Category: weight loss

diets · media · training · weight loss

Bodyshock TV: The Reality of Getting into Shape? Really?

Tracy I19 Comments

CarinaOver the weekend a few people brought Bodyshock TV to my attention (including Sam–thanks!).  It’s a new internet TV show — or at least they’re trying to make it a show but if I got the promo video right, they need “you” (read: your money) to be able to achieve their goals.  Bodyshock describes itself as a fitness, health and lifestyle TV show.

Enter Season One:  Meet Carina. She’s a “really unfit” model (that’s just insulting). We follow her 30-day journey “from fat to flab” over thirty episodes.  The point of the show is to show us “the reality of getting into shape” and to “show the transformation you can achieve.”  In the promo video we see Carina running on the beach (the whole thing takes place in Spain), eating healthy food, getting her “before” fat pinched by calipers, cellulite massaged, enduring some sort of body scan that measures her health “inside and out,” doing squats, and (it looks like) being tended to after passing out beside a tree, and doing a whole host of other fitness-y looking activities in her crop top and workout shorts.

We also meet her personal trainer (a walking fitspo!  I mean the woman is buff!) who outlines the S.M.A.R.T. goals that have been set for Carina.  The main goal was for her to lose 7 kilos (that’s just over 15 pounds) and 3% body fat in 30 days.

I really have no objection to people setting challenges for themselves and seeing what they can achieve in 30 days. I like challenges myself, as I‘ve said on this blog.   And I like that the name “bodyshock” suggests that this isn’t your ordinary workout routine. As her personal trainer explains, Carina works out three times a day during the filming.

But there are a few things I take issue with. First, let’s be frank:  Carina’s before body is just fine.  She’s slender and while she may carry a bit more body fat than is recommended, 32% is hardly shocking.  To say she goes from “flab to fab” (that’s what they do say) is a bit of an exaggeration.

Second, the tagline for the Carina season of the show is horrible: “Carina is a model who wants to find her true-self. See her shred [sic] fat. Pack muscles. 30 episodes of intense fitness and diet. 30 days of blood sweat and tears.”  Is this really the way to find our true selves? By shedding [I assume they meant “shed” not “shred” but perhaps there’s a usage with which I’m not familiar] fat and gaining muscle?

I don’t think these are unworthy goals. But if we’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that dieting and working out probably aren’t the best routes to finding your true self.  As a philosopher, I don’t want to get too abstract about what the ‘true self’ might actually be, but it better be a bit less dependent on having a lean and mean body than Bodyshock TV makes it sound.

Now let’s go to the suggestion in the promo that they’re “showing the transformation you can achieve.”  Okay — Carina has a personal trainer and a “wellness team” at her disposal. I’m guessing she’s not in charge of her own meals either.  Though I’d love to have  team of people devoted to my training for one month, it’s not within in my reach.

So it’s not fair to say that this is “the reality of getting into shape.”  It’s not most people’s reality. Most of us don’t have 30 days in southern Spain with a personal trainer, wellness team, and a chef.  I’m guessing too that most of us don’t have time for over 100 workouts in 30 days, which is what Carina did.

And yet educating and showing the reality of getting into shape is exactly what the producers claim is the point of the show. This seems at odds with the “shock” aspect, where they claim the point is to show the limits of what the human body can do.

The producer in the promo sets up Carina’s journey as the opposite of a “quick fix.” Well, it’s not a magic pill, but 30 days is pretty darn quick. I’m not doubting that someone under the right conditions (e.g. personal trainer, wellness team, south of Spain, no other commitments, personal chef) can achieve some dramatic changes in 30 days, the key issue is always how sustainable these changes are.  Not to doubt Carina, but since 30 days is really just a start, where will she go from there, when her team is gone and she needs to continue “her journey” alone?

The promised Season 2 is slightly more disturbing. In it, two “unfit” models compete against each other. The one who makes the most progress in the Bodyshock regimen wins a modelling contract.  Given what I know about how different bodies respond differently to the same physical challenges, and given how I feel about pitting women against each other in a way that forces comparison of bodies (it will all come down to aesthetics in the end, no doubt), I’m happier with Season 1 than with Season 2.

But neither gets at “the reality of getting into shape.” Why? Because that reality is not as fat-loss focused as the show makes it out to be, is much more long term than 30 days (which is really just the beginning), and, if it’s to be sustainable, has to involve a realistic schedule of activities that can be incorporated into our day to day lives and that do not require a support team.

If you’re curious, here’s the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdEGusxP_l4

 

 

sports nutrition · weight loss

Water, water everywhere but how much should I drink?

Sam B12 Comments

If you’re interested in fitness and nutrition, the answer used to be obvious: lots and lots. If you saw a diet counselor or a sports nutritionist, they often had the same question: How much water are you drinking? And it was never enough.

We were told not use our body’s cues, that these were unreliable, By the time you’re thirsty, they said, you’re already dehydrated.

If you’re like me, you’ve carried stylish non-disposable water bottles everywhere with you. I own the one pictured on the left. I love it. But I confess that I feel virtuous drinking water and that sometimes I drink water when I’m bored in a meeting, not always because I’m thirsty.

Intuitive eating? Maybe. But intuitive drinking? Maybe not so much.

And drinking lots of water is often touted as a sure way to lose weight.

WebMD has a water based weight loss diet. They report:

“Research has also shown that drinking a glass of water right before a meal helps you to feel more full and eat less. “Many people do find that if they have water before a meal, it’s easier to eat more carefully,” says Renee Melton, MS, RD, LD, director of nutrition for Sensei, a developer of online and mobile weight loss and nutrition programs.

One study, for example, found that people who drank water before meals ate an average of 75 fewer calories at each meal. That doesn’t sound like a lot — but multiply 75 calories by 365 days a year. Even if you only drink water before dinner every day, you’d consume 27,000 fewer calories over the course of the year. That’s almost an eight-pound weight loss.”

But now it’s not so clear.

First, came the marathon deaths due to over hydration. These were usually women, often beginning runners, non elite athletes, who stopped to drink at every water station thinking they were doing their bodies good. The deaths resulted from hyponatremia, a sodium imbalance that results from drinking too much water.

From Shape Magazine’s article, Is it possible to drink too much water?

“Clinically called hyponatremia, it’s a condition in which the level of sodium — an electrolyte that helps regulate water levels in the fluid in and around your cells — in your blood is abnormally low. When this happens, your body’s water levels rise, and your cells begin to swell. This swelling can cause many health problems, from mild to severe, and can result in death. Hyponatermia has been in the news for the past few years after a study in the New England Journal of Medicine listed overhydration as a serious health issue of some runners at the Boston Marathon. “
 

You can read about the dangers of overhydration here  and here.

