The Long Slow Climb

As Crabby continues lolling on the beach in Maui, we have another great guest post from Shadowduck! Not only may you recognize Shadowduck as a valued blog commenter and contributor, but he is the English translator of the popular Chilean webcomic "The Juanelo Show."

On August 16th 2009, at the final of the World Athletics Championships in Berlin, Usain Bolt broke his own 100 metre world record by eleven hundredths of a second, crossing the line in just 9.58 seconds. Four days later he repeated the feat, this time slashing eleven hundredths off his own 200 metre world record. In those few summer days he established himself categorically as the fastest human being of the modern age, and one of the greatest athletes the world has ever seen.

So what has he been doing since 2009? Well, he's been doing fine. A few olympic medals here, a 4x100 relay world record there.

But what he hasn't done in the last three and a half years is run faster than he did in 2009.

The Cranky Fitness Guide to Shakespeare

Um... isn't this a blog about health and fitness and whining? Shakespeare isn't covered under any of those, unless you're a student with a paper due. So what gives?

Actually, this post is Crabby's fault. It started off as a post about getting back on the exercise wagon and try try trying again, and somehow morphed into a post about Shakespeare. Clearly, Crabby is to blame.

I mean, she said to me, "Merry, write whatever you want -- no matter how weird."

Now, how could I pass up an offer like that? Could you?

The Cranky Fitness Guide to Shakespeare, or Getting going again when you're stuck on a plateau

Hey, anything you try rarely comes out perfect the first time. Look at Shakespeare. According to scholars,* his Romeo and Juliet was originally written as a baseball drama:

Romeo: But soft! Whose ball through yonder window breaks?
Juliet: It is that beast, little Timmy's the one!
Romeo: Kid, what part of 'soft' don't you understand? [Exit, pursued by Yogi Berra]

Then the story morphed into something that students had to be forced to watch.


See, if Shakespeare could start with something like that and end up with a story so well known that it's been turned into a movie with Leonardo di Caprio and a hip, cool soundtrack, and even into manga, then there's hope for you even if you seem totally stuck in something that's not working.



The trouble with the slogan 'try, try, try again' is that it sounds like you're supposed to keep doing the same damn thing over and over again until it finally works. To quote my six-year-old niece, "I don't think so."

Think and Grow Fit

Napoleon Hill wrote a best-selling book called Think and Grow Rich. Haven't read it? I'll summarize the book for you:

1. Make a plan to get rich.
2. Try the plan out.
3. See if the plan is working.
4. If the plan is not working, figure out what you're doing wrong.
5. Revise the plan to correct the mistake.
6. Repeat steps 2 through 5 until you're rolling in dough.

See? Saved you a whole lot of reading right there.

Oh all right, there was a bit more.

[Warning: Crabby, don't read this part. There's some Positive Thinking ahead.]

He wanted you to visualize yourself achieving your goal, and -- this is the clincher -- to concentrate on feeling, infusing the visualization with an emotional tone. According to Hill, the brain isn't activated by rote memorization, but by deeply felt images. You're not going to achieve unless you believe to the point that you feel the belief.

[Crabby, it's okay, you can read the rest.]

Whether Hill was right about the emotional aspect or not, the rest of his steps are so obvious that it's amazing someone put them into a book and made tons of money with them. Yes, if you're on a plateau, maybe something's not working. Analyze what you're doing and figure out if you need to change your routine or need to give your body time to work through an issue (e.g. building muscle rather than shedding pounds).

If you're stuck on a plateau, I don't think it would hurt to try visualizing and adding emotion to the image. It's what athletes do all the time. Seems to me that people who are stuck on a long-term plateau stop when they reach step #4.

They tried something, it didn't work, they stopped trying.

And lo, when you stop trying, you start gaining.

I figure if you're stuck on a plateau and nothing seems to be working, you might as well try something different. Like searching through the works of Shakespeare for inspiration or infusing your mantras with emotion.

Do you have any good tips for getting motivated and getting going again? How do you get off a plateau -- or do you? Maybe I should stop reading so much Shakespeare and start practicing patience instead. Naaaah...

*All right, one scholar. Merry's Disreputable Guide to Shakespeare, Cranky Fitness Press 2009, p. 47

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/clatiek/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Six Month Plateau: It Ain't Just You

So a research review just came out that took a big bunch of previous weight loss studies (80 of 'em), threw them all together, and tried to figure out what worked to help people lose weight.

Quick answer: cutting calories.

Shocking, isn't it? But, wait, there's more.

Well, not that much more. The article appears in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, but you have to pay for it. Alas, Cranky Fitness has no budget for Scholarly Journal Subscriptions, nor does this blog have the dedication necessary to get off its ass and head to a University Library to retrieve further details. So let's just talk about the stuff they mention in the handy Reuter's summary and call it a day, shall we?

Anyway, the study found some things that seemed to make sense. Like:

• Most people lost around 11 to 19 pounds over four years, but typically, participants gained a little bit of weight back over time.
• Diet-focused approaches were most successful. Advice-only and exercise-only studies produced "minimal" weight loss.
• Weight-loss medication seemed to help "somewhat" in keeping weight off over the longer-term.

But the study (or at least the summary) seemed to suggest that calorie cutting worked whether or not the subjects did any exercise. At least this was the wording: "Approaches that focused on trimming calories -- with or without exercise -- were most effective at keeping the pounds off over four years."

Huh? This makes no sense! How could the exercisers not do better than those who weren't exercising?

So screw science. Crabby doesn't like this part of the result so she'll just ignore it. Perhaps the people in the diet + exercise groups were lying about doing the exercise part. Not having the details from the actual study to refer to, Crabby is free to just make sh*t up.

But aside from the suspicious bit about calorie cutting by itself doing the job, there was another interesting thing they found. Check this out:

"In trials that used calorie-cutting alone and in those that added exercise, weight loss typically hit a plateau after six months. After that, participants gained a few pounds back, on average."

The researchers went on to suggest that "after six months, people should be prepared for their weight loss to taper off. Then the goal should be maintaining whatever success has been achieved."

Now many of you folks out there have managed to keep losing well past the first six months and 10-20 pounds. Hooray for you--you're exceptional! But for others of you who are finding yourself "stuck" after six months, losing the same five or ten pounds over and over--well, it turns out there's nothing wrong with you. Your results are quite typical.

Is this fact acknowledged very often? Let's repeat:

It's completly normal to get stuck and "plateau" after six months. It's really hard to lose additional weight after that.

Is this discouraging news? Or is it helpful to hear? Are any of you stuck? Or do you have any inspiring stories of how you got stuck once but broke through it?

All comments most welcome!