We had a great chat with both the Film Maker and the Pro Bodybuilder Trainer from the documentary. We are cutting the interview down to a reasonable length and it will be out on April 3, 2010 in show #93.

Hi Holly,

The best thing to do with a personal blog like that is to also get people who you know in real life involved to read it. You accountability will jump many-fold again.

Good Luck!

I'm still weigh daily, but I only worry about the averages over the week. I track my weight, but my scale also tells me my body fat percentage. Right now I'm more concerned with seeing my muscle mass increase ever so slowly...

So I have the "I Want to Look Like That Guy" video and it does show the reality of what you really have to do to look like those fitness models. At the end of this experiment, he does have some good observations about what he discovered along the way, and many of these things are what we have been telling people since the start of the show.

Not all of our listeners would ever want to do the extreme program that he was on, but I'm hoping that he has found a balance of what can keep himself in 'descent' shape now.

I'm going to contact the film maker to see if he is interested in doing an interview on the show. I'm curious to see his observations now after even more time has passed since this experiment.

I'll just make a quick response and see what others here have to say as well. We do get a lot of email to the show and we saw your email (this post) a few weeks ago. We grouped your email with a whole bunch that were very similar and chose to answer one on the show that seemed to be a combination of many emails.

This was the email that we thought was similar to yours: " I workout hard...running, strength-training, biking, walking and so on. I've lost 25 pounds since September putting me at my goal weight. Hubby is fighting his weight every step of the way. He walks 15 minutes a day at his break and figures that's enough. Now, that's his choice and I don't push him to do more...BUT...he tries hard to sabotage all my work, even going so far as to tell me I overdo it and don't need to workout so much. What do you do when your spouse or SO has different goals than you and attempts to get you to change?"

Here is a portion of how Russ responded: "Comfort in a relationship is a powerful thing. When one person in a relationship starts changing themselves, there is bound to be some pushback from the other person in the relationship. Your husband's comments are telling you that he was comfortable with the old fatter you. It was easier. You made more of his favorite foods, more fatty foods. You watched more television on the couch with him, helping get both of you fat. Now that you're changing and leaving the comfortable life he's grown accustomed to, he's sabotaging."

I agree with the theme of Russ' response and that it also applies to your situation. The issue that your husband is gaining weight has nothing to do with him not knowing what to eat or needing suggestions of non-diet foods. He was thinner for many years, so he knows how to live the lifestyle of that thinner person already.

The bottom line is that you can't get your husband or your Dad on the weight loss bandwagon if they really don't want to. It isn't your responsibility to get them to want to do it, because you simply can't. I'm not saying that you can't continue to attempt to get them to move to a healthier lifestyle, but you can't make them want something that they don't really care about. It is similar to trying to get someone to quit smoking. If a smoker truly doesn't want to quit, they will always fail.

There is something more going on here that I'm not qualified to really comment on. There are obviously complex psychological components to your relationship that is affecting things here, and I think that Russ was on the right track.

Here is one concrete piece of advice that I can give you. Everyone is moving towards where they really want to be in life. They are either moving there because of laziness or lack of vision, or they are intentionally ending up where they plan to go through dedicated actions whether it is easy to get there or not.

Sit down with your husband and have a frank discussion about where both of you want to be in life. Figure this out for the short term, medium term and long term. Set goals for many categories of your lives. Things like financial, health, relationship goals etc. Truly knowing what each of your goals are in life is the most important thing to do because that will determine the actions that you do. If, for example, your husband doesn't have health as one of his goals, then there is no point working on an action plan that will help him lose weight. If that is truly one of his goals and he has a true desire to become healthy and thinner, the actions will come from him. In other words, things like finding out healthy things to eat will be something that he will be willing to do for himself if he truly wants that goal. You are not responsible for attaining his goals for him.

I would also suggest that you give another listen to show #84 about how to set goals.

(I know I said a brief response, but I type pretty fast...)

Hey John,

You are doing exactly what you should be doing. It is just like how we recommend what people should be eating with regard to their macro-nutrient ratios. Start in the middle and see how things work for you and how you feel and then adjust as needed for your own body. The same thing is with meal frequency.

