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How Being Motivated Can Make You Fat

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About a month ago I decided to start focusing on losing weight and getting in better shape – AGAIN.

I’ve started the journey of losing weight and getting fit more times than I can remember, and I’ve actually had a lot of success with losing weight.

Losing weight is easy.

The challenge is that gaining it back is even easier.

Years ago, my primary focus and obsession with weight loss and fitness was figuring out what is the best, fastest and safest way to lose unwanted excess fat on the body and how to put on lean muscle mass.

Because I focused on that, I figured it out and I know exactly what to do and what not to do in order for me to lose weight.

However, this time around, I’m focusing on something different.

I’ve now been a lot more focused and obsessed with learning how to get fit, lose weight and KEEP it off after I lose it, and I’ve learned some very interesting things about that.

Here’s what I did first…

Discovering How Fit People Stay Motivated Long Term

In the past, whenever I would make the decision to lose weight, I would be highly motivated to produce results – and quickly.

I would either do a weight loss competition with one of my friends, or just make the decision to put energy, time and focus into losing weight.

And I would do it.  I’d lose the weight I wanted to lose and hit my goals.

Each time I would start highly motivated to lose the weight, however as time would go on my motivation levels would drop.

By the time I was hitting my target weight loss goal, usually my motivation was pretty low at that point…

… so after I hit my goals I would stop doing the things I was doing, and I would go back to eating unhealthy again…

… and the interesting thing I noticed was that when you’re in great shape, and you start eating unhealthy again, you actually don’t gain weight right away…

In some cases I would eat unhealthy foods for weeks or even a few months without gaining much weight, because my body was still in great shape and my higher set metabolism would just burn away any excess food.

Also, my appetite for unhealthy foods wouldn’t be that great – at first…

… but as I would start eating crappy food again, the addiction would start up again and slowly I would eat healthy foods less frequently and start eating unhealthy foods more frequently.

And then a few months later I would start to gain the weight back, but there was usually something else I was focused on in my life outside of health and fitness which held my attention and motivation.

Eating healthy and being fit was not a priority at all, and so I would start to gain the weight back.

And then of course a year or two later I’d be right back where I started, or even a bit heavier and wondering how the heck this happened and why didn’t I STICK with it!?

So this time around, when I decided to go on this journey I started thinking that what I need to figure out is how to stay highly motivated to be healthy and fit not just for a short period of time, but for a LONG time – like forever!

You see, I know when I’m highly motivated to do so, I can lose weight and get fit, but when my motivation goes down, I start gaining it all back.

So my thinking was that if I could JUST figure out how to stay motivated long term, I could keep the weight off forever.

So I started doing research, reading health and fitness and bodybuilding forums, reading articles, and seeking advice from various people who have transformed their bodies long term on how they stay motivated long term.

Surprisingly, what I discovered was kind of interesting…

Virtually NOBODY could answer that question.

NOBODY could tell how the heck they stay motivated to be fit and healthy for more than just a short period of time.

After a while I started thinking maybe people just don’t know what keeps them highly motivated to be fit and healthy long term because they don’t think about it, so if I can just figure out what questions to ask them I could figure out what’s going on in their heads and understand their motivations better.

After a few weeks of searching, I was honestly no further ahead than when I started.

I still had no idea how the heck these people keep their motivations high to eat healthy, work out and stay fit for long periods of time.

I was frustrated, because I couldn’t believe it was this hard to find an answer to seemingly such an easy question – “How do these fit people stay motivated long term!?”

Then during one of my sessions with my Retrofit coaches, I mentioned this and they recommended I look into the work of BJ Fogg.

BJ Fogg does lectures at Stanford and his area of expertise is understanding motivation.

The Truth Behind Motivation

After looking into BJ Fogg and after watching some of his lectures, I realized that the reason I wasn’t able to find the answer to my question on how to keep my motivation high for staying healthy and fit long term is because there is no answer!

Meaning, what BJ Fogg discovered is that it is impossible for people to stay highly motivated about something forever.  In fact he discovered that motivation is a VERY short-lived phenomenon in humans.

Our motivation levels are always going UP and DOWN like a roller-coaster, on a daily or weekly bases, and sometimes our motivation levels can even change throughout the day!

Here’s BJ Fogg’s lecture on this where he explains this phenomenon, why we are like that and what to do about it:

I absolutely LOVED this lecture.

