Kaleolani’s Story

When I was asked by Amber to write a piece, I was giddy, and honored and scared to death. Where would I start? What was I going to talk about? So I decided, very simply, to start at the beginning. I was born and raised in Hawai’i (hence my first name). I could say I was a surfing beach bunny, sitting around eating fish and poi, and laying in the sun getting my tan. The fact is, I don’t surf, deep ocean water scares me, I love poi but not so much the fish and I find laying out boring. Somewhere along the way between childhood and today, I also developed an eating disorder. I have compulsive eating disorder or binge eating. When most people think of an eating disorder they think of someone who is starving themselves or binging and purging. An eating disorder doesn’t always fit that mold. For me it was the coping skill I used for my feelings, for my emotional protection, and to make it through my daily life.

I met a wonderful man, we got married and due to his job, I moved away from home. Through other ups and downs of life, I know I suffered a few times from depression, including depression brought on by the C-section I had with my first daughter. It wasn’t what you’d call an ideal pregnancy and her birth was far from the fairy dust sprinkled, birth miracle of your favorite movies or TV show. We moved again. I had a second baby; got sick and things took a down hill turn. We moved again, and I didn’t realize that the bottom was so very far down or that I’d end up sinking down there and hitting rock bottom.

One day I went to the doctor’s for a check up, something I avoided because I was told all of my ills were due to my weight. At this particular visit, my new to me doctor, informed me I was pre-diabetic. No! Only one person in my family had been diabetic. This does not run in my family. We had other diseases, cancer, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, but not diabetes. What was I supposed to do with this? Well the very same thing I did with everything else. I ran the other way and ate to push it down.

My doctor did talk to me about my weight. I am 5’2″ and I had gotten up to about 360 lbs. That’s pretty short and round like. When she approached it, it was not in the same way that others had done before, but she really listened.  She heard me when I said I’d tried every single diet, when I said I always came out of it feeling like I was the biggest failure in the world, when I said I had been listening to a couple of friends talk about compulsive eating and it seemed to fit every thing I was feeling and doing. She listened to me when I said I’d bought a book and cried as I read because it felt like I had written it myself. She then put me in touch with a totally awesome therapist. I was only able to spend 6 months with my therapist until we had to move again.

When we moved I decided it was time to live my best life right now. No more waiting for that magic miracle diet to help me shed all the pounds and make me a perfect size 2. By now I’d have been happy with the perfect size 20. I got a seat belt extender for my car, donated all of my clothes that didn’t fit and threw away the last scale in the house. I also found a new doctor in our new home. I needed help because I was tired all the time and couldn’t drive without falling asleep. I couldn’t stay up for more then 2 hours. I also had my first ambulance ride to the ER one morning, scared to death I was having a heart attack because I couldn’t breath and the pain in my chest was unbearable.

My totally new, totally awesome doctor sent me for blood tests, did a physical and sent me to a pulmonologist for a sleep study. Turns out, I have severe sleep apnea. The blood tests came back and, oh, by the way, I’ve now got full-blown diabetes. No time to panic as I was already panicking thinking I would die while sleeping with my daughters would be the ones to find me dead in the morning. I didn’t know what to do so I dumped all the things that could possibly cause me an issue with my blood sugar. I dumped all grains, all starchy vegetables, all fruits, and nearly all sugar. I got set up with my CPAP machine, took my Metformin and then I set about figuring out what to do with this disease I knew nothing about.

Insurance wouldn’t pay for a visit to a nutritionist. I did a better thing. I asked a diabetic friend, well, more like I cried all over my computer and begged my diabetic friend for any help. I can’t begin to tell you what my angel of a friend did for my peace of mind. She gave me wonderful advice and tips. I took them to heart. I wasn’t prescribed a glucometer, but I went out and got one from CVS. The great staff there was so helpful, showed me how to use it, and told me I didn’t need the latest and greatest one with bells and whistles. I needed the simplest one, with the cheapest test strips and off I went. I found myself a chiropractor and an acupuncturist. I wanted all of my bases covered. They were going to help me with all other physical and emotional aspects and most importantly, try to help my body heal my pancreatic function.

