Today there seems to be confusion with forced exercise for those who are obese or extremely overweight. People who are really overweight believe or are told they just “don’t exercise enough“. Bah!  That’s not the problem.

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Eat less, exercise more and you’ll lose weight.  Boom!  I should stop writing this article right now because I just fixed all your problems.  Excuse me?  You’ve tried this method and it didn’t work?  Hmpf!?  Well then, allow me to tell you why I’M NOT SURPRISED WHAT SO EVER.

In this article we’re going to talk about the confusion created around exercise, food, weight-loss and health in general.  The confusion stems from the messages delivered to us in commercials and advertisements. Fitness, supplements, and health products are a portion of the health industry worth billions upon billions of dollars.  There’s just so much to be sold; so many marketable pieces to this puzzle!  The problem is if someone wants to sell a product or a service it must be unique.  It has to address a common problem in a special way never previously thought of.  This has resulted in the Fitness and Health Industry dividing into hundreds, if not thousands, of different specialty services and products.

Below I’ve listed responses commonly spoken by so-called fitness pros, gurus, and whatever the hell else they’re calling themselves today.

“…You must be doing it wrong or not working hard enough.”  (Translation – You need a coach to show you how to exercise and push you harder because you’re obviously not capable of educating yourself in addition to being too lazy to put your maximal effort into exercise without someone in your ear for the entire hour. Hire me.)

“…You probably weren’t strict enough with your diet.”  (Translation – Again you lack discipline and need someone to supervise you.  Hire me.  Also, here’s a diet plan I sell to everyone regardless of their individual body type which includes all of the powdered food and supplement a person needs. It’s called the “Pyramid Scheme Nutrition Pack” and it only costs $500/month, but it totally works for everyone.)

“…You’re not exercising in a way to get your body to respond.”  (Translation – I do this special thing called CrossFit which is modeled after 16th century slavery conditions where we work you close to death and totally cut simple carbs out of the diet.  Join our gym.  If it doesn’t work for you, you need to either come in more often which will cost extra.  If that doesn’t work you just have to eat less and cut all carbohydrates our of your diet.  You’ll definitely lose at least some weight at this point, be a irritable, miserable prick and most likely result you getting injured… but that’ll be your fault for not maintaining good form.  No worries, though!  After you regain all your weight recovering from your injury, we’ll help you lose it all over again!)

Ok, maybe I went a little overboard on the last one, but you know what I’m talking about.  In fact, I know you know what I’m talking about because there aren’t many people out there anymore who aren’t frustrated with their current level of health, and that frustration level is directly proportionate to the number of jack assess who have tried to sell you products of which the ingredients are top secret due to the formula being proprietary information.

This leads us to the obvious conclusion – No style of training is right, every thing you eat gives you cancer, and all supplements are snake oil.

…Ok, big breath.

Now let’s get serious a moment.  The problem we’re dealing with as an entire country is much of our “science” is and has been funded by companies attempting to sell products.  The more money a company has the more scientific studies they can conduct.  Since the 1950s we’ve been fed nutritional guidance based on scientific studies conducted by the winners of product wars held at the industry level.

For instance in the 1957 a study was conducted by the American Heart Association which sought out to prove that a diet high in saturated fat, eggs and red meat causes high cholesterol which then leads to heart attack. The study was called the “Anti-Coronary Club”.  It consisted of two groups of men between the ages of 40 to 59 years old who were observed over a 10 year span.  The Control Group ate the average American diet of the time which consisted of eggs for breakfast, red meat 3x/day, and cooked foods in butter.  The other group was put on what was called at the time the “Prudent Diet” (the first ever fad diet) which substituted vegetable oils for butter, cold cereal for eggs, and fish and chicken for red meats.

By 1966 the control group on average had a higher blood cholesterol level (an average of 250) than the Prudent Diet group (an average of 220), BUT during the study 8 DEATHS BY HEART ATTACK WERE RECORDED IN THE PRUDENT DIET GROUP.  Even though the study had essentially proven that the substitution of vegetable oils for animal fats caused higher mortality rates the study was still published as a success for lowering cholesterol numbers.  Why, you ask?  Because the institution responsible for conducting the study was founded by and funded by members of the Edible Oil industry; the very people who were selling the products the study was supposed to prove to be healthier for you.  This also opened the door for statin drugs by categorizing nearly 40% of the country as “at risk” for heart disease due to high cholesterol.

