The Truth About Why You Are Still Overfat
1. The 2 Minute Rule
In a mere two minutes I can tell you if someone will be successful in their quest for a leaner physique. And two minutes is being safe. It is probably closer to about 30 seconds. And this applies not just to fat loss but also to the rest of your health and fitness goals.
If you blame yourself – success. If you blame everything else – no success. Period.
When I first talk to people I am not listening to the details of their health, fitness, and nutrition. That stuff is pretty irrelevant and I am going to be changing it all anyway. All I want to know is whether a person takes responsibility for themselves or if they blame everything and everyone else.
You haven’t been successful because you made bad decisions. You ordered a pizza on a Tuesday night. You surfed Pinterest for an hour instead of heading to the gym to train. You bought a tub of ice cream to ‘have a treat’ while watching Downton Abbey (confession: I love Downton Abbey).
VS.
My significant other brought home pizza so I had that for supper. I had to respond to my friends third cousins post on Facebook to debunk the anti-vaccination people and that is why I skipped my workout. Everyone brought donuts to work to ‘indulge’ while we sat around and talked about Downton Abbey.
See the difference? I made the decision. THEY all MADE me do it.
You are responsible for yourself. Either take responsibility for your own life and actions or blame everyone else and everything else around. I really don’t give a shit. Honestly. I don’t care. Because I am over here living my own life that isn’t affected by you. And that is why I am successful.
So make a decision. Take care of your own life or sit around bitching how hard everything is and how everything is someone else’s fault.
It’s your life.
2. You can’t make a sacrifice.
I am seeing this pop up on a lot of blogs in all sorts of areas and I sure hope it sticks.
Who said life was easy?
Who said life was fair?
Let’s release the captive born lion back into the wild and to its natural habitat. That is fair. That is how it is supposed to live. Then the pretty sunset hits the camera with just a touch of lens flare as the newly released lion jogs into the sunset. Fade to black.
The camera isn’t there tomorrow when the lion gets hungry. Or the day after that when a territorial dispute leaves bloody wounds across its back. Or a week later when it is starving because it has never been taught to hunt. And a week after that when it is lying in a field unable to move because it is dying of infection and lack of water and its emaciated body is mere minutes from death. A flock of vultures moving in behind the lion as its ragged breathing finally stops. Fade to black.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate the idea of animals in captivity. But let’s not glamourize what life outside of captivity is really like. Forget the Disney version of fairy tale endings (* Edit – I messed up the Cinderella story – Cinderella’s sisters actually had parts of their feet cut off to fit in the slippers. Still to the point – fairy tales don’t exist – life can be hard and brutal!), real life is hard, brutal, and not fair.
You have to make sacrifice to stay healthy. Deal with it. You will have to turn down the donuts. Pass over the ice cream. Skip the odd party.
Forever? No. You can add these into a healthy life for sure. Not daily. Maybe not even weekly. 95% of your diet has to be perfectly healthy. That is the reality.
Life isn’t fair. Life is hard. You will get out of it what you put into it.
And when you decide to make real changes, when you make a commitment to yourself to make a difference, YOU HAD BETTER STICK TO IT.
We run challenges a couple times a year to help people make more drastic changes to their lives. Usually ranging in length from 6 to 12 weeks. Most people do really well. Some people don’t.
This blows my fucking mind. It’s 8 weeks. Seriously. You can’t make sacrifices for 8 weeks? And to be fair those who don’t make the length of the program usually are going off track within the first 3 weeks.
Yep. Can’t even do something for 3. Fucking. Weeks. And then have the audacity to complain or be down on themselves because they aren’t getting results! Seriously? WTF. You couldn’t even make 3 weeks of some small life sacrifices to change your health. I don’t feel sorry for you.
I am sure it’s your co-workers fault for bringing in that cake.
3. You Don’t Know What a Treat Is
Treat /tret/: defn: an event or item that is out of the ordinary and gives great pleasure
You know the part about great pleasure. Chocolate tastes good. Wine goes down smooth. Nachos and wings are delicious. Cookies should be their own food group. But you missed a part I think.
‘An event or item that is out of the ordinary’
100 years ago you had cake on your birthday and maybe a family member or two. 70 years ago you had a milkshake a few times a year at the drugstore soda fountain. 20 years ago you ordered Chinese food (the nasty deep fried North American version) a couple times a year as a family or at a party.
Today is different. EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY you are exposed to ‘treats’. Donuts and chocolate milk on the way home from your kids sporting events. Trays of cookies in the office lounge. Bags of chips in the cupboard.
Every. Single. Day.
That’s without dinners and events every weekend or birthday parties, anniversaries, baby showers, sports events, holidays, and the plethora of celebratory events. ‘Treats’ are something out of the ordinary. If it happens more than once a month it is no longer out of the ordinary. Stop saying treat. You aren’t having a treat. It comes down to sacrifice and commitment, like we talked about earlier. Come on. You’re a grown ass adult making their own decisions. Don’t delude yourself in an attempt to justify the fact you are fully responsible for the shit you plow into your mouth. You are just eating shit. And that’s fine. I don’t care. It’s your life. Don’t cry over the blubber hanging over your belt though.
4. You Are Planning for the End Date Already
When we sell annual memberships at our fitness facility we have a few red flags that pop up. When a potential new member is seemingly more concerned with how long the contract is and how they can get out of the contract that they even have yet to sign, we know the relationship is not going to work out.