I tested everything I ate. I ran through testing strips like they were water. I began to exercise, which was not easy. After 2 C-sections and my illness my back was out of whack. I was in pain all the time and dealing with a second round of plantar fasciitis. My right knee would not bear any weight by itself. I walked, or tried to. I could make it maybe 1 1/2 minutes before I hurt so much I had to stop. I walked a small path behind our condo. It would take me about 20 minutes to walk something that should have taken 3. I saw a video for DDP Yoga and I got the tapes. I did the things my friend told me to do. Her most wonderful advice ever was to walk. She said if I ate something that spiked my blood sugar, which happened a lot at the beginning, to walk. If you move the big muscles in your body, it would move the sugar floating around in there, instead of sitting there making me feel high.

I had been getting horrible headaches before and the Metformin helped with that. I could visually see and physically feel when my blood sugar was going up too high and too fast. My walking was getting better. Finally, after a couple of months, I got rid of the last bit of sugar in my diet. I gave up chocolate. I knew it wouldn’t be a lifetime move, but I had to give it up for the time being to let my body heal.

Two weeks before my 3-month appointment with my doctor, I started to get headaches again when I took the Metformin. I decided to stop taking it. I got another blood test. My blood sugar numbers were dropping. My doctor was looking for my A1C numbers. According to diabetes.org A1C is: “A test that gives you a picture of your average blood glucose control for the past 2-3 months. The results give you a good idea of how well your diabetes plan is working.” She agreed when I told her I didn’t want to take the Metformin and try to control things with diet and exercise. Did I say yet how awesome she is?

I slowly started to add back in some whole starches like potatoes and some black and brown rice. I was sleeping so much better with my CPAP and life was amazingly different already. I found new recipes to help with my cravings as I still was dealing with my eating disorder. There’s a fine line to balance with making sure I’m doing what’s needed for health and balancing it out emotionally. I do not restrict my eating because for me, that is a sure way of creating a need for a binge. Paleo and primal web sites helped me tremendously. I still ate dairy and still had starches but I needed to learn a different way of baking to avoid wheat. I had a NEED for cookies.

I saw my doctor every three months. I got a blood test each time to check my A1C levels and various other things. I kept seeing my chiropractor and acupuncturist. My levels kept going to down closer to the normal range. I kept doing what I was doing.

My physical changes were phenomenal. I thought I wasn’t an outdoors person. I really was. I love walking in nature. I just don’t want to sit in nature or eat in nature (:-) I am not an al fresco diner), but moving through nature, I could do. My daughters and I found some trails to walk and we did as often as we could. I walked a bigger loop near our condo. I noticed, as I was doing my DDP, and standing in a lunge position, my right knee was able to go lower then it had before. I was taking pictures to track progress, and there was a visible difference in how I looked, how my clothes fit. I still didn’t use a scale and had to stop taking measurements. It wasn’t working for me emotionally to do this. I got derailed a bit by a weight loss challenge that I shouldn’t have joined, but it did teach me that restricting or surrounding myself with people who do, does not work for my peace of mind.

I then decided I wanted to try running. After getting the ok from all my medical people, I followed my intuition and got myself a pair of Vibram 5 Finger shoes and started to try to jog. I had read somewhere something about John Bingham and how he said he waddled when he jogged. That so fit. My friend told me she called it wogging. I loved it. I got some new wogging pants, sewed some skirts to wear over the pants and tried to see what I could do. I started very slowly and I’m still slow, but low and behold, the person who thought she hated running, LOVES it. Turns out, I just hated running for PE.

Today, I had my 1-year check up. My A1C numbers have me in the normal range. Not diabetic, not pre-diabetic but the normal range. I eat sprouted wheat bread when I want, I have some maple syrup on sprouted wheat pancakes, I have some sugar, and I still have my rice, my potatoes and everything else, including my chocolate. I have lost about 60 lbs. In the process I finally was able to lose my fear of what the food would do to my body. I still deal with my eating disorder one day at a time. I am living every day, and eating the chocolate, and wogging because I love it. I can walk a flight of stairs, I can run a few sprints, I can do actual squats without holding onto anything. I still have a ways to go physically, emotionally and mentally, but it’s no longer a race against a disease but a way to a better life. It’s always been about putting one foot in front of the other and finding a solution to the problem at hand. Now though, I look forward to seeing what new thing I’ll be able to do tomorrow, living my best life now.

