Brad Pilon.com » intermittent fasting

Why I Hate ‘New, Unique’ Weight Loss Tips

Brad Pilon — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 14:07:10 +0000

This post is 100% inspired by a blog post I found on Forbes.com

It was written by J.D. Roth of GetRichSlowly.org.

To say it resonated with me would be an understatement. His views on money mirrored my views on weight loss so closely that I’ve decided to ‘commentary’ on his post here on my blog.

Below you will find J.D.’s original article, with my comments in [Blue]

*********

Today I’m going to rant.

I get a lot of requests from reporters who want quotes for their stories about personal finance. That’s fine. I’m happy to help when possible. What bugs me, though, is that nearly every single reporter pitches her story with the same caveat: “I need tips about saving, but I don’t want the same old stuff. I need new, unique ways to save money.”

[The weight loss and diet industry is no different. People want stories and articles about weight loss, but every request for help comes with the same caveat: "I need tips for weight loss, but I don't want the same old stuff. I need new, unique ways of losing weight" and I'm sure J.D. would agree when I say that this is largely because the new, unique ways move magazines and sell books]

sigh

“New, unique ways to save money” have become the bane of my existence. I loathe these requests. Why? Because the basics of personal finance never change. They haven’t changed in thousands of years, and they’re not going to change for thousands more. Fundamentally, all you need to know about managing your money is this: Spend less than you earn.

[Obviously, if you visit this blog with any regularity, you know how I feel about the basics of weight loss. No matter how many tricks and tips are invented it will always come down to spending more energy then you eat]

That’s it. If you spend less than you earn, you’ll do fine. Everything else is details. Those details are important, I know, but most of them are common sense and widely known.

Reporters don’t want to hear that the best ways to save money are to cut cable television (and other monthly expenses), start a vegetable garden, clip coupons or buy a used car. No no no. These ideas aren’t good enough. So, you end up with articles that claim they’ll save readers $5,000 a year — but only if you can get rid of your hot tub or ditch your pet ostrich or give up the vacation home on the lake. In other words, by constantly striving for new, unique ways to save money, reporters make their articles mostly useless.

[Similarly, very few people want to hear that weight loss is mostly about eating less. It HAS to be about hormones and meal timing and burning an extra 5,000 calories every day]

Instead, I think reporters should have the guts to promote the basics. Why? Because they work.

[ditto]

The basics of personal finance

We’ve covered this a zillion times before — including a four-part series in April during which I described my core financial framework — but let’s do a quick review.

Smart personal finance can be reduced to one simple equation:

[WEALTH] = [WHAT YOU EARN] – [WHAT YOU SPEND]

[You] = [What you put in] – [What you put out]* (you can substitute in ‘energy’ or ‘calories’ – I’m just trying to keep this as simple as possible)

If you spend more than you earn, you have a negative cash flow. You’re losing wealth and in danger of going into debt. (Or, if you’re already in debt, you’re digging the hole deeper.) If you spend less than you earn, you have a positive cash flow, which will let you climb out of debt and build wealth.

[If you consume more than you expend, you have a positive energy balance. You're gaining energy and in danger of gaining body fat. (or, if you're already overweight, you're digging the hole deeper.) If you consume less that you expend you have a negative energy balance, which will let you climb out of debt and build health]

So, basic personal finance comprises three essential skills:

Earning — Your ability to bring in money. This skill requires resourcefulness and a willingness to work.
Spending — Your ability to live frugally and spend wisely. This skill generally requires sacrifice and the ability to prioritize.
Investing — Your ability to produce a surplus and to make that surplus grow. This skill takes patience and research.

Consuming – Your need to eat. Managing this requires a degree of mindfulness. Changing major habits takes some serious work.
Expending – Your daily life and Exercise. Prioritize your workouts to your goals – expend but expend wisely.
Lifestyle – Your ability to eat a little less and move a little more. This takes patience, research and practice.

Spend less than you earn — invest the difference. That’s all you need to know. The rest is developing the mindset and skills to make these things happen.

[Eat Less, Move more, while enjoying the foods you eat.]

Missing the point
Last Tuesday, I did yet another interview with a reporter who was looking for new, unique approaches to personal finance. Her e-mail said she needed finance tips for new college grads. “I don’t need the obvious stuff, like ‘save money, spend less’,” she wrote. “I’d like to tell readers something they don’t already know.”

[sound familiar? think about this statement the next time you read about the LATEST amazing fat-burning hormone]

When I spoke with her, the truth was even worse. She was looking for advice on things recent graduates should buy. “When you’re out of college, you don’t have much of an income, and you may not have a job. If that’s the case, what should someone spend money on?” she asked. I was dumbfounded. I offered some lame answers — it’s okay to spend on a wardrobe (if your job requires it) or further education — but in the end, I gave up.

