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hellyeahheroes · 7 years

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Secret Empire: Top Ten DUMBEST Moments

As far as events go, Secret Empire is probably one of the worst. And considering both Civil Wars, Ultimatum, Amazons’ Attack and Countdown are events, that bar has been set pretty low. So as it finally comes to an end, seven months too late, let us showcase some of the worst decisions made during the creation of this story. They made it into such colossal trainwreck.

Honorable Mention: Dress Like a Nazi To Work Day

Out of all moronic decisions in this event, this was the one that irks me the most because it slipped into real life. Marvel tried to get their retailers to not only dress in Hydra shirts the day the book premieres but also dress their entire store in Hydra symbols. At least one store owner told them they hire LGBTQ and Jewish people and will be dropping Marvel. Hard to blame that person. Who in their right mind tells people selling his product to dress like a Nazi?! And don’t tell me the old “Hydra isn't Nazis” crap. First of all, even if they’re not, they’re still a fascist death cult that had absolutely no moral qualms about working with the Nazis during World War II, copying from their style and being effectively taken over by remnants of Nazi Germany multiple times. At this point, it’s splitting hair. And two, Marvel, you had Steve Rogers say Hail Hydrand a whole year before. Since then you were constantly trying to tell people Hydra isn’t a Nazi organization and NOBODY BOUGHT IT! At this point, you should have looked at the “Hydra Takeover” idea and realize it might backfire. That this wasn’t recalled but went through only proves that Marvel’s head is so deep up its very ass they no longer see the reality.

Number Ten: Captain America Walking Out Of Himself and Standing Nearby

It is undeniable that Marvel did horrible damage to Captain America in this story, basically twisting the guy into everything he wasn’t. I was honestly afraid how, if ever, they manage to fix the character. But I was not expecting them to pull out the good, old-fashioned chickening out by having an identical copy of the character before he was ruined appear to take over. While seeing real Captain America beat the shit out of Captain Nazi is really cathartic, one cannot forget it came to be through rather...ridiculous means.

Number Nine: Tony Stark

Okay, this one is simple. Tony Stark is in this story. Despite being in a coma. Tony Stark holographic A.I. from Brian Bendis’ Invincible Iron Man is filling in for him. Only here he parades around in Tony’s old armor all the time without anyone commenting on it, recalibrated his personality to be constantly drunk and at one point Steve Rogers tries to decapitate him, a hologram, talking some technobabble about how Hydra made it possible for Tony to die this way.

He’s just Tony Stark. He is Tony Stark because Spencer had scenes requiring Tony Stark to be there and instead of killing his darlings like a good writer, he just wrote clearly human Tony Stark and threw some half-assed explanations and lampshades. It’s silly and makes every scene with him impossible to take seriously.

Number Eight: All the Fucking Quislings!

This one is bad. And I mean, just simply bad. Okay, it’s multiple problems, not a singular one. But it makes my very insides turn at the thought. Nick Spencer asked how can he threw some moral ambiguity IN AN EVENT ABOUT HEROES FIGHTING LITERALLY NAZIS and the best idea he had was to have some random heroes join Hydra. I’m not talking here about those who were brainwashed, like Wanda and Vision, although that is a conversation to also be had by their fans about how often this treatment occurs. Although I wonder - if they are too powerful to let them roam freely, why even HAVE them in this event? It’s not like every superhero was there, currently, heroic Victor Von Doom could probably break Hydra at day one and he was nowhere to be seen.

No, the real problem is with the fact they made some heroes join Hydra willingly. Sometimes they tried to throw flimsy reasons in. Punisher joined to get his family back...even though in previous stories he refused the same offer from less evil people. I feel it’s kinda funny they did this with Frank, considering the man who more or less defined him, Chuck Dixon, has thrown in with real-life Nazis like Milo Yiannopolus. Meanwhile, Deadpool and Thor just go along with letting Nazis rule the States because....Steve Rogers said so and Steve Rogers is always right. That’s just a plain stupidity and total lack of compassion on their side. I’m sure don’t feel like buying any book starring them ever now.

But the worst one is, by far, the Hulk. Who also comes back to life for this event, only to smash for Hydra and immediately die.But that is not the worst part. The worst part is how they build up to it. By having Hydra Steve give Bruce Banner long speech over how Avengers and everyone mistreated him over the years and with Hydra he will finally be accepted for who he is. And Banner calls him a Nazi and tells to go fuck himself. And it is a very powerful moment, Bruce Banner symbolizes everyone disfranchised by the society being offered hand by Nazis and heroically rejecting it... Nah, turns out Rogers was talking to Hulk who felt like changing his catchphrase to Sig Heil. I don’t think Spencer even realized what message he sent by this one moment. He basically said that everyone who has been screwed over by the system secretly agrees with the Nazis, but are “too PC” or “too weak” to say it out loud. It’s stupid AND extremely insulting, two for the price of one.

Number Seven: BARF!

How to properly seed a classic Chekov’s Gunman and yet STILL make him feel like a Deus Ex Machina? Make him ridiculously fucking stupid, that’s how!

Enter Barf, a random Inhuman with the power to vomit up things he needs. He shows up in the first issue, is absent through the entire story only to reappear in Captain America #25 and vomit out a fragment of Cosmic Cube. Because why let people work for their victory and earn their happy ending when you can just have all their efforts blow in their faces and just have means of victory handled to them on a silver platter in the most blatant way possible! If Nick Spencer knew he’s going to write himself into a corner, couldn’t he simply change the plot to avoid it instead of setting up something so stupid?

Number Six: Thou Shalt Not Kill, Miles

After Civil War II we were left with a vision of the future where Miles Morales kills Captain America. Once Secret Empire rolled around and we saw Rogers go full Alt-Right on the country, many were hoping this will actually happen. And Miles, with a handful of friends, does join Black Widow in her efforts to off Captain Nazi. And she spends most of the series training them to be more like her....then talking how she doesn’t actually want them to be more like her and how her generation screwed things up....then taking them on the assassination day anyway only to lock Miles up to kill Rogers herself and when that fails, give up her life trying to stop their fight. Which, in the classic refrigerator fashion, pushes Miles hard enough to actually do this. Only to be given one of the most hollow, lazy-written speeches about how killing is wrong. It hits all the old, tired notes. “Heroes should be better than villains”. “If you kill him, you will be just like him!” (a reminder that “you” in this situation is a Black-Latino and “him” is A FUCKING NAZI FOR CHRIST”S SAKE...). “Natasha wouldn’t want this for you.” (she showed it in the strangest way).... It’s especially bad when you have a character who has a backstory of being trained to kill but rejecting those ways, like Nadia Van Dyne, delivering this speech. Despite her background and personality none of this sounds like her words. It reads like she was going through a checklist of tired cliches.

This is why I came to hate this Aesop that superheroes shouldn’t kill. Because nine times out of ten this isn’t done to actually be a piece of a character driven narrative. It’s done to give a bunch of excuses to let villain live when he deserves to die.

Also, that entire plot point dragged since the previous event, in the end, amounted to BUG FUCKING NOTHING!

Number Five: Who Cares About the Civilians, Right?

So okay, the day is saved, villains are defeated, Captain Nazi got his ass kicked by Steve Rogers and Kobik, a sentient cosmic cube, undoes all this damage. EXCEPT FOR FUCKING VEGAS, WHICH HYDRA LEVELED AND LEFT NOT SURVIVORS! Seriously, I don’t care about the explanations given. Someone should have asked her to do it. And no, some “leave it as a reminder” excuse doesn’t work, Kobik is mentally three years old, she isn’t some wise all-powerful being like Odin or the Stranger from whom we could buy this shit. This is pretty much done only so that Nick Spencer can claim he kept his promise to not undo everything by the cosmic cube. He didn’t undo EVERYTHING, that counts, right? It makes all the heroes look like morons and assholes. Even Z Fighters in Dragon Ball have enough decency to ask the dragon to resurrect all dead civilians when they undo everything after every arc. Marvel heroes, for all the “lessons” this even taught them, couldn’t be assed to do even that.

Number Four: Ultron the Centrist

I’ll be honest with you, Pymltron wearing “Kiss the Overlord” apron, forcing Avengers and Hydra to sit and roasting all of them was one of the best parts of the event. But then it also comes off as paying lip service to the “both sides are as bad” mentality that we saw being used by people of today to desperately try to equate alt-right and those opposing them in real life. It’s pretty much justifying this approach in this story and it doesn’t matter one saying that is a fusion of mentally unstable man and a genocidal robot - he never gets challenged on this position because, for all his talk otherwise on twitter, Nick Spencer apparently cannot think of a compelling argument against it. I guess he secretly agrees with him...

And it doesn’t help that while Ultron ends up aiding the good guys, he does say it’s because Hydra became too strong and might pose a threat to him. Sending a message that any outside powers that show support to those opposing Nazis, in reality, wants America’s destruction...

Number Three: Nazi Pandering

Do I really need to explain this one? The entire event does nothing but bends over to kiss Hydra, and by the extension, Nazi ass at every possible opportunity. They beat up all superheroes because the plot says so, while the narrator goes on and on about how NAZI STRONK! We’re told they were supposed to win the World War II and that Allies “cheated” by rewriting reality...but for some reason let the Holocaust in?! Their rule is shown as being the strongest, which is water to the mill of real-life Nazis as their philosophy is based on “might makes right” and they beat up pretty much everyone, even Wakanda. Every victory heroes have against them must be immediately undermined by giving Nazis another win for consolidation. And while the heroes win at the end, this comes after several issues portraying them as absolutely pathetic losers who didn’t really earn their happy ending but it was handed to them by a random inhuman and Deus Ex Machina device. Which brings us to the next point...

Number Two: Cosmic Cubes

All the dumb shit going in this event can be tracked back to Cosmic Cube, be it as Kobik or the shards. She causes Crazy Steve to emerge, launching this story. And she fixes this mess at the end. Shards of Cosmic Cube serve as a distraction to put both good and bad guys on a wild goose chase because Spencer couldn’t think of any actually interesting plotline for this event. All dumb shit evil Steve pulls out can be explained by them. When it’s time for heroes to win, Barf vomits out a shard. And It undermines everything. A story that entirely revolves around this crap doesn’t have any time to actually show things it’s talking about. Maybe instead of running after Dragon Balls, more time should be developed to show how lack of trust and resentments between the good guys gets in the way? You know, something the narration keeps talking on and on and on but never is reflected in the book? Or show more of them acting like an actual resistance would? Worse, thanks to them heroes no longer win because they’re heroic but because they’ve been handed the I Win Button. Any easy win of the villains can be explained by them holding the Fuck You That’s Why Button. Making you wonder why even care if everybody wins only by writer’s fiat?

Number One: Bown Down To the Gary Stu

Most of the problems in this entire story can really boil down to just this. Steve Rogers is a gary stu. He wins because Nick Spencer wants to show how cool and badass he is. His plans always go without a hitch and he never has to adapt or improvise, under him, Hydra wrecks everyone's shit, even if he loses he still wins and in the end, the only man allowed to beat him is...another Steve Rogers. All other problems in the story can be traced back to Spencer’s desperate need to make him look strong. And believe me, he tried soo damn hard. Up to have him go full Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Four Madara Uchicha with Cosmic Cube Dojustsu on everyone’s ass at the finale. I don’t think we’d see a guy being shoved down our throats so hard if Roman Reigns joined Ultramarines! This is where the book truly falls. Nick Spencer could not let go of his fanboyism over the character and it twisted everything he supposedly wanted to say into a parody of itself, often sending the exact opposite message to accommodate the need to make evil Steve Rogers look good.

So, these are ten dumbest moments in the series. As far as events go, this was one of the worst. It looks like it might have ruined Nick Spencer’s career at Marvel and maybe in general, and will probably make it very hard to look at certain characters for years to come. The only good thing you could say is that it finally ended.