It totally explained to me why I’ve failed to keep the weight off in the past.

You see, in the past, whenever I would decide to lose weight, my motivation levels would always be through the roof.

I’d be excited, I’d be pumped up, and I’d usually enter into some kind of competition with one of my friends to see who can hit their weight loss targets etc., so my motivation levels would be ultra high.

While my motivation levels were ultra high, I would find activities and action steps that I could take in order to produce results – fast!

In BJ Fogg’s motivation wave graph, these activities and actions would belong under the “Hard to Do” and “Requiring High Motivation” section of the graph.

Now, because my motivation was ultra high, the fact that those activities were hard to do didn’t matter, because when your motivation is high, things that are hard to do aren’t so hard to do!

And, typically when you do things that are hard to do, they usually produce results very quickly, which then fuels motivation even more, which in turn makes it easier to keep doing those hard to do things.

HOWEVER, once I would hit my goal, or I would finish a competition with my friends, my motivation levels would usually drop down – just a bit.

Not all the way down to zero, but they would drop from “Ultra High” to like “Medium”.  On a scale of 1-10, they might drop from 9 or 10, down to like 5 or 6.

This usually happened because I would get motivated by something else in my life.  Meaning, once I hit my fitness goal, I would move onto something else in another area of my life, such as manifesting a new car or increasing my income or something along those lines.

So then, while my motivation to do that OTHER thing would go up to like 9 or 10 out of 10, my motivation to eat healthy and be fit would drop down to 5 or 6.

The challenge with that was that ALL the activities and structure I put in place for eating healthy and staying fit while I was at level 9 or 10 were all HARD to do and required a lot of energy  or time to accomplish.  I guess you could say that those activities were a 9 or 10 out of 10 on the “easy or hard to do scale”.

So what happens when your motivation drops to 5 and the activities you are trying to do are at a difficulty score of 9 or 10?  Nothing!

You don’t do them!

Instead, what you do is you start eating crappy, and you start to skip workouts, and then you feel guilty for doing so, and you try find a way to get your motivation high up again.

Of course that doesn’t work, because you can’t fake motivation.  If you’re already highly motivated to be focusing on something else and that thing is already taking up all your energy, time, focus and attention, you can’t also be highly motivated to stick to a diet or fitness plan at the same time.

There’s only so much energy, time, focus and attention we all have in a day, and if you’ve already decided to invest that into something else you’re excited about, there just isn’t enough to also focus on a healthy diet and fitness plan which requires a high level of motivation.

So what’s the solution?

Creating a Variable Motivation Plan of Attack

Once we realize that motivation is not something we can fake or manufacture if it isn’t already there, the solution to how to deal with that is actually not that complicated.

The solution is to simply create a plan of attack which MATCHES your current level of motivation in any given moment.

Meaning, what we need to do is we need to create a plan of attack which moves us forward when our motivation levels are HIGH, but also continues to move us forward when our motivation levels are LOW – and everything in between.

For example, way back in 2009 I did a program called P90X.  Some of you probably heard about it.

When I started the program, my motivation was super high, and I had the time, money and energy to invest into it.

So when it came time to invest the 60-90 minutes to do the workouts, and maybe another 15-30 mins before / after the workouts, and the energy and will power to keep pushing through these insane workouts – it was no problem for me – because my motivation was high.

But 60 days later, when I had to shift my focus on my business, my motivation dropped a bit and I stopped doing the workouts and went from doing P90X every day to doing NOTHING.

This is because I had absolutely no plan in place as to what to do when my motivation goes down.

This is because when our motivation is high, we think that our motivation will ALWAYS be high – forever – so who the heck wants to plan for low-motivation situations when we are living in a fantasy that says that our motivation will never go down.

We think “No man, I’m done with being fat.  I want to be fit, I’m pumped up, I’m committed, and I’m never giving up!!!”

Yeah, right.  That’s a fantasy.

That might be our motivation in the beginning, but there will come a time when that motivation goes down – for any number of reasons.

The only solution is to have a plan in place which ASSUMES that at some point your motivation goes down, and it already gives you an exact plan of attack that you can easily accomplish even if your motivation is super low.

For example, right now my motivation to get fit and to lose weight is very high.  So for me to bang out a 60-90 minute workout today wouldn’t be that hard.

HOWEVER, I’ve already been working with my Retrofit coaches and we have a plan of attack in place where I have a 5 minute workout already in place, ready for me to implement on days when my motivation is low.

