Fallen off the Wagon? How to Get Back On

When you’re trying to change your lifestyle for the better, chances are that you’re going to slip up every now and then. It’s quite common with weight loss in particular to “fall off the wagon”, by reverting back to poor eating habits while trying to follow an improved nutritional regime.

Consistently falling off the wagon is a sure sign that your approach is unsustainable. This is commonplace with diets, where the focus is on short-term and fast weight loss, rather than on sustained weight loss indefinitely.

Though, even if you are trying to approach weight loss with a long-term perspective in mind, it is quite possible that you will succumb to a binge, no matter how minor it may be. So when you do fall off the wagon, how do you get straight back on it?

The important aspect to focus on is the long-term effect of your slip-up. The problem with dieting is that the focus is on short-term, so eating even a minute amount of junk food is sure to make you feel guilt ridden, because you would have affected your progress in the short-term.

But here’s the thing, a piece of cake is going to have a near negligible effect on your weight loss in the long-term. Let’s say a piece of cake is 500 calories…over the course of a month, that’s less than 20 calories per day if we were to spread out those calories contained within.

Ultimately it’s not the food that you consume that causes you to fall off the wagon and thus jeopardising your long-term efforts. Rather, it’s the negative emotions Rather, the negative emotions associated with eating a food “off the plan” is what will cause you to fall off the wagon.

Guilt and discouragement in particular are two very common symptoms of a binge. If you want to lose a notable amount of weight, you’ll find that one binge on one day is not going to affect your progress in the long-term. What is going to affect your weight loss progress is the guilt and discouragement associated with this binge which leads you to cease trying to lose weight altogether.

How to get around these emotions? Well, it’s not easy – but if you can, then you’re on the path to success. Always put things into perspective relative to the long-term, because after all, weight loss is a long-term endeavour. Focusing on the short-term will set you up for failure.

Remember, that extra food that you ate will have very little bearing on your long-term progress. The decision that you make right now to pursue your weight loss goals will determine your results in the future – not your actions in the past.

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Starting that Diet Next Week – The Problems with Putting off Dieting

It’s Friday evening and time to relax for the weekend! That means putting your feet up and indulging on your favourite food to unwind from the previous week. Sure, you’re wanting to lose weight, but that can wait for next week, because right now you just need to de-stress! Monday is going to be the day that you begin your weight loss endeavours.

Does this mentality sound familiar at all? I have certainly had similar thought patterns to this in the past before I became passionate about health and fitness. Plus, I have heard many variations to the “I’ll start the diet next week” rationale from friends, family and clients.

Considering this approach to dieting, you are probably already aware that this is almost going to guarantee failure. After all, why start next week – why not the week after, or the month after that? If you have been telling yourself that “you’ll start the diet next week” – for how many weeks have you actually been telling yourself this?

Let’s be honest, a “diet” is an awful word. Dieting requires restriction, starvation and even unpleasant exercise to compliment the changed eating habits. Losing weight on a “diet” certainly isn’t enjoyable – it’s a chore! If you can last a month on a “diet”, you’re doing pretty well!

But – this is exactly where the problem lies. Yes, almost any “diet” will help you to lose weight – but almost all “diet’s” are not sustainable because they just cannot be enjoyed. So the problem actually revolves around your perception of the changes that must take place in order to facilitate weight loss.

If you are putting off weight loss, then you are going about it the completely wrong way. As humans, we will consciously either move toward pleasure or move away from pain. By embarking upon a “diet”, you are doing neither – you are introducing pain into your life with an un-enjoyable approach to exercise and nutrition, while moving away from any pleasurable activities such as relaxation or your favourite junk food. Sure, losing weight may bring about pleasure (after all, we naturally associate being in shape with being happier) – but the primary problem is that:

We naturally associate things we have to do in order to lose weight as more painful than the pleasure this weight loss would bring!

Putting yourself through the diet from hell is not going to make your life any easier.

So, ditch the diet!

So the very first step you must take when seeking to lose weight is to change your perception of the pain associated with weight loss. Until you do this, you will never lose weight and sustain it – you will always be fighting an up-hill battle.

