Light — On Trending to Your Right Weight

I think the typical shirtless before and after pics draw attention from the details of what extra weight does to you. Take a second and notice how much the face can change. It never occurred to me that my face was fat, until I put these side by side. How much of what you take for age is just a fatter face?

Whoa! That’s amazing!! -AA
(AA is a friend whom I asked for comments given their experience losing 33 lbs.)

Over the past 8 years of struggling with my weight (I once peaked the scales at 238 lbs, with over 30% body fat! I spent the majority of the past 8 years around 228 lbs.) I’ve lost more than 25 lbs. on 3 separate occasions through serious dieting and massive effort, but I was never able to get below 200lbs and I always gained the weight back within 6 months. In 2013 I lost over 50 lbs. and returned to my weight as a junior in High school — 173 pounds, and 12.8% body fat! In 2014 I kept the same weight (varying between 173 and 179 over the year) while trading 6lbs of fat for 6 lbs of muscle. These notes are about what I learned that made this time so different.

Prerequisites:

Get Disturbed

It’s OK to be hard on yourself at the start. Get disturbed about where you are, because you’ll need that mental energy and motivation to change. Here is the hard truth. You are fat because you are currently a fat person — that is you live the life, you make the choices, you have the habits, the tastes and the preferences of a fat person. Sit with that reality a while, hold onto it, fight the urge to reject it and use that energy to change for good. A temporary change will not save you.

THE GOAL IS TO MAKE INCREMENTAL CHANGES TO YOUR LIFE — HOW YOU LIVE YOUR LIFE EVERY DAY — THAT ADD UP OVER TIME.

NO DIETS: Repeated, Permanent Upgrades to Your Life

Dieting doesn't work because your body is the sum total of your habits — Your body is the result of your daily life. If you are overweight you cannot trust your habits or your cravings. Those habits and cravings built the body you have. If you want to change your body you have to change your life. Anything temporary is a waste of precious time. You have to find a new normal. Many of your habits suck. Look it in the face and accept it.

Disassociate your habits from yourself. They are outside of you, they are changeable and they are the problem.

New habits are an incredible opportunities to upgrade your life. Get excited about eliminating bad habits and bringing on new ones.

I love this comment. People have a tendency to think that they are the sum of their habits. And that changing habits mean being someone else (which can feel fake)
-AA

MENTAL MODELS YOU’ll NEED: The Circle, The Monkey, and Willpower Investing

The Circle

Change your habits to serve your core. Imagine all the things about you spread out in a circle, with the crucial things in the center and the least important things at the edge. In the center is the conscious flame of your awareness, close by are your deepest held beliefs and morals. On the edge far out, might be a preference for orange Kool-Aid over cherry. Somewhere within this circle we all draw another smaller circle and say “this is me and these things don’t change.” The tighter you draw that circle, and the more things you put outside of it, and allow to change, in service what is inside, the more power you have.

You and the Big Dumb Monkey

You are small bright flame of intelligence riding around in a big dumb animal. Your will power is small limited energy source you get each day with which you can force the big dumb animal to do things it doesn’t feel like. Will power runs on a limited fuel source that is only replenished with you sleep. Will power requires glucose and particular neurotransmitters to be present in the brain. As you use willpower to control the animal, this fuel is depleted. When it’s gone, the animal runs the show. You are far better off using your will power to manipulate your environment so that the animal make the choices you want it to, than you are burning energy fighting the animal on every decision.

Invest Willpower, Don’t Spend it.

Habits come from repeating new actions until the monkey is more uncomfortable not doing them. Until then, repeating new actions requires will power. The key is investing your willpower in changing your environment not spending it each time you perform the habit.

• People with very strong will power don’t waste it. They invest their will power in ways that will reduce the will power they need to use in the future. (E.G. Throwing away things you shouldn't eat, instead of wasting precious energy not eating them. Or buying a kettlebell that lives next to your desk, instead of a gym membership you never use.)
• When building habits, spend time thinking about how to reduce the energy required to engage in the habit. (E.g: If you want to run, layout your running shoes and cloths the night before. If you want to drink less coffee get smaller cups. Etc…) These steps are 10x more powerful than directly spending your precious will power.
• Chain habits: You have some unshakable habits. You wake up, you brush your teeth, put in your contacts, you eat meals. You got to bed. If you want to add a new habit, add it to the beginning or end of an existing habit, so that it is triggered automatically.