If you are already planning the end then what you are doing is not for life. And if you are doing things for your health and fitness that you don’t plan on doing for life then you are destroying your own life.
I see it all the time during challenges. ‘Only 3 more weeks.’ ‘Halfway through!.’ You. Have. Already. Failed. An end implies cessation of current activities. If your current activities are healthy then by default the cessation of those activities is unhealthy. They are your old habits. You know them, they are the habits and activities (or lack thereof) that got you to this point to begin with. If the end point is in your sights I am telling you right now that you will not be successful in the long term.
It is awesome to have targets and goals. In fact it is imperative to have targets and goals. But those are simply markers, stepping stones, to the ultimate goals, which should be health and fitness until the day you die.
If you have an end date in mind you are already fucked.
5. You Want Results Faster Than Your Laziness
Four week bootcamp programs are seemingly still popular. Two week diets! Results in just one week! 10lbs a week in weight loss!!
The claims never stop. They just keep on coming. Everyone wants results fast. They want results now.
Question for you: how long did it take to plump up that body of yours with extra adipose tissue?
One week? Two weeks? Four weeks?
Probably not. It was probably something that caught up with you over time. Months. Years. It is slow and steady and a result of many different factors all working together to plump you up.
It’s the parents of the other kids on the team who bring in donut holes and cookies. It was your coworkers who kept having Friday pizza parties. It was your job that got busy preventing you from doing any exercise.
Just joking. By this point you should know better than that! Seriously.
Those are all a group of compounding factors that led to you being fatter than you want to be.
Yet now you want to change and you think making ONE change (adding exercise) should have RESULTS in 3 WEEKS.
Wtf. Remember earlier when we talked about being a grown ass adult? Take that to heart again.
The same way it went on is how it is going to come off. Through a group of compounding factors over a period of time. You have to change your exercise, your diet, and your lifestyle and you have to expect it to take the SAME amount of time to get back to where you were as it took to get you to where you are.
Period.
Can you get results in 4 weeks? Sure. Will they last for the next 4 years. No. No they won’t.
As long as you are looking at short term fixes with definitive end dates, having a few treats, and blaming everyone else for your current state, you will never be successful.
6. You Have a Shitty Fucking Attitude
This is the number one thing I believe will have the most effect on your long term health and fitness.
Your attitude.
This is something I rant about a lot. You need to read what I am about to say and really try to understand it. You need to shut the fuck up about how hard you have it and how hard your life is. Seriously. There are people who really have it rough. They have no home, no job, they have cancer or diabetes, they have been in terrible accidents and their bodies are broken, and many people have no way out and no hope to make it better.
If you have a house, can walk on two legs, use both your arms, have a job, a family, can go grocery shopping, drive in your car, go out for dinner, exercise, and free time then STFU. If you don’t have to be worried about your young daughters being kidnapped at school by boko haram and sold into slavery and you don’t have to worry about ebola decimating your entire community and everyone you love, then STFU.
The vast majority of people reading this will be North American middle class and above. You are among the luckiest of all humans on earth.
And you go around bitching and moaning about how hard you have it. About how hard it is to not eat cookies while you watch TV. About how hard it is to motivate yourself to go workout after a day at work. About having to eat pizza and wings at a Superbowl party.
You’re stressed because you have a little blubber hanging over your belt? Almost 1 billion humans suffer from malnutrition and chronic malnourishment. You are so lucky. You don’t even know. Why do I write about all of this in a fat loss fitness article? It is because your attitude will determine your success. And your attitude is based on your life and the issues you deal with. And I want you to take a minute to put into perspective the majority of your problems and issues.
It’s too hard to exercise. Think about accident victims who are now confined to a wheelchair and would give anything JUST TO TAKE A SINGLE STEP.
You’re just too tired to exercise. Think about people living in fear for their lives of another missile attack or rape gang visiting their village.
Everyone else makes it so hard on you bringing bad food around. Think about all the children who are without parents because their parents are dead from preventable disease that could have been corrected with a healthy diet.
It’s everyone else’s fault. No. It’s. Not.
It is your life, your decisions. Your life is what you make your life to be. Period. Your attitude WILL determine your success in both your health and your life.
It is either a cold miserable winter day or a chance to learn to cross country ski. It is either a boring meal of roast and vegetables or a gift to spend time with loved ones over a bounty of food many people would literally kill for. It is either a workout you have to do or a celebration of the amazing gift your healthy body is.
Conclusions:
Your life is yours to live. Be reasonable, responsible, and realistic.
What I have written is all true. It is the brutally honest truth that people aren’t telling you. I have coached hundreds of people over the last 13 years and I can tell you that each one of these 6 honest truth’s work. Every. Single. Time.
Take each of these 6 truth’s to heart. Live them. Mold your lives around them. And you will achieve every single health and fitness goal you have ever had.
-Coach Taylor
http://strengthcoachtaylor.ca/uncategorized/the-brutally-honest-6-reasons-you-are-still-overfat/
It's very obvious to me
now that I need to reduce my stress to be successful. I can't blame work
stress or family stress for my derailings because let's be real...such is life. There will always be one stressful event or another. Not to mention, I have a stressful job and am constantly asking for more responsibility which equates to charting more unknown territory and....you guessed it...more stress. So what do I do? Give up on my career dreams to reduce my stress and feel bored at work? No way. I need to take a lesson from one of my coworkers (& Martin Lawrence) and say Woooooosahhhhhhh. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTGdAGPDBpo
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