This week, I welcome Dr. Debi Silber to the show. Dr. Silber is the founder of the Post Betrayal Transformation Institute and is a holistic psychologist, a health, mindset and personal development expert, the author of the #1 bestselling book: The Unshakable Woman: 4 Steps To Rebuilding Your Body, Mind, and Life After a Life Crisis and her newest book: Trust Again. Her recent PhD study on how we experience betrayal made 3 groundbreaking discoveries that changes how long it takes to heal. In addition to being on FOX, CBS, The Dr. Oz Show, TedX (twice) and more, she’s an award winning speaker, coach and author, dedicated to helping people move past their betrayals as well as any other blocks preventing them from the health, work, finances, relationships, confidence and happiness they want most. Download, subscribe, share with your friends and please take a moment to leave us an iTunes review.
Each week, beyond and sometimes on the training floor of RevFit, I’m having countless conversations about food. With my clients, we can get as in depth as: “How many grams of carbohydrates should I be aiming for?” to “Why can’t I stop eating after dinner?” or “Is plant protein better than whey protein?”
Of course, every client is approaching food with a completely different set of circumstances. Sure, most of my clients are with me for weight loss but each individual has their dietary preferences, intolerances, psychological relationship with food, and life stressors that further determines how food will work for them or against them with their weight loss plan.
However, if there is one common thread between the individuals I work with, regardless of age or gender, it’s the notion of a “bad” diet.
Before I delve any further, ask yourself: What makes your diet or, more specifically, your food choices bad? (You might want to write those things down).
In practice, what I hear from clients ranges from: the choice of food they ate (typically highly processed options), to the amount of food they ate (portion sizes relative to what their goals/needs are) and sometimes it delves into certain “bad” ingredients (high sodium, aspartame, etc.)
What strikes me as funny, if you will, is that what a client thinks is bad, typically isn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I have clients with a history of binge eating and while a distinct overconsumption of foods may be “bad” for the goal and “bad” for the psyche, we’ll consider binge eating somewhat beyond the scope of this conversation. My kind advice is to seek out a therapist who has a background in dealing with the psychological aspect of this and perhaps a dietitian who can help facilitate better eating behaviors as well.
I’ll offer my thoughts based on what I hear most often with my clients.
A) Choice Of Food
If I’m coaching a client with their diet, we might be talking about their fat loss progress throughout a given week. Whether the scale is up or down, there’s a good chance I’ll hear something like this from Client A: “Well, I had a pretty good week until yesterday. Yesterday I was bad.”
“Why do you say you were bad?”
“Well, because I ate something I shouldn’t have.” Client A says.
“Really? What was that?”
“Oh, I had packed a lunch to bring to work but they had pizza delivered and it smelled really good so I had a slice.” Client A mentions.
“So, what’s wrong with pizza?”
“I mean, it’s not healthy, right? And it has a lot of calories.”
“Sure. Potentially it does have a lot of calories but you only had one slice and it sounds like the rest of your day went according to plan, right?”
“Not exactly. I felt bad that I had pizza so then, when I got home that night I said “Screw it, I’ve already messed up the diet with the pizza, I might as well have that dessert I’ve been holding off on and I’ll try and get back to my diet the next day.”
And this is my big issue with shaming ourselves around food. Once we set the ball in motion that a “bad” choice was made, rather than halt the process, the snowball builds and a fairly innocuous meal turns into a day of counterproductive eating. Then the client ends the day on a low note, feeling bad about themselves and their choices and “hopes” (operative word) that next day will be better.
The effects of how we eat often have less to do with what we put in our mouths and more to do with how we treat ourselves as a result of it.
So that was an example of quality of food dictating our eating behavior. What about quantity of food?
B) Food Quantity
Recently, I was having a consultation with a weight loss client and I remarked how I had been working through a sweet tooth in the evening after dinner.
For me, I found that a cinnamon graham cracker could satisfy that little bit of sweet that I needed. Normally, the one sheet (4 small rectangles) is enough for me. (Total calories, approx 65).
My client thought that sounded like something worth trying. That night she opted for graham crackers and ended up finishing the sleeve (total calories, approx 560).
Did I shame her? Absolutely not.
All I asked her to consider was that maybe that wasn’t her ideal food. Maybe, for her, something safer would be dark chocolate. For someone else, it might be a serving of fruit.