TRAGIC MYTHS

The Myths that kill your chances of getting healthy

(I have personally believed, spread and suffered from each of these myths.)

MYTH 1: Cardio Good! — Wrong. Cardio will not help you lose weight.

It’s a trap! The energy deficit you cause in cardio actually causes strong hunger pangs and you overeat far more then you worked off. Take the hardest workout you have ever done, and I guarantee you can eat that many calories in a couple of spoonfuls. YOU CANNOT COMPENSATE FOR THE FOOD YOU PUT IN YOUR MOUTH WITH EXERCISE.

Agreed! I did this work out called Physique 57 for like 6 months, and I gained way more than when I wasn’t working out. It also plays tricks with you mind and makes you want to eat high sugary things — which only makes you feel guilty later — double trouble. -AA

Myth 2: Fat Bad! — Wrong. Fat is GOOD for you.

People who eat good fats are healthier and get thinner. People who eat no fat/low fat get fatter.

• Skim Milk makes you fat. Get whole milk. (I use Heavy cream in my coffee. The more fat, the less sugars the better.)
• Consumption of fat is not correlated with heart attacks or cardiovascular disease. Being fat is.
• Since America started to fear fat in the 1960’s our waists and health problems have exploded.

Is heavy cream good fat? As much as I hear that fat is good. I’m still very hesitant because it seems so counter-intuitive. Can you phrase why it is good for you in a way that’ll stick with me? ☺
-AA
Response: Fats are a critically important piece of your nervous stem and make up at least 60% of your brain.Fat plays a major role in your endocrine (hormonal) system and help regulate hormone levels. Also at the cellular level every cell in your body is constructed from lipids (fat). Here is an ordering of Fats in terms of health benefits. For the total lack of science behind the “fat is bad for you” dogma, and diets generally, checkout this episode of Stuff You Should Know (The Punchline — all based on a study in the 50s that controlled for nothing. Picked 5 countries with differences in average fat in diet and pointed to higher incidence of heart attacks. Ignored data from 22 other countries that disproved the correlation.)

Myth 3: If You Are Fat, Go On a Diet! — Wrong.

If you are an overweight wrestler facing a weigh in, diet (here is a great one). Other wise you need to change forever. Diets are temporary. If you are overweight, you need to change some of your habits around food and exercise forever.

Myth 4: Eat 6 times a day. As many small meals as possible.– Wrong.

How often you eat is at best irrelevant. First of all if you are eating 6 times a day you are using up precious will power at least 3 time more than you need too. Second this is a myth born of the no fat world. You can only carry enough glucose for about 3–4 hours — so if your body sucks as using fat as an energy source you need 6 meals a day. The reverse it true too. If you get tantrum hungry every 3–4 hours you know you still suck at burning fat. The beautiful thing is, when your body gets good at burning fat you might go till 2pm before you notice you haven’t eaten. If you are someone who eats 1 meal a day, congrats you are ahead of the curve!

Myth 5: I have to eat right after I workout because if I don’t get protein within 30 minutes I won’t gain any muscle and the workout is wasted. — Wrong.

First of all you are an animal. You are built to eat when you are lucky enough to find food. Second “earning” food by working out is a top reason people fail at loosing weight. Stop using working out to eat more. Third, there are a TON of benefits to working out, not just muscle growth. Finally, the studies this myth are based on were done on people who were fasting, so ya, if you haven’t eaten in 24 hours, feel free to grab that smoothie.

Myth 6: I have to eat right after I workout because if I don’t get carbs within 30 minutes I won’t replenish the glucose in my muscles. — Wrong.

First of all you are an animal. You are built to eat when you are lucky enough to find food. Second “earning” food by working out is a top reason people fail at loosing weight. Stop using working out to eat more. Third, this is an idea from sports, that is elite athletes, who are also bad at burning fat. If you have a marathon tomorrow go ahead and have a smoothie. Otherwise, you are trying to lose weight, it’s not a bad thing to be “inefficient” and slowly fill those glucose reserves by burning fat. (And there is a good chance you didn't really work hard enough to deplete them much anyway)

TRUST EVOLUTION

Your body hasn't betrayed you, it is protecting you.