I have a printed out sheet which tells me EXACTLY what exercises I can do on that day, which only take 5 mins or less.

That is actually what we started with – an exercise program which is easy to implement and easy to build a habit with.

On the diet side of things, I’m doing the same thing.

I have a plan of action for what to eat while my motivation levels are high, but also what small changes I can implement when my motivation drops.

In other words, I have a plan in place which encompasses all the motivation levels from Ultra High to Low.

Now, it’s very important to realize that I am not saying that the solution to losing weight and getting fit is some 5 minute workout program…

Why Making Things Too Easy Isn’t The Solution

When people skim over this stuff and don’t take the time to actually understand what BJ Fogg’s research reveals, there is a tendency for people to try to oversimplify a complex subject like this.

I want to be very clear with this.

I am *NOT* saying that the long term solution to losing weight and staying fit is to create a 5 minute workout for yourself, or some super easy dietary change to follow.

Creating a 5 minute workout plan, or having a plan to make a super easy dietary change are examples of activities that a person would do when their motivation levels are LOW – for whatever reason.

However, they are NOT examples of activities you would do when your motivation levels are MEDIUM or HIGH.

Meaning, it’s not just as simple as saying “Oh okay, I get it.  So what you’re saying is that I should just create a simple workout like to do 10 pushups per day and just do that forever, and I’ll be in the best shape of my life, right?”

NO!

See, the challenge is that doing activities that are TOO EASY as compared to your current motivation level will not work either.

Reason being is that if your motivation is high, when you don’t match that high level of motivation with higher difficulty level activities, you essentially dissipate that motivation and produce very little results with it and that doesn’t feel good either.

Meaning, if you’re pumped up, excited to get fit, and ready to do a 60 – 90 minute workout, then THAT is what you should be doing!  Not a 5 minute workout.

Make sense?

Because if you are pumped up and excited to do that, but then you stop yourself and think “Well, I want to do a good solid workout, but I think that I should start slow, so maybe I’ll just do a 5 minute workout today, and then maybe a 6 minute workout tomorrow and build it up from there…” that will kill your motivation levels instantly!

What BJ Fogg talks about in his lecture is that when your motivation levels are high, you need to apply that motivation to taking action at that level, and there are a whole bunch of different things that you can do while motivation is high.

Also, besides applying that motivation to doing something that is harder to do – diet or fitness wise – another thing you can do with a high level of motivation is to do things that  might be hard to do in the short term, but which will make it easier to produce results when motivation is low.

For example, let’s say that currently the only place I can work out is at a local gym which is 20mins away, but I have a room in my house that I could transform into a home gym, but it would take a lot of work to clean it out, set it up as a gym, and to buy the equipment to make it into a gym.

That process of transforming a spare room into a gym might be a good example of a HIGH difficulty level activity, AND it can also be a good example of an activity that – if completed – could make it easier to work out when motivation is LOW.

So if my motivation was Ultra High, for example, that might be a good time to utilize that motivation and to apply it into cleaning out a spare room, going out and buying gym equipment and setting up a gym.  This way, on days when motivation is low it will be easier to do a 5 minute workout in THAT room, instead of having to drive 20 mins to go to a gym.

That’s just one example.

Other things we may choose to do when motivation is high is to go grocery shopping for healthy meals, or to pre-plans meals, or to even pre-cook some meals ahead of time.  Or we might go and buy some gym equipment, or some new clothes, or some new shoes or sign-up for some kind of class.

Again, these are just examples, you have to figure out what would work for you.

The point, however, is simply to just be aware of what your current level of motivation is, and then to take action based on that level.

Don’t do LESS than you’re motivated to do just because someone told you that it’s best to “start slow” or they told you to not “overdo it”.

If you do that, you’ll get bored, you’ll get mad for not producing results quicker, and you’ll just give up on the whole program.

Match your CURRENT level of motivation to the activity levels which will move you towards your goals.

And don’t feel bad or guilty for not doing MORE, if your motivation levels are lower than what would be required to do some activity.

Just match your activity levels to your current level of Motivation.

That’s what I’m doing now, and it’s working out really well for me.

I started my new program on June 1st, and on some days I’ve had more time, energy and motivation to do more so that is what I did.

On other days my schedule was so busy with my businesses, that I had to fall back on my “easy” activities that still move me forward like doing a 5 minute workout before going to bed when I was really tired.

