You're Probably The Problem. I was.
We’ve all heard them. The whining questions from people who just cant do it.
“Why can’t I lose weight? Why can’t I change my body?”
Why? Because you eat like shit and train even worse. That’s why.
“I’ve tried EVERYTHING and NOTHING works!”
If you’ve seriously tried everything and got no results, then its time to look in the mirror and see what the real problem is. YOU!
Even the most useless training will yield some sort of result if it’s done with enough effort and persistence. I will say that too many people choose the wrong type of training for the outcome they desire. Running every day isn’t going to turn you into a lean muscular person any time soon. So why are you running up and down stairs or around a park?
If you must experience all the wonders of a variety filled diet and lifestyle, then don’t expect the results of a person who lives a dedicated strict existence, and certainly don’t question why you cant look like them when you do absolutely nothing to get what they have.
Want to drink every night? Do it. Want to pop pills, snort lines and party all weekend without eating for days on end? Enjoy yourself! It’s fun! Want to eat cake and junk food? Go nuts! But stop bitching about how much you hate how you look and feel, and that nothing works for you.
You’re the problem!
Making no progress with your training? Could it have something to do with those Friday and Saturday nights you’re out until the early hours getting fucked up?
Weight and body fat aren't dropping? Have you stuck to a diet for more than 4 days?
Stop comparing yourself to those lucky people (assholes!) who can get away with eating and drinking what ever they like. You’re not one of them.
Accept that you have the body that you were given. You can make it bigger or smaller. You can make it harder or softer. You can kind of change its colour…temporarily. However you cant change the fact you have wide hips. You can’t change that you have short legs. You can’t change the shape of your muscle. Work with what you have and make it the best it can be.
Now before you go “stop being an asshole. You don’t understand. Some people just can’t lose weight” or whatever BS excuse people say these days. I’m not talking about the people who genuinely do try. The ones who follow diets and train hard. Some people are just unlucky. They have messed up body’s that don’t want to change no matter what they do. So many people have been given such bad advice and have tried so many different things that their body just puts up a giant “fuck you” sign and refuses to change. There are so many moronic personal trainers who destroy people’s metabolisms with starvation diets of chicken and broccoli leaving the person broken for life. I’m not talking about these people. I’m also not talking about those that genuinely don’t care. For whatever reason there are plenty of people who have no interest in improving how they look. They are quite content to eat and drink as much or as little as they feel and look how ever they look. No I’m talking about the pain in the ass people who expect the outcome but aren’t willing to put in any of the work to get it. The ones who are 30% body fat and want rock hard abs but cant stop eating shit food for more than a week before going “omg the cravings were to much I just had to eat something sweet!”
These people piss me off!
And just so you know, I used to be fat.
At my fattest I was 105kg and while it was never officially measured, I would have been well over 30%. Put it this way, my waist was wider than my shoulders. Also, I’m short. 5’4. So put 105kg on a short guy and picture those wonderful proportions: big belly, wide waist, bloated face. Stunning, I know!
I wish I had photos to show how bad I looked. I don’t really wish but for reference they would be helpful. I’ve always hated photos though. They are a constant reminder that I don’t look as good as I wish I did.
There was a startling moment of realisation one afternoon when I walked past a mirror and caught a glimpse of myself mid stride.”WTF?!”
I was fat.
How did this happen? I always thought I looked good. Maybe not good, but muscular. Yeah that’s it. Now I suddenly saw that not only did I not look good, I certainly wasn’t muscular. I was fat!
There were signs of course. Ones that I was apparently oblivious to. That very day of looking in the mirror I had to get a pair of pants altered so they would fit. They were a 40” waist and I couldn’t do them up! Only a few years earlier I was a 28” waist. Still, at that point I saw no issues with this.
Months prior I went to use my weight belt while training and couldn’t get it done up. I called my brother and with great concern said, “my belt is broken, I can’t do it up” he replied, “its not broken, you’re fat.” Completely missing the obvious meaning of his words I said, “nah man, you don’t understand, it’s broken. It wont do up!” He replied again, “I get it. But it’s not broken. You’re just fat”
Such cryptic talk. Why cant people ever just get to the point?
You’d think I would have heard something when a friend said to me one night “you looked really good a few months ago, now you’re fat.” Nope. Didn’t catch the “fat” part. I just laughed and drove off.
This came during a ridiculously unhealthy period of my life. Sleeping less than 3 hours a night and spending every night and the early morning hours eating pies and sausage rolls bought from petrol stations. But I bought diet coke to wash it down with, so I was all good!
Looking back I now realise how deluded I was. I ate 7 meals a day sticking to the “eat every 2.5-3 hours” routine. Meat, rice eggs and protein shakes. Perfectly fine right? Well if that’s all I ate then yeah it would have been. But on top of that I had an almighty diet coke addiction of 30 cans per day. Yes 30. Basically I needed to have a can every 30 minutes or so to stop the caffeine withdrawals crippling me. I was able to feel the crushing pressure building in my head after 15 minutes of finishing the last can. How I still have teeth is a miracle. In between meals I would have the occasional donut or chocolate bar. Sometimes I'd replace my steak and rice with subway. Due to being awake all weekend, every weekend there were always kebabs. With McDonalds being the most convenient food in the wee hours of the morning, I'd munch on a few big macs with large chips. Fresh McDonalds chips are awesome! Speaking of hot chips…KFC chips! Omg! I’m going to stop this reminiscing as I’m starting to drool!