There is always the perfect way to eat and exercise, but being perfect isn't always necessary if things are working for you. You are in your maintenance right now and your goal is how to keep healthy without struggling or feeling hungry.

Yes your metabolism will burn a little faster eating more often, but that isn't your goal right now. You want to live the rest of your life eating good food until you are satisfied every day, and feeling strong and healthy.

Keep up the good work!

Alright, everything in my original post still stands and...

it is very reasonable that you might want to walk more right now and only gradually build up to running. You will get the same calorie burn walking or running right now and it is better to get that extra caloric deficit from walking than to only be able to do running sporadically. (as long as the distance is the same) Also, like I said, you need to do a variety of things for exercise. I know exactly how you feel running at 230 lbs and 5'9", because I have truly been there and I know that it isn't very comfortable running at that weight. It sure must seem easy though compared to 50 lbs ago!

Your biggest concern right now is being injury free if you want to pursue running so you have to take it easy. Like I said, the best strategies that I can offer are a very slow progression, a combination of running and walking during each run, and trying out that "barefoot running" technique.

(Alright, I just looked at Trevor's profile and he isn't 130 lbs now like he said in his original post, he is 230 lbs which makes things very different here, but I'm going to keep my reply here assuming that he was super skinny now and worrying about losing another 20 lbs before he started running, just for interest sake and then reply again)

Hi Trevor,

There are a lot of things that I could address with your questions, but I'm going to assume that you are running for the purpose of being able to run 5K. You are clearly on maintenance and don't need to be exercising to create a greater caloric deficit anymore. Congratulations on all of your weight loss!

If you aren't doing any resistance training, I would start. If you put on some muscle, you will be able to eat a lot more food on a daily basis. We are both the same height and I don't think we are very different in size, but I outweigh you by 30 lbs. I don't think you can lose another 20 lbs. Give your skin time to shrink back, you don't have 20 lbs of fat to lose. Think of Michael Jackson, he was 5'10" and 134 lbs - can you imagine him thinking that he needed to lose 20 lbs?

Fable Fairy has some good points and I'll just add that it is very important to listen to your body and be very conservative with increasing your distances. (you said that you are already on a modified program, so that is good)

The thing that most runners don't realize, is that they don't always have to run to become better runners. You can always cross train, and do other aerobic activities instead of a run. Biking, stair climbing, elliptical machines all will work similar muscles, but do not have the same impact on the exact same muscles and joints, and therefor will let you work out more often and reduce the strain and risk of injury.

I'm injury prone in my knees and shins, so running is tough for me. I'm currently doing a 5K run a couple times a week right now, but it just recently took me 4 months to get up to that distance. My concern was to build up to be able to do that distance without injury on a consistent basis. My cardio level is very high, so it has been frustrating for me to do such a slow progression, but so far it has worked.

I started at 2K and added 50 meters per run. I also walked for a minute every Kilometer, and I have been trying that "barefoot running" technique. Basically when I am running, I try to run on the balls of my feet and not let my heels slam into the ground. The first couple of weeks I was sore in my ankles and lower calf because of that new running stride, but it has seemed to work for me so far. I had discomfort in my shins for the first 5 weeks, but I have no troubles right now.

I would give something like this a try. Your legs are incredibly strong because of the weight that they used to carry around. There shouldn't be any issue with their strength for running. If anything, if you lost 20 more lbs of weight, you would be a weaker runner with less muscle mass to power you.

Hey Tom,

I just ordered the second documentary for myself. The "I Want to Look Like that Guy" video. It kinda reminded me of when I really started working out and eating very clean. I went crazy hard like that for about a year.

I'll let everyone know what I think of it when it arrives.

Let us know how things are going once a while. You can be our "inside reporter"!

Hi Terry,

It's great to hear that you are back on the road to recovery! Life can really give you some curve balls. I know that it is really frustrating that you have had this setback, but it is awesome to hear that you are going to take it in stride and just get back on the horse.

I know exactly what you are going through. A few years ago I had a double inguinal hernias and had to wait 8 months for surgery. I couldn't do any physical activity for almost a year, gained about 20 lbs, and lost all of my fitness.

