Transformation or Transition?

I'm always hearing about these people who have had a major body transformation; these success stories who have lots several stones in weight and now look like fitness models. For some reason, I also keep hearing the time span of three months - "you can totally transform your body in three months", I am always being told.

Well, in three weeks time it will have been an entire year that I have been on my new food and exercise plan. I have not yet transformed my body. It's changed for sure, but there's no magical transformation yet. I still look the same, just a little smaller. I don't think of myself as fat any more but I've still got over 30% body fat and plenty of wobbly bits to show for it.

So why is that? Why are some people able to "transform" themselves so quickly, whilst others slog away for months (or years) and only make slow progress?

When I think back along my fat loss journey what I see is a slow but certain transition. My diet has slowly transitioned from one of totally adhoc eating of mostly crappy junk food to a well planned diet of balanced nutritious meals. My exercise habits have slowly transitioned from a lifestyle with zero exercise to daily activity and a regular sport. My body has slowly transitioned from a fat, ugly lump that moved slowly and had no energy to a fairly average looking, slightly more energetic thing that's still a bit wobbly here and there.

I suspect that there are a lot more people out there like me than those that have transformations. When I read the stories there is usually a turning point, a wake up call of some kind for the person in question that triggers a total life change. In an instant that personal totally changes everything - they throw out all the junk food, radically alter their diet, charge straight into an exercise plan and they just go for it 100% Wow, just writing about it makes me feel exhausted.

We are all different but a lot of us are creatures of habit. We don't like major changes. If somebody comes along and tells you that you are going to be dead in six months if you don't lose some weight then sure that will trigger a change but I believe that for many of us that doesn't happen. The fat creeps on slowly throughout the years, the exercise peters off to very little or none and we become entrenched in our unhealthy lifestyle. We know we're not happy and we want to look better but there's no real compelling reason. We probably won't die if we stay fat. Or perhaps we will but we don't know that. For most of us, risks like heart attacks etc are just an unknown. They could happen but they might not and its just easier to ignore the possibility.

But for one reason or another here we are, having decided to lose some of that flab. The trouble is, we're not really ready to dive straight into some major lifestyle change; it's just too much. We may have tried several times in the past and failed miserably. In fact I think a lot of people fail at losing fat for this very reason - almost any diet or exercise plan seems like a massive change when you live really unhealthily and people look at the difference and it's too much for them so they give up.

I adopted my changes slowly. The biggest change I made in the beginning was joining at gym close to work and going every lunch time. However, I didn't really do a lot while I was there! I remember my first day. I climbed on the cross trainer (elliptical machine) and almost fell off the bloody thing! I put it on level 1 and started peddling (? peddling, what's it called on an elliptical?) away slowly. There was a lady next to me who was much bigger than me but obviously much fitter too. Her level way way high and she was going for it, pounding away really fast. I meekly continued at my level 1 sluggish pace and tried not to show how out of breath I was getting. 10 minutes was enough and I spent another 10 minutes pretending to stretch and then went back to work. Sometimes I'd use the pool. Oh yes that jacuzzi was very hard work :-) My new gym hasn't got a pool. Shame.

Anyway, I progressed very slowly. Sometimes I'd do a little cardio, other times I'd pick up some weights and play with them and eventually I started doing it more seriously. After a few weeks I started karate which was a massive shock to the system. A few months later I added extra gym sessions in the morning. A few months later still I started running which would have been totally impossible for me a year ago. The point being, I added all this stuff in very slowly.

I took the same approach with my food. I brought my own food into work mainly because I simply couldn't afford to buy stuff from the sandwich shop but I didn't really pay much attention to what I was eating. I have experimented with new recipes and tweaked them weekly for this whole year and the changes have been very gradual.

I feel like I have slowly transitioned from a fat, unfit, unhealthy person into a healthy, fit, and not quite so fat person. I don't think I'll ever see that transformation but if I keep doing what I have been doing long enough then I may eventually transition into what I eventually want to become. Maybe.