Your body does not want to have extra weight. It is a finely tuned evolutionary wonder-machine that is trying to protect you from perceived danger. If you want to lose weight, get rid of the danger — Starvation (dieting), Coma (high blood sugar), Famine (chronic stress), lack of sleep, and heavy metal poisoning.

You can force your body to lose weight, but in the process you are convincing it that you are starving. It’s not fun, and your body will remember to pack on the pounds when the food comes back in case the famine happens again.

What about the occasional fasting? I’ve heard lots of conflicting things about how fasting can actually be really good for you and keeps your body always “surprised”. -AA
Response: Great Point! Intermittent fasting once or a few times a week, for 18–36 hours at a time is great for you. It actually causes your body to start cellular repair work that does not normally get done. When there is too much energy the body focuses on building, only when things are slow does it work on repair. If other animals are a guide, occasional days without food are very normal for our evolutionary machinery. So normal that they seem to be used as a trigger for occasional repair work. It’s extended, chained days of caloric deficit that cause problems.

A Better Strategy: Remove the Perceived Danger

Evolutionary Danger 1: Run away blood sugar

If you blood sugar falls outside of a narrow bound, too low or too high you die in minutes. That is fast. The fat storage mechanism is your body’s primary means of decreasing sugar in the blood. Whatever problems body fat causes, it won’t kill you in under a minute, so the body does what is can to keep you alive and packs on the pounds.

This is fascinating! I have never heard this before. Is this only for animal fats? What about foods that have both protein and carbs? Like Quinoa?
-AA
Response: Great Question! I know it holds for plant fats like avocado, and plant bases oils. I’m not sure about plants that, themselves, contain significant protein. I would put some Ghee on that Quinoa to be safe ;)

Avoid spiking your blood sugar:

1. Avoid white carbs — They turn to sugar fast and all at once spiking your blood sugar. Look for complex carbs, like lentils and beans.
2. If you have carbs, do not have them with Protein! Protein + Carbs raises blood sugar 2x carbs alone!
3. If you have carbs, do have fats. Carbs + Fats raise your blood sugar 1/2 as much as carbs alone.
4. Proteins raise blood sugar, but only half as much as carbs
5. Fats are the best source of energy from this point of view because they have no effect on blood sugar. In fact fats are what your body runs on when blood sugar is too low.
6. It’s not crazy to teach your body to run on fats if you want to lose fat. So don’t run from fats, and seek them out when eating carbs. Avoid Carbs and Protein together. Caveat: No Transfats! If you see Hydrogenated anything drop it. Butter is good. Margarine is poison. Natural oils are great, but never cook with then at a temperature high enough that they smoke.
7. One great side effect of getting used to running on fats it you don’t get those crazy “I’m STARVING” hunger pangs every 3–4 hours when your body runs out of sugar. You’re already in a fat burning mode, so when you are low in energy your body just grabs some off your thighs or stomach.

Evolutionary Danger 2: Famine

The second reason your body maintains fat is in anticipation of hungry times. Subjecting yourself to repeated simulated famine (dieting) can cause this effect, but the main thing here is Stress. Evolutionarily chronic stress = bad times = lack of food. Better store the fat!

You can’t run from stress. It’s part of life. But you can recuperate from it: Sleep, Movement, & Breathing

Sleep: Lots of quality sleep is the key. Sleep is the primary time when your body makes the hormones that clean up the damage caused by stress. Tips for good sleep:

• It’s not about waking up later, it is about going to bed earlier.
• Light makes a MASSIVE difference — Get blackout curtains or a sleep mask. Put electrical tape over all those LEDs on your chargers and devices.
• Blue shifted light is especially bad, the brain interprets it as day time. (Blue light causes the production of melatonin — a hormone that makes you feel sleepy — to drop by 30%!) TV screens and phone screens are a strong source, so don’t look at them for say ½ hour before bed. (If TV or phones are to much a part of your nightly ritual, buy these glasses and wear them starting about an hour before you sleep.
• You sleep better if it’s cold, so turn down the thermostat.
• Also, it really helps to take a hot bath or shower before bed. The heat puts your body in a cooling state, which combined with the water evaporating as you dry, drops your core temperature to a good place for sleep fast.
• Massage: Deep tissue massage, especially of the big muscles in the thighs and butt releases all kinds of great sleep hormones. So either trade massages with your significant other, or Get a tennis ball, or a Lacrosse ball, put it under your body and roll around. (Its ok if it hurts a bit, or causes a sort of tingling sensation. It just means you are helping.)

