Ab Hinc: 2012

Monday, January 9, 2012

New Year - New Body

Seems a lot of people are talking about losing weight, becoming more healthy, working out, etc. Oh wait that's right it's the beginning of the year. Resolution time. This is when so many lock down one of the 2 fundamentals to change their bodies - desire. The other fundamental is more tricky and usually is the reason why many of the "resolution" folk don't hit their goals. That fundamental is belief.

Often people sabotage themselves because they don't believe they can hit their goal and for one reason or another jump on the excuse train to quitsville. "I can't possibly do this or do that so I'll cut a corner here, a corner there" and then "I'm getting no results, I'll never have those massive guns or that six pack - oh look soda, oh look ice cream...oh look soda with ice cream in it!". That's about the gist of the process. Part of the problem is misinformation. We are just not educated enough to understand how the processes in our bodies work and that affects our belief in the end result. If we lose the belief that we can enact change in our bodies we will eventually lose the desire.

A good example of this is the thought that you can spot target fat loss. "Oh look at my belly, I know! I will do 1000 crunches and my abs will magic their way from under the layers of fat!". Turns out that doesn't work and all you gained is a strained neck and an injured back. Reason being, it's true what they say , abs are in fact made in the kitchen. I am a firm believer in the 80/20 rule (80% nutrition, 20% exercise). If you eat properly (that's great tasting healthy food - it's not a myth people!) you will shed fat over your entire body.

Can't tell me this doesn't taste fantastic!

Your last fat stores to go tend to be the exact problem area you are looking to "target", like your belly bulge. No amount of crunches are going to make that pouch budge until your other stores are depleted. And on top of that crunches are terrible for you! stop right now! Do some functional core centric routines (abdominals does not equal core btw) and you'll have much better results and avoid imbalances since you are not helping your lateral obliques or your back which can lead to injury due to imbalance, and oh wait no working out due to said injury, and eating since you are sad you cannot work out...but i digress. There is a reason that your body stored all that fat there to begin with. We cannot control which area our body burns fat from at a given time, but we can continually burn it until all that's left is that final problem area and that too will disappear.

Maybe our resolutions should be adjusted to avoid misinformation and using our brains to understand how exactly our systems work so at the end of the day, we can still believe in our end result. That way we can avoid the eventual pitfalls including losing the excitement you had on January 1st that this is your year to rule the pool! Also, maybe we can change that to the year we become more healthy so we can live better quality lives for longer than we would have otherwise, but hey if "rule the pool" gets the same results - there's your motivation. Keep the belief!

Check out the fat I didn't spot reduce - also 0 crunches. Zero!