Non stop Pilates teaching these days. I’m training clients I haven’t seen since January 2010. Luckily, nobody is in denial these days. Those that have strayed from a healthy weight already know what they need to do. Still, there are vices that keep them from making any real progress.

One of my favorite clients asked me if I like pies. I said told her yes, but that “I hadn’t had a slice since 2009″. To which she responded that pies are the new cupcakes.

I, like my fittest of clients, don’t pay attention to these kind of food trends. Especially when it’s nothing more than a reformulation of fat and sugar.

The food industry knows that even overweight people can get bored with fried and sweet foods. So, to keep things fresh and hip, new incarnations of old classics like the pie are resurrected. My reaction? So. Nothing tastes as good as trim feels. And if you’re rolling your eyes right now, you’re probably the type that should’t be eating pie to begin with.

• Goal: I want to start saving more money
• Conflict: There’s a sale on Miu Miu handbags!
• Goal: I want to de-clutter my house
• Conflict: I’m too exhausted after work to even do the dishes. How am going to de-clutter?
• Goal: I want to get trim and healthy in 2011
• Conflict: I have a lunch meeting at STK in Beverly Hills. They’re paying for it so why not?!

A male black widow spider approaching a female spider is very telling. The female is four times the size of the male so he treads carefully. The male will get close to the female but will stop, knowing there might be repercussions. As the female walks toward him, he will back away. When she stops, he’ll approach again. Back and forth they go. These are two opponent neural circuits of the male at work.

The male is driven by two opposing forces, pain avoidance and pleasure seeking. Survival versus reproduction. Eventually the male gives in and mates. Sometimes, as they often do, the female will end up eating the male after mating. Pain Avoidance, FAIL.

This is the same thing when you have someone wants to lose weight but is lured by high caloric density foods. This is survival instincts versus reproductive presentation. Two goals are at war with each other, and they are not compatible.

Part 2 to follow….

Click on the title above to bring up the video page.

Then click this link: Reformer – Running

I’ll call him “Ben”.

Ben is a self-proclaimed “foodie”. You know. That self-appointed euphemism that people assign themselves because they’re addicted to fatty and/or sweet foods. When you call yourself a foodie, there’s almost a responsibility to try new foods and often. Some think that the foodie designation gives them carte blanche to become nutritionally senseless. A foodie is a hobbyist that tries different foods and drinks at various restaurants (or food trucks these days). As such, there can be different sects of foodies whereby they become specialists.

• food truck foodie
• dive restaurant foodie
• downtown LA restaurant foodie
• cheese foodie
• cupcake foodie, etc.

Nothing wrong with trying all types of food, as long as you’re not overfat. Ben is overfat. Not marginally, but resolutely. I calculated his waist to hip ratio. Oy! Not good. It was well above the .95 cutoff for a healthy male.

“Why is that such a big deal?” you may ask.

Mayo Clinic’s Position:

Why is belly fat a concern for men?

Heart Disease, stroke, some types of cancer, Type 2 diabetes, Low HDL, Metabolic Syndrome

National Institutes of Health Position:

Women who carry excess fat around their waists were at greater risk of dying early from cancer or heart disease

I digress.

Ben’s latest endeavor as a foodie is to search Los Angeles for the best burger. Like some kind of angus aficionado in his highfalutin circle, he’s the go to guy for where to find the highest quality burgers. His knowledge of different burger joints is actually impressive but has given him an ego about it if you question his hegemony over the subject. You’d think he’d start a blog site about it. Wink.

Unfortunately, his body doesn’t share the same discernment over his rich food choices. His latest love affair is with a kobe beef burger in Venice California. His description of the burger is eight ounces of kobe beef, applewood smoked bacon, and imported swiss cheese on a brioche bun. This sounds like a very high quality burger, even to this vegan. But, according to MyFitnessPal.com, a PLAIN 8-oz. Kobe beef burger has 660 calories per serving, and a preposterous 56 g of fat. That’s with no applewood smoked bacon and no imported swiss cheese.