Start or upgrade your nightly ritual. Pick things from above and just make it a habit

I like this. Have you noticed though that some people just naturally do not get stressed? No matter how bad/stressful things seem? My first manager is like that. I just met him recently and asked how he stays so calm all the time (I thought maybe he is on drugs :p). He said “Worrying/stressing doesn’t help me be productive”. I wonder how true that is for everyone. Maybe people who get stressed more function better that way? Thoughts?
-AA
Response: A couple of thoughts here. I think you are right that there is probably a lot of variation in people natural stress response, both in terms of how easily it is triggered and how intense it is. I also think a lot of this is learned, though and can be unlearned if desired. In terms of what is efficient, or good productivity wise, a stress response is terrible for creative work, but can be great for focused and detailed work. That is assuming you give your self-time to recover. I think it’s a tool to be used, like a nitro-booster in a car. You don’t drive that way all the time. I would wager that no one is more productive in a constant state of stress.

Move slowly often. Walk a lot. Get out and walk. Or jog. Cardio has been shown to literally regrow brain cells. It also has an incredible effect on improving mood. If you are in a bad mood and you haven’t exercised that day, it’s on you. Again, Cardio will not help you lose fat directly. As long as you know that and don’t put that weight on it, it will help you tremendously in 100 other ways that reinforce your mission.

Your body is designed to move — meaning not just that is it for movement, but that it is premised on or assumes movement — that is, certain processes in your body require it. Your Lymphatic system’s circulation for example, crucial to the immune system, is entirely driven by movement.

Sprint every now and then, say once or twice a week exercise for a very short time really hard.

• Sprint for 20–40 seconds. Walk until you can talk normally repeat 3 times. Workup to repeating 6–8 times.
• Lift something heavy once or twice a week, not for long.
• Try a Tabata — Do something hard, really push yourself (sprint, lift something, situps whatever) for 20 seconds, move slowly for 10 seconds. Repeat that 8 times. 4 minute of exercise and you get 90% of the benefits of an hour of cardio.

Meditate: It’s not weird. Breathe deeply and don’t think too much a few minutes a day. It’s good for you. Get in a comfortable position in a quiet place. Close your eyes. (The idea is to give your mind less sensation to deal with). Breathe deeply and concentrate on your breath for 5 minutes. Breath deep down into you pelvis. Your mind will stray. Your will have thoughts. That is ok. Your only job is to recognize that your mind has strayed and to pull your attention back to your breath. It is that easy). It’s nice to have a voice guiding you through the meditation, so try The Honest Guys. I love Epic Power and Middle Earth Meditations

Seek out happiness: Beyond just not being stressed, being happy is a signal to your body of good safe times too. So seek out things that flood your body with happy chemicals: Time with dogs or babies, Hugs, Sex, Smiling & Laughter, Nature — any place green and serene (No food! Don’t spike your blood sugar).

Evolutionary Danger 3: Poison

Another reason your body holds onto fats is because fat is the storage place for lots of heavy metal poisons in the body. The body isolates poisons by surrounding them with fat, so if you start losing fat, the poison enters the blood again and the body says “oh crap we need more fat to deal with all the poison!” If your fat loss plateaus this is usually the reason.

This is another really fascinating insight! -AA

How to fix it:

• Drink a TON of water. If you are trying to loose weight and you don’t have to pee all the time, you are doing it wrong. Drink more water. It takes a lot of water to flush out all the extra poisons being released into the blood when you are losing weight. If your body doesn’t get that water, it tries to hold onto the fat for your own good. Bottom line, if you are trying and failing to lose weight, there is a good chance you are not getting enough water.
• Stop eating processed, boxed, or canned foods.
• There are natural things that will help you get rid of heavy metals. One great one is cilantro (which I personally hate the taste of :P) So add a little more cilantro to your diet, but be careful when you do to also stay well hydrated, as we want the freed up metals to exit your body, not redeposit themselves somewhere in your body less safe (read the brain).

