Top 7 Reasons You’re Fat
Reading Time: 7 Minutes
1. FOCUS
Winning this battle is completely doable and not so hard after gaining momentum and acquiring some basic knowledge in two areas:
1) How your emotions work, observing and better understanding your personal patterns
and
2) How you can effectively move the calorie equation in your favor in a sustainable way that fits within your life demands
Nevertheless, it’s a formidable challenge you’re embarking on; so respect it. You’ll likely need to lower some other priorities in your life for a few months while building some new healthy habits. Don’t expect that you can handle this issue “when you get time.” You won’t have to put the rest of your life on hold… but you’ll have to make this top of mind, stubbornly pursuing this goal no matter who it pisses off. Yes it offends some people when health becomes a top priority in your life.
2. Neglecting The Inner Game
If you’ve persisted in eating beyond your calorie needs long enough to hang a big boiler from your waist, it’s not just from being inactive or not knowing what to eat. You’ve neglected to respect the internal aspect of “getting lean” and have not given enough attention to it’s development. For some, venturing into the “self-help” category of the bookstore is a source of shame. But get over that. You don’t need to get absorbed in it, but there is a reason some authors sell so well. They teach you effective and practical strategies for managing your thoughts and emotions: the genesis of your external results.
Depending on your personality, there are a couple of books I HIGHLY recommend. If you’re interested in a thorough uncovering of your inner workings and strategies to achieve mastery in any area of life pickup “Awaken the Giant Within,” by Tony Robbins. However, if you’d like something a little more focused on the task of winning the battle of the bulge, get Tom Venuto’s “The Body Fat Solution.” Tom does an OUTSTANDING job of taking strategies from the world of NLP and turning them into specific pieces of practical advice that apply to the game of fat loss for the non-bodybuilder.
3. Food Is A PRIMARY Source Of Pleasure For You
This is obviously a part of the inner game, but it is such a fundamental and widespread problem that it deserves being singled out. You’re abusing food for same reasons that guy on the corner is nursing a 40 oz of malt liquor at 10AM. I don’t say that to put you down but to help you get leverage on yourself. As a Dad, you’ve achieved a lot in life, done a lot of good. It’s simply incompatible with who you are to be abusing food like it is crack and not appreciating it for what it really is: construction material for your cells, building blocks.
Just as in your career, you put together a series of actions, a series of deliverables to construct a body of work that adds value to your employer or customers, similarly, each bite you eat is constructing your physical body, feeding every single cell, and ultimately impacting your emotions and spiritual capacity as well.
No question that food is one of life’s pleasures and bounties to be enjoyed and appreciated. But your insistence on seeking pleasure from every meal and every bite has gotten you way off track. Ironically, it’s also robbed you of the true joy of food. Your occasional splurges will be so much more satisfying when you’ve taken control of this area and started to consume 80-90% of your calories from the viewpoint of them being “fuel.” Shift where you seek your pleasure to the way that healthy food will make you feel, how much more you’ll get out of life by eating that healthy meal, NOT in the instant gratification, pursuit of a quick fix from the rush of sugar, salt, or fat, and then suffering the chronic bad feelings that come from being unhealthy and overweight (Not to mention the physical problems.)
Both of the books mentioned in number two can help you rewire your programming to make this happen.
4. You Don’t Understand How To Sustainably Run A Calorie Deficit
If you just live a “normal” life without paying attention, you’ll be way over your calorie needs. Sophisticated marketing weapons have been aimed squarely at us. They’re unavoidable and relentless. What chance do you have if you don’t take a vigilant stance, get a little bit of moxie, and push back?
We’ve been led to believe that we can happily live off of these foods that come in nice packages or are served hot through the drive-thru window. However, the calorie trade off and loss of nutrients is just too severe to be fit for consumption. You think you can “snack” on these foods and that cutting them out is “extreme.” But it is nearly impossible to have these foods as a daily part of your diet, stay below your calorie expenditure, and get enough nutrients to feel good. To win this war, you don’t have to be perfect 100% of the time but you do have to be informed.
Any food with low nutrients and high calories must be avoided unless it is one of your planned times to go off course.
