This isn’t the typical weight loss article. There are no before and after photos, and I won’t tell you how much weight I lost. I won’t say, “Here’s what you need to do to lose 10 pounds in a month,” or some such bullshit. I lost the amount of weight I wanted to lose for the reasons that I wanted to lose it. So, I won’t slap some arbitrary weight loss goal and timeframe in your face.
We’re also not a “weight loss” gym. We’re a performance gym for adults. But aside from extreme cases, most people in Western civilization want other people to have a gander at them and think, “Well yeah, I’d do them.” It’s nice to feel desirable. More importantly, a healthy body composition leads to a healthier life that you may fill with the things you love. That’s what spurred my weight loss.
Full disclosure: I didn’t have a radical transformation. I’ve been muscular and mostly lean my whole life. But I did change my body composition within a healthy timeframe and by doing simple things. Those simple things apply to anyone that wants to lose weight – no matter how much they want to lose.
Here are those things.
Purpose and Enjoyment
Here’s maybe the most important fact about my weight loss: It wasn’t spurred by self-loathing or the hope that dropping bodyfat makes me happier. I was already happy when I leaned out. The process was about approach, growth, love, purpose, and enjoyment – not about avoidance or the hope that weight loss would solve bigger problems that it can’t solve.
In the blog article that precedes this one, I wrote about my love affair with big mountains and Western hunting. This love drove me to drop weight and lean out. First, because I knew that being leaner and lighter would improve my performance. Second, because weight loss promotes longevity; and I want to hunt big mountains until I’m an old, old man. My weight loss was attached to something I love and enriching my life. Let’s also chat about enjoyment of the process.
I did things I enjoy to lose the weight. I didn’t punish myself, and I didn’t force myself to do things I wasn’t ready and willing to do. Beyond that, I doubled down on things I enjoy doing – walking, hiking, cooking, rucking, and learning.
Before we get into any of that, let’s chat about one more foundational element.
Life About Doing, Not Consuming
Life in Loudoun County, Virginia is cushy. Most people have more than enough, and central air-conditioned suburbia makes it easy to be comfortable all the time. On top of that, there thousands of great options for eating and drinking. It’s so easy to make all leisure one big calorie consumption fest. In fact, it seems like that becomes life’s purpose for many folks around here. Evenings are spent at restaurants. Weekends are spent at wineries and breweries. And I can’t blame a single person for it – it’s fun!
However, that pattern feels empty if we pause and ask ourselves, what am I really doing? Is life really about dumping booze and food down our gullets? Listen, I love food and I love cooking, and I love when food and drink come together to create an elevated experience. But that’s only one kind of experience. And while it’s a good one, it can’t out do the feeling of a clear mind that’s happy with less. It can’t beat the reward reaped when your heart calms after miles of walking to reach an overlook, your eyes cast on an expanse that at once makes you feel small and a greater part of all that happens around you.
I’ve made my life about doing and not consuming. It’s given me clarity and made life simpler. And the reward I get from doing makes it easier to keep moving instead of sensation seeking booze and food in an environment that’s saturated with options. The doing creates a negative space for the consuming, making consumption even more enjoyable when it fills the space.
If you’re jiving with all of this, but it still feels a little opaque, here’s some practical application: I plan my weekends around doing things that burn calories rather than things that push me to consume them. I find new trails to hike, or I hike old favorites. I bike; I hunt; I fish; I kayak. I make up new aerobic capacity workouts and I try them out.
The weekend is when most folks’ eating goes off of the rails. So, if like me you choose to plan a life around doing instead of consuming, you’ll put yourself at a weight loss advantage.
Increasing Activity Level: Post-Breakfast and Post-Dinner Walks (And a Bonus Strategy)
It’s clear that activity level is important. All-cause mortality drops when people hit 7,000 steps per day and continues to drop up to about 17,000 steps per day. Activity level also makes fat loss easier. Moving uses calories; and it’s also harder to stuff your face if you’re walking around. We understand the importance of maintaining a high step count, but modern life doesn’t make it easy to get your steps in. It requires strategy. Once you’ve dialed in on strategies that work for you, they become habit. Then you move a lot without thinking about it. Then it seems like you almost magically hit your step count every day. My strategy is simple: I walk my dog.
Every morning after breakfast, Stella and I set out for a 20-minute walk. We do it again after dinner. We cover about 1.25 miles in 20 minutes. That lands us at 3.5 miles for those two walks combined, which equals about 8,000 steps. The walks also curtail my eating. I don’t want to feel like 10 pounds of shit stuffed in a 5-pound bag while we walk, so I don’t overeat. Not only do I enjoy the walks, but they’re a catalyst for two healthful outcomes.
