Academy 8 - Dollification 4 - Getting your dream body (part 3)
Putting it all together
Welcome back, girls! Now we know a little about what we’re talking about, let’s get to work and look at how to apply it.
By now you should have about a week's worth of data on how many calories you’re taking in. One of the points of this task was to make you more aware about what you’re eating. It’s easy to veg out in front of a screen and have a biscuit and then another and another and then you’re halfway through the packet, so why not just finish it? But if you know that the packet totals half of your daily calorie allowance, you’ll know if it’s a good idea or not.
The big number
You’ve probably been expecting this but if you want to change your body, you need to have a way of measuring it, of course I’m talking about your weight. I know that for some of you, this will send a shiver down your spine and you’ll be thinking that you just want to “look better” or “lose a little fat” but these are much too nebulous. You need to set yourself targets that you can measure and achieve.
Now your weight is a number and (and this is an important point, so pay attention) it’s JUST A NUMBER. It says no more about you then the length of your hair or the colour of your eyes. You’re not worthless or a failure because your weight is high or low and the best thing you can do to help you achieve the body of your dreams is to remove the emotional aspect of your weight, view it as a measurement like any other. You’re not a success because your height is over 6 feet and your not a failure because your weight is over 14 stones.
For those of you who are planning to do this, you need to weigh yourself everyday. Repeat it over and over again until it’s just a part of your daily habit like brushing your teeth or moisturizing.
Once you start to do this, you’ll realise that your weight changes day to day, sometimes you’ll stick to your eating plan and it will go up, sometimes you’ll eat a huge cream cake and feel like a pig and your weight will drop, the day to day number is less important than the long term trend.
This happens because other things can cause fluctuations, we can counter this a little by keeping the circumstances when you weigh yourself as similar as possible. This should now become an addition to your daily ritual. When you get up, go to the toilet and then weigh yourself. This will keep the time you’re doing it fairly consistent and mean your body is in roughly the same place when you do it every day.
Log your weight, myFitnessPal lets you do this (along with a few other things like goal setting) but I’ve also made a simple spreadsheet that you can use here. Copy it to your Training Book and put the start date in and you’re good to go. There is a chart on the second tab that will take the data and display it if you prefer a more visual record.
As I said, your day-to-day weight can be affected by other factors, so there’s a rolling 10-day average figure that will be calculated as you put entries in and this will give you a good idea of the underlying trend. You can use whatever units you like, just be consistent!
How to change your diet
The quick answer is slowly, big sweeping changes will be unsustainable over any length of time, so swearing that you’re going to cut what you eat in half is not a sensible long-term plan.
I will mostly talk about weight loss but the principles are the same if you want to gain weight, just in reverse! You need to eat more, but doubling what you eat is no better plan then halving it is for weight loss!
Now you have some idea of what you’re eating in a week, you need to get an idea of what your body is using. You can browse the internet and find estimates based on your job and level of activity, but you don’t need to do that. If your weight is broadly steady your consuming as many calories as you’re using, if it’s going up you’re eating more than you’re using and if it’s going down, you’re eating less than you’re using.
Once you know where you are, it’s a lot easier to plan a route to where you want to be. If you’re going to change what you eat, make it by around 200-300 calories a day, give it two to three weeks and see what effect it has. Then if you want too, do the same again.
As to how to do it, there are the usual things you will have seen recommended to get some quick and easy wins, cut down on calorie dense food like sweets and don’t drink your calories and these are good places to start with.
Now for those of you looking for the perfect diet, sorry sweetheart! There isn’t one. I would highly recommend learning to cook and being mostly vegan, but that works for me! People have success with many different things and the best diet for you won’t necessarily be the same for anyone else
Exercise
In a similar vein, I can preach to you the calorie benefits of Olympic-style weightlifting or using kettlebells, but what if you don’t have access to the equipment or training? The best exercise is whatever works best for you and whatever you can fit into your life.
If you’re new to exercise, go slowly to begin with and keep an eye on your weight and what you’re eating. If you cut calories and start exercising you’re taking in fewer calories and using more and your body may not be too happy with it. You can always ease back a little on one or the other and give your body time to adapt. This will take time whichever way you do it, so going slowly to begin with is better than racing out of the gates and falling flat on your face.
Luckily, if you’re able to read this you have access to an almost inexhaustible supply of exercise videos on YouTube, so all you really need is a mat or towel and a little free time and you can get your sweat on in the privacy of your own home.
If even that seems like hard work, just go outside! Hopefully you did the last lesson’s homework and took a walk, just repeat it every day. If you want to pick up the pace a little, then go for a jog. If running appeals but you don’t know where to begin, you’ll be able to find no end of couch to 5km apps on your phone and if you want to make it more fun. There are even apps that let you run while experiencing a zombie apocalypse.
Have a bike? Go for a ride!