Easier said that done right? Well I concede that making changes in your lifestyle is necessarily not an easy task – after all, I mean not to trivialise the serious struggles that the vast majority of people face when seeking to lose weight. For many people, finding that right lifestyle balance can be very difficult, so this requires an intelligent and persistent approach until you find what is just right for you.

The key is to develop a new lifestyle that is conductive of weight loss. This will require changes to your eating and exercise habits – but not to the same degree as a “diet”. Rather, you must make the changes to your lifestyle that you are comfortable with and that you can enjoy for the rest of your life. Weight loss should therefore be approached with a long-term mindset – approaching weight loss with a “lose as much weight as possible in the shortest period of time” is dieting mentality and you will likely be setting yourself up for failure.

So ask yourself, what can you do TODAY to change your lifestyle permanently? A lifestyle change can commence immediately – it doesn’t have to wait until next week. Are you going to lessen the amount of alcohol you consume? Are you going to go for a walk? Will you hire a personal trainer to get you motivated? Reduce your portion size for dinner tonight? Will you decide to reduce the amount of fast-food that you order? Whatever you are going to do, take a step (any step – even a really small one!) and start right now. The sooner you make a permanent change, the sooner you will be happier with yourself and really begin to enjoy living within your body.

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Your Weight Loss Beliefs & Your Overweight Body

What if I were to propose that your body is a manifestation of your mindset? If you are overweight, given this premise, you are therefore overweight because of the way that you think.

Disregarding extraordinary circumstances, your body weight is ultimately a consequence of the way in which your brain operates. All the habitual behaviour that you exhibit is a result of your thought patters. Because your body weight is a consequence of the environment that you subject it to, your thoughts will determine how heavy you are.

There are four area’s to your life, the:

1. Physical
2. Mental
3. Emotional
4. Spiritual

The physical is what you can see and feel around you. The mental, emotional and spiritual are all intangible. However, these intangible dimensions to life determine our own belief systems and thus influence our behaviours, in turn affecting our physical environment. Here are some weight loss examples:

• You have low self-esteem and do not believe that your body is worth being looked after. This can manifest itself into a behaviour of overeating and thus gaining weight.
• You become anxious and believe that food is a useful tool to settle your anxiety. You therefore overeat and gain weight.
• You believe that you have a body that has an “overweight gene” and are therefore bound to be overweight. Thus, all your behaviours contribute to gaining weight.

Your beliefs dictate your behaviours. If you are overweight and are struggling to lose weight, this is going to be due to your internal and subconscious belief system. For if you truly believed that you can and should be at your desired weight, your habits would be conductive of this lower bodyweight.

Being overweight is a symptom of a deeper belief system. If you have been seeking to lose weight and wish to overcome this weight loss rut once and for all, you need to look beyond the physical.

Consider this analogy of fruit growing on a tree. If the fruit that is being produced is of substandard quality what do you do? Do you aim to take care of the fruit itself (ie. the physical manifestation that you can see)? Of course not. Rather, you go to the root of the problem by nurturing the tree itself. This means dealing with issues that you cannot see (moisture, soil nutrients, tree health etc.) so the fruits are grown optimally.

Weight loss is no different. If you are to treat the physical symptoms alone, you will never achieve sustained weight loss. This is like embarking upon a fad diet for a finite period of time. This drastic band-aid solution does not bring with it any long-term consequences unless you were to dig deeper and address the mental, emotional and spiritual issues at hand.

To accomplish a sustained physical change, you need to go to the root of the problem and entertain why you have this belief system in place. Maybe your lack of belief in yourself is holding you back from accomplishing extraordinary feats.  Maybe you have been overweight all your life and that’s all you know. Maybe there is another powerful belief at hand preventing you from taking control of your weight. Whatever it is, you need to address it. If you do not, you can almost guarantee yourself of indefinite weight cycling (up/down fluctuations) for the rest of your life.

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Thinking About Stopping Your Exercise Routine Temporarily?

Has something in your life changed that is making a structured exercise regime difficult to follow? A common example would be extended (and quite stressful) working hours. Alternatively, family obligations or changed living circumstances may make your exercise session quite difficult to accomplish on a regular basis.

