Fit2Fat2Fit (17 page)

One week was bad enough, but another week of inadequate weight loss? After
that
week of dedicated exercise and nutrition? How was that even possible?

Michael Jordan is the icon of professional basketball, the standard by which all current and future players are judged. When one thinks of Jordan, many thoughts come to mind—his redefining of the sport, his six championships, and his ability to perform superhuman acts on the court. There's no denying his excellence and the consistent “product” he displayed in every game.

Yet that Michael Jordan—the one that stays with us—wasn't always viewed in that way. In fact, years before, his critics wondered if he'd ever live up to his billing and accomplish what the greats had: win a championship.

Michael Jordan came into the National Basketball Association as a phenom. He had led his college team (North Carolina) to a national championship, and it was assumed that his abilities would translate to the professional ranks. Yet three years into his career, Jordan had a critic for every fan, questioning his ability to be a team player, to make those around him better, and to be a proper defender.

It was painfully obvious that he was trying to do too much. His team, the Chicago Bulls, kept having mediocre records and losing in the first round of the playoffs. The pressure and desire to achieve a championship was taking its toll on Jordan and his fans. Jordan simply wasn't improving. In fact, the more he tried to do, the less he seemed to accomplish.

So Michael Jordan went back to square one. He started working with a fitness trainer who helped him build a stronger core and greater endurance. He practiced incessantly in the gym, trying to perfect his technique and build further basketball skills. He worked tirelessly on his defensive game.

Even with that dedication, progress in his overall goals came at a slow pace. Years after being called a lazy defender, more concerned with scoring points, Jordan won his first Defensive Player of the Year award. His Bulls got better as well, advancing out of the first round of the playoffs, and started to knock on the door of a berth in the NBA Finals.

Yet Jordan again hit a wall. For as good as he and his team had become, the Bulls continued to lose to a better team each year—the Detroit Pistons. Again at a crossroads, Jordan had another choice. He could continue to press, sure that he would win a championship, or he could question his current status and figure out how to improve.

Jordan studied one nemesis on the Pistons, Joe Dumars. In spite of Jordan's better natural talent, when the Bulls and Pistons reached the sixth or seventh game of their annual series, Dumars and the Pistons seemed to have a bit more in the tank.

So Jordan developed a morning workout group to get better and gain further endurance through the long NBA season. As Jordan committed to the extra workouts, teammates followed suit. Together, the team's chemistry and endurance grew.

In the 1990–1991 season, Michael Jordan finally broke through and carried the Chicago Bulls to the NBA Finals. That same year, the Bulls won the first of what would be six championship titles with Jordan at the helm.

It would have been easy to start to relax/coast. Yet Jordan's morning workouts continued. More teammates joined the program. And he was the first one in the gym and the last one to leave. In the end, Jordan faced this choice: to focus on the destination or to focus on the journey (believing that the destination was a given). He chose the latter.

As we approach our own health and fitness goals, it's easy to get lost in the destination. We pinpoint a weight, a dress size, or a waist measurement which will signify that we've accomplished everything we hoped for. That numerical goal becomes the be-all and end-all. In other words, we ignore Jordan's model and become obsessed over whether we reached a certain number.

When we're overweight and decide to become healthy, our initial positive changes in nutrition and fitness have an immediate impact on our measurements and weight. Pounds come off in droves, and we drop pants sizes so quickly it's hard to find a pair that comfortably fits.

All the nutrition and fitness plans we follow tell us to stay the course and our goals will be met. In most cases, everything seems to progress. That is, until we plateau. This leveling off happens even when we remain committed to our nutrition and our workouts. Despite our best efforts, the pounds stop dropping off. The pants we now fit into stay around a month longer than we had hoped.

Of course we get frustrated. Thus begins a cycle in which all decisions and actions around our health are based on measurements or numbers on a scale. If we drop a pound, it all seems worth it and we celebrate. If we gain a pound or simply maintain, we become depressed, or worse, convinced that something is flawed with our approach and that all the hard work isn't worth it.

Despite the universality of this issue, the nutrition and fitness routines out there tend to avoid talk of the “final 15 pounds.” It's the unspoken problem with losing weight: a plateau will come—it's inevitable—and most of us are left feeling helpless and alone in the face of it.

Well, here's what I learned the hard way. The final 10 to 15 pounds comprise a mental battle as much as a physical one. And in order to overcome the mental and physical rigors, we must change the game. We must forget about the numbers.

True health does not dictate that you weigh a certain amount or have a waist of a certain number of inches. Health is a state of being. It's about making the right decisions every single day.

While true, that understanding of the bigger picture doesn't make the frustration of the final 15 pounds any less difficult to deal with. But if we're to push through and achieve the change we're looking for, we need to keep looking at this bigger picture. We can't continue to improve by narrowing our focus down to numbers and results. If we do, our ultimate destination (which has nothing to do with a specific number) will remain out of reach.

When we reach the final 15 pounds, we're at the same crossroads that Michael Jordan faced in his early and middle career. The more he pressed to reach his destination, the less likely it seemed he would achieve it. But when he stepped back and focused on the choices and impacts he was making on his overall journey, Jordan was able to excel at the highest level for years.

