It's nearly 2 a.m. as I'm writing this. I tend to be a night person and find it strangely relaxing to write late at night. But being a night owl, I also watch a lot of late night TV. I have seen hundreds of hours of infomercials telling me about products which can do everything for me from increase the gas mileage in my car to make me rich. Of course, almost any hour of the night from midnight till dawn someone is hawking a product, diet or exercise program which reveals the "secret" of losing weight.
I hate to tell you this, but you already know the "secret" of weight loss. Here it is Eat Fewer Calories than you Burn Each Day!
That's it in a nut shell. That's what you need to do to lose weight. Okay, so there are a few nutritional nuances like reducing fat and sugar consumption and increase that of fruits, vegetables and fiber. But the bottom line is that your weight is like a bank account. If you put more money in your bank each month than you spend, your bank account gets fat. If not, it shrinks. But what's good for a bank account is not good for your body.
If you eat 2500 calories today and burn 2000, you will gain weight. If you eat 2500 calories today and burn 3000 then you will lose it.
So, the secret is simple. What is hard is how to turn what we know into a plan of action we can stick with. In fact, we need to learn new behaviors and make them a part of our over all lifestyles.
Going on a "crash" diet for six weeks or six months begs the question, what happens after the diet ? Has the diet made any lasting changes in your eating habits or have you simply been deferring eating your favorite foods until you reach some sort of target weight and then you "pig out" on them and go back to your old eating habits and regain the weight only to repeat the cycle with the next novelty diet you find in a magazine or on TV.
Learning Fitness Skills
Instead of thinking about your initial weight-loss efforts as a "fitness program" or "diet " think about it as a training course. You are learning a new skill.
On the TV infomercials or in the books or on the talk shows, you see doctors telling you what you need to do to lose weight. Well, I'm not a doctor. (I don't even play one on TV). But frankly, you don't need a doctor to tell you how to lose weight. You already know that you need to cut calories and increase exercise. The problem isn't one of not know what to do. It's learning the skills to actually do it. No, you don't need a doctor, you need a teacher. You don't need information, you need education.
I am a teacher by trade. I teach public speaking, and I teach it well. My educational methods professor defined learning this way "establishing and maintaining new patterns of behavior." My students, when successful, learn new patterns of behavior such as organizing thoughts before speaking, maintaining eye contact with an audience, speaking loudly and clearly, creating interesting introductions and conclusions, basing arguments on sound reasoning and reliable evidence. If we are successful in my class, those behaviors persist and are repeated when faced with future public speaking situations. We practice in a class room setting, so that the students can learn behaviors to apply to situations outside the classroom.
Consider what you will be doing over the next several weeks as education. You are learning the skills necessary to lose weight, keep it off and generally live a healthier life style. We will be applying the basic tools of educational theory, to help you learn not just to lose weight, but to keep it off and create a new healthier lifestyle without taking the fun out of living and joy out of eating. This doesn't mean blindly following some preset eating plan featuring no-taste food. Nor does it mean suddenly working out 2 hours a day at the gym and running 6 miles a day. It means learning how to gradually make sustainable lifestyle changes which make your life more enjoyable and healthier at the same time. You won't be learning so much what to do, as how to do it, and how to keep doing it for a lifetime. So, you need to consider not just the principles and techniques of weight-loss, but a bit about the psychology as well. Attitude is as important as aptitude in any learning environment. It is no less important here.
PIGSS in the Parlor
So, what does the research say about sustainable weight loss. It's pretty much the same as any type of long term skill education. Looking over the studies we find five keys to effective weight loss: Simplicity, Gradualism, Individualization, Perseverance and Self-Confidence. I tried to put these together into a clever acronym, but the only thing I could come up with was PIGSS and that just didn't seem right. So, let's forget clever and take a look at each of these components of the Get Real Approach to Weight Loss.
Simplicity. The more complicated your program the less likely you are to integrate it into your lifestyle. The KISS formula works here as well as elsewhere.
The story is told of a pastor who had a tendency to drift into very complex theological concepts in his sermons. Every Sunday, his wife would send a note to the pulpit with KISS written on it. Someone saw this and said to her, "Oh, how sweet, you send your husband a kiss every morning before he speaks." The wife smiled and replied, "That's not a kiss, it's an abbreviation for 'Keep It Simple, Stupid.'"
Sometimes I'd like to tell that to the creators of these diet and exercise programs. "Eat 2 grams of this, eat before 5 p.m. Eat within 30 minutes of waking up. Take these 25 vitamins (One actually had 50 vitamin supplements to take!) Do 2 minutes each of 15 exercises in the exact order shown with only 10 seconds between each exercise."
