If you're reading this, I'm assuming you have a goal that is similar to the one I had when I started this journey. To Recap :
"I want to get lean enough that if I never made progress past that point, I would still be happy. I want to find a way to do it where I can imagine myself living some semblance of that lifestyle forever. While I am dieting down, all exercise performance markers should only be indicators of whether they are bringing me closer to my primary goal of LEANNESS, and I should never mistake correlated bonuses to be the primary goal. Most importantly, my process of getting lean should only ENHANCE the experience my loved ones have while interacting with me and never get in the way of our relationships".
In every endeavour, there's usually a list of necessary points that need to be addressed. It's important to give these points a hierarchy of importance, if not there's a chance that a less important point could end up hijacking a more important point. So let's start with the most important.
"Most importantly, my process of getting lean should only ENHANCE the experience my loved ones have while interacting with me and never get in the way of our relationships".
I was a relatively new Dad when this whole thing started. My daughter had just turned 2 years old. I'm married to a wonderful wife who handled most of the caregiving for the earlier years of my daughter's life but my daughter was just coming to that magical age where her personality was starting to develop and I didn't want to miss it.
I work a day job, so I already miss one out of her three mealtimes during the workweek. I knew whatever my plan entailed, I didn't want it to compromise on the time I would have with her. Also, whatever diet/exercise regime I needed to start couldn't leave me so wrecked and starved for time that my ability to do my job and provide for the family would be compromised.
It was also important to me that I could be there to celebrate with the people I loved. Family always comes first. I don't have many friends, but those that I do I love fiercely.
The approach I was going to take, I would need to be able to keep for life. There was absolutely no way that I was going to be the guy who brought a tupperware of Chicken Breast and Broccoli to a birthday party. Ok sometimes i'd bring my own salads, but I made enough for everyone and I also ate some of everything else that was at the party.
The priority of any resolution regarding making a lifestyle change is that it has to fit into a life that is worth living. Your priorities might be different from mine, but before you go scouring the Internet on the way to biohack your way into the most optimal way to get jacked in the minimal amount of time, ask yourself what your lifestyle non-negotiables are. To me, anything that compromises on my ability to be a good husband, father, son, and friend (also in that order) is not worth it.
Next : "I want to get lean enough that if I never made progress past that point, I would still be happy."
I grew up in Singapore during a time where overweight kids were singled out in school and put into something called the TAF club (the school called it the "Trim and Fit Club" , the non-fatty kids called in the "Trip and Fall Club". During recess, while the rest of kids got to go to the school canteen to enjoy a mid session snack, we were rounded up for mandatory physical activity and not allowed to eat with the rest of our non-fat friends. Of course, I found a way to hijack the system and always excused myself "to the toilet" five minutes before recess to run to the canteen to buy myself a ton of fried chicken so that I could scarf it down while sitting at the back of my next class.
Obviously, I didn't lose any weight during my time in the TAF club. This was in spite of the 1/2 hour of daily vigorous exercise (ok well maybe it felt vigorous to me at the time) from Monday to Friday. I did, however, enjoy my fried chicken and my love for it continues to this day.
It's a sad story and my bet would be that many people around my age who grew up in Singapore would relate. I tell you this story not for your pity, but to illustrate a key point.
Diet will always trump exercise when it comes to getting lean.
Half an hour of vigorous activity that involves running, bodyweight exercises and circuits (these days fashionably called METCONS) 5 times a week is probably more exercise than the average adult gets.
I haven't done the math, but I'm pretty sure every single day from Monday to Friday, the 5 minutes I spent chowing down on fried chicken undid the 25 minutes of exercise and more.
If you like running, or spinning, or crossfit, or any kind of physical activity, do it. But do it for the joy of doing it, the cardiovascular benefits and the happy hormones it will produce. Just know that unless you're a professional athlete, the odds that exercise can compensate for a diet that isn't managed to reach your goals are close to zero.
Most of us would be lucky to be able to carve out 2 hours a day on a daily basis to work out. That leaves 22 other hours in a day where we can totally undo any kind of progress that exercise can deliver. It takes approximately an hour of exercise to burn off one snickers bar. I can eat a snickers bar in less than a minute. Those odds are not optimal.
How to deal with the diet will be covered with in a later post, but for now suffice to say if getting lean is part of the primary goal, it's improbable that getting there without addressing the giant elephant in the room that diet is the great confounder is not going to work.
"I want to find a way to do it where I can imagine myself living some semblance of that lifestyle forever."
If you read the beginning post, you'll know that this wasn't my first time on this rodeo. I got lean (not as lean as now) back when I was 26, but I did it only focusing on calories, with no concern for satiety, nutrient density or overall wellness.
Being young and dumb, I was on a quest to get it done while proving I could do it on a diet that consisted of Snickers bars, Peanut Butter, Portion Controlled Potato Chips and 3 hours of sleep every two days. It worked, for a while. When the inevitable crash happened, I found myself smashing whole bags of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in a half hour, eating so much processed food that I would send myself into sugar shock and eating crap till it hurt but not being able to stop.
This time round I knew I didn't want to go through that again. A white knuckle, willpower based approach was not going to work. I had to learn how to do this while working WITH my body and not pit my mind against it.
"While I am dieting down, all exercise performance markers should only be indicators of whether they are bringing me closer to my primary goal of LEANNESS, and I should never mistake correlated bonuses to be the primary goal."
This post won't go too into detail about workout routines, but in a nutshell if the goal is LEANNESS and not just weight loss, then something needs to be done to try to keep as much lean muscle during the dieting process. While i'm not an exercise scientist, I did a lot of digging online and found that almost every practitioner that sounded credible recommended some kind of resistance training while dieting to maintain muscle mass.
Lots of people end up going to the gym and lifting weights, but many get caught up in using their weightlifting sessions for caloric burn, or start getting obsessed with hitting big numbers and forget the primary reason they were lifting weights while dieting in the first place.
During my process, I was also tracking my numbers closely, but more to make sure I was maintaining as much strength as possible while running a caloric deficit (which is required for fat loss).
It's hard to know if you're making progress in the gym when whatever muscle you have underneath is still covered up by fat mass but one of the best ways to measure muscle retention is strength retention. This serves as a double check also to see if you're losing weight TOO fast and losing too much strength - losing weight fast is great but going too fast can lead to rebound binges that can unwind weeks of work.
If you're anything like me, a large part of your stress in life comes from not having gameplan. Once a logical gameplan is in hand, while the task might be difficult, it ceases to become stressful because it's just a matter of execution. Having a hierarchy of points becomes useful so that every element of your plan is put in its rightful place and STAYS there while you are staying the course.
This was my plan. There were a few hiccups, no one is perfect. But whenever I went off course, it became easier to not say "screw it, call Dominos" because the plan gave me direction to refocus my energy when it got tough.
You don't need to use my plan, what's important is that you form your own. Just remember that 75% of how you get to the end is how you stay there and if you lose more than fat (ok and muscle) and end up compromising on the more important parts of life along the way, there is a chance you may never get them back.
I'd recommend you formulate a plan where the point of primary importance addresses the people you love. One of those people should be you.