You can also read  Krista Scott Dixon’s Waterlogged: Interview with Dr. Tim Noakes. 

Second, came the research that showed that the “8 glasses per day” recommendation is just false. It was based on a bad research funded by the manufacturers of bottled water. See the CBC’s 8 glasses of water a day ‘an urban myth’

“The common advice to drink eight glasses of water a day doesn’t hold water, say nutrition and kidney specialists who want to dispel the myth. “What drove us to drink two litres of water a day?” asks an editorial in this week’s issue of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health. The recommendation was driven by vested interests rather than health, suggests author Speros Tsindos of the department of dietetics and human nutrition at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia.”

“What drove us to drink 2 litres of water a day?” was published in the Australia New Zealand Journal of Public Health. It begins by noting that the Saharan nomads do just fine with very little water in a very hot and dry environment.

A Scientific American piece Fact or Fiction: You Must Drink 8 Glasses of Water a Day? concludes: “There is no clear evidence of benefit from drinking increased amounts of water.” They say that the recommended amounts of fluid that we hear quoted were meant to include liquids from all sources, including those foods such as fruits and vegetables, as well as beverages such as milk and coffee. A National Academy of Science panel in 2004 wrote that “the vast majority of healthy people adequately meet their daily hydration needs by letting thirst be their guide.”

Third, came controversy over maintaining a reasonable metabolism and the over consumption of water.  Listen to Matt Stone here. Read Pee All That You Can Pee? How Much Should You Drink? a guest post by Stone over at Krista Scott Dixon’s Stumptuous.

Read Cheeseslave’s 10 simple tips to raise your metabolism:

“1. Don’t Drink When You’re Not Thirsty: This sounds like common sense but most of us don’t follow it. We drink too much water because we think it’s good for us. We drink lots of coffee and soft drinks for the stimulant effect. We drink too much alcohol to relax.

None of these things are bad as long as they are done in moderation. You don’t have to avoid coffee or alcohol. Just watch how much you consume. Drinking too much and drinking for reasons other than thirst lowers your metabolism.

Limit the fluid intake, increase your body temperature, boost your metabolism.”

Me, I figure my body probably can sort this one out on its own and I’m going back to drinking when I’m thirsty.

Book Reviews · diets · eating · fat · health · weight loss

Book Review: Taking Up Space

Tracy I9 Comments

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I’m a big fan of Go Kaleo so I was happy to see that Amber Rogers has put a lot of her important message into a new book called Taking Up Space.

The very idea of taking up space is feminist to the core. It challenges traditional assumptions about what it means to be a woman, about what it means to be feminine: “smaller, thinner, lighter, softer, quieter, daintier.”

Amber Rogers is tired of it:

I have a body that takes up space.  I have opinions that take up space. I have a healthy sense  of self-worth and that takes up space too.

Like most of the books that I like to blog about, this one promotes an anti-diet approach.  Why?  Because

Our diet culture is designed to keep us fat and sick; hating and doubting ourselves because when we doubt ourselves we will buy more useless crap.

So although the book will be helpful to women who want to lose weight and learn how to maintain a healthy body weight, it is not your average diet book. Don’t expect a quick fix, detailed eating plans, or a detailed exercise routine.

After her disclaimers about people with serious medical conditions and eating disorders (namely, see your doctor, you shouldn’t be getting your info from a book or a blog), she introduces the three rules that guide her approach to weight loss and maintenance:

1. Make peace with your body.

2. Acknowledge that there is an appropriate amount of food your body needs to support your activity and a healthy weight, and that calories are relevant.

3. You’re allowed to eat whatever you want.

The section on making peace with our bodies is full of well-researched information about the “flaws” so many women hate: cellulite, normal fat storage (gluteal-femoral fat reserves), belly pooch, and those various lumps, bumps, veins, hairs, and stretch marks that, as she so nicely puts it, are the “evidence life leaves on our bodies.” Let’s love our bodies a bit more.

Rule #2 introduces the book’s main concept, which is that we need to eat the amount of food our bodies need to support our activity and a healthy weight.  For this, calories matter.

If you have followed the Go Kaleo blog, you will know already that energy balance and metabolic health are high priorities for Amber Rogers.  I have blogged about her metabolic health approach here. Much of that good information is provided again in this book.

She gives the usual information, by now well-supported, about the body’s natural famine-response or starvation-response to severely restricted diets.  In essence, if you drastically cut calories, you’ll lose quickly for a short period of time and then your amazing body will adapt.  The metabolism will slow down to support the body’s functioning on less.

So, in order to maintain a healthy weight without compromising your metabolism, it’s necessary to bring calories into the equation.  Most women need 2000-3000 calories a day to support their activity level at a healthy weight.  And yet most weight-loss diets max out at about 1200 calories a day. Do the math.  You can’t eat that much less, move more, and expect your body to handle it indefinitely without a famine-response.

She links to a calculator  that helps figure out how many calories a day you need to support the weight you want. It’s a great tool. You may be surprised at the result. I know I was.

I turned the dials to reflect my gender, age, weight, height, activity level, and the hours I spend sitting and sleeping, and it turns out that in theory I need 2700 calories a day to support my weight.

I say in theory because I am sure that most days I don’t eat anywhere near that and yet I still weigh about the same as I did back in January (when I stopped weighing myself). So I must be doing something wrong because my caloric intake should support a lower weight.  If the information Amber provides in the book is correct (and I’m not doubting it; she’s very convincing), then the most likely thing I’m doing wrong is not eating enough, and probably not enough protein.

Food quality does matter. She recommends one gram of protein per pound of body weight, an amount I personally find overwhelming. For me, that’s over 130 grams of protein a day and I can rarely manage it.

Knowing whether you’re getting what you need involves tracking. I hate tracking. She acknowledges that lots of people have a troubled history with tracking and that it’s not essential. But she thinks it’s the only method that is guaranteed to work. Why? Because it really is about calories in and calories out.

Two things she says make me think I might be able to work with her approach, including tracking (for a period of time). First, she re-frames it not as a tool of restriction but as a tool of seeing that we are getting enough.  Second, she notes that it’s temporary. She says: “Tracking for awhile teaches you how to judge proper portion sizes, how much food you need to meet your energy needs, and how to put balanced meals together. Over time, these skills become habit and you can leave the tracking behind.”