I was so tired that I didn’t even want to do that workout, but because it was only 5 minutes though, and it was already pre-planned for me and I didn’t have to think about WHAT I needed to do, I just did it.

Only took 5mins and I felt great! 🙂

If you’ve been struggling to lose weight and get fit, or more importantly to KEEP the weight off and to stay fit, I highly recommend looking into this concept and the research/lectures on motivation from BJ Fogg.

Then, once you understand the concepts, focus on creating a plan that assumes that some days your motivation will be HIGH and some days it will be LOW – and have a plan in place for the entire spectrum of motivation levels, not just one or the other.

-Paul

P.s. Incidentally, if you haven’t already realized, this entire concept of matching activity to current motivation levels can be applied to EVER area of your life, not just fitness and health.  I’m just using health and fitness as an example, but it applies to everything.  Now that I’ve learned this simple but powerful concept I’m starting to implement it into other areas of my life as well and I recommend you try it out yourself as well.

Manifesting Body Diet and Fitness Plan – Day 103

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Today I wanted to do a quick update on my diet and fitness plan, and more specifically to share my updated stats from my Aim Skulpt device.

For those of you who are not familiar with the Skulpt Aim device, it’s basically a device that allows you to measure each one of your major muscle groups and test individual “MQ” scores for them.

Here’s a quick chart which explains what “MQ” is.

As you can see from the chart above, an MQ of 80 falls under the “Needs Work” category and looking at the silhouette of the person at 80 MQ we can tell they are obese, and on the other side of the spectrum we have an MQ of 160 which is someone who is completely skulpted, with an MQ of 100 being an average person.

The main benefit of using a device like this is that it allows you to see changes in your body composition which are more accurate and more specific than just weighing yourself on a scale.

I’ve taken two full body measurements so far with the Skulpt Aim.

The first measurement was taken on Day 1 of starting this plan, and the second measurement I took a few days ago on Day 100 of the plan.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of the two reports for the muscle groups on the front of my body.

Skulpt Aim

 

As you can see I’ve had improvements in my “MQ” all across the board.

The MQ of my shoulders was 97 (right) and 99 (left) on Day 1, and now it’s at 100 for both.

The MQ for my chest (pecs) was 98 (right) and 100 (left) on Day 1, and now it’s at 101 (right) and 102 (left).

As you can see in the chart, pretty much every one of the numbers went up.

This makes sense to me because the biggest part of my plan so far has been focused around strength training with my personal trainer Sam.

Now, let’s look at the stats from the back of my body:

From the muscle groups in the back of my body, the biggest improvement showed up in my glutes as well as my calves.

You can see the exact numbers in the graphic above.

Now, the final chart I’ll share is just the total body average snapshot between the two days.

 

As you can see form the chart above, my average MQ for all the muscle groups was MQ 90 on Day 1, and as of Day 100 I was at MQ 96.

Now, some people may think to themselves “Yeah, but so what?  This device showed you that you had an MQ of 90 and now you’re at 96… what does that tell you?”

Well, depending on what your goals are, to some people these numbers may seem insignificant.

For example, if someone was just looking to lose weight and wasn’t doing any strength training, then tracking their MQ wouldn’t probably be a useful measure.

You could simply just step on a scale and measure your weight and see how much weight you lost.

However, since I’m mainly focusing on strength training with my program right now, psychologically I need to track some sort of measure of progress BEYOND just my weight.

The reason for this is because building muscle kind of works against you in the beginning of a fitness program if all you’re looking at is your weight.

Meaning, by doing strength training I’m actually building muscle tissue which is actually pretty heavy as compared to fat for example.

Therefore, let’s say that I lose 3lbs of fat and gain 3lbs of muscle in a certain period of time, if all I looked at was the scale then my weight wouldn’t even change.  There would be no difference.

And when we don’t see any difference on the scale, we get demotivated!

However, if we could somehow measure that we’ve gained lean body mass, in addition to losing fat, then it becomes more motivating.

Now, technically we can measure total lean body mass by using body fat percentages, but with the Aim Skulpt device it just gives me that extra level of detail and tracking so that I can see how each individual muscle group is responding to my strength training program.

For a gadget geek like myself, this is uber cool stuff.

I love tracking stats and seeing graphs and sleek looking graphics, and if that’s what I need to do in order to get myself motivated to work out, then that’s what I’ll do.