The key to tackling the last 15 pounds isn't to become obsessed with a scale or a tape measure. It's to reflect on how our goals fit into our lifestyle. We need to find ways—large and small—to make our approach to weight loss part of our everyday life. Becoming healthy isn't something we can compartmentalize into a “45-minute” workout. Our decisions about health will affect all aspects of our daily life.” We need to accept that losing weight isn't just about restrictive diets or obsessive workouts; it's about making the right choices every day and believing that these choices will make us happy and keep us healthy well beyond the program's or plan's intended time limits.

We all seem to have a roadmap for what adulthood will bring us. Although the actual map differs for each person, there's a typically prescriptive path that everyone expects to follow.

After high school, we have to make the decision whether to go through at least four more years of education or immediately enter the workforce. Concurrently or soon after, we face the freedom of moving out of our parents' house, getting our first “real” job, and starting to build our own lives.

Next comes serious dating (beyond the more superficial experiences of romance) and trying to find a significant other to spend a lifetime with (or, in my case, someone who will put up with you!), followed by marriage and potentially children.

No matter how you get to this stage in life, most individuals share another common goal: becoming a homeowner. After a few years of living in apartments, dealing with loud neighbors above and below you, rising rent costs, and the realization that you're not building any sort of equity, you find the idea of owning a home increasingly attractive.

Typically, this first major purchase is called a starter home. It qualifies as an actual home in that you inherit a mortgage and can (and do!) nail anything to the wall that you'd like without incurring a hit on a security deposit. But the starter home isn't designed as a long-term fit. There are a limited number of bedrooms and an even more limited number of bathrooms. You're lucky if the kitchen can fit more than one person comfortably, storage space is nonexistent, and the idea of expansion is simply audacious. But for the current situation, it's perfect.

And then things start to change. You begin collecting belongings throughout the years—tokens and trinkets and furniture that you can't bear to relinquish. Children often enter the equation, first taking over any spare bedrooms and then taking control of half of every bathroom.

With drawers and closets filled to capacity with toys, books, and puzzles, you start looking for creative places to use as storage. And trying to feed a group of people in the kitchen now is laughable—it's easier to put out some television trays than deal with a full-fledged dining room table.

Finally you wake up one day and feel like your house is going to explode. There's no room for anything, and you realize that either the family and possessions have to stop growing (in fact, have to shrink!) or you're going to need a bigger house. Simply put, the starter home has served its purpose. You've reached the ceiling (both literally and figuratively).

As a result, and if you're fortunate, you upgrade. You sell the starter home (likely to another up-and-coming couple) and move into a home with actual storage, more than two bedrooms, and enough bathrooms that the children have one “just for them.” You ensure that every room has closet space and that there's potential for expansion. You're now able to increase your family and/or possessions to the next level.

Perhaps it's the reality of a starter home's limitations that makes us realize the routines of the past don't work in the present. When we see overflowing closets, we know it's time for more storage.

Being overweight is like the good old days when you were still living with your parents. You didn't worry about space back then, and you worried less about having the basic necessities around you. Similarly, as a person who is overweight with no goal to be fit, you eat what you want, when you want, and any physical exertion is on your terms alone.

When you make the decision to lose weight and get healthy, you realize it's time to move out and buy your own starter home, as it were. Your starter home, which is small and manageable, offers a level of control you aren't used to.

And it works for you. The starter home of health and fitness is about balance, choice, and persistence. Your meals are prepared and measured according to plan, and you focus on following demanding workout routines to get the results you need.

Yet all too often, as we've seen, the results start to slow down. You aren't getting the drop in pounds or inches that you're used to, and you aren't sure why. The answer might surprise you.

When our bodies start to get healthy, they require change. People are often surprised to learn that I needed a 3,000-calorie diet to maintain my pre–weight gain body. Why? Because when the body is operating at its optimum level, considerable energy is required. It takes plenty of fuel for the body to continue to lose fat and build muscle. In essence, your body needs more to do more.

When we're nearing our health goals, our bodies start to require more nutrients and activity to maintain performance. If we don't change (that is, if we stay in our starter home), we can only go so far—there's a ceiling that we will hit, and the results will crawl to a halt.

We're smart enough as homeowners to know when it's time to leave the starter home behind and upgrade to a larger space. When we reach the ceiling in our own health, we're not so savvy. Typically, we either quit or go more extreme with the restrictions. We believe that if we cut a few more calories out of our diet the weight will start to come off again, but the opposite is actually true.

If the body starts to require more energy, but isn't getting it, it goes into “retention mode.” It holds on to fat and the limited amount of nutrients it's getting, just to maintain its current state. The body won't continue to become leaner because there's simply not enough fuel to do so.

One of the hardest lessons to learn is that when we reach our health plateau, we need to move out of the starter home and into a larger space. Many times, we need to actually increase our caloric intake (still with healthy choices!) as we continue to advance in our physical activity. However we do it, we must
adjust
.

The human body is amazing in that it offers clues as to when a systemic change is required in our diet and/or fitness routine: it stops making progress. You can either continue to push against the ceiling, becoming frustrated that no results are coming, or you can upgrade your diet and make sure that your body has enough fuel and energy to continue to shed weight and build lean muscle.

When you're progressing through your life roadmap, moving from a starter home to the house you'll live in for 30 years is a momentous occasion. For many, it means you've arrived. The plateau in your own health is equally momentous. Finally, your body is starting to perform at a level it's never seen before.