Tips From Olympians To Achieve Your Goals

With the Winter Olympics just started this weekend in Canada, this is the build up of at least 4 years training for the athletes. They have arrived at this point in their best physical and mental shape for the games.

Now, 4 years is quite a long time to stay focused to achieve their goal. We are now half why through February and most people have failed with there New Years Resolutions. So how do these athletes keep focused for so long? And what can they teach us to achieve are own goals!

We will go over 5 strategies that world class athletes use, and that you can use to reach your health and fitness goals. So, lets get started........

1. Know What You Want To Achieve And When!

For most of the athletes at the Winter Olympics the goal is the coveted Gold Medal at the games.


The athletes have a DEFINITE final destination, an end point for there goal. This is the key in this strategy a definite destination, you have to have a date of completion, an end point.

First you pick the goal (say lose a stone) and then you have to pick a date, an end for this goal, this one thing makes it set in stone giving you a final destination to aim for. Its like the GPS in your car you have to put in the destination first before it will give you direction to this destination.

Rule number 1 - Decide what you want to achieve and then fix a date to achieve it by, then write it down as it makes it real.



2. Why You Want To Achieve This Goal!

For the athletes this is to prove that they are the best at their chosen sport, to stand on top of the podium and be crowned Olympic Champion. Also to have the admiration of your country, but probably most of all is to prove to themselves that thay are the best at their chosen sport.

To find out the Why of your goal you have to ask yourself some probing questions. You have to find the real emotional reason that you want to achieve your goal. You can't just say that you want to lose a stone because you want to look better. Deep down inside you there will be the real reason like, i want to lose a stone because i don't feel comfortable with my shape to ask that person out, or i wouldn't feel comfortable for him to see me naked, i don't feel comfortable to be in a bikini at the beach on holidays. You know the real reason deep inside, if you can really tap into this emotional side of your goal it will drive you to really succeed in reaching your goal.

Rule number 2 - Find your emotional trigger, the real desire to make the changes to achieve your goal.



3. Knowing and paying the price for your goal!


With every goal you set in your life there is a price to pay to achieve it, for the athletes it is getting up early to train, never missing a training session, eating the right foods at the right times, missing that party because they have training or a competition, and so on.

Do you know what it will cost to achieve your goal?

Eating better, increasing your activity levels, maybe even the financial cost of hiring a personal trainer, possibly having a few less drinks at the weekend, etc.

Whatever it is, be honest enough to appreciate what you have to change. At the very least you can then decide whether the cost is worth taking for that goal which was so important to you a few minutes ago.

Rule number 3 - Know what it will take to achieve your goal the changes you have to make and pay the price to achieve your goal.



4. Tracking Your Progress!

You have to know how close or how far you are off your goal so you can adjust and get back on track. The athletes have many feedback methods, but the most important of these is competitions they have over the 4 year period leading up to the Olympics. The athletes can see how they are performing competition to competition and make adjustments to there training and eating. The competitions also help to break the main goal of the Olympics down in smaller goals to keep them focused for longer.

So, after you have picked your goal and set that date to reach the goal, found the real reason to complete the goal, you have to now track the goal to see if you are going to reach the goal by the time you have set for yourself.

Step 1 - Break down your goal into more manageable chunks, ie if your goal is to lose a stone in 16 weeks are you on track at 8 weeks and 4 weeks.

Step 2 - Track your eating. Keeping a food journal (an honest food journal, you are only lying to yourself) gives you an idea of any changes that you might need to make to get your progress back on track for your goal.

Step 3 - Track your training. This is training sessions complete, and progressions you have been making in your training. This way you can see if you have been performing enough training sessions (activity to burn calories) or that you have been pushing yourself to make progress in your training.

Rule number 4 - Break your goal down into mini goals, track your progress so you can make changes to reach your goal.



5. Believe You Can Do It!

For some of the athletes they have setbacks like injuries, but they believe that they can come back form the injury and compete at there best in the games, and many do because they have that emotional desire to achieve there goal.

