Methods of getting feedback and using them for your advance!

Pilots and ship captains use compasses, gyroscopes, radar, radio beacons and geographical
and astronomical landmarks as their methods of feedback on the way to destination. Your
optimal method to measure progress is body composition test. However, the more ways you
have of measuring your results, the better.


Here are 10 different ways to measure your progress:


1) Photographs
2) Total body weight
3) Muscle mass
4) Body fat percentage
5) Fat weight
6) Other people’s opinions
7 Skinfold thickness
8) Measurements
9) How you look in the mirror
10) Clothing sizes & the way clothes fit

Methods such as the mirror and photographs are good feedback methods, but they can be
distorted by your limited self-perceptions. Other people’s opinions are useful too, if the feedback
is really honest, and they're not just being nice to avoid hurting your feelings. All these methods
have value, so use them all. However, the best measurements of your progress must be objective,
such as body fat percentage, the skinfold calipers or a scale, they don’t lie.


Adjust your program and methods according to your weekly results


It's rare that you'll ever move in a constant and linear path in the direction of your goals.
Often you will zig-zag your way to success, kind of like sailing to headwind. If you're working
hard enough, you will see progress every week, but your progress rate will often vary.
On one week you may lose 0.5% body fat, the next you may lose 0.6% and the next only 0.4%.
If you have a bad week, you might not make any progress.

Don’t let this zig-zag pattern of fat loss dispirit you. Don't ever panic over a one-week
fluctuation. The progress over time is much more revealing and more important. You should
imagine your progress chart as a lot like the stock market. The market goes up and down
in the short term, but in the long run, the trend is always upwards. If you are persistent and
you stay focused on the fundamentals and if you continue to make daily investments in your body
and health, your progress chart will always make it's way in the direction you want.

Just as you need faith in long-term investments in the market, you must have faith 
in long-term investments in your body, without getting too emotional about your present 
results. If you look only at one small part on your body composition progress chart, you're liable to
give up or make unfortunate and rush decisions. Keep looking at the big picture, keep watching the
trends and always keep working daily on the basics.


Why some people get off to a slow start


Many of us see the results immediately just by cleaning up their nutrition and beginning a consistent
workout program. Others might have more difficulties reaching up to “takeoff speed.” Like the airplane
that uses nearly half its fuel just to get off the ground, overcoming inertia and gaining momentum
are not an easy task. But, you should remember that when you reach the cruising speed, it's very easy
to maintain that speed and to stay on the course!

One part of this is psychological, the other is physiological. Psychologically, if you’re off to a slow
start, you just haven’t given yourself enough time to develop habits, which are necessary to get you
into “auto pilot mode,”, or "cruising speed". Therefore, you could be unconsciously making poor food
choices or missing workouts by sheer power of old negative habits. Reviewing my older posts will help
you overcome the old conditioning. Just keep at it!

But then physiologically, you may suffer from a slow metabolism, especially if you’ve gone on and
off crash diets for years or you haven’t developed any muscle with weight training. A slow metabolism
can be sped up, but it takes some time. If your metabolic rate has slowed down as a result 
of past bad habits, be patient; it will gradually increase in time by following the nutrition 
and training guidelines presented at this blog!

Also keep in mind that fit people burn body fat easily than unfit (eg. overweight) people. The higher
your starting level of cardio fitness (as measured in oxygen consumption, also known as  VO2 max),
the more fat you’ll burn when resting (and also during exercise). And the leaner you are to begin
with, the more calories you’ll burn at rest and during exercise. If you’re out of shape and carrying a
lot of body fat, it’s going to take time to develop momentum. So again, i can't emphasize this too much;
Be patient!

These facts of physiology may be discouraging at first because it’s similar like the rich getting richer
and the poor staying poor. As with building wealth, you must make consistent, gradual investments in
your body. With consistency your lean body mass will increase from weight training, your metabolic
rate will increase and multiply its efficiency like compounding interest in your bank account.
Be patient; you’re about as likely to get “ripped” overnight as you are to become a millionaire overnight. Never give up if you get off to a slow start!


The first thing you need do if you hit a dead end


You should be seeing some kind of positive result every single week. If you’re getting no results after
seven days, look back over the past week and ask yourself – honestly; “Am I consistently doing what
I know I should be doing – every day - or have I been cheating or slacking off? Have I put in my 100%
effort or didn't I try hard enough?” Have I been consistent in my nutrition and exercising habits every
single day? Have I been eating perfectly one day, then eating junk the next?

Losing body fat is the result of consistently applying the basic laws of nutrition and training - every day.
If you notice you didn’t give it your all, don’t beat yourself up, just simply re-focus and recommit for the
next week. Re-reading and re-writing your goals will also help. Plan your exercise and nutrition strategy
for the next week in advance; schedule the workouts right in your daily planner. Then go back to work
with renewed motivation and enthusiasm.