Fuck this book.

- Admin

#Secret Empire #Fuck Secret Empire #Marvel

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ijustwant2write · 7 years

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You Abandoned Me-Part 1/10 (Steve Rogers x Reader)

(GIF credit to @stevenrogers)

Masterlist

Part 2/ Part 3/ Part 4/ Part 5/ Part 6/ Part 7/ Part 8/ Part 9/ Part 10

(A/N: So this is my first post on here and of course it’s going to be a Marvel imagine but it will be split into more parts I don’t know how many exactly. This is following after Civil War though it won’t stick to the whole story; remember it’s just fan fiction, anything can happen.)

Summary: Civil War has just ended, Steve is about to disappear with Bucky but doesn’t realize how much of a strain this will be on his relationship with (Y/N). But his head doesn’t seem to be in the right place, making everything harder than it needs to be.

Meanings:(Y/N)= Your Name (Y/H)= Your height

Characters: (Y/N) x Steve Rogers, Platonic relationship with the rest of the team (especially close to Tony Stark)

Warnings: Arguing

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“What do you mean you’re leaving? Where will you go?” I sobbed to Steve as he packed his things in a duffle bag.

“I have to do this, he’s my best friend.” he replied not looking up at me.

After I had been pacing around the living room for hours waiting for Steve, he finally barged through the door to our shared flat. I had heard nothing from him in days; I couldn’t assume he was on a mission because he always told me beforehand. However I knew all about the incident with the team and the Sokovia records, they had been split apart because of their different views and I was stuck in the middle. This had to have something to do with it and the fact that no one was answering my calls or text just made that more obvious.

As soon as he had burst through the door I leapt onto him, only receiving half the love back. I caught a glimpse of his bruised and battered face before he rushed towards our bedroom without a word being said. I followed after the super soldier, demanding an explanation. What I wasn’t expecting was a brief description of how he was running away with his best friend from the 1940′s who was now….who used to be a HYDRA assassin to save him.

“Your best friend!? What about me, your girlfriend?” I stressed, unpacking the clothes he was stuffing into his bag.“How is it that when he turns up out of the blue he gets your full attention but when I start worrying about my boyfriend, all I get is a simple response?”

“He’s being tracked down by the government. He’s been brainwashed for years, that wasn’t him killing those people, it was HYDRA.” he glared at me angrily as he tried to grab the clothes out of my hands.

“Steve I know that he is basically family to you but you can’t just get up and leave. Let’s talk about this.” I held them away from him, desperately pleading.

“I don’t have any time. I’ve got to get the others.” Steve walked around the bed trying to snatch his clothes back.

I backed away from him.“Steve listen to yourself! At least give me a proper explanation, please! This isn’t fair, I’ve stuck by you for so long and now you’re just disappearing off somewhere!”

His eyes softened for just a second until he snatched the clothes out of my grip.“I’ve already fought Tony, I’m not fighting with you.”

I felt my breath hitch. The way he said it suggested they had literally fought but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. The thought of all of my friends fighting each other pained me, I had seen them throw a punch, they never held back. Who knew what the others were doing or where they were right now?

“Do you know how long you’ll be gone for?” my voice suddenly became quieter, scared about the answer.

“No.”

“What am I supposed to do? Sit around and wait for you to just randomly show up?”

“I don’t know. Find a way to entertain yourself.”

This wasn’t the man I fell in love with. Steve Rogers, Captain America, was not this rude, selfish and unloving person stood in front of me. My mind couldn’t understand it. I knew that he had been through so much this past week; the Sokovia records were dumped on the Avengers which then teared the team apart, Peggy Carter had just died and Bucky Barnes was suddenly a wanted man. I understood that this was a lot for him to take in but how could he push me out of the picture? I was trying to help him. Surely we were supposed to stick together, stand by one another so that we could get through this and come out stronger.

He was heading towards the door until I slammed it shut and stood in front of it, trying to act as a barricade. We both knew he could easily storm through in a matter of seconds. Still, I stood my ground, determined to make him stay or at least get him to talk. He sighed and wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“Steve, how long have we been dating?”

“(Y/N), I don’t have time-”

“Answer the question!” I raised my voice.

His soldier stance never faltered.“Three years.”

“Three years! We live together, I train with you, I wait out missions for you, I have been attacked multiple times because of you; yet I’m still here.” I took a deep breath before I continued.“Now I’m not asking to go with you, I’m not asking you to stay, I just want to know that you’ll be safe. You can’t just barge in here then leave without telling me what’s going on.”

“You’re wasting time.”

“Steve, just-”

Before I could finish my sentence he threw me over his shoulder, dumped me on the bed and ran out of the room. I forced myself to run after him though I couldn’t keep up. As I made it to the living room, the front door was already slamming shut. I knew there was no point going after him. A 6'2" super soldier against a (Y/H) normal woman, no explanation needed.

The realization that the love of my life had just left me hit me all of a sudden. A horrible, ugly cry left my mouth as I crumbled onto the floor. Sobs racked my body, it was suddenly becoming hard to breathe. He wouldn’t just leave me after that would he? Not after all we had been through? We had never argued, not like this. I wasn’t sure if he was ever coming back. The tears that ran down my face smudged my make up, the crying making it hard for me to breathe. It took several attempts to calm myself down, though it was a miracle that I managed to stop crying.

As I recollected myself, I had only just noticed how dark the room had gotten. I had obviously been slumped on the floor for a long time. Pulling myself to my feet, I suddenly had an idea and reached for the phone, holding it in my hands for a couple minutes. The home screen was of Steve and me, a selfie of us on the couch together. I quickly opened the apps, wanting the picture to disappear. My eyes bore into the screen as if it would dial the number itself. Eventually I selected the number, putting the phone up to my ear and praying for an answer. They were answered as the other person picked up the phone.

I suddenly felt nervous, the words rushing out.“Tony it’s me, (Y/N). Though you already knew that cause of the caller ID and…yeah, um-”

“(Y/N), calm down. What’s happened?” Panic was evident in his voice.

“I…I, uh…” I couldn’t bring myself to say those words.“Steve, he’s gone, he got up and left.” the tears suddenly flooded back.

He was silent for a minute.“Come to the tower, now. Pack a bag, you’re staying the night.”

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lindafrancois · 5 years

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“Why Can’t I Lose Weight?” The 10 Uncomfortable Truths Holding You Back

“Why can’t I lose weight, Steve?”

This question breaks my heart every time I hear it. And I hear it multiple times per day from frustrated people like yourself.quite often.

Today, I’m telling you the truth on why weight loss is so tough to achieve. Why “Eat less and move more” sounds nice in theory, but is insulting to those who KNOW this, try their best, and yet the scale just doesn’t budge.

We’ll tackle today’s topic with statistics, science, and plenty of Harry Potter analogies. This is Nerd Fitness after all.

We’ll go over:

Why I hate the nutrition industry.

How much exercise do I need to do to lose weight?

How your metabolism responds to a calorie deficit.

The science of fat loss.

What to eat for weight loss.

Which diet should you pick?

The difference between strength training and exercise.

How strength training assists weight loss.

Small changes for successful weight loss.

Let’s jump in, Scuba Steve style, so you can start seeing results!

WHY THE NUTRITION INDUSTRY MAKES ME SO ANGRY

I took this picture walking around Manhattan last week:

There is some SERIOUS psychological warfare going on here, and it hurts my soul.

For starters, they advertise as “THE” flat belly tea.

This means there are many other companies selling similar products, which would ALSO lead me to believe this is a lucrative product to sell!

They list every fitness buzzword and term every marketer uses when it comes to selling health and fitness: gluten free, “removes waste,” organic, “burn fat,”

Including some real head scratchers.

“Strengthen your colon?”

How the hell do you strengthen your colon?!

This reminds me of the brilliant Saturday Night Live skit about “Colon Blow” cereal:

But I digest digress…

People are buying this stuff, even if they know it probably won’t work.

Like buying a lottery ticket even when we know the odds of winning are 0% – what we’re really buying is “hope”:

Hope that this will actually work – unlike the last 10 attempts.

Hope we can overcome 20 years of bad choices with a beverage.

Hope that this product will give us the confidence and self love we deserve.

Don’t get me wrong.

“Hope is a good thing, and no good thing ever dies.”

I just HATE when hope gets weaponized to sell you expensive snake oil and pretty-packaged fluff.

This is what we are rebelling against here in the NF Rebellion: marketers and companies who are crappy enough to prey on our hopes and fears and sell snake-oil in a bottle.

We’re also rebelling against that voice in our head that talks down to us, calls us failures for not getting in shape yet, and berates us every time we break down and eat a cookie.

I say no more.

Let’s fight fire with fire science.

How much exercise do I need to do to lose weight?

There are a few generally accepted truths when it comes to weight loss.

All of these are controversial, vary wildly depending on your weight and body fat percentage, and will differ from person to person.

Setting all of that aside, I’m going to try and keep things simple just to prove my point.

Let’s go with an (understandably) oversimplified look at weight loss: a pound of fat equals around 3,500 calories.

This would mean you’ll need to either eat 3,500 less calories, or burn an extra 3,500 calories to lose 1 pound.

So…how long does it take to burn 3,500 additional calories per week? Let me answer a question with another question:

…How many hours do you have?

Studies show you’ll burn an extra 100 calories when walking or running a mile.

So, you would need to be running/walking an additional 5 miles per day, 7 days a week, to lose one pound per week.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to run an extra 5 miles a day. Nor do I want to.

Not only that, but as you’ll see below – this idea of just burning an extra 500 calories per day to lose a pound a week only works early on.

You’ll quickly run into speed bumps and roadblocks – figurative ones, try to avoid the real ones on your run – that slow down your progress significantly. Simply put, exercising your way thin has proven time and time again not to work.

Here are three such reports:

Many people develop increased appetites as a result of exercise, which leads to no weight loss. Time Magazine got in trouble for pointing this out – even though they were right!

This 2011 study came to the conclusion, “In overweight and obese populations… our results show that isolated aerobic exercise is not an effective weight loss therapy.”

Another study compared people who dieted vs people who only exercised: “Body weight decreased by 10% in the diet group and by 9% in the diet–exercise group, but did not decrease in the exercise group or the control group.”

What I’m trying to say, and a lesson we try to deeply understand at Nerd Fitness: “you can’t outrun your fork”

…and the bad news isn’t done.

How our metabolism responds to a caloric deficit (our bodies ruin everything!)

When you start to lose weight, your resting metabolism slows down.

You might think this is some sort of evil sorcery worthy of “He Who Must Not Be Named,” but unfortunately – it’s just 2nd grade math.

When you start to lose weight, there is less of you to ‘manage.’

In other words: your metabolism doesn’t have to work as hard to fuel all of your bodily functions, has less weight to carry, and thus it will burn significantly fewer calories compared to when you were much bigger.

Here is the estimated daily resting calorie burn (“sit on your ass all day”) of a 35-year old male nerd at 3 very different weights:

300 lbs: 2,600 calories.

250 lbs: 2,300 calories.

200 lbs: 2,000 calories.

WHAT THIS MEANS: Unless you adjust your calorie intake as your weight decreases… your previous calorie intake amount becomes less and less effective at weight loss, until you hit an equilibrium.

Put a different way: this person could eat 2,300 calories per day and over time, lose 50 pounds (from 300 pounds to 250 pounds), but that’s where he’ll hit equilibrium: calories burned equals calories consumed.

In order for him to lose the next 50 pounds, he’ll need to decrease his caloric intake even more, and then STAY at that calorie consumption to keep the weight off.

In economic terms, this is called “diminishing marginal returns.”

And then it gets even worse!

There are buckets of anecdotal evidence of a bodily feature called “adaptive thermogenesis.”

Which has nothing to do with the band Genesis – though feel free to listen to “Invisible Touch” right now:

youtube

It might soften the blow while you learn about “adaptive thermogenesis.”

