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:

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/

We don’t help cocaine addicts by teaching them about the metabolism of serotonin-norepinephrine-dopamine re-uptake inhibitors or the hormonal implications of cocaine use, yet we try and help people lose weight by teaching them about hormones, metabolic pathways and glucose chemistry.

While learning about the science of weight loss is fun and interesting, the most important part of any weight loss plan is dealing with our habits, environment, perceptions and stressors.

With this being said, the most important part of Eat Stop Eat isn’t the effect on growth hormone or insulin, but rather what you learn during the 24 hours that you are fasting.

Concentrate on using this time to figure out which of your habits, environmental factors, and perceptions are contributing to how much you eat.

Basically – pay attention to what drives you to eat.

Sure you’ll lose weight by fasting, but if you also use your fasts to help improve the way you eat when you are eating, then you’re setting yourself up for long term success.

BP

Instead of Nutrition, we talked Economics (One of John’s Interests).

Whenever I get the chance to talk economics with anyone who is knowledgeable I’m always blown away – mostly because it’s an area where I have next to no education.

Of course, eventually we turned it back to nutrition, covering the major economic philosophies, using nutrition and weight loss as analogies (I learn best through analogies)

Now, I’ll get John to post on the some of the concepts we discussed, but for now I want to turn back to one of my favorites

Body fat as debt.

Now, I’ve talked about this before (here and here) mostly because it’s a concept I really find fascinating.

Being overweight is exactly like being in debt.

You ate to much, and eventually you have to ‘pay it back’, otherwise…it’ll drown you.

With money debt, you either have to start earning more or start spending less.

With Fat you either have to start burning more or start eating less.

And with both (debt or fat) it’s usually the latter than gets you out of trouble. (but striving for both is good practice)

But here’s the dead truth.

Losing fat and getting out of debt are both simple – not easy by any means, but simple.

Now I’m not a fan of the spend money to get out of debt plan, nor am I a fan of the eat more to lose fat plan. Both seem ridiculous and fueled by ulterior motives (ie someone else’s profits). Instead, I’m a plan of the more realistic money-in, money-out or calorie in calorie out approach.

Sure It takes longer than you want it to, and It will be uncomfortable. It will also take large changes in lifestyle in order to be successful.  Quite frankly, you will not be able to do things that your friends can do. But if you embrace it for what it is (a lifestyle change that involves some self control), then the  process is manageable, but you do have to make it a lifestyle.

After all, if you are overweight then you have simply eaten a little more than you need to at times. If you are in debt you have simply spent a little more than you should have a few times. So you ‘owe’ back.

In debt you owe money. In fat, you owe calories.

And here’s the truth in both situations -

If you stick with it – make it a lifestyle – you’ll get results.

And when you do, people will talk – they’ll wonder how you did it. They’ll look for the ‘secret’. They certainly wont want to admit that what you did was sacrifice (but just a little bit)  in order to look the way you want to look, or to be out of debt and finally have some cash freedom.

In money terms – you didn’t buy the 62 inch flat screen TV…you stuck with your old TV, and now you are reaping the rewards.

And here’s some good news.

If you get out of money debt, you all of a sudden have a little extra cash to play with – so life gets a little easier.

If you get out of fat debt, you all of a sudden have a little calorie wiggle room to play with – so maintaining get’s easier.

But in both cases, this only applies if you make it a lifestyle.

Now with this analogy it becomes easy to think your way through weight loss fraud.

Just like ‘get out of debt’ schemes..if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.

You can’t spend your way out of debt, you can’t eat yourself out of being fat.

It’s a matter of aknowleding you need a budget.

And when it comes to your eating budget – Spend your Cals on the important things and the things that make you happy, just don’t blow your budget and you’ll eventually lose weight.

That’s all on this topic for tonight, but tomorrow I’ll tell you how fruits and veggies are like extreme couponing!

BP

I know it sounds Taoist or Zen, but your emotions and your outlook on life play an important role in your health. We’ve known this for an exceptionally long period of time, yet for some reason, we like to ignore it.

(Why work on your outlook on life when you can just take a supplement or eat organic?)

But the truth is, it is important. Stress can have a profound effect not only on weight loss, but also your quality of life.  Take the following as an example:

The first documented account of the existence, composition, and fate of chylomicrons was made by S. H. Gage in 1924. And while our knowledge about these compounds has increased exponentially since 1924, there is one piece of information from the original research that we have completely ignored for, well almost a century now.

According to his Key Note Speech on the topic of Nutritional adaptations in 1979, Rene Dubos explained the following:

It reported in detail and with striking time curves that the fate of chylomicrons was profoundly influenced by emotional states. The prospect of having to give a lecture on anatomy was sufficient profoundly alter the rate at which chylomicrons disappeared from the blood.