I did try this a few months ago when I became determined to increase my protein to at least 100 grams a day.  I tracked for about a week.  And I confess that I did find that I was falling short most days, not just on protein, but on calories.  But the thing is, I went to bed every night feeling totally stuffed.  It went against everything I have been doing to internalize the principles of intuitive eating. So this is something I’ll need to work with a bit to see if it’s going to work for me. Frankly, intuitive eating is more important, but I can do it while still trying to make choices that are higher in protein.

Amber is very sensible about weight. She notes that many of us may have a too-low goal weight in mind, and provides a few guidelines for determining whether the weight you aspire to is a reasonable weight for you to maintain.

She encourages slow weight loss that preserves lean mass, metabolic health, and leads to successful maintenance. That means resistance training, eating enough, and developing a sustainable and enjoyable exercise routine. She cites research studies that show that regular activity is essential to weight maintenance.

In order to lose moderately and without metabolic damage, “you are essentially going to eat the amount of food that will support a healthy weight.” The calculator cited above will tell you what you need to know if you dial in your goal weight and take it from there. She gives a few more details that you can find if you read the book.

If you follow her recommendations about caloric intake, choose a healthy—not unreasonable—goal weight, and maintain a regular exercise routine that includes resistance training at least three times a week, you should find yourself eventually leveling off at a healthy weight. At that point you can turn your attention to “body recomposition.”

That’s the process of changing the percentage of lean mass to fat mass. If you maintain the same weight but increase your lean mass and decrease your fat mass, your body will start to look different.  Amber herself has undergone gradual changes in body composition over the years that show up dramatically in the photo series that makes up the banner of her blog.

For those who have moved into the body recomposition phase, she provides some good tips: eat the calories for maintenance, get plenty of protein, eat carbs too, keep in mind that it’s possible for a healthy woman to gain 2 pounds of lean mass a month, don’t restrict fat, EAT, experiment, do resistance training for strength, get rest, and get rid of guilt.

She has a separate section geared towards those who are in recovery from starvation, including a list of signs to help determine if you have an eating disorder.  I won’t go into the details here, but it is an informative section. The most important advice contained there is to seek professional medical treatment.

The third rule says you’re allowed to eat whatever you want to eat. You will find no specific food plans here.  The main guideline is to eat a wide variety of whole foods, including protein and carbs. Nothing is forbidden.  Treats are important so that you don’t feel deprived.

For many people, this will be a revolutionary idea that might require some further work.  I recommend Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch and If Not Dieting, Then What?  by Rick Kausman if you need a bit more about the transition from restrictive diets to unrestricted healthy eating.

Finally, though the book doesn’t focus on exercise, Amber sees “physical activity, not diet, as the cornerstone of health.” Diet’s main function is to support our physical activity, to provide energy and fuel so we can do what we like to do. Find something you enjoy and make it a regular part of your life.

I’ve gone into the book in some detail because I think the information contained is important. But I have still only sketched out the main ideas. The book is worth reading if you are seeking to lose weight or feel happy with your weight but are wondering how you might shift the lean mass to fat mass percentages around.

I have the ebook on my kindle and my iPad, and I feel it’s absolutely worth the $9.99 it cost.  The focus on metabolic health and energy balance makes it unique among weight loss books. I don’t think it’s a negative thing that the book provides information about how to lose weight. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to shed a few pounds, gain lean mass, and achieve and maintain a healthy body weight.

Amber provides enough information about how to choose a realistic body weight, and emphasizes that in lots of cases the right healthy body weight for you might not match the ideal you have always had in mind: it might well be heavier.

That’s one of the things I like most about her book, other than that it’s well-researched and full of excellent, reasonable information. By the end of it, it’s not just okay to be at a weight that’s a bit higher than you’ve always had as a goal, it’s even desirable.  Even though I gave up weighing myself and swore off dieting back in January, this is the first book I’ve read where I actually feel at the end of it like I’m totally good with the weight I’m at right now. 100%.

If you are a regular follower of Go Kaleo! you will find most of the information is not totally new to you. Amber is up front about this. But it’s good to have it all between two covers (even virtually), and she deserves support for the amazing work she is doing free of charge on the blog!

fat · fitness · Guest Post · weight loss

Count what matters and make what matters count (Guest post)

natalieh (she/her)1 Comment

I love reading Sam & Tracy’s posts about quantifying and qualifying fitness. It makes the number crunching, nerdy part of my brain very happy. I’ve tried calorie counting, graphing my weight, logging distances swam, biked or ran but nothing makes my fit, feminist and nearly forty face smile like counting steps.

Last fall I tried logging food intake and exercise output but a part of me had a nagging suspicion that the data was out of whack. The numbers generated from apps based merely on my weight , 256 lbs, would assume any movement required a Herculean amount of energy, far more than my efficient frame required. I kept eyeballing each apple wondering, was it really 80 calories? Was it smaller? If I underestimated by only 10% I could be eating more than I intended. I started obsessing about food. I started weighing myself daily. My anxiety skyrocketed. I spouted calorie estimates on everything. That diner breakfast 1,200 calories, this beer 68. It was awful. I stopped loving food and I felt pretty crappy when my exercies and food intake didn’t hit targets. Dang.

You may have guessed by now that I have a fairly intense A type personality. I like deliverables, measures of success, quantifiable, all paired with a great story. When I was twenty and in the military I never quite measured up. I was a slow runner, always taking just a little more time than the 12 minutes alloted to complete 1.5 miles. I have asthma that is triggered at max effort so I often have to scale to 60-80% to stay below that threshold. Frustrating. And, at twenty, when I worked out for 3 hours a day, 6 days a week I was 5’4″, wore a size 12 and weighed 180 lbs. I was the embodiement of not hitting the mark on what the military said I should look like and what others thought I should weigh even though I was able to run, bike and swim like a champ.

In January 2013 I read Tracy’s post about doing less, like her I needed smaller, bite sized goals. I also wanted success. My partner, a thin, fast responder type was convinced that counting steps would be my thing.”Every step counts!” he chimed cheerfully and so began my favourite math exercise ever. I tried an app for my phone but it was inaccurate. I was gifted a pedometer, a fitbit, and I fell in love.

The first two weeks I set the goal of wearing my pedometer to get a baseline. While I was convinced I was above average for activity the data told another story. Turns out I walked  on average 8,000 steps a day, just short of the Canadian average. 

I decided I needed to increase my daily activity to the recommended 10,000 steps a day, which I could easily do if I committed to walking the 2km to work everyday and a short 3km walk with the dogs in the evening. I liked that my pedometer uploads to my computer when I walk by and gives me daily and weekly reports. I giggled the day I got a badge saying I climbed enough flights of stairs to the minimum altitude of a helicopter. My partner and I compare steps, turns out being shorter of leg I take 10% more steps over the same distance (insert evil laugh here).