Aloha,
Kaleolani Garcia
Homeschooling, stay at home mom of 2 and Coast Guard spouse.

For people for whom aesthetics and calorie burning aren’t major goals, exercise as it is framed in our culture may seem irrelevant. Today I’d like to talk about the less acknowledged, but probably more important, reasons for staying active.

Metabolic Health

I discuss Metabolic Health a great deal on my blog. It is a concept that is a little foreign to our reductionist society. Just as we tend to reduce food to a collection of nutrients, we reduce our bodies to a collection of organs and processes, imagining that each works in isolation. Our bodies are more complex than that. The body is actually an intricate system, all the processes of which affect and are effected by all the other processes. The function of this system is what we call metabolism. Popular culture has reduced ‘metabolism’ to ‘the number of calories the body burns’, but metabolism is far more than that. ‘Metabolism’ is actually every single chemical process of every single cell in your body. When one of those processes goes awry, it effects other processes and so begins a cascade of dysfunction.

Exercise is, in my opinion, one of the fundamental processes of metabolism. Exercise effects the body on a cellular level. Exercise helps regulate the ability of our cells to metabolize glucose and produce energy. Improved energy production has far reaching effects on all aspects of our health. This effect on the way our very cells function, our Metabolic Health, is, in my opinion, the reason exercise has been shown to be so powerful an intervention in the treatment and prevention of myriad health conditions.

Exercise has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity and mitigate symptoms of Diabetes. Exercise also improves the symptoms of PCOS and even lead to increased fertility. Higher levels of activity are inversely associated with risk factors for Metabolic Syndrome.

Exercise can reduce the risk and symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Exercise can mitigate the pain and dysfunction of arthritis, both Osteo and Rheumatoid.

Exercise increases bone density.

Exercise is associated with a reduced risk of cancer and heart disease.

Exercise also has numerous, less quantifiable quality of life benefits, such as increased confidence, higher libido and improved energy levels.

Ultimately, the kind of exercise one does is far less important than simply being physically active on a regular basis. Although there is a perception that we can only derive benefits from high intensity, vigorous activity, the truth is that simply walking more will produce improvements in health and well being. If walking more leads to other fitness goals, great! If not, walking is enough! As I say to my clients, you do not need to puke, pass out or die in order to get fit. Just moving enough to physically challenge yourself most days of the week is totally adequate to gain health benefits.

Our bodies evolved to move, and when we don’t move enough our bodies don’t function optimally. This has nothing to do with aesthetics or calories or weight. Is has to do with the health of our very cells, and the ways the systems of our body work together to support whole-body health. You try to eat a wide variety of foods to provide your body with the nutrients it needs to stay healthy, remember that your body needs movement to stay healthy as well. Find an activity you like, so that you will stay engaged, and then enjoy the health benefits it brings!

*Note: this offer applies to payloadz downloads only, not the Kindle versions.

Taking Up Space: My Guide to Eating to Support a Healthy Weight

From the Amazon description:

“Can I get an “AMEN!”?! This is so simple, and makes so much sense! If you have to white-knuckle your way down to a weight and struggle miserably to maintain it, how is that “ideal”? About a month ago I found Go Kaleo, started tracking my food, upped my protein and calorie intake, and I’ve lost weight AND inches! All that weight training I’ve been doing is finally noticeable! But the miracle is that I’m not obsessed with food every day, I’m not fighting cravings and feeling hopeless, like if I lost my focus for one minute I’d blow it. I’m not afraid of food anymore! I feel like Go Kaleo has let me in on the “secret” to being healthy… You are changing lives.” ~Denise

In a weight loss world where grueling 1200-calorie diets are the mainstream standard for weight loss, accompanied with long lists of evil foods to avoid, Amber Rogers, aka “Go Kaleo” is the voice of reason.

Being healthy and finding your healthy weight simply doesn’t work when it’s hard. It works best when it’s easy. Go Kaleo puts practicality and sustainability first – two concepts often completely eliminated from popular diets in pursuit of quick, albeit impermanent results.

While most recommend eating as little food as possible and doing as much exercise as one can bear, Taking Up Space advocates finding the MAXIMUM amount of calories and minimum number of paranoid restrictions that still gets results.

