Weight Loss and Healthy Living

You've heard it before. "Never say I can't." Think positive. It is almost a cliché, right? But how do the things we say, feel, and believe truly affect our lives? Every day you have internal conversations with yourself, and the way that you conduct those conversations will have a tremendous impact on your success. There is much more to positive thinking than "can, can't."

What To Do For Maintenance?

One common question I receive is, "What do you do for maintenance?" It always takes me by surprise because the concept is alien to me. Maintenance? Granted, when I started this lifestyle, I would have loved to have some "vacation" waiting for me at the end, and I was certainly thinking about how I would "relax things" when I achieved my peak physique. Along the journey, however, I learned a true lesson in life: there is never any "maintenance".

Consider this: the average adult loses several pounds of muscle as they age. This has been studied in thousands of individuals over decades and as a person reaches their golden years, they begin to lose muscle mass. So what is maintenance? Is it losing muscle mass? I don't think so. Even gaining enough muscle mass to counter-act the natural loss is "progress" in my book - you must train hard, intensely, and consume the right foods in order to just "maintain" your lean mass. The net result is maintenance of your physique, but the training style is far from "maintenance."

The same thing applies to training in general, even for younger individuals. It is well known that the body is quick to adapt to training. This is why the periodization model of training has been proven to be so effective: it constantly changes parameters of training to prevent the body from adapting. Because the body is so good at becoming efficient, the longer someone trains, the less gains they are likely to make and the more intense their training must become.

The converse to this is that because of the high intensity of training, most must rest more to recover as their training advances. Lee Haney once mentioned that he would be happy to put on 1 pound of muscle in a year. Once again, there is no such thing as maintenance - even doing the same workout will eventually produce fewer results, and send you backwards instead of keeping you at the same place!

What Does This Have To Do With The "I Can, I Can't" Syndrome?

The question I always have in return is, "Why do you want maintenance?" Inevitably, people become tired of living a certain lifestyle. Whether it is due to boredom, overtraining, or some other reason, it happens. My own father asked me just recently, "Are you still training? It's okay if you aren't - working out is something you do for awhile and then take a break from." The problem is that if you are too focused on a specific goal such as "body fat" or "weight" then it becomes easy to hit that goal and slip into maintenance mode. If your goal, on the other hand, is total health, then it must become a lifestyle change because there is no maintenance. You don't reach good health just to fall back out of it.

The people who yearn for the maintenance mode wake up and tell themselves, "I should go workout." This is an inner dialogue and while it may not seem significant, it is. "I should go workout." This implies a sense of "urgency" - it is not a desire, but a need being fulfilled. There may be a negative consequence if the action is not performed, so it should be done. Instead of positive reinforcement, this borders on negativity. After weeks of doing something I "should do," I, too, would probably want to hit some magical "maintenance" phase so I wouldn't have to do it anymore.

The alternative to this is to workout because you want to. "I want to go workout." This is a subtle change to the inner dialogue, but it makes a tremendous difference. Now, there is no implied consequence for not doing it. It's not a finger wagging in your face, telling you to do something. It is an inner desire - the action is tied directly to a reward. If you want to do something, there is typically a reward involved - whether it is the satisfaction of accomplishment, the great feeling of good health, or some other positive emotion that springs from the activity.

This reminds me of vegetables. Vegetables? When I started to eat healthy, I knew that I should be eating more vegetables. I did not really like vegetables, and the few that I did eat came packaged with a ton of sodium in a can. I yearned for my "free day" and my "breaks" between programs so that I didn't have to eat vegetables. I still sucked them down because I knew I should eat them, but I did not want to eat them.

Somewhere along the journey, I began to enjoy the journey and realize it was about much more than the destination. It suddenly was not just about losing fat - although that was certainly a bonus. It was about living life. It felt good to be in shape. I could tie my shoes and not fall out of breath! I could play basketball with my son! We had a great time and being healthy just felt great. I made a conscious decision to tie the sensation of good health into the activities that blessed me with it. One such activity was eating vegetables. While I was still eating them because I should, and not because I wanted to, I constantly reminded myself that they were part of what helped me become so healthy.

As time progressed, I began to truly appreciate the benefits of vegetables. I studied their composition and learned about phytochemicals and other components that promote good health. I realized that these were something I'd need to eat for the rest of my life, so I'd better enjoy them. I took some steps towards this. First, I moved towards frozen veggies from canned veggies but added my own seasoning and steamed them until they were mush. Then, I simply steamed them less, to acquire a taste for the crisp, raw flavor, and I seasoned them less. With raw vegetables, I started by dipping them in salad dressing. I reduced the amount that I "dipped" and the amount of times that I dipped and eventually acquired a taste for raw vegetables.

I did not by any means reprogram my entire set of tastes. For some odd reason, I still cannot eat raw tomatoes or mushrooms, and I still want to plug my nose when I eat Brussels sprouts. But, for the most part, I enjoy vegetables. I eat them now because I want to ... not because I should. And that means they are not a burden to me or something I need to take a break from - in fact, when I have a "splurge" meal, I often find myself enjoying a nice plate of roasted asparagus because I want to.

Your Inner Dialogue