This is important because Chylomicrons transport the fat from your food to your liver, body fat stores, heart and skeletal muscle tissue, where their triglyceride components are unloaded for use or storage. Basically, they’re the school bus for the fat you eat, taking it through your blood and dropping it off at various locations.

So emotional stress can have a large and immediate impact on fat metabolism.

Here’s another amazing story form the same talk:

A nutritional and medical survey was carried out from 1955 to 1961 in the Pennsylvania town of Roseto. At that time, 90% of the town’s 1630 inhabitants were descendants of Italian settlers.

The Rosetans ate at least as much saturated fat as other Americans, they took large meals, drank a great deal of wine, and most of them were overweight.

Yet, not a single Rosetan male under 50 died of heart attack during the 6 years covered by the survey, and the incidence of heart disease among older men was less than half what it was in neighboring towns.

According to the conclusions of the survey the rarity of heart disease in Roseto might have been due to some genetic peculiarities of the Rosetans or to their ways of life: “gay, boisterous and unpretentious, mutually trusting (there is no crime in Roseto) and mutually supporting.”

The Rosetans themselves explained their good state of health by the fact that they simply did not worry much. Their heart attack rate seems to have increased and to have reached the United States norm when they moved to large cities and had to change their ways of life.

This sounds eerily similar to something that Dr. Aubrey DeGrey (Author of Ending Aging) once told me at a meeting in Cambridge. I asked him if there was any common characteristic that was shared by all the centurions (people living over the age of 100) that he had met. His answer was “they all smile a lot”.

So stress and life situations are important. They play a role in inflammation (see www.inflammationtheory.com), and they play a direct role in fat metabolism, and probably a whole host of other metabolic processes.

But here’s the million dollar question:

How do you manage stress?

I get that when you are stressed out, nothing is more annoying then someone telling you that you need to relax.

I will also guess that just like inflammation, the stress response is actually a good one in small/acute doses.

What we DON’T want is chronic stress.

So here’s the best piece of advice I can offer you – If something is stressing you out deal with it as quickly as possible. Don’t let it linger.

When it comes to dealing with things that are stressing you out, whether it’s your weight, your job or your relationships an excellent adage:

There’s no time like the present.

This is probably why I like Eat Stop Eat so much…it deals with the issue in an immediate manner, and tends to be a low stress undertaking.

BP

Stress and Weight Loss

However, If you let yourself get a little creative with an analogy it can become rather simple:

We are all magical Balloons.

We have a slow leak, but we do not burst (that’s the magic part).

Now, because of this leak we constantly need to add air to our balloons, so all of our balloons are all attached to bicycle pumps. We can control how much air is being pushed in, however many of us are pushing in way more air then can possibly escape through the leak. (This is our ‘calories in’)

As a result, we grow and and we grow, but thanks to magic – we don’t burst.

The leak can slow down or speed up a little, but this is completely dependent on how much air is being forced in, but it won’t ever tear or rupture..it is what it is, a slow steady leak. (This is our ‘calories out’)

So our job is to manage the size of the balloon. We can’t really alter the size of the leak to any truly significant degree, but we do have complete control over the the amount of air coming in.

If you think of metabolism and weight gain as magical balloon with a slow leak, it becomes a pretty simple concept.

When the balloon gets to big, stop putting air in and let the leak take care of the amount of air in the balloon.

I know – it’s an odd analogy – but it helps me when I start letting things get to complicated.

BP

Funny, but true.

Our belief is that you’re goal is to lose weight and to be healthy.

So while some people like to use the logical fallacy of Reductio Ad Absurdum and state that since we say you can eat anything you wish and lose  weight, what we are really saying is that you SHOULD eat nothing but candy and chocolate for the rest of your life….nothing could be farther from the truth.

But as silly as it sounds, I guess that’s what other health professionals think you will do.

That’s why they give you complicated rules, because if they didn’t you’d obviously think that sitting down to eat your way through a bucket of chicken wings, 4 large pizzas, a whole chocolate cake and 2 liters of chocolate milk was a logical weight loss solution.

So if you were looking for a reason why we’re so liberal with our recommendations this is it – We think your pretty smart.

If you choose to take this advice and go the complete opposite direction of your goals then that’s your decision.

However, if you are still aiming towards losing weight then during this process you can eat anything you want.

It goes without saying…but I’m going to say it anyways (actually I think I already said it in a previous post)

A donut is fine, a box of donuts..not so much.

A couple Oreos? Terrific. Only eating Oreos for 7 days straight? Not so much.

But really, I’m guessing you already knew that

To lose weight you need to eat less, but it’s not nearly as complicated as people would have you beleve.