It gets so complicated trying to keep everything straight. In fact, weight loss is the simplest concept in the world. Eat fewer calories than you burn. Now, I've included a journal and ask that you keep track of calories because we know that journaling helps keep people on track, but after awhile, you'll know the calorie count of your favorite meals and your most frequently used exercise routines. And a ball park figure will work for your journaling (as long as that ball park isn't too big).
If you find anything is getting too complicated, ask yourself, how can I adjust this program to make it simpler? For instance, I use Weight Watchers E-tools rather than counting calories because their point system and journal program simplifies that task and also figures in the effect of fat and fiber. That simplifies my life. I don't follow everything in their program, but that part is good.
Gradualism. Too many people jump into a fitness regimen with both feet trying to make major life changes overnight. It may take longer, but making a few smaller changes at a time, you'll build longer lasting behavioral changes.
I teach public speaking at college. Speech One (as we call it around the college) tends to have a high drop-out factor. Students usually put it off and when they do take the class many drop out before the first speech. One of our former instructors would begin with 30 students and end up with 10-12 every semester. In fact, she would lose almost half of her class by the end of the first month. Many dropped in the first week.
You see, by the end of the first week, she required the students to present a 5-7 minute graded speech. Most of our students are panic stricken by the thought of public speaking, but she didn't seem to understand this and took a "sink or swim" approach with the majority sinking.
My classes retain about 85 percent of the students who enroll as do the classes of my current colleague. Now, we are not necessarily easier on our students. They still work very hard and at the end of the semester can present good solid speeches, but we take a more gradual approach with smaller ungraded assignments leading to longer and more complex ones. Students are almost to midterms before they are doing major speeches. Without even realizing it, they become more and more comfortable with public speaking and more competent speakers as well.
Many people starting out on a weight-loss or fitness program treat themselves like my former colleague treated her students. They jump into the deep end of the pool and hope to learn how to swim on the way to the bottom. In fact, most fitness programs expect total compliance to the diet or exercise plan almost immediately. I saw this one diet which during the first week asked you to eat half what you ate the week before. That was their idea of easing into a new lifestyle! So, if you are eating 3000 calories a day and next week you are eating 1500 how are you going to feel? Hungry all the time? Deprived? Stressed? Will you stick with a program like that? No wonder 95 percent of us who go on diets gain all the weight back and more.
Fitness is a skill like any other. You have to learn new patterns of behavior. That's a daunting task, if you think you have to learn it all at once. But just as I give my students graduated assignments to help them learn to speak, you need to make graduated changes in your lifestyle starting with small easily accomplished changes and then adding to them.
Set achievable goals for yourself. Then increase the "difficulty" periodically. By making gradual changes you will hardly notice the changes as they occur.
One simple way to do this is the 10 percent rule. Reduce your calorie intake by 10 percent each week until you reach the level you want, and increase your exercise by 10 percent each week.
Another way is to choose one or two behaviors each week to change slightly and then add to them each week. You will find a list of such behaviors on this page.
Finally, in learning any new skill, even in small chunks at a time, you will occasionally make a mistake. That's to be expected. Did you ever learn anything without messing up from time to time. It's not a failure, just part of the learning process. And in most cases individual departures from your plan will not make a big difference. It's the overall trend which matters.
Learning any skill takes time and can be difficult at times, but it is much easier when you take it one small step at a time.
Individualization. Everyone is different and consequently what works for one person might not work with another. Let's find out more about your individual fitness and weight-loss issues, your lifestyle and your preferences and use those factors to create a weight-loss program right for you.
In the Gettng Started section we ask you make no major changes the first week, but to keep a simple journal of your eating and exercise. The most important reason for this is to take a look at your own personal fitness lifestyle. This helps you decide on approaches which will be best for you.
Let's take a classic example. Every diet book on the market will tell you that you should have breakfast. And there is a good deal of research that supports the contention that you will do better on your diet if you do have breakfast. However, that didn't work for me. But then I often get up at 9 a.m. after working on the computer until 2 or 3 a.m. and am eating lunch at 11. By the time I would have fixed breakfast and eaten it, I would be within an hour and a half of eating lunch. Well, I couldn't eat that close to breakfast, so I waited until I got home from work at 6 or 7 and was famished. So, popular wisdom and even research couldn't change the facts of my life. So, I don't eat "breakfast" per se, but rather a type of brunch, then a good meal at 6 or 7 in the evening and maybe a healthy snack while watching TV.