Today I usually meet my daily goal of 15,000 and my best day recently was just over 21,000. I still weigh the same, I still wear the same size pants and I feel pretty rock star about walking as much as possible. I’ve decided I’m measuring success by my resting heart rate (a chill 58 bpm), how well I feel (pretty rocking!) and each step I take towards my well being. If you haven’t found out what to count for your fitness goals think about what matters to you and go for it!

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Natalie is a self described  fat, fit, feminist 38 year old mother of two teenage minions who also lives with her high energy life partner of 19 years. She loves moving her body and sometimes does yoga, short distance triathlons and dances like a fool. Her next measure of success will be being happier and fitter by the end of 2013 than she was in 2012.

body image · fashion · weight loss

Hot pants, wobbly toning shoes, and the latest in skinny making fashion

Sam B14 Comments

My father taught me an important life lesson: If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration. He said it a lot but I likely didn’t learn the lesson for real until I spent my own money on something which claimed to do something it couldn’t. Can’t recall just what that might have been, sea monkeys perhaps? I did buy some. They didn’t look at all like the picture above. I could barely tell if they were alive or dead and I spent a whole week’s allowance on them. I never did get to use the training manual that came with them. But I did learn something. I imagine that’s why my parents first tried to talk me out of mail order sea monkeys from the back of a comic book and then later helped me do it. It was a cheap life lesson at the price of just one week’s allowance.

And now I try to pass the same lesson along to my own kids. Yet, I’m still surprised that products with these larger than life claims exist especially when they are targeted at adults.

No one is more vulnerable than someone who believes she needs to change herself to be worthy and so the worst of these products aim to sell thinned, toned bodies to people who don’t currently have them.

First, it was the wobbly toning shoes. I laughed when they were first on the market, quietly, since a friend had bought some. Since then of course we’ve learned that the miraculous wobbly toning shoes are a scam. They do nothing for toning your legs. You just look silly and feel wobbly.

Sketchers just paid $40 million in damages over its toning running shoes. Read more here. You can also read the Runners Works story here. Similar suits are now underway against Reebok and Vimbram five finger shoes for claims they make about the health benefits of their footwear.

Now, the wobbly shoes didn’t just make false claims. It looks like they also actually hurt people.

Consumer Reports says this:

“Most of the reported injuries were minor, including tendonitis and foot, leg, and hip pain. But 15 complaints reported broken bones, some of which required surgery. Our medical experts say that those types of shoes have rocker-style bottoms that are designed to cause instability, forcing users to engage muscles that are not normally used while walking. But that instability might also lead to turned ankles, falls, and other injuries if the user is not careful. The rocker design is not unique to Skechers, which was cited in most of the reports. Other brands with similar designs include Avia, Champion, Danskin Now, and New Balance, and shoes sold at Sears and Kmart. Reebok has a toning shoe that’s designed differently, but it also causes instability. The above-mentioned brands were also named in injury reports filed with the CPSC.” Read more here.

I’m hoping this sends the wobbly shoe trend to its grave. I have noticed that the thrift stores are full of them.

But like weeds that won’t die, another trend in weight loss clothing has popped up. This time it’s skinny hot pants. The claim is that they burn 11 percent more calories while you exercise and 13 percent more calories even after you stop. I first came across them as a sponsored ad in my Facebook newsfeed.

It seems like a recycled idea to me. In the 1970s you could buy plastic ‘sauna suits’ to do your housework in while losing weight through sweat. Body builders used to use saran wrap to accomplish this effect even though experts say it doesn’t work. You can wrap plastic around your waist, sweat, and lose some water weight but the minute you have a drink it’ll be back.

The new hot pants seem like the same old idea to me. But then maybe much of the target audience weren’t alive through the 1970s.

Fox News asks, Can fat-melting ‘hot pants’ help you lose weight? ABC news also evaluates them here.

Note there’s no research backing up the manufacturer’s claims that has been published in refereed scientific journals and all the obesity researchers interviewed expressed skepticism.

Surprise, surprise.

Oh, and the hot pants also claim to help with trouble areas. You’re supposed to lose more inches in the areas where the special heat panels are located. That sounds a tad unlikely too.  Potential buyers ought to read Newsflash: Spot Reduction/Spot Training Does NOT Work.

When will the first lawsuit begin?

Now I’ve already gone on record as being a bit of a grump about pricey exercise clothing (see Just walk slowly away from that rack of $100 yoga pants) because I think it’s a dangerous myth that fitness requires specialized expensive clothing and pricey personal trainers.  However, at least Lululemon claims only to make your butt look good. It doesn’t make any claims about helping to shrink it. Oh wait, there was the Lululemon seaweed scandal. Yoga pants were supposed to contain seaweed which would release amino acids and marine vitamins and minerals into your skin while you worked out. However, tests showed the pants contained no actual seaweed. Smells like sea monkeys to me.

 

body image · diets · fat · training · weight loss

Newsflash: Spot Reduction/Spot Training Does NOT Work

Tracy I18 Comments

I went through a brief period when I was about twenty-one when I committed to doing the Jane Fonda workout (!) every day (!!).  What I loved about Jane’s workout was the way it targeted all those “problem” areas–you know, the thighs, the waist.  Jane and I and all her workout friends in the video, with our big hair, eighties shiny spandex and leg warmers, blasted those areas with leg lift after leg lift and crunch after crunch.

Sometime between then and now it’s become common knowledge that spot reduction is a myth. There is even a Wikipedia entry on it.  In an inconclusive study in 2006  some scientists had male subjects do leg extensions for THIRTY minutes with the same leg. They found that the blood rushed to the active more than the resting leg (I’m no scientist but that doesn’t surprise me in the least), as well as increased lipolysis (lipo=fat). But if it makes a difference, they’re not sure how much of a difference it makes.

I can tell you from my Jane Fonda experience, repetitive exercises that focus on one body part do nothing to reduce just that part.  An article about spot reduction on Livestrong says:

There are no reliable studies that support the idea of spot training. There are, however, several that discredit it. One of the most well-constructed studies to provide evidence against the concept of spot training was conducted by researchers at the University of Massachusetts in the 1980s. During the 27-day program, 13 male subjects were required to perform 5000 sit-ups. Fat biopsies were taken from the subjects’ abdomens, buttocks and upper backs before and after the study. Although the subjects only trained their abs during the course of the study, the results showed that fat decreased similarly at all three test spots.

If it doesn’t work on men, it almost certainly won’t work on women. Again, I can attest to this in an anecdotal way.  Lots of focused effort, no focused reduction.  The science didn’t prevent Livestrong from recently posting this misleading video on the best yoga moves for slimming the waist. I have to say, given the science, this video really infuriated me. I thought we’d established that this “spot” approach was a myth.