This term refers to the process in which our bodies will adjust based on how many calories we burn – and do whatever it can to preserve the body fat we have.

Our bodies WANT to maintain the extra body fat we have (“I don’t know when I’ll need this, better save”), and are actively working in unison to preserve it – so even after a few pounds are lost from running, it’s going to be a persistent challenge to keep the weight off.

As pointed out in this article above:

“In long-term studies of weight-reduced children and adults, 80%-90% return to their previous weight percentiles, while studies of those successful at sustained weight loss indicate that the maintenance of a reduced degree of body fatness will probably require a lifetime of meticulous attention to energy intake and expenditure.”

This is why so many people can LOSE weight, but can’t seem to keep the weight off.

This is also not even factoring in all of the other issues around our bodies: environmental issues (you can smell Cinnabon minutes before you see it!), psychological challenges, menopause, hormones, depression, anxiety, and other issues.

These things cause our bodies to crave food, to try and store food, and make it tough for us to keep our calorie intake under control, because chocolate cake.

To Recap:

You can’t exercise your way to weight loss.

Your metabolism slows down when you lose weight.

Your environment and food scientists are trying to get you to overeat.

Your body will try to keep its fat stores.

Even when you lose the weight, your body wants to keep the fat it has.

If you lose weight, you have to keep working on it or you’ll put the weight back on.

This is all terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news.

I know, I know.

However, there is HOPE!

And here at Nerd Fitness – and in the Star Wars universe – rebellions are built on hope.

We have thousands of success stories from people who thought they couldn’t lose weight…until they did.

People HAVE lost weight, and kept it off. People who are older, bigger, have more children, less money, more illnesses, and bigger hardships than you.

It’s a constant battle, but one that’s absolutely worth fighting.

And this means that you are not broken. You don’t have metabolic damage. You are not doomed. Sure, you’re flawed. But so are your heroes .

You might be playing life on “Legendary” difficulty, but people like you have succeeded.

It starts by using all of the tools at our disposal, because the forces working against us are doing the same.

Let’s get nerdy.

The Science of Fat Loss

YES, it would be awesome if you could drink a tea, or wrap yourself in plastic, and it would somehow magically make you lose weight or fat.

YUP, it would be amazing if a 30 minute bootcamp class was enough to still allow you to eat junk food all day every day and not gain a pound.

YEAH, it would be amazing if you could take a magic pill that reversed the past decade of damage you’ve done to your body.

It would also be cool if superheroes were real and I could fly.

Well, not like that.

Come on, Aquaman. People can see you.

Anyways!

We live in a world of science, physics, and thermodynamics.

This means we should ALWAYS look at life through the following lenses:

Occam’s Razor: The simplest explanation is PROBABLY the correct one.

Law of energy: Energy can’t be created or destroyed, only transformed.

Reality: If it sounds TOO good to be true, it probably is.

Let’s apply this to our waistlines:

If we are overweight…

It’s not because we have “toxins” in our body that need to be flushed out.

It’s not because we didn’t spend enough time in the “fat-burning” zone during our “muscle confusion” bootcamp.

It’s not because we picked the wrong ‘fat burning’ product tea.

These are all pseudoscience buzz terms to sell products, and have no truth to their claims.

Occam’s Razor dictates the simplest solution is PROBABLY the right one.

So what’s the simple explanation to why we’re overweight?

Every day, we consume food that gets transformed into energy.

This food has three options:

Fuel our bodily functions: fuel our organs, regulate our body temperature, etc.

Pass through as waste: pee and poop.

Get stored as fat: saved for a rainy day.

If we are overweight, we are consuming too much ‘energy’ every day. Our body doesn’t need all of it, so too much is being stored as fat consistently.

Which brings us to the main point of our nutritional focus:

If weight loss is our goal, we must consume FEWER calories than we burn on a consistent basis.

By doing so, our body HAS no choice but to dip into that “rainy day” fund of fat stores to still get all of its bodily tasks done each day.

Do this consistently, and that’s how we end up with a lower number on the scale and a smaller pants size.

“Steve I know I should eat less. It’s doing it consistently that’s the tough part.

Have you tried CAKE?!”

Great point.

And yes, cake is awesome.

But we have to start somewhere.

And it starts here: we need to eat fewer calories, but it ALSO has to be sustainable and enjoyable, otherwise we’ll never stick with it.

And temporary changes produce temporary results. We want permanent weight loss!

Just saying “eat less” doesn’t factor the crazy biological, physiological, and/or emotional challenges we face every day:

We might eat when we’re stressed, depressed, or bored.

We can’t eat just one potato chip without eating an entire bag.

We absentmindedly grab a handful of Peanut M&M’s when visiting Kevin in Accounting.

Not only that, but even when we pay attention to what we eat, studies show that we often underestimate our calorie consumption by 30+%.

Crap. This just keeps getting worse! What’s a smart nerd like you supposed to do in this scenario!?

If we KNOW we overeat without realizing it, and we KNOW restricting calories is tough to stick with long term, then the only path forward is to attack the problem differently.

Not with fit tea.

Nor with body wraps.

Not with “muscle confusion.”

But with science, math, and psychology.

What to Eat For Weight Loss

If weight loss is the goal, we need to shift our food choices to foods that give us more “bang for our buck” – healthy, filling, nutritious foods that fill us up and makes us less likely to overeat calorie-bomb foods.

These foods allow us to feel full, but still keep us under our calorie goal for the day:

Protein like meat, fish, eggs, and so on.

Fruit like apples, bananas, berries.

Vegetables like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale.

Quinoa, legumes, oats, rice, and potatoes (in moderation).

These are foods that take up a lot of space in our stomach and make us feel full.

Compare this to foods that don’t fill us up, but are loaded with calories – thus making it very easy to overeat without realizing it.

High calorie, easy to overeat foods like bread, fries, pasta.

Soda and juices and sugary coffee beverages.

Candy, cookies, crackers, etc.

To really HAMMER this point home…

As we point out in “Can You Burn Fat and Build Muscle at the Same Time?” here’s what 200 calories look like, thanks to WiseGEEK.

Which ones do you think will make you feel full, and which ones will make you eat more than you realize?

Can you get yourself to stop after 2/3rds of a bagel or a small handful of pasta?

Of course not!

One more example – here’s 200 calories of broccoli:

“Steve, that is an absurd amount of broccoli.”

Yup. It’s also the SAME number of calories as 2/3rds of a bagel (which doesn’t even include the calories from the cream cheese or butter).

Now, it’s insulting to say “You should eat more broccoli and less bagels. There’s yer problem.”

I’m merely pointing this out to emphasize the difference between energy (calories) and volume.

(Hate broccoli and all vegetables? Read this.)

Depending on what you eat, you could feel “OH SO FULL” after your meal or “Why am I already hungry again? NOM NOM NOM.”

Which means…

If you can start to make even SMALL changes, substituting nutrient-dense, calorically-light foods like protein, fruit, and veggies, for junk food – even occasionally, it’s going to shift the energy balance back in the right direction.

You’ll become more likely than not to eat fewer calories than you burn, moving you beneath your daily equilibrium.

Do that consistently, and you start to pull from those fat stores.

And we end up the holy grail: sustainable, non-miserable weight loss.

This is actually the secret sauce for ALL popular diets these days.

As we point out in our “Perfect Diet” article, all the popular diets get you to eat more REAL food and less junk food. They just all have their own unique marketing spin to sell cookbooks and podcast episodes

Let’s look at each of these diets in a nutshell:

Paleo: cut out grains and dairy. Consume only meat, veggies, fruits, and nuts

Keto: cut out ALL carbs. Consume only meat, veggies, nuts, and fatty sauces.

Intermittent Fasting: cut out an entire MEAL every day.

Mediterranean Diet: focus on REAL foods, with whole grains. Cut out processed foods.

Carnivore Diet: Only eat meat. Remove everything else.

Military Diet: Nevermind. Please don’t do this diet.

ANY of the diets above will result in weight loss if you strictly follow the rules, but not for the reason you’d think.

It’s not because we’re designed to eat like cave people (though we are), or that our bodies function differently on a Ketogenic Diet (it does), or even that fasting has plenty of health benefits (it does!).

Those things are like 2% of the reason why they work for weight loss. [2% is a statistic I made up to emphasize the smaller importance of any ancillary benefit compared to the bigger picture]

The other 98%: they make us more likely than not to consume fewer calories on average than we usually eat, which will lead to weight loss in the long term… if you can stick with it.

And each diet has rules and guidelines that speak to the specifics of individual people. We have our own 10-level system at Nerd Fitness that we’re proud of – it promotes small changes and gets results in a unique way.

WHICH DIET SHOULD I PICK To Lose Weight?

In my opinion, you should only follow a strict diet like those above IF you can see yourself sticking with it consistently for the next 10 years.

“Steve, that’s melodramatic. Come on.”

That’s what I was going for.

If a diet sounds too restrictive to stick with permanently, then it’s too restrictive for you to devote weeks or months of your life to!

After all, temporary changes equal temporary results. You’re better off picking a diet that you confidently feel like you can stick with permanently.

Here’s the end goal we’re working towards:

Sustainable weight loss and weight maintenance.

A healthy weight that you can maintain without feeling miserable. Looking in the mirror and being happy with what you see, and knowing that the weight stays off.

And most importantly, our “normal” behavior that allows us to enjoy life but also reach our goals. Not temporary changes. But permanent small adjustments that adjust over time as we start to see results and build momentum.

Sound good?

Let’s get back to basics and start learning about the food we’re putting into our bodies. Cool? Cool.

A PRIMER ON STRENGTH TRAINING

Conservatively speaking, strength training is the greatest thing ever invented in the history of the galaxy.

Okay, so maybe it’s third after electricity and Nintendo.

But I say this to make a point.

There’s a huge difference between “exercise” and strength training when it comes to body composition.

We cover this in a very in-depth manner in our “Can I Lose Weight and Build Muscle?” article – which is one giant Harry Potter allegory that you’ll love – but I’ll share the basics right here.

If your goal is consistent, permanent, healthy weight loss and weight management, 80-90% of the battle will be nutrition,

When it comes to exercise, you really only have TWO things to focus on:

What exercise do you love? Good. Do that.

Strength train as often as you have time for.

I’ll touch on the first one quickly.

When you do exercise you love, you’re giving your heart and body a good workout. You’re reminding yourself “I am living healthy” and THUS you should be more likely than not to stick with your healthy eating strategy.

Notice I said “exercise you love.” If you hate running, never run a mile again. Hate going to the gym? Never set foot in one. Hate bootcamps? Me too. Don’t do them.

Instead, go rock climbing, or hiking, or do yoga, or swing dancing, or LARPing. Really, anything that gets you off your ass and moving. Cool? Cool.

How Strength Training Assists Weight Loss

Your body functions differently when you strength train, in all of the right ways.

We have a whole Strength Training 101 sequence that can you get you started, but I’ll whet your appetite with the nerdiest metaphor ever below.

You can find study after study after study that shows you the benefits of strength training for weight management when combined with “calorie restriction.”

Let me explain it here quickly, borrowing from Harry Potter: (You know, the wizard.) At the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, when each student arrives they put on the “Sorting Hat,” an actual hat that determines which House (group) that child will join for his time at Hogwarts. The hat acts almost like a traffic director: “Harry, you will go to Gryffindor! Draco, you will go to Slytherin!”

Your body operates in a VERY similar fashion: every day, it receives new calories (when you eat), and it needs to decide what to do with them! For example: You eat a large Hawaiian pizza and 20 ounces of Mountain Dew. Your body has to do SOMETHING with all those calories.

To keep things simple, let’s look at the 3 most common results.

It’ll sort those calories into one of three Houses:

A: Burn for Fuel. B: Rebuild Muscle. C: Store as Fat.