In the book, Go Kaleo talks about her incredible 80-pounds of slow, effortless, hunger and craving-free weight loss that never came back – all on a steady diet of 2800 calories a day with a few good workouts a week. No big cravings for carbs, meat, fat, or sweets – as these were things that she was eating in ample abundance every day.

After reaching a healthy goal, what did she do? She increased calories even more only to find that this allowed her to build toned muscle and shed more fat than ever before.

Taking Up Space also contains some passionate and important discourse on getting past the illusions created by fake tans and Photoshop, and realizing that what everyone is increasingly thinking are “flaws” are actually quite normal aspects of human physiology.

This book sets a new standard in approaching weight loss in a lasting way. It is the future of how better health and better bodies will be attained once the rest of the world realizes how counterproductive extreme approaches really are.
“…You can get better, you can get stronger, you can get healthier, you can be MORE. You can’t restrict, reduce, eliminate your way to any of these things. Yes, you can lose weight, but there is a healthier, saner, more sustainable way to do it.” ~Go Kaleo

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you’ll recognize many of the themes I cover in this book. I’ve tied several of my more important posts together to create a more cohesive guide that will give you the basics on energy balance, maintenance of a healthy weight, self respect and self care, and a path forward out of the diet maze.

First 100 Days Beginners Program

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” -Arthur Ashe

One of the questions I get asked frequently is how to get into shape when you’re an absolute beginner. If you’ve been sedentary for years, don’t have a history of athleticism, don’t know your way around a gym, are deconditioned or simply don’t know where to begin, this program is for you.

What can you expect? We’ll start slowly, with basic exercises and simple routines. Early on, the workouts can be done without any equipment, and as you progress through them you’ll build on skills you learned in earlier workouts and add in equipment and intensity. The ‘goal’ of this program is to build functional strength, familiarize you with traditional exercises, and improve cardiovascular endurance. If you have more specific goals, such as running a 5k or working toward an aesthetic goal, this probably isn’t the right program for you. This program contains a lot of variety. I wrote it this way for three reasons: to keep you from getting bored, to build a broad base of skills and generalized fitness, and to allow you to try out different exercise styles so you can start to identify things you enjoy. At the end of these 100 days you’ll be stronger and fitter than you are now, you’ll have more confidence in yourself, and you’ll have an idea of where you want to go from here.

Basic Lifting Routine

My Basic Lifting Routine is a simple, straightforward, progressive resistance program that can be useful for people of any fitness level. It includes 6 short but intense full body workouts, each incorporating compound multijoint exercises that improve strength, functionality, flexibility and cardiovascular endurance. We focus on the basics here (hence the name): squats, deadlifts, presses, rows and an array of bodyweight exercises that will be both doable for the beginner, and challenging for more experienced exercisers. When you complete the 6th workout, you start over, adding weight, reps and/or intensity each subsequent workout, so this routine can be used indefinitely: you will continue to get stronger and faster.

My client base is made up largely of women who’ve already run the diet gauntlet. By the time they get to me, most of these women have essentially been on one diet or another for years, or even decades. They’ve done it all. They’re experts at losing weight. Trouble is, the weight always comes back. With each successive diet, they ultimately find themselves fatter and sicker. I don’t put my clients on diets: they’ve already been, to a one, on all the diets. I get my clients off diets. Get them eating a humane, sustainable amount of food, with a focus on supporting their activity and honoring their personal tastes and cultural traditions. The vast majority of my clients stabilize fairly quickly and begin making forward progress, once they wrap their minds around eating to support their metabolic health.

There are a few clients, though, who have a much harder time stabilizing. Their weight won’t budge, or it fluctuates wildly. They don’t seem to be able to build muscle mass as effectively. They begin to store more fat around their belly than they have in the past. They experience edema. They deal with anxiety and insomnia and other symptoms of starvation, even when their calorie intake is adequate. It is as if their bodies refuse to emerge from the starvation response (see my Adrenal Fatigue post for more info on the starvation response). This goes on for months, even when calories and macronutrients are all adequate and consistent. I’ve had several clients who’ve experienced this, and every single one of them had a history of one or more of the three diet philosophies that I’ve taken to calling the ‘Metabolic Downregulators’. Those three diet philosophies are: HCG, Intermittent Fasting, and Ketosis.

