I've lost over 40lbs, and I've kept it off for over a year.
I just thought I'd start with that so that you'd know that I wasn't completely talking out of my ass.
A great number of years ago I took some Aikido lessons. I enjoyed the lessons, but the location changed and I was unable to continue them. When I went to college I found more Aikido lessons, but the instructor was an ass[0] and I'm very glad to say that I did not continue taking lessons from him. However, in the previous location I did encounter a good instructor[1].
One of the most basic things that you do in Aikido is to stand up[2].
Not the standard motion that you think of as standing up. Normal people stand up by using their arms and legs in a step by step process where you slowly build your way from the floor up to a distinctly vertical position.
Not in Aikido.
You're supposed to do this graceful roll forward where you use the top of one of your feet to lift yourself up to a standing position. I tried it several times. I went (gracefully) from a position (gracefully) on my back to a position where I was sitting with one foot planted firmly (yet gracefully) on the floor and the top of my foot painfully (and gracefully) pressed against the ground... and my ass firmly (and quite gracefully) upon the floor.
The instructor looked at me and told me not to try to lift myself. He told me to try to roll forward and to just happen to let my front foot get in the way so that I happen to lift.
I tried it. And it worked. I gracefully rolled up into a standing position. It was almost effortless.
And that's why I want to talk about what's wrong with dieting.
Dieting is what's wrong with dieting.
If you're starving to death your body doesn't want to die. So it tries to hang on to it's long term food supply (fat) and burns the thing that eats the most calories that it can easily rebuild (muscle). Reducing your calorie intake is painful. It's starvation. You're biologically conditioned by millions of years of scarce food to not want to do it. It's like being told by the most sexually desirable person you've ever met that they like you very much "as a friend".
It sucks.
Now in my mind (and I am the guy who lost 7 inches off his waistline ) the two keys to losing weight are as follows:
1. Don't try to lose weight, try to alter your body composition.
2. Find exercise that you enjoy, and then do it.
Altering your body composition doesn't have the same "you're a fat person and therefore a bad person" psychological baggage attached to it as dieting. When you alter body composition you say: "I want to be strong. Being strong is cool and it means I burn more calories just by being alive." Losing fat is a side benefit of gaining muscle.
If you're seriously working out you can eat a bacon chilli cheese burger and a chocolate shake for lunch and you can still lose fat[4]. In fact, one of the weird things that can happen if you work out heavily is that you can find yourself not eating enough.
This isn't to say that you get to ignore what you eat and pig out on pasta & ice cream (although, hopefully, nobody eats those together as an entree). Rather, you start to focus on building yourself into something better.
And that's the key. You're building yourself up. You're not trying to tear your body down. You're not a bad person because you have %25 or %50 or %75 body fat. You're a highly adapted organism who needs to manufacture muscle in order to be strong. You don't need to lose 5 pounds. You need to lift 5 more pounds.
Needing to lift 5 more pounds is a goal, needing to lose 5 more pounds is an indictment.
I don't know you[5] so maybe my path isn't for you[6]. But I did gracefully roll to a standing position, and I did lose over 40 pounds without starving myself. So, even if you don't like lifting weights[7], you can start to look at your body as the complex machine that it is. Fat isn't a problem. Fat is a situation. It's a surplus of stored energy. It's an opportunity. Go cash it in.
---
[0] First of all, he didn't know what "Sensei" meant. Secondly, he was teaching a throw and he torqued my arm around and I didn't fall down. I calmly stood there while he twisted at my arm and he finally yelled at me "If you don't fall down you're just inviting me to twist harder and hurt you". I smiled, pretended to fall, left class and never went back.
[1] There was one incident where I fell and should have wound up embarrassed and possibly injured, but due to training I turned the whole thing into a graceful dive roll. For that I thank the instructor I encountered near Appleton, WI.
[2] This is my own personal experience. YMMV IANAL GALYPF[3]
[3] Get A Life You Pedantic Fuck
[4] By "seriously working out" I mean that you're hitting the gym 3-5x per week for an hour of exercise (or some equivalent). I know when I've hit that point because I get this intense burning hunger that I last naturally felt when I was in my last growth spurt as a teenager.
[5] Well, I know some of the people who read what I write.
[6] There are lots of valid paths. Some people I know (Kasia) run half marathons and don't like weight lifting and look amazingly sexy. The key here is attitude. You find a positive path where you want to go someplace and you go there. Don't try to change yourself, rather, pick a positive goal and go for the goal.
[7] Strictly speaking, I do not like lifting weights. I like being strong. It's like condoms. I don't like condoms, I like having sex without getting pretty girls pregnant or getting unpleasant diseases.
Posted by matt at December 13, 2003 03:00 AMThank you! Someone finally agreed (and showed results) for what I've been preeching to my family and friends who try and diet.
I do have to agree with the hunger bit though. Since I'm not playing varsity level soccer anymore I don't work out nearly as much, and I don't eat nearly as much. My parents and friends have all commented on it, they're scared Im sick or something. Not really, just don't feel the need to EAT four hamburgers to keep the carbs and protein in me.
Posted by: Chris at December 15, 2003 01:14 PMExactly.
A friend of mine used to play competitive women's rugby, and she was telling me about when they'd go into serious competition. There were women on the team who were normally vegetarians, but when they were working that hard they'd all aquire this appetite for red meat that was so rare that you could almost hear it moo.