Ironically, the key for me to losing weight is to try to shift my mindset away from worrying about weight.
Frustratingly, the slower you lose weight, the more likely you are to keep it off. Do whilst it might feel like a hard slog, if you do it right you should only have to to do it once.
A SMALL deficit every day ON AVERAGE should give you the energy you need to do what you need to do and have you losing weight at the sam time.
Whilst it’s ok to have a weight goal, a goal of improving all round health is better IMO. Smart watches can supply us with all different markers we can use to identify improvements in our health.
- Resting HR
- VO2 Max
- Sleep bad time spent un the various states of
We can also look at performance goals.
- How fat we can run/walk
- HR/Pace ratio (how fast we can move in Zone2 etc)
- Beep test score
- What % if our body weight we can lift.
It’s taken me a long time to get over but rather than a weight goal. For example, I want to be able to run 5k in 20, 10k in 45, Arthur’s in 1:45 while being strong enough to bench press my body weight. I want to train 5x a week and want to dedicate one day a week to resting/recovery/family time. Also aiming to get as close as I can to 7 hours sleep a night.
If you set a variety of targets and work towards them, the weight will look after its self. We want to lose weight to have more confidence and be healthier. So why not make one of our goals to just be healthier?
There’s no point hitting your target weight if it means you have no energy to do what matters to you.
These other goals or good for your mental health too. You might have a week where you don’t lose any weight, if that’s your only metric, you’re susceptible to getting down about it. But if you have a week where you don’t lose weight but lifted heavier than you have before, or had your best ever HR/Pace ration, ran a PB etc, you can tell yourself that even though you didn’t lose weight this week, you are still improving.
Couldn’t agree more mate and there’s 3 points you highlight:
1. Focus on the process, not the result - something that’s so true for achieving anything. But most people can’t help themselves and just focus on the goal, forgetting about what they need to do to achieve the goal.
2. Have a goal that losing some weight helps you achieve - for me, that’s feeling great and having as much energy as possible to do everything I want to do in life.
3. How important losing weight slowly is. Like what you said about the all blacks. “What’s slow is smooth. And what’s smooth is fast.”
“A SMALL deficit every day ON AVERAGE should give you the energy you need to do what you need to do AND have you losing weight at the same time.” - you hit the nail on the head here mate and I can’t tell you how hard it is to get this message across to people as everyone thinks they have to go into a huge deficit each day, especially if they start counting calories.
Yeah, I think people forget to remind themselves of why they want to lose weight. If it's to feel better, set your goals around how you feel. Even if it's having a notepad next to your bed and giving yourself a rating out of 10 for the day for how you felt.
One of my favorite metrics to focus on is my heart rate/output or performance ratio. It's probably a little bit nerdy and there are a few variables to consider, however, I get really excited when I start to notice my zone 2 runs are getting quicker and quicker. That means I am able to do more, at the same relative effort. So I'm getting more out of my energy. I also like to look at resting HR. The less my body has to do while I'm resting means I should be getting a better quality of rest and re-energising should be easier.
I fuckin' love that saying. I don't often warm up when I run unless I'm going for a PB or whatever. I just use the first part of the run as the warm-up. I ALWAYS start slower than I finish and I think it's because of the meaning behind this saying. Find your rhythm, settle into it, get comfortable then make incremental tune-ups as you go along. That's where the pace will come. I was speaking to someone on twitter yesterday who is trying to run their first half marathon. They had run a 10k in 50 minutes. They said they don't know how they will run an Arthur at that pace. I said, "don't. What's the goal? To run an Arthur? If it is, run slow enough to run an Arthur. Get the distance under your belt first. Prove to yourself you can do it, then in terms of pace work backward from there. If the goal is simply to run the distance, then stay true to that goal and forget about pace, at least for now.
