Lesson 11 (Of 20) In Your Quest For A Better Body

By Harry Johnson Jr, 1998 Body For Life Champion, Certified Personal Trainer

Here’s a Recap of Your Lessons So Far…

1. You Must Have a Powerful and Meaningful Reason to Want to Change

2. You Need to Make a Decision to Change

3. Create a Sense of Urgency

4. Write Down Your Goals, Draft a Contract With Yourself, Sign and Date It

5. Take Your Photo

6. Create a Mission Statement

7. Measure Your Progress

8. Make Fast Progress

9. Visualize

10. Plan

Remember, the greatest effect from these lessons will be their combined synergy

Lesson 11 – Consider This When All Else Fails

What I have found is a lack of progress usually boil down to this answer.

Food

If you’re failing to make progress and find that your fat loss efforts have stalled then you need to analyze your food intake.

Food, as I see it, is the biggest hurdle most of us have to contend with when it comes to getting into top shape. The reasons are many and complex and I delve into some of those in chapter 2 and 3 of my manual.

But if you’ve been doing everything right and are still not making progress then the solution to regaining control and making progress again is to carefully analyze the type
and amount of food you have been eating.

Most likely the problem lies in excess calories. Remember, even if you are eating the best foods for your body, if you take in more calories than you need you will accumulate fat.

It remains, and always will be a physiological fact that in order to lose fat, you must take in less calories than you use on a daily basis over a consistently long period of time. This is the only sure fire way to guarantee steady and continual progress will be made. But how do you go
about analyzing if you are eating the correct number of calories for yourself?

This is where several of the other blueprints come into play and help in this situation. Planning is paramount of course. So you must plan your diet for each and every day. If you don’t there is a greater chance you will eat something not on your list of permitted foods to eat for the day. When you have a plan, you are more likely to stick with it than a haphazard “I’ll just try and eat good today.”

Along with this planning goes tracking. You must be able to know precisely how many calories you are putting into your body each and every day, and each and every meal. This sounds tedious I know, but you have to do it, at least at first.

In almost every single instance where someone complained to me of their lack of progress I was able to trace it down to the simple fact they were taking in too many calories for the amount of energy they were burning.

Here’s an example for those that have had a hard time losing fat to see that everyone truly can lose their bodyfat. Although this is an extreme example I use it to make a point.

Let’s say I were to take a man (or woman) who had the hardest time in the world losing fat (or weight) and suddenly and quickly took away ALL access to any food at all (but kept water intake plentiful) what do you think would happen? Would this person lose fat and weight? How
long do you think without ANY access to food would it take for this person to drop bodyfat?

You and I both know that this person would lose bodyweight very rapidly. In fact they would eventually die due to the lack of food. The point I’m trying to make is that there is a level for everyone that if calories are lowered beneath, fat loss will start to occur. It’s inevitable and a
physiological certainty.

Do you see where I’m going here?

Now of course I don’t advocate going without any type of food, as this is unhealthy, dangerous, and causes the loss of precious, metabolism-boosting lean muscle. However, you can use the information from this example to help you achieve consistent and predictable fat loss.

You can lose fat easily and consistently By PRECISELY controlling the calories going into your body EVERY SINGLE DAY and keeping those calories slightly less than you need to maintain your current body weight. There really is no magic here.

So the first step is to follow the program as I’ve outlined for you in your “Ultimate Results” manual. I’ve designed it so that you will average anywhere between a 500 – 800 calorie deficit every single day. If you weigh more you’ll have more of a deficit and a faster fat loss. If you weigh less you’ll still lose fat in a progressive manner because your calories are lower than you’re burning.

And remember, because of the way it is designed, you will likely experience little to no cravings because of those 2 reward days you get each week.

Next, you need to get a food scale. You can get one at most any supermarket or health food store. I use one that has a digital readout and is highly accurate. Anyway, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s accurate and easy to use.

Now you have to weigh every single solitary morsel that passes between your lips. You have to become religious about this. Over a 2-week time period you will have a really good estimate of how many calories your body needs to maintain itself.

This is an important part of your success because we all tend to overestimate our portion sizes. Failing to weigh your food will be an almost guaranteed ticket to failure. Yes, it’s a pain in the rear but you’ll only have to do it for for the first 2-4 weeks. Look at it as a small price to pay for the body you’ve always wanted.

At the end of 3-4 weeks you’ll have become so good at knowing what the correct portion sizes are for you that you’ll be able to estimate your portion sizes visually and you won’t have to use a scale anymore.

BOTTOM LINE: Keep calories slightly lower than you need and you’ll lose fat — simple as that.