EATING LESS

You have to trick yourself, until you change

If you are fat, it is because you eat the wrong things and too much of them. The problem is you are used to it. It doesn't look like too much. And when you get the right amount it feels like too little. I still feel panic sometimes when I’m hungry and my plate isn't full. I have never in my life not had enough to eat and yet the monkey brain panics. In countries where people are thinner, guess what: They eat less. Their plates are smaller. They are shocked at the size of our cups.

When we stayed in Guatemala I saw people eat quantities I thought would make them starve. They were obese. It was the shock I needed to realize my perceptions about how much I needed were just a fiction of my past. Your need MUCH less than you think.

To Eat Less, outsmart the Monkey Brain.
The monkey brain is strong. It is the old animal brain. And like animals, you can’t win by sheer strength. You beat it by out-thinking it. This is useful knowledge in lots of places, but regarding weight loss, the main thing to note is that the monkey brain is a creature of habit. It freaks out when you change things. And it can’t be trusted.

Your goal is to eat less, but you don’t do this by simply putting less on your plate. If you do this the monkey brain will freak out. You will be panicky. The brain will dump panic neurochemicals and your body will get the message “oh no! There isn’t enough food!” When you system is flooded with these panic messages regularly it feels like danger to the evolutionary-wonder-machine this and the response is to store up fat incase of famine.

You have to set things up a head of time so that you eat less, without panicking the monkey brain. The best tricks to get the monkey off your back:

• Get smaller plates, bowls, glasses, spoons, forks, cups. I cannot emphasize how useful this is. To the monkey brain a full plate is a full plate.
• Have someone else serve you. Ask them to spread the food out so it looks like more. That way your brain never has to decide how much to take. You just get a delicious looking plate. Again this is a game changer. I still put way to much food on my plate.
• Tell yourself you’ll come back if you want more and mean it. Remember starvation feelings lead to more weight down the line.
• Stop at 80% The key here is to learn to distinguish between I am satisfied/I’m no longer hungry (which is where you should stop) and I’m Full. The difference is in the side effects. If you are full you’ve eaten so much that your stomach feels a bit stretched. You feel lethargic, you don’t want to move. Your body is generally telling you to sit still like a snake while it attempts to digest this massive weight in your gullet.
• Pay attention to enjoying your food. Taste it. Savor it. Slowly learn to appreciate quality over quantity. Search for the feeling of satisfied. It comes way before the feeling of full and stretched.
• When you eat out split meals. If you can’t split the meal with someone, get a To-go box and split it before you start eating.
• Drink a ton of water.
• Don’t eat with the tv on. People who watch tv while eating have 50% more. (Side note conversation can also cause you to eat more, but it helps so much with stress levels and overall happiness it’s not worth worrying about)
• Call on the Stoic Observer: The Stoic Observer is a nitro-booster for your will power. It is an old technique recommended by the stoic philosophers, to assert rational control over your monkey brain. If and when you have failed in all of the above and the monkey brain is in full panic call on the power of the Stoic Observer as follows: Observe the Monkey Brains panic, like a caged animal bouncing on the bars. Think of all the reasons why these feelings are absurd. Have you ever been truly starving in your life? Don’t you have a week’s worth of food at home? Won’t you eat again in a few hours?! You know you have enough fat reserves to literally survive for weeks without food. And yet observe the animal panic being sent tighten you chest and make your breathing shallow. Laugh at Monkey Brain and it’s foolish bodily discomfort, take the reins and go about our day.

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU STALL

Stuck for months at a time? It is normal, it will happen. Carry on.

Over the course of 2013 I lost 50 lbs, but I spent 2 months stuck at 211, one month around 192, 2.5 months at 182 and a month at 179. That is over 6 months in 12 the scale not going anywhere!

