Getting Lean is Like Dating

Let's look at a short list of some of the important similarities:

1. There is a limited and usually common set of objectives, but an infinite variety of approaches.

2. Doing it wrong is more likely to lead you to failure than success.

3. It's easy to become cynical and exhausted with the process.

4. It helps to know what your most important factors are and whether they need to be reevaluated for you to make significant progress.

5. When you're successful, you're being true to yourself, and it feels like a natural expression of who you are.

Why is this comparison useful? Because in today's world, with both processes (which can have a big influence on your sense of well-being and self-worth), we tend to either take a scattergun approach or have no clear plan. That's why chaos and multiple missteps are common in each endeavor. And repetitive failure takes a lot out of you.

So let's look at getting lean(er). As the ancient philosophical (origin uncertain) phrase posits, your first step should be to "know thyself". If your body is more than 40% fat and you have a history of yo-yo dieting but no consistent integrated exercise program, it's likely that a registered dietitian who collaborates with a psychological care professional will provide a critically important perspective and guidance to set you on the best path forward.

Conversely, if you are deeply committed to a fitness lifestyle and have eaten well enough to support a consistently healthy body composition and rigorous athletic performance, modifying your fueling habits for either improved sports performance or a modest to moderate aesthetic-focused reduction in body fat (especially if preserving strength and muscle size is a priority), that's a very different project with a different starting point, a different set of practices and a different end-goal.

In either case, you probably don't possess the ideal combination of expertise and objectivity to facilitate your best chance of success. Surfing the internet for free and useful directions that factor in your profile specifics mentioned above, which are accountable to you for reliability, is like trying to find a diamond ring in a pile of second-hand clothes at a swap meet. Is that really how you want to spend your time and energy?

This IG post by a prominent sports nutrition researcher provides a great overview of the process that applies to our over-50 hybrid athlete community. Take a minute to read it and then check out some of the comments by opinionated but ill-informed keyboard warriors, who are doing their best to muddy the waters for you even more than they already were.

Or let me light the path for you.