loss

laurel — On left: In my body-building days /
On right: Most recent pic – feeling huge

I’ve been thinking about writing this blog for quite a while. I’ve been struggling with this issue since I was a teenager. I know I am not alone.

This blog won’t give you the latest weight loss secret, nor will it give you a really incredible workout. As a matter of fact, it won’t give you any answers. My hope is that it starts a conversation that needs to happen.
It’s time for me to get honest with myself and it’s time for me to get honest with others.

I need to hear about other people out there who struggle with the same issues as I do. I know I am not alone. I see it in others, I see it in my clients, I see it all over social media and I see it in my family.

My issue is my love/hate affair with my body. I can’t even tell you when or why this started. All I know is that I have fought with my body image and my weight since I started junior high school. I have no idea whether or not I was actually overweight, but that does not even matter. I thought I was overweight and thus began decades of self-loathing, countless diets and a trip to a 28 day eating disorder clinic.

laurel3 — On left: At leadership meeting, very ashamed about weight /
On right: Starting another diet

At 20 years old and after the birth of my first son, my goal was to weigh in the double digits. Imagine my elation when I tipped the scales at 99 pounds. I was on top of the world. That number meant that I was finally a success and that I was attractive.

Of course it didn’t last long. Before I knew it, I ballooned to a whopping 119 pounds. I felt like a failure. Suddenly I went from feeling attractive to feeling like a monster. I was buying a size 20 in clothes to hide my hideous body.

I only wore clothes that hid my massive frame. It was then that I sought help and entered treatment for my eating disorder. I never considered myself anorexic nor bulimic, I went because I was a straight up binge eater and my weight was out of control. Again I only weighed 119 pounds.

One of the things we had to do was exercise. I felt so hideous that my workout clothes consisted of my huge potato sack skirt that reached the floor and a huge over-sized shirt. After all, I didn’t want anyone to see how big I was.

I spent 28 days in treatment and left the same as when I went in.

laurel2 — On left: Weight down, feel great /
On right: Weight up again – note the baggy clothes

Over the past decades, I have gained and lost 20 pounds.

My biggest weight loss successes came when I was competing in bodybuilding. Those were the days. Some how I managed to stay with a strict diet for 12 weeks. I ate by the clock every 2-3 hours. My meals consisted of boiled chicken, rice, cold sweet potatoes and broccoli. It wasn’t good, but it was what I ate. Food was not longer enjoyable. I even traveled to Las Vegas on vacation for a week with my cooler full of food.

On the day of my contests, my body fat was approximately, 18% and yet I still had a wad of fat on the back of my legs. I guess I should mention that I am of Hispanic, Italian descent. We have some meaty thighs! God, how I hate them.

It took about 3-4 weeks after each contest to gain back 20 pounds. I had no idea how to transition back to normal eating. I went from a ripped, lean size 0, back to what I felt was a fat, over weight woman.

The next few years, I gained and lost 15-20 pounds through various diets and exercise plans.

Now I sit here writing this, ashamed. I am 51 years old and I’m still struggling with weight and body image.

Laurel5 — **On left: Weight up… Again / On right: Starting yet another diet…**

As fitness professional, I know better. But, first and foremost, I am a woman. I am woman who has struggled with her weight, self-image, self-esteem and body image for 40 years.

Trust me, I have done every diet out there. I have done Paleo, I have done the Whole30, I have gone off sugar, I have gone off carbs, I have detoxed, I have done Precision Nutrition, I have eaten low fat, high fat, low protein, high protein, I have kept food journals. I have counted calories and I have measured my food. I have done tons of cardio, I have lifted heavy weights…I have done it all.

I still go through the same emotions and behaviors. I lose around 7-10 pounds. I feel great. I feel attractive. I feel successful. I go shopping and buy cute clothes and wear them with pride. Then I gain the weight back. My self-esteem, body image and confidence go to hell. I go back to my baggy clothes.

So, is there a point in life and I am asking anyone who is reading this blog, in which you stop the madness and just accept who you are, accept and love your body and quit torturing yourself? Or do you continue the self-destructive mental and physical abuse?

At 51 years old, I’m tired of fighting this. I’m tired of hating and fighting with my body. I want to enjoy my life and I want to just enjoy food. Damnit, I want to eat cake and not feel like a loser and not feel judged and not feel guilty.

I know I am not alone. I have clients who have been coming to me for years who pretty much do the same. We have transformation contests with pretty amazing results. After the contest is over, they end up where they started. I have clients who, after coming for years look pretty much the same. They work hard, their health has improved tremendously, but they are still overweight. Is that so bad?

