Those of you who have read my SelfHelpWisdom.com blog know that I have tried several different work-out and healthy eating diet trials over the years. There was one diet which I followed several years prior to starting my blog which was based on the Dr. Robert Young alkalarian diet from his book Ph Miracle. I followed the diet strictly for 3 weeks and lost 16lbs of fat in that time. The diet was very hard to follow for the first 5 or 6 days due to my addiction to sugar and refined carbohydrates and I almost felt like a heroine addict going through withdrawal. I had all kinds of symptoms like feeling irritated, going from feeling slightly depressed to slightly angry, to feeling like I *must* devour anything with some sugar in it or I’m going to go insane. The feelings of addiction actually motivated me though, because I don’t like being addicted to anything so the fact that I was addicted to sugar really bugged me. You could say that I used the pain to fuel my dedication to stick with the program. After a while I felt much better and was shedding unwanted fat rather quickly.

I have never been on a strict diet like this before, and it was producing exactly the results I wanted, however my vacation to Disneyland was scheduled on the 4th week and while I was down there I allowed myself to vacation away from my diet. That was a bad mistake. It was hard to eat health down there, so I just ended up eating crap foods and desserts consisting of ice cream sundae’s and banana splits. Obviously my body’s re-addiction to sugar kicked in and by the time the vacation was over, I was back to square one. When I got home, I still weighed less than before I went on my diet, but the foods that I was eating while down there made me feel so crappy that I didn’t even have the energy or desire to get back on my alkalarian diet when I got back.

Lessons learned from that trial:

1. Addiction to sugar and refined carbohydrates is real and very common. Most diets that try to slowly cut out simple sugars prolong the addiction process and withdrawal symptoms. Even though it wasn’t easy, especially since I didn’t know how long the withdrawal symptoms would last at first (a week? a month? a year?!), I still think getting rid of sugar addiction is best done cold turkey.
2. Starting a diet with no pre-planning is not such a good idea. For example in my case I had a vacation scheduled a few weeks after starting the diet which threw me off track just when I was starting to get traction on the plan.
3. The Alkalarian diet seemed to work great for me, as long as I stuck to it. I still felt there was something missing though, even though it was a huge improvement over the Standard North American Diet I was following before that.

My next trial was my 30 Day Workout Trial where I did strength training and cardio for 30 days straight from May 28th to June 28th, 2006 without missing a day. I used my newly purchased Bowflex machine at the time to do my strength training, a treadmill for cardio and supplemented with several NitroTech products. I did not implement any diet changes during this time. I simply wanted to see how much muscle one could build by working out, without dietary changes. My bench press sets went from 80lbs to 130lbs in 30 days, and my squat sets went from 160lbs to 300lbs in that time as well. All in all, it was a pretty good trial to test how much muscle building could be done in a 30 day period of time without making any other adjustments to diet. After working out for 30 days, however, my promise to myself to do the trial for 30 days straight was fulfilled and over the coming days I fell off the wagon.

Lessons learned from that trial:

1. Muscle strength and mass can be increased rather quickly if you are fully committed to it. Staggering my upper body and lower body workouts in between cardio workouts I was able to work out every day and it was actually a lot easier to stick to that then working out 3 or 4 times a week like I tried before.
2. Building muscle without taking care of losing fat as well is kind of pointless. You feel stronger inside, but when you look in the mirror you just look fatter. You don’t see muscle definition because the fat is sitting over top so it is totally depressing and de-motivating. Therefore, all future work out plans must include or start with a fat cutting element.
3. Working out without correcting your diet at the same time is draining to your energy levels and probably does more damage to your body than just sitting around if you’re eating crappy foods. The body needs nutrients to fuel your muscle growth, so don’t starve it.
4. Just working out while eating crappy does not seem sustainable long term. It’s too energy draining and doesn’t produce the results you want to see in the mirror.