This is where it takes some honesty with yourself and determining:
What do I feel that I need right now?
What can I tolerate in moderation?
Is it easier to abstain for the time being?
Am I actually hungry for more food or would something else suffice?
(You may want to write those things down as well).
C) Foods We Fear
For as long as we, the general public, have been reading about nutrition, we’ve had a target to take aim at and be afraid of. Sometimes, it’s eggs or butter or aspartame or high sodium foods. There can be a shred of truth to those depending on if you have a pre-existing health condition or an intolerance to a given food.
That fear then transitioned into whole food groups and people began to fear grains as a whole or fruit as a whole, vegans of course strip out all animal products (although the reasoning isn’t necessarily out of fear), while on the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got the carnivore diet that just leaves meat on the menu. Three cheers for a nation of extremes…
Which lends the “bad” choice to be anytime we consume something we were taught (even incorrectly) to fear. Imagine if someone said Oreos were cancerous!
I often find that the food many people have been led to fear are foods they were misled about and may need to reconsider the source of their information.
Here are some strategies for conquering the notion of a “bad” diet and making it better by comparison.
Remember, first and foremost, that what you eat does not dictate your value as a person. Whether you eat more or less, whether you eat “clean” or “dirty”, you are still a perfectly functional human being and your self worth goes well beyond what’s sold in a grocery store.
Reduce your exposure to social media channels, platforms, pages and people who don’t help you foster a healthier relationship with food. It’s difficult to be on social media and not get lost in comparisons. If you see a fit person who gloats about eating a cupcake and keeping their washboard stomach, it’s not that it isn’t inspirational but you don’t want resentment guiding your food choices either. They’re working with a different set of circumstances than you are and the comparisons are hardly fair (assuming the person’s image hasn’t been photoshopped beyond recognition…)
Build a food environment that breeds success. The foods that are more visible and easier to access in the home are the foods that you will likely gravitate to faster. So, if chips are out on the counter instead of fruit, you’re probably going to reach for the chips.
Alcohol changes the way the game is played. You may have the best intentions with your food for the evening but not everyone can follow the straight and narrow after the first drink. Determine where and how alcohol can be a part of your plan if you’re currently trying to diet.
“Is this the most caring thing I can do for myself right now?” This was affectionately taken from my dear friend, Kelly Coffey. Rather than attach a feeling such as good/bad, right/wrong, ask yourself if the eating behavior is what your body and mind need the most. If so, carry on without guilt. If not, choose a more “caring” option.
You can change your entire trajectory at the next meal. Regardless of what you ate, how you ate it, or how much of it you consumed, your next best opportunity to change course is at the next meal. Make a plan to do so.
Hope is for gamblers. I referenced the word “hope” earlier in this article. I constantly hear clients say “I hope I do better tomorrow”, “I hope I make the right decision with my food”. Rather than leave your food up to whim, willpower and chance, plan more effectively, develop strategies, and form healthy skills. Get the family involved. You’ll need their help. You can “hope” for a winning lottery ticket but if your food needs to be on point, don’t hope for it, plan for it.
I was first connected with Storme Gray through our very own Kimberly Young who was also recently on this show. Storme joins me this week to discuss her journey into and around fitness and how she has embraced powerlifting to enhance not only her strength but her life as well. Storme has so many great takeaways in this episode as we chat about how what you do in the gym can crossover into how you approach your life. This is another HIGHLY recommended listen if you have an affinity for getting stronger and learning why it matters. Download, subscribe, share with your friends and please take a moment to leave us an iTunes review.
2020 marks 14 years since I got off drugs. For the 10 years prior, I put everything I could into my system from street drugs to pharmaceuticals (not legally prescribed, of course).
What kept me addicted to drugs for 10 years?
Well, a lot of things. But I spent the better part of those 10 years not completely convinced I had a problem.
I had a full-time job, plenty of friendships, was playing in a band, writing songs, basically having the time of my life and drugs were just there to make things better (or worse, depending on your point of view).
It didn’t matter that my loved ones were encouraging me to change. I didn’t have a problem.
It didn’t matter that I reached a point where I had to be high all day long to make it through a work shift. I didn’t have a problem.
