Avoid Discouragement and Gain Your Best Physique Ever

Jenny Weaks and John Barban

As we move into the final stretch of the Venus Transformation Contest VT-10 some of you have probably learned a few things; such as we are all human, we all stumble forward, and the results of our work dramatically delay the consistent daily efforts.

John talks about the delayed rewards in his interview with our VT-9 first place winner Michelle Hahn.  The interview is motivating and well worth the listen.

Here are some tips for staying on track during the final home stretch as well as life long strategies to keep your shape:

•       Remember what it feels like to eat too much food.

•       Remember what it feels like to eat at a deficit.

•       Remember what it feels like to eat just the right amount.

•       Admit that you must stay aware of food intake for life if you want to keep your shape.  It doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy yourself, just stay aware.

•       Not gaining weight for a period of time is always a WIN.

•      With exercise it’s okay to make a grand final push during the last stretch, but after that keep workouts fun and sustainable to avoid burnout.

•       Focus on eating vegetables; lean protein, and then carbs and fat will generally fall into place.

•      Treat your food intake like a financial budget.  When we store extra fat it’s like a mortgage debt, it will stay there and it will accumulate unless we make payments.

•      Don’t fall pray to “hormone mania” and broken metabolism theories (if you are in doubt make a visit to your doctor). For the most part we gain fat as we get older because we have more time to accumulate “debt” without realizing we need to take action.

•        Exercise does very little to lose fat.  Of course we burn some, but it’s not significant except for very lean athletes (especially males).

•        It’s okay to skip any meal you want, even breakfast. There is no scientific evidence to prove you need breakfast. Breakfast food companies mainly propagate the myth that you need breakfast.  Breakfast can be whatever food you want, at whatever time you want, sometime after waking.

•        Even if exercise doesn’t burn as much as everyone thought, of course it improves your health.  Just a little every day is beneficial, even just 20 minutes.

•        Too much strenuous exercise is counter productive to fat loss because it makes you fatigued, lethargic, and extra hungry due to the stress it’s placed on your body.  Small bursts of any activity you enjoy is great, and just enough resistance training to maintain health and bone density.

•        Everyone does a “fast” when they sleep at night. So a trick to eating a bit less is to prolong the nightly fast either by eating dinner early then no snacking or no more eating in the evening, or skipping breakfast and just having some coffee instead.  This creates a shorter sort of “eating window” which helps many people stay in budget.

•       Fasting isn’t for everyone, but if it works for you that is okay too. People have been fasting since the beginning of human kind, for spiritual and religious purposes and also for survival when we were merely hunter/gatherers.

•        It’s okay to feel hungry sometimes when you are attempting to lose fat, it won’t kill you, and in fact it may be a necessary part of “paying off the fat debt”.

•        It doesn’t matter when you eat or don’t eat; all that matters is the cumulative daily calories over time.

One key thing to remember is that your day-to-day work, effort, and choices are not very exciting at all.  The excitement comes much later, it’s very delayed, and there is not much instant gratification in the actual process.  If you can’t be patient and just keep going you will get discouraged.

To avoid discouragement focus on the process and not the results.  Rejoice in healthy new eating habits that stick, healthy new workout habits that stick, enjoyment of your new healthier lifestyle, and all the other positive things that come along in the process (there are many!)

Before you know it the results will be there and will catch you by surprise and you will have the best physique ever.

It will be just like Jenny who is happy with her physique now in her 40’s compared to any other time in her life. She also learned that you can’t out work too much food. She learned to be patient and she got what she always wanted, in fact even in her 40’s she’s got a physique a teenager would die for.

Jenny is one of our Venus coaches.  She answers questions in the forum and she is our expert on exercise form all keeps all of our exercise documentation up to date.  We will all see and hear more about Jenny very soon. There are new and exciting developments in the works.  It’s something we can all look forward to.

And of course we all very much look forward to seeing the results of VT-10 in just a few short weeks.

The deadline for VT-10 final entries will be April 14, 2014.  There will be more updates on this in email soon.

Keep your eye on the prize.

-Ro

You can find me inside the community here:  RobertaSaum