Keeping Your New Year's Fitness/Body Promises

How are you doing with the small promises you made 2 weeks ago?  Did you keep them?  Are you ready to move on to new ones?

Five years ago, Rick and I spent our 25th Wedding Anniversary in Hawaii.  This is Diamond Head Mountain in Honolulu.  We decided we wanted to climb it.

This was the view as we were climbing up to the top.  It was actually much further than this.  After getting to the top here, there were 282 stairs (I know because I have a t-shirt that states it!)  to climb, another narrow spiral staircase and then a metal  ladder that went up through a hole in the rock (only one person could go up or down at a time)--it was much more than I expected!  Some people would and did say, "No way, I can't do that!"

Well, we did, and here's what we saw once we made it to the top:

Totally worth it, wouldn't you say?

This is how we should look at the promises that we've made to ourselves to get healthier, to exercise more, eat cleaner and be more positive even when it seems impossible, because once you reach that goal--it's awesome!

So, today I'm going to share some tips to help you achieve your body/fitness promises and goals.

As I wrote in the last post, you need to make both long and short term goals or promises that are only for you and they need to be SMART--Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time bound.  I also mentioned that I prefer using size/measurement goals as opposed to weight goals.  I'm going to explain why.

How quickly you see weight loss on the scale will depend on several things:  how much weight you have to lose, the type of and how much exercise you are doing, and your eating plan.

First off, the more weight you have to lose, the quicker it will initially come off.  If this is the case, this can be a very encouraging tool.  However, a good deal of the time the initial weight loss is excess water, not fat.  Not a bad thing, excess water isn't healthy either.

If you don't have a lot of weight to lose (less than 20 pounds), it can seem like that scale just won't budge no matter how little you eat or how much exercising you do.  This can be very discouraging.  Plus, what you eat even the day before can affect what shows up on the scale as well as how much muscle you are adding to your body.

Today I'm going to talk strictly about exercise and how it can affect the scale.  Exercise burns calories.  When you create a deficit between calories taken in and calories burned, you lose weight.  A pound of weight equals 3500 calories.  So, here's the thing--most of us overestimate how many calories we are burning during a workout (as well as how many calories we take in--that will be discussed in another post).  There are several factors here that determine how many calories you are burning during and after a workout.

First, the heavier you are, the more calories you will burn.  Why?  Because you are moving more weight through space--using more energy than someone who is lighter.  The type of exercise you are doing, the intensity you are working at and its duration are all factors as well, and lastly, it also depends on your body's muscle to fat ratio (this has more to do with the calories burned after the workout).

Most people believe that in order to lose weight, they must do tons of cardiovascular or aerobic exercise because this burns the most calories. While it's true that this type of exercise does burn calories, how many calories burned during and after depends on the type of exercise you are doing.  So cardio alone is not your best option.  Now, I'm not saying to stop your aerobic exercise, what I am saying is don't make it your only form of exercise, and here's why:

Aerobic exercise does burns calories, but where are those calories coming from?  You want the calories to come from your fat stores, not from your muscles.  So, if there is no strength or muscle training going on as well or all you are doing is a steady state type of aerobic exercise that doesn't get your heart rate up enough, those calories could potentially come from your muscle.  We want to maintain our muscles, we want the calories to come from stored fat.  Did you ever see someone who lost weight and their skin just kind of sagged on them or they still looked jiggly even though they lost weight?  That's because they didn't build the muscle while they were losing the weight and the body used it for fuel.  

So what does this mean?  It means for maximal calorie burn and muscle retention, it is best to do a combination of higher intensity aerobic conditioning (even if the short bursts of higher intensity work are only 30 seconds long) and strength training to get the most bang for your buck.  Muscle is active tissue, it needs calories to maintain itself, therefore, the more muscle you have on your body, the more calories you will burn--even while you sleep!  For every pound of muscle that you add to your body, you will burn 50 more calories a day.  That means an increase in your metabolism.  Plus there is an added bonus.  Muscle is also more compact than fat.  It's like comparing a pound of bricks to a pound of feathers.  They both still weight a pound, but the feathers take up a lot more space--it's the same way in your body!  Plus, in the long run, aerobic exercise that is done at a higher intensity for short bursts will actually help you burn more calories afterward because that is when you will be in the "fat burning" zone.  Here's a great video that explains it--some of which I've already stated.

This is the major problem I have with the weight loss competition shows.  They are very heavy into the cardio because it's all about the scale.  These people are working out 5-6 hours a day--it's not reality at all!  More importantly, you can see the people shrinking before your eyes--they are getting much smaller, but a lot of the time the muscle definition is not there--that's why they start wearing compression shirts during the weigh-ins. If they only lose a couple of pounds they get very upset.  They do mention that it's harder to lose weight the smaller they get, but they never mention the importance of strength training. Why?  Because it doesn't necessarily show up on the scale, and it's a weight loss competition--that is the only thing they gauge.  UGH!!!

That's why I find a size goal to be a better one.  You could drop a size or more and lose little to no weight because you are replacing the fluffy space hog that fat is with the compact, denser muscle.  Understand? 

You can either measure yourself, or just use your clothes to gauge your progress.  Remember, it is not going to happen overnight.  If you are measuring yourself, don't do it again for at least 3 weeks and don't do it if you are feeling bloated from yesterday's take-out food,  Do it on a day that you ate healthy the day before.  The other thing I want you to consider is how you feel physically.  Do you feel stronger, more energetic, more focused?  These are positive things that regular exercise does for you as well.

If you really can't let go of the scale, here's what I want you to do.  Either weigh yourself at the same time everyday taking into consideration what you ate the day and night before.  This will allow you to see the fluctuations that can occur from day to day, or weigh yourself only once a week, same day/time again taking into consideration what you ate in the last 24 hours.  Why?  because if you ate something high in sodium, you can carry an extra 3-4 pounds in water weight. Women also have to take their menstrual cycle into consideration.

So, keep doing that cardio, but add some weight training to your schedule as well or start doing interval training, and put it on the calendar!  If you don't have any weights, start with some bodyweight exercises like squats, push ups, tricep dips, lunges and planks. You can either do these on alternating days from your cardio or mix them in.  For example, do 5 minutes of cardio followed by one minute of squats, 5 min. cardio, one minute of push ups, etc.  I will give you more ideas as we go along.  

Finally, find a way to track your progress--a heart rate monitor, a tracking device like fitbit, a pedometer to track your steps, or simply keep track of what you are doing--is it getting easier? can you do more reps? lift more weight?  All of these things are accomplishments as well!

Remember, short term SMART goals/promises!  You CAN do this!