So basically for all the wonderful calories I put in from clean food, I put double in from bad food. Combine that with very little sleep and a whole lot of partying and we have a recipe for “fat adam”.
But no one forced any of this on me. I did this. I ate the food willingly. I chose to stay up all night at clubs. I chose to party through the week. Never was a gun pointed at my head forcing me to do anything. Never was I held down and food forced into my mouth. Actually that may have happened but you get my point. I did this. I’m not the victim.
Personal responsibility seems to have been forgotten these days. All the scary advertising showing how bad fast food is. Really? You went to McDonalds looking for nutritious food? If you’re eating McDonalds honestly believing you’re doing your body good, I hope natural selection skips you.
I was actually in a McDonalds a few weeks ago. Not for the food. The person I was with needed a bathroom. We walked in. I sat down and waited for my friend. I was amazed. Not once did a burger jump out from behind the counter and jam itself down my throat. Not once did anyone behind the counter offer me a Mcflurry or thick shake. I wasn’t even sold any chips. I was confused. I’ve been lead to believe that McDonalds makes you fat if you walk near the store and it needs to be banned because the food is forced down your throat. But here I was minding my own business. No one paid any attention to me, and when I left I was no fatter than when I walked in. How could this be? Maybe, and I know this is a hard concept to grasp for many, but maybe people are the problem and not the food.
I understand that eating McDonalds isn’t the greatest thing in the world. Getting 1000 calories from a burger that has ingredients that can outlive the average human, probably isn’t the best source of nutrition. However I’ve never actually been forced to eat it. I see the ads all the time on bus shelters, tram stops, TV. I even hear it on the radio every now and then and yet never once have I been forced to eat it. I haven’t eaten McDonalds in years and the only time I did eat it, was after I made the choice to walk in and order some food. No one forced me. So why should it be banned?
Claiming that people need to be educated on the harmful effects of fast food is a terrifying thought. Has common sense and basic intelligence dropped that low that we really need to teach people that eating food made from plastic and glue is bad for them? Do we really want to run the risk of one of these uneducated people holding a position of power?
No one who eats fast food was forced. They made a choice. They chose to eat it. Therefore they chose to deal with what it does to them. If you don’t want the harmful effects of eating fast food, here’s an idea….don’t fucking eat it!
Now back to me. Upon discovering that I didn’t look like Brad Pitt in Fight Club and that I actually resembled a white Fat Albert, I decided to make a change. That night I wrote myself a diet. I knew that ketogenic diets were wonderful for losing weight so that’s what I chose. I didn’t really get the keto part right though. Or that it’s supposed to be low calories. The day basically consisted of:
- 800g sausages
- 8 x eggs
- 2 x bread
- 100g peanuts
- 120g protein powder.
I actually only worked this out recently and discovered it was around 4500 calories with a ratio of roughly 25p/20c/55f. Not even close to keto. But I stuck to it. I lost over 30kg in just over 3 months.
And all I had to do was stick to a diet and stop doing the things that made me fat in the first place. Its not rocket science.
What made me change was I hated everything about myself being fat. I hated that I was now a fat guy. People give fat people shit about being fat…because they’re fat. I was now a fat guy. When I realised I was fat I hated how I looked. Hated how I felt. Hated how clothes fit. Hated that I couldn’t sit down without my belly sticking out. I hated everything about myself and had to change! That hatred of myself was my motivation to get off my ass and do something about it.
Some people say they look to their trainer/coach for motivation. That's fine. If me looking a certain way, sticking to a diet and training at a high level is motivation to a person then I'm cool with that. But it isn't my job to motivate someone. The best motivation you can ever have is hating something about yourself. Hate will make you change. If you can't look in the mirror and hate yourself enough to stick to your training and diet, then nothing I say or do will help. It simply doesn't mean enough to you.
The unfortunate truth is, for most people you can have one or the other. Either you live strict, eat strict, train hard and really work on your body and look awesome. Or you eat shit, drink shit, stay up all night going out socialising, then take your clothes off and look shit. Very rarely are people able to eat and drink what they want, stay up all night and do everything wrong and still look good. Yes it happens but for the majority of us, life just aint that kind!
Lets not kid ourselves and deny that vanity runs through our veins. All the bullshit out there about “be happy with who you are” is utter crap! Every one judges everyone. Every time you walk out the front door you’re making a first impression on someone. Don’t even try to lie and say you don’t care what people think of you. No one spends 45 minutes in front of a mirror getting ready to then turn around and say they don’t care what others think. There isn’t a person alive who doesn’t appreciate getting a compliment about their appearance. It is the ultimate personal recognition. YOU.LOOK.GOOD! People don’t see your personality at first glance. That comes later.
