Sunday Story…Challenge not

If you are paying attention to what is happening in the land of fitness as it pertains to nutrition you have seen the prevalence of the “30 day challenge”. These challenges have become so common as to be monotonous. Here’s the real shocker…evidence has begun to prove they really don’t work. It’s a shocker, I know, but the reset or kick start to get you on track for the beach, or the wedding, or after the gluttony of the holidays just doesn’t work.

I know it’s popular. I know all your friends do it. I know your second cousin’s brother-in-laws sister lost 12 pounds on her eat only green food 30 day challenge. None of that provides empirical evidence (as in factual) that these challenges actually work for the great part of the population. Most of us drop out about half way through the challenge. Or we gain the weight/inches back and go back to eating crap (Calorie Rich And Pathetic) food the same way we did before the challenge started.

Here are some of the issues with 30-day challenges:

1. Most of these challenges are based on restricting some portion of your diet/food consumption. This puts you into a mindset of deprivation and scarcity. You decide you can “tough” or “gut” it out for the 30 days. And sometimes you can. Often you can’t or some life event gets in the way. Eating a certain way that is foreign to you simply serves to have you craving the last day and dreaming of all the junk food you are going to gorge on when it is over. This gives you NO sustainable shift in your eating habits, behavior patterns or belief systems. That shift is required to modify your nutrition into a healthy pattern.

2. Too many of these programs want to have you feel bad if you can’t or won’t complete the challenge. If you can’t do this for 30 days you are weak or bad or worthless. It isn’t that hard, after all. The fact is simple: this type of motivation is rarely successful and usually backfires. How do you like being guilted or shamed into doing something? For me…not so much. These feeling usually result in a high dropout rate and zero change into healthier eating habits.

3. I should clarify that I am NOT disagreeing with the nutritional advice and guidelines most of these challenges provide. Eating real food, avoiding sugar and alcohol, eliminating allergens, proper hydration and shopping on the perimeter of the grocery market are all good things. The problem is the method used to get you to do those things. If you don’t address how you are going to incorporate all the restrictions on your diet after the challenge you will revert to your old patterns and behaviors (Friday night IS Pizza night!)

Restriction is not a recipe for long term change and success. If you were addicted to heroin you could avoid heroin for the rest of your life. You cannot avoid food. You are going to eat for the rest of your life. What is needed is a reprogramming of behaviors and attitude around food. What is needed is a way to create a desire for healthy foods. What is needed is a way to have you WANT to make good choices around food.

This process is going to require you to change how you think about food. It is a circular process…thoughts create feelings which create behaviors and the behaviors reinforce thoughts. The real question that needs to be answered is how? How to create an attitude shift? How to make it over to the other side of restriction and scarcity to abundance and fullness?

Stay tuned! The answer is simple. Not easy just simple.

John Mariotti
www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

Sunday Story…BMR

The question has come after last week’s story about eating more food. How does that work? Why is it true? It is the exact opposite of what most of us believe. We all have a basal metabolic rate. In simple terms you have an amount of calories you need to eat every day to maintain the lean muscle mass your body has. If you don’t have much lean muscle mass you don’t need many calories. If you are a 300 pound body builder you need a lot more food every day just to fuel the muscles on your body.

If you want a scientific discussion you can go here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate

There are formulas and everything to satisfy your yearning for science. The bottom line is this: before you do anything in your day you need a certain number of calories to support your current lean muscle mass. It is just like a business…before I turn the lock in the door I need a certain dollar amount every day to cover the rent and lights and fixed expenses. This is my base metabolic rate.
If you want to calculate your BMR you can go here:

https://www.healthstatus.com/perl/calculator.cgi

I did it two ways…one with my gross weight and it gave me about 3100 calories a day. The other way I put in my lean muscle mass and it gave me 2800 calories a day. SO before I do any work I need that many calories just to keep my muscle on. When I work out and start moving I will burn more calories. If I want to get stronger and build muscle my body needs more fuel to build that strength. I need the fuel REAL FOOD gives me…the macro nutrients as well as the micro nutrients...the fiber, the act of digestion…I need it all.

For too long we have been seduced by the calorie in – calorie out argument. You can live on 1000 calories a day. You won’t be healthy. You will compromise our immune system. You will lose weight. Unfortunately your body will conserve fat (a very rich source of fuel that doesn’t have any caloric needs) and will burn muscle to fuel the deficit in calories. So you will keep the fat and lose the muscle. It takes more calories to feed muscle than fat. You will become the dreaded Skinny-Fat person. You see them all the time…especially in fashion magazines. They are both men and women.

You need fuel to feed a strong sexy body. EAT MORE REAL FOOD. Run your basal metabolic rate. Let’s get a scan and figure out how much you need to eat and then we will strip the fat off and leave a body ready to kick some a** and take names!

Call me!

John Mariotti
www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

Sunday Story…More Food

We live by 3 words when we talk about nutrition and diets and food…Eat Real Food. That’s it…Eat Real Food.

I often get questions about supplements and pills and powders and shakes. I will ask you to first refer to the 3 words above. If you are eating real food and eating enough of it to support your activity level but not store fat then we can discuss the other stuff. The facts, in general, are simple…Eat Real food…meat, vegetables, seeds and nuts, a little fruit, some starchy vegetables, healthy fats, avoid sugars and consume in quantities to support activity.