BP

Instead of the carpet bomb approach that many women use towards weight loss (eat less and run and exercise until they are ‘small’), I like taking a tactical approach that really defines goals and vision.

So we can use the example of a 5’6 woman who is 31 years old and weighs 160 pounds. She has about 35% body fat . She isn’t sedentary, but isn’t exactly a ‘gym junkie’ either.

Now instead of just saying “lose weight” we will use the Venus Index principles to map out a weight loss guide.

At a height of 5’6 we know that the average Lean Body Mass (LBM) is about 104 pounds, and a little less than 50% of that is skeletal muscle…so that means about 50 pounds is true muscle.

We also know that at this height LBM can be as high as 112 pounds, but realistically, adding 4-5 pounds would be impressive since this is close to a 10% increase in Skeletal Muscle (since she would only be adding muscle and not all lean body mass).

So with a 8-10% increase in Muscle Mass we have a Lean Body Mass of roughly 108  pounds.

When we reduce body fat down to around 20% we see a VERY large decrease in body fat (From 56 pounds of fat down to 27 pounds) <– granted not all the weight loss will be Body fat, but over the long run a significant portion would end up being from fat.

Bottom line, we end up with a woman who is 5’6″ at about 135 pounds with roughly 20% body fat.

At these numbers and height we would expect to see a waist that is about 25 inches in circumference and shoulders that are between 40 and 41 inches in circumference. (keeping in mind she would be roughly 1 standard deviation more muscular than the average woman for her height)

So in this scenario I would use this description as her ‘body road map’ – something to aim for while doing everything possible in the gym to gain or maintain strength.

Remember Muscle mass follows strength. For anyone other than beginner athletes, you can’t get stronger at a lift without the muscle involved in that lift getting at least a little larger. And building an attractive body involves having some muscle that allows you to have a ‘shape’ underneath the skin and fat.

Then just like in the guy example, she would take her measurements, then test some basic lifts in the gym..shoulder press, squat, bench, dead, weighted chin, maybe weighted dips… Then Track and test and test and track during her weight loss progression.

This is an example of what it’s like when you are tactical with weight loss.

You now have a map, and you have some metrics to work with. You should now be able to eat less, lose weight, and track to make sure that the inches lost off of your waist and hips is greater than the inches lost on your shoulders. (We can also reasonably estimate that this transition should take between 4 and 6 months)

Now this road map is by no means perfect…you could be a genetic freak with VERY wide shoulders, or you may not be able to have a 25 inch waist, but you will probably be very close…(maybe she hits these numbers at a weight of 128 instead of 135 because she had less muscle then we estimated…etc)…but regardless… having a rough guide is better than having no direction at all.

That’s what the Venus Index is all about…tactical body ‘shaping’.

It’s a road map or a guide that makes the process a little less daunting.

After all, your body is malleable, so you can form it in the way you want as long as

A) you are tactical

and

B) you are realistic with you’re starting point and what you’ve got to work with.

BP

PS – To learn more about the Venus Index, and to take advantage of the holiday special, simply click the photo below.

Working with a tactical weight loss plan

You’re probably not going to see a magic weight loss pill in your lifetime.

Despite pouring of dollars into anti-obesity drug development, and with many great and creative minds working on the problem  for the last couple decades the Holy Grail of an anti-obesity drug that is both highly effective and safe appears elusive.

(Which of course beg the question – What the heck do the supplement marketers know that these guys don’t )

and quick fixes don’t seem to work either….

Exercise is great, but even the best exercise program can’t prevent things like social overeating, mindless eating, food addiction, or the like.

(fancy way of saying you can’t out train a bad diet)

So if we aren’t getting an anti-obesity drug anytime soon, and exercise has it’s place, but isn’t the cure all…the question becomes:

Why are we so afraid to eat less?

We’ve even tried the opposite (The eat more to lose weight approach) which has the pleasant effect of making you never feel hungry, but you also never really feel lean either.

In the health and fitness world we’ve promoted all combination of proteins, fats and carbs. For some reason none of these combinations had staying power as ‘the cure’

On the government side (where we are typically afraid to take a stand on anything) we stick with the ambiguous and nonsensical “Get plenty of exercise and eat a healthy and balanced diet”

Which of course begs the questions

What type of Exercise?

How much Exercise?

What is healthy?

What is balanced?

And even when we know what ‘healthy and balanced’ is, we’re still skirting the issue of ‘HOW MUCH” healthy and balanced diet.

The answer is less.

If you weigh more than you want to, you are eating more than you need to.

Most likely, our timidness to say ‘eat less’ comes from the fact that there is a small group of people who always see things in black or white type extremes.