But what works for me probably wouldn't work for you. You are a unique individual living a unique life. Your diet and exercise should fit into your lifestyle and not the other way around. But many diet plans take the opposite approach, expecting you to change everything around to accommodate their system.
There was one plan I was on, that actually worked pretty well during the summer when I was off work. You ate 5 meals a day with a protein, a carb, and a vegetable at each meal. I was never hungry. Then school started. I didn't have time for all those meals and the program stopped working for me. But for others it worked great. In fact, if you can do it, I recommend the idea of frequent meals.
You need to make any fitness program your own. Me, I never could get into working out on the machines at the gym. I found that boring. But classes work well for me because there is a change of event every so often and the presence of others struggling like me makes me feel like I'm not alone. But I have friends who love the repetitiveness of the machines. They take a tape recorder or radio, listen to their tunes and have a grand time. If it works for you, then it is good.
I think the best piece of diet advice I ever heard was from the man who created the 5 meal a day plan. He said, "If you can't spend the rest of your life on an eating plan, then you shouldn't spend one day of your life on it." In other words, if it doesn't fit your lifestyle and it can't adapt, find another approach. The Get Real Approach is designed so that you can adapt any diet or exercise plan to your lifestyle. And the better it fits your lifestyle,the more likely you are to stick with the program. Until the program is no more a program, but just a way of life.
Self-Confidence. One thing I've learned in almost 20 years as a teacher is that students can do almost anything they believe they can do, but they can do nothing they believe is impossible. Learn more about improving your self-confidence and self-esteem.
I was involved in a research program while taking graduate work in psychology. The study was to determine how much self confidence affects academic performance. We administered a survey asking people to rate how they felt about their capabilities to achieve academically. Then we compared these measures of "self-efficacy" to their actual success. The results were not surprising, but significant. Those who believed they would do well in a class or on a test usually did. Those who did not have such confidence usually did not do as well. This was true even when the individuals were of equivalent ability.
Weight-loss is like that. You have to actually believe you can do what you have set out to do. One of the reasons we encourage you to take a gradual approach is that in so doing you can see yourself succeeding and building up confidence.
But before going any further, let me define success. Success is not losing pounds. Surprised? You don't have direct control over when and how much weight you will lose. I can't tell you to eat such and such and this week you will lose 3.8 pounds. Many variables are involved other than diet which affects how much and how rapidly you lose. Weight loss is not success, rather it is the long term result of your success. Success is setting some behavioral goals and meeting those goals. In other words if you said that you would work out for 10 minutes a day five days this week and you did, that's a success to celebrate regardless of what the scale says Monday morning. Staying under your calorie goals for the day or exercising or cutting fat grams are all types of success which over time will translate into weight loss, but even if you don't see that weight loss immediately it will come.
So, set yourself challenging, but achievable goals, and celebrate your success in keeping them.
Perseverance. Changing the fitness patterns of a lifetime, takes time. Learning to "keep on keeping on" is essential to success.
Okay, I'll admit it I'm a classic academic. I actually watch, and enjoy the documentaries on PBS. Recently, I saw one entitled "Lewis and Clark: The journey of the Corps of Discovery."
As I watched the documentary, what struck me most was the slow pace of the journey. The men averaged 12-14 miles per day at best. At that pace they completed a journey of nearly 3000 miles - one way! They traveled up the Missouri River against the current for almost 2000 miles.
If those men had focused on their short term progress they could have become very discouraged and abandoned the trip. But they had a goal. They wanted to reach the Pacific Ocean and they knew one secret: 12 Miles a day will get you anywhere as long as you don't stop or turn back.
In many ways the same thing goes for weight loss. Usually, you will lose a good number of pounds right after beginning a weight loss program, but after the first 2-3 weeks, the average weight loss will be 1/2 to 2 pounds a week. Right now, my weight loss is in the half-pound category. And there will be weeks when you won't lose anything or even gain slightly. This is all a natural part of the process.
Yet, we get impatient and get discouraged when we aren't losing 4-5 pounds each week. Aside from not being a healthy rate of weight loss, it isn't realistic. Consider yourself in this for the long haul.
A half pound a week will add up to 26 pounds a year or 50 pounds in two years. Unless you are morbidly obese and need to lose a huge amount for health reasons (in which case you probably need a doctor's supervised diet), 50 pounds is a great deal of weight loss. And two years isn't that long. And in the process you will be learning skills and fitness habits which will help you keep the weight off.
Take a tip from Lewis and Clark. It may be a long journey, but you will get where you are going as long as you don't stop and you don't turn back.
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