Wellness Trek Into Results City

There is a healthy balance that exists when it comes to the amount of food you eat and how much you exercise. If you can operate in this “sweet spot” then you can optimize fat loss and decrease any strain or tension resulting from being hungry or tired. The amount of fat you lose and the resistance towards your approach are inputted into a kind of success formula. The resulting output determines how long you stick with your plan and what kind of attitude or beliefs you develop about losing weight and eating healthy. What I am getting at by saying all of this is to work hard but also WORK SMART. You must have a plan backed by logic. You invest your time in the gym for a better body so it would make sense to also invest your time educating yourself to make your gym time worthwhile.

Part 1: Energy In

During weight loss, the general rule of thumb is to have less energy coming in than going out. That way your body compensates by using your fat reserves. However, if there are not enough calories coming in, your body goes into starvation mode. In this case, you will have low energy, use more muscle for energy, and decrease your daily energy going out. Generally the faster your weight loss, the more your body uses your muscle as fuel. Muscle increases your daily calories burned(BMR). Muscle is a good thing for women and men so be sure to eat enough and include strength training in your exercise routine.

With the addition of processed foods and added sugars to the modern diet, it has become an ever-increasing challenge for our bodies to tell us when they have had enough food. In order to succeed in eating the right amount of food for energy in these modern times, many people choose to practice calorie counting. This ensures there is enough coming in to sustain muscle while being less than the amount going out. So we measure the energy in the food we eat by using calories. A calorie is defined by the degree of which the temperature of water is raised when the food in a submerged container gets an electrical current ran through it. (crazy and confusing but true) The number of calories in a food is directly related to how many degrees the temperature of the water increases. This is the most accurate system that is mainstream today. While this uses heat energy, our body uses chemical energy. The 3,500 calories in a pound of fat theory has yet to be proven. I challenge you to find out where this 3,500 number came from. While this is not a perfect system by any means, calories are a pretty darn accurate way to measure energy we use in our bodies. It is the best we have to date.

Part 2: Energy Out

Now that we understand that energy in is measured in calories, we can look at the equivalent energy going out with the same unit of measure. The heavier the person, the more calories it takes to maintain that weight. To find out how many calories you burn in one day you need to calculate you BMR. Your Basal Metabolic Rate(BMR) is a fancy way of saying how many calories you burn a day at rest. This includes normal daily functions and maintenance of your body. You can find a BMR calculator online for this purpose. As you exercise, you add calories to your BMR from cardio related activities to calculate your DCE or Daily Caloric Expenditure. As long as you eat less than your DCE, you will lose weight in fat. Fat is made up of Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen. As fat is burned, the majority of the byproduct is simply breathed out as CO2. The remaining amount is converted to H2O. A great calorie counting app is MyFitnessPal. It will calculate your BMR for you and give you a calorie goal based on how much you want to lose per week.

While counting calories is not necessary it provides insight into how our bodies use certain foods for energy. Lower calorie foods that are not processed provide more mass and nutrition per calorie that will naturally alert your body of being full. The more you introduce real food, and restrict/cut out modern processed foods and sugar, the better your body will default to a healthy weight. Don’t forget to focus on the quality and nutrition of the food you eat in addition to calories. I can not tell you your "sweet spot" when it comes to calorie goals and exercise. You must find what works best for you that is sustainable. With everything that has been said, my future posting will be much shorter and have more pictures. 

To conclude this post, these are my three guidelines for success:

Make foods primary purpose fuel and secondary purpose taste.

Strength train and get your heart rate up so you sweat.

Successful Weight Loss In My Past That I Did Not Maintain

When I was in college I came to the realization that I was at an unhealthy weight. I wanted to look better and have more confidence. At the time, I hated the idea of changing my habits without the promise of losing weight. Fitness and nutrition was like a foreign language to me. I hated running for extended periods and I wanted nothing to do with the gym. My diet consisted of pasta, fast food, soda, and other sugary items with empty calories. Eating this kind of “food” was fun and made me feel great and satisfied short term. Most healthy food tasted undesirable to me and never made me feel any better after taking a few bites. I ate the occasional apple and some cooked veggies, but never believed eating healthy mattered enough to do so consistently. I had just not given it much thought up to that point in my life. Having never truly experienced the health benefits of being at a healthy weight and eating healthy, it was a challenge to get started to say the least. It was almost as if I accepted that my fat defined me and that my genetics were responsible, not the food I was putting in my system.