You have to believe that you can achieve your goal also. You are going to have pitfalls too, like - missing the training sessions, have that meal thats not on your plan, having to much to drink and even injuries. But these are mostly minor setbacks and you just have to get back on the plan asap.

Belief is knowing no matter what setbacks comes up in your plan that you can make it to the finish line, (that date you have set for yourself) keep a positive outlook and adhere to rules number 1 -4 and you will reach your goal.

Rule number 5 - Believe you can do it no matter what the setback.


If you have set yourself a goal in the past and have never really reached the desired outcome then give the 5 rules above an honest effort and that goal could be closer than you imagine.

Acceptable in the 80's - Part 2

In Acceptable in the 80's part 1, we talked about training and what old training methods have been debunked by research for fat loss and gave you a few new methods to speed up the fat burning process. So in part 2 of acceptable in the 80's we will be looking at nutrtional strategies that have been debunked by reseach and improved strategies for fat loss success.

So lets get started..........
ACCEPTABLE IN THE 80'S NO 2 - HIGH CARB, LOW FAT DIETS

The thinking in the 80's was that if we didn't eat fat we wouldn't be fat, sounds sensible.

Well Walter Willett, Chair of the department of nutrtion at Harvard School of Health, had this to say:

"The idea that all fat is bad for you, the exclusive focus on adverse effects of fat, may have contributed to the obesity epidemic.... The emphasis on total fat reduction has been a serious distraction in the efforts to control obesity and improve health in general."


The Different types of fat

There are 4 different types of fat - Monounsaturated, Polyunsaturated, Saturated and tran's fat which can be further broke down into good and bad fats.

Monounsaturated fats (good fats)

Monounsaturated fats are said to help reduce cholesterol, blood pressure and help with the control of diabetes.

Polyunsaturated fats (good fats)

Polyunsaturated fats help to improve immune function and help to protect against sudden death from heart disease.

Polyunsaturated fats can be broken down into 2 catagories:- omega 3 and omega 6.

Saturated fats (bad fats)

Saturated fats raise the risk of heart disease and stroke, as well as cholestrol. In fact they are twice as potent at raising cholestrol as polyunsaturated fats are at lowering cholestrol levels.

Tran's fats (bad fats)

Trans fats increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.


Omega 3 fish oil and fat loss

One of the reasons why we where told not to eat fat in the 80's was that there was little human data available about fish oil and fat loss until the late 1990's.

• One of the earliest studies on fish oil and fat loss in humans was published in 1997 in the International Journal of Obesity (Couet 1997). The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of substituting fish oil for other visible dietary fats on body fat mass and substrate oxidation in healthy adult humans.

Six male subjects were fed a control diet ad libitum (as much food as they wanted) for 3 weeks. 12 weeks later, they were given a diet with the same amount of calories, only this time with 6 grams per day of fish oil replacing 6 grams of other dietary fat. During both periods, the researchers measured energy intake, resting metabolic rate, basal substrate oxidation and body fat (using dual x ray absorpitometry, a sophisticated and highly accurate way to measure body fat composition).

The fish oil was given to the experimental group as 8 capsules of 750mg (2 at breakfast, 3 at lunch, and 3 at dinner). This amounted to 1.1 grams of DHA and 0.7 grams of EPA, for a total of 1.8 grams of long chain omega 3 fatty acids per day.

Food intake was carefully controlled, with all meals deing ingested in the metabolic laboratory. Food was weighed and cooked by a dietician before being served, and leftover food was weighed and accounted for in the calculation of calorie intake.

The subjects body weight did not change, but there body composition did: the fish oil group lost 2 pounds of fat compared to 0.7 pounds of fat in the group without fish oil. The researchers noted however, that these differences did not reach statistical significance.

There was also a difference in resting metabolic rate: The resting metabolic rate of the fish oil group was 1775 kcal per day, compared to 1710 kcal per day for the no fish oil group.

Of most significance, the rate of fat oxidation in the fish oil group increased by 25% over the group that did not take fish oil.