As fitness professionals, we post before and after pictures of our best client’s transformations. However, when I see group pictures of clients working out, there are some who are over weight and obese and I know those clients have been coming to those classes for a very long time. It happens in gyms, in boot camps, in Kettlebell classes and in Crossfit.

Now I know that other fitness professionals will judge me because I am fitness professional and I should look the part. What is the part? Many of my new clients, when asked what their goals are, say they want arms like mine.

One of the things I am guilty of that just adds fuel to my already low self-esteem fire is that I compare myself to other women on Facebook who are leaner and stronger. I know those are part of the issues I need to work on.

I don’t know the answers. I don’t know what to tell my clients who struggle with the same issues. When is it time to quit the madness?

Laurel4 — **On left: Weight back up, ashamed.. / On right: Diet success, feeling great**

One thing that really helps me is to understand different body types. We are all different. I will never be a skinny girl even though I have tried. My brothers and my oldest son struggle to put on weight. They are tall and thin with nice long legs. My sisters and I are short with short, muscular legs. No matter how hard I try and how lean I get, I will not have tall, lean legs. I know I can have a lean upper body, but my legs will always be and look heavier.

One of the things that help me, is the website that has pictures of some of the world’s most elite athletes. You will see they have completely different body types depending on their sport. None of them are the same.

http://reelfoto.blogspot.com/2012/08/howard-schatz-and-beverly-ornstein.html

I am not writing this blog to get pity and I am certainly not writing it to get any more advice.

If you are one of those who have never struggled with weight, or if you are one of those who have fought the weight loss battle and won, without having to fight the demons of self-loathing and constant failures, then you will never be able to wrap your head around this. As fitness professionals however, we need to understand that for some of your clients that struggle with this, we have to understand and we have to be able to help them.

Another diet, another food journal and harder workouts will not take care of the underlying emotional issues surrounding this issue.

So what are we to do?

Is quitting the madness and focusing on health instead of losing weight so bad? Do we support and affirm their efforts on improving their health or are we focused on their weight loss?

Do we refer them out for help, for counseling?

I go to counseling and have been on anti-depressants since I was a teenager. Many of our clients have never been and maybe it’s time. Do we do them a disservice by not addressing this issue?

I ask you to please share this blog in the hopes that it helps someone and starts a conversation that I think needs to happen. I really put myself out there and I would like to think I didn’t do this in vain.

***

Laurel Blackburn is an RKC Team Leader and owner of Boot Camp Fitness and Training and Tallahassee Kettlebells. Look for Laurel at www.bootcampstogo.com or www.tallahasseekettlebells.com.

At 51, she is out to prove that age is just a number. Her goal is to motivate and inspire people everywhere, both young and old that strength, flexibility and mobility can get better with age. Follow her adventures on her blog: www.SuperStrongNana.com.

Well known and long standing adages like “leave a couple reps in the bank” and “safety is part of performance” often, sadly, are put aside for fat loss circuits.

In this world of CrossFit, P90X, and super ultra-hardcore-bootcamps everywhere, it’s hard not to fall into the “more is better” trap that everyone is constantly pushing. As RKC’s we should be well aware that more isn’t better. It’s just more.

Fat loss clients come in with that perspective, and it’s our job to educate them. Often we’ll get a new client who will literally tell us “I want to sweat and puke and be sore.” Regardless of how stupid a goal this might sound to us, we’re best off giving them some of that, in the smartest way possible. We usually can give ’em what they think they want up front, then educate them over time.

In this article, we’re going to talk about what smart, RKC-style fat loss circuits could look like.

A Smarter AMRAP

CrossFit popularized the term AMRAP for “as many rounds as possible”, and I thank them for that.

Unfortunately, the concept of doing an AMRAP workout at 100% effort is a recipe for disaster. You can only push oxygen debt and muscle exhaustion for so long before exercise form goes out the window. So don’t do that.

Or as Yoda so famously said: “Stupidity leads to bad form. Bad form leads injury. And injury leads to the orthopedic surgeon.”

We’re going to slow our AMRAPs down – somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-90%, and err on the side of too little vs. too much.

We’ve all been fed a myth about intensity. And it feeds that thing inside us that always tells us we should be doing more. But it’s false. I experimented with my clients for two years during the writing of my first book, and found no difference in results between running clients at 80-90% intensity in workouts and running them at close to 100%.

So… 80-90% intensity… all of the benefits… none of the injuries… shouldn’t that be like, totally obvious, right?

The Josh Hills Fat Loss Circuit Progression: Not Just More Rounds

More rounds is also another stupid thing that most circuit based workouts do. Just more. More, more, more. More isn’t better. So very un-RKC.