The good news is that you have only been out of commission for a few months so within 6-8 weeks your fitness level should be almost back to where you were. As for your weight loss, try not to sweat it because it isn't a race and you will get there. If you concentrate right now on eating well and exercising the weight loss will come.

I made a post on how I do it over at Fat2Fit Radio. Here is the link: http://www.fat2fitradio.com/2009/01/welcome-to-jeffs-kitchen/

There are some great comments after that post that gives some good points as well.

That is good advice Leo about finding your calorie sweet spot. Even the best calculators are only accurate to the "average" person based on an "average" amount of assumed muscle mass. When you add in the amount of activity that you do, the numbers could be off by a couple hundred calories for some people. What you have to do is try a number of calories and very carefully keep track of what you eat and monitor your progress, and then adjust based on your results.

It is also best to start at a higher number of calories and then gradually decrease if needed. If you start at lower calories and then start increasing them, your metabolism may be slowed down from the low calories, and you may seem to gain weight at a lower number than you should.

The ultimate goal is to eat the most amount of food and still have results.

Hey Guys,

It's good to see you guys posting again. I was just watching a couple tv shows on TLC where people just gave up and really let themselves go and it was quite sad. My advice is just to never give up and accept that for you guys (including myself), we will always need to be vigilant about our weight.

Part of why I keep working on the show is that it gives me more accountability to keep in shape. It is great that I hear you are going to truly be setting goals this year, because you guys seem very much to be "all or nothing" with your fitness goals. I'm kind-of the same way with working out and I get burned-out and this is a strategy that I use.

I just finished doing a 90 day workout plan for myself that is like a true re-start that is a super easy progression. I planned it out so that every workout gets just a little bit harder and at the end of 90 days I will be doing a workout that will almost kill me today, but I know from experience that it will seem like a moderate workout by then.

My suggestion for you guys is to not attempt to jump right back into going 100%, but set some goals that you are determined to do and make them easily attainable at the start and only gradually get harder.

Good Luck!

Hi Dwight,

Chance has some good points, but I'm going to jump back even further and try to see a "bigger picture"

I'm going to be blunt, the reason why you can't find people who are at their goal weight supporting each other is because very few people like that exist. What you find is that people use all of these tools to hit their goal weights and then they simply quit. Then they come back a year or so later and go through the exact same process over again.

Goals are extremely important and Chance is right about setting new ones so you don't end up at your goal weight with nothing else to achieve.

The best advice that I can give you to be successful in the long term is to truly accept this "lifestyle change" that we are always pushing on the show. The closer your lifestyle is right now to your "goal weight lifestyle", the higher your chances of success will be in the long term. Think of it this way. Those last 10 lbs might take 2 years to come off, but look 5 years down the road. If those last 10 lbs came off in 2 months, what are the chances that they all won't be back and more within 2 years. As well, after 2 years of living that healthy lifestyle it is just a part of who you are, and what you do - you won't need support any more than you needed support when you were gaining weight because your lifestyle was that of a heavier person.

That really is ingenious how they managed to incorporate food and activity into one pyramid. They both do go together and I had no idea how they could really do it.

John said it really well and I agree that you really don't want to drink your calories. 220 calories is quite a lot when there is no benefit of satisfying hunger. There is nothing wrong with drinking orange juice, but it is a processed food that lacks all of the benefits of eating a real orange. It is a healthy alternative when comparing to sodas for sure.
If you look at the math: 2 oranges are around 150 calories. If you ate 2 oranges a day instead of drinking orange juice, that would be a 70 calorie difference, and over a year that works out to a little over 7 lbs of difference in weight loss.
But like John said, everything in moderation. It is a better choice to drink OJ instead of having a chocolate bar, but in the end if you goal is weight loss, they will have the same impact if their calories are similar.

Hey Ani,

That's great to hear that you are getting help. I think that the hardest thing is probably just going to that first meeting. I'm still an emotional eater myself and have put on some weight in the last month dealing with some personal grief. It's something that I though I had overcome, but in a time of weakness, I truly understand how powerful the comfort of food can be.

