The misunderstood psychology of weight loss — how to lose 30 pounds PART 5

Don't like the word ROUTINE...?

Me either;) so I chose different way of looking at it... 

Chose your own, exciting daily routine you will want to commit to 

Treat your workouts like business meetings or appointments. Schedule them in your calendar as recurring events every week. You’d never miss a meeting with your boss or a date night with your partner. Treat your workouts with the same level of urgency and respect.

Try to space your workouts over the week and keep at least 1 day between them. Try to combine one push and one pull muscle group in each workout session, such as:

·         Chest and back

·         Shoulders and arms

·         Legs

If you’ve never lifted weights before, please please please please please find someone who has, so they can build a good program for you and show you proper technique. Don’t just turn up at the gym and jump on the machines — you’ll make zero progress and give up.

Find a friend and ask them to come to the gym with you for a few weeks. Better yet (and if you can afford it) hire a personal trainer. They’ll not only show you what to do and how, but they’ll hold you accountable too.

As a final option, find a program and watch the instructional videos on your phone at the gym before you start an exercise. Always focus on form first and weight second. If you lift heavy because everyone else is, you’ll injure yourself and you’ll be out of the game.

To build your foundation, you want to focus on keeping your metabolism high when you’re NOT in the gym, which means moderate weight for 10–15 reps over 4 sets per exercise. Bonus points if you add super sets or pyramiding. I added super sets to my routine 2 years ago and I’d estimate it increased my progress by at least 30%.

Before you workout, have some sort of pre-workout snack. Coffee is a popular pre-workout, but I like a banana and a few scoops of Optimum Nutrition’s pre-workout powder. You need energy stores to lift weights and sugar (such as fructose from fruit) converts into useable energy fast. Don’t eat a huge meal before going to the gym.

When you’ve finished your workout, make sure you eat protein and fast-digesting carbs within an hour. I like to have a protein shake and some fruit, like 2 bananas or a tin of pineapple slices.

After a workout your body goes into a catabolic state where it starts to break down muscle for fuel, so having a high-carb meal prevents that and keeps you in an anabolic state (muscle building) as your body starts to repair the (good) damage you made to your muscles (micro tears) during your workout.

Once you’ve built your foundation (lost excess fat) and want to put on some muscle, you can lower your reps (from 10 to 6–8) and increase your weight.

When you want to continually gain muscle over time, I’ve found it helps to do 1 of the 3 things during every workout for at least one exercise:

·         Lift heavier weight (without sacrificing form)

·         Reduce rest time between reps

·         Reduce rest time between sets

https://medium.com/personal-growth/the-misunderstood-psychology-of-weight-loss-how-to-lose-30-pounds-in-2016-c26fbd8e16f3

The misunderstood psychology of weight loss — how to lose 30 pounds PART 4

Foundation

It’s a lot easier to lose fat first and then gain muscle. Yes you can do both at the same time, but it’s hard. You want to give yourself the best chance of success, so focus first on losing the fat and then building the muscle.

I like to call it your foundation — if you build a great (low body fat) foundation, it’s easier to stack muscle (lean or bulk) on top of it down the track. If you’re overweight right now, you’ll have quite a bit of subcontinous fat covering your muscles anyway, so why not get rid of it first?

In my experience, the best way to lose fat is not to do cardio. Slow cardio (walks, treadmill, bike, etc) burns up fat but also muscle. Cardio is great for your heart, especially HIIT, but isn’t necessary to lose fat.

There’s a bunch of research online about cardio versus lifting weights for losing fat, but I prefer to use diet and weight training (moderate weight, high rep — if you’re female, you won’t put on bulk) to lose fat.

Control your calories via food (a 500 calorie deficit per day based on your BMR) and keep your metabolism burning using weights.

When you think about where most people come undone, it’s normally not in the gym. It’s relatively easy to workout 3–4 times per week for most people. It’s the food temptation that’s the hardest. I’ll talk more about that below.

To build your foundation, you first want to get your BMI (Body Mass Index) into the normal range, at around 20. You can calculate yours here. Once you’ve done that, you’ve got a foundation on which you can start to build some good, lean muscle quite quickly.

https://medium.com/personal-growth/the-misunderstood-psychology-of-weight-loss-how-to-lose-30-pounds-in-2016-c26fbd8e16f3

The misunderstood psychology of weight loss — how to lose 30 pounds PART 2

Success starts with your own self perception. And if you don’t like yourself, that will negatively affect everything you do, making even a moderate level of success much more illusive.

So why would you listen to an entrepreneur about losing weight? Well, weight loss isn’t about the mechanics as much as it is the mindset. And being an entrepreneur means you need to be pretty good at dealing with tough situations, building yourself up and believing when no one else does.

Plus, I was overweight until 2008. I was working long hours building my third company and I lived on Red Bull, pizza and McDonalds. But one day I snapped (figuratively, not literally) and decided to do something about my physical condition, by focusing on my mindset first and body second.

Over the following 18 months (September 2008 — March 2010) I completely transformed myself physically. I lost 31 pounds and then put on 37 pounds of muscle using lots of trial-and-error, Youtube videos and advice from sites like BodyBuilding.com.

The transformation improved my effectiveness as an entrepreneur by at least 10x. I was sharper on my feet, made better decisions, could do more in less time and started to bounce off the walls with unlimited energy.

Not only did I experience a transformation, so did my business. Sure it was still a lot of work to grow the business, but it didn’t feel as hard as it did when I was carrying the weight. I had better clarity of thought and my stress levels were kept down by the hormone regulation that resulted from regular exercise.

Truth be told, it wasn’t all that difficult to lose weight once I figured out what it was really about, which is 80% mental, 20% physical. I break it down into 5 key areas of focus. They are:

1.      Why?

2.    Foundation

3.    Routine

4.    Food

5.     Mental Toughness

Stay with me to learn each key area of focus in more detail.

https://medium.com/personal-growth/the-misunderstood-psychology-of-weight-loss-how-to-lose-30-pounds-in-2016-c26fbd8e16f3