Look at the instructor — she doesn’t need any spot reduction of any kind.  No yoga move will literally slim your waist if by “slim your waist” you mean reduce the amount of fat you carry at the waistline.

As Danielle from the Body Yoga Divine blog ranted back in 2012, the whole yoga body idea is a conspiracy! It’s designed to sell yoga, yoga clothing, yoga accessories, yoga magazines, etc.  And it’s not even a healthy ideal, as Danielle, herself a committed yogi, points out:

Lets face it, the yoga body is not a healthy ideal. It is a body overworked and underfed. It is not the result of regular yoga classes but the result of a narcissistic obsession with working out. And it is driven less by empowerment than by feeling ‘fat and inferior’…

The spot reduction thing is just another way of packaging the same idea: body hatred and body obsession. It promises that we can whip those unwieldy areas of our flawed bodies into shape.  It perpetuates something similar to the diet mentality, assuming that there are aspects of our bodies that are unacceptable and need to be dealt with in a way that is at best tedious and at worst thoroughly punishing.

The false promise of spot reduction is akin to the false promise of fad dieting.

Enough!

The only way to see lasting changes in our physical bodies is a combination of physical exercise and healthy eating in reasonable amounts. There is no other way.  And if we’ve had any consistent message on this blog, it’s that it doesn’t need to be a journey of deprivation and self-abuse.  We can engage in activities that we enjoy, set performance goals to get us out the door, have fun getting active with our friends, learn ways of eating (in my case intuitive eating, in Sam’s case, the Precision Nutrition approach) that involve new, healthier habits and mindfulness.

It is true that it is possible to sculpt an already lean body through weight training.  But this is a different thing altogether from spot reduction exercises that supposedly slim areas of the body that are hidden under body fat. For most of us, this is the reality. The ripped, competition-ready physique of a fitness model or body builder is not the norm even for fitness models and body builders.

And above all, we can learn to accept our bodies now, appreciate what they are able to do, maybe even become aware of and grateful for the structural and systemic and often un-acknowledged privilege that being a non-disabled person in this world affords us.

As we approach our fifties, neither Sam nor I plan to follow Jane’s model of binge and purge (she had bulimia during all those years she was making those exercise videos). No, we want to enjoy ourselves, eat well, and have strong, healthy bodies that work for us in our chosen activities. Instead of working at spot reduction, I’ve opted to work towards a healthy body image and to embrace only those things that will take me in that direction (so, no more trips to the bod pod for me; I learned my lesson last month).

Don’t just take my word for it. I invite you to do a google search of “spot reduction myth” and you’ll find articles everywhere from CNN (10 Exercise Myths that Won’t Go Away) to Bodybuilding.com. (You Can’t Spot Reduce: Learn Why!”).

So let’s lay that one and all the body hatred that it suggest to rest for once and for all.

diets · eating · fat · overeating · weight loss

Listen to your body, yes, but with a skeptical ear….

Sam B7 Comments

Tracy has written lots about what works for her when it comes to food choices. Listening to her body rather than following a strict diet plan is the main piece of that. (See her post on intuitive eating.) She’s also not interested in seeking the advice of sports nutritionists (see here.) Largely she thinks our bodies know what they need and listening to our bodies is both healthier and less alienating than ‘mediated eating.’ We should eat what we want not what the latest diet plan or diet guru tells us to eat. See her post on fad diets here.

We hear this same idea from others too. According to Amber at Go Kaleo, we should listen to our bodies and let them guide us.

Our bodies are not the enemies. I like that as a slogan. The thing is I’m convinced my body is not my enemy. But I’m also not convinced it’s always my best friend either.

That said, I’m not as angry at my body as eat, drink, and run is. I’m not as amusing either. She explains why she doesn’t listen to her body in these terms:

“Because my body is kind of a little bitch.  Yep, this body is all about guarding its own shortsighted interests.  Go for a run, body?  Noooo…I asked the legs, they’d rather take a rest day! Eat some of that broccoli?  Noooo…taste buds want ice cream instead! Get out of bed and go to work?  Oh…I consulted the epidermis and it says that these warm covers feel just fine, so we’re staying put, KTHXBAI.” 

Go read the rest here. It’s very funny.

Mostly I’m in agreement with the intuitive eating idea, especially the claims that we need to make peace with food and end restrictive dieting.  I think self trust matters for women’s autonomy. Casting aside the advice of experts is liberating.

These experts tend to target women with their advice and treat us as incompetent idiots. They create incompetence and then sell products to fix the problem.

Like the woman centred childbirth movement–if you feel like walking around in labour, walk around– the intuitive eating approach teaches women that we know what’s best for our own health.

Shut out the outside noise–whether the noise is fast food advertising or nutritional advice from experts–slow down and feed your self when you’re hungry, stop before you’re full, and eat foods that appeal to you.

What’s great about trusting your body, especially for women, is its radical potential. And as I’ve said, I think lots about this is right but here I want to raise some doubts about intuitive eating, at least as it applies to my life.

The worries I have been be divided into two categories, the internal and the external.

First, let’s look at the internal issues with intuitive approaches to eating.

Our bodies often want things that aren’t the best for us. That seems obvious to me and there is an easy explanation of why this is so. In evolutionary terms death by starvation was a much more likely bad outcome than the health risk of being overweight, especially prior to childbirth years. We are creatures geared for feast and famine times living in an environment of all feast, all the time. We’re not wrong or mistaken to want to eat whenever food presents itself. Until very recently in human history that desire would have served us very well.

Our bodies also aren’t unitary desiring machines either. There are conflicts between well being for different bits of our bodies. What’s good for our brain may not be so good for our thighs. Our brain’s desire for sugar is fascinating and it’s in clear conflict with what’s best for us overall. See “Why our brains love sugar and why our bodies don’t,” here, in Psychology Today.

It seems to me to be a very romantic view of embodiment to think our bodies know what’s best. I’ve written before about the variety of ways that our bodies undercut our best efforts. See this post about our bodies scheming against our weight loss efforts.

Second, let’s look at the external factors. There is no ‘what I want’ separate from my environment. I crave cupcakes, when I crave cupcakes, because I’m in a cupcake heavy time and place. There are many places and times where I might have lived where I’d never crave cupcakes. Would I have wanted something else? Sure. I don’t crave or eat meat but in much of the world not eating meat wouldn’t be an option and probably I’d come to desire it.