My third trial was called Getting in Shape – No Holds Barred. It consisted of implementing the following:

1. A customized nutrition plan put together for me by a naturopath aimed to produce a healthy body which will automatically reduce excess fat and nourish my body for my cardio and strength training workouts.
2. Building up my motivation by following the Tony Robbins “The Body You Deserve” multimedia course and adding in other aspects of personal development I learned over the years which helped me to get really clear on what I wanted, why I wanted it, which beliefs I needed to change and how to change them, how I could use leverage to help me stick to the plan, how I could make this fun, and how I could implement the more spiritual aspects of the plan such as using Law of Attraction etc.
3. Immersing myself fully in nutrition studies with the Advanced Nutrition courses I am taking from Alive Academy.
4. Implementing a daily cardio workout routine.
5. Implementing a strength training routine.

This trial I was able to stick to from December 20th, 2006 to March 20th, 2007 which was basically 90 days. My weight dropped from 198lbs down to 182.4lbs by Feb 22nd, and went back up to 186.4 by March 20th. I felt great, I was actually starting to really enjoy my cardio workouts running on the treadmill, and my strength training was going well.

My diet went well for the first while, but it was consistently getting interrupted by birthday parties and social events with family and friends which didn’t really serve the healthy foods that I needed to be eating, and my naturopath’s advice for implementing my diet was to slowly ease into it. Although it kind of felt easier to follow than the Ph Miracle Alkalarian diet I followed in the past, it didn’t really produce as quick of a result as I would have wanted. Constantly “cheating” a little bit here and there just prolonged the process, but I did stick to the diet at least 80% and followed my supplement regiment basically 100% as prescribed. My energy levels took at least a month to improve though, and it kind of felt like I was dragging out the process a bit compared to the Ph Miracle Alkalarian diet plan.

All in all, this whole plan was basically the slow and steady plan across the board with cardio workouts, strength training and a healthy diet. The only problem was that my results were fairly slow coming, so it was somewhat de-motivating. However, if I stuck to the plan long term I am sure I would have gotten the results I wanted. Unfortunately, once again a “big event” disrupted my plan. Between March 20th and April 1st we finalized the details of purchasing our new home and moved in shortly thereafter. My workout room was disassembled, my routine broken, and my diet was put on hold while we worked on getting re-set up again. Although I have been doing a lot of strength based workouts outdoors working on building my giant ~800ft fence, my cardio and diet plan fell through the cracks.

To be fair to myself, I have been fairly active physically over the last three months since the move spending a lot of time outside when the weather permits working on clearing bushes, cutting down trees, landscaping and building my fence. Some days I’ve worked 10hours solid out there and by the end of the day I came inside exhausted from the full day full body workout. I know I have gained a lot of strength out there. Nothing like real physical labor to help with that, however with all the extra manual labor came a giant appetite and I have been eating like crazy. I have not gotten back on the diet prescribed by my naturopath because I want to make some changes to it, but in the process, because I’m doing physical labor and not nourishing my body properly I’ve had an enormous appetite and have been eating and eating.

My current weight has jumped back up to 196lbs from the 186lbs I weighed on March 20th of this year. With the completing of my fence drawing near, I have been working on trying to figure out a solution to my diet and fitness plan for the last few weeks. I feel there is still something missing. My No Holds Barred plan is almost there, but I know it needs one major change. It needs to demand more commitment and at the same time deliver a lot more results. I’ve seen people follow a workout plan and diet for 90 days and have some amazing results to show for it. I also know a few people who have been working out for years on a semi-regular basis, eat semi-healthy but really haven’t produced amazing results.

I have been studying John Stone’s website JohnStoneFitness.com and was amazed at the results he produced in just 4 months from Jan 6th - May 6th, 2003. You can check out his monthly pictures here. These are the types of results that I want, and I am willing to put in the commitment to achieve them, but a part of me has been fighting the idea of a 100% perfection plan like crazy.