Based on the stats above I have to say I’m very pleasantly surprised.

During my first 100 days of strength training I’ve only done 14 one hour work out sessions with my trainer or on my own so far, which comes out to – on average – about one workout per week.

In addition to that I’ve also done quite a bit of yard work and landscaping outside as well, so I’m sure that contributed to this as well, but in terms of actual strength training workouts, I’ve only done 14 so far!

I definitely still have a long way to go, but I have already lost about 10lbs of fat, my clothes fit better and I’m feeling WAY stronger than I was when I started this journey.

If I can increase my average number of workouts to 1.25 or 1.5 or 2 or 3 workouts per week I’m sure I’ll start seeing results coming in even faster.

But, even if I just keep doing what I’ve been doing so far, I’ll still see results, it’s just that they will take longer to achieve.

For the first time in my life though I’ve been CONSISTENTLY working out for more than 3 months in a row, which is super awesome, and I have to thank my trainer Sam from Ivanco Fitness for that. 🙂

Manifesting Body Diet and Fitness Plan – Day 73

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Today I decided to do a quick update on my progress with my “Manifesting Diet and Fitness Plan”.

It has now been 73 days since I started this plan on April 20th.

My main goal was to create and follow a plan which would allow me to lose approximately 65 lbs of fat, and to get stronger and more fit physically, while at the same time integrating this diet and fitness plan into my entrepreneurial lifestyle in a way which enhances my ability to make money with my business.

In other words, I want to lose fat, get fit, and do it without it taking over my entire life and distracting me from building my online business.

Here’s a chart of my progress so far:

So as of this morning, so far I have lost 8.4 lbs of fat.

I’m actually quite surprised by this number as I really don’t feel like I’ve been dieting at all.

I’m been eating pretty much the same foods I’ve always eaten.

There are only three main changes that I’ve made.

Firstly, I’ve replaced about 50-70% of my soda/pop drinking with these healthy vitamin/mineral drinks which I just love:

Previously when I would be thirsty and would have a craving for a bit of sugar and/or caffeine, I would usually turn to drinking a can of Coke or having some black tea with sugar, but now instead I turn to these drinks.

Secondly, I’ve been doing a lot more exercise by working with my personal trainers from Ivanco Fitness as well as working outside doing landscaping work on my yard.

Thirdly, I’ve been doing some PSYCH-K subconscious belief balancing and visualization work to help me visualize my new body and to program my mind to help attain it.

To help me with my visualizations and with tracking my progress I actually find it a lot easier to plot my weight on a chart, rather than just looking at a number, as a line graph shows me a trend over time.

Here’s what that chart looks like:

It’s pretty easy to see that even though my weigh fluctuates day to day, I am on a downward trend with my weight which which is pretty exciting.

In fact, based on my current stats, I’m currently losing 0.12 lbs of fat per day on average, and at this pace I should be able to reach my target weight of 177.5 lbs by November 27th, 2016 assuming I maintain this pace.

I know that’s more than a year away from now, but that’s only if I continue to do what I’ve been doing so far with my diet – which hasn’t been much. 🙂

If I want to speed the process up I could add in some more changes to my diet which would help me to reduce my fat much faster, but even if I did nothing more than I’m doing now it’s still really exciting to see that I will eventually hit my target.

And what’s probably more exciting about this than any other diet / fitness program I’ve been on in the past, is that I can actually see myself sticking with this plan indefinitely.

This is not a radical / fast / drastic weight loss plan where I make huge changes to everything I do and then 3 months from now end up quitting and going back to my old habits.

This is a program that I think I can EASILY follow.

It’s not hard replacing a few sodas a day with some healthier drinks, and I’m quite enjoying my workouts with my personal trainers, so I can see myself sticking with this long term which is something I could never really say about any other diet / fitness programs I’ve been on.

Manifesting Body Diet and Fitness Plan – Day 56

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I has been a while since I’ve done an update on my “Manifesting Body Diet and Fitness” plan.

I will most likely do a more formal update next week when I’ll officially be at the 2 month mark, but I wanted to get an interim update posted today as well.

Progress With My Diet

I started off this plan by tracking my daily meals and counting calories using MyFitnessPal.

I was only able to keep that up for a short period of time and then I stopped doing it.

I may go back, but it’s not really a priority right now.

