There's no elevator to success

Like all schools, my high school used to have year books that we'd get at the end of each year. The last few pages were dedicated to the graduates where they'd be asked a couple of questions, and some of them would put up their favorite quotes. One quote stuck with me that I try and utilize as much as I can in my life. It goes like this: "There's no elevator to success, you have to take the stairs".

It paints a pretty abstract picture in your head, but even my 500 year old neighbor would get the message behind it, which brings me to what I want to talk about today. I've really come to appreciate the meaning of this quote over the last half a year or so. In terms of where my training has gone, I believe I've made substantial progress. A decent amount of discipline is needed if you want to achieve any sort of goal and no less for people aiming to lose weight, which I'll talk about today. For the sake of argument I'm considering an athletically inclined individual here who's looking to shed body fat while conserving muscle, although the general principle applies to everyone. My knowledge doesn't span beyond what I've learnt from reading up on the research of people like Lyle McDonald, Alan Aragon and Dr. John Berardi. Of course Google Scholar, PubMed, and journal studies floating around the interwebz here and there have helped validate my claims.

I've come to realize that lack of consistency is probably the biggest reason people tend not to achieve their goals. They get bored, have too many 'cheat meals', don't see the scale move for too long which can be disheartening, or just decide to try the next new diet. In terms of body recomposition, fighting against your body's natural tendencies to conserve fat is not easy. At all. Your body doesn't care how it looks, all it wants to do is survive long enough to pass on your genes. Our ancestors survived because their bodies burnt fat when food wasn't available (I'm talking cavemen days). So given that, you can see that fat caveman = more chance of survival. This genetic predisposition is not something the human animal will ever, for lack of a better word, change. I'd like to write a lot more about dieting, but I'm only familiar with the basics so when I feel like I know enough I'll come back and write something on it. Right now all I know is how to do it the right way, and while I'm seeing progress, it comes slower and slower as fat drops more and more.

I can point you in the direction of two articles that serve as the very foundation of weight loss, be it for the average person looking to drop some pounds or an athlete looking to conserve muscle while cutting fat. There's three trillion diets out there and the dieting industry probably earns that much in revenue each year, but what the average person doesn't know is that all these 'fad' diets out there cleverly trick you into losing weight because they all revolve around the same principle - the law of thermodynamics. If you can eat 12 bagels at night and 'magically still lose weight', it's because the morning part of your diet was a banana and air.. diet air, so from a caloric perspective it's balancing out. When someone begins to understand how this principle works, they'll realize that setting out a healthier diet than the ones you see in magazines while waiting to check out at the grocery store, is better in the long run for many reasons. If you're still reading up to this point, thanks, and if any of this sparked your interest take a look at the two links below.

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-fundamentals-of-fat-loss-diets-part-1.html

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-fundamentals-of-fat-loss-diets-part-2.html