Now let’s compare that to another food choice that isn’t as “high-quality” as Ben’s Kobe Beef Burger. How about the steak and fried egg biscuit from Biscuitville. I chose this item solely because the name of the restaurant is Biscuitville! Surely there aren’t any of these chains in West Hollywood or the Palisades. The steak and fried egg biscuit has 600 calories per serving and 37.5 grams of fat.

As grotesque sounding as this sandwich is, it has less calories and 20 grams less fat than the genteel kobe beef burger. So what’s the point?

Don’t delude yourself into thinking that choosing good eats equates to a good lifestyle. Eating a high fat, high calorie entree from the latest celebrity chef essentially has the same effect on your belly and butt as eating tempura ding dongs from the Orange County Fair.

Then click this link: Twist-Cross

People who really want to achieve something don’t need to be told to go after it. They take action and don’t stop until it’s done. For example, if you needed your favorite shirt to be clean so you can wear it later on an interview or audition, you would put it in the washing machine. If you couldn’t get to the washing machine for whatever reason, you would bring it to the cleaner. If the cleaner couldn’t clean it by the time you needed it, you would take a wet wash cloth and rub out the stains. So on and so forth. You wouldn’t stop until that shirt was clean because you had a goal that really meant something. To look your best might mean a better and more rewarding job.

My friend didn’t really have any good reason for himself to be fit. He had the same superficial reasons everyone else has:

• I want a six-pack
• I want a lot of women to like me
• I want my buddies to be jealous of me
• I want to be healthy

He would’ve been better served if he had phrased his goals this way:

• I can only be wealthy if I am healthy. This money is meaningless if I’m sick.
• I don’t want to suffer from CVD while in my 40′s or later.
• I’m not defined by what I couldn’t physically achieve earlier in my life. I’m worth more than that now.
• I want someone who values and respects their body as much as I do mine.

When his goals are set this way, there’s no stopping him because there’s something tangible at stake. He wouldn’t need me to yell at him or tell him “C’mon! You got one more in you!”. In fact, I’d  probably have to hold him back so he doesn’t over do it.

Many of the studio’s clients are self driven this way. Albeit, Pilates can be a pricey endeavor and is typically practiced by successful professionals like lawyers, actors, writers and the like. If I were to scream at them for motivation’s sake, they’d probably tell me to go kill myself. BTW, I’m blessed to have clients who are all very caring and nurturing. The point is, success leaves clues and I’ve noticed that they all have clearly defined reasons why they should get into the best shape possible.

ADDENDUM:

I have no prejudice against bootcamp and the Biggest Loser TV show. I’ve done bootcamp and it’s great. Just like spinning, hiking, jogging on the beach, walking long distances, gardening, and anything that causes your body to change from an inert state. The most important thing is find your own reasons to get healthy and choose a fitness path you can consistently do for THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

Then click this link: Tucking the tailbone

Then click this link: Double Straight Leg with a Ring

She reneged. Not to me, but to herself. I didn’t tell her to not have dessert. That was self-imposed. So now I have to hold her accountable. We locked horns…kind of. She’s a bit of a junk food addict, and she knows this when she’s lucid. But for now, she was defensive. I’ll call her “Tera”.

Tera: Like, I can’t even eat at Thanksgiving?

Me: Remember last week when I asked you “are you sure you wanna do that?”.  You threw down the gauntlet to yourself when you said you weren’t gonna have to eat the dessert. That you’ll enjoy everything else and be done with it.

Tera: I’ll just eat super clean this week. I don’t wanna feel trapped. I want to have freedom with my eating choices.

What Tera calls freedom, I call prison. Imagine having a wanting so bad that keeping a promise to yourself is a crapshoot. She wanted that cheesecake so bad that it got the best of her. That’s not freedom of choice. She’s a pumpkin pie prisoner.

One of the best ways out of the food hoosegow is to make small, incremental changes to your diet and COMMIT to them. Small changes make it easy to succeed in your fat loss goals and they allow you to build momentum in the fitness game. In time, these changes will become permanent and you’ll look back and wonder how you were a food prisoner to begin with.