So ‘less’ to them means A LOT LESS, or even BARELY ANYTHING….And this is scary.

(I’m not sure why this is, but I have a hunch it has a lot to do with this post –> Perfect abs)

That being said, if this IS the reasoning for shying away from saying ‘eat less’ then we are putting the needs of a few people ahead of the needs of a massive group of people (pun not intended), and this isn’t right.

The other reason we may shy away from saying ‘eat less’ is that it creates the need to know ‘how much less’.

This question creates the need for calorie counting, and predictive equations.

And predictive equations create the need for guesstimating fat mass and lean body mass and the average calorie burning associated with exercise.

So we measure, predict and guesstimate…then pretend it’s all 100% fact.

Because if there is one thing us ‘experts’ don’t like to say..it’s I DON’T KNOW (again probably because of this –> perfect abs)

Now, we all have our estimates (I like 10 times IDEAL body weight if you’re NOT doing Eat Stop Eat,  11 or 12x if you ARE doing Eat Stop Eat), but again, they are ALL estimates.

This is where the confusion sets in…we start pretending we know EXACT numbers when everything is estimates.

So it could be our fear that people would take ‘eat less’ to the extreme that keeps us from saying ‘eat less’. It could be the fact that by saying ‘eat less’ we have to admit that we don’t know EXACTLY how much less.

Or..

It could also be the simple fact that ‘eating less’ doesn’t sell.

You don’t sell magazine covers, diet programs, books etc with the headline “EAT LESS TO LOSE WEIGHT” it’s not catchy, it’s not sexy and it certainly doesn’t put you in a “Oh my gosh I HAVE to buy this” frame of mind.

So, those are probably the three biggest reasons why eating less isn’t the answer.

Of course, there is the one reason why Eating less IS the answer…. it works.

BP

BP

And, despite what we may be led to believe this is nothing new.

The weight loss industry has been alive and profiting since AT LEAST the late 1800′s .

You don’t need to look any further than the story of Bernarr Macfadden as told in “Mr. America” for proof that NONE of this is new.

From the benefits of the all milk diet to the miracle of high protein,….it’s all been recycled multiple times.

Somehow, at some point, we convinced ourselves that in order to lose weight, eating LESS is not the answer.

Instead, we’ve decided that the key to losing weight is discovering the secret foods that MAKE us lose weight.

I think this concept works so well because it “FITS” with life.

It fits with our current addiction to purchasing and consuming.

In today’s reality “taking away” is an answer that just doesn’t seem to fit*.

*(unless you have embraced a minimalist type of lifestyle)

We would much rather “add”.

As an example we would rather believe that grapefruit juice is better than apple juice at causing you to lose weight…

Sure, this keeps us as good little consumers, and keeps our never quite satisfied taste buds happy…but a quick look at the stats reveals that it certainly doesn’t make us any leaner (or wealthier).

In fact, the opposite is happening. We keep consuming and, as a population, we keep getting bigger.

So here is my solution – Instead of worrying about which green tea to buy, and what specific type of grapefruit you are going to eat, whether or not you should use cream or coconut milk in your coffee, and which fast food is “healthiest”, do your best to try this technique.

Limit the amount of food your purchase outside of the grocery store.

I don’t mean steal.

I just mean don’t buy anything extra that day.

So if you have a hypothetical grocery budget of 100 bucks a week, give yourself a non-grocery budget too.

After all, for many of us this it’s this extra mindless consuming that we don’t remember.. that adds up on our waists and empties our bank accounts.

We already know that just because you are hungry, it doesn’t mean your metabolism is slowing down, or that you are breaking down muscle (If you don’t know this, you should read Eat Stop Eat, it would probably help a lot).

So, for the most part, hunger simply means you ‘really want to eat’.

So forgo the snacks in the car, and the coffee stop on the way into work (unless it’s in your budget).

The bottom line is this:

Getting control over how much you eat is the answer to your weight loss goals. The issue for some people is often not knowing where to start.

They get caught up in counting calories and trying to eat ‘the rights foods’.

A more effective and realistic approach is to measure with your wallet.

I’m sure that if you can avoid buying any extra food for an entire month, you will see significant weight loss. Despite all the gimmicks and trends, simply eating less is still the best, most effective answer.

Give it a try, but take a positive approach. Go into this experiment thinking that you do not need to buy extra food. That you will not feel bad, or sluggish. That it will not affect your workouts or your stress level. Stay positive, and avoid purchasing anything other than your groceries and your budgeted ‘extras’.

Still eat the foods you normally eat, just let the all-mighty dollar be the limiting factor in HOW MUCH you consume.

Hopefully this will help you get a leaner body and a fatter wallet.

BP