Thanksgiving has just passed and, boy, am I grateful.
Between my family, my community, my gyms, my great City, my body that continues to perform, my friendships and too many other things to name, I have a lot to be thankful for.
One of those things is my staff.
I’ve said this before but running a small business can be a real bitch. But one of the great things is that you get to choose the people you work with and this crew is absolutely the best.
And while I feel very close to all of them, there is one aspect of my life that I think they’ll never be able to understand.
They were never fat and out of shape.
I’m pretty sure Hollis came out of the womb with abs that can cut diamonds. Conor ran a sub-6 minute mile as a toddler. Will and Eric scored off the charts on the Presidential Fitness Test in elementary school. Elena and Christabelle were born with the squat depth of the Gods. Kyle and Jules have never gone through a phase of NOT wanting to show off their quads.
I could go on and on but you get the point.
The upside to all of this is that I feel I can most closely relate to the challenges our clients face. When you sign up for a facility like ours it is most likely because you need support and expertise around your training in order to make progress. If you are already benching 100kgs like Layla (which is absolutely nuts, by the way) you probably aren’t calling me for help.
Lucky for you, the former fat boy over here is also in charge of writing this blog every week.
And double lucky for you, you can underline the “former” in the above sentence. Because while I’ve had periods of being in better and worse shape over the last 25 years, I’ve never gone back to my former status.
Which makes me rather qualified to share with you what I call “The Ten Stages of Weight Loss” which may come in remarkably handy as many of you will face the upcoming new year looking to drop some weight.
Let me walk you through the stages.
Stage One: That Nagging Feeling
One day, you are minding your own business, walking to the bus as you always do after work when you have a thought you’ve never experienced before.
“Am I fat?” you think to yourself.
Maybe you felt a little extra jiggle as you had to pick up the pace to grab the 5:15. Or caught a glimpse of yourself in the reflection in a shop window at a bad angle and, boom, now this brand new concern has entered your noggin.
You chalk it up to not getting a good night sleep or that you are retaining water and you are sure by tomorrow all will go back to normal.
But it doesn’t. It lasts. For weeks. You can’t shake it.
Stage Two: Life Goes On
Even though this new thought is bothering you, you continue living life as usual. You still smother your pancakes with maple syrup at brunch. You circle around the parking lot for an extra 10 minutes to find a spot that cuts down your walk to the Best Buy by approximately 20 steps.
But the thought is still there. “Do I enjoy living my life this way?” you wonder as you plop down on the couch with your third pint of Cherry Garcia this week.
Stage Three: The Moment
You have your friends over for fried chicken and ribs in order to celebrate your birthday. It’s all there. The meats, the sauces, the sides, the biscuits. And it’s all delicious. But you are having a hard time enjoying it.
And after forcing down the last serving of tri-tip baked beans you put down the fork and gently announce to yourself that it’s over. You can no longer continue this way. Suddenly this becomes the most important thought you ever had in your life.
You put down the fork, tell no one, say your goodnights and you go to bed.
Tomorrow things will be different.
Stage Four: A Brand New Day
You wake up somewhat surprised that you are still motivated to do this. But it’s going to be great.
You wipe the sleep out of your eyes as you instinctively grab the box of Lucky Charms off the top of the fridge before you realize, “I am not prepared for this”. You put the box down and head out for work, deciding you will just grab something along the way.
You decide two things. The first is that you’ll get a bacon, egg, hold the cheese on a whole wheat bagel.
“This has to be better for me, right?!?”
The second is that you have no idea how to do this and you must research.
Stage 5: The Deep Dive
You get to your desk and immediately scour the internet for weight loss diets, calorie calculators and whatever hacks are going to help you drop the pounds the fastest.
It all becomes confusing and overwhelming and you decide the internet is too big. Instead, you are going to ask Samantha in accounting for advice. She lost twenty pounds on low carb.
You realize as you are about to approach her office that you don’t even know what a carb is.
Maybe getting a book would be a better idea.
Stage 6: You’re Doing It!
You sift through all the materials, decide on a plan that works for you and you stick with it.
Sure, you’re afraid of the number that’s about to appear between your feet, but you get on the scale anyway so you have a way of tracking progress.
You buy the groceries, throw out the snacks and cancel the auto-renew subscription to the “Candied Bacon Of The Month” club.
Stage 7: What Are You Doing?!?
You’re at your parents house for your niece’s birthday and you decide to skip out on the birthday cake which draws a curious look from your mother.
The ladies from the second floor are kind of surprised when you take food prep out of your bag instead of walking with them to Arby’s for lunch.
The guys notice your absence at fifty-cent wing night as you currently hold the bar record for most eaten.
People start to question your behavior. Your mother calls your grandmother because she is very concerned. Your friends start to wonder if you’ve joined some sort of cult.
Stage 8: What Are You Doing?!? (Part 2)
It starts working.
First, you notice it in the mirror when you get out of the shower.
“Is that my chin? Am I starting to see the outline of my top two abs?”
You figure out the best lighting and mirror set up in your home and check your progress again.
“Holy shit, it’s happening!”
It takes two more weeks but other people start noticing as well.
The ladies from the second floor want to know what is in that container that you bring in every day.
Samantha from accounting gives you a knowing nod.
Your mother grows even more concerned.
Your wing-night buddies. - yeah, they don’t notice anything.
Stage 9: The Roller Coaster
Inspired by the progress you’ll continue on the path. It will become obsessive and robotic. This is just who you are now. You will approach or even reach your weight loss goal. You believe that you are bullet-proof.
And it will feel that way for a while. And in an effort to find ‘balance” you will loosen up. A slice of pizza at Janice’s retirement party. A fifty-cent wing night reunion with your friends.
Sure, you’ll show a lot more restraint than you have in the past. And these indulgences don’t even affect your body composition.
Until they do.
And after not stepping on the scale for a few months (mostly cause you were scared to) you realize you are back up seven pounds.
Stage 10: The Actual Beginning
Now that you’ve gone through it all, you realize how it actually all works and you figure out the push and pull of the entire system.
You know when you can break your diet and when you can come back to it.
If you are lucky, it becomes intuitive. It becomes part of you. Sure, you still have to think about it but you don’t have to “think about it”.
Just like water doesn’t put a lot of thought into how it is going to flow.
Granted, most people will not reach stage 10. They will give up along the way.
But I hope that isn’t you. Because while it seems perhaps trite or overstated, I actually believe that having control, confidence and belief in your body is one of the greatest gifts that you can give yourself.
And if you are lucky enough to have your health and the ability to take control, it’s a gift worth giving.
Greater than anything you will find under the tree or around the menorah.