Your body sorts most of those calories into “Burn for Fuel.” There’s a number of calories your body burns each day just existing: to keep your liver functioning, your heart pumping, your brain operating, and so on – it burns a good chunk of calories just keeping the lights on.

Here are two quick examples:

A 6’, 34-year old male weighing 250 pounds burns 2,300 calories a day just by existing.

A 5’5”, 40-year old female weighing 140 pounds burns 1,350 calories a day just by existing.

Now, if you don’t do any exercise, and you consume MORE calories than the rate you burn each day, the “Sorting Hat” in your body needs to put those calories somewhere! Where do you think it’ll sort them? “C: Store as Fat.”

However, your body’s sorting behavior changes when you strength train. Specifically, when you train in a way that really challenges your muscles. This is completely relative to where you are at in your life right now:

HEAVY weight training might be a 500 lb deadlift or a 5 pound dumbbell curl.

INTENSE bodyweight training might be a handstand push-up or a knee push-up.

When you strength train – by picking up something heavy – your muscles are “broken down” during the exercise itself, and then they rebuild themselves stronger over the next 24-48 hours. Guess what happens during those 24-48 hours? Your body will divert as many calories as possible to “Rebuild Muscle!”

It also diverts additional calories to “Burn as Fuel” to handle this increased “muscle rebuilding” activity.

Which means two amazing things:

Your metabolism is revved up for this time period, burning more calories than normal.

Rebuilding muscle is a calorie taxing activity!

There are significantly fewer calories available for “Store as Fat.”

AND IT GETS BETTER. When you consume fewer calories than your body burns each day, continuing to strength train will cause your body to get even more clever. Let’s imagine a scenario where you’re eating fewer calories than you burn every day:

You strength train regularly, and your muscles break down and need to be rebuilt.

You don’t consume enough calories compared to how many calories your body needs to both rebuild muscle and fuel itself…

So does your body just shut down?

NOPE!

Your body has been preparing for this, by storing any excess calories over the years in the “Store as Fat” house.

This is the moment your body has been saving up for.

This means your body can pull from “Store as Fat” to make sure all the work still gets done, including your daily functions as a human, and rebuilding the muscle. This is the trifecta of physical transformation victory:

You get stronger and keep the muscle you have.

You burn through the fat you’re trying to get rid of.

You’re decreasing your body fat percent and keeping your muscle = look good naked.

This would be a “win-win-win” according to Michael Scott, Regional Manager, Dunder Mifflin Scranton.

BACK TO BASICS: How To Guarantee Successful Weight Loss

If you’re still reading, then there is hope for you yet.

You can do this – but you have to be smart and diligent about it! Stop trying to exercise your way thin, and stop trying to find ‘get fit quick’ solutions.

Instead, take this one day at a time. We’re here for you!

We talk about proper nutrition in our big “Healthy Eaters” guide, and we go more in-depth into the specific foods that we recommend, but it starts here:

You have to eat fewer calories than you eat now to lose weight, and do so permanently.

The best way to do that is to substitute more protein and veggies onto your plate.

Strength training will supercharge your results, building muscle and burning extra fat.

Understand you’re overeating, and forgive yourself for doing so – most foods have been designed for you to overeat!

YOUR MISSIONS, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT THEM:

#1) Pledge to stop buying snake oil. If you’re not sure, ask yourself “Does this sound too good to be true?” and “What would Steve do?”

In addition: stop doing exercises you hate just to lose weight. Pick exercises you enjoy, and put all of your focus on slowly adjusting your nutrition instead!

Shun the Dark Side and come back to the Light!

#2) Be deliberate in your decisions. Every calorie counts. Every decision counts. So make ONE different decision as a result of you being more aware of what you put in your body.

Drinking water instead of soda or juice.

Swapping out a salad for fries once per week. It all counts, but make your decision deliberate.

You’re a smart person. You know what foods should be daily staples, and what foods should be occasional treats. It all counts. So make ONE decision differently to prove to yourself that you can change.

#3) Educate yourself on the serving size of ONE food that you eat regularly. Google it. Find out if what you THINK is a serving and what’s actually in a serving is anywhere close to accurate.

You might be surprised to find out:

A serving of pasta is HALF the size of what you normally eat with your meal.

How much peanut butter is considered a serving (hint: it ain’t much).

There are 2.5 servings in that one bottle of Green Machine Naked Juice.

I don’t want you to change the food or the portions yet. I just want you to educate yourself on what you’re eating, and compare it to how much you thought you were eating.

#4) Do a strength training routine! We have 15 free circuit training routines and our Beginner Bodyweight Routine is super popular. We also have a whole Strength 101 article series that gets you from “newbie to barbell” quickly.

While we’re hurtling down this rabbit hole of nutrition, calories, food, and happiness, I’d love you to leave a comment below:

“What is the biggest question you have around nutrition, strength training, and weight loss?”

-Steve

PS: I know this article covers a LOT, and my hope with it is to inspire, educate, and get you fired up. However, you might still be super overwhelmed and lost. I get it!

If that sounds like you, and you’re looking for professional guidance, custom strength training routines just for your situation, and expert accountability, check out our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program!

Schedule your free call and tell us your story! We’d love to hear from you, and we can decide together if we’re a good fit for each other! Simply click the image below for more details:

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Photo source: A good Sunday to you, Can I have your bicycle, Speed!, Swimming pool, Pizza lab, Dinner is set, Happy monday!, Speed.

“Why Can’t I Lose Weight?” The 10 Uncomfortable Truths Holding You Back published first on https://dietariouspage.tumblr.com/

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lindafrancois · 5 years

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“Why Can’t I Lose Weight?” The 10 Uncomfortable Truths Holding You Back

“Why can’t I lose weight, Steve?”

This question breaks my heart every time I hear it. And I hear it multiple times per day from frustrated people like yourself.quite often.

We’ll tackle today’s topic with statistics, science, and plenty of Harry Potter analogies. This is Nerd Fitness after all.

We’ll go over:

Why I hate the nutrition industry.

How much exercise do I need to do to lose weight?

How your metabolism responds to a calorie deficit.

The science of fat loss.

What to eat for weight loss.

Which diet should you pick?

The difference between strength training and exercise.

How strength training assists weight loss.

Small changes for successful weight loss.

Let’s jump in, Scuba Steve style, so you can start seeing results!

WHY THE NUTRITION INDUSTRY MAKES ME SO ANGRY

I took this picture walking around Manhattan last week:

There is some SERIOUS psychological warfare going on here, and it hurts my soul.

For starters, they advertise as “THE” flat belly tea.

This means there are many other companies selling similar products, which would ALSO lead me to believe this is a lucrative product to sell!

They list every fitness buzzword and term every marketer uses when it comes to selling health and fitness: gluten free, “removes waste,” organic, “burn fat,”

Including some real head scratchers.

“Strengthen your colon?”

How the hell do you strengthen your colon?!

This reminds me of the brilliant Saturday Night Live skit about “Colon Blow” cereal:

But I digest digress…

People are buying this stuff, even if they know it probably won’t work.

Like buying a lottery ticket even when we know the odds of winning are 0% – what we’re really buying is “hope”:

Hope that this will actually work – unlike the last 10 attempts.

Hope we can overcome 20 years of bad choices with a beverage.

Hope that this product will give us the confidence and self love we deserve.

Don’t get me wrong.

“Hope is a good thing, and no good thing ever dies.”

I just HATE when hope gets weaponized to sell you expensive snake oil and pretty-packaged fluff.

This is what we are rebelling against here in the NF Rebellion: marketers and companies who are crappy enough to prey on our hopes and fears and sell snake-oil in a bottle.

We’re also rebelling against that voice in our head that talks down to us, calls us failures for not getting in shape yet, and berates us every time we break down and eat a cookie.

I say no more.

Let’s fight fire with fire science.

How much exercise do I need to do to lose weight?

There are a few generally accepted truths when it comes to weight loss.

All of these are controversial, vary wildly depending on your weight and body fat percentage, and will differ from person to person.

Setting all of that aside, I’m going to try and keep things simple just to prove my point.

Let’s go with an (understandably) oversimplified look at weight loss: a pound of fat equals around 3,500 calories.

This would mean you’ll need to either eat 3,500 less calories, or burn an extra 3,500 calories to lose 1 pound.

So…how long does it take to burn 3,500 additional calories per week? Let me answer a question with another question:

…How many hours do you have?

Studies show you’ll burn an extra 100 calories when walking or running a mile.

So, you would need to be running/walking an additional 5 miles per day, 7 days a week, to lose one pound per week.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to run an extra 5 miles a day. Nor do I want to.

Not only that, but as you’ll see below – this idea of just burning an extra 500 calories per day to lose a pound a week only works early on.

Here are three such reports:

Many people develop increased appetites as a result of exercise, which leads to no weight loss. Time Magazine got in trouble for pointing this out – even though they were right!

This 2011 study came to the conclusion, “In overweight and obese populations… our results show that isolated aerobic exercise is not an effective weight loss therapy.”

What I’m trying to say, and a lesson we try to deeply understand at Nerd Fitness: “you can’t outrun your fork”

…and the bad news isn’t done.

How our metabolism responds to a caloric deficit (our bodies ruin everything!)

When you start to lose weight, your resting metabolism slows down.

You might think this is some sort of evil sorcery worthy of “He Who Must Not Be Named,” but unfortunately – it’s just 2nd grade math.

When you start to lose weight, there is less of you to ‘manage.’

Here is the estimated daily resting calorie burn (“sit on your ass all day”) of a 35-year old male nerd at 3 very different weights:

300 lbs: 2,600 calories.

250 lbs: 2,300 calories.

200 lbs: 2,000 calories.

WHAT THIS MEANS: Unless you adjust your calorie intake as your weight decreases… your previous calorie intake amount becomes less and less effective at weight loss, until you hit an equilibrium.

In order for him to lose the next 50 pounds, he’ll need to decrease his caloric intake even more, and then STAY at that calorie consumption to keep the weight off.

In economic terms, this is called “diminishing marginal returns.”

And then it gets even worse!

There are buckets of anecdotal evidence of a bodily feature called “adaptive thermogenesis.”

Which has nothing to do with the band Genesis – though feel free to listen to “Invisible Touch” right now:

youtube

It might soften the blow while you learn about “adaptive thermogenesis.”

This term refers to the process in which our bodies will adjust based on how many calories we burn – and do whatever it can to preserve the body fat we have.

As pointed out in this article above:

This is why so many people can LOSE weight, but can’t seem to keep the weight off.

These things cause our bodies to crave food, to try and store food, and make it tough for us to keep our calorie intake under control, because chocolate cake.

To Recap:

You can’t exercise your way to weight loss.

Your metabolism slows down when you lose weight.

Your environment and food scientists are trying to get you to overeat.

Your body will try to keep its fat stores.

Even when you lose the weight, your body wants to keep the fat it has.

If you lose weight, you have to keep working on it or you’ll put the weight back on.

This is all terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news.

I know, I know.

However, there is HOPE!

And here at Nerd Fitness – and in the Star Wars universe – rebellions are built on hope.

We have thousands of success stories from people who thought they couldn’t lose weight…until they did.

People HAVE lost weight, and kept it off. People who are older, bigger, have more children, less money, more illnesses, and bigger hardships than you.

It’s a constant battle, but one that’s absolutely worth fighting.

And this means that you are not broken. You don’t have metabolic damage. You are not doomed. Sure, you’re flawed. But so are your heroes .

You might be playing life on “Legendary” difficulty, but people like you have succeeded.

It starts by using all of the tools at our disposal, because the forces working against us are doing the same.

Let’s get nerdy.

The Science of Fat Loss

YES, it would be awesome if you could drink a tea, or wrap yourself in plastic, and it would somehow magically make you lose weight or fat.