There is no magic pill or potion that is going to fix a poor diet. You can’t out exercise a poor diet. No amount of burpees or road work or miles or spin classes, or yoga, or boot camp or CrossFit is going to fix eating crap (Calorie Rich And Pathetic). Maybe you can get away with it for a bit, especially if you are young but the bottom line is eating crap and drinking a boatload of booze is going to mess up your fitness journey.

Not only do you need to Eat Real Food but you need to eat Enough Real Food. That’s right; you may not be eating enough food! If you don’t put fuel in the tank the car won’t run. If you only put a little fuel in it will sputter and stop. Or if you put just enough in it will only run a little while and then stop. You need to fuel your body like the high performance vehicle it is unless you are not taking it out of the garage (lying on the couch much!) in which case it probably isn’t going to matter too much anyway.

How much is enough? It is more than you think especially if you are using the prescription above. I recently brought my calories up to almost 4000 a day based on a nutritionists recommendations. It is a lot of food. But I can tell you my energy levels are up. I don’t crash as hard in the afternoons and I don’t feel as beat up by my workouts. And it is all real food except for 1 scoop of a high quality protein powder.

You can do this…eat well, be satisfied, get lean, get strong. But it isn’t going to be easy…it takes discipline and preparation. Yes, you can cheat once in a while. Yes, you can relax and have a glass of spirits occasionally. But those things are not the habit. The habit is to Eat Real Food.

Let’s talk food again…soon!

John Mariotti
www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

Sunday Story…CVO

You are the CVO of your life. The Chief Visionary Officer. Your life is all about you…it’s your story, your movie. You get to be the producer, director and the star of Your movie. It really is all about you.

A few years ago in one of my stories I recounted something that happened in my life. I t was significant and had far reaching implication on My life. My mother, who read this religiously (Hi Mom!), called and said, “you know, I don’t remember anything like that at all.” Of course not, it was My life; I am the star so it impacted me.

Your life, today, looks the way it looks because you have designed it that way. You might not have done it intentionally. You might not have meticulously planned it out. It may appear to be random and haphazard but, in fact, you have created it to look the way it looks. It wasn’t your parents (although they had some influence); it wasn’t your kids or your spouse. It was you.

It is time to take some responsibility for that. It is time to take a look and decide if you are envisioning the life you are leading. If not, why not? What needs to change? What can you do to move closer to your vision? How are you doing your visioning?

It is helpful to move out of the wishful thinking in your head and into a more concrete medium. Make a vision board. Write a vision statement. These are not hard things to do…but you will need to sit down and spend a few minutes (hours) working on it. You need to look down and define your values and desires and put them into a concrete form. Then you will need to spend some time making that vision a reality. You have to do some work. You can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket.

Once my vision is set up I can begin to chip away at the work to get there. I can ask myself if what I am doing is in service to my vision. If your vision is to get into your skinny shirt (?!) how is that glass of wine going to help get there? It’s a simple question…is what you are doing right now, moving you closer or further from your vision? Answer the question and move on.

You…the Chief Visionary Officer of Your Life. Go get it in all the Technicolor wonderfulness you can imagine. If you shoot for the stars you just might hit the moon!

John Mariotti
www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

Sunday Story…2016

It is the first of the year. The time when we all decide that this year is going to be the year. The year we get in shape. The year of eating clean. The year of personal growth. The year of getting things done. But wasn’t last year that year? Or was it the year before?

As your friendly neighborhood transformation specialist this is a very frustrating time of the year for me. I know you have good intentions. I know you want to succeed. I know you know how to make it happen.

Just in case you don’t know how to make it happen here it is in 5 easy steps:
1. Decide what you want and when you want it.
2. Make a realistic plan and commit to it
3. Follow the plan
4. Fix the flaws in the plan and follow the plan
5. Be consistent and disciplined every day and follow the plan

There it is…simple. Not easy, just simple. Yet here is what happens: you decide what you want but it isn’t really what you want. Because when the work gets hard, you begin to let your commitment wane. You stop showing up quite as often. Your one cheat meal a week turns into a cheat day which then becomes a weekend and the next thing we know you are saying how hard it was and just didn’t work for you. I get it.

Change is hard, really hard. If it was easy we would all do exactly what we wanted all the time. The fact is your mind is an amazing machine. It will leap into action and begin manufacturing resistance and excuses and reasons why something can’t be done just as soon as there is an inkling that change is imminent. We all love things just the way they are. It’s easy.

I am lazy. So are you. We don’t want to gird our loins for the battle with our mind for change. It is so much easier to stay out of shape, eat whatever we want, vegetate in front of the TV, or ignore the need for self improvement. The battle against indolence requires vigilance and honest effort.

If you really want to change, if you really want to reach your new goals, and keep your resolutions I suggest you do the following:

Take something out of your day…in other words if you are going to start working out an hour a day you will need to free up an hour. Give something up to make room for your new regimen.

Adjust your environment. Find new friends and places to be that will support your journey, things and people who will ask more of you that you ask of yourself. Hire a coach if need be.

Work. Put your nose to the grindstone and work. Ask yourself if the activity you are doing is in service to where you want to be. Stay consistent, stay disciplined, stay the course…grind out the work.

If you need some support call me…775-338-2412

John Mariotti
www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com