It didn’t matter that my drug use became so pervasive that I had to deal drugs just to afford the habit (my paycheck couldn’t do it all). I didn’t have a problem.
My problem occurred when I started neglecting my mortgage to pay for my drugs. That problem eventually affected my father and his credit score because he co-signed on my house with me. THAT was my problem.
It was one thing to have a drug addiction. It was another thing for others to suffer as a result of it. When that other person became my father, I knew something had to give.
There are many beliefs associating abuse of food/drink and how it can be similar to drug use. Similar parts of the brain are affected, cravings and urges creep in, and when you have no other coping skills to help you with stress or boredom, your cope becomes the food (or drug, in my case).
If 2020 has shown us anything (and it’s shown us a lot) it’s that many of us need better coping skills and outlets for our stress.
Which makes this whole conversation about “change” really difficult.
Last year, I got back into therapy. My life, while mostly pretty fantastic, was not going the direction I felt it needed to be in. I have a lot more to write about this in the future, so I’ll take a slightly different angle on change with you today.
Recently, I was speaking with my therapist and, sometimes, when I’m at a loss speaking about my own personal problems, I just pick his brain about concepts relating to change.
You see, I’m in therapy to get better. I want a better life for myself and my own set of coping skills when I’m under stress were not helping me achieve that.
I was recently speaking about this topic on two of my more recent podcast episodes. One with one of my clients, Erin, and the other with internationally renowned coach, Dan John. I highly recommend you check both of them out so you can hear about change from the viewpoint of the client (Erin) and from the viewpoint of a coach (Dan).
This was even something I brought up recently within our closed community on Facebook.
I told my therapist that within the field of health/wellness/nutrition coaching, there is a belief that if you have a set of behaviors that you feel you need to change, you should start with the one that provides the least amount of resistance in your life. This way, you can tackle something “easy” to develop confidence and consistency with it and then stack that with the next behavior until you have the momentum and results you’re looking for.
He agreed that this certainly was a path one could travel to improve their health.
He also offered another path: that sometimes people need to tackle the most difficult behavior first. The theory being that if they can accomplish the hardest thing first, everything after is easier by comparison.
There is a common statement that I hear with weight loss clients, male and female, and I asked my therapist more pointedly how he responds when he hears this:
“I know what I need to do, I just have to do it”
He offered five reasons which I am re-purposing in my own words strictly for the goal of weight loss.
1) They don’t want to do it. Which is why change has not been implemented up to this point. The “want” is not strong enough.
2) They don’t actually know how to do it. Applied to weight loss, are you in a caloric deficit, do you know how to get in a deficit and are you doing the appropriate/right amounts of exercise?
3) There is a fear of change. Change disrupts the status quo. It disrupts friendships, marriages, social gatherings, the workplace, etc. Weight loss, done responsibly, requires a lot of change and not everyone is mentally prepared to do it.
4) There is a fear of success. I actually had to probe deeper on this. Why would someone fear success? His response: Some people fear the ability to keep up the success they’ve had. I’ll offer my client, Don, as an example. Since his weight loss has been so dramatic so far, what if he started to second guess himself and start (unconsciously) sabotaging himself because he knows a lot of eyes are on him to succeed? Some people short circuit and revert back to old behaviors.
5) They don’t give credit to their barriers. It’s easy to blame certain boogeymen for an inability to lose weight: Oh, it must be my metabolism. Oh, it must be sugar. Oh, it must be “insert demonized thingamabob here”. When the reality is things like: your food environment is out of control, you married a saboteur, your sleep habits suck, and you haven’t found more productive ways to handle your stress. Pinpoint those barriers first, THEN revel in your success.
Circling back to me and giving up drugs, I struggled with two of those factors for sure: 1) I didn’t want to give them up and 3) I had a fear of change. I had spent so many years with drugs as a part of my life, my recreation, what I felt inspired me to write better songs, and what gave me a stress outlet that I wasn’t sure how I could function without them.
Once I learned what life was like without drugs to get me through, I had something I had long forgotten how to appreciate: clarity.
Come to find out, I didn’t need drugs to sleep better, feel better, relieve stress or write songs. What I needed was a more focused mind so I could prioritize my life and my finances again. While giving up drugs was “easy” in execution, it took time to develop the self-confidence that I could actually live a normal life again.