YUP, it would be amazing if a 30 minute bootcamp class was enough to still allow you to eat junk food all day every day and not gain a pound.

YEAH, it would be amazing if you could take a magic pill that reversed the past decade of damage you’ve done to your body.

It would also be cool if superheroes were real and I could fly.

Well, not like that.

Come on, Aquaman. People can see you.

Anyways!

We live in a world of science, physics, and thermodynamics.

This means we should ALWAYS look at life through the following lenses:

Occam’s Razor: The simplest explanation is PROBABLY the correct one.

Law of energy: Energy can’t be created or destroyed, only transformed.

Reality: If it sounds TOO good to be true, it probably is.

Let’s apply this to our waistlines:

If we are overweight…

It’s not because we have “toxins” in our body that need to be flushed out.

It’s not because we didn’t spend enough time in the “fat-burning” zone during our “muscle confusion” bootcamp.

It’s not because we picked the wrong ‘fat burning’ product tea.

These are all pseudoscience buzz terms to sell products, and have no truth to their claims.

Occam’s Razor dictates the simplest solution is PROBABLY the right one.

So what’s the simple explanation to why we’re overweight?

Every day, we consume food that gets transformed into energy.

This food has three options:

Fuel our bodily functions: fuel our organs, regulate our body temperature, etc.

Pass through as waste: pee and poop.

Get stored as fat: saved for a rainy day.

If we are overweight, we are consuming too much ‘energy’ every day. Our body doesn’t need all of it, so too much is being stored as fat consistently.

Which brings us to the main point of our nutritional focus:

If weight loss is our goal, we must consume FEWER calories than we burn on a consistent basis.

By doing so, our body HAS no choice but to dip into that “rainy day” fund of fat stores to still get all of its bodily tasks done each day.

Do this consistently, and that’s how we end up with a lower number on the scale and a smaller pants size.

“Steve I know I should eat less. It’s doing it consistently that’s the tough part.

Have you tried CAKE?!”

Great point.

And yes, cake is awesome.

But we have to start somewhere.

And it starts here: we need to eat fewer calories, but it ALSO has to be sustainable and enjoyable, otherwise we’ll never stick with it.

And temporary changes produce temporary results. We want permanent weight loss!

Just saying “eat less” doesn’t factor the crazy biological, physiological, and/or emotional challenges we face every day:

We might eat when we’re stressed, depressed, or bored.

We can’t eat just one potato chip without eating an entire bag.

We absentmindedly grab a handful of Peanut M&M’s when visiting Kevin in Accounting.

Not only that, but even when we pay attention to what we eat, studies show that we often underestimate our calorie consumption by 30+%.

Crap. This just keeps getting worse! What’s a smart nerd like you supposed to do in this scenario!?

If we KNOW we overeat without realizing it, and we KNOW restricting calories is tough to stick with long term, then the only path forward is to attack the problem differently.

Not with fit tea.

Nor with body wraps.

Not with “muscle confusion.”

But with science, math, and psychology.

What to Eat For Weight Loss

These foods allow us to feel full, but still keep us under our calorie goal for the day:

Protein like meat, fish, eggs, and so on.

Fruit like apples, bananas, berries.

Vegetables like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale.

Quinoa, legumes, oats, rice, and potatoes (in moderation).

These are foods that take up a lot of space in our stomach and make us feel full.

Compare this to foods that don’t fill us up, but are loaded with calories – thus making it very easy to overeat without realizing it.

High calorie, easy to overeat foods like bread, fries, pasta.

Soda and juices and sugary coffee beverages.

Candy, cookies, crackers, etc.

To really HAMMER this point home…

As we point out in “Can You Burn Fat and Build Muscle at the Same Time?” here’s what 200 calories look like, thanks to WiseGEEK.

Which ones do you think will make you feel full, and which ones will make you eat more than you realize?

Can you get yourself to stop after 2/3rds of a bagel or a small handful of pasta?

Of course not!

One more example – here’s 200 calories of broccoli:

“Steve, that is an absurd amount of broccoli.”

Yup. It’s also the SAME number of calories as 2/3rds of a bagel (which doesn’t even include the calories from the cream cheese or butter).

Now, it’s insulting to say “You should eat more broccoli and less bagels. There’s yer problem.”

I’m merely pointing this out to emphasize the difference between energy (calories) and volume.

(Hate broccoli and all vegetables? Read this.)

Depending on what you eat, you could feel “OH SO FULL” after your meal or “Why am I already hungry again? NOM NOM NOM.”

Which means…

You’ll become more likely than not to eat fewer calories than you burn, moving you beneath your daily equilibrium.

Do that consistently, and you start to pull from those fat stores.

And we end up the holy grail: sustainable, non-miserable weight loss.

This is actually the secret sauce for ALL popular diets these days.

Let’s look at each of these diets in a nutshell:

Paleo: cut out grains and dairy. Consume only meat, veggies, fruits, and nuts

Keto: cut out ALL carbs. Consume only meat, veggies, nuts, and fatty sauces.

Intermittent Fasting: cut out an entire MEAL every day.

Mediterranean Diet: focus on REAL foods, with whole grains. Cut out processed foods.

Carnivore Diet: Only eat meat. Remove everything else.

Military Diet: Nevermind. Please don’t do this diet.

ANY of the diets above will result in weight loss if you strictly follow the rules, but not for the reason you’d think.

Those things are like 2% of the reason why they work for weight loss. [2% is a statistic I made up to emphasize the smaller importance of any ancillary benefit compared to the bigger picture]

The other 98%: they make us more likely than not to consume fewer calories on average than we usually eat, which will lead to weight loss in the long term… if you can stick with it.

WHICH DIET SHOULD I PICK To Lose Weight?

In my opinion, you should only follow a strict diet like those above IF you can see yourself sticking with it consistently for the next 10 years.

“Steve, that’s melodramatic. Come on.”

That’s what I was going for.

If a diet sounds too restrictive to stick with permanently, then it’s too restrictive for you to devote weeks or months of your life to!

After all, temporary changes equal temporary results. You’re better off picking a diet that you confidently feel like you can stick with permanently.

Here’s the end goal we’re working towards:

Sustainable weight loss and weight maintenance.

A healthy weight that you can maintain without feeling miserable. Looking in the mirror and being happy with what you see, and knowing that the weight stays off.

Sound good?

Let’s get back to basics and start learning about the food we’re putting into our bodies. Cool? Cool.

A PRIMER ON STRENGTH TRAINING

Conservatively speaking, strength training is the greatest thing ever invented in the history of the galaxy.

Okay, so maybe it’s third after electricity and Nintendo.

But I say this to make a point.

There’s a huge difference between “exercise” and strength training when it comes to body composition.

If your goal is consistent, permanent, healthy weight loss and weight management, 80-90% of the battle will be nutrition,

When it comes to exercise, you really only have TWO things to focus on:

What exercise do you love? Good. Do that.

Strength train as often as you have time for.

I’ll touch on the first one quickly.

Notice I said “exercise you love.” If you hate running, never run a mile again. Hate going to the gym? Never set foot in one. Hate bootcamps? Me too. Don’t do them.

Instead, go rock climbing, or hiking, or do yoga, or swing dancing, or LARPing. Really, anything that gets you off your ass and moving. Cool? Cool.

How Strength Training Assists Weight Loss

Your body functions differently when you strength train, in all of the right ways.

We have a whole Strength Training 101 sequence that can you get you started, but I’ll whet your appetite with the nerdiest metaphor ever below.

You can find study after study after study that shows you the benefits of strength training for weight management when combined with “calorie restriction.”

To keep things simple, let’s look at the 3 most common results.

It’ll sort those calories into one of three Houses:

A: Burn for Fuel. B: Rebuild Muscle. C: Store as Fat.

Here are two quick examples:

A 6’, 34-year old male weighing 250 pounds burns 2,300 calories a day just by existing.

A 5’5”, 40-year old female weighing 140 pounds burns 1,350 calories a day just by existing.

HEAVY weight training might be a 500 lb deadlift or a 5 pound dumbbell curl.

INTENSE bodyweight training might be a handstand push-up or a knee push-up.

It also diverts additional calories to “Burn as Fuel” to handle this increased “muscle rebuilding” activity.

Which means two amazing things:

Your metabolism is revved up for this time period, burning more calories than normal.

Rebuilding muscle is a calorie taxing activity!

There are significantly fewer calories available for “Store as Fat.”

You strength train regularly, and your muscles break down and need to be rebuilt.

You don’t consume enough calories compared to how many calories your body needs to both rebuild muscle and fuel itself…

So does your body just shut down?

NOPE!

Your body has been preparing for this, by storing any excess calories over the years in the “Store as Fat” house.

This is the moment your body has been saving up for.

You get stronger and keep the muscle you have.

You burn through the fat you’re trying to get rid of.

You’re decreasing your body fat percent and keeping your muscle = look good naked.

This would be a “win-win-win” according to Michael Scott, Regional Manager, Dunder Mifflin Scranton.

BACK TO BASICS: How To Guarantee Successful Weight Loss

If you’re still reading, then there is hope for you yet.

You can do this – but you have to be smart and diligent about it! Stop trying to exercise your way thin, and stop trying to find ‘get fit quick’ solutions.

Instead, take this one day at a time. We’re here for you!

We talk about proper nutrition in our big “Healthy Eaters” guide, and we go more in-depth into the specific foods that we recommend, but it starts here:

You have to eat fewer calories than you eat now to lose weight, and do so permanently.

The best way to do that is to substitute more protein and veggies onto your plate.

Strength training will supercharge your results, building muscle and burning extra fat.

Understand you’re overeating, and forgive yourself for doing so – most foods have been designed for you to overeat!

YOUR MISSIONS, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT THEM:

#1) Pledge to stop buying snake oil. If you’re not sure, ask yourself “Does this sound too good to be true?” and “What would Steve do?”

In addition: stop doing exercises you hate just to lose weight. Pick exercises you enjoy, and put all of your focus on slowly adjusting your nutrition instead!

Shun the Dark Side and come back to the Light!

#2) Be deliberate in your decisions. Every calorie counts. Every decision counts. So make ONE different decision as a result of you being more aware of what you put in your body.

Drinking water instead of soda or juice.

Swapping out a salad for fries once per week. It all counts, but make your decision deliberate.

#3) Educate yourself on the serving size of ONE food that you eat regularly. Google it. Find out if what you THINK is a serving and what’s actually in a serving is anywhere close to accurate.

You might be surprised to find out:

A serving of pasta is HALF the size of what you normally eat with your meal.

How much peanut butter is considered a serving (hint: it ain’t much).

There are 2.5 servings in that one bottle of Green Machine Naked Juice.

I don’t want you to change the food or the portions yet. I just want you to educate yourself on what you’re eating, and compare it to how much you thought you were eating.

While we’re hurtling down this rabbit hole of nutrition, calories, food, and happiness, I’d love you to leave a comment below:

“What is the biggest question you have around nutrition, strength training, and weight loss?”

-Steve

PS: I know this article covers a LOT, and my hope with it is to inspire, educate, and get you fired up. However, you might still be super overwhelmed and lost. I get it!

Schedule your free call and tell us your story! We’d love to hear from you, and we can decide together if we’re a good fit for each other! Simply click the image below for more details:

###

Photo source: A good Sunday to you, Can I have your bicycle, Speed!, Swimming pool, Pizza lab, Dinner is set, Happy monday!, Speed.

“Why Can’t I Lose Weight?” The 10 Uncomfortable Truths Holding You Back published first on https://dietariouspage.tumblr.com/

0 notes

lindafrancois · 5 years

Text

“Why Can’t I Lose Weight?” The 10 Uncomfortable Truths Holding You Back

“Why can’t I lose weight, Steve?”

This question breaks my heart every time I hear it. And I hear it multiple times per day from frustrated people like yourself.quite often.

We’ll tackle today’s topic with statistics, science, and plenty of Harry Potter analogies. This is Nerd Fitness after all.