All three of the Metabolic Downregulators appear to provoke the starvation response by design. The first symptom of the starvation response is rapid weight loss. Subsequent symptoms are endocrine adaptations that slow the body’s metabolic processes and insure against famine by shoring up fat reserves, stopping reproductive function and reducing metabolically expensive lean mass. IF and ketosis seem to be able to do this even in the absence of a caloric deficit. HCG, of course, simply relies on extreme calorie deprivation. That initial rapid weight loss is what the dieter fixates on, and when the weight loss stalls out they wonder what they are ‘doing wrong’, and double down on the diet in an effort to get the weight dropping again. This only compounds the metabolic downregulation, and the dieter ends up exhibiting all the symptoms of starvation AND excess fat stores.

Like I said, I’m not going to throw studies at you today (I’ll let Alan Aragon, Anthony Colpo, Stephanie Ruper and others do that). I’m simply sharing the observations I’ve made amongst my clients and readers.

My clients who’ve succeeded in downregulating their metabolic function need much more time to repair and stabilize than others who’ve followed less extreme diet philosophies. 6 months is not uncommon. Some women need a year or more. The longer a person’s body has been in the starvation response, the longer it’s going to take to recover. This is a frustrating reality. The temptation to return to extreme dieting can be great. I encourage those of you who are experiencing this to remember that the diets ultimately failed, and it is exactly those diets that brought you to where you are today. There is a better way. Consistently and dependably giving your body the nutrition and energy it needs to be healthy and active will allow it to emerge from the starvation response and heal from the damage the diets have done. But it takes time. Be patient! The long-term benefits are worth it.

If you’ve gone through this, please share your experiences in the comments so that people just beginning the healing process know they are not alone. There is a vast support network out there for those ready to start on the path out of the restriction maze. Please reach out, from wherever you are, to support each other and to find the help you need.

I will add to this list as I find additional resources.

http://www.alanaragon.com/an-objective-look-at-intermittent-fasting.html

http://www.paleoforwomen.com/shattering-the-myth-of-fasting-for-women-a-review-of-female-specific-responses-to-fasting-in-the-literature/

http://anthonycolpo.com/why-intermittent-fasting-isnt-all-its-cracked-up-to-be/

What am I talking about? I cover several main themes on my facebook page, and the last week or so I’ve been focusing on eating enough calories. Here are a few of the comments people have left on my posts just in the last day, these are directed at me and my food choices:

“Ask yourself why you must defend your need to have [sugar]?” (left in response to my post about sugar being an awesome fuel for my workouts)

“Uh, hello? 3000 calories a day is not normal or healthy intake! Unless you are running a marathon every day.” (in response to my post that 3000 calories a day is not unreasonable for an active healthy adult – it’s about how much I eat. Not everyone needs quite that much, but many do.)

“3000 calories is a large amount of food if you are a healthy eater. Fresh fruits and veggies and lean proteins do not have many calories. What to you do? Eat a cheese burger on a big bun and than go running and call yourself healthy?” (same post as above)

The message here is that eating this much food is undesirable, unhealthy, bad.

How someone can look at my pictures and then criticize my eating philosophy as unhealthy and ineffective is beyond me. Well, I’ll take that back, we’ve seen very clearly that people who don’t want to hear the truth can make up some pretty amazing stories to rationalize away my success and ease their cognitive dissonance. These comments make me shake my head. Some have said to just ignore them, but I think it’s really important to highlight them and TALK about them. Disordered thinking is so deeply ingrained in or culture, I think that a lot of people reading comments like these won’t recognize the disorder, and will internalize it. That’s how our culture has conditioned us.

The good news is that the vast majority of responses my posts about this topic get are positive. Comment after comment from people who’ve increased their calorie intake to a more sustainable level and seen fitness, body composition and even weight loss progress where before they were frustrated. But these negative comments can be powerfully subversive, and have the potential to derail a person just beginning the recovery process. So I am talking about it. As you begin to emerge from the dark of the diet maze, you will be subjected to calorie shaming. It will come from all directions: the media, your friends, your SELF. Recognize it for what it is. It is not healthy.

You deserve a healthy strong body, and you can not starve yourself healthy and strong.

