Getting Back to Jacked

So I’ve been saying that my current goal is fat loss for, like, a few months now.

Gee, guess how much fat I’ve lost?

UM, like none.

Actually, not “like” none. I’ve lost NONE. Period.

Here’s why:

• I ate what I wanted to from 12/22 through 12/31. Sometimes that was cookies, sometimes that was peanut butter, sometimes that was wood-fired thin-crust pizza for New Year’s Eve dinner. Most of the time it was my normal eats, but those extras don’t make for easy fat loss.
• I took a very light approach to lifting for that same time period. I needed some rest, and while I did do *some* lifting that week, it was nothing compared to my normal 5-6 days of heavy weight training.
• I took a very light approach to cardio for that same time period. I had stuff to do, family to visit, and plans. Those things were, rightfully, more important for that time period than some cardio time.

But the holidays were not my only problem; those holidays, after all, only lasted for the ten days at the end of 2012. I’ve been focused on fat loss for a few MONTHS.

Why had I not lost any fat during those months prior?

The answer, by the way, was not binge eating. I think that’s a thing of the past for me.

What has prevented me from losing fat these last few months was regular old overeating. Namely, all the little extra foods that don’t add anything to my fat loss efforts or that aren’t exactly in my normal fat loss diet plan. Things like unnecessary condiments, extra handfuls of nuts, extra spoons of peanut butter or greek yogurt, “just a bite” of this here and there, slices of cheese in an omelet instead of a healthier fat source, etc.

I may  not be guilty of eating too many M&Ms or potato chips, but extra calories of ANY kind, including healthy foods, will stall or prevent fat loss if eaten consistently. And I am certainly guilty of eating things when I am not hungry, another habit that will prevent fat loss if repeated.

So something clicked in my head last Sunday when I was thinking about what I wanted to do about this. I was farting around, checking out old videos of myself on my facebook page, and the difference in how I looked 1 year ago versus today made me seriously compare what was different back then. It didn’t take long to come up with an answer — and the answer was so simple, so easy, I had to share it.

One simple word:

COMPLIANCE.

Not to my workouts, because frankly, I comply with lifting heavy weights readily and happily.

Case in point:

Leg day from today. It felt good to rock that sh*t after a light leg day last week.

And I don’t mean compliance to a cardio plan, either, because one need not kill oneself with cardio to lose fat.

This is about my diet.

Plain and simple:

I have to be compliant.

And that is it — my entire fat loss plan from this point forward. In one word.

Is there *actually* more to fat loss than that? Sure — I could hash out the details of what to eat, how much to eat, and when to eat it. But I’ve done that already, in this post and this post.

Once a plan is in place, however, there’s only one way to make sure it works:

FOLLOW IT.

And I’m on it.