We’ll go over:

Why I hate the nutrition industry.

How much exercise do I need to do to lose weight?

How your metabolism responds to a calorie deficit.

The science of fat loss.

What to eat for weight loss.

Which diet should you pick?

The difference between strength training and exercise.

How strength training assists weight loss.

Small changes for successful weight loss.

Let’s jump in, Scuba Steve style, so you can start seeing results!

WHY THE NUTRITION INDUSTRY MAKES ME SO ANGRY

I took this picture walking around Manhattan last week:

There is some SERIOUS psychological warfare going on here, and it hurts my soul.

For starters, they advertise as “THE” flat belly tea.

This means there are many other companies selling similar products, which would ALSO lead me to believe this is a lucrative product to sell!

They list every fitness buzzword and term every marketer uses when it comes to selling health and fitness: gluten free, “removes waste,” organic, “burn fat,”

Including some real head scratchers.

“Strengthen your colon?”

How the hell do you strengthen your colon?!

This reminds me of the brilliant Saturday Night Live skit about “Colon Blow” cereal:

But I digest digress…

People are buying this stuff, even if they know it probably won’t work.

Like buying a lottery ticket even when we know the odds of winning are 0% – what we’re really buying is “hope”:

Hope that this will actually work – unlike the last 10 attempts.

Hope we can overcome 20 years of bad choices with a beverage.

Hope that this product will give us the confidence and self love we deserve.

Don’t get me wrong.

“Hope is a good thing, and no good thing ever dies.”

I just HATE when hope gets weaponized to sell you expensive snake oil and pretty-packaged fluff.

This is what we are rebelling against here in the NF Rebellion: marketers and companies who are crappy enough to prey on our hopes and fears and sell snake-oil in a bottle.

We’re also rebelling against that voice in our head that talks down to us, calls us failures for not getting in shape yet, and berates us every time we break down and eat a cookie.

I say no more.

Let’s fight fire with fire science.

How much exercise do I need to do to lose weight?

There are a few generally accepted truths when it comes to weight loss.

All of these are controversial, vary wildly depending on your weight and body fat percentage, and will differ from person to person.

Setting all of that aside, I’m going to try and keep things simple just to prove my point.

Let’s go with an (understandably) oversimplified look at weight loss: a pound of fat equals around 3,500 calories.

This would mean you’ll need to either eat 3,500 less calories, or burn an extra 3,500 calories to lose 1 pound.

So…how long does it take to burn 3,500 additional calories per week? Let me answer a question with another question:

…How many hours do you have?

Studies show you’ll burn an extra 100 calories when walking or running a mile.

So, you would need to be running/walking an additional 5 miles per day, 7 days a week, to lose one pound per week.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to run an extra 5 miles a day. Nor do I want to.

Not only that, but as you’ll see below – this idea of just burning an extra 500 calories per day to lose a pound a week only works early on.

Here are three such reports:

Many people develop increased appetites as a result of exercise, which leads to no weight loss. Time Magazine got in trouble for pointing this out – even though they were right!

This 2011 study came to the conclusion, “In overweight and obese populations… our results show that isolated aerobic exercise is not an effective weight loss therapy.”

What I’m trying to say, and a lesson we try to deeply understand at Nerd Fitness: “you can’t outrun your fork”

…and the bad news isn’t done.

How our metabolism responds to a caloric deficit (our bodies ruin everything!)

When you start to lose weight, your resting metabolism slows down.

You might think this is some sort of evil sorcery worthy of “He Who Must Not Be Named,” but unfortunately – it’s just 2nd grade math.

When you start to lose weight, there is less of you to ‘manage.’

Here is the estimated daily resting calorie burn (“sit on your ass all day”) of a 35-year old male nerd at 3 very different weights:

300 lbs: 2,600 calories.

250 lbs: 2,300 calories.

200 lbs: 2,000 calories.

WHAT THIS MEANS: Unless you adjust your calorie intake as your weight decreases… your previous calorie intake amount becomes less and less effective at weight loss, until you hit an equilibrium.

In order for him to lose the next 50 pounds, he’ll need to decrease his caloric intake even more, and then STAY at that calorie consumption to keep the weight off.

In economic terms, this is called “diminishing marginal returns.”

And then it gets even worse!

There are buckets of anecdotal evidence of a bodily feature called “adaptive thermogenesis.”

Which has nothing to do with the band Genesis – though feel free to listen to “Invisible Touch” right now:

youtube

It might soften the blow while you learn about “adaptive thermogenesis.”

This term refers to the process in which our bodies will adjust based on how many calories we burn – and do whatever it can to preserve the body fat we have.

As pointed out in this article above:

This is why so many people can LOSE weight, but can’t seem to keep the weight off.

These things cause our bodies to crave food, to try and store food, and make it tough for us to keep our calorie intake under control, because chocolate cake.

To Recap:

You can’t exercise your way to weight loss.

Your metabolism slows down when you lose weight.

Your environment and food scientists are trying to get you to overeat.

Your body will try to keep its fat stores.

Even when you lose the weight, your body wants to keep the fat it has.

If you lose weight, you have to keep working on it or you’ll put the weight back on.

This is all terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news.

I know, I know.

However, there is HOPE!

And here at Nerd Fitness – and in the Star Wars universe – rebellions are built on hope.

We have thousands of success stories from people who thought they couldn’t lose weight…until they did.

People HAVE lost weight, and kept it off. People who are older, bigger, have more children, less money, more illnesses, and bigger hardships than you.

It’s a constant battle, but one that’s absolutely worth fighting.

And this means that you are not broken. You don’t have metabolic damage. You are not doomed. Sure, you’re flawed. But so are your heroes .

You might be playing life on “Legendary” difficulty, but people like you have succeeded.

It starts by using all of the tools at our disposal, because the forces working against us are doing the same.

Let’s get nerdy.

The Science of Fat Loss

YES, it would be awesome if you could drink a tea, or wrap yourself in plastic, and it would somehow magically make you lose weight or fat.

YUP, it would be amazing if a 30 minute bootcamp class was enough to still allow you to eat junk food all day every day and not gain a pound.

YEAH, it would be amazing if you could take a magic pill that reversed the past decade of damage you’ve done to your body.

It would also be cool if superheroes were real and I could fly.

Well, not like that.

Come on, Aquaman. People can see you.

Anyways!

We live in a world of science, physics, and thermodynamics.

This means we should ALWAYS look at life through the following lenses:

Occam’s Razor: The simplest explanation is PROBABLY the correct one.

Law of energy: Energy can’t be created or destroyed, only transformed.

Reality: If it sounds TOO good to be true, it probably is.

Let’s apply this to our waistlines:

If we are overweight…

It’s not because we have “toxins” in our body that need to be flushed out.

It’s not because we didn’t spend enough time in the “fat-burning” zone during our “muscle confusion” bootcamp.

It’s not because we picked the wrong ‘fat burning’ product tea.

These are all pseudoscience buzz terms to sell products, and have no truth to their claims.

Occam’s Razor dictates the simplest solution is PROBABLY the right one.

So what’s the simple explanation to why we’re overweight?

Every day, we consume food that gets transformed into energy.

This food has three options:

Fuel our bodily functions: fuel our organs, regulate our body temperature, etc.

Pass through as waste: pee and poop.

Get stored as fat: saved for a rainy day.

If we are overweight, we are consuming too much ‘energy’ every day. Our body doesn’t need all of it, so too much is being stored as fat consistently.

Which brings us to the main point of our nutritional focus:

If weight loss is our goal, we must consume FEWER calories than we burn on a consistent basis.

By doing so, our body HAS no choice but to dip into that “rainy day” fund of fat stores to still get all of its bodily tasks done each day.

Do this consistently, and that’s how we end up with a lower number on the scale and a smaller pants size.

“Steve I know I should eat less. It’s doing it consistently that’s the tough part.

Have you tried CAKE?!”

Great point.

And yes, cake is awesome.

But we have to start somewhere.

And it starts here: we need to eat fewer calories, but it ALSO has to be sustainable and enjoyable, otherwise we’ll never stick with it.

And temporary changes produce temporary results. We want permanent weight loss!

Just saying “eat less” doesn’t factor the crazy biological, physiological, and/or emotional challenges we face every day:

We might eat when we’re stressed, depressed, or bored.

We can’t eat just one potato chip without eating an entire bag.

We absentmindedly grab a handful of Peanut M&M’s when visiting Kevin in Accounting.

Not only that, but even when we pay attention to what we eat, studies show that we often underestimate our calorie consumption by 30+%.

Crap. This just keeps getting worse! What’s a smart nerd like you supposed to do in this scenario!?

If we KNOW we overeat without realizing it, and we KNOW restricting calories is tough to stick with long term, then the only path forward is to attack the problem differently.

Not with fit tea.

Nor with body wraps.

Not with “muscle confusion.”

But with science, math, and psychology.

What to Eat For Weight Loss

These foods allow us to feel full, but still keep us under our calorie goal for the day:

Protein like meat, fish, eggs, and so on.

Fruit like apples, bananas, berries.

Vegetables like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale.

Quinoa, legumes, oats, rice, and potatoes (in moderation).

These are foods that take up a lot of space in our stomach and make us feel full.

Compare this to foods that don’t fill us up, but are loaded with calories – thus making it very easy to overeat without realizing it.

High calorie, easy to overeat foods like bread, fries, pasta.

Soda and juices and sugary coffee beverages.

Candy, cookies, crackers, etc.

To really HAMMER this point home…

As we point out in “Can You Burn Fat and Build Muscle at the Same Time?” here’s what 200 calories look like, thanks to WiseGEEK.

Which ones do you think will make you feel full, and which ones will make you eat more than you realize?

Can you get yourself to stop after 2/3rds of a bagel or a small handful of pasta?

Of course not!

One more example – here’s 200 calories of broccoli:

“Steve, that is an absurd amount of broccoli.”

Yup. It’s also the SAME number of calories as 2/3rds of a bagel (which doesn’t even include the calories from the cream cheese or butter).

Now, it’s insulting to say “You should eat more broccoli and less bagels. There’s yer problem.”

I’m merely pointing this out to emphasize the difference between energy (calories) and volume.

(Hate broccoli and all vegetables? Read this.)

Depending on what you eat, you could feel “OH SO FULL” after your meal or “Why am I already hungry again? NOM NOM NOM.”

Which means…

You’ll become more likely than not to eat fewer calories than you burn, moving you beneath your daily equilibrium.

Do that consistently, and you start to pull from those fat stores.

And we end up the holy grail: sustainable, non-miserable weight loss.

This is actually the secret sauce for ALL popular diets these days.

Let’s look at each of these diets in a nutshell:

Paleo: cut out grains and dairy. Consume only meat, veggies, fruits, and nuts

Keto: cut out ALL carbs. Consume only meat, veggies, nuts, and fatty sauces.

Intermittent Fasting: cut out an entire MEAL every day.

Mediterranean Diet: focus on REAL foods, with whole grains. Cut out processed foods.

Carnivore Diet: Only eat meat. Remove everything else.

Military Diet: Nevermind. Please don’t do this diet.

ANY of the diets above will result in weight loss if you strictly follow the rules, but not for the reason you’d think.

Those things are like 2% of the reason why they work for weight loss. [2% is a statistic I made up to emphasize the smaller importance of any ancillary benefit compared to the bigger picture]

The other 98%: they make us more likely than not to consume fewer calories on average than we usually eat, which will lead to weight loss in the long term… if you can stick with it.

WHICH DIET SHOULD I PICK To Lose Weight?

In my opinion, you should only follow a strict diet like those above IF you can see yourself sticking with it consistently for the next 10 years.

“Steve, that’s melodramatic. Come on.”

That’s what I was going for.

If a diet sounds too restrictive to stick with permanently, then it’s too restrictive for you to devote weeks or months of your life to!