[Think: 'What should you eat to lose weight?' or 'special fat burning foods']

“To be honest,” I said, “I think it’s dangerous to do a story like this. In essence, you’re giving young people permission to spend, even if they don’t have the money. That’s the road to debt.”

[So the question becomes - 'is it dangerous to give out similar weight loss advice - giving people permission to eat more than they need to, sometimes A LOT more?']

Note: I don’t mean to pick on this one reporter. She’s just fresh in my mind. Her requests and approach are very, very typical of most other reporters I’ve talked with.

Nothing new under the sun
This is what happens when you’re constantly trying to find new and unique ways to save money. You start by chasing narrow niche topics (“The pitfalls of insurance if you carshare”, “How to save on silk underwear”, “How the BAH helps military members afford a home“) and eventually you’re writing nonsense like “10 things every college graduate should buy”.

I reject the relentless push for new, unique money tips. They’re few and far between. Besides, there are millions of people who can profit from hearing the old advice. For many, the old advice is new advice. And even those who’ve heard it many times before can benefit from hearing it again.

If you want to write a story about personal finance and you’re worried that readers will be bored because you’re covering the same topics everyone else has covered for the past hundred years, the solution isn’t to look for new, unique ideas. The solution is to find new, unique ways to convey the timeless information that works. Find real-life examples (like the GRS reader stories). Explore government statistics. Find a new angle into the story (psychological? religious? political?). But don’t turn your back on the basics just because they seem tired and worn out.

[Absolutely fantastic paragraph that can be echoed in weight loss - We can stop scamming people with ridiculous stories, and start helping by finding new unique ways to explain the basics, and find innovative ways to help people apply the basics - admittedly, this is the crux of Eat Stop Eat - a simple, flexible and effective way to reduce calories]

The basics are the basics for a reason. And until everyone grasps the concept, the fundamental formula of personal finance needs to be trumpeted from the rooftops: To build wealth, you have to spend less than you earn. It’s not new. It’s not unique. It’s simply the truth.

*********

Bottom Line – Probably the two most important aspects of your life – health and wealth – they are eerily similar. Proper management is almost identical. The fact that people are trying to find new unique things to say – just to entertain you is also almost identical.

The one point I need to make is that obviously constantly eating less will end up reaching a point that is unhealthy. But the point of eating less is that allows you to eat MORE on occasion. Celebrations and the like. But then again, this is similar to wealth management – the point of buidling wealth and growing your money is so that you can eventually spend on the things that are important to you.

So again, the fundamentals are the same.

PS-

Original article is here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2011/10/24/why-i-hate-new-unique-money-tips/

J.D. Roth’s website is here:

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/

My other posts of fat as debt here:

http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/big-fat-debt/

http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/extreme-couponing-for-fat-loss/

http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/how-to-calorie-budget/

http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/lean-and-rich/

http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/gain-the-fat-back/

http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/on-being-average/

http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/the-root-of-obesity-and-debt/

http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/how-to-gain-fat/

Impulsive Eating Update

Brad Pilon — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 20:55:39 +0000

Just a quick update to give you one of the biggest benefits of Eat Stop Eat – Control.

Knowing you have Control really is a stress buster.

Control is knowing that when you add weight, you can take it off… It’ll take a bit longer then it did to add it, but at least you know it’s completley possible to fix any mistakes.

Yep, Eat Stop Eat is like Body Fat white-out…or delete button for those of you born after 1992

I like to keep my weight at 175, plus or minus 5 pounds. I don’t mind going down to 17o for a photo shoot, and I don’t mind creeping up to 179 if it was due to calories well spent (Vegas weekend with friends)..and by staying within my ‘plus or minus five’ I know that I am always in control.

Here’s an update from my impulse eating post, where I showed you the damage I did in Vegas. I’m back on track, and in another ten to twelve days I will be right where I want to be..no rush, no hurry – because I know I’ll get there.

Do you have to eat clean to get lean?

Brad Pilon — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 19:20:06 +0000

Clipped from: johnbarban.com (share this clip)

via s.tt

For some people, spending 4 months eating nothing but egg whites, chicken breasts and broccoli is easy. For the rest of us it’s good to know that you don’t HAVE to go to such extremes to get lean.

As John Barban (Adoniseffect.com) illustrates in this post…a donut a day can still be fit into a lifestyle that gets you lean.

And as the picture below shows…You can follow a Barban style “Anything Goes” diet and still carry a large amount of muscle and while getting lean (as long as you are following a well designed workout program).

Proof that you can get lean on an "Anything Goes" Style Diet

The New Expanded Eat Stop Eat

Brad Pilon — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 16:47:57 +0000

When I first released Eat Stop Eat the entire book was under 75 pages.