True to the theory, giving up drugs also cost me friendships. Many of my friends at the time were still users and I had to split myself further from them socially (and geographically) so I could clean my slate with less temptation.
If you’re struggling, there’s a lot listed above that may be worth your consideration. Change comes at a cost. Not everyone is willing to pay the price.
However, marking my 14th year clean, I can promise you that change is worth it.
Dan John joins me again for his third appearance on the show. You can reference Episodes #100 and #181 to hear those. This go-round, we discuss his brand new book “Attempts”, Dan John University, the importance of habits, thoughts on fitness “hacks” and so much more. Dan John is always a guest you’ll want to tune in for. Download, subscribe, share with your friends and please take a moment to leave us an iTunes review.
My mother and I just returned from a very quick weekend trip to my hometown in Tennessee (Union City) to see my Grandmother and visit my father’s gravesite in nearby Ridgely. I’ve always credited my grandmother for teaching me to read when I was still very young. She, herself, was an elementary school teacher many years ago and it was always a priority of hers to know that all of her grandchildren were proficient readers. To this day, I love devouring books.
On this particular trip, I was perusing her bookshelves and came across an old book called “The New Way To Eat and Get Slim”. It was originally released in 1941 and written by one Donald G. Cooley. The edition she had was the 7th one which had been reprinted in 1945.
Diet books, regardless of when they were released, fascinate me. Like many things in the world of health, it is always interesting to see what concepts have held up over time and which things have since changed due to the ever evolving nature of science.
While I don’t make a habit of doing “book reports” on this blog, I found the book of particular interest on more than a few fronts. Bear in mind, that we’re talking about dieting the way it was spoken of 80 years ago. When you hear the adage ‘there is nothing new under the sun”, it is books like this one that remind you just how true that actually is.
Let’s start with most of what I felt Cooley did right in the book.
For one, there was a great explanation of calories and, what we now call macronutrients (carbohydrates, fats and protein). He explains the importance of all of them and how getting “slim” is just a matter of reducing calories, or in his words, being on a “reducing diet”.
He also reminds the reader that while exercise is important for the physique, aesthetics and cardiovascular function, it is not the most efficient way to burn calories, thereby putting the focus back on controlling intake for more effective weight loss.
Cooley notes that for those who think their weekend hike burned a fair amount of calories, it likely didn’t burn anywhere near what they think it did and it would be prudent not to eat those calories back into the equation as a reward for good effort.
There is mention that the reader needs to be mindful of added fats, processed sweets, and foods low in nutritive value. He also talks about alcohol and gives an interesting breakdown of what certain drinks look like in total calories compared to their food counterparts.
Within the context of alcohol is the understanding that the body has a preference to work on filtering alcohol out of the system before it focuses on burning fat. While he doesn’t suggest one should be a teetotaler to lose weight, he does encourage limiting alcohol on a “reducing diet”.
Somewhat surprisingly, Cooley took one page in the book to comment that even though the reader might think their thyroid is keeping them from losing weight, a visit to the doctor will most likely show that it isn’t so. He then reinforces his belief that a sub-maintenance (low calorie) diet will still do what’s necessary. To be honest, I assumed that just because people thought that now didn’t mean they had the same feelings in 1940…
More than once, I found myself nodding my head in agreement not just with the recommendations in the book but with how little things have actually changed in the nutrition world over 80 years.
So, what does his diet actually look like?
Well, that’s where it gets a little bit more interesting.
Cooley lays out a blueprint for a 10-Day Miracle Diet in the book. The focus of the diet is primarily lean proteins, vegetables, a “vitamin cocktail”, water, black coffee and clear tea. Total caloric intake on his Miracle Diet would be well south of 1000 calories a day.
After the 10-Day plan is another set of food plans which wisely allows the reader to swap proteins for proteins or vegetables for vegetables in order to allow some flexibility and these meal plans sit at phases of 1000 calories per day, 1250 calories and 1500 calories depending on your respective starting point.
He reminds the reader of the thermogenic effect of protein and is so adamant of the nutrient’s importance that he suggests no fewer than 400 calories of every day coming from protein (100g for those of you counting).
When you look at the breakdowns of his meal plans, what you frequently see if a macronutrient breakdown of approximately 50% protein, 40% fat and approximately 10% carb. For those of you wondering, this is not an early incarnation of the keto diet. However, it is absolutely a low carb diet during the “reducing” phases.