After all, temporary changes equal temporary results. You’re better off picking a diet that you confidently feel like you can stick with permanently.

Here’s the end goal we’re working towards:

Sustainable weight loss and weight maintenance.

A healthy weight that you can maintain without feeling miserable. Looking in the mirror and being happy with what you see, and knowing that the weight stays off.

Sound good?

Let’s get back to basics and start learning about the food we’re putting into our bodies. Cool? Cool.

A PRIMER ON STRENGTH TRAINING

Conservatively speaking, strength training is the greatest thing ever invented in the history of the galaxy.

Okay, so maybe it’s third after electricity and Nintendo.

But I say this to make a point.

There’s a huge difference between “exercise” and strength training when it comes to body composition.

If your goal is consistent, permanent, healthy weight loss and weight management, 80-90% of the battle will be nutrition,

When it comes to exercise, you really only have TWO things to focus on:

What exercise do you love? Good. Do that.

Strength train as often as you have time for.

I’ll touch on the first one quickly.

Notice I said “exercise you love.” If you hate running, never run a mile again. Hate going to the gym? Never set foot in one. Hate bootcamps? Me too. Don’t do them.

Instead, go rock climbing, or hiking, or do yoga, or swing dancing, or LARPing. Really, anything that gets you off your ass and moving. Cool? Cool.

How Strength Training Assists Weight Loss

Your body functions differently when you strength train, in all of the right ways.

We have a whole Strength Training 101 sequence that can you get you started, but I’ll whet your appetite with the nerdiest metaphor ever below.

You can find study after study after study that shows you the benefits of strength training for weight management when combined with “calorie restriction.”

To keep things simple, let’s look at the 3 most common results.

It’ll sort those calories into one of three Houses:

A: Burn for Fuel. B: Rebuild Muscle. C: Store as Fat.

Here are two quick examples:

A 6’, 34-year old male weighing 250 pounds burns 2,300 calories a day just by existing.

A 5’5”, 40-year old female weighing 140 pounds burns 1,350 calories a day just by existing.

HEAVY weight training might be a 500 lb deadlift or a 5 pound dumbbell curl.

INTENSE bodyweight training might be a handstand push-up or a knee push-up.

It also diverts additional calories to “Burn as Fuel” to handle this increased “muscle rebuilding” activity.

Which means two amazing things:

Your metabolism is revved up for this time period, burning more calories than normal.

Rebuilding muscle is a calorie taxing activity!

There are significantly fewer calories available for “Store as Fat.”

You strength train regularly, and your muscles break down and need to be rebuilt.

You don’t consume enough calories compared to how many calories your body needs to both rebuild muscle and fuel itself…

So does your body just shut down?

NOPE!

Your body has been preparing for this, by storing any excess calories over the years in the “Store as Fat” house.

This is the moment your body has been saving up for.

You get stronger and keep the muscle you have.

You burn through the fat you’re trying to get rid of.

You’re decreasing your body fat percent and keeping your muscle = look good naked.

This would be a “win-win-win” according to Michael Scott, Regional Manager, Dunder Mifflin Scranton.

BACK TO BASICS: How To Guarantee Successful Weight Loss

If you’re still reading, then there is hope for you yet.

You can do this – but you have to be smart and diligent about it! Stop trying to exercise your way thin, and stop trying to find ‘get fit quick’ solutions.

Instead, take this one day at a time. We’re here for you!

We talk about proper nutrition in our big “Healthy Eaters” guide, and we go more in-depth into the specific foods that we recommend, but it starts here:

You have to eat fewer calories than you eat now to lose weight, and do so permanently.

The best way to do that is to substitute more protein and veggies onto your plate.

Strength training will supercharge your results, building muscle and burning extra fat.

Understand you’re overeating, and forgive yourself for doing so – most foods have been designed for you to overeat!

YOUR MISSIONS, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT THEM:

#1) Pledge to stop buying snake oil. If you’re not sure, ask yourself “Does this sound too good to be true?” and “What would Steve do?”

In addition: stop doing exercises you hate just to lose weight. Pick exercises you enjoy, and put all of your focus on slowly adjusting your nutrition instead!

Shun the Dark Side and come back to the Light!

#2) Be deliberate in your decisions. Every calorie counts. Every decision counts. So make ONE different decision as a result of you being more aware of what you put in your body.

Drinking water instead of soda or juice.

Swapping out a salad for fries once per week. It all counts, but make your decision deliberate.

#3) Educate yourself on the serving size of ONE food that you eat regularly. Google it. Find out if what you THINK is a serving and what’s actually in a serving is anywhere close to accurate.

You might be surprised to find out:

A serving of pasta is HALF the size of what you normally eat with your meal.

How much peanut butter is considered a serving (hint: it ain’t much).

There are 2.5 servings in that one bottle of Green Machine Naked Juice.

I don’t want you to change the food or the portions yet. I just want you to educate yourself on what you’re eating, and compare it to how much you thought you were eating.

While we’re hurtling down this rabbit hole of nutrition, calories, food, and happiness, I’d love you to leave a comment below:

“What is the biggest question you have around nutrition, strength training, and weight loss?”

-Steve

PS: I know this article covers a LOT, and my hope with it is to inspire, educate, and get you fired up. However, you might still be super overwhelmed and lost. I get it!

Schedule your free call and tell us your story! We’d love to hear from you, and we can decide together if we’re a good fit for each other! Simply click the image below for more details:

###

Photo source: A good Sunday to you, Can I have your bicycle, Speed!, Swimming pool, Pizza lab, Dinner is set, Happy monday!, Speed.

“Why Can’t I Lose Weight?” The 10 Uncomfortable Truths Holding You Back published first on https://dietariouspage.tumblr.com/

0 notes

lindafrancois · 5 years

Text

“Why Can’t I Lose Weight?” The 10 Uncomfortable Truths Holding You Back

“Why can’t I lose weight, Steve?”

This question breaks my heart every time I hear it. And I hear it multiple times per day from frustrated people like yourself.quite often.

We’ll tackle today’s topic with statistics, science, and plenty of Harry Potter analogies. This is Nerd Fitness after all.

We’ll go over:

Why I hate the nutrition industry.

How much exercise do I need to do to lose weight?

How your metabolism responds to a calorie deficit.

The science of fat loss.

What to eat for weight loss.

Which diet should you pick?

The difference between strength training and exercise.

How strength training assists weight loss.

Small changes for successful weight loss.

Let’s jump in, Scuba Steve style, so you can start seeing results!

WHY THE NUTRITION INDUSTRY MAKES ME SO ANGRY

I took this picture walking around Manhattan last week:

There is some SERIOUS psychological warfare going on here, and it hurts my soul.

For starters, they advertise as “THE” flat belly tea.

This means there are many other companies selling similar products, which would ALSO lead me to believe this is a lucrative product to sell!

They list every fitness buzzword and term every marketer uses when it comes to selling health and fitness: gluten free, “removes waste,” organic, “burn fat,”

Including some real head scratchers.

“Strengthen your colon?”

How the hell do you strengthen your colon?!

This reminds me of the brilliant Saturday Night Live skit about “Colon Blow” cereal:

But I digest digress…

People are buying this stuff, even if they know it probably won’t work.

Like buying a lottery ticket even when we know the odds of winning are 0% – what we’re really buying is “hope”:

Hope that this will actually work – unlike the last 10 attempts.

Hope we can overcome 20 years of bad choices with a beverage.

Hope that this product will give us the confidence and self love we deserve.

Don’t get me wrong.

“Hope is a good thing, and no good thing ever dies.”

I just HATE when hope gets weaponized to sell you expensive snake oil and pretty-packaged fluff.

This is what we are rebelling against here in the NF Rebellion: marketers and companies who are crappy enough to prey on our hopes and fears and sell snake-oil in a bottle.

We’re also rebelling against that voice in our head that talks down to us, calls us failures for not getting in shape yet, and berates us every time we break down and eat a cookie.

I say no more.

Let’s fight fire with fire science.

How much exercise do I need to do to lose weight?

There are a few generally accepted truths when it comes to weight loss.

All of these are controversial, vary wildly depending on your weight and body fat percentage, and will differ from person to person.

Setting all of that aside, I’m going to try and keep things simple just to prove my point.

Let’s go with an (understandably) oversimplified look at weight loss: a pound of fat equals around 3,500 calories.

This would mean you’ll need to either eat 3,500 less calories, or burn an extra 3,500 calories to lose 1 pound.

So…how long does it take to burn 3,500 additional calories per week? Let me answer a question with another question:

…How many hours do you have?

Studies show you’ll burn an extra 100 calories when walking or running a mile.

So, you would need to be running/walking an additional 5 miles per day, 7 days a week, to lose one pound per week.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to run an extra 5 miles a day. Nor do I want to.

Not only that, but as you’ll see below – this idea of just burning an extra 500 calories per day to lose a pound a week only works early on.

Here are three such reports:

Many people develop increased appetites as a result of exercise, which leads to no weight loss. Time Magazine got in trouble for pointing this out – even though they were right!

This 2011 study came to the conclusion, “In overweight and obese populations… our results show that isolated aerobic exercise is not an effective weight loss therapy.”

What I’m trying to say, and a lesson we try to deeply understand at Nerd Fitness: “you can’t outrun your fork”

…and the bad news isn’t done.

How our metabolism responds to a caloric deficit (our bodies ruin everything!)

When you start to lose weight, your resting metabolism slows down.

You might think this is some sort of evil sorcery worthy of “He Who Must Not Be Named,” but unfortunately – it’s just 2nd grade math.

When you start to lose weight, there is less of you to ‘manage.’

Here is the estimated daily resting calorie burn (“sit on your ass all day”) of a 35-year old male nerd at 3 very different weights:

300 lbs: 2,600 calories.

250 lbs: 2,300 calories.

200 lbs: 2,000 calories.

WHAT THIS MEANS: Unless you adjust your calorie intake as your weight decreases… your previous calorie intake amount becomes less and less effective at weight loss, until you hit an equilibrium.

In order for him to lose the next 50 pounds, he’ll need to decrease his caloric intake even more, and then STAY at that calorie consumption to keep the weight off.

In economic terms, this is called “diminishing marginal returns.”

And then it gets even worse!

There are buckets of anecdotal evidence of a bodily feature called “adaptive thermogenesis.”

Which has nothing to do with the band Genesis – though feel free to listen to “Invisible Touch” right now:

youtube

It might soften the blow while you learn about “adaptive thermogenesis.”

This term refers to the process in which our bodies will adjust based on how many calories we burn – and do whatever it can to preserve the body fat we have.

As pointed out in this article above:

This is why so many people can LOSE weight, but can’t seem to keep the weight off.

These things cause our bodies to crave food, to try and store food, and make it tough for us to keep our calorie intake under control, because chocolate cake.

To Recap:

You can’t exercise your way to weight loss.

Your metabolism slows down when you lose weight.

Your environment and food scientists are trying to get you to overeat.

Your body will try to keep its fat stores.

Even when you lose the weight, your body wants to keep the fat it has.

If you lose weight, you have to keep working on it or you’ll put the weight back on.

This is all terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news.

I know, I know.

However, there is HOPE!

And here at Nerd Fitness – and in the Star Wars universe – rebellions are built on hope.

We have thousands of success stories from people who thought they couldn’t lose weight…until they did.

People HAVE lost weight, and kept it off. People who are older, bigger, have more children, less money, more illnesses, and bigger hardships than you.

It’s a constant battle, but one that’s absolutely worth fighting.

And this means that you are not broken. You don’t have metabolic damage. You are not doomed. Sure, you’re flawed. But so are your heroes .

You might be playing life on “Legendary” difficulty, but people like you have succeeded.

It starts by using all of the tools at our disposal, because the forces working against us are doing the same.

Let’s get nerdy.