As short as that sounds, it had everything you needed to know in order to be successful at losing weight using the Eat Stop Eat lifestyle of flexible intermittent fasting combined with resistance training.

However…since Eat Stop Eat is an e-book, it would be a crime not to take advantage of the massive benefits that the e-book format can offer.

Namely – The ease of updating any work.

So that’s exactly what I did.

The New Expanded Eat Stop Eat is over 140 pages long and now contains updated information on many of the health benefits of flexible intermittent fasting including some VERY relevant information on weight loss, fasting and chronic systemic inflammation (which I think I will be the next BIG health issue).

I’ve updated the references to include everything that I deemed relevant that was published since ESE’s original launch.

I’ve also included a new revised chapter on resistance training and another on hunger, because both are extremely relevant to your weight loss success.

I’ve done my best to keep the book ‘User friendly’ meaning I’ve tried to keep it as readable as possible (it’s been referred to as ‘newbie friendly’).

I’ve also done my best to accurately report on the science of intermittent fasting and weight loss in a way that is honest, truthful and not overly hyped.

So without further ado, I present to you the latest version of EAT STOP EAT.

www.EatStopEat.com

PS- I’ve you’ve read the new version, drop me a line here and let me know what you think!

Fasting and Strength

Brad Pilon — Sat, 01 May 2010 00:32:39 +0000

(The mistress in the basement)

The relationship between fasting and strength seems to be an issue that has been coming up a lot in the comments on this blog.

So here’s something to think about:

I’ve been following Eat Stop Eat for over three years.

I am significantly stronger than a lot of on-line fitness personalities who do not fast.

And, there are on-line fitness personalities who don’t fast who are also significantly stronger than me.

So really, comparing me to other people (or vice-versa) is pretty pointless….

(Just like how comparing yourself to anyone on-line is pointless)

But here’s something very important to consider: I’m significantly stronger now than I was three years ago.

In other words, I’ve become stronger while fasting once or twice a week for the last three years.

Did fasting make me stronger? I highly doubt it. In fact, I’m pretty sure I owe any strength gains I’ve received in that last little while to a well planned workout protocol.

But I know one thing: fasting didn’t suck all of the strength out of my body…

Bottom line: if your strength is suffering don’t look to your diet, look to your workout.

PS – If you are looking for a more ‘research heavy’ explanation of fasting and strength you can find it in chapters 9 and 11 of Eat Stop Eat

Nobody was ‘meant’ to be fat.

Brad Pilon — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:54:50 +0000

Some people are naturally big and strong, while some people will always be small.

Some are short, and some are tall.

But nobody was ‘meant’ to be fat.

You can always improve.

You can work within your strengths, and improve on your weaknesses, but you can’t change you you are.

But your body fat?

That’s not you.

It’s hiding you.

I know this sounds ‘new age’, but it’s true.

You don’t need to be ‘shredded’ to have self-worth.

6 Pack abs wont make you a better person.

But, if you want to change how you look, body fat is the ONE thing you can really change.

One small change to the way you eat, and some dedication to stick with it.

That’s all it really takes.

Some people are big and strong, some people will always be small.

But nobody was meant to be fat.

(This is my reasoning for Eat Stop Eat)

Obsessing over Fasting

Brad Pilon — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:14:52 +0000

Human nature is a tricky thing. We all seem to have some form of innate competitiveness built into our genetic code.

And while this competitive streak doesn’t always manifest itself into a love of conflict or confrontation, it does drive us to constantly seek the extreme.

It’s this drive that can turn tools meant to make our lives easier into tools that burden us.

Think of laptops, Black Berries and iPhones.

All of these are tools that were meant to give us more freedom, but that have ultimately turned into tools that make us work harder and longer.

The idea of answering your cellphone while on family vacation simply did not exist 20 years ago, nevermind the idea of answering emails, texts, Skype calls, etc…

Many experts refer to this as “The Technology Trap”

From my experience this same trap happens in health and fitness.

Eat Stop Eat was designed to be freeing and flexible. To free us from having to count calories, measure portions and stress about our food. To be flexible in the fact that we can fit it into our lives without drastically altering our lifestyle.

With Flexible Intermittent Fasting the idea is to lose weight while breaking free of Obsessive Compulsive Eating.

1 or 2 24-hour fasts per week.

It is simple, and incredibly effective. It is the best way to get results while doing nothing. A great way to lose weight without stressing over what to eat.

The key is to stay loose with it.

1 or 2…not 4 or 5

24 hours, not 35,42, 50 or 72.