One day I figured that I’d give it a fair try to see if my limiting beliefs about genetics and food had any truth. I used the elliptical daily, cut out soda, and drank more water. With those changes alone I dropped weight fast! As soon as I started to notice a change, I was addicted. I eventually hit a plateau where I would maintain my weight. Once that happened I started researching fitness and nutrition like a mad man. I saw the change and wanted more, A LOT MORE! From December of 2010 until August of 2011, I lost around 50 pounds.

Updated Weight Loss: In the past two months I have lost around 14 pounds. Two of those fourteen pounds have been in the past month. As mentioned in an earlier post, "road food" on two trips caused me to gain weight. The past month is represented in this picture. After the last trip I realized it was time to get serious. In the past seven days I have returned to eating items mostly in the green category, exercising, and starting this blog for motivation. My progress is clear in this chart. The age of red has come to an end, time to put this month behind me and take what is mine!

A few years ago I remember reading an article about the U.S. weight-loss industry's annual revenue of around 20 billion dollars. Not sure how that number was established but I knew that was a really BIG number! There is a huge market for weight-loss and diet products and from what I understand, nearly all dieters gain back their weight and more in one year. I feel that there is such oversaturation, misinformation, or just misleading information with only part of the truth. How is America spending increasingly more money on weight-loss and dieting only to gain more weight?! I'm not sure but it sounds literally INSANE.

My belief is this & you may agree with me:

There is no "magic pill" or supplement but that's what people want and that's what people are sold.

We want results fast. We want it now. We want a quick fix or an answer that requires minimal effort. Supplements and pills DO have the potential to help but ONLY if you are working out and eating right. Metabolism boosters actually have a comical effect in calories per hour when you look at how many calories are in a pound. Putting some cinnamon on your ice cream cone isn't the answer to a new body. (Cinnamon rocks... but that's a topic for another time.) Words like "natural," "fresh," "wheat," or "soy" are all marketing tactics. These words do not determine their health value. There will always be some type of new marketing word or approach to make you think something is healthy. Do not let certain marketing words trigger you. Know what you eat.

I am going to give you the answer on how to achieve the body of your dreams and I offer it to you for FREE!

The answer is HARD WORK!

Yes for FREE because nobody wants to buy hard work. They want to buy something that saves them time. Time is money! They want to pay for the result, they don't want to work for it.

If you want to succeed at losing weight and toning up, the FIRST thing to do before anything else is to commit to putting in the hard work and to stop looking for a quick fix. You need to be willing to sacrifice and be consistent doing what needs to be done. You need to take measurable, strategic action and not be afraid of the concept of hard work.

Hard work in the gym.

Hard work in the kitchen.

Hard work learning and accepting the basics relating to working hard.

Yes, hard work can be scary. Gator up and make it rain. Do it for yourself and accept nothing less.

You will put in the hard work and one day find it's not hard anymore. It is easy to be a healthier you. You will feel better and look better. I am writing this not only to hold myself accountable but in hopes that someone will benefit from my words. In future postings, expect a roadmap of what needs to be done to walk through those golden gates of results city. Everything you need to know I will teach you. You may even know these things already but do not apply them. It is hard work. I have fallen to many a fried food and sweets before. It is not easy to make a healthy lifestyle change and I don't claim to have the secrets to internal motivations to make you want to put in the hard work but I know the basics and I am happy to share with anyone that will listen.

So...

If you want to put in the hard work, you will succeed.

This blog was created with the purpose of finding a support team to aid in the burning of fat and the sculpting of muscle. Can you hear the fat sizzle? Can you hear the chizels? Something BIG is coming... A sculpted, yolked, shredded, jacked body made from hard work, dedication, and commitment!

My name is Dave. Join me so we can support each other in our nutrition and exercise journeys. I am an overweight individual. I was once at a healthy weight. In fact I lost around 50 pounds and looked great. I felt great too! Then one day, the weight was back. It snuck up behind me like a monster disguised as pizza and fries . It was a painful realization. I am ready to win back my body sculpting success and add some muscle. I was recently 216 pounds. I have lost around 11 so far. I am here to talk about my journey and get support. I want to feel a sense of accountability and offer that feeling to others.

We will WIN this, and step into the golden gates of RESULTS CITY!!!!

Being interested in fitness and nutrition for a few years now & getting a personal training certification, I have come to find a number of truths to succeeding. It is quite easy to know what to do, the hard part is doing it. The good news is that it gets easier! I am here to motivate you, and teach/remind you the keys to body sculpting success that I find to be true. They are simple, easy to follow, and to the point!