“How do I lose fat?”
Strangers ask me this every day. What do I say?
Do I fart out blind advice? Send people on their way with pseudo-intellectual quips that absolutely can't fail?
If your grandma doesn't know how to make the food, don't eat it! If it has more than five ingredients, stay away!
Boy. Those quips do sound great. I feel warm and fuzzy inside.
But quips are the currency of those wanting to appear intellectual by making everything sound overly obvious and simple.
Exactly why quips are useless.
But, man, it would have been easier if I farted quips and got on with my life. I guess I'm an idiot. I prodded. I asked questions.
I said: I don't know you and your question is vague, like, so vague, like, stranger calls you on the phone and after you say hello she says, “How can I bake a better cake?” sort of vague.
Is the stranger Emeril Lagasse? Or little Sally using an easy bake oven? What do you say?
Some strangers don't like being asked questions. Maybe asking questions is something only doctors do…
Tell me where it hurts. Tell me how it happened. Tell me other things I'm going to ignore because I, much like the majority of doctors, made up my mind about what's wrong with you a long time ago thanks to all sorts of cognitive bias. Now we're just playing charades. I'm going to write you a prescription. If that fails, the emergency room will handle things. Please see the receptionist, she'll handle your payment.
Some strangers appreciated my genuine interest. They answered.
It wasn't long before I noticed patterns within the answers. Patterns that made me say: no wonder most diets fail.
This is when Big Win Fat Loss was born.
In business, there's a concept called “return on investment” (ROI), which essentially asks: for all the time, resources, and energy you're investing in something, how much are you going to get in return?
If you spend ten hours making something that's going to net $3 in profit, your ROI is tiny. Something that involves lots of effort, but has a small payoff is Small Stuff.
But imagine the opposite. Imagine spending three hours making something that’s going to net $10,000 in profit. Something that involves little effort, but has a high payoff is a Big Win.
Here's an example.
Billy wants to save money. He looks at his bank statement at the end of the month. “Oh man,” he says to himself. “I buy a coffee every morning. I'll save money by brewing coffee at home from now on.”
So Billy buys a coffee pot. Coffee filters. Coffee itself. He gets his $2.50 daily coffee expense down to $1 per day, meaning he saves $1.50 per day — around $550 per year.
Frank also wants to save money. He looks at his bank statement at the end of the month, too. He notices he spends $30-$50 every Friday during Happy Hour.
Frank realizes that he can cut one happy hour every month and save over $1000 dollars per year.
Billy “suffers” every day and only saves $550 per year. Frank “suffers” once every two months and saves $550 per year.
Billy is a Small Stuffer.
Frank is a Big Winner.
Whether you realize it or not, fat loss is all about behavior change. “I want to lose fat” really means: I want to stop doing things that make me fatter, I want to start doing things that make me leaner.
- I want to STOP eating junk food after dinner.
- I want to START eating vegetables with every meal.
- I want to START exercising three times every week.
But behavior change has cognitive costs. Willpower, motivation, and attention span are finite resources, just like money. So behavior change, too, has an ROI.
For all the time, attention, and energy you’re investing in a new behavior, how big of an impact will the new behavior have?
People interested in fat loss have an irrational obsession over Small Stuff.
- When should I eat after I strength train?
- How many meals should I eat?
- Will eating fruit light my hair on fire?
Everyone is churning through their cognitive reserves worrying about things that don't have a huge impact on the outcome.
I blame both the mainstream fitness industry and the supplement industry. They need to sell their products. They make you think your muscles will melt if you don't drink their new super supplement formula.
I found myself asking a lot of questions like this:
Before we worry about what you eat after you strength train, tell me how much protein you're eating in one day.
It wasn't long before I found myself rerouting people to more important (and less complex) objectives.
Don't worry about what you eat after you strength train, just focus on getting the right amount of protein every day. Once you do that, then we can move up the elevator and worry about more detailed things.
This is the scaffolding of Big Win Fat Loss.
Imagine being on an elevator. You start at the basement level. Your goal is to ride the elevator to the top floor. The caveat being that the elevator stops on every floor.
The caveat to the caveat being that you have complete a goal on each floor in order to move to the next floor. If don't complete the goal, the elevator doesn't move up.
This is how Big Win Fat Loss works. I uncover 10 Big Wins, each arranged in descending order of importance.
Let me show you how this works.
Say you want to build muscle. You get into the elevator. It stops on the first floor. The door opens and you're hit with this: “Do you do progressive barbell (or bodyweight) training at least three times per week?”
If not, the circuit trips and the elevator holds. You're stuck on the first floor until you do you do progressive barbell (or bodyweight) training at least three times per week.
There's no need to think about higher floors, only the floor you're currently on and the goal at hand because the system is arranged in such a way that the biggest Big Wins come first.
You can focus all your cognitive reserves on what's going to yield the biggest impact.
Over my years of self-research and self-study, I've learned that behavior change is best served small and tiny. Ironically, the is the opposite of how most people approach change. They try changing everything all at once. They fail.
The effectiveness of the elevator system is antiknowledge. If you're stuck on the second floor, it doesn't matter what's on floor 3, 4, 5, and 6.
And that's powerful: to say things don't matter. To say you don't need to think about x, y, z. Because, in today's age, where information is ever present. Learning things isn't the hard part. Taking action is.
Big Win Fat Loss helps you take action because it eliminates what doesn't matter.
Big Win Fat Loss has 10 total Big Wins. You'll about each Big Win and why it's important. You'll also learn a behavior change strategy that'll teach you how to actually do each Big Win.
At the end of Big Win Fat Loss, you'll be able to assemble a daily eating plan based on your specific body.
I give many examples on how to set up an eating plan, but there is no such thing as one stock eating plan everyone in the world should follow.
You'll see this often in fitness with “meal plans.” Ugh. Let's just say stock meal plans violate physiology and often lead to stubborn body fat and metabolic damage.
But I talk about this more inside of Big Win Fat Loss (and also how to avoid all of these common pitfalls).
The format of BWFL is text (as of now). You can access and read BWFL through a private web area (so it's just like reading a blog).
There is a mobi/epub/pdf version coming soon, that'll be available to download within the private web area (for free). I'm also going to add videos and make it more interactive. If you buy now (at book price), you'll get any and all upgrades for free.
$33
You're paying for access to a private membership area. There is no physical Big Win Fat Loss book. It's all digital.
Want to know something I didn't touch on?
Ask me: anthony /at/ anthonymychal dot com