Instead, what I’ve been really focusing more on is getting my strength training workouts implemented, and trying to make better decisions during meal times.

For example, instead of having a can of Coke with meals like pizza, or Greek food, or other similar foods like I usually do, I’ve been trying to substitute some of those for just plain carbonated water.

I haven’t cut out soda pop completely, but I’ve just been trying to build a habit of switching out a different beverage once or twice a day and just drinking more water.

Also, in terms of meals, I’ve been trying to really watch my portions and becoming aware of when I’m full and satisfied with my meal and getting myself to stop eating at that point, instead of stopping when my plate is empty.

I’ve also been making a point of drinking more high quality nutrition shakes, and a few different types of vitamin drinks that I just love.

It really doesn’t feel like I’ve been on a “diet” of any kind, but I have been losing some weight – although slowly – so I’m pretty happy with that.

Progress With My Fitness Plan

For my strength training / fitness plan, I’ve hired the personal training services of a local company called Ivanco Fitness.

Although I’ve only had 3 training sessions so far with my personal trainers Ivan and Sam, I’m really loving the program they put together for me.

I’ve done a grand total of 6 training sessions so far, 3 of which were with Ivan and Sam, and 3 of which I did on my own based on the program they put together for me.

I would have more sessions completed, but I ended up getting sick with a really bad chest flu that was going around and I had a really tough time getting my workouts done while sick.

When I did start to feel a bit better, but was still coughing, I did 2 training sessions with Sam – completing about 70% of the sets that they planned out for me, but at least I got it done.

Now that I’ve been feeling at 100%, I felt great doing those same workouts the last two times on my own.

Another thing that has been kind of interfering with my strength training regime, has been some landscaping work I’ve been doing in my yard.

Last Monday I had a huge tree fall on my property and it broke through two parts of my fence.

I had to cut the tree up into “small” pieces, and get them off the fence and then fix the fence.

That process of chainsawing the tree into smaller pieces and moving them, and fixing the fence took about 8 hours and it was the equivalent of about 3 or 4 full body workouts – LOL.

I had NO IDEA that trees are that heavy.  I’ve cut big branches and small trees down before, but I’ve never dealt with a tree of this size.

The weight of the trunk, even when cut into smaller pieces is just incredible.

We’re talking hundreds of pounds of weight for each piece.

It’s actually kind of interesting, because in the past when I would start a fitness program like P90X or some kind of daily workout or 3x/week workout program, and something like this came up and I had to go outside to work on my yard – which is clearly a full body workout in itself – I would feel guilty for missing my actual workout.

But this time around, I am looking at it totally differently.

I even reached out to Ivan from Ivanco Fitness and asked him how he looks at a situation like this.

I wanted to see what his beliefs are around this issue.  I wanted to know if he has to do something like this, where you’re out doing landscaping work or yard workout which is clearly a workout, do you count that as a “workout” for that day, or do you still try to do a strength training session that same day?

Ivan told me that in a case like this he would definitely count what I did (landscaping work) as a training session for that day.

I know it may sound dumb, but in the past when I was doing other programs if I missed a day of THAT program, because I was too exhausted after doing landscaping work on my property, I would kind of feel a bit guilty.

Now I don’t.

In fact, today I was originally going to do another strength training workout, but instead I ended up doing about 7 hours of work in my front yard building a retaining wall and putting down some gravel.

It was a great workout, especially digging / shoveling dirt and moving gravel, AND I felt really great when it was done because I’ve been wanting to get that retaining wall built for months!

My Results So Far

I haven’t done my measurements recently as far as tracking muscle gains, or body measurements.

I’ll most likely do that next week.

However, I do track my weight almost every day and it’s been decreasing so I’m happy about that.

Here’s my weight loss chart so far for the last 56 days:

As you can see, it’s nothing too drastic, but I have lost 6.4 lbs of fat so far!

The dotted line in the graph above represents the first mini-goal I set for myself when I was at 245 lbs, and that was to get to below 240 lbs.

I’ve now gone below the 240 lbs mark, so it’s time for me to re-set my goal again.

I think this time I might set it to 229.9 lbs.

I’ll have a more extensive update on all my stats and measurements soon.

Manifesting Body Diet and Fitness Plan – Day 28

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So it’s been about two weeks since my last weight loss / fitness plan update.

In my last update I introduced my tracking sheet and the concept of “THE GAP”.