Before continuing, I wish to emphasise a point discussed extensively in many prior blog posts. They key to success with any fitness endeavour is consistency. The cumulative effects of multiple workouts is what delivers amazing results – no single workout in isolation will ever provide you with progress of any great magnitude. It is important to keep this in mind as the premise of this article.

Circumstances change – nothing is ever constant. Pausing an exercise routine will almost always become a necessity for all of us from time to time. In my professional experience, I have seen this situation culminate itself in a number of different ways (including changing jobs, longer working hours, moving house, lack of motivation, tragic events and financial circumstances). What may start out to be an honest and valid temporary pause on one’s fitness routine will more than likely turn out to be a long-term rut. When I say more than likely, I have seen it happen 95% of the time (at least) from a professional perspective.

So what differentiates this 5% minority to the  95% majority of people who struggle to resume their training, although they have the best of intentions when they initially pause their regime? It’s all to do with mindset. The few 5% of people who do resume exercise as quickly as possible are the people who are absolutely passionate about exercise and have managed to integrate an enjoyable routine into their lives. Exercise is something that is an integral part of their lifestyle. It is a priority in their life because the benefits of exercise (physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually) run right down to their core. From my experience, this is not the case with the majority of people, because exercise is often considered to be a burden of some means (effort, financial, time etc.).

You will know in which category you stand. The 5% minority have absolutely no question in their minds that exercise is a necessity to maintain the quality of their lifestyle. The 95% majority may go through peak periods of regular exercise, yet this is also accompanied with long troughs where other life influences affect their consistency.

Consider your training history in an objective manner to determine where you fall. Don’t be fooled by your current mindset – this can be quite misleading, for nearly all people will get excited about exercise in one point in their life. The critical determining factor is whether or not you have displayed a consistent approach to exercise over a sustained period of time (years). If this is the case, you can objectively say that you do fall into the 5% minority.

So why such an emphasis on the distinction between how “most” people think about exercise? Well, if you’re thinking about pausing your exercise routine, here’s why:

The 5% minority prioritise exercise very highly all the time. Therefore only very (very) high life priorities will affect their consistency. Nothing affects how highly exercise is prioritised, it is a necessity of a good quality and enjoyable life.

The 95% majority normally have exercise as a much lower priority, or at a variable priority level. Therefore many life factors will affect their consistency. During specific periods of time, exercise may be prioritised higher (eg. preparing for a race, an upcoming event like a wedding, a weight loss challenge, warmer weather, a holiday etc.). However during other times, exercise is not of great importance and thus consistency is affected.

Because consistency is the key to long-term, sustainable and exceptional results, it is obvious why the majority of people fail to accomplish their goals in a sustainable manner. Exercise must be prioritised permanently, else you will continue to be “stuck” indefinitely.

Coming back to the topic at hand, if you have been exercising consistently for a short period of time and are considering placing a hold on your exercise regime, ask yourself why that is:

1. Do you fall into the 95% majority? If you do:
2. What is your reason for ceasing your exercise routine? Is it a legitimate reason and is it truly more important than continuing to exercise?
3. Can you honestly say that you will resume your exercise routine in the near future? If you can, on what date will this be and will you commit to this?

Ask yourself these questions honestly. Kidding yourself will only work to your detriment.

If at all possible, take every necessary step to avoid ceasing your exercise routine. Try making workouts less frequent, shorter, or try training outdoors/closer to home – whatever it takes to fit in with your changed circumstances. If you’re feeling de-motivated, hire a professional to get you back on track. If you fall into this 95% majority and cease exercising, I can say almost certainly that it will be significantly more difficult to resume an exercise routine in the future, than to continue exercising at present. This is because:

1. Habits are easier to maintain (whether that be habitually exercising or habitually remaining sedentary)
2. You will most likely feel discouraged after months of inactivity after the realisation of the physiological regression that has taken place (loss in fitness, loss in muscle mass, loss in strength etc.)

My professional advice is to avoid putting an exercise routine on hold AT ALL COSTS. I cannot emphasise this enough, as it is commonplace in this industry for people to initiate a routine, adhere to it temporarily and then cease training (for whatever reason), only to find themselves back at square one.