On a smaller scale now this is true about the environment I create for myself. I don’t like potato chips very much and I don’t buy them or bring them into my house. But if they’re there I come perversely to want them. Our desire for food isn’t separate from our environment. And I think this is especially true for food that’s designed, like cigarettes, to be addictive. I’m looking forward to reading Salt, Sugar, Fat reviewed here in the Guardian.

My next post in habits and environmental cues looks at how we might intervene and help ourselves make better choices.

Here’s what intuitive approaches get right. We don’t do as badly as we imagine we’d do if all food is available and nothing is off limits. And I think it’s right that lots of over eating stems from restricting our diets. Certain foods are held up to be both magically bad and desirable. And highly restrictive diets are destructive for just this reason.

But, for me at least, intuitive eating isn’t perfect either. After days without vegetables I come to crave them it’s true. But I doubt that left to my own desires I’d come to want enough green things. I also think that in small amounts we might eat more than we need in some cases and less in others. My own examples come from sports performance, not eating enough when I’m racing and eating too much on days when I do long slow rides. My appetite isn’t a reliable guide to what I need to eat to perform well.

Okay, what can we do? I think small changes in behavior and in our environment can make a difference. What sort of changes? These will be the topic of my next blog post.

Note it may turn out that for you, even small restrictions bring to mind the full on serious restrictions of heavy duty during, the way that tracking and nutrition counseling affected Tracy. If that’s right then I agree it’s best to stick with intuitive eating as a way of recovering from a history of dieting.

But as I’ve said in a few blog posts, it’s part of my goal to get leaner and to improve my nutrition. I’ll be listening to my body too but with a critical ear and strategizing about ways to get it what it wants while still meeting my goals and changing my eating habits.

Further reading:

When listening to your body doesn’t work, Part 1

When listening to your body doesn’t work, Part 2

(Mark’s Daily Apple)

Nia Shanks: Ditch the diet rules, listen to your body for optimal health

The most effective diet: listening to your body

body image · diets · family · motivation · weight loss

“You’ve Lost Weight! You Look Great!” Isn’t a Compliment

Tracy I41 Comments

Last week, a friend reported how horrible she felt when someone in her workplace whom she didn’t know very well complimented her on her recent weight loss. As it happens, my friend is losing weight to prepare for a figure competition. But this remark made her question her “before” look.  In her case, her “before” body is the one she has whenever she’s not prepping for a competition because the competition body isn’t sustainable.  (see here for why that’s the case)

Implicit in the so-called compliment about weight loss is the assumption that you really didn’t look so great before.  But now!  Wowza!  Looking good!

There are lots of reasons to think that you’re not doing anyone any favors by trying to give them the “look at you! You’ve lost weight!” compliment.

1. When we think of it in that way, it’s not such a great compliment. It’s a set-up for self-consciousness and negative self-judgment of our past selves. When remarking on weight loss is offered as a compliment, the speaker clearly thinks that there’s been a noticeable and notable improvement in how the person looks.  Without the normative standard of “thinner is better,” the comment would have no value as a compliment at all.

2. It’s also a set-up for our future selves because, for the most part, diets don’t work in the long run. Much of the research out there shows that those who lose weight by dieting now have a pretty good chance of gaining it all back and more within 2-5 years (if not sooner).  Diets and weight loss programs have very poor results over time.  See Regan’s post, “The Thing about Weight Watchers” and this report from UCLA.

3. It reinforces the notion that it’s okay to monitor other people’s bodies.  When the blog first began, I talked about “the panopticon” in relation to tracking.  The panopticon is a prison design (from 18th C philosopher Jeremy Bentham). Its key feature is that the prisoners cannot tell when they are being watched and when they are not.  The uncertainty about when they are under surveillance means that prisoners begin to regulate themselves. Philosopher Michel Foucault, and later, feminist philosopher Sandra Bartky, offered the panopticon as a metaphor for contemporary society.  Bartky uses it to explain how women fall into line with the standards of normative femininity.  If we condone comments on people’s weight loss (or gain, but we are loathe to do that since it’s thought to be an insult), we are promoting a panopticon-like scenario where people the expectation of random surveillance becomes the norm.

4. It reinforces the idea that it’s okay to let people know that we are monitoring and judging their bodies. One thing that shocked my friend in the story I opened with was that she really didn’t even know the person who commented on her weight.  And yet the person felt completely entitled to say something. What kind of a twisted world do we live in where the state of our bodies is fair game for comments from whoever feels like making them?

5. It assumes that we are trying to lose weight and that, therefore, our weight loss is an accomplishment worth congratulating us for.  I know, I know. For lots of people this is actually the case. When I attended Weight Watchers, we would literally applaud people for losing weight.  I’m sure I read somewhere in WW literature that receiving compliments from family and friends was a good motivator to keep us on track in “our weight loss journey.”  But hello!  Not everyone, everywhere is always trying to lose weight.  It’s offensive to make that assumption.

Almost 20 years ago, Sam and I learned our lesson about casually offering, “You’ve lost weight; you look great!” as a “compliment.”  If that’s the compliment you’re looking for, you won’t get it from us.  We ran into someone who used to work in our office but had moved to another unit.  We complimented her heartily on her lost weight.  Her response, “I have cancer.”

Awkward moment ensued.

Lesson learned.

If I could push rewind, I would approach it differently. I would say, “It’s so great to see you.  How have you been?”  At that point, she could choose either to tell us of her health issues or not tell us.  We could have a conversation about what we’ve been up to lately that focused on things that really matter instead of how her body looked to us.  Thankfully, our friend has since recovered from her illness. But we re-live the mortification of that major faux pas on a regular basis, pretty much any time we catch wind of anyone saying to anyone else, “You’ve lost weight. You look great.”

I do know that lots of people are in fact trying to lose weight and change their body composition.  They are putting in an active effort. They are not hiding it from anyone.  They themselves regard their progress on these fronts as accomplishments.  That’s all good. I myself would like to gain more muscle and I do have another trip to the bod pod scheduled to see how that’s going (for the sake of research, I swear!).

Nonetheless, I still urge everyone to re-think the weight loss comment as compliment for the reasons outlined above.

It’s nobody’s business whether someone has lost weight or not.  Friends, family, co-workers, and strangers do not have a right to monitor our bodies closely enough that they notice changes in our weight.  Even less do they have the right to talk about it, among themselves or to us.

You might want to say that it’s okay if we ourselves initiate the conversation. Still, I feel wary (and weary) of embarking on conversations in which the main topic is somebody’s weight.

And despite the good intentions that most have when they offer this compliment, it often comes across as a covert way of telling someone that they really didn’t look so good before.  We live in a society obsessed with “before and after” shots (it’s through those that WW “leaders” gain their credibility with the clients).  “Before” is always unacceptable. “After,” the “new you!” is to be congratulated and praised.

