We've all done it: watched a workout video and thought, "If I do this video every day, I'll look like her." In college I had a picture of Flo-Jo on my refrigerator. I thought, "If I run and stay out of the cookie dough long enough, I'll have her body." We see images on social media with hashtags like #fitnessgoals, so we order a salad and take an extra spin class, all with these images in mind. We look in the mirror and think, "I still have this fat around my (take your pick)." "If I could just get down to a certain weight, it would be easy to maintain it." If I ask you if your goal is to look like the ladies in the workout videos or #fitnessgoals images, you will likely say "yes."
I've had many clients with this as their goal. If you have enough drive, I can certainly help you look like any of these women. But the truth is, THESE WOMEN DON'T EVEN LOOK LIKE THESE WOMEN. During most of the year, these ladies are lean, fit, and strong, but 99 percent of them do not maintain what you see in the images year round. It takes excruciatingly careful meal-planning (weighing and logging every molecule of food), and at least 2.5 hours per day, 6 days a week in the gym doing grueling workouts, and that's just to get in the ballpark range of body fat percentage. To continue cutting down to get what you see in these images, it takes even stricter dieting, harder training, supplementing and adjusting sodium intake. After they are down as far as they can go, they get the spray tan, the body tape (yes, taping things in place), and even a little airbrush or photoshop.
Once they are in this photo-shoot ready condition, they make their videos, shoot their photos, win their contests, and so on. When it's all over, any of them who want their metabolisms back will start eating again (maintaining a calorie deficit for long periods of time damages metabolism). And guess what comes back? --that little bit of fat here or there. Those who want to stay close to what they were for the video shoot or competition must continue to devote the equivalent of a part-time job's worth of time, energy, and planning to maintaining that. I have nothing but respect for people with this level of dedication. The fact is, however, most of us don't want to or can't spend 80 percent of our time and energy on cutting down that last 4 percent of body fat.
Understand that you can have a great body without spending hours in the gym per day. But don't be deceived by the images and videos--that is a whole other realm of the fitness (under)world. So, when you consider what it is you want for yourself in the way of fitness, do it with a healthy dose of reality.
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