Fall speed ahead

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/10/2022 (1105 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I turned 38 on Oct. 4. You stop “celebrating” birthdays as you get closer and closer to the big 4-0, right?

As a kid I always thought I had the worst birthday because I was months behind my friends.

But now, I’m just grateful they’re still happening. I don’t yet feel like Paul Rudd in This Is 40. I get to help hundreds of people through my chosen career path, doing what I love, and I have a healthy family and plenty of gratitude for it all.

(Well, I could take or leave the cat and its vomit, but that’s a discussion for another day.)

With it being October, it’s the perfect time to turn over a new leaf. No barbecues and pool parties for a while. No more hot dogs and beer. No more excuses.

Time to get serious about building the body, mindset and discipline it takes to get in great shape inside and out.

But if you’re like me, you’re busy. “Free time” is that half hour after the kids are in bed before you crash out yourself. I’ll let you in on my secret: Accept that you’ll never have “free time” and take action now.

The best time to start is actually when you feel busiest, because if you can make it work then, nothing will throw you off course later. And that’s the only way you keep the results of your effort, if you can stay consistent through the ebbs and flows of life.

After all, we all know the return on investment of eating better, exercising and lowering our BMI is unparalleled. Nothing makes a bigger difference in our lives. But, for whatever reason, it often falls off the to-do list when things get tough.

But the longer we wait, the harder it’s going to be. We’re either moving forward or backward, and when we delay starting, we just move further away from where we want to be and the gap widens.

For so many years I got stuck in that rut. I accepted my own BS and the lies I told myself. But I didn’t realize how miserable I was because I was out of shape. It was the governor of my progress.

I just kept digging myself deeper into a hole of negative self-image and a lack of energy and confidence. It’s a vicious cycle and starting can seem overwhelming, but just taking that first small step is the secret.

There’s a tendency to rationalize coasting the last few months of the year. Kids’ activities are in full swing. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and so on. I get where this is coming from.

But it won’t be any easier in January. If you need perfect conditions to start, it means your results will be temporary because you’ll stop as soon as conditions change. But life doesn’t work that way. You will always have something. So, if you know you want to get in shape for the rest of your life, right now is the best time to start.

So let’s give you a small action to take today to get going the right way.

What’s the one tweak that would change everything else?

For one former client, that was his alcohol intake. It was the hurdle to optimal health, wealth and relationships for him. For him, drinking was the domino that had to fall.

For you, it could be something else. But often we’re just one bad habit away from a completely new way of life. Figure out what that is and take strides to reduce its impact in your life.

Q: I know sleep is important, but why is it important from a fat-loss perspective? And how can I get more of it?

A: There’s plenty of science linking poor sleep with weight gain. I think the main thing is the cascade effect. A lack of sleep is linked to increased hunger and calorie intake, as well as with decreased physical activity. Therein lies the rub, I believe.

So how do you get more sleep?

Sleep has always been a frustrating thing for me. I’ve dealt with some bouts of insomnia in the past, and I still occasionally have nights where I toss and turn and get in my own head about it.

A big lightbulb moment for me came when I heard it put like this: If you ask someone who sleeps well every night “How do you do it,” they will respond with, “I don’t know, I just fall asleep.”

That’s definitely not me, and it was a bit frustrating to think that some people can just drift off the second their head hits the pillow. But after thinking about it more, it makes total sense.

If you approach sleep with any sort of anxiety around falling asleep itself, your mind is going to be your own worst enemy.

The more you stress about needing something, the more you actively repel it, right? That seems to be the case in every aspect of life.

In essence, you want to just let it happen and have sort of a small meditation session when you fall asleep.

You don’t want to focus on what you have to do tomorrow but on how good your bed feels and how grateful you are to have a place to lay your head. Be in the moment. Hopefully that helps.

I know age, hormonal changes and so on are X factors beyond control here, too, which makes the solution more complex, but that’s a topic for another day.

Q: When is it best to trust the scale, and when is it not a good time to do so?

A: Let’s lead with an example.

Each inch off the waist loosely translates to around four to five pounds of fat loss (not a perfect science, but research supports this estimate).

Our CF Coaching member Steven has lost 1.5 inches off his waist and two inches off his hips in his first 30 days — so he’s lost an estimated six pounds of fat.

But his scale weight hasn’t budged. He was actually frustrated until we looked at measurements. He’s gained several pounds of muscle and it’s masking the movement on the scale.

Now, it’s rare to see muscle gain keep pace with fat loss, but a few factors make it possible early on. Specifically, it’s those coming in having not done strength workouts like this for some time (if ever), increasing protein intake to levels not seen in some time (if ever), and a genetic predisposition to muscle building (rare, but it may be a factor in some who have an extensive training history or blessed genes).

If you want to optimally drop body fat and maintain or even gain muscle, fairly lean individuals can do so with the formula utilized in Steven’s case (you don’t need to be as diligent if you have a high BMI and lots of weight to lose):

1. He’s in a small calorie deficit — 300-500 calories less than he needs to maintain his weight per day, max.

This allows him to manage hunger — he’s eating plenty of food; he’s just being sure he’s eating a bit less than he burns over the course of a day.

2. He tracks his food daily.

When you want to have a small deficit and get results like this, it’s nearly impossible to do without properly tracking your intake. A margin of error of 300-500 calories is razor-thin — a few handfuls of mixed nuts is all it takes to turn a day of fat loss into no net change.

3. He fails quickly, and moves on.

He hasn’t been perfect, but he’s been very good — and when he messes up, he just wins the next meal.

Mitch Calvert is a Winnipeg-based fitness coach who has helped more than 1,500 people transform their bodies and lives over the past decade. Visit mitchcalvert.com to grab a free copy of his metabolism jumpstart or drop him a message to get direct coaching to drop the inches before the holidays.