If you are currently at the point where you are still not convinced that continuing to exercise will work favourably to your goals, I would consider having a long hard think about your goals. Spend time to determine exactly “why” you want to achieve them, rather than “what” you want to achieve. Why you want to achieve something has an emotionally motivating force behind it and is something very close to your heart. This could be intertwined with self-worth, fear of heightened medical risk, confidence etc. If you can identify the core reason as to why exercise is important in your life, maybe you can work out a way to fall into that minority of people and accomplish some amazing personal feats.

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The Best Time to Begin Losing Weight

As you can imagine, we receive a large number of enquiries from people who are seeking to lose weight and get in the best shape of their life. I am the person who speaks to potential personal training clients to discuss their goals and to assess whether or not they would benefit from our personal training services.

Before initiating training, it is common for someone to ask me at what point they should begin training. Often there are perceived obstacles in the way such as:

1. A business trip
2. A birthday party
3. A family get-together
4. Waiting for food shopping day
5. Lack of exercise experience
6. Not enough knowledge on exercise and nutrition
7. Lack of preparation for weight loss

…and the list goes on.

In all of these situations, the best time to begin losing weight remains the same:

RIGHT NOW

Almost without exception, if you want to lose weight (or accomplish any health/fitness goal for that matter), the best time to get started is immediately. Delaying this start date simply delays results. This procrastination inhibits you from accomplishing your goals.

Think about it this way – to accomplish a health and fitness goal, you need to do something. Doing nothing is not going to get you anywhere. Sure, an intelligent and effective approach is optimal, yet doing anything at all is going to be better than nothing.

Creative Procrastination

There are two major obstacles that, from my discussions with clients and potential clients, I have found inhibit people from actually getting started:

1. An upcoming event
2. Over preparation

An Upcoming Event Inhibiting You From Losing Weight

An upcoming event could be anything to do with a particular date. This could include your birthday party, the festive season, a holiday, having to go to the shops, a business event, next week and so on. This is anything that is coming up that you feel will inhibit your momentum on your weight loss journey. Consequently, it is easy to rationalise that it would be more beneficial to wait for this event to occur prior to initiating your weight loss efforts.

The fact is that in almost all situations, this method of thinking is exactly what has hindered you from losing weight in the past. It is an excuse in disguise and serves no purpose but to stop you from actually getting started. If you are absolutely and utterly determined and dedicated to losing weight, then you will not allow this event to stand in your way of accomplishing your weight loss goals. This means getting started now and accommodating for this event when it occurs. Here are some practical examples:

• Your birthday party: Make smarter food choices, decrease portion sizes, avoid excessive alcohol.
• Going to the shops: Make the most of the foods you currently have available. Lack of ideal food choices should also not inhibit you from exercising.
• A holiday: You’re going to feel better on your holiday if you get started now and lose just a little bit of weight. Plus, a holiday does not mean that you cease exercising and stuff yourself silly. You’ll feel much better if you stay active.

Weight loss is a long-term project. Events will come up all the time and no one will ever have a perfect run at weight loss without interruption. Your success is greatly determined by how you accommodate for event based obstacles and utilise a flexible approach within your lifestyle. Allowing events to inhibit you from losing weight will almost certainly result in you not achieving your potential.

Over Preparation Inhibiting You From Losing Weight

Many people attempt to lose weight without having the slightest clue about nutrition and exercise. Educating yourself is therefore extremely important to accomplishing a health and fitness goal. This is why education is such a focal point of our personal training services. So whilst it is very important to know “how” to lose weight, you have to be careful not to use this as an excuse to over prepare and delay your weight loss efforts.

You see, when you set out to accomplish a health and fitness goal, a substantial portion of the learning occurs from the “doing” rather than the theoretical work involved. This is primarily due to your body being so unique that it will respond more effectively to some training and nutritional approaches than others. Thus knowing how your body responds is going to determine the degree of success that you experience. The only way to know this is to actually begin exercising and eating in a more appropriate manner.

If you have hired a personal trainer, then you don’t need to prepare at all – your personal trainer will do all the ground-work for you. Once started though, you will benefit by reading abroad and learning about the science and theory behind exercise and nutrition. Your trainer can act as a mentor in this field, as they would have been formally trained in these area’s of science.

So whilst it is important to set goals and plan, preparing for weight loss should not be counter-productive to you losing weight.