If you faithfully followed your program 100% (except for planned, allowed cheat days), and you still got
nowhere, that’s your signal to make adjustments to break your fat loss plateau.


How to break a fat loss "dead-end"


The first step in breaking plateaus, or dead-end, is to stay positive and focused on your goal.
Decide and focus on where you want to go, not on where you are or where you don't want to go.
A bad week is not a setback or failure, it is feedback. If you have a week with bad results, be like
Thomas Edison and say, “This is great! I’ve learned another way that doesn’t work.”

When you look in the mirror and see no change in there, and you still keep the faith, knowing that in
time you will get where you want if you stay on the course, that’s the difference between those who
succeed in the end and those who fail. The losers - the unsuccessful ones - they get frustrated after
a few weeks with slow results and throw their arms up in the air. They quit. And still grumbling
about how they tried “everything” and it didn't work.

Often times when you hit a dead end, it means you need to work harder and change your approach:
You should crank up the intensity and frequency of your training. You also need to “tighten up”
your nutrition. The amount of effort it requires to develop a lean body is often underestimated.
Most people have been so brainwashed by the media and advertisements for weight loss scams 
that their perception of the amount of work required is very very distorted. It really takes hard work
to get lean and if the effort you’re putting in it isn’t working, then quietly (without complaining) accept
the fact that you need to work harder.

Let's take an example: You’re doing 20 minutes of cardio training per session, so you can increase
the duration to 30 minutes. If you’re doing 30 minutes, you can increase it to 40 minutes and so on.
If your heart rate during the exercise is 130, you can push it up to 140. If you’re eating only 3 meals
per day, you can speed up metabolism by dividing them into to 5 or 6 smaller meals. If you’re having
a cheat meal 2 or 3 times a week, you can drop to only one cheat meal a week. Basically, reaching
peak condition means that you train harder and keep your nutrition clean!


Know when to push harder and when to let the body get some rest


Without saying, doing more and doing it harder is not always the best way to go. Sometimes when
you’re “stuck in the mud,” pushing on the pedal even more just digs you deeper in the mud. If you’ve
been on an extremely intense and hard training schedule for a long period of time, your plateau
could be due to over-training syndrome.

If you suspect over-training is the cause of your plateau, then the best thing to do is take a rest.
Taking 3-7 days off from high intensity training might be exactly what you need. If you’re severely
over-trained yourself, you may also need to cut back on your volume and slowly work your way back
up after your brief layoff.

Don’t worry about your results dropping - but even if you do, the rest is like taking one step back to
get ready for two steps forward. Once your system has recovered itself, you’ll easily be able to thrust
your results to a new peak.

Adaptation syndrome is also a frequent cause of fat loss stops. Adaptation occurs because your body
can easily get accustomed to a training or nutritional program that has been repeated for a long time. At
this point, continuing with the same stimulus will no longer will result in an improvement. The only way to bypass the adaptation syndrome is to change your workouts frequently.

The body will adapt to any weight training or cardio program very quickly. To avoid that, you should
change at least one variable in your training program every four to twelve weeks. The better and fitter
you get, the more quickly your body will adapt and the more often you should change. Your cardio
program should be changed any time you’ve hit a plateau in fat loss.

Almost any change will work. And luckily, the training variations are literally endless. With weight
training you can use new work outs, different set/rep schemes, changes in tempo, shorter rest times,
change a grip or stance width and so on. In your cardio workouts, you can change the type of 
exercise you use, the intensity, the duration, the frequency, steady state vs. interval, or the 
time of day. As you see, it's very easy to break this kind of plateau so you should really 
remember to vary the exercises!

Another common cause of fat loss dead-ends: Your calories are too low and your body has gone
into starvation mode. Once your body goes into that mode, no amount of increased training will help.
The only way to get out of starvation mode is to eat more. If your caloric intake has been at very low
level for a long time and you suspect the starvation response is to blame, the best thing you can do is
to raise your calories temporarily.

But remember to keep your food quality “clean” (don’t eat a lot of junk food), just eat more of the
same good foods you normally would eat. Depending on the degree to which you have slowed your metabolism, you might need a brief 1-3 day raise in calories before dropping back down
(remember my older post, the zig-zag method), or you might need to raise your calories for longer period.

One proven way to give a sluggish metabolism a boost is by using the Zig-Zag-method of dieting: that is,
eat one to three days of higher calories and higher carbs followed by one to three days of lower calories
and lower carbs. On the low calorie/low carb days, you lose body fat rapidly, but before your body can adapt, you raise the calories back up, which increases your metabolic rate and keeps you out of starvation
mode.

That's all for today, but tomorrow I will give you 10 in depth methods on how to vary your nutrition
and exercise plan. Very useful ones to help you get back on track if you've hit a dead end with fat loss!