As an aside, if you work a desk based job or are at school, try and get up and move around for a few minutes every hour. It doesn’t have to be anything serious but sitting for long periods isn’t great for you (standing still for long periods isn’t super wonderful either, so if you have a standing desk, you should still go for a little walk, even if it’s only to get a drink!).
You can even go to the gym or make one at your home, which brings us nicely to…
Muscle vs Fat
I know girls, a lot of you are worried that if you even look at something heavy, you’ll start to get lumps in the most unfeminine places. All I can tell you is, don’t worry! It takes a lot of work and a lot of very strict eating to build a body that is anything like that, if it was easy steroid use would never be needed!
The below picture illustrates why you should build muscles, it will make you look slimmer!
Fat loss is something a lot of you will be interested in, unfortunately, you can’t spot-reduce fat (short of liposuction). If you work a particular body area, the muscle there will increase (which will make it look better) but your body will use fat from all over and not just the area you’re working. This can be frustrating as you watch your butt deflate while your stomach remains stubbornly flabby, but you just need to stick with it!
I want abs!
You couldn’t hear it, but I’ve just snapped my fingers, you now have abs! Everybody does but they are usually covered. To be able to see your abs, you need to get your body fat percentage down to around 10% or lower.
You can do all the crunches you want but it’s as true for your stomach muscles as for anywhere else, abs are made in the kitchen!
Working your abs can be done every day and does have benefits, even if they aren’t immediately apparent. Working your oblique muscles (the ones on the side) will give you a slimmer appearance and strengthening your core will make you feel stronger. The exercises you’ll be doing will also give you an amazing sense of progress,
One very important thing to remember is that if you’re focusing on your core, you need to exercise and strengthen your lower back too. If your back isn’t strong enough relative to your abs, you can end up with lower back issues as your body struggles to adapt and back pain is something you should avoid (and yes, I speak from experience here).
I want a big, no HUUUUGE butt
In the words of B Spears, “you’d better work b*tch”. If you want to pop your butt, you need to increase the muscles there and luckily, as we’ve already covered, muscles can be directly improved by working them.
Unlike your abs, any other body part should only be specifically worked on every other day at the most. If you don’t give them enough time to rest and recover, you’ll be more prone to injury there and you won’t build new muscle.
If you’re really pushing it hard, then you need to work it even less and rest it more. Just like you can’t turbocharge your weight loss by not eating anything you can’t magically boost your muscle growth by constantly pushing.
Walking and running can help (and if you have access to a lot of stairs, then walking or running up and down them will be perfect), but when you do it you need to focus on your butt and tighten it. The mind/muscle connection can help but if you don’t do this, your body will use other muscles more and it will lessen the impact.
You will be able to find plenty of workouts on YouTube to work it, there are so many you’ll be able to do a different one every time. As you’re building muscle, you can use equipment to speed your progress. It doesn’t have to be anything outrageous, resistance bands or ankle weights will have you feeling like you’ve run a marathon!
Always make sure you pay attention to any videos you’re watching and use the correct form, I know it’s harder and your muscles really burn at the end when you do it properly, but that’s a good thing! It’s a sign that what you’re doing is working.
Growing your butt won’t happen overnight, if it did, everyone would be walking around with a huge a$$, but you’ll feel things start to firm up after a little while and that’s the sign that growth is about to happen.
The plateau effect
Everything is going wonderful, the weight has just been falling off you, your diet is much improved and it seems like the sun is always shining. Then POW it all seems to stop, your weight is stubbornly stuck even though nothing has changed.
If this happens to you, don’t worry! Weight loss can happen like this, it won’t be a smooth, steady process so just stick to your plans and give it some time.
Homework
I’ve mentioned it a few times, but I’m going to do so again here. This is something that won’t change overnight. You shouldn’t make large changes to your diet in a short space of time (unless you’re told to by a medical professional) and you shouldn’t go from no exercise to trying to deadlift twice your bodyweight.
Extreme low-calorie diets will make you miserable, lethargic and much more prone to injury. Your body is capable of marvels but physically pushing it beyond its limits will only end in injury.
With that out of the way, we’ve covered quite a lot over the past few letters, so I want you to go away and think about the body you want. You have plenty of inspiration and the secret behind most of the bodies you see that make you feel envious is simply effort.
Decide what you want to be, accept it will take some time and then put in the work to get there. I know at the start it can seem impossible and it’s easy to shrug and say that it will take too long and this is why you set yourself short-term goals.
So you don’t cut your diet in half, you make a small change and stick with it every day for a week.
If you’ve never really exercised, you’re not going to jump out of bed tomorrow and run a marathon so just commit to going for a 30-minute walk every day.
Once you start to feel more confident and succeed with small changes, you can start to set more goals. These can be longer-term ones, but always make sure to keep some smaller, short-term ones going. You might want to lose 10kg but to do that you have to lose 2kg so you have 5 short-term goals already with a long-term one at the end to top it off! It’s like a video game, there’s a big boss creature somewhere, but to get to it, you need to defeat smaller creatures along the way (and level up!).
So, who do you want to be?