The bonus strategy is also simple: I walk during every phone call. Between business and personal life, I talk on the phone a fair amount. So, every time I get on the horn with someone, I put my headphones in and walk. Sometimes I just walk around my house. Other times I go for a jaunt around the neighborhood. Like I did with breakfast and dinner, I used the phone as a trigger to create a walking habit.
Using these strategies combined with my workouts and hiking, my weekly average step count stays between 80,000 to 100,000 steps per week.
That’s made it easy to lose weight and keep it off.
Diet: Track Then Stop
I’ll preface this section by saying that nutritional behavior change is an individual thing. It’s a product of personality, schedule, environment, etc. Some folks love counting macros and calories and will do it until the day they die. Others find it monotonous and soul sucking. Regardless, we all must find nutrition skills and habits that work for us. I’ll tell you what works for me. Consider how it may, or may not, work for you.
I periodically download diet tracking apps. I’ve used MyFitnessPal and Carbon Diet Coach. I use the app’s macro and calorie guidelines as a reset for how much and what I’m eating. While I use the app, I focus on observing portion sizes and what they look like. I also focus on how appropriate portion sizes make me feel during and after eating. After a few weeks or a month, I have it dialed, and I stop tracking.
Maybe you’re wondering why I stop tracking. Well, first, I don’t love it. It’s just a tool that I use to get me on the right track. Second, it raises rebellion in me. As tracking goes on, I start to see what I can get away with and still eat within my calorie and macronutrient designations. Gummy bears take the place of fruit and other similarly dubious drops in food quality appear. Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with having sweets once in a while. But I start to eat them habitually in place of higher quality foods. I don’t know, man. I just feel this need to rebel against the tracking. That’s when I know it’s time to stop.
Once I’ve learned what I need to learn, I carry on eating with the correct portion sizes and feeling for me. When it seems that I need a reset, I’ll track again.
Training
I’ve trained consistently for 25 years. Knurling has scarred and hardened my hands since I was 12 years old. Football was the catalyst. I wanted to be great at it and I wanted to play in college. I don’t know if I was ever great, but I did get to play in college. It meant a lot to achieve the goal, but looking back as a 37-year-old man, I realize that the most important thing football did for me was create a training habit. If you do anything for 25 years, and pay just a little attention, you’re bound to get good at it. You’re bound to get results.
Football led to powerlifting, which made me pretty dang strong. But once I was strong as I wanted to be, the luster for the iron left my eyes. It’s about that time that hunting returned to my life. My training changed again.
The thing about powerlifting is that you can be good at it and not really care about anything but lifting heavy things and maintaining just enough conditioning to get to the bathroom and back. The thing about Western hunting is that if you’re not conditioned for it, you suffer…a lot. So, I switched my training focus to maintaining my strength while building a lasting aerobic base. I layered intensity on top of that aerobic base.
Here’s what happens when you switch from a strength-focused program to a conditioning-focused program: You use way more fuel, you improve how your body metabolizes that fuel, and you’re left with way less time to stuff your face. There’s also a cultural shift. It’s cool to be a puffy powerlifter. It’s not cool to be a puffy backcountry hunter. Ta da! I lost weight.
On top of all the training shift, I maintained my 25 years of consistency. I’ve exercised at least 5 days per week for as long as I can remember. If you consider hitting my step count exercising – which I’ve done nearly every day for years – I exercise every day.
Shifting my training focus while maintaining consistency was a huge factor in my weight loss. If you’re struggling to lean out, have a look at the type of training you’re doing. Does it make it easy to ignore leanness? (If you’re training with us at Beyond Strength, you’re doing the right kind of training to get and stay lean.) Look at your consistency? Are you training regularly enough to teach your body get, and stay, lean?
I hope you’ve found this little article helpful. Maybe it didn’t overhaul your weight loss strategy. But maybe it did liberate you from some thought patterns and behaviors that are holding you back. Mostly, I hope that you do things you enjoy to enhance and improve your life. That’s what’s ultimately worked for me.
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- YESTERDAY DON’T MEAN SH*T
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- WANT TO MAKE PROGRESS? PUT SOMETHING HARD ON THE CALENDAR
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- WHY IT’S IMPORTANT TO COOL DOWN AFTER TRAINING
- MORPHEUS HEART RATE TRAINING: WHAT IT IS, WHY WE USE IT, AND HOW YOU CAN GET THE MOST OUT OF IT
- START NOW: WHY WAITING FOR THE PERFECT TIME IS THE WORST THING TO DO
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