This whole approach comes perilously close to casting thinness and those who “achieve” it as virtuous.   The occupants of our “before” pictures are seen in a negative moral light.  Not only were we not so attractive with our unwieldy bodies that everyone noticed but kept silent about until we changed them, but also we were not so virtuous, were we?  It may be subtle and covert, but it’s shaming nonetheless.

Please join me in the boycott.

Read more about body image, body shaming, and the assumption that thin is better:

On Comparing

The Day I Discovered the Dreaded Camel Toe

Why the “Thigh Gap” Make Me Sad

Loving the Body You’ve Got

Why Food Is Beyond “Good” and “Evil”
diets · eating · overeating · weight loss

Why Food Is Beyond “Good” and “Evil”

Tracy I137 Comments
Image description: a half an orange and an orange. Credit: pexels.com
Image description: a half an orange and an orange. Credit: pexels.com (free stock photos)

Recently, in response to a comment I made about the calories in fruit juice, a friend said to me that fruit juice is “evil.” I am a philosopher who does a lot of ethics. So “evil” means something quite severe to me. Hitler and Pol Pot were evil.  Fruit juice, not so much.

I checked back with my friend. No, he didn’t mean it was literally evil. Just that it’s as bad as a can of Coke.  Still pretty bad, if not downright evil. It’s a “sometimes” food, not an everyday food. Other anti-juice people jumped in to clarify further. Juice is really, really bad FOR you. Harley Pasternak demonized it the other day in his talk too.  He said that a cup and half of OJ has 240 calories. That’s not quite right, since a cup has 112 calories.

But I don’t want to quibble about orange juice in particular. It’s this whole notion of good foods and bad foods that really gets under my skin. Very few foods, eaten in moderate quantities, are actually bad for you. I ate a big and delicious piece of vegan chocolate cake yesterday.  I don’t believe it was in the least bad for me. Why? Because I don’t eat cake every day. I eat it about once or twice a month.

I can’t trace the quote exactly, but a long time ago I read a great response by George Cohon of McDonald’s, to the claim that McDonald’s food was “bad for you.” He said something like that McDonald’s never said you should eat its food three meals a day, seven days a week.  I hesitate to agree with him (because McDonald’s is problematic in other ways, in my view), but I agree. McDonald’s and orange juice, chocolate cake and potato chips…all of these can be part of a healthy diet without doing damage to the person who ingests them.

Moralizing food by calling some of it “bad” and some of it “good” gives the false impression that foods in themselves have moral qualities. It isn’t a huge jump, and people make this jump all the time, to the claim that people who eat “good” foods in the “right” amounts are virtuous and people who do not are bad.

We frequently think of chocolate cake as “sinfully delicious” and “decadent.”  I’ve spoken to many a dieter who said, not that they had a good week, but that they were “good” that week.  If they wandered off the plan by eating something they weren’t supposed to, they were “bad” that week.  Some foods are considered “guilty pleasures.”

One of my favorite parts of both the  intuitive eating approach and the the demand feeding approach to food is that they both tell us to “legalize” all foods.  Carrot sticks are as legal as carrot cake, neither better nor worse than the other. I can already hear the rumblings in the comments.  “But carrot sticks are better for you than carrot cake!”  I can even hear those who would jump in against carrot sticks because they have a higher sugar content than celery sticks.

The whole thing brings me back to the idea of moderation, which Sam wrote about in such a lovely way recently.  We can live life by strict rules and have all sorts of forbidden foods on a black list if we like.  But forbidden foods are, for many of us, more attractive for being forbidden.

I know that when I finally truly legalized all foods, french fries, which I’d considered my favorite food for all of my life, suddenly lost their appeal. They’re okay, and I do enjoy them from time to time. But are they my favorite foods? No. If I had a choice of giving up fries for the rest of my life or giving up mangoes for the rest of my life, I’d give up the fries. And not because they’re “bad” or even “bad for me,” but because I simply love a good fresh mango.

The food police are those people who like to jump in and tell you about the evil foods that are bad for you and that you should avoid. I’m not interested in what they have to say.  I am extremely well informed about nutrition and used to be able to rhyme off all sorts of fun facts about countless foods. I wrote them down every day and kept meticulous count. I avoided fruit juice and all caloric drinks so as not to waste the stingily parceled out grams of this or that.  Like so many people, I felt so incredibly virtuous when I stuck with it, often for months and even years at a time.

I convinced myself, as I have heard so many others do, that I just loved this way of eating. It was so great! And I was so good! Meanwhile, I felt deprived, especially around celebrations and special occasions, which are enhanced by taking a meal together.  I had my false sense of virtue, but it wasn’t much fun.

I have also witnessed the effect of “virtuous” eating on others who were not so virtuous but who thought they should be. People would apologize for themselves for eating. “I shouldn’t be having this, but…”  That is always a preamble to the next day’s self-flagellation, “I was so bad at my daughter’s wedding yesterday.”   Or this one, “I’ll just take a sliver.”  When I was a young adult, my mother and I polished off close to whole banana loaf over the course of an evening by taking little slivers.  Even today I look back and think I should have just cut off a good sized slice, slathered it with butter, sat down with it, and enjoyed it. Instead, I sneaked into the kitchen a few times and shaved off inadequate pieces that left me wanting more.

When we moralize foods into good, bad, evil even, we deny ourselves permission and set ourselves up not just as failures, but as moral failures.

If the foods that made people feel so bad weren’t forbidden or “sinful” in the first place, they’d be less attractive and people would be less likely to eat more of them than is comfortable.

Are there any foods that, for health reasons, we simply should not eat EVER, that even in tiny amounts are “evil”? For some people, there are “trigger” foods that they simply cannot moderate.  I will have more to say about that in another post. And of course, some people are allergic to things that will kill them if they eat them. And as a vegan I am keenly aware of social, moral and political reasons for avoiding certain foods.

But those foods aside, I’m not sure if there are any foods that should never, ever, under any circumstances, be eaten because of our health. And if there are, fruit juice is not among them.

Some other posts about food, diets, and moderation:

Three Amazing Rants about Food, Nutrition, and Weight Loss

Metabolic Health Is a Feminist Issue

Raspberry Ketone, Pure Green Coffee Extract, Garcinia Cambogia, and the Fallacy of the Appeal to Authority

Why Sports Nutrition Counseling Is Not for Me

Moderation versus All or Nothing

[photo credit: Good-Wallpapers]

body image · diets · eating · fat · overeating · sports nutrition · weight loss

On the Grapefruit Diet, Atkins, Paleo, the Zone, Five Factor, and Cabbage Soup: Reflections on Fad Diets and the Meaning of “Success”

Tracy I10 Comments

When we track our blog stats, Sam and I always get a kick out of seeing that our post on raspberry ketones, pure green coffee bean extract, and garcina cambogia is among the most popular.  It’s not popular because everyone wants to read about why the appeal to authority is a fallacy. It’s not popular because it essentially dismisses these things, claiming that you should keep your money and focus on a healthy approach to eating real food.