Here’s the challenge in thinking I’ve been struggling with over the last few weeks:

1. A plan that is based on the philosophy of “Do your best.” is too weak and too slow. You put in effort and stick to your plan 80-90% of the time, but the results fall short. You miss a workout here, you miss a workout there, and your diet progressively gets more and more relaxed and before you know it, you’re back to your old habits.
2. A plan that is based on the philosophy of “100% Perfection” will undoubtedly produce results as John Stone has illustrated, but is it sustainable and is it what I really want? Having a healthy, chiseled body would be awesome, but can I really live the rest of my life not EVER having another ice cream, or some birthday cake, or a McDonald’s burger? It’s not so much that I even want those things, but the word “never” gets my ego’s defenses up to Red Alert. We always want the things we absolutely can’t have, so I know this plan won’t work for me long term. I could maybe stick to it for 3-6 months, but eventually I think there would be some unpredictable circumstance that would throw my plan off track, even for just a day and my “100% Perfection” mindset would be broken and I would fall off the wagon.

So what to do? I would describe the plan my naturopath put me on as an 80%-90% plan. You do your best 80% - 90% of the time and over the span of your lifetime your body can handle the “bad” 10% and you’ll still be healthier than 95% of the population. The good thing about this plan is that it’s fairly easy to implement. You slowly cut out bad foods while increasing the good foods you eat. The bad thing about this plan is that the results, in terms of energy level increases and fat loss are way too slow for my liking so it’s hard to be motivated enough to stick with it.

The 100% Perfection plan as I like to call it sounds so awesome in terms of the results I would be able to achieve. Think about it. Imagine never missing a single cardio workout. Every cardio workout you give it all you’ve got. Imagine never missing a single strength training workout and with every strength workout you also give it all you’ve got. Imagine never putting anything “bad” in your body, but instead nourishing it with healthy, energy-full foods. How could anyone NOT get results from this? Doesn’t it sound exciting?

However, can any human being really be perfect like that? Well, I know I can’t. Yesterday a solution to my problem dawned on me, finally. I know this will sound simplistic but I realized that nobody is perfect. It isn’t human to expect 100% perfection. However, just because 100% isn’t sustainable long term, it doesn’t mean you have to go to an 80-90% plan like my naturopath prescribed for my diet. The problem with 80-90% plans is that they take too long, so yesterday out of the blue it finally dawned on me that what I’m really looking for is what I like to call the 98% Diet and Fitness Plan. The basic philosophy behind it is that instead of trying to be 100% perfect, you instead commit fully to being 98% perfect which basically translates as follows:

1. For a daily cardio workout plan, you can miss 1 cardio workout within every 2 month / 60 day period and still maintain your plan.
2. For a 3 times a week strength training plan, for example, you can miss 1 strength training session within every 4 month / 120 day period and still maintain your plan.
3. If you eat healthy meals and snacks 6 times a day, you are eating approximately 180 times a month. That means that to maintain a 98% rate you can “cheat” 2% of the time (180 x 2% = 3.6) which means you can “cheat” about 3.6 times a month. So basically you could eat 3 cheat meals, plus a cheat snack for example and still maintain your 98% plan.
4. If you’re drinking 6 cups of good quality water a day, that’s about 180 cups of water a month. You could drink 3.6 cups of “cheat” fluids a month and still maintain a 98% success rate. Etc.

See what I mean by this? It will still get you results quickly, because you’re making a commitment to health and fitness but you’re not saying that you will NEVER ever have another Coke or a McDonalds burger or a slice of pizza or an ice cream or whatever other food you might start craving that you know is bad for you. It also takes into account the fact that sometimes in life shit happens and you might miss a workout. This plan allows for that, but it doesn’t relax the rules so much as to render the plan ineffective.

This is the basic philosophy of my new plan. I will be hashing out the details of it shortly, but I wanted to share what I figured out so far as I’m really excited about this.

Incidentally, I don’t know why I missed this before, but after I came up with this 98% idea I found a section on John Stone’s site where he keeps a blog and I found out that he also has occasional cheat days where he doesn’t work out or has an unhealthy meal. Crazy how I didn’t see that before on his site. Just by reading through his blog, I’d say he’s pretty much following the 98% philosophy and clearly getting results.

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