Transformation Step Four: Accountability

After four years of maintaining a 60 pound fat release, I am still convinced that the primary key to physical transformation is exercise.  Many studies have shown that diet drives weight loss, but in my case at least, it was finding  forms of exercise I love like Turbulence Training and Zumba, that gave me the sense of well being and self mastery that makes following a food plan possible.

Not long after I started TT, it became clear to me that eating whole healthy foods had an immediate effect on how successful and enjoyable my training was going to be.  Now that I’m teaching a total of six Zumba and Zumba Gold classes a week, I can literally see and feel the difference while I’m teaching when I’ve taken the time to prepare and eat balanced healthy meals.

In the past, I’ve been a little bit ashamed of the fact that I couldn’t eat reasonable portions of sweets and grains.  I thought, “Healthy, normal people eat bread, cereal, and pasta all the time.  Why can’t I?”  This kept me from using one of the most powerful tools for transformation: accountability.

Now I understand that I never ever have to advocate a specific diet to my clients or readers.  What you eat is between you and your doctor, or your nutritionist.  What I can do, is write about ways that you can remain true to your healthy choices, whatever they may be.

If you are participating in the transformation contest with me, we have a little more than six weeks between now and picture day, and as I wrote in my last post, it’s time to take our eating plans seriously. I mean to do that by posting what I eat here every day through writing or photographs.  Time consuming?  Maybe.  But now that I’m within ten pounds of my authentic ideal weight, I know that I have to practice a high level of accountability to get great results.  Here is my plan for the day:

Breakfast:  Coffee with cream, 2 eggs cooked in 1t. coconut oil, 3 strips uncured bacon, mixed vegetables cooked with 1t. pastured butter.

Snack: 1 apple

Lunch: Large mixed salad with olive oil and apple cider vinegar dressing, 1 4oz pork chop, 1C cauliflower w/1t. butter.

Snack: 1 apple

Dinner: 4 oz grass fed beef, mixed salad with dressing as above, 1C cauliflower w/1t. butter..

8 glasses of water.

I have copied this menu and saved it to my desktop so that I can paste it into my blog and edit it easily each day.

Another fantastic reason to record what you are eating on this journey is so that you you can look back and see what worked when you succeed.  I have re-read some of my blogs from when I hit my ideal goal weight in December of 2011, but they are not nearly as specific as I would have liked.  I intend to remedy that in the coming weeks.

Do you have to make every bite you eat public in order to release fat for good?  Maybe not, but I think this level of accountability will be incredibly effective, and how wonderful it will be if I’m right.