Candace’s BodyBlog

I came across this great fat loss story on the web today and I was particularly impressed with this excerpt on Fat Loss… He and I have the same relationship with food, and the same weakness for sweets. I hope you enjoy and please let me know your thoughts!!

Canada K is a 37 year old guy, who, by day, is a chemical engineer and father of 3 boys. By night, however, he paints his face and turns into a bonified gym warrior.

During the last few months, he’s made it his mission to drop stubborn body fat. You know, the stuff that prevented him from ever dipping into the land of single digits - in other words, below 10%. And drop it, he did, ending up around 6% body fat. Here are his words on the subject:

Lesson #6: Fat Loss Is Easy, It’s Your Brain That’s Getting In The Way
This will pi$$ a lot of people off, but fat loss is actually pretty easy. It’s way, WAY easier than muscle gain. It’s not always pleasant, it’s pretty much always socially uncomfortable, and it forces you to go against the grain of your friends, coworkers and family. But when we break it down to a pure physiological process, fat loss is easy.

It’s all the mental stuff tied up in eating that make it pretty much impossible for most of the world. It’s the emotions around eating, the addiction to the taste and the feeling of food, the bonding that comes from sharing food with others, and the sense of belonging that comes from “going with the flow”. Most people fail not because they don’t have the right diet plan, not because they don’t have access to the right food, and not because they don’t know or understand exactly what they need to do. All the physiological elements are in place, and they work. Most people fail because they don’t consider the psychological aspect of the diet.

Food, particularly sugar and refined carbohydrates, is addictive. The cravings can be emotionally crippling. Hunger is a feeling completely foreign to westerners and we can’t handle it; it breaks us as brutally as being physically beaten.

There’s also the profound sense of alienation that comes from doing something “different”. Once food and shelter are taken care of, our number one need as human beings is to feel like we belong. When a person starts a diet they isolate themselves form the norm. And the single most social thing we do, as a species, is share food and drink. Many people will abandon a diet because it feels like they’re excluded, and for a heavy person already feeling badly about their self-image and their sense of belonging, that’s just too high a price to pay. They’d rather be obese than alone.

I’m not trying to be all haughty and holier-than-thou, let me be the first to admit I’m an emotional eater. I get a profound sense of happiness from sweets. It’s such a satisfying feeling it is (honestly and without exaggeration) practically sexual. But now I can control the psychological aspects of eating, and for long periods I can treat food purely as fuel. I feel like if any single thing allows me call myself an upper-tier gym warrior it’s that

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 7:59 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.