We live in a world where appearance matters. Cover yourself in tattoos; you’re probably going to be treated differently. Don’t like it? Don’t get the tattoos. Simple.
Ill admit I was fortunate that my body dropped the weight as quickly as it did. My weight loss came from nothing but strict dieting and weight training. I never did any cardio! I chose the right type of training for the outcome I desired. I do feel for the people who get no results despite hours of training and starvation diets. Unfortunately the industry is so full of idiots who have no clue. Telling people that running around a park is going to have them looking like a magazine cover model. It won’t! Skinny girls with massive implants who have never been fat in their life, telling fat women they can look like them if they follow their clean eating guides. Not going to happen! But every time a person says “fuck this, its not working” and then spends the next month eating all the shit food that made them fat in the first place, falling off the wagon, it just puts them right back to square one. But that’s on them and no one else. No one forced that food down their throat.
Since losing my fat I’ve never been able to understand why people who are trying to lose weight eat off their diets. It makes no sense to me. No one working their ass off saving money to buy a house goes out in the middle of it and buys a car. No one is that dumb. It would set them back years. In fact when most people start saving for a house, they cut almost every unnecessary expense in order to purchase the house quicker. Why wouldn’t you do the same with your body? Your body is much more important than some bricks.
Why would you go out and eat shit food when your goal is to be lean? WHY?
On a daily basis I see people and measure them. Listening to their justifications of why they “had” to have a drink. Why they “had” to eat bad food. How it was completely unavoidable. They went away somewhere and it was impossible to get decent food. Apparently wherever this “away” place is, they only serve booze and bad food. Doesn’t matter where “away” is, the menu always seems to be the same. They also don’t have supermarkets in “away” and no one could ever prepare food and take it with them, that’s just madness!
I’m sitting on a plane right now writing this part of the blog. I just finished a meal that I brought on board with me. I cook my food every morning and fill a Tupperware container that I divide over 4 meals. If I’m going out somewhere I also take 2 protein shakes. So I have 6 meals with me when I go out. When I get off the plane I’m going to go to the super market and buy my food for the next few days I’m away. I’ve got scales with me so I can weigh the food. I’ve brought protein powder with me so even if I get caught somewhere, I’m still covered.
It really isn’t that hard to be prepared. For the people who say they have no time in the morning to get food ready, cook it the night before. Spend one day a week and cook all your food for the week. And if you say you don’t like that idea because you don’t like eating refrigerated food, then get up earlier and cook! Quit making excuses for why you cant do anything. ANYTHING can be done or worked around if you really want to. How bad you want to is really the question.
Don’t give me that shit about “lifestyle” and you must have variety. It is plain laziness when people make excuses about why they cant follow diets. I have had 2 major surgeries in the last 2 years and each time I went to hospital I took my food with me. On one occasion when I had to stay in hospital longer than expected, my wonderful girlfriend cooked another day’s food for me and dropped it off. I haven’t eaten off my diet since I dropped those 30 kilos almost 6 years ago. Not a cheat meal. Not once. The worst I’ve done and this is only a recent thing, is I’ve eaten a steak at a steak restaurant. A plain steak with no sauce or sides. I simply subtract the amount of steak from the menu off my daily amount. Crazy right? I’m such a rebel!
For those that say the way I choose to live and eat is extreme and boring I really don’t care. I spent so many years trying to kill myself in various ways. Believe me, I’ve heard the excuses. I’ve used the excuses! I live this way because I’m trying to accomplish something personal. Eating chocolate cake and drinking wine aren’t going to help me achieve my goal, so they have no place in my life. I offend you because I choose sticking to my goal over eating off my diet? I’m making others feel uncomfortable because I’m the only one in the room without a drink in my hand? I can’t begin to tell you how little I care! What you choose to do with your life is your choice, but for fucks sake either do it right or don’t do it at all. My point here is that if you want something, then do what needs to be done to get it.
For every ten people that cry “I can’t do it. Nothing works!” There is always one that just shuts up, gets on with it and gets results. This means, it CAN be done if you just put the work in. In the years I’ve been writing diets for people, there is a trend I’ve noticed: the ones who need constant changes to the diet, who need a massive variety of foods in order to stick to something, who always seem to have a reason why that week they couldn’t follow it. Never go anywhere. The people who just keep it simple, do what they have to, shut up and work, make massive changes.
I really don’t care that people eat and drink poorly. Do whatever makes you happy. It’s your body. It’s your life. What pisses me off are the people that so “desperately” want to change their body because they hate how they look, yet aren’t willing to give up the stuff that made them look shit in the first place. They whinge and complain that nothing works for them yet cant stick to a diet more than a day before sticking something sweet and sugary in their mouth. I’m aware there are thousands of useless trainers out there but when a person comes in and says I’ve seen this person and that person and this person and that person and I didn’t get the results I’m after, I start to question where the problem really lays. As I said earlier, every kind of training will give some sort of result. If nothing is happening for you, you might want to look at yourself before you point the finger and blame everyone around you.