From the Amazon description:

“Can I get an “AMEN!”?! This is so simple, and makes so much sense! If you have to white-knuckle your way down to a weight and struggle miserably to maintain it, how is that “ideal”? About a month ago I found Go Kaleo, started tracking my food, upped my protein and calorie intake, and I’ve lost weight AND inches! All that weight training I’ve been doing is finally noticeable! But the miracle is that I’m not obsessed with food every day, I’m not fighting cravings and feeling hopeless, like if I lost my focus for one minute I’d blow it. I’m not afraid of food anymore! I feel like Go Kaleo has let me in on the “secret” to being healthy… You are changing lives.” ~Denise

In a weight loss world where grueling 1200-calorie diets are the mainstream standard for weight loss, accompanied with long lists of evil foods to avoid, Amber Rogers, aka “Go Kaleo” is the voice of reason.

Being healthy and finding your healthy weight simply doesn’t work when it’s hard. It works best when it’s easy. Go Kaleo puts practicality and sustainability first – two concepts often completely eliminated from popular diets in pursuit of quick, albeit impermanent results.

While most recommend eating as little food as possible and doing as much exercise as one can bear, Taking Up Space advocates finding the MAXIMUM amount of calories and minimum number of paranoid restrictions that still gets results.

In the book, Go Kaleo talks about her incredible 80-pounds of slow, effortless, hunger and craving-free weight loss that never came back – all on a steady diet of 2800 calories a day with a few good workouts a week. No big cravings for carbs, meat, fat, or sweets – as these were things that she was eating in ample abundance every day.

After reaching a healthy goal, what did she do? She increased calories even more only to find that this allowed her to build toned muscle and shed more fat than ever before.

Taking Up Space also contains some passionate and important discourse on getting past the illusions created by fake tans and Photoshop, and realizing that what everyone is increasingly thinking are “flaws” are actually quite normal aspects of human physiology.

This book sets a new standard in approaching weight loss in a lasting way. It is the future of how better health and better bodies will be attained once the rest of the world realizes how counterproductive extreme approaches really are.
“…You can get better, you can get stronger, you can get healthier, you can be MORE. You can’t restrict, reduce, eliminate your way to any of these things. Yes, you can lose weight, but there is a healthier, saner, more sustainable way to do it.” ~Go Kaleo

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you’ll recognize many of the themes I cover in this book. I’ve tied several of my more important posts together to create a more cohesive guide that will give you the basics on energy balance, maintenance of a healthy weight, self respect and self care, and a path forward out of the diet maze.

Be sure to check out my facebook page and the Eating the Food facebook group for support in putting the concepts in this book into practice.

To purchase Taking Up Space as a downloadable pdf:

To purchase Taking Up Space for Kindle:

I have visible abs. Want to know my secret? It’s not my diet or workout routine, and I can’t sell it to you.

To keep things simple, today I’ll begin with a brief rundown of the benefits of weightlifting, and a brief description of the different forms of weightlifting. In future posts I’ll cover the basics for getting started, how to ensure proper form, a discussion of women and ‘bulking up’, and nutrition tips for supporting a weight lifting program.

First lets touch on WHY weight lifting is important. If you haven’t read my Strength Trianing For Women post on 180degreehealth.com, go do it now. In it I discuss the health benefits strength training provides, especially for women:

-increased bone density
-fat loss
-improved metabolic function
-lean mass preservation
-relief from anxiety and depression
-pain relief
-improved insulin sensitivity

And more.

Now that we have that out of the way, lets talk about some basics.

What IS Weight Lifting?

There are several different approaches to weight lifting and strength training. I’ll discuss some of the most common here.

Bodybuilding is focused on aesthetics, with a primary goal of building muscle mass and achieving a desired physique. A bodybuilding program typically will include more isolation exercises that focus on a specific muscle or muscle group; bicep curls and tricep extensions for instance. Workouts are typically dedicated to working a different body part each day, ie ‘leg day’, ‘bis and tris day’, ‘back day’ etc. Building mass and definition is a higher priority than building strength.

Powerlifting is focused on building strength. The primary goal of powerlifting is to lift the most weight possible in a single repetition, and there are three lifts that powerlifting focuses on: the squat, the deadlift and the press (usually bench press). Weights are heavy and rep ranges are usually low.