I consider 5 rounds the magic number for any of these workouts. They may have to work up to being able to complete five rounds. That’s fine. But when they are getting up over 7 rounds, bump ’em up a level. That could be a harder bodyweight progression, a lower bench for pistols, a lighter band for pull-ups, or a heavier kettlebell.

But lets not turn this into a Group X class. Lets up the weight on our circuits instead of just cranking out a zillion rounds.

This is a super important point, and I’ve never seen anyone else in the entire fitness industry bring it up. There is a right amount of work to get done in a circuit, and you can have it happen like clockwork every single time. It’s right about 5 rounds. It’s heavy enough that they *have to* rest during the 20 minutes, but no so heavy that it looses it’s circuit-ness.

It also lets clients know that it’s *ok* to rest. Obviously if they could crank through the 20 minutes without any rest, they’d be doing 10+ rounds or so. It gives them a target, it lets them know how they are doing, and it lets them know when they can progress. These are all major points for having clients understand and be engaged in the workout program.

20 Minutes of Circuits, Then Do Strength

A 20 minute bout of circuits, at 80-90% intensity, should be enough high intensity stimulus for all of the fat loss results we want. And it should be enough to satisfy the clients who want to feel like they are getting throttled.

After that, we can move on to very well rested strength work. We put the circuits at the beginning (after a joint mobility warm up), because it’s hard enough to keep everything tight in a circuit anyway – we want them as fresh mentally and physically as possible, to do the circuit with the heaviest weights possible and the most perfect form.

We’ll put three movements in the circuit, and then we’ll do the fourth movement in the strength portion. For example, if we have a push, a pull, and a squat in the circuit, we’ll do a hip hinge in the strength part. If we have a push, a squat and a hip hinge in the circuit, we’ll do a pull for the strength part. That way, we’re always hitting all four basic movements, but we’re rotating through which ones we do in the circuit and which ones we do for strength.

If the client also needs FMS or any other corrective exercises, you can super-set the correctives with the strength work.

Workout A:

As many rounds in 20 minutes:

Assisted Pullups x 3
Kettlebell Push Presses x 10L+10R
Kettlebell Goblet Squats x 10
3 minutes rest, then
Single Leg Deadlifts 3 x 5L+5R
with 1-3 minutes rest between sets, then
Side plank 2 x 0:30L+0:30R
Plank 2 x 0:45

Workout B

As many rounds in 20 minutes:

Bear Crawl x 50 ft
Walking Lunges x 100 ft
Kettlebell Swings x 25
3 minutes rest, then
Assisted Pullups 3 x 5
with 1-3 minutes rest between sets, then
Side plank 2 x 0:30L+0:30R
Plank 2 x 0:45

Workout C

As many rounds in 20 minutes:

Convict Conditioning Style Pushup Progression x 10
Kettlebell Bent Over Rows x 10L+10R
Kettlebell Swings x 25
3 minutes rest, then
Bench Pistols or Split Squats 3 x 5L+5R
with 1-3 minutes rest between sets, then
Side plank 2 x 0:30L+0:30R
Plank 2 x 0:45

Food, Food, Food

Look, no fat loss article can ever be complete without mentioning that the food is going to be the number one driver of fat loss. Smart fat loss workouts complement a smart food program. That’s why it’s so totally stupid to kill people in the workouts or push the envelope to the point of injury – it just isn’t going to make a difference.

Be smart, check people’s food journals (both quality of food and quantity of food) and do intelligent circuits at 80-90% intensity, with smart progressions over time. Your clients will stay healthy, happy, and injury free, and most importantly – get all of the fat loss results that they hired you for.

***

About Josh Hillis: RKC, NASM-CPT/PES/CES, Z-MRS/MIS, www.21daykettlebell.com: Over the last 8 years as a personal trainer, Josh has worked with every kind of fat loss client, but he is a specialist in helping fit women lose the last 5-10 pounds of stubborn fat. He’s been quoted by The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post, he’s been in USA Today, and was a featured expert for Experience Life! Magazine. Josh has written six books on fat loss and kettlebell training, created an audio program on fat loss nutrition for On Target Publications, and contributed a chapter “Fighter Workouts for Fat Loss” to The RKC Book of Strength and Conditioning for DragonDoor Publications. Josh holds beginner and advanced fat loss nutrition workshops on a monthly basis at several kettlebell gyms in Colorado. Josh is the creator and writer for www.LoseStubbornFat.com, which has over 32,000 subscribers in over 200 countries world-wide.

My Weight Loss Struggle

Smart Fat Loss Circuits