How to Enjoy Weight-loss
How I’ve shifted my perception from physique to performance
It’s safe to say that my YouTube is awash with yoga videos, popsugar follow along workouts and UK IFBBPro bodybuilders talking about movement and physique and all the great stuff we critique ourselves on, on a daily basis.
A news article in 2012 from the sexist, racist and homophobic (IMO) Daily Mail said that women check their reflection average eight times a day. I’d say that is correct with bathroom breaks, getting ready and getting ready for bed/bathing. A conflicting argument surfaced three years later suggested that men of the same VAIN, checked their reflection 23 times as opposed to a woman’s 16 and suggested men may have been the more vainer sex.
My YouTube seems to suggest this is the case as I follow male bodybuilders and I follow fitness women, and the male bodybuilders are more concerned with the physique than their overall performance rather than how physically fit and strong they are. I then watched a gymnast take on a bodybuilder who had lost his neck in an unfortunate smelting accident, I joke, his traps had just ate it.
“I have never seen a man who has designed his body a certain way be so out of tune with his body”
Comparatively the bodybuilder was clunky, couldn’t bounce on the trampoline, couldn’t keep his body straight, couldn’t pull his body up to do a muscle up, couldn’t even do a handstand.
The gymnast’s body was slender, toned, muscular and he could do 100 more things with his body than the bodybuilder. The best thing he said the whole video was “I have never seen a man who has designed his body a certain way be so out of tune with his body” and it got me thinking that my dieting efforts would be negligible if I was going to be out of tune with my body.
So I fucked off the diet and focusing on how I looked and focused on what I can do instead. And my working out has become incredibly fun, not stressed and challenging. I find pushing myself because I wanna create the ability to do something instead of get a flatter stomach more engaging. There isn’t a direct link with 50 jumping jacks and a 6 pack, however there is the direct correlation that if you can do 50 jumping jacks today, in a few days you may be able to do 60. Until you’re burning thousands of calories while you’re just having fun getting in tune with your body and increasing your stamina.
And there it is, once you’re in a calorie deficit just having fun, the weight comes off and the stress hormone cortisol doesn’t curtail your efforts by hoarding insulin like a bitch. Eat that cookie hunny.
Who I follow online and what activities I do also feed into this theory too, I ultimately like to work out with friends, so me and my best friend have been going to HotPod yoga in our hometown for a bit of a de-stress and some strength training as Yoga is not considered aerobic. We go for a hike on Saturdays with a minimum of 6 miles covered, which on a flat ground I could now do without breaking a sweat and on rocky terrain I can do in about 2.5 hours.
I’ve tried trampolining which nearly murdered me as it is high intensity and I was damn sight afraid of breaking my neck, but I had loads of fun and if I keep going I’ll get better at it. This is my philosophy to getting back “In Shape” forget what you look like, have fun and work on your ability to do things. A study found that obese men compared to healthy Eutrophic men had tightness in hips, groin and chest and were unable to get to higher VO2 Peaks, in other-words they couldn't create the oxygen in their bodies as efficiently as the healthy men, and the predictor of the VO2 peak was a calculation that included their BMI. ( O2peak can be predicted by the model VO2peak =85.161 — (0.747 x BMI) — (0.925 × body fat percentage)
They wanted to use this calculation for managing obese patients and pushing them to their limit and not beyond it, VO2 Peak is different to VO2Max, Vo2 Peak is what the body can obtain, Vo2Max is what the body can use. When the body doesn’t use oxygen Hypoxia can happen. Hypoxia is a condition in which a certain area of the body is not getting enough oxygen, it’s like suffocation for your muscles, it can cause muscle cramps and also can contribute to stitch.
Your spleen contracts, sends out erythrocytes which carry oxygenated red blood cells to fuel your muscles. Hence stitch. The best way to get rid of stitch, breathe deep and carry on running. Also breathe deep through your nose as it’s heated up through your nose where as huffing and puffing through your mouth doesn’t warm the air for your lungs to tolerate. Already your tolerance for oxygen inside the body is getting stronger. I mean don’t kill yourself every time you do a workout but do something that makes you high (for me it’s trampolining, pun obviously intended) the good rush of euphoria after you’ve used your creatine phosphate resource in your muscles to give you a massive burst of energy, its basically what drives your contraction.
STOP FOCUSING ON HOW YOU LOOK AND FOCUS ON WHAT YOU CAN DO.
If you focus on performance and what you can do, you’ll build more muscle and you’ll increase your metabolism as your basal metabolic rate and lean muscle mass will be at higher ratios.
Taking myself for example, I am around 34% body fat, I’m a UK 12/14 and I am 154cm long, if I am sedentary I can eat 1710 calories.
But if I dropped my weight by 14kg and decreased my body fat to 20% then I can eat 1688 calories at sedentary level.
Lower Lean percentage at 66% body fat 34% : BMR = 1710kcals
High Lean Percentage at 80% body fat 20% : BMR = 1688kcals but 14kg lighter
The difference in calories is minimal , I doubt I’ll suffer at 30kcals LESS.
If I stayed the same weight and reduced my body fat down to 29% the results are outstanding.
At the same weight but 71% Lean body mass and the rest fat 29%, I can eat 1806 calories. More calories than I can eat now, and do less cardio, sedentary level. If I add my workouts, 3 times a week, yoga, trampolining and walking that totes upto 2069 kcals. All the yummy foods just for changing how much fat I have in comparison to how much muscle I have. It’s like the opposite of dieting and people get themselves in a trap forcing their weight down in unrealistic calorie deficits to pile the weight back on in a week because they’ve damaged their metabolism, STOP FOCUSING ON HOW YOU LOOK AND FOCUS ON WHAT YOU CAN DO.
We as humans don’t have an issue with weight, we have an issue with fat and flab and we get it confused with weight. At the minute I am focusing on my ability to jump high, create explosive movement, lean my muscles out through yoga and stretching and generally improving my quality of life. I don’t know whether it will make me slim, at the minute I’m not concerned about that. But I am concerned about not being on a diet for the rest of my life and generally being fit and able.
This is how I am enjoying weightloss, by not thinking of it as weight I’m losing but more as abilities I have gained.