The Best Time To Begin Losing Weight is NOW!

So remember that every day you delay, that is one day longer that you have to wait to realise your goals. If you’re considering putting off weight loss, ask yourself why and determine whether or not this is actually advantageous for you.

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Feelings of Failure with Weight Loss

If you are attempting to lose weight, how successful are you presently? Are you progressing toward your goals effectively? Do you feel successful with your attempts to date?

Often, this is not the case. For many people, attempting to lose weight can be a tiresome, demanding and up-hill battle. It can seem like no matter what you try, the weight just doesn’t come off (and STAY off).

If you fall into this category, why is this so? Why, when you have the best of intentions, do you not successfully lose the desired weight and sustain this result indefinitely? Why have you yo-yo’ed up and down for the past many years, to be right back where you started (just much more tired from repeated failures)?

A famous quote from Einstein goes something like this; “You cannot solve a problem with the same line of thinking that created it”. Consider this very relevant statement for a while. Does it pertain to you and your current situation?

You are currently facing a very personal and profound problem of losing weight. It may be five kilograms, it may be fifty kilograms – either way, it is a problem of significance within your life. Solving this problem may make you healthier, fitter, more vibrant, more energetic or just happier. But ask yourself – are you trying to solve this weight problem with the same line of thinking that created it? This “heavier you” mentality is exactly why you are at the weight you are at today. The way in which you think (mentally, spiritually and emotionally) transcends into your physical being. In other words, your thoughts result in actions that ultimately dictate the weight of your body.

In order to change your body weight, you need to change your line of thinking. You cannot modify your physical being and expect it to be permanently changed without recalibrating your thoughts (or, the line of thinking that created the problem in the first place). Here are examples of common approaches that you may have taken in the past which serve little-to-no use in changing your line of thinking:

1. Diets (by restricting the foods you eat)
2. Liposuction or other surgery
3. Sporadic bouts of extreme exercise

All of the above suggestions do have their place in society, however they will all be ineffective if you do not modify your thought processes to avoid revisiting this same problem in the future.

Make no mistake about it, changing your line of thinking is the tough part – hence why obesity is such a prevalent issue in Australia. It is possible but ONLY if you decide to step out of your comfort zone in order to free yourself from the restraints of your current thought patterns. This takes both courage and determination because changing the way in which you think about your life in general is a very big step to take.

Let’s get specific here. One of the most important steps that you must take is to rise above your short-term impulses. These “feelings of failure” are what is setting you up for failure with weight loss and ultimately preventing you from being as successful in life as you desire. Here are some examples of these feelings:

1. “I can’t be bothered exercising today”
2. “Work was tough today, I should watch television”
3. “I did a workout this week, I deserve a splurge”
4. “One more packet of chips won’t hurt, surely”
5. “What difference will one more workout make?”
6. “I really don’t care if I’m overweight right now”
7. “Ice cream is much more rewarding than what my exercise session would be”
8. “Why bother eating healthily when you only live once?”

I’m sure you can think of several hundred variations to the above. These feelings all come across our minds from time to mind. You may have the best of intentions, but unless you put these into action you will change absolutely nothing. Just imagine if you were able to modify each of the above self-talk scenario’s above (in order):

1. “I’m not the most energetic, but I have a workout scheduled for today and that’s that”
2. “Tough day at work – nothing like a workout to clear my mind”
3. “One workout down for the week, time to capitalise upon those results!”
4. “This packet of chips is going to take me an hour to run off. It’s not worth it”
5. “If I skip this workout, what’s going to stop me from skipping the next and the next?”
6. “Yes I may feel miserable, but a lot of that misery is attributed to me being overweight and unhappy with myself. So I am going to do something about it!”
7. “Whilst ice-cream may make me feel better, it’s a superficial feeling of satisfaction. Plus I don’t want to deal with the guilt afterwards.”
8. “My quality of life matters. I’m going to make the most of now and stop living my life trapped in a body that I don’t love.”

YOU and only YOU can make the necessary changes in YOUR life to achieve YOUR goals. Do yourself a favour and have a long-hard think about how your current thinking is inhibiting you from achieving your dreams.

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How To Get Motivated To Exercise When You Can’t Be Bothered!