Let us know how it is going. I think that compulsive overeating should be a topic that we should cover in the future.

We started listing the homework in the show notes for each show about a year ago after many requests. The reason why we didn't start out listing all of the homework right at the start, was because we didn't want everyone to try and do everything at the same time if they started listening later on. It's actually intended to be an easy "lifestyle change" each week. We were just hoping the each show there would be something little that people could do to add on to whatever they were already doing.

Some of the homework assignments are actually pretty similar a year apart. For example, near New Year's we always have some homework which deals with goals.

We are working on some sort of "Fat2Fit Radio" program or book that will summarize everything that we have been talking about on the show over the last couple of years. In the "homework" section of it, I'm going to compile all of the homework and put it in a more logical order.

This is really good stuff here. We are going to do a feature section on this in an upcoming show so that more people will watch it!

If you decrease your calorie level and continue to exercise, your body weight will go down. A few lbs of weight loss needs to be looked as an average because everyone's weight bounces around a bit with water retention etc.

It is very possible to reduce your body fat percentage without a matching decrease on the bathroom scale. (for a little while at least) You can gain a little bit of muscle and lose many times the volume of fat without any difference to the scale. This would be the perfect way to lose weight and speed up your metabolism at the same time.

In your case you are very close to your goal, so I would focus on your body fat percentage because it is a little more stable than your weight. The goal is always to reduce your calories a little bit so that it doesn't affect your exercise. A few hundred calories per day is not really noticeable for your body. If you find that you are lethargic while exercising, just increase your calories.

Hey David,

That is awesome that you made it under 200! Do you still have clothes that now fit you from back then? I just recently pulled out some high school clothes that fit me, but the fashion doesn't.... (20 years old)

So, as promised we will be highlighting all of these great tips on episode 71 of Fat2Fit Radio that will be coming out on August 5, 2009.

And Matt, what do you say when your wife says "Do these pants make me look fat?"

I agree with you that education is the most important thing to get across with supplements and that is the goal when talking about them on the show. There are thousands of different supplement products on the market (most of which are crap)so blanket statements are the only way to deal with them most of the time.

Some of the ones that do show a benefit, only show a very small benefit. Products for weight loss that use stimulants are only a temporary and minor help. Even things like caffeine are adapted to quite quickly and are only a short-term help.

The main reason that I don't encourage the use of supplements is because they are still only the "5% portion" even if they do show some benefit. The problem with most people is that they focus too much on the supplements because they are the easiest part of fitness and weight loss. People who are using supplements rarely only spend 5% financially on them compared to other things like spending money on a gym membership or a cookbook.

If someone has the other 95% of their healthy lifestyle down, then if they want that extra little boost they should go that extra mile. I don't have my own fitness and nutrition down better than 90%. Personally, to get my program up another 5%, I would rather stop eating a chocolate bar once a week than start taking daily supplements to try and compensate for eating that chocolate bar.

The foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

You have an interesting point about how placebos might help people in the long run, but I think there is only one ethical way that placebos should be used.

A doctor in Canada can prescribe a placebo to a patient that they will get from a pharmacy. It will be inexpensive and will most likely have a positive effect for the patient. Under the care of a M.D., this can be part of a treatment.

A private company creating products that clearly have no therapeutic effect or make exaggerated claims about what it can do is extremely unethical for society as a whole for several reasons. The worst situation, which happens thousands of times per year in the US, is when someone dies because they took non proven "alternative" medicines instead of seeking professional science based medical help from a doctor. If I believed that my weight loss was caused by taking a homeopathic weight loss remedy, I will then try other homeopathic remedies for pain as cancer spreads through-out my body. This isn't a hypothetical situation.

Another point is that is it ethical for a person to continue to spend money for years and years on a "fake" or useless product. Many people will continue to take these products after just to keep the weight off.

These are just some points off of the top of my head. I'll have to give this some more thought.

If I look at my own situation:
There are thousands of people around the world who are losing weight because of my down-to-earth advice. Any person who follows my advice will become healthier because they will truly understand how to change their lifestyle for the long-term.

