Being lean and being rich have a few things in common.
Firstly, both will bring you jealousy and haters.
Secondly, you’ll be able to afford things that other people just can’t.
If body fat is debt, then being lean is like being debt free – which in and of itself is a whole type of wealth – No debt is a pretty cool freedom.
Basically when you are lean you can afford to indulge on occasion. You have ‘the room’. (You know your lean friend who eats whatever she wants? It’s because she’s lean). However, when you are overweight and you indulge, you are simply adding to the mounting debt…or in this case the mounting fat.
To put it another way, when you are lean, gaining 2 or 3 pounds isn’t a big deal…you know it’s there and you know you can get rid of it.. When you are overweight ANOTHER 2 or 3 pounds is just ANOTHER 10,000 Calories worth of defecit you have to create..and that’s no kind of fun.
(Granted if you keep adding 2 0r 3 pounds you’ll eventually become overweight again – the point is that it is easier to manage this weight gain when you are lean)
So here’s the reason behind this rather odd blog post – We all know that to buy the toys we dream of owning we need to be wealthy, and to be wealthy we have to get out of debt. Well, it’s the same for eating.
If you want to be able to eat your favorite foods and even overeat on occasion without worrying about it, you need to get lean first.
So put the effort in, try Eat Stop Eat, lose the weight, then relax a little and monitor what you eat. I know it’s hard work, but once you are lean (and you learn how to stay lean) the little mess ups that happen in life (weddings, birthday parties etc) are a lot easier to fix when you are fat free 
BP
Tags: Lean and Rich
Hey, Brad, great article. Thanks for all the useful information you’ve disseminated over the years. As someone who has been following the Eat Stop Eat lifestyle for the last 12 months, I can tell you that it has revolutionized my life and my body. I used to be 215lbs and around 20% plus body fat at 5’8″. While I worked out and looked very muscular, I carried quite a bit of useless bulk. Now I’m at 9% body fat and weight 140lbs. I literally look like a different person and I feel unbelievably great. My current goal is to get down to 5-6% body fat while staying in the neighborhood of 135 – 140lbs. My question to you is this: can a weekly strategic cheat day help me reach my goal? I’ve begun cheating once a week because of all the stuff I’ve been reading about leptin, etc, but I’m worried that I’m setting myself back by wasting the rest of the week losing those couple of pounds I gained during my cheat. Your input would be much appreciated. Thanks!
This is probably the best way to descirbe the situation= the advantage of being lean but honestly I don’t think people who are not particularly can understand it really… will try to use your example and see how it works
Ps can I share this on twitter?
sorry for double posting I mean to so say particularly LEAN
Do you think you shouldn’t relax a bit when leaning out I.e weekly cheat meals?
Brad, do you like to wait to eat your favorite foods for the special occasions (birthdays, weddings, etc.)or do you eat them everyday? In other words, do you think it is a good strategy to hold off on your favorite foods when they are truly worth eating (mainly with others)?
I guess it depends on what your favorite foods are.
I don’t eat cake everyday…but I probably do eat chocolate almost everyday.
I don’t drink champagne every day…but I probably have a drink once or twice a week.
So I’m not really sure how to answer.
Will stick with the money analogy.
When you’re saving to get out of debt, it is a good idea to occasionally go out for dinner and a movie, it is a bad idea to buy a new convertible. So weekly cheat meals depends on what you consider cheat, what you consider a meal.
Bottom line, at the end of a day, you have a budget, and in the long term, being under that budget is what’s going to help you lose weight.
Absolutely, and I agree…if you’ve never been lean, it’s hard to understand that you actually have more freedom with what you eat.
Hi Darius,
Same answer…at the end of the day you have a Calorie budget…so over the weeks as long as you are within that budget you are losing weight…
Brad,
Putting the effort in is key. This is often the piece that is overlooked by the jealous ones. Lean people and rich people (for the most part) put in a lot of work and make sacrifices to get to where they are. This is why I admire them, especially people who are both successful and very physically fit.
Alykhan
Brad, I appreciate the reply but it doesn’t quite answer my question. I’m trying to figure out whether overeating strategically helps the fat loss process. I’ve read many times that a weekly cheat day is necessary to increase leptin, and thus help dieters break out of plateaus. Is there any validity to this claim? I would be extremely grateful to hear your thoughts on this.
I’m only interested in overeating if it gets me to my goal. I don’t need a cheat day for psychological reasons. As Kate Moss brilliantly put it, “Nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels.”
Darius,
Again it depends on your definition and your scope. Overeating for 1 day, but only eating 1,000 calories a day on the other 6 will still result in weight loss for most people.
Necessary to increase leptin – why would you want to increase you leptin unless it is some how deficiently low?
What is a diet plateau?
If you don’t need it for mental reasons, then I’m not sure why you’d use it?
Hi Brad,
Great post once again. I really believe the value of what you and others in your fitness camp (Barban, Rusty) offer for free far outweighs what the so-called “gurus” charge a significant amount for. Just to expand on the last question though, do you not feel that there’s value to spiking and decreasing leptin levels for fat loss as those “gurus” claim?
Thanks in advance.
Brad,
Thanks for the input. The reason I’m cheating is because I’ve read numerous articles encouraging cheat days, cheat meals, or “refeeds,” to reverse some of the negative effects of strict dieting, e.g., decreased fat loss, slower metabolism, decreased hormone levels, decreased leptin levels, increased hunger, etc. I’m guessing from your reply that you think it’s a bunch of ‘broscience’.
I will have to carefully test it myself and see what happens.
Thanks, again.
Cheers.
Hi Pat,
I really don’t have anything against the concept of cheat days..in fact I think you’d be crazy to think you can diet for long periods of time without them (they just kinda happen). But in terms of leptin, my issue is simply this – it’s silly to try and manipulate a variable you can’t measure based on guesses on what might be happening.
I’ve also read the lower your body fat % the better your calorie partition is. Meaning, assuming you weight train, the leaner you are the higher percent of the calories you eat a shuttled to muscle gains and maintenance of lean body mass, the fatter you are the higher the percent of calories are shuttled to making you even fatter. So seems the benefits of being leaner are compounded!
Thanks for your response,
Since the main goal of Eat Stop Eat is reduction of body fat and maintenance of an ideal weight, the complete program would not be of much help to me if I want to GAIN weight. Would you recommend that I fast for just one day per week, instead of two, to get the benefits of fasting and body fat reduction, without hindering my chances of INCREASING my weight? I would think that this is the logical approach.
I look forward to your response.
Buy whatever brad did on the disks and learn about starvation edema and refeed or cHeat days