Introduction
This week I would like to introduce the first of a 3-part article looking into what I feel are the 3 most important keys to becoming lean and healthy. This is very much the practitioner’s view on the best way to tackle healthy weight loss, or more correctly (as the title of this article suggests) how to aim for fat loss and health gain, as this truly is the best goal we can have. My approach to this 3-part article is semi-scientific at best, in that I am not strictly referencing scientific articles on the topic of weight loss. Instead I am combining my gauge on the body of research in this area and combining it with what I have seen succeed and fail with thousands of clients I have worked with over the past 17years working as an exercise physiologist. As a practitioner it is important to take this approach because A) no single study, or even collection of studies, can give us all of the answers we need to help individual people, B) all that we need as practitioners has not yet been researched, and C) we see patterns of success and failures as practitioners that are also yet to be studied, and these should not be ignored. So for what it’s worth, I would like to share with you what I view as the 3 most important things to get right in order to stay lean and healthy.
1st Key – Set the correct goal
Step one in becoming leaner and healthier is to set the correct over-arching goal and don’t deviate from it. Often we need to resist the urge to just jump into our next weight loss or fitness campaign. Distractions from media and socially driven saturation of confusing and contradictory information can often lead people to build their next wave of effort on the wrong information. From where I sit the inaccuracies that often confuse people and therefore encourage focus in the wrong areas include:
– Inaccurate reporting on what is and isn’t healthy, eg. Fat is bad for you
– An overuse of the term ‘weight loss’ instead of ‘fat loss’. After all, what else are we trying to lose?
– Too much emphasis on weight loss instead of getting as healthy as possible. There is a distinct difference with these two approaches.
– Body image confusion with no healthy regard to different body types and anatomical structure. Leading to the non-stop internal dialogue of “I still don’t look the way I want to look” or “I’m not happy”.
So from my perspective, the best goal for most people is along the lines of:
“Get lean, build muscle and fuel your body with clean nutrition so that you actually feel great” For some very driven people I might also add rest when you need to. Following this goal will lead to amazing health benefits, and yes, you will also look great and people will comment!
Next week we will look at the 2nd Key: How to eat right.