I know what you mean, and I don't even try to purvey that message nearly as often as you do. It took me years to learn it myself. It's not easy, but if we want to help people we just have to keep chipping away and encouraging people until they have done it for long enough to learn that lesson for themselves. I gained and lost 25kg+ three separate times. In the first two, I started myself and lost it quickly. It wasn't until the third time around that I finally found the best way. I've kept if off for 6 years now.
And I agree the goal should always be to feel great, which is why I check my Oura ring score (out of 100) first thing in the morning which is based on my resting heart rate, body temp, sleep and my heart rate variability. Can’t recommend getting one highly enough mate!
I think my watch does all the same stuff. I probably just need to pay more attention to it. I don't like looking at it because it always tells me to do less, haha. I hate wearing jewelry.
"But if they aren’t fueling themselves properly, they eventually burn out or get injured, put all the weight back on, and feel worse about themselves for failing. A cycle I know all too well."
This is me as well, but in the last month being consistent with eating enough has completely stopped my binge eating, and feel so much better as a result.
Awesome mate! And that’s interesting to hear as my binge eating only returns if I haven’t been fuelling myself properly. When I’ve been eating well, I feel I have more self control.
Swapping is definitely important when changing food habits. Even swapping full cream milk for skim milk makes a big difference.
I do agree having fat club is important, and it's good that those with higher than required body fat are doing the extras together, but as you discussed, addressing the cause of the unhealthy eating habits is the best long term solution. We all have stress in our life, and as a professional athlete you're always in the public eye and never get a break, they constantly get criticised for being human. (As if that wouldn't be stressful along with the fitness requirements and pressure to perform) Fat club should be based around support and education, not used as a form of punishment.
Yes I agree that swapping things is a far better mindset than to always be thinking “I can’t have that” and that reminds me of an old brumbies trainer who when I went to him and said: “I can’t do that because im injured”, he’d say “let’s focus on what you can do, not what you can’t do”. Unbelievable advice and that shift if mindset is so positive.
Ironically, the key for me to losing weight is to try to shift my mindset away from worrying about weight.
Frustratingly, the slower you lose weight, the more likely you are to keep it off. Do whilst it might feel like a hard slog, if you do it right you should only have to to do it once.
A SMALL deficit every day ON AVERAGE should give you the energy you need to do what you need to do and have you losing weight at the sam time.
Whilst it’s ok to have a weight goal, a goal of improving all round health is better IMO. Smart watches can supply us with all different markers we can use to identify improvements in our health.
- Resting HR
- VO2 Max
- Sleep bad time spent un the various states of
We can also look at performance goals.
- How fat we can run/walk
- HR/Pace ratio (how fast we can move in Zone2 etc)
- Beep test score
- What % if our body weight we can lift.
It’s taken me a long time to get over but rather than a weight goal. For example, I want to be able to run 5k in 20, 10k in 45, Arthur’s in 1:45 while being strong enough to bench press my body weight. I want to train 5x a week and want to dedicate one day a week to resting/recovery/family time. Also aiming to get as close as I can to 7 hours sleep a night.
If you set a variety of targets and work towards them, the weight will look after its self. We want to lose weight to have more confidence and be healthier. So why not make one of our goals to just be healthier?
There’s no point hitting your target weight if it means you have no energy to do what matters to you.
These other goals or good for your mental health too. You might have a week where you don’t lose any weight, if that’s your only metric, you’re susceptible to getting down about it. But if you have a week where you don’t lose weight but lifted heavier than you have before, or had your best ever HR/Pace ration, ran a PB etc, you can tell yourself that even though you didn’t lose weight this week, you are still improving.
Couldn’t agree more mate and there’s 3 points you highlight:
1. Focus on the process, not the result - something that’s so true for achieving anything. But most people can’t help themselves and just focus on the goal, forgetting about what they need to do to achieve the goal.
2. Have a goal that losing some weight helps you achieve - for me, that’s feeling great and having as much energy as possible to do everything I want to do in life.