I could use my celebrity as a fitness expert and say that I have discovered a product that will help people lose 10 lbs per month and start selling a placebo fake product. I could make a lot of money and it would help out some people as they continued to take my product. Some people would not have results and keep buying it and start taking higher and higher doses just in-case it worked. Others would lose some weight, stop taking my product, put the weight back on, and then start buying my product again. Others who are at high risk of serious diseases or death related to their obesity, may continue to try my product without results and then die from their obesity. How responsible would I be then? If I had continued to give them reasonable advice that always works, they would have lost weight and possibly survived?

If you are using some supplements to get that extra few percentage benefit after doing the other 95% of eating right and exercising, there isn't a problem. Most people do the opposite though.

Of your list of supplements above, the only one that I take while going through a cycle of heavy lifting is creatine. It is the only one that I have found that has the science behind it. It does help in the last few reps in a set. I realize that it is only a food product, but I simply can't eat the amount of meat that it would take to get 5 grams of creatine out of it in a day. I take the pure creatine powder and don't waste my money on all of the "creatine" infused supplements. The rest of your list of supplements that are simply based on foods, I would rather get them from eating a balanced diet of real food. Things like fish oil caplets have calories and give you no enjoyment or satiety for eating them.

Hydroxycut has now been pulled because of liver injuries and one death tied to it...

I use a site called "Quackwatch" when I want to quickly look up to see what the scientific/medical community says about a claim. Usually this site just seems to bust claims.

According to the consensus of scientific opinion, creatine supplementation does make a measurable improvement in short periods of high-intensity power and strength. It is just a food supplement though, but you would have to eat several pounds of red meat each day to get the equivalent amount of creatine from the recommended dose.

Here is the link to Quackwatch's article on it. It give's a summary of the Creatine studies and links to about 20 of the actual studies.

From Quackwatch, here as the cautions:

"There appears to be some potential for creatine supplementation. However, many questions remain. Are there any long-term harmful effects from supplementation? Is there a point where enhanced performance levels off from long-term supplement usage? What effect does "stacking" or taking two ergogenic aids simultaneously have on the body? What happens if you immediately stop taking the creatine supplement? Is the enhanced performance great enough to warrant the expense of the supplement? Until further research answers these questions, creatine is not recommended for the average athlete."

Awesome work David! These will sure be powerful motivation if you find that you start slipping back into your old ways, and they will surely help others see what 50 lbs looks like.

What a difference in your belly and love handles. Don't tell me those lines on your back in your "before" picture was from a bra...

All cardio isn't created equal. An elliptical machine will always burn more calories than a bike simply because you are using more muscles at the same time. I almost never ride a bike because it really isn't that efficient at burning calories. If I'm going to go to the gym for half an hour, I want to get the most benefit out of it. I think that bikes are very popular at gyms simply because they are easy... I wrote an article a while ago about how many calories I burn on the different cardio machines out there.

David is also right about the intensity. The harder you work, the more benefit you will get out of it. You don't have to kill yourself with 110% all the time, but 70% should be sustainable for 30 minutes.

There is no perfect solution for whether to do cardio before or after weight training. It is more determined by what your goals are. If you are only looking to gain muscle, you would do your weights first. If you are looking to burn more calories to lose fat and want to maintain that muscle that you have, you could do your cardio first. Also, the specific type of training that you are doing is important. If you are doing really tough interval training, you might be too tired to do resistance training after. The bottom line is that you will become adapted to whatever you choose to do, so no matter what might be the "perfect" way to do it, you need to change things up once and a while.

Wow David,

That is a huge thread. I randomly read a number of pages and there is a ton of good stuff.

Some things just from page 1:
People dont look in my shopping cart anymore.
When I do work presentations/teaching I know longer worry about being judged first by my weight - that has a huge impact by the way - so much energy wasted by worrying.
I feel pain. You might find that an odd thing to say but when you have previously used food to smother dissapointment/lonlieness/insecurity you dont feel those things so much, though it brings a whole different set of cyclidic problems plus guilt/self condemnation.

There is actually some pretty deep stuff in there. I'm sure that everyone will be able to find some things that they will want to look forward to and find some motivation from here.