades for at least an hour or more.

Third, I tell myself that it’s not an option. I MUST eat well, or I MUST exercise. There’s more at stake than the short-term instant gratification. More often than not, if I do succumb to a craving or false appetite, I end up regretting it almost immediately. I remind myself how bad it feels afterward, and usually, that’s enough to keep me on the straight and narrow.

Motivation wanes every now and then. I liken it to a pendulum that sways back and forth. It’s normal to lose motivation every now and then. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Just learn how to get past it, how to push yourself beyond a lack of motivation, and how to keep going toward your goal. Sure, it’s not easy (or everyone would be healthier/lighter/fitter/etc), but with some mind hacks, you can do this.

I had intended (or rather, hoped) to lose about 5 lbs on this past annual training (AT), but it was not to be. I ended up having alcohol on some of the evenings, and ate out for lunch far more often than I otherwise do or normally can during AT due to our being at our home station, but I have to be happy with the fact that there was no weight gained, either. I stayed pretty much flat at the weight I went to AT at.

How do I feel about this? I’m okay with it. Sure, it would have been nice to drop a few pounds, but ultimately, I didn’t gain any, and I had a really good time. I ate good meals, drank good drinks, and had memorable conversations and experiences. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

Now that AT is done, I’m back to eating right and my normal routine. I still have 15 lbs to lose to get back to my final goal, but I have time to get there. I know that I will; it just takes some patience. And I have a lot of that.