Eat Stop Eat is about fitting short periods of fasting into your life, Not turning your life into fasting…

The bottom line is that forcing yourself to agonize through a 100 hour fast just for the sake of seeing how far you can go is NO DIFFERENT than packing 8 Tupperware containers full of chicken and broccoli and carrying them around with you all day…They are both OCE.

When it comes to health and fitness, keeping it free means keeping it simple. You don’t need to workout 8 times per week. Your workouts don’t need to be 3 hours long. you don’t need to fast 4 times per week, and your fasts certainly don’t need to be 72 hours long.

1 or 2 24-hour fasts per week. – This is Eat Stop Eat

Anything more is a much different form of fasting.

It’s not Flexible Intermittent Fasting and it’s certainly not Eat Stop Eat.

If you lose the Flexibility, your just dieting all over again.

Keep it Flexible with these steps.

1. Don’t try fasting without reading Eat Stop Eat. This may seem a little self-serving on my part, but I get close to 100 fasting related questions and comments per day, and the people having the hardest time are always the ones trying to follow Eat Stop Eat without reading Eat Stop Eat.

2. Start with ONE fast per week. I am a firm believer that many people would be surprised at how effective even one fast can be for weight loss.

3. Fight the temptation to fast more than twice a week, or to extend your fasts into 2 or 3 days straight. There’s nothing wrong with cutting a fast short at 22 hours, or extending a fast to 27 or 28 hours IF IT FITS INTO YOUR SCHEDULE. But if you end up fasting for 40, 50 or even 70 hours I simply don’t see how this CANNOT become intrusive on your life.

What to eat AFTER you fast

Brad Pilon — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:54:54 +0000

What should I break my fast with?

What should I eat after my fast?

What’s the best thing to eat after my fast?

The answer to all of these questions is exactly the same.

When you finish your fast you need to pretend that your fast NEVER HAPPENED.

No compensation, no reward, no special way of eating, no special shakes, drinks or pills.

The minute you decide to stop fasting, you need to wipe the fast from your memory, and eat the exact way you would normally eat at that specific time of the day (responsibly of course).

If you end your fast at dinner time, have dinner. If you end your fast at 4 PM, and you don’t typically have dinner until 6 or 7 PM, then have a light snack…but nothing larger than you would normally have at that time.

There is no magic way to end your fast. The absolute best thing you can do is simply pretend your fast never happened and begin eating in the exact way you would normally eat at that specific time of day.

Fasting for Fat Loss

Brad Pilon — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:42:31 +0000

Here’s a great blog post about fasting written by Craig Ballantyne. I usually find Craig’s posts entertaining, but this particular post was ‘extra special’ for a number of reasons:

It starts with a picture of Steak AND a picture of a pint of Guinness!
Craig talks in great detail about his experience with fasting
Craig was a HUGE fasting skeptic, especially when it came to fasting during exercise! So it’s nice to read that he finds Eat Stop Eat so easy.
Craig mentions one of my biggest pet peeves (Hint: He mentions it while talking about the other passengers on his plane)
Last but not least, Craig mentions hitting a personal best with the Deadlift – It’s always motivating to read about people making progress in the gym – Makes me want to do deadlifts tonight.

You can read Craig’s post here ==> http://www.ttfatloss.com/fat-loss/fasting-for-fat-loss/

New Years Weight Loss Success

Brad Pilon — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:28:44 +0000

So its Jan 1st…again.

For many people this means new years resolution time…and like a bad case of deja vu…it’s typically the SAME resolutions EVERY YEAR.

“I’m going to lose weight”

“I’m going to eat healthy”

“I’m going to go to the the gym every SINGLE DAY”

The problem with these resolutions is that..well..they are boring.

So this year, lets shake it up.

First..let’s combine the first two “traditional” resolutions ..”I am going to eat healthy and lose weight”..throw it out, and replace it with:

I am going to commit to getting results by doing nothing

Way more fun…and if you think about it, that’s exactly what happens when you follow Eat Stop Eat…all of your weight loss success come from…doing NOTHING!

Next, lets take the traditional resolution of “I will go to the gym every single day” and replace it with something much easier and FAR more effective:

I will record my workouts in a journal, and will try to improve with each workout

Like I said, much easier, and 100 times more effective.

Lastly, lets add one more resolution to the mix:

I will commit to one strength goal this year

I like this one becuase it really focuses your workouts, and because strength in the gym is a great measure of improvement.

For me, I commit to doing a standing barbell shoulder press with 225 pounds. It has been a goal of mine for a while now, but 2009 is going to be the year that I accomplish this.

So there are three health and fitness resolutions that are not traditional, not boring, but are super effective.

BP
PS- My own personal new years resolutions are to explore the first resolution to its fullest

I will commit to getting results by doing nothing

I am starting to think that this may have a far greater reach than simply intermittent fasting and weight loss.