“THE GAP” is basically the amount of FAT that I still have left to lose to hit my target weight.

When I started this journey on April 20th, my starting weight was 245.1 lbs and my target weight was 180.0 lbs, so the gap was exactly 65.1 lbs.

Here’s what that looked like in my spreadsheet:

So that was my starting point.

As of today, my tracker looks like this:

I’m still very early in my journey here so the numbers aren’t that significant yet, but do you see how this method of tracking “THE GAP” is more effective than just tracking your weight and target weight?

Meaning, as you can see, during the last 4 weeks I’ve lost 5.9 lbs of weight, but at the same time I’ve also put on 0.3 lbs of muscle, which means that the amount of actual FAT LOSS – which is what I really want – is actually 6.2 lbs, and not just 5.9 lbs.

Now I know, some of you might be thinking “Cmon Paul, 5.9lbs … 6.2lbs… big deal, pretty much the same number… you lost 6 lbs, we get it… why waste your time tracking the extra 0.3 lbs etc.”

And at this point in my journey I would agree with you… that 0.3 lbs of muscle gain isn’t a huge factor in the overall numbers here – BUT that is only because so far I’ve only done two full body strength training sessions since starting my program, and that is about to change in a big way.

I’ve been sick this last week and a half with a cold/flu, so I didn’t do my strength training session last week, and also I only have my DAY 1 personalize training program from my trainer so far.

I have two more sessions with my personal trainer Sam this coming week where he will be teaching me my Day 2 an Day 3 programs and then I plan on doing strength training three times a week, so I anticipate that my muscle gains WILL play a much bigger role in these calculations going forward.

Why is Tracking Important for Motivation?

Now you might be thinking… why even bother tracking all these things anyways?

Why not just set a target weight, and then weigh yourself once in a while and keep going until you hit your target.

Well, back in 2009 that is pretty much exactly what I tried to do.

My starting weight back then was 212.0 lbs, and I started this training program called P90X.

I worked out every day for 8 weeks straight without skipping a single workout.

No matter what, I did every workout, and I followed the P90x diet guidelines about 80%, and after 8 weeks I did my weigh in.

I thought for sure that I must have lost at least 10-20 lbs from all the blood and sweat that I put into the program…

But you know what my weight was after 8 weeks?

212 lbs!!!

I hadn’t lost a single pound!

I was so discouraged, and even though there were other factors that played into the equation in my life at that time as well, one of the reasons I ended up quitting that program was because it felt so discouraging to not see ANY progress on my scale.

Now, here’s the thing…

What REALLY happened is that I was putting on muscle during that program, while at the same time simultaneously losing some fat.

And essentially any fat that I was losing was offset by any muscle gains, so the net result was a zero difference in my weight.

Now because I had no way to track my lean body mass vs fat mass back then, I don’t know if I lost 5lbs of fat and gained 5lbs of muscle, or if I lost 10lbs of fat and gained 10lbs of muscle, or what the actual numbers were.

I know for sure that I put on muscle because I was definitely WAY stronger after 8 weeks than when I started and I do know I lost fat because my waist measurements did shrink, but I don’t know how much I lost.

And the interesting thing was that even though I knew these things at a conscious level, at a more basic subconscious level I was disappointed and depressed about the fact that my body weight hadn’t moved at all!

Do you know how annoyingly depressing it is to work your ass off (literally) for 8 weeks straight, working out every day, no matter what, and following a diet and then 8 weeks later you see absolutely no change on your scale?

If I was tracking my stats much more closely like I am now, I probably would have been way more motivated to keep going.

That is why I track my stats so closely nowadays.

Even though I know that the stats I’m tracking are not 100% accurate, since the Fitbit Aria scale I’m using isn’t 100% accurate in calculating body fat vs lean body mass, it’s still better to see SOME kind of stats than nothing.

Like when I look at my numbers above and I think to myself that I’ve already lost 6.2 lbs of fat in the first 4 weeks on this plan, that gets me excited and keeps me motivated to keep going.

Now, granted that a part of that weight loss did come from the last few days of me being sick and not having much of an appetite, but still… 6.2 lbs of fat loss is 6.2 lbs of fat loss. 🙂

It’s exciting!

My next step in the program this week is getting my Day 2 and Day 3 programs from my personal trainer and then I’ll go from there.

I’m really curious to see how my body responds to the strength training program when I start doing it three times a week.

Stay tuned!