This means getting an estimate of how many calories you expend each day and knowing the general calorie density and nutrient density of the foods you eat. You’re hunger cravings have betrayed you and your appetite trigger has been corrupted from over eating. You’re going to have to resist some passing hunger signals while your appestat gets recalibrated. Knowing your energy needs will help you know when you’re truly hungry.
5. You’re Unclear About “Carbs”
Refined Carbs Bad. Natural Carbs Good. While I am not in the super high protein camp, I recognize there are a minority of doctors in the field of nutrition who are. Whether you support a starch centered diet or a lean protein centered diet, everyone agrees that refined carbs make you fat. They are high calorie with low nutrient value, the perfect storm for building blubber. If you’re serious about trimming down, white rice, white pastas, and breads need to be removed from your daily intake and eaten only on special occasions.
Examples of natural carbs that you can incorporate are fruits (although you can go to an extreme with fruit but rare), starchy vegetables like potatoes, yams, squash, peas, and corn, and whole grains: brown rice, quinoa and many others. Don’t mistake “wheat bread” or “whole grain bread” for being truly whole grain. The bread that is truly whole grain is in the refrigerated section in the whole food store. This is one area that I compromise in. I sparingly use regular wheat bread to make tasty vegetable sandwiches. You can make trade offs like that when your overall nutrient-to-calorie ratio for your meal is still very favorable. When you see the term “Enriched” RUN. It sounds nice but it means the natural nutrients have been stripped and put back in after refinement. The net result is still a high calorie/low nutrient food.
6. You “Don’t Like” Green Vegetables
Come on. Stop the trend your parents set and start incorporating handsome amounts of green veggies into your meals as an individual and as a family. Greens are not only a welcome food by your cells but they are your ace in the hole for getting lean. These amazing foods win the triple crown: Low Calorie, High Nutrient, High Satiety (make you full). Don’t kid yourself and think you’ll get lean without expanding your appreciation of these wonder foods. You may not love them at first, but force them down like medicine with the desire to increase your liking of these foods, keeping in mind the larger benefits you’re after. You don’t need to fall in love with every one but find a few that work for you and go for it. Here are mine: Broccoli, Cabbage, Celery, Asparagus, Spinach, and Green Beans. I try to include handsome portions of one or two of these foods with each lunch and dinner.
My palette adjusted once I made the decision that these foods must be a regular part of my food intake. Once you tell your body that you are the boss, it will start to adjust to your desires over time to where these foods start to taste pretty good. Find some good recipes too.
7. You Drink Calories
Unless you are Brock Lesnar, a Sumo wrestler, or an opera singer, we’re all on a budget when it comes to calories. And there are not a whole lot to go around if you want to maintain a decent calorie deficit. Knowing that, do you really want to spend half of your energy intake at Starbucks? You’ll have to go the rest of the day on only broccoli and water to finish the day on target. How you spend your calories is your choice but for most people, drinking calories is a highly unsatisfying way to spend calories. It’s like being on a tight budget in the house and choosing to blow some cash on DVDs and CD’s. They’re luxury items that don’t really enhance the quality of your life all that much. Fruit juices, sodas, and fancy coffee drinks are examples of very high calorie, low nutrient, and low satiety foods — the exact opposite of our triple crown winning green foods.
Don’t drink your calories. Opt for water and mineral water. Add some lemon or lime if you want some extra variety. You’ll not only cut a ton of calories but start to enjoy the incredible healing properties of water.
Flip these 7 reasons in your favor today and start enjoying the quality of life you deserve!
Oct 02, 2009
Awesome article! These 7 steps have implications far beyond just weight loss. If followed by enough people they could have a beneficial effect on society as a whole and your family in particular.
Getting control and achieving mastery of this one element of your life will help to transform other aspects of your being for the better.
Go ahead, be a leader and do something wonderful for your family.
I double dog dare you!
Oct 02, 2009
@panamapete Love the energy sir and good point. You’ve highlighted a key under number 2, which is expand your purpose for getting lean and fit beyond yourself. Who else are you impacting? How many people are looking to you as an example? What positive chain of consequences will you be setting in motion by making this change?