The Science of Fat Loss

YES, it would be awesome if you could drink a tea, or wrap yourself in plastic, and it would somehow magically make you lose weight or fat.

YUP, it would be amazing if a 30 minute bootcamp class was enough to still allow you to eat junk food all day every day and not gain a pound.

YEAH, it would be amazing if you could take a magic pill that reversed the past decade of damage you’ve done to your body.

It would also be cool if superheroes were real and I could fly.

Well, not like that.

Come on, Aquaman. People can see you.

Anyways!

We live in a world of science, physics, and thermodynamics.

This means we should ALWAYS look at life through the following lenses:

Occam’s Razor: The simplest explanation is PROBABLY the correct one.

Law of energy: Energy can’t be created or destroyed, only transformed.

Reality: If it sounds TOO good to be true, it probably is.

Let’s apply this to our waistlines:

If we are overweight…

It’s not because we have “toxins” in our body that need to be flushed out.

It’s not because we didn’t spend enough time in the “fat-burning” zone during our “muscle confusion” bootcamp.

It’s not because we picked the wrong ‘fat burning’ product tea.

These are all pseudoscience buzz terms to sell products, and have no truth to their claims.

Occam’s Razor dictates the simplest solution is PROBABLY the right one.

So what’s the simple explanation to why we’re overweight?

Every day, we consume food that gets transformed into energy.

This food has three options:

Fuel our bodily functions: fuel our organs, regulate our body temperature, etc.

Pass through as waste: pee and poop.

Get stored as fat: saved for a rainy day.

If we are overweight, we are consuming too much ‘energy’ every day. Our body doesn’t need all of it, so too much is being stored as fat consistently.

Which brings us to the main point of our nutritional focus:

If weight loss is our goal, we must consume FEWER calories than we burn on a consistent basis.

By doing so, our body HAS no choice but to dip into that “rainy day” fund of fat stores to still get all of its bodily tasks done each day.

Do this consistently, and that’s how we end up with a lower number on the scale and a smaller pants size.

“Steve I know I should eat less. It’s doing it consistently that’s the tough part.

Have you tried CAKE?!”

Great point.

And yes, cake is awesome.

But we have to start somewhere.

And it starts here: we need to eat fewer calories, but it ALSO has to be sustainable and enjoyable, otherwise we’ll never stick with it.

And temporary changes produce temporary results. We want permanent weight loss!

Just saying “eat less” doesn’t factor the crazy biological, physiological, and/or emotional challenges we face every day:

We might eat when we’re stressed, depressed, or bored.

We can’t eat just one potato chip without eating an entire bag.

We absentmindedly grab a handful of Peanut M&M’s when visiting Kevin in Accounting.

Not only that, but even when we pay attention to what we eat, studies show that we often underestimate our calorie consumption by 30+%.

Crap. This just keeps getting worse! What’s a smart nerd like you supposed to do in this scenario!?

If we KNOW we overeat without realizing it, and we KNOW restricting calories is tough to stick with long term, then the only path forward is to attack the problem differently.

Not with fit tea.

Nor with body wraps.

Not with “muscle confusion.”

But with science, math, and psychology.

What to Eat For Weight Loss

These foods allow us to feel full, but still keep us under our calorie goal for the day:

Protein like meat, fish, eggs, and so on.

Fruit like apples, bananas, berries.

Vegetables like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale.

Quinoa, legumes, oats, rice, and potatoes (in moderation).

These are foods that take up a lot of space in our stomach and make us feel full.

Compare this to foods that don’t fill us up, but are loaded with calories – thus making it very easy to overeat without realizing it.

High calorie, easy to overeat foods like bread, fries, pasta.

Soda and juices and sugary coffee beverages.

Candy, cookies, crackers, etc.

To really HAMMER this point home…

As we point out in “Can You Burn Fat and Build Muscle at the Same Time?” here’s what 200 calories look like, thanks to WiseGEEK.

Which ones do you think will make you feel full, and which ones will make you eat more than you realize?

Can you get yourself to stop after 2/3rds of a bagel or a small handful of pasta?

Of course not!

One more example – here’s 200 calories of broccoli:

“Steve, that is an absurd amount of broccoli.”

Yup. It’s also the SAME number of calories as 2/3rds of a bagel (which doesn’t even include the calories from the cream cheese or butter).

Now, it’s insulting to say “You should eat more broccoli and less bagels. There’s yer problem.”

I’m merely pointing this out to emphasize the difference between energy (calories) and volume.

(Hate broccoli and all vegetables? Read this.)

Depending on what you eat, you could feel “OH SO FULL” after your meal or “Why am I already hungry again? NOM NOM NOM.”

Which means…

You’ll become more likely than not to eat fewer calories than you burn, moving you beneath your daily equilibrium.

Do that consistently, and you start to pull from those fat stores.

And we end up the holy grail: sustainable, non-miserable weight loss.

This is actually the secret sauce for ALL popular diets these days.

Let’s look at each of these diets in a nutshell:

Paleo: cut out grains and dairy. Consume only meat, veggies, fruits, and nuts

Keto: cut out ALL carbs. Consume only meat, veggies, nuts, and fatty sauces.

Intermittent Fasting: cut out an entire MEAL every day.

Mediterranean Diet: focus on REAL foods, with whole grains. Cut out processed foods.

Carnivore Diet: Only eat meat. Remove everything else.

Military Diet: Nevermind. Please don’t do this diet.

ANY of the diets above will result in weight loss if you strictly follow the rules, but not for the reason you’d think.

Those things are like 2% of the reason why they work for weight loss. [2% is a statistic I made up to emphasize the smaller importance of any ancillary benefit compared to the bigger picture]

The other 98%: they make us more likely than not to consume fewer calories on average than we usually eat, which will lead to weight loss in the long term… if you can stick with it.

WHICH DIET SHOULD I PICK To Lose Weight?

In my opinion, you should only follow a strict diet like those above IF you can see yourself sticking with it consistently for the next 10 years.

“Steve, that’s melodramatic. Come on.”

That’s what I was going for.

If a diet sounds too restrictive to stick with permanently, then it’s too restrictive for you to devote weeks or months of your life to!

After all, temporary changes equal temporary results. You’re better off picking a diet that you confidently feel like you can stick with permanently.

Here’s the end goal we’re working towards:

Sustainable weight loss and weight maintenance.

A healthy weight that you can maintain without feeling miserable. Looking in the mirror and being happy with what you see, and knowing that the weight stays off.

Sound good?

Let’s get back to basics and start learning about the food we’re putting into our bodies. Cool? Cool.

A PRIMER ON STRENGTH TRAINING

Conservatively speaking, strength training is the greatest thing ever invented in the history of the galaxy.

Okay, so maybe it’s third after electricity and Nintendo.

But I say this to make a point.

There’s a huge difference between “exercise” and strength training when it comes to body composition.

If your goal is consistent, permanent, healthy weight loss and weight management, 80-90% of the battle will be nutrition,

When it comes to exercise, you really only have TWO things to focus on:

What exercise do you love? Good. Do that.

Strength train as often as you have time for.

I’ll touch on the first one quickly.

Notice I said “exercise you love.” If you hate running, never run a mile again. Hate going to the gym? Never set foot in one. Hate bootcamps? Me too. Don’t do them.

Instead, go rock climbing, or hiking, or do yoga, or swing dancing, or LARPing. Really, anything that gets you off your ass and moving. Cool? Cool.

How Strength Training Assists Weight Loss

Your body functions differently when you strength train, in all of the right ways.

We have a whole Strength Training 101 sequence that can you get you started, but I’ll whet your appetite with the nerdiest metaphor ever below.

You can find study after study after study that shows you the benefits of strength training for weight management when combined with “calorie restriction.”

To keep things simple, let’s look at the 3 most common results.

It’ll sort those calories into one of three Houses:

A: Burn for Fuel. B: Rebuild Muscle. C: Store as Fat.

Here are two quick examples:

A 6’, 34-year old male weighing 250 pounds burns 2,300 calories a day just by existing.

A 5’5”, 40-year old female weighing 140 pounds burns 1,350 calories a day just by existing.

HEAVY weight training might be a 500 lb deadlift or a 5 pound dumbbell curl.

INTENSE bodyweight training might be a handstand push-up or a knee push-up.

It also diverts additional calories to “Burn as Fuel” to handle this increased “muscle rebuilding” activity.

Which means two amazing things:

Your metabolism is revved up for this time period, burning more calories than normal.

Rebuilding muscle is a calorie taxing activity!

There are significantly fewer calories available for “Store as Fat.”

You strength train regularly, and your muscles break down and need to be rebuilt.

You don’t consume enough calories compared to how many calories your body needs to both rebuild muscle and fuel itself…

So does your body just shut down?

NOPE!

Your body has been preparing for this, by storing any excess calories over the years in the “Store as Fat” house.

This is the moment your body has been saving up for.

You get stronger and keep the muscle you have.

You burn through the fat you’re trying to get rid of.

You’re decreasing your body fat percent and keeping your muscle = look good naked.

This would be a “win-win-win” according to Michael Scott, Regional Manager, Dunder Mifflin Scranton.

BACK TO BASICS: How To Guarantee Successful Weight Loss

If you’re still reading, then there is hope for you yet.

You can do this – but you have to be smart and diligent about it! Stop trying to exercise your way thin, and stop trying to find ‘get fit quick’ solutions.

Instead, take this one day at a time. We’re here for you!

We talk about proper nutrition in our big “Healthy Eaters” guide, and we go more in-depth into the specific foods that we recommend, but it starts here:

You have to eat fewer calories than you eat now to lose weight, and do so permanently.

The best way to do that is to substitute more protein and veggies onto your plate.

Strength training will supercharge your results, building muscle and burning extra fat.

Understand you’re overeating, and forgive yourself for doing so – most foods have been designed for you to overeat!

YOUR MISSIONS, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT THEM:

#1) Pledge to stop buying snake oil. If you’re not sure, ask yourself “Does this sound too good to be true?” and “What would Steve do?”

In addition: stop doing exercises you hate just to lose weight. Pick exercises you enjoy, and put all of your focus on slowly adjusting your nutrition instead!

Shun the Dark Side and come back to the Light!

#2) Be deliberate in your decisions. Every calorie counts. Every decision counts. So make ONE different decision as a result of you being more aware of what you put in your body.

Drinking water instead of soda or juice.

Swapping out a salad for fries once per week. It all counts, but make your decision deliberate.

You��re a smart person. You know what foods should be daily staples, and what foods should be occasional treats. It all counts. So make ONE decision differently to prove to yourself that you can change.

#3) Educate yourself on the serving size of ONE food that you eat regularly. Google it. Find out if what you THINK is a serving and what’s actually in a serving is anywhere close to accurate.

You might be surprised to find out:

A serving of pasta is HALF the size of what you normally eat with your meal.

How much peanut butter is considered a serving (hint: it ain’t much).

There are 2.5 servings in that one bottle of Green Machine Naked Juice.

I don’t want you to change the food or the portions yet. I just want you to educate yourself on what you’re eating, and compare it to how much you thought you were eating.

While we’re hurtling down this rabbit hole of nutrition, calories, food, and happiness, I’d love you to leave a comment below:

“What is the biggest question you have around nutrition, strength training, and weight loss?”

-Steve

PS: I know this article covers a LOT, and my hope with it is to inspire, educate, and get you fired up. However, you might still be super overwhelmed and lost. I get it!

Schedule your free call and tell us your story! We’d love to hear from you, and we can decide together if we’re a good fit for each other! Simply click the image below for more details:

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Photo source: A good Sunday to you, Can I have your bicycle, Speed!, Swimming pool, Pizza lab, Dinner is set, Happy monday!, Speed.

“Why Can’t I Lose Weight?” The 10 Uncomfortable Truths Holding You Back published first on https://dietariouspage.tumblr.com/

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