You Can’t Out Train a Bad Diet; Update & Advice

On December 13, 2012 I weighed in at 170 lbs and was 31.75” around my abdomen at my belly button.  On January 2, 2013 I weighed 186 lbs and was 36.5” around my abdomen at my belly button.  That’s a gain of 16 lbs and over 4” in twenty days.  Two weeks ago I wrote about how I put on the weight and the inches and proved that you can’t out train a bad diet.  It’s something that I’ve always preached and decided I would prove it.

So, here we are, 22 days after my experiment ended and I want to talk about how my new journey to lose this weight has been going.

One of the first things I stress to new clients is that the weight-loss that you see on The Biggest Loser isn’t realistic.  What that show does for people and how they inspire others to get started is amazing, I watch every week, but what it also does is set false hope and unrealistic numbers when it comes to weight loss. Unless you’re working out 8 hours a day, seven days a week, while counting every calorie you put into your body and have a personal trainer with you non-stop yelling at you, you’re probably not going to lose that much weight, that fast.  That’s just not how it works.

To put it in perspective; how long did it take you to get to where you are today?  I’m sure you didn’t put on that 10, 20, 30 or 100 pounds overnight.  I know I didn’t put my 100 pounds that way, it took a year for me to gain that much weight. And I sure as hell didn’t lose it overnight.  It took time (probably 2 years to get to a happy place), work, patience, failures, success, blood, sweat and yes, tears.

On January 9, 2013, a week after being back on the Paleo diet, I was down 7 lbs and 2” around my abdomen.  I’d say most of that was water weight and bloat from dairy and grains.  On January 16, 2013 I weighed 178 pounds and was down to 33.5” around my abdomen.  Today I’m at 181 lbs and still at 33.5” around my abdomen.  I’m pretty stoked about the 181 lbs because I’m trying to put on muscle mass, but I am not happy with the 33.5” around my belly.  Before Christmas, I had a 6 pack and right now I have about 3 ¾ pack.  I’m eating perfect 6 days a week, doing double workouts 3 of my 6 days of training and even with all of this, this is a slow process.  All that hard work I had done is gone and it’s at least five times as hard to get it back as it was to lose all of it.

The reason I’m throwing so many numbers around in this post is because I want to show you that it took zero effort and minimal time to put weight on and it takes tons of effort and more time than you’d think to lose it.  It took 20 days to put the weight on and I’m at 22 days of trying to get rid of it and I’m still not close.

What I have to remember daily is this; Be patient, work hard, be committed, love yourself, be honest with yourself, and thrive for success, but don’t punish yourself.

Here are the two sayings I use most often in any given day;

Losing weight isn’t hard; eat clean and exercise! It’s committing that’s the hard part!

Don’t let yesterday’s mistakes affect today’s successes.