Olympic Lifting is the form of weight lifting that is featured in the Olympic Games. Like powerlifting, the primary goal is to lift the heaviest weight possible in a single rep, but the lifts are different. The Olympic lifts are the Clean and Jerk and the Snatch. Both involve moving a weight from the floor to overhead in one or two quick, explosive motions. Both are intricate lifts that require a high level of skill and athleticism.

Bodyweight Training is a form of training that utilizes the weight of a person’s own body to provide resistance to increase strength and muscle mass. Pushups and pullups are the bodyweight exercises you are probably most familiar with. Plyometrics are explosive bodyweight exercises, such as jump squats, that increase speed and power.

Circuit Training combines weight lifting exercises, bodyweight exercises and aerobic exercise in a fast moving, high intensity series of exercises, performed consecutively, with the goal of increasing strength, endurance and cardiovascular fitness.

Crossfit is actually a fitness company with thousands of affiliates around the world. Crossfit workouts include elements of powerlifting, bodyweight training, circuit training, Olympic lifting, gymnastics, and other modalities with a goal of building a broad base of competency and fitness across disciplines.

What is Best?

There is no ‘best’ form of weight lifting. Each discipline has it’s strengths, and the key is finding one that you enjoy and will be consistent with. No matter which one you feel drawn to, there will be people who will tell you it is ‘wrong’. People are as passionate about their exercise dogma as they are about their diet dogma. Any of the disciplines I listed above can provide the health benefits of weight lifting. It is important to find a competent coach to teach you proper form, especially when getting into heavy lifting. I’ll discuss how to find one in a future post.

My own training includes many of the disciplines I listed but if I had to classify it I’d say it is a combination of powerlifting and bodywieght training. That is what I enjoy the most. And enjoying what I’m doing is what keeps me engaged and consistent, and THAT is what is ultimately most important. So experiment, find what you enjoy!

No, as far as I’m concerned, the primary goals of any weight loss program (aside from weight loss of course) should be:

-preservation of lean mass (muscle, bone, organ)
-preservation of metabolic health (which lean mass preservation supports)
-successful long-term (ie, permanent) maintenance of a healthy weight once it is achieved

The methods that promote those goals end up being, by most people’s standards, pretty moderate.

Extreme Diets Produce Extreme Results

You know what they say, ‘everything in moderation’? Moderation catches a lot of flack in the fad diet world. We’ve got gurus declaring entire food and macronutrient groups off limits, other gurus advocating replacing multiple meals a day with powdered supplements, others recommending inhumanely low calorie intakes, and now I’m seeing more and more extreme mono-diets (diets consisting of only one food such as potatoes, fruit, milk or even just water, perhaps with a splash of flavor from spices, or broth). Any of these techniques can produce rapid weight loss for a number of reasons: dehydration, extreme calorie deficit producing loss of lean mass along with fat, low palatability producing a spontaneous calorie reduction, etc. Unfortunately, along with rapid weight loss frequently comes loss of lean mass (1, 2) and a reduction in resting metabolic rate (RMR) (3), which together prime the body for subsequent rapid fat gain when ‘normal’ eating behaviors are resumed. In other words, losing lean mass and depressing one’s RMR are a great way to get fatter in the long run.

If a person can reach a healthy weight with lean mass and RMR intact, they stand a much better chance of maintaining that loss in the long-term. So how do we minimize lean mass loss and protect metabolic function? There is a massive body of evidence supporting exercise during weight loss a means to preserve both lean mass AND healthy metabolic function. In my opinion, any successful weight loss program will prioritize supporting the establishment of habitual regular physical activity, and will progress at a pace that will allow for the preservation of the greatest degree of lean mass as possible. See what I did there? Framed healthy weight loss as a process of sustaining and supporting, rather than reducing and restricting. This is an important distinction.

Preservation of Lean Mass

The results of this study indicate that slow weight loss preserves lean mass better than rapid weight loss. To keep weight loss at a pace that supports lean mass preservation, the calorie deficit needs to be very modest. The larger the calorie deficit, the greater the percentage of weight lost will be lean mass.

Resistance training during weight loss also preserves lean mass. This study indicates that while creating a calorie deficit through food restriction produces a greater total weight loss, creating a deficit through physical activity actually produces a greater loss of fat, and preserves lean mass. This study on 118 women examined the body composition results from weight loss produced either by diet alone, or by diet and exercise. Each group lost about the same amount of weight, but the diet plus exercise group lost more fat, and didn’t lose any lean mass. Exercise in general, and resistance training specifically, protect lean mass during weight loss and so are an essential component of any program aimed at promoting long-term success.