Of the book’s 200+ pages, Cooley spends at least 60 pages discussing the importance of vitamins and minerals in the diet. He talks about not only the ones you should be most aware of, but the foods needed in the diet to help you achieve those levels. While some of the claims may be somewhat far-fetched, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t encourage a varied, whole foods approach to balancing your diet for better health.
So, where does he go wrong?
It’s interesting to note that fat shaming was definitely a thing in the 1940s and not just something that magically appeared with the rise in social media. Cooley makes the claim that a slimmer person is healthier, more envied, has a better libido and is essentially the talk of the town. He uses the words fat, pudgy and portly liberally throughout the book. I’m not entirely sure how Mr. Cooley might have felt about the Health At Every Size movement (despite some inherent issues within the movement itself).
It’s also important to note that due to the timeline of when the book was written, smoking had not yet been proven to be as detrimental to one’s heath as we know it is now. As such, when smoking cigarettes is mentioned, it’s not outright discouraged as a reason to improve one’s health.
In addition, scurvy was still a problem in the 40s and Cooley references it several times when he is speaking on the importance of vitamins and minerals in the diet.
Another thing I found troubling was that despite his mostly correct understanding of “calories in”, Cooley attempted to make a claim in reference to how many calories we actually expend in a day. Granted, this was the 1940s and I don’t know that people were quite as sedentary then as they are now.
If you were going to take his advice to heart, I would suggest not following the guidelines of how many calories you actually burn in a day. They seem to be grossly inaccurate. As with anything in the diet world, take what you read with a grain of salt and don’t accept everything as truth simply because it made the written page.
While he does reference many nutritional studies such as ones that came from Yale and the Mayo Clinic, science does continue to evolve and life in 2020 is not exactly the same as it was in 1941. What does remain the same is that your control over what you put in your mouth is paramount to your weight loss success. We could argue over the right balance of macronutrients but you’d likely not find a person on this planet who wouldn’t lose weight on his 10-Day Miracle Diet or even his comparatively more balanced 1000 calorie or 1250 calorie diet plans (assuming you can follow them).
Simplified further: eat lean proteins, get a variety of vegetables and fruits in your diet, drink water, black coffee and clear tea, reduce processed sugars and extra fats, reduce alcohol and move more. Contrary to the title of the book and the article, there are no new ways to eat and get slim. What might have been considered new back then is certainly not the case any longer. It’s the basics of most sound nutrition plans and if they worked 80 years ago, there’s a damn good chance they still work now.
P.S. You probably don’t need to do the 10-Day Miracle Diet anyway.
Initially, it was my intent to get as many of my clients on the show who had the desire to do so before I had a repeat performance back on. However, Erin’s story I knew would resonate with so many of my listeners that I had to bring her back to talk about it. You can hear her first episode with me back at #179. This episode does have some explicit language, so listener advised depending on how you like to enjoy tuning in each week. Download, subscribe, share with your friends and please take a moment to leave us an iTunes review.
Today would be my father’s 69th birthday. Each year since he passed, I normally write something inspired by him around the anniversary of his passing, Father’s Day and/or his birthday.
This year, I decided to revisit a post I wrote a year ago. For one, I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to write something new about him. I know there’s more to say and more stories to tell.
However, since last year, a lot has happened for me, my family and the rest of the world. I thought that many of my sentiments shared last year would still be applicable (and maybe more so) now.
I’m leaving the original post up on the website and have changed some minor details to the article below.
A strange thing happened when my Dad passed away.
For the first time in my life, I looked at the age he was when we lost him (59) and the age I was at the time (35) and started to count down the years.
It was unfair and probably unreasonable for me to do so.
The likelihood that I will pass from the same cancer that took my Dad from us is not likely.
I started to look at my life from the viewpoint of: What if my days are numbered more so than I realize? What if I only make it to 59? What am I going to do with my life for the next 24 years?
And now, the gap has closed and I still think about it. I’ll be 45 this year, Dad would be 69 today.
What am I going to do with my life for the next 14 years?
Some people take the viewpoint that they are going to experience all of the joys, the thrills, the excitement that life can offer.
I feel like I got enough of those thrills in my 20’s (otherwise known as my ‘lost decade’.)