Feeling demotivated? We all feel demotivated from time to time, but just because you are feeling sluggish is no excuse to throw the towel in! Here are some quick tips on how to get motivated to exercise on those really tough days!

Note we are not considering the days where you are ill. These are the days where you just cannot be bothered to go into the gym and exercise when there is no justified reason for it.

Tell someone that you’re going into the gym, even if you really don’t feel like it. This will give you a sense of accountability and pressure you into the gym. Don’t worry about what you feel like doing – you’re forgetting about your emotions temporarily and following a process. Follow these steps:

1. Pick up the phone
2. Call someone up
3. Advise them “Hey, I’m off to the gym now. There is absolutely no way that I’m not going to go, but I am going to go, just because I am EXCITED!”

Okay, you can make up your own script, but commit yourself with conviction.

Don’t think about the exercise. If you’re feeling sluggish then thinking about the exercise is only going to make you want to remain sedentary even more. Just make it automatic and establish a routine.

Watch an exercise video. Jump on YouTube, or put Pumping Iron into your DVD player and watch a few minutes of exercise footage that really inspires you.

Listen to some motivational music. You can go from feeling lazy to feeling energetic in a matter of seconds – it’s all in the head and music can certainly turn your mood around very quickly.

Organise to meet a friend at the gym. If you’re meeting someone at the gym, you have an obligation to turn up. This is often best organised the day before so you keep yourself accountable.

Have a very deep think about your goals and re-evaluate how important they are to you. Goals are what will drive you to overcome temporary set-backs such as lack of motivation.

Exercise in a different manner. If you are not excited by completing a similar training regime to that which you have been following over the last few weeks, mix it up. Something as simple as undertaking a fitness class can get you in the mood to exercise because of the novelty of something new.

Announce your goals to those you trust and admire the most. If they know of your goals, you will feel more accountable to accomplish them and avoid making excuses along the way. I’m sure you don’t want to feel like a failure in another person’s eyes!

Put yourself in tomorrows shoes. Think about waking up tomorrow and consider how great you are going to feel if you invest the time into yourself today. You would have completed one additional workout and be closer to your goals.

Drive into the gym anyway. As soon as you step foot into the gym, it is highly likely that you will feel motivated. Why? Because everyone around you is exercising. We are social creatures and have a natural tendency to participate in similar activities to those surrounding us.

Recognise that you are making an excuse. The toughest part to it is actually admitting to yourself that you are making an unjustified excuse to get out of your workout. If you can realise this, you can begin to isolate the emotion associated with rationalising skipping your workout and talk yourself into a workout.

Remind yourself that nothing is going to change if you change nothing. In other words, if you don’t do your workout, your body is not going to have any reason to adjust as a result of that workout. You need to invest the time and effort to reap the rewards.

If you are finding that you often feel demotivated, and often don’t know how to get motivated to exercise, there may be a bigger issue at hand. Possibly you do not have an effective approach to your goals. You may need some accountability. Your exercise programme may not be enjoyable. Your training regime may not be suitable for your lifestyle. Of course, there are also many other factors to consider.

Whatever the reason, you may need to do something about it. A personal trainer can keep you accountable and motivated and this may be well worth the investment to get you on track. Otherwise, you may need to have a good sit down with yourself and come up with an effective plan to accomplish your goals and give yourself the best chance of success.

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How Much Muscle You Can Gain – BodyBuilding Expectations

When you begin bodybuilding, or building muscle, it is important to have a realistic expectation as to how much muscle you can gain. If you are expecting far more muscle development than what is possible, you are setting yourself up for failure.

If you are all super-motivated to become buff, this is an important article to read. It is absolutely imperative that you ensure that your goals are realistic before you begin training.

Why is this? Well, if you expect to gain an enormous amount of muscle over the next few weeks/months, and fail to accomplish this goal, you’re going to be pretty discouraged – wouldn’t you agree?

Here’s the thing, bodybuilding is a long-term project. Building muscle is a very slow process that takes years to accomplish.

For the average person, you may expect to gain somewhere within the vicinity of 2-5kg of muscle in the first twelve weeks of training, assuming that you have not trained previously. These first 2-3 months are like the honeymoon period where you obtain some amazing gains and can see some fairly considerable physique changes. Of course, how much muscle you gain will be highly dependant upon your approach to nutrition, exercise, recovery etc, as well as your genetic makeup.

