Well the New Year is here and I’m waiting for the Diet Pill onslaught, the late night infomercial for .025 second Ab Machines, and the latest “Eat only______ and lose 10lbs the first day” Diets to hit the market. Its bound to happen and as a Personal Trainer, its just a part of life that we have to counter every false claim, misconception and wrong statement that these so called products purport.

So I’m doing a little pre-emptive strike! I’m going to explain, in a nutshell, the basics of fitness for a specific goal. If I can save just one person from falling prey to these snake oil salesman, then I’ll have done some good.

Mantra: “Abs are made in the kitchen.”

Remember this statement.

I’m going to explain the concept of weightloss in terms all of us can understand. MONEY!

Your body has a bank account. It has money (calories) coming in and money (calories) going out.  Our paychecks/deposits are calories that we eat. Our spending is activities we do. Movement causes us to spend more “money” aka calories.

So lets say we have daily bills of $2000. Each day our “boss”(you) pays us $2000 and through the day with work, moving around and body functions we pay our bills of $2000, exactly. This is called a balanced system. No surplus no deficit. We’ll call this “Maintenance” for simplicity. We maintain without over or under spending.

Next example, lets say we are now making a little bit more per day. We got a raise…aka…we eat more. We are still spending our $2000. So now we have the ability to SAVE some of our hard earned intake. So we put our intake away in “savings.” Can you guess what “savings” is? We’ll just say that we have what is called a “surplus” and continue on…it will all make sense soon.

Final example. Times are tough. We aren’t taking home as much as we used to, but our “bills” or expenses remain the same. Remember our take home “pay” is the food we eat, our “bills” are our activities. So we are only taking home $1500 a day and still spending $2000. Now we have what is called a “deficit” and what do we do when in a deficit? Borrow!!! So we tap into “savings” to pay our remaining $500 we owe.

Your body is very much like your bank account. If you take home too much you save it…in the form of body fat. If you spend the same amount as you take in you stay the same. No loss, no gain. If you take a pay cut (eat less) and spend the same (maintain activity) then you spend savings aka lose body fat. This is why calorie counting is like balancing your body’s budget without a budget you can’t run a successful business…right?

So we’ve covered why correct food intake is critical right? What about exercise?

Here is the beauty of getting your ducks in a row with food first: everything else you do only enhances your results!

Exercise is the “spending” your body does. If your food intake is only $1500 a day and you spend $2200 a day, you now have to borrow $700 from “savings!” Exercise maintains or increases the muscle you have and can actually cause you to “spend more” daily. By spending more I am referring to raising your metabolism! Muscle has a way of doing that.

Consistency=RESULTS!

Imagine having to tap into savings every day drawing out $500 a day. Over the course of the week you would have withdrawn $3500, right? Here is where it comes together.

1lb of fat=3500 calories. 7 days of being at a daily calorie deficit of 500 calories=3500 calories. That’s 1lb of body fat lost for reducing your food intake 500 calories. That’s before “spending” more has occurred. Lets say you exercise 5 days a week and burn an average of 300 calories…that’s another 1500 calories on top of the 3500. So that’s a body fat loss of over1.5lbs a week!

So now we understand and see the relationship between proper food intake and proper exercise and how they work hand in hand to help you achieve fat loss safely and correctly. I hope that helps. Remember the Bank Account Example when someone tells you “lose weight and change nothing” and you’ll see right through the hype.

They say you should learn something new each day. (you know…”they”) Hopefully this will save you from falling for the hype, marketing bull and overinflated claims and put you in a realistic mindset about weight loss. It really is a math game.

Happy New Year!