And, for me, it’s how I am going to inspire enough people to change their lives with the time I have left? Whether it’s 5 years, 15 years or 42.5 years…
I watch people spin their wheels, agonizingly accomplishing nothing with their health, their lives, and their ambitions. It’s like they’re tied ball-and-chain to a past they can’t let go of and they keep forgetting that the key to unchain themselves is within arm’s reach.
Literally within sight.
Literally within grasp.
But, they don’t take it. They just stay with the familiar.
No matter how painful or depressing it is.
I have struggled for nearly ten years since my father passed to write this.
Every time I feel like I’m ready, I tell myself “No, not yet. It’s not time. You’re not ready.”
But then come back to that same series of questions ultimately ending with “If not now, when?”
And it’s the question I pose to you.
To me, I don’t care what you need to change. I care THAT you change. You don’t have to be a client of mine. You just have to make that decision.
I think if you have been fortunate enough to have lived longer on this earth than my father did, you were given a gift. A gift that every day you get another breath. Are you wasting it?
I think that if you are nowhere near the age he was when he passed, you have the same gift. Every day, you get another breath. Are you wasting it?
I have struggled to write this because I didn’t know how it all would be interpreted. I have struggled with a lot of other things too: self doubt, moral failings, poor decisions, the seemingly endless cycle of not knowing how to fill the shoes he left behind.
After my father was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, we were given nine months left with him. Nine months where I saw some of the most beautiful and poignant sides of him and nine months where I saw a man who was the pinnacle of strength and poise in my life be reduced to a shell of himself by a miserable disease. And if you haven’t heard the sentiment…fuck cancer.
I don’t take a lot of moments to stand on a soapbox and beg more from you.
I’m doing it now.
Because if you won’t ask better of yourself, who will?
And if you’re waiting for the perfect time to do better, stop waiting.
Do…something.
The picture you see below is among my most treasured. If you are reading this and you recognize this picture, it’s because it was at my father’s calling hours.
Dad was admitted into the hospital shortly after Valentine’s Day 2011. He would remain in the hospital for almost one month to the day. My mother and I would go to see him every day. Every chance we got, we would bring Jackson with us. Jackson had just turned three and it was around this time that he received his official diagnosis of being on the autism spectrum.
Jackson didn’t mind being in the hospital room with my Dad. But he didn’t want to be near the hospital bed. It broke my heart because I knew how much it would mean to my Dad to be close to his grandson. My father loved being an Opa. Seeing him fulfill that role were some of the best times of my life. Not surprisingly, he was as great of a grandfather as he was a father.
The doctors released my father to come home and have his remaining days with us. On Sunday, March 20 Jackson was at the house with us. Dad was resting in the bed. Jackson went into the bedroom and climbed into the bed next to my father. That’s when I took this picture. It’s one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking things I own.
Dad passed away on Wednesday, March 23.
When I ask you what you will do with the time you have left, I don’t mean to browbeat.
I just want you to look at the gift you’re given, the life you’re given, and I want you do better.
I’m joined this week by the owner of Rackhouse Whiskey Club, Dannie Strable. We veer slightly out of the norm with this episode but we cover a lot: a fondness for bourbon and whiskey, the story behind Rackhouse Whiskey Club, an appreciation for exercise and, of course, how the pandemic has affected his industry and how they’ve used their resources to help the distilleries they partner with. Stay tuned at the outro for a special coupon code for listeners to get $25 off your first box with Rackhouse Whiskey Club. Download, subscribe, share with your friends and please take a moment to leave us an iTunes review.
To learn more about Dannie’s work with Rackhouse Whiskey Club:
If you’re friends with me on Facebook, you’ve been seeing a lot of Don M. His wife, Amy, started coming to me a little over a year ago for weight loss and while she got off to a good start, she began to plateau and held steady there prior to the pandemic.
All along the way, she kept telling me how much she wanted to get her husband, Don, in to see me.
When I met Don, I liked him instantly. We share more than a few common bonds: we’re relatively close in age, we each have two sons (one on the autism spectrum and one who is neuro-typical) and we’re both musicians (he, an active musician and I loving say, am a recovering musician).
Don’s immediate problem was pain. We both agreed that, even with our lack of medical degrees, much of that pain could be alleviated if he lost weight. In his words: “Jason, I could lose 100 pounds and I’d still be fat.”