3. How important losing weight slowly is. Like what you said about the all blacks. “What’s slow is smooth. And what’s smooth is fast.”
“A SMALL deficit every day ON AVERAGE should give you the energy you need to do what you need to do AND have you losing weight at the same time.” - you hit the nail on the head here mate and I can’t tell you how hard it is to get this message across to people as everyone thinks they have to go into a huge deficit each day, especially if they start counting calories.
Yeah, I think people forget to remind themselves of why they want to lose weight. If it's to feel better, set your goals around how you feel. Even if it's having a notepad next to your bed and giving yourself a rating out of 10 for the day for how you felt.
One of my favorite metrics to focus on is my heart rate/output or performance ratio. It's probably a little bit nerdy and there are a few variables to consider, however, I get really excited when I start to notice my zone 2 runs are getting quicker and quicker. That means I am able to do more, at the same relative effort. So I'm getting more out of my energy. I also like to look at resting HR. The less my body has to do while I'm resting means I should be getting a better quality of rest and re-energising should be easier.
I fuckin' love that saying. I don't often warm up when I run unless I'm going for a PB or whatever. I just use the first part of the run as the warm-up. I ALWAYS start slower than I finish and I think it's because of the meaning behind this saying. Find your rhythm, settle into it, get comfortable then make incremental tune-ups as you go along. That's where the pace will come. I was speaking to someone on twitter yesterday who is trying to run their first half marathon. They had run a 10k in 50 minutes. They said they don't know how they will run an Arthur at that pace. I said, "don't. What's the goal? To run an Arthur? If it is, run slow enough to run an Arthur. Get the distance under your belt first. Prove to yourself you can do it, then in terms of pace work backward from there. If the goal is simply to run the distance, then stay true to that goal and forget about pace, at least for now.
I know what you mean, and I don't even try to purvey that message nearly as often as you do. It took me years to learn it myself. It's not easy, but if we want to help people we just have to keep chipping away and encouraging people until they have done it for long enough to learn that lesson for themselves. I gained and lost 25kg+ three separate times. In the first two, I started myself and lost it quickly. It wasn't until the third time around that I finally found the best way. I've kept if off for 6 years now.
3rd time lucky!
And I agree the goal should always be to feel great, which is why I check my Oura ring score (out of 100) first thing in the morning which is based on my resting heart rate, body temp, sleep and my heart rate variability. Can’t recommend getting one highly enough mate!
I think my watch does all the same stuff. I probably just need to pay more attention to it. I don't like looking at it because it always tells me to do less, haha. I hate wearing jewelry.
"But if they aren’t fueling themselves properly, they eventually burn out or get injured, put all the weight back on, and feel worse about themselves for failing. A cycle I know all too well."
This is me as well, but in the last month being consistent with eating enough has completely stopped my binge eating, and feel so much better as a result.
Awesome mate! And that’s interesting to hear as my binge eating only returns if I haven’t been fuelling myself properly. When I’ve been eating well, I feel I have more self control.
Really liked this line Ben: "All external pressure and little internal motivation."
Spot on... this won't generally get you long term results.
Yep. Long term results always starts from within.
Swapping is definitely important when changing food habits. Even swapping full cream milk for skim milk makes a big difference.
I do agree having fat club is important, and it's good that those with higher than required body fat are doing the extras together, but as you discussed, addressing the cause of the unhealthy eating habits is the best long term solution. We all have stress in our life, and as a professional athlete you're always in the public eye and never get a break, they constantly get criticised for being human. (As if that wouldn't be stressful along with the fitness requirements and pressure to perform) Fat club should be based around support and education, not used as a form of punishment.
Yes I agree that swapping things is a far better mindset than to always be thinking “I can’t have that” and that reminds me of an old brumbies trainer who when I went to him and said: “I can’t do that because im injured”, he’d say “let’s focus on what you can do, not what you can’t do”. Unbelievable advice and that shift if mindset is so positive.