Jun 22, 2010
Refined or natural, carbs create predate an insulin response. Obviously, refined carbs are far worse for a variety of reasons, usually that there are no micro nutrients at all paired up with the calories.
The reason I eat tons of vegetables and limit my fruit intake is that vegetables usually have at least the same nutritional bang for their buck as fruit without any insulin spike to speak of. Sugar is sugar as they say.
Train with purpose,
Sandy Sommer RKC
Jun 22, 2010
Thanks Sandy. I know you’ve found great success with the paleo approach and probably are a little further up the nutritional science food chain than I am at this stage of my career, so I definitely make room for that. We’ve got credible, hard working doctors on both sides of the high protein or high starch debate so I try and help a client first get out of what is “agreed upon.” No doubt that what will make you fat and keep you fat for life is refined carbs/sugar. If they want to keep making fast progress I’ll keep giving them clues to follow, supporting their own path of learning. My own weight loss story happens to involve a lot of brown rice and potatoes which technically aren’t that thermogenic and should add to the insulin imbalance according to a lot of health researchers, but the Pima Indians did very well on a high starch diet and so did other civilizations until we added alcohol, sweets, and packaged goods to their diet.
So I think there is something more to the story here and I’ve seen a study quoted which had an explanation for this. There is a nutrition camp that suggests it is not the carbs in general which are the culprit for the insulin imbalance but more specifically the refined carbs and they use some of these civilizations as examples that thrived on a starch centered diet. At the same time, there are as many ore more civilizations that thrived on a meat and dairy diet, so I concede that as well and am grateful to the low carb researchers for being the cause of all of the new cutting edge health research.
I am going on a tangent now. Fun stuff. Thanks for chiming in and for the onslaught of good info you put out on your blog. Officially I am staying somewhat nuetral on this. But what we agree upon is that the Food Pyramid is whack and that Saturated fats are not evil when they come from clean sources like grass fed beef and high quality dairy. The only real source of disagreement I see is around foods like carrots, potatoes, and brown rice
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Jun 26, 2010
Oh, there’s another disagreement if we look to the French diet. Those jokers are skinny and healthy and they eat plenty of grains, rice, carrots, and just about anything else that they get their hands on. They have what we miss: portion control and exercise. When I went to Paris, I went balls out crazy. I was a food eating nut. I consumed everything I could get my hands on for a full week. Anything that looked good, I ate. I stuffed myself at dinner, lunch, and breakfast. I lost 3 lbs that week.
There’s something we’re all missing. Fundamentally, I see that I ate fresh ingredients, fresh cooked. I didn’t have “bagged” or packaged foods. There’s magic in there somewhere.
For me, the only thing that will help is more swings.
Cheers,
The cook.
Jun 26, 2010
Hey Matthew,
That’s awesome. There’s also a little customization needed sometimes, depending on where a person is at health-wise and metabolism-wise. Raising the metabolism can often be done through flooding the system with nourishment so the body gets out of conservation mode. It’s often a good idea, as I’ve learned from researcher Matt Stone, to even gain a little weight at first by getting lots of rest and eating to appetite and even beyond with real food from all of the macro nutrient categories. Then the metabolism raises and the appestat mechanism should normalize with less sugar cravings and less of a desire to over eat. At that point when the body is out of a “famine-like” state, you start cranking up the activity as long as you can also keep up the rest and recovery to avoid sending the body back into conservation mode. As you keep up the real food, decent activity, get rest, your metabolism will maintain or raise and your appetite will not betray you like it did when eating crappy food.
With all of the disagreement though, there are still plenty of agreed upon points that are all the much more solid, the fact that such opposing groups actually acknowledge and agree on them. Eat real food. Avoid refined sugar and other refined carbs. White rice is probably the least offensive culprit of the refined carbs, not too much of a problem in moderation, especially after a resistance workout. Brown rice is better, especially for someone that wants to see fat come off quickly. I think you’d see your fat start melting off if you would commit to zero bread, flour, or pasta, or sweets, except for one cheat day a week. And maybe mix in some brown rice and moderate your white rice if you eat tons of it. Other than, eat as you normally do, getting a few more green veggies, and with your activity level, the fat will melt away. Homework on it’s way