Unfortunately, the honeymoon period doesn’t last. Following this short period of significant muscle development, hypertrophy (muscle growth) slows considerably. For a trained individual, it is typical to experience somewhere between 2-5kg of muscle growth a year. Again, this varies widely with your lifestyle and genetic composition. The more muscle you develop, generally the slower your gains will become.

It is very important to have some idea as to what to expect. Most people do not last longer than 8 weeks because they have unrealistic goals. I’m sure you could name a number of people who have attempted to accomplish some muscle building goals, only to be discouraged weeks later by lack of results. This is commonly due to unrealistic expectations (but of course, ineffective exercise and nutritional approaches weigh heavily on this too).

You may be interested in a calculator that we have available that actually predicts your maximum circumferences at a given body fat percentage. This data has been empirically derived from elite athletes and of course will carry a degree of inaccuracy. Follow this link to our maximum circumference prediction calculator. Do keep in mind that it would take many, many years of consistent training to reach anywhere near your peak natural muscle development.

If you are just getting started with bodybuilding and building muscle, you may wish to read a comprehensive introductory article we have available, entitled “Bulking Up – Bodybuilding For Beginners“.

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Will Acai Berries, Thermogenics & Herbal Tea Help Me Lose Weight?

Every day, there are new products being introduced around the world to combat weight loss. Acai berries, thermogenics and herbal tea’s are just some examples. So will they help you to lose weight?

This is only a very short article. I do apologise if you were seeking to read through a highly detailed review of the effectiveness of acai berries for weight loss. However, don’t stop reading now – this article is short for a reason – there is a very profound message that I do want to highlight before you proceed to research weight loss products further.

Weight loss products – whether nutritional or physical exercise products (eg. Cardio Twister) often have one thing in common – they don’t work for the masses. The vast majority of people who purchase these products will do so in the hope that this will be the key to losing weight once and for all. This is fueled by very persuasive marketing, appealing to our emotional desire to look great.

But the problem with weight loss lies deeper than any herbal tea. The true key to losing weight – forever – is to create a lifestyle that supports that lower bodyweight.

Living a sedentary lifestyle with poor nutritional habits is how you encourage weight gain – possibly the situation that you are in right now if you are reading this article. The addition of a “supplement” to your poor lifestyle habits will not improve the general environment that you subject your body to – physically and nutritionally. Thus, they will have little bearing on your body shape.

These products will never be effective in isolation. No matter how healthy or promising they may be, if you have no clue about good nutrition and effective physical exercise, I can almost guarantee that you will not accomplish your goals with the addition of one product.

To summarise:

Your body adapts to the lifestyle to which you subject it to. Supplements cannot reverse bad lifestyle habits.

That’s not to say acai berries aren’t healthy – far from it. Just don’t start buying them expecting to lose kilograms of body weight as a result.

This is a very brief article, but I do hope that you will continue reading up on this concept in further detail in an article I wrote entitled “How to Lose Weight“. This article elaborates on this “lifestyle” concept in much more detail, and provides some verbs to get started on your weight loss journey right away.

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What You Should Not Do When Losing Weight

Let’s take an alternative view at losing weight and identify three key (yet common) things that you should not do when losing weight.  This could save you a lot of time, effort and disappointment in your weight loss endeavours!

Weight Loss Don’t #1: Do Not Starve Yourself When Losing Weight

You may be familiar with the concept of calories in versus calories out. In a nutshell, to lose weight, you need to create a calorie deficit. However, taking this to the extreme by starving yourself can have some major side effects.

When I refer to “starving” yourself, I mean creating such a significant calorie deficit that you become lethargic, malnourished, moody and generally unhappy. You don’t necessarily need to eat “nothing” to starve yourself.

Starving yourself can lead to a significant amount of muscle loss, decreasing your basal metabolic rate (your BMR, or the number of calories you expend naturally each day). This will lead to a slowing of your metabolism.

Further, you can run into an array of medical problems by taking such an unhealthy approach to weight loss. Food allergies are just the beginning – you may develop toxic chemical imbalances, a serious eating disorder or become hospitalised.