Preserving Healthy Metabolic Function

While there are myriad aspects of metabolic health, the one I’m most concerned with for this post is resting metabolic rate (RMR), the amount of energy the body expends at rest. Total body weight is one determinant of RMR, and so weight loss generally will produce a drop in RMR. However, it appears that exercise can mitigate that drop. This study (that I linked above) even suggests a minor increase in RMR over the control group in the diet plus exercise group. This one also indicates that resistance training can increase RMR, even in the context of weight loss. The last thing anyone should want is to get to a healthy weight but find themselves with an RMR in the toilet. When RMR is depressed, calorie intake must be kept low to prevent weight regain. Who wants to be on a diet for the rest of their life? With strength training and slow weight loss via a very modest calorie deficit, RMR can stay high enough to afford a humane and sustainable calorie intake once a healthy weight is achieved.

Successful Long-Term Maintenance

We’ve looked at ways to preserve lean mass and RMR during weight loss, now lets look at ways to support long term maintenance once a healthy weight is achieved. The National Weight Control Registry, which tracks people who’ve successfully lost and kept off weight, shows that in addition to making permanent changes in diet (I’ll talk about diet a little more in a minute), virtually everyone who is successful at maintaining weight loss exercises regularly. This study indicates that the more active a person is during weight loss, the less likely they are to regain lost weight. I suspect this is due to both improved metabolic function and the establishment of habitual exercise. Exercise protects RMR and lean mass, AND promotes successful maintenance.

What about diet? In my opinion, diet should be as expansive and unrestrictive as possible while still allowing for (slow) weight loss. This means maintaining a very modest calorie deficit (I prefer a deficit of 500 calories or less), and only restricting foods, food groups and macronutrients if there is a real medical need. In this study, including a daily treat had no negative effect on weight loss and body composition results. In this one, altering the diet to be less restrictive produced a greater adherence to an exercise program, improving subjects’ weight loss outcomes:

“…exercise regimens of moderate to high level of intensity proved counter-productive as weight-reducing strategies for an obese sedentary subject. This was due to the limited energy reserves (specifically, muscle glycogen) available to such individuals. However, when the diet was changed from a balanced composition to one that was highly loaded with carbohydrates, it became possible to sustain the intense exercise regimen over the experimental period, and achieve a significant drop in body weight. The results underscore the significant interaction effects between diet composition and physical activity, and emphasize the critical role that diet composition can have in exercise-based treatment interventions.”

The lesson here: to promote the important goals of lean mass and RMR preservation, and long term successful weight maintenance, regular exercise needs to be an integral part of any successful weight loss program. To promote adherence to an exercise program, diet should be as moderate and sustainable as possible while still allowing slow weight loss. As this review of obesity literature concluded:

“While energy restriction in isolation is an effective short-term strategy for rapid and substantial weight loss, it results in a reduction of both fat and muscle mass and therefore ultimately predisposes one to an unfavorable body composition. Aerobic exercise promotes beneficial changes in whole-body metabolism and reduces fat mass, while resistance exercise preserves lean (muscle) mass. Current evidence strongly supports the inclusion of resistance and aerobic exercise to complement mild energy-restricted high-protein diets (note from me: protein, like exercise, helps preserve lean mass, so be sure you’re getting plenty) for healthy weight loss as a primary intervention for [obesity].”

Rapid results are appealing, but more often than not they are short-term, and in the end losing weight quickly can sabotage your lean mass and RMR. There is a great deal of consensus in the scientific community that exercise and moderation in diet are the safest, most sustainable interventions for long term weight loss success. My own results certainly support this, by creating a very modest calorie deficit and prioritizing physical activity, I’ve been able to reach and maintain a healthy weight without any drastic or extreme dietary or exercise measures. Moderation in diet and exercise have worked for me, and work for my clients. And moderation is supported by a massive body of scientific evidence. Moderation isn’t sexy, but it works.

If you’d like to read more, please check out my new eBook, Taking Up Space. I discuss all these concepts and more, and provide guidelines for implementing them into your life.