• 2006, Czech researchers (kunesova, et al) from Charles University's obesity management centre in Prague. Took 20 severely obese women who were randomly assigned to either a very low calorie diet and placebo or a very low calorie diet with an omega 3 (EPA and DHA) supplement. The subjects also performed about 60 minutes daily of light physical activity.

In the omega 3 supplement group, fat loss was significantly (25%) greater (16.7 pounds/7.6kg) than the placebo group (13.4 pounds/ 6.1 kg). Body mas index and hip circumference were also markedly decreasesd in the omega 3 group.

• A study published in the International Journal of Obesity (Garulet 2006) showed for the first time in humans that omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids were related to reduce fat cell size in certain lacations on the body. The same study showed that in contrast, saturated dietary fatty acids significantly correlated with an increase in fat cell size and number.

Low carb diets and fat loss

As you can see not all fats are bad for you, and some fats can even help with fat loss. But there was another side to the nutritional strategy of the 80's it was high carbohydrate intake. This is probably the worst part of the 80's nutritional strategies, because of are own recommendations (6-11 servings of refined carbs in the food pyramid) we created Type 2 diabetes.

• A study comparing different diets (Atkins, Zone, Learn and Ornish) was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Vol 297 No.9 pp 969-977)

The study was entitled the A TO Z Weight Loss Study (Atkins, Traditional, Ornish, Zone)

Briefly:

311 people were randomly assigned to a diet for 12 months.

Results after 12 months:

Atkins Diet: -4.7kg (10.4lbs)
Zone Diet: -1.6kg (3.5lbs)
Learn Diet (traditional diet recommendations -- low fat high carbs) : -2.6kg (5.7lbs)
Ornish Diet: -2.2kg (4.8lbs)

The diet essentially looked at different gradations of carbohydrate intake on weight loss.

Basically -- the Atkins diet (low carb, high fat, high protein diet) outperformed the other diets VERY significantly in terms of fat loss. There was no statistically significant difference in fat loss between the other groups.

Important to note is that total energy intake was NOT different among the diet groups at the baseline measure or any subsequent point -- they all ate the same total calories. However, over time all four groups significantly decreased caloric intake over the course of the study - they all did eat less to generate fat loss - but they all ate the same amount.

• Greene, P., Willett, W., Devecis, J., et al.,

Pilot 12-Week Feeding Weight-Loss Comparison: Low-Fat vs Low-Carbohydrate (Ketogenic) Diets," Abstract Presented at The North American Association for the Study of Obesity Annual Meeting 2003, Obesity Research, 11S, 2003, page 95OR.

Three groups on different diets for 12 weeks:

Low fat/low cal (1800 cals per day) diet: Lost on average 17 lbs
Low carb/higher cal (+300) group: Lost on average 20 lbs.

But when they combined low carbs AND low calories (1800 again) - that group lost 23lbs.

• Meckling KA, Sherfey R

A randomized trial of a hypocaloric high-protein diet, with and without exercise, on weight loss, fitness, and markers of the Metabolic Syndrome in overweight and obese women.
Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2007 Aug;32(4):743-752.

The subjects were divided into two main groups - high carb (3:1 carb:protein) and low carb (1:1 carb: protein) and then subdivided into exercise (three times per week) and non exercise groups within each diet group.

Weight loss after 12 weeks was as follows:

4.6lbs for high carb no exercise group
8.8lbs for high carb with exercise group
10.1lbs for the high protein-low carb -no exercise group
and 15.5 lbs for the high protein, low carb with exercise group.

What's really interesting is that the high protein, low carb group was superior for weight loss over high carb with exercise. And it was 75% superior when combined with exercise.


In conclusion

I hope over the 2 articles that i have given you some ideas on more effective approaches to fat loss training and eating. Lower your refined carb intake and up your good fat intake. Start with a good resistance training program then add interval type training sessions. Follow these ideas and you will be on the road to fat loss success.



PS. I would like to thank my mentor Alwyn Cosgrove and Tom Venuto for bringing these research studies to light for fitness professionals all over the world.

PPS. As a tribute to Calvin Harris and the song Acceptable in the 80's that started the idea of the article in my head, please watch the video below