Weight Loss Don’t #2: Do Not Follow a Fad Diet

A fad diet is often a form of starvation. Two common fad diets come in the form of a protein shake diet (that significantly reduces carbohydrates – an important nutrient) or a fad detox diet (that may reduce your intake of a whole range of nutrients).

Apart from the health concerns associated with the vast majority of fad diets, their long-term sustainability is very poor. Of course, if you undertake a diet, it is unlikely that you will want to adhere to it for 5, 10, 20 or 50 years. So, what happens once you come off the fad diet?

In theory, it seems easy to follow a fad diet, lose 10kg and then maintain the lower weight. But in practice this is nearly always not the case. The reason is because your body adapts to the lifestyle to which you subject it to. A fad diet (or, a temporary fix), will result in a significant calorie deficit and thus your body will change due to the calorie limitations. Stop the fad diet and resume eating “normal” foods and your body will adapt to this new environment that you subject it to.

Upon the conclusion of your fad diet, if you were to eat in a highly controlled manner and exercise regularly, you could keep that weight off. By why does this rarely happen? The reason is because during the fad diet, you do not learn how to develop new lifestyle habits. Instead, you learn how to use excessive amounts of willpower to follow an unrealistic and unsustainable approach to weight loss.

If you were just to follow the “maintenance plan” (ie. the healthy eating and exercise) in the first place, you would lose weight anyway. This is because again, your body adapts to the environment you subject it to.

And of course, this is not to mention the high incidence of binge food eating that occurs as a result of fad dieting. When you starve your body of essential nutrients (eg. good quality carbohydrates and fats), you will work up some HUGE cravings for them!

Weight Loss Don’t #3: Do Not Focus on Losing Weight as Quickly as Possible

This is the hardest part of weight loss. Nowadays, we all want everything yesterday! We are extremely impatient by nature and ultimately focus on the short-term rather than the long-term.

If you have been experiencing some yo-yo dieting in your lifetime, this is most likely heavily influenced by a focus on the short-term rather than the long-term.

Let’s assume that your weight has been fluctuating for the past five years and you’re approximately the same weight as five years ago, yet you want to lose 15kg. Five years ago, if you said to yourself, “I am going to lose 6kg a year”, that would seem pretty reasonable, wouldn’t it? It’s 0.5kg a month, which is an eighth of a kilogram a week. You could easily accomplish this by doing exactly what you are doing now, but by adding in a walk (or two) a week. Alternatively, you could cut out a few glasses of wine indefinitely, or choose to reduce the number of take-away meals you have each week.

Taking this approach, you would have accomplished your 15kg weight loss goal two and a half years ago (probably much sooner).

Conversely, assuming you have taken the short-term approach, you may wish to lose 15kg in 7.5 weeks. This may be influenced by some of the marketing that floats around this industry, making such a phenomenal degree of weight loss seem realistic to the average person. Well, 15kg in 7.5 weeks isn’t realistic for most of us (and nor is this sustainable!).

So, that would equate to 2kg a week. This will take some SERIOUS lifestyle renovating to sustain this degree of weight loss. You may have to:

1. Exercise 6 days a week, possibly twice a day at high intensities
2. Significantly reduce what you are eating
3. Move around as much as possible

This is an extremely unhealthy approach to weight loss mind you – 2kg of weight loss per week can increase the risk of various health complications.

But assuming that you did attempt a drastic lifestyle change, how long could you keep this up? Sure, you may be motivated in weeks 1 and 2…but come week 4 it is going to be really draining. It may even get to the point where you are so completely exhausted that you decide to throw in the towel and treat yourself to a bucket of ice-cream (or three).

If this has happened to you in the past, don’t fret – this happens to many, many people who yearn for a skinnier body. It all comes down to correct mindset and smart approaches to achieving your goal. So if you have failed in the past, there certainly is hope!

Hopefully here I have demonstrated the effect of short-term versus long-term thinking. A year or two may seem like a very long time, but this is exactly how you have to think if you want to take control of your body once and for all.

You may wish to read further on this topic that I have written about comprehensively. Here are two links to get you started:

Yo-Yo Dieting

How to Lose Weight

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