A new you - Military Health, military health and wellness, military physical fitness - Military Times

A new you

Dude, what happened?! Did you eat a bowling ball for the holidays? Are you suddenly expecting twins? Yeah, of course it shows. That must be like, what, 10 new pounds you’re trying to hide from the promotion board?

It’s OK. Don’t panic. You can lose the holiday love handles and get yourself back into fighting form in no time.

First off, forget the latest diet’s snake-oil hype and super-slimming, silver-bullet, fat-fighting gadgets. It’s time to get back to basics.

Talk to any true expert and he’ll tell you it all comes down a simple, hard truth: Eat less, exercise more.

Yeah, I know — bacon tastes good. Beer really tastes good. And, let’s face it, if you loved exercise, you probably wouldn’t be in this boat to begin with.

But there’s good news. You don’t have to give up all your favorite munchables or become a manic workout machine to get into shape.

Here’s how:

Do the math

First, let’s get the eating under control. Here’s a basic fact everyone should know: 3,500 calories equals about one pound on — or off — the body. So do the math, says food guru Nancy Clark, author of the Sports Nutrition Guidebook.

“Most people diet by day and blow it by night, so I recommend shaving off a couple hundred calories at the end of every day,” Clark said. “It’s the equivalent of waving off the last four Oreos before bed or the extra piece of pizza at the party. That translates into 20 pounds in a year.”

Want to lose faster? Try cutting out sodas. You could lose a pound a week easily, Clark said.

Clark recommends frontloading high-calorie meals toward the front of the day when the body needs to fuel up. Don’t eat in a crescendo, eat in a pyramid, she says.

“One person I know of lost a lot of weight simply by eating dinner for breakfast and breakfast for dinner,” she said.

And instead of multisnacking during the day, go for four solid meals with at least three, preferably four, food types — ideally breaking up one of those meals around a workout.

No good or bad

While she encourages healthier eating — fewer sugars, fats and processed foods — Clark said it doesn’t have to be complicated or Spartan.

“There’s not ‘good food’ and ‘bad food,’ just a good diet and a bad diet,” she said. “Eat anything you want, just less instead of more.”

John Hughes, former Navy physician and co-author of the Navy SEAL Physical Fitness Guide, agrees.

“The best thing you can do to lose weight is just push the plate back after 6 p.m.,” Hughes said. But that can be hard on military people, especially if you’re standing watch or on deployment.

Worst case, Hughes advises stuffing the gut with space-filling veggies.

“It’s cliché to eat all that rabbit food, but it carries a lot of space, is nutritious and doesn’t bring a lot of calories,” he says.

Bring on the sweat

OK, time to dial up the sweat and take a look at the other side of the weight loss yin-yang conundrum.

It doesn’t take a lot to get things moving, says Joe Carini, a mountainous powerlifter who won New Jersey’s Strongest Man championships through most of the 1980s.

Still, it does take, you know, actual work.

“The biggest thing I’ve learned after 36 years of doing this is that you’ve got to be consistent. Workouts are peculiar things. They don’t work unless you do,” said Carini, who’s helped hundreds lose weight and build bulk, including many NFL greats.

In fact, he just co-wrote a book with former New York Giants running back Tiki Barber, “Pure Hard Workout: Stop Wasting Time and Start Building Strength and Muscle.”

Carini is credited with slapping 31 pounds of tackle-breaking, record-crushing muscle onto Barber, transforming him from a 183-pound NFL lightweight into a 214-pound all-pro titan.

“Whether you want to lose weight or bulk up, the basic workout can be the same,” Carini said.

Big loser vs. little builder

The only major differences between workouts designed to dump weight and those that focus on putting it on: time and tonnage.

Pound-producers should shoot for shorter reps but with extra weight added, with anything from simple barbells and body weights to big free weights and fancy machines.

Wannabe big losers are already carrying around extra weight and should shoot for longer workouts to burn off the calories.

For weight burning, shoot for longer exercise but lower intensity; for weight gaining, reverse that, Hughes said.

“Either way, I always start with the legs,” Carini said. “The legs are the root of the tree. They’re the first thing you need to get strong, flexible and agile.”

Squats, calf raises and step-ups form the core of his training trinity. And that can be all that’s necessary, if simple weight loss is the name of your game.

But even budding bodybuilders need a strong foundation.

“A lot of people say they want to add 30 pounds, but 90 percent of the time they’re only doing arm exercises,” Carini said. “I’m sorry, but you can’t put 30 pounds on your arms. The idea is to train your entire body; that’s the only way to go.”

Motivation station

All right, so you’re scaling back on the calories, nothing too crazy, and stoking up the furnace with a little aerobic fire. If you’re not careful, a few weeks into the program and you might just be back sitting on your butt.

“You’ve got to mix things up or you will die of boredom,” Hughes said. Plus, he says, there will be plenty of days where the hustle and bustle of real life trumps the best of workout intentions.

Grab what you can, he says. “It’s all about stealing a march on the enemy.”

Staying motivated is also key.

Hughes’ best advice for an attitude tuneup: Find a workout mate, someone who will help keep you pumped up. It’s the first, second and third most important thing you can do.

In the end, though, no amount of pep talks and cajoling is going to make the weight come off. You have to want it and you have to make it happen.

“You’ve got to be committed,” Carini said. “Committed to yourself, because that’s who you’re doing it for.”