No. It’s popular because “raspberry ketones,” “pure green coffee bean extract,” and “garcinia cambogia” are popular search terms for people looking for the next weight loss miracle. They are among the latest fads.
“Fad diet” is a derogatory way of referring to any trendy weight loss plan. I’ve yet to hear it used in a positive way.  When I was a teenager and in my twenties, popular fad diets included the banana diet, the grapefruit diet, the cabbage soup diet, the Scarsdale Diet.

The grapefruit diet is pretty representative of how these things go, so I’ll use it as an example.  You eat half a grapefruit at each meal. With it, at breakfast you have two eggs and some bacon, at lunch you have meat and salad, at dinner you have meat and a vegetable (from an approved list), and then you drink a glass of tomato juice or skim milk at bed time.

The “key” ingredient, be it cabbage soup, bananas, grapefruit, acai berries, a miracle juice or a special smoothie, is really just a diversion.  The reason people lose weight rapidly on these diets is that they involve severe calorie restriction and usually cut out most simple and complex carbohydrates (except a few vegetables and one or two types of fruit). They also include very few snacks, usually restricting eating to three bland meals a day.

Fad diets like this don’t even pretend to be long term.  They are almost always for a stated period of time, ranging from 3 days to 3 weeks.

Other kinds of fad diets, such as the Zone, Atkins, the Blood Type Diet, the Paleo Diet, or the South Beach Diet purport to be longer term and most include advice for eating their way forever.  But they also include long lists of forbidden foods, such as carbohydrates other than certain approved vegetables. I don’t care what anyone says, our bodies need carbs to function efficiently.

Again, the complicated food plans are, in my view, just a diversion.  If we eat a lot of junk food we will maintain a higher weight than many of us wish to maintain.  These plans usually cut out chips and fried foods, cakes and pies, cookies and candy bars. Cutting those things out will of course allow someone to maintain a lower weight than they might if they ate these things all the time.

The diets also often restrict juice.

I was at a talk the other day by Harley Pasternak, personal trainer for many Hollywood celebrities and author of “The Five Factor Diet.”  Other that his approved smoothies (because apparently we ingest more nutritional ingredients when our food is blended than when we chew it ourselves), his diet requires that all drinks be calorie free. He spoke of fresh squeezed OJ as if it was the devil (note that a cup and a half does contain an alarming 450 calories—this might be good information to have but doesn’t automatically mean you ought never drink fresh squeezed orange juice again).

An interesting thing that Harley Pasternak said was this. Though he believes, and all the research points to the fact that, slow, steady weight loss of about half a pound a week is the most effective for long term good results, no one is interested in that kind of weight loss. A book that offered that would not sell.  These days, we want fast results, a la Tim Ferriss and the 4-Hour Body. Without fast results in the first week or two, people will not stick to a plan.

That goes a long way to explaining the appeal of fad diets that are for a limited time only. They get the weight off quickly.  So those who go on them feel successful. That keeps them focused, at least for the period of the diet.  And knowing that it is time-limited makes it bearable.

But as I’ve said many times before, short term results aren’t all that interesting.  They’re uninteresting because they are fleeting at best.  The weight comes back and in 98% of the cases, people end up heavier than they were before they went on the diet.

This is in part because they have damaged their metabolism. The body responds to severely restricted eating by slowing down the metabolism to cope with the lower food intake and use it more efficiently. Most of us do not ease ourselves off of fad diets, but rebound with a major binge on all that we were deprived of while eating half grapefruits and meat and salad.

The need for quick results is what sabotages our efforts from the get go.  If slow but steady is what works, then why are we so resistant to slow progress?  Maybe we need new measures of success. Much of what Sam and I are trying to do in our lives, and are trying to champion in the blog, is to revise our visions of success.  Sam has a great post that explains why body weight and even BMI have been shown to be poor measures of fitness and health. I’m with her when she advocates for athletic over aesthetic values.  It’s not all about looking a certain way, as we can see when we look at the reality of fitness figure competitors.

These days, I have a more diverse sense of goals.  I do not have weight loss goals at all anymore.  I am happy with what my body can do and I enjoy fueling it according to the guidelines of the intuitive eating approach.  A great measure of success for me is to maintain a non-obsessive relationship with food, eat what I want when I need it and in the amounts that keep me satisfied, and above all to enjoy eating.  It’s a wonderful part of life.

I also have performance goals for distance and speed in swimming and running, and for weight and reps in my resistance training, and for gaining strength, confidence, and balance in my yoga practice.

Besides those goals, I have simple “practice” goals each week.  These are just about showing up to do what I said I would do and what I feel I need to do to train well.  For me, this means running 3 times a week, going swimming 2 times a week, resistance training every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and going to yoga 3-4 times per week.  If I can stay on task with these commitments, I feel pretty successful.

I feel fairly confident that following through on doing what is necessary to meet these goals will automatically change the ratio of lean mass to fat in my body composition. I do not preoccupy myself with this as a goal, but I do look on it with interest, for the purposes of our “fittest by fifty” adventure.  To that end, I have scheduled another bod pod visit for next month.

Finally, I’ve got an overall goal that supports my sense of well-being, and that is to have a pretty relaxed attitude about it all. I’m not a drill sergeant anymore. If I miss a workout or eat less mindfully than I rather would, it’s not the end of the world and I don’t spend a single second in remorse.  Onward!

Fad diets fuel an all-or-nothing mentality.  You’re on it or you’re not.  They set us up to fail even if we are successful on the diet itself. Why? Because the pounds will return. They do not promote good health, strong muscles, or sustainable habits. They do not promote moderation, but rather, extremism.  I’m not alone in my views about fad diets. Go Kaleo has a whole blog with the tagline: Are you as tired of fad diets as I am?

I liked Sam’s post about moderation yesterday because I’m a big fan of it myself. I’m also a big fan of slow and steady progress that takes me in a consistent direction. And I’m an advocate of doing less instead of more. And I really don’t like wasting my time with things that set me up for failure, demoralize me, and make me feel badly about myself.  Fad diets have done all of these things to me, lots of my friends, and millions of people I don’t know.

Let’s revise our view of success in ways that support our well-being.