Another seemingly convincing study was held in 1953 by Dr. Ancel Keys called the “Six-Country Study”.  The graph below shows the correlation between dietary fat consumption and death from heart disease.  It seems like an open an closed case.  The more fat in the diet the more death from heart disease.  But in the second graph you’re able to see all the information available to Dr. Keys at the time.  So as you can see the good Doc drew a nice swooping line along the path he chose and then just removed the data points that didn’t fit.

And lastly without even getting specific there are studies proving cardiovascular exercises are the most effective ways to lose fat and also studies stating that weight training is the most effective way to burn fat.  Or we could break it down to the dozens of styles which all claim to be the best method for weight loss:  High Intensity Interval Training, body building, endurance training, Tabatas, circuit training, german volume training, blah blah blah blah.

The point is this is the world we live in today.  No matter where you turn you’re confronted with more science supporting a product or service and sitting right beside it on the shelf is its competition which has its own scientific studies disproving the science of the neighboring product.  And so the one thing most people seem to agree upon is “eat less, exercise more” because that at least seems like simple math.  It’s a simple subtraction problem.  Wrong!  It’s not simple math.  I’m sorry to be a downer, but honestly this thought process is a huge part of the problem.  If you’ve read my last blog called “Rapid Fat Loss (Warning!)” then you already understand why.  Click here to read it.

So let’s talk about fat for a moment, the war on obesity if you will.  Being fat or having a lot of fat on your body is not the root of your problem.  Excessive fat storage is a symptom.  It’s a sign of a dysfunctional metabolism.  Just getting rid of the fat by adding exercise and basically starving yourself isn’t the answer to the question of how you become healthy so that you avoid illness later in life.  Maybe because the fat is what we can see in the mirror, as opposed to a slow acting thyroid or overburdened liver, answers why it’s become the target of our health obsessions.  I mean, it’s even become the Presidential First Lady’s pet project to cure obesity in America and yet we as a country struggle more with it even though we spend more money on health care than any other country in the world.

What if fat wasn’t the enemy?  Sure it’s not healthy to have a lot of fat on your frame, or maybe you’re least happy about how it looks, but what if we just viewed it as a symptom of a bigger problem? it could make it easier to grasp the real reason as to why we might store too much of it.  At FitLife Fusion this is the perspective we take.  So whether you want to look good, be as healthy as possible, or compete at a high level of athletics our team is looking at the big picture.  We’re asking, “What’s causing your body to store and retain the fat?”  If you look at it that way instead of …”I’m fat.  I need to burn it off” …you might see your situation in a new light.

So here are the basics in regard to what needs to be done in order to get to the root of the problem and really lose weight without the long term ramifications.

How often and how you exercise is completely dependent upon your individual goals.  Are you training for an athletic event or are you just concerned about being healthy, avoiding pain, and moving well?  Daily movement should be a thing, but not every day must you go to the gym for a one hour sweat-athon consisting of circuit training and cardio.  Movement should be your primary concern.

At FitLife Fusion we focus on a lot of joint mobility drills, visual (eye) exercises, and balance and coordination drills. We then relate those things to major exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench press, rows, over-hear presses.

If your main objective is to lose fat your training program should be set up similar to a body builders; high repetition ranges with relatively low weight and short rest periods.  Here’s and example:

This kind of training rep/set scheme should provide you with a pretty good burning feeling.  If there’s no burn, there’s no fat loss.  The burning feeling is the production of lactic acid which is a sign that your body has to dip into fat reserves for energy production.  This is where the “No pain, no gain” phrase comes from.  It just refers to the burn, not the pain of injury or of the mental anguish you must go through to accomplish anything.  Perform an exercise.  Do it until it burns.  Walk away for a moment and relax.  Do it again.  Switch things up every 3-6 weeks and you’ll see results pretty quick.

This is the most difficult part for most.  I’m sorry, but it really is.  I wish I could say that dieting is easy like everyone else does, but the unfortunate truth is that nutrition is such an individual process there’s just no set diet or way to eat that can be packaged, sold to everyone, and actually be effective.  The effectiveness of one’s diet isn’t just in its ability to make you lose weight, it’s also measured by its ability to actually make you or keep you healthy.  Even though there are many individual aspects of a person’s diet there are a few things we can say for sure.

And finally, make sure your are eating all three of these things (protein, fat, sugar) in any given meal.  This helps you absorb nutrients more efficiently and keep your blood-glucose levels steady.

Additionally  there are other things to take into consideration like vitamins, minerals, light, and environmental stressors, but these are at least  some of the basics you could take into consideration and install into your lifestyle.

If you have any questions request a free consult.  We work with people people in our facility in Las Vegas and all over the world via Skype.

Keep moving!