When this happens, and it will, just keep doing what you are doing. Focus on process over outcome. It’s normal, your body is improving in less visible ways and the scale will eventually start to move again. In the mean time try these things:

1. Watch your inches. You may be gaining muscle. I was pretty depressed this December(2014) when I notice I was the same weight as 7 months previous, when I’d been as much as 8 lbs lighter in the mean time. But then I notice my waist had dropped 1.5 inches. It turned out I had lost 6 lbs of fat and gained 6 lbs of muscle in that 7 months. Not to shabby!
2. If you are not gaining muscle(your circumference measures aren’t shrinking), and your weight doesn’t budge, or even goes up 5 lbs take a close look at your habits and see if you’ve reverted on anything. Maybe you broke out the large cereal bowl again, stopped drinking water, or started having a Cliffbar for “dessert”. Been there! No big deal, just notice that you have strayed and calmly go back to business.
3. You may find that you are doing everything right, and you are still stalled. This is totally normal. Just focus on your process, keep showing the evolutionary-wonder-machine that it’s safe to carry less fat and in a month or two the scale will start to move again. While you are waiting, make a point of drinking even more water and maybe adding a new upgrade to your habits.

Summary

Eat when you are hungry, but eat half what you are used to, search for satisfied (It comes way before full), tell yourself you can always come back for more if you are not satisfied and mean it, drink 2–4x what you are used to in water. Seek out good fats, and avoid carbs and Protein together, especially if it doesn’t have plenty of fats. And manage stress with exercise (walk a lot) and happiness (Dogs, Hugs, Sex and Cuddling). Don’t underestimate stress and sleep. I lost 35 of 50 pounds on our backpacking trip and the biggest change was a massive melting away of stress and lots of sleep (had to sleep when it was dark).

When in doubt, drink more water.

That’s the main bits. Hope it helps!

For the road ahead.

Progress: Manage What You Measure

Take some before pictures, you’ll want them. Later they become a symbol of how far you’ve come rather than how bad it’s gotten.
Measure your weight every morning and record it. Your weight will not drop every day. This is a noisy signal. You’ll see a drop over a week. But it’s still worth measuring daily to learn your normal fluxuations. The point is to start associating the swings with what you do. You are mostly water, your body uses water as a tool. Depending on what you do or eat your body may need more or less and that will change your weight a lot. Here are a few things I’ve learned:

• In a normal day I can gain 2–3 lbs by afternoon.
• I lose at least a pound every night. I don’t know where it goes. :P Sweat I guess.
• Eating carbs adds 2–3 lbs which take 3 days or so to go away
• Same with drinking alcohol, also seems to take longer to start losing again.
• Flights add a ton of temporary weight. Chennai to Houston +10lbs, fell away in a week.

Measure inches once a week. When you start getting healthy it’s normal (AND GREAT) to gain muscle. If you are not measuring inches in addition to weight, you’ll think you are stuck, when you are really doing as good as you possibly can: losing fat and adding muscle at the same time. Measure at a minimum your neck, waist, stomach, butt and thighs. Use this.

In the end all this is about a lot more than pounds.

• Diversify your Ego —So much of life is dependent on chance and other peoples actions. Giving yourself a field where you can stack up some wins that only depend on you and your actions, when the rest of life isn't cooperating is really helpful!
• Build optimism — The world will always yield to consistent action guide by thought. If you can believe that, you do damn near anything. The hard part is believing it while the world shows no sign of changing. Taking control of your body and health is a place where you can prove it to yourself. Your body will change just fast enough to stay motivated, but slow enough to train you.
• Build a foundation for stacking up good habits — Separating your sense of self from your mere habits. When you see the power of upgrading habits you’ll start applying it all over your life.
• Enjoy the energy that comes from a body running right — feeling light and energetic pays dividends in all parts of your life. It feels like growing younger.

Books that helped:

1. The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman: This is a great source for lots of info on a ton of important stuff. The diet works, as long as you follow it. Just keep in mind your goal is permanent change. Take the principles and what works for you and keep adapting.
2. Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength : For the science around will power as a limited resource and it’s connection to blood sugar levels.
3. Superhuman by Habit: A Guide to Becoming the Best Possible Version of Yourself, One Tiny Habit at a Time: A quick and to the point book integrating the best advice on changing habits.
4. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success: The short of it is you are better off choosing to believe that you can grow and change and get better at anything.
5. An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace: This is just an amazing book on cooking. It’s economical, it leads to gourmet healthy meals. I love the concept of buying the whole food, reusing scraps, and meals leading naturally to new meals. Here is a short talk to get a flavor :P

Originally published at alwaysascending.weebly.com.