I’ll come back to that…
Don was plagued with so much pain in so many different areas of his body that I wasn’t sure just how few things I could comfortably get him to do in the gym.
When he decided to start, I told him this would be a long, painful journey. I wasn’t trying to be snarky. Long, because he has a lot of weight to lose and painful because of how much pain his body was in day-in and day-out.
As I do with all of my incoming weight loss clients, it’s a lot of conversation about food. If you don’t know much about the work we do, when it comes to weight loss, the major mover is food intake NOT how hard we can crush you with a workout.
Don gave me a tour through his diet. On paper, it didn’t look terribly off path. However, that’s one of the interesting things about nutrition coaching. Some people will give you every gory detail of their diet and some are a bit more reserved. That’s not a good or bad. It just sometimes requires more digging.
So, I asked Don: Where do you think your diet goes sideways the most?
His response: Definitely dinner.
Now, I have something to work with.
Without discussing in great detail how many calories, or how much protein, or any of those things, I asked Don to do something “simpler”: Eat the same size dinner as your wife is supposed to eat.
Allow me to caveat this. I knew what Don was eating throughout the day. I knew what the scope of his day looked like. This tactic was aggressive and, killed two birds with one stone, if you will. It got Don into a deficit and it got his wife, Amy, back on the plan.
This next part can’t be understated. Don is extremely motivated. That’s not a slight on anyone else. When someone comes through my doors, motivation is at least somewhat in place. The problem is that dieting is harder than people give it credit for. It takes focus, it takes patience, it takes consistency and it requires a fair amount of change to make it work and make it stick.
Don is motivated by pain: to be in less of it. He is motivated by his sons: he wants to be alive and healthy to enjoy a lifetime of raising them. He has his own stories about his relationship with his father that motivates him to provide something different for his own children.
This motivation is what is giving him something of a dietary compass.
As for his exercise, we saw some interesting things early on. I knew I would be limited with the training I could do for him because standing too long would give him pain and sitting too long would do the same.
We experimented with a handful of exercises on his first couple of sessions and while some of them were relatively pain-free movements, others would fire his system up (notably his midsection) where he would sometimes be paralyzed in pain, sweating profusely and unable to continue.
So, I pulled together a small list of exercises he could perform on the two days he’s here each week. We focused on those and on progressing them in weight or reps each time he came in.
He is currently doing no cardio.
I mention that because, it never fails that someone who is unable to lose weight immediately jumps to the conclusion that they need to do more cardio to succeed. Cardio can help, don’t get me wrong. However, it is nowhere near as efficient as calorie/food management.
In Don’s case, it’s barely even an option for him until we get more weight off his frame and have fewer and fewer bouts of pain holding him back.
To date, Don is down 37 pounds in 9 weeks. Results are not typical. If I could get 37 pounds off every weight loss client who walks through this door that quickly, I could likely retire on a remote island.
What you’re seeing (or in this case, reading about) is a man who is driven to succeed. His diet isn’t perfect and it doesn’t have to be. It has to be more “in line” than “outside the lines”. It is more about caloric content than food quality (although better food quality certainly makes the process easier).
It’s about a father who wants better for his sons and a husband committed to a plan with his wife.
I chuckle with him because every time I post about his weight loss success, those posts do extremely well on social media. I lovingly call it The Don M— Fan Club. People love him. And, it stands to reason, that his friends, his family, and extended RevFit family very much want to see him succeed.
To the man who said: “I could lose 100 pounds and still be fat”, that may very well be the case. The journey will be to see him get beyond 100 pounds lost, to a weight he feels he can maintain, be happy with and fulfill all that his motivation is driving him to be.
What Don is doing is tremendously inspiring. It is for anyone who solves their weight loss riddle and makes the plan work. We have no fads and no gimmicks here. Just a path.
He sent me a text over the weekend and the last part of it read: “Brother, you will just never know what this means to me and what YOU mean to me. Thank you for your wisdom, your superior leadership, but most of all, thank you for believing in me when most wrote me off. You are my friend more than anything else and you gave me my life back. I don’t even know how to begin to say thank you. I love you, brother!”
On that note, I’m going to grab a tissue. I wouldn’t give myself near as much credit as Don does. The hero here is him.
Jason Leenaarts 