I tried all these diets, all at once, ate everything mentioned and put on 10 kg!
That’s the problem with diet advertising. They don’t say it explicitly, but the implicit message is, You can really pig out on all this delicious stuff day after day and you’ll look like Elle McPherson in a couple of weeks!
It’s not surprising that most people who sign up don’t last the course.
Statistical fact (at least as of 2011): less than 10% of people with a Fitness First gym membership use it over a 6 month period, and something like 70% have never used memberships they have paid and signed up for
There’s a gym chain in the US I was listening to a podcast about, all of their gyms have 10x more members than the place can hold at once. Because they know no-one turns up. For the ones who do they come to use the massage chairs while the workout gear is hidden in a back room.
It’s the most cynical business model I’ve seen and it works a treat. When the first one opened up near by I gave it three months. Now there are 4 of this style of gym within a 5k radius. The idea that enough people will pay for something they won’t use is mental.
It’s not at all surprising that gyms have more members than they can accommodate simultaneously. Not everyone goes to the gym every day, and they don’t all come at once. Most members who attend regularly would go three or four times a week at most, and some would go early morning, some a bit later, many at lunchtime, and a lot after work. Plus a number at off-peak time. I would have thought that a gym that could accommodate say 50 members at once would probably want to have at least 500 members to get reasonable use of its equipment.
Yes there are plenty who sign up and never go more than once or twice, but I would guess that most people give it a bit of a trial at first before signing up long term and handing over lots of dough. And if you’re stupid enough to sign up for a full year without giving it a bit of a trial beforehand, I would say you only have yourself to blame.
They want 500 members to get $$$
And as I said - the less the equipment gets used the better as it cuts down on maintenance costs (which for treadmills and pin loaded gear runs into the thousands per annum for a gym)
You would be amazed at how many people sign up long term after a trial and within a month don’t go anymore
A guy I did trade school with had 6 concurrent gym memberships and didn’t use one of them
Just for the record, the ‘strict diet’ I refered to in my post came about only because I left Australia to work overseas for quite a few years. Before I left I basically ate and drank everything that was bad for me and didn’t exercise. Offshore I had access to quality gyms and had the ability to choose and/or prepare my own meals. I was initially with another guy who was a gym junkie who wrote me a very good program and we discussed what a reasonable and healthy diet meant at length. I went from 111kg to 90 in a couple of years and then maintained it for a couple more. I never cheated and stayed focused. Back in Oz it was gradual but I backslid to where I was before I went. I knew what I was doing was wrong but lacked discipline. So when I say strict diet I meant more about adhering to something that met my needs rather than one of those exotic fads. BTW, I’m overseas again, so we will see…
I tried all these diets, all at once, ate everything mentioned and put on 10 kg!
That’s the problem with diet advertising. They don’t say it explicitly, but the implicit message is, You can really pig out on all this delicious stuff day after day and you’ll look like Elle McPherson in a couple of weeks!
It’s not surprising that most people who sign up don’t last the course.
Statistical fact (at least as of 2011): less than 10% of people with a Fitness First gym membership use it over a 6 month period, and something like 70% have never used memberships they have paid and signed up for
There’s a gym chain in the US I was listening to a podcast about, all of their gyms have 10x more members than the place can hold at once. Because they know no-one turns up. For the ones who do they come to use the massage chairs while the workout gear is hidden in a back room.
It’s the most cynical business model I’ve seen and it works a treat. When the first one opened up near by I gave it three months. Now there are 4 of this style of gym within a 5k radius. The idea that enough people will pay for something they won’t use is mental.
It’s not at all surprising that gyms have more members than they can accommodate simultaneously. Not everyone goes to the gym every day, and they don’t all come at once. Most members who attend regularly would go three or four times a week at most, and some would go early morning, some a bit later, many at lunchtime, and a lot after work. Plus a number at off-peak time. I would have thought that a gym that could accommodate say 50 members at once would probably want to have at least 500 members to get reasonable use of its equipment.
Yes there are plenty who sign up and never go more than once or twice, but I would guess that most people give it a bit of a trial at first before signing up long term and handing over lots of dough. And if you’re stupid enough to sign up for a full year without giving it a bit of a trial beforehand, I would say you only have yourself to blame.
I tried all these diets, all at once, ate everything mentioned and put on 10 kg!
That’s the problem with diet advertising. They don’t say it explicitly, but the implicit message is, You can really pig out on all this delicious stuff day after day and you’ll look like Elle McPherson in a couple of weeks!
It’s not surprising that most people who sign up don’t last the course.
Statistical fact (at least as of 2011): less than 10% of people with a Fitness First gym membership use it over a 6 month period, and something like 70% have never used memberships they have paid and signed up for
There’s a gym chain in the US I was listening to a podcast about, all of their gyms have 10x more members than the place can hold at once. Because they know no-one turns up. For the ones who do they come to use the massage chairs while the workout gear is hidden in a back room.
It’s the most cynical business model I’ve seen and it works a treat. When the first one opened up near by I gave it three months. Now there are 4 of this style of gym within a 5k radius. The idea that enough people will pay for something they won’t use is mental.
I lost just on 20kgs about five years ago through a very strict exercise and diet regime. It's slowly all come back on as the discipline slipped. It's very easy to give up and I'd got to the very sad point last week where instead of being able to do the 300 challenge without too much trouble I was barely capable of doing 5 minutes on a cross-trainer. This thread inspired me to get off my fat ■■■■, embrace exercise again and, trust me - it's they key- watch what I eat. Thanks guys!
Your problem wasn’t discipline. Your problem was the diet you were on sucked. If you can’t do it forever it sucks. Fullstop. If your TV stops working you don’t blame yourself, same with stupid diets.
Megz, you’ve said that sort of thing before, and I know you’re a dietitian, but don’t you think that for many people, keeping their weight under control really does require some discipline?
In the past many people didn’t have enough to eat, food availability depended on the season, junk food didn’t exist, advertising of food didn’t exist, TV didn’t exist to entertain us and keep us indoors, and the way you got to the shop to buy food was by walking there.
Life’s different now. Food is everywhere, portion sizes are immense, we’re bombarded with saturation advertising telling us to have a Mars bar or a sweet sport drink or a “snack” (the eqivalent of a small meal) mid-morning at Maccas. Malnutrition is (with a few exceptions) a thing of the past, obesity is an epidemic and getting worse, and the average Australian is significantly overweight.
In the face of all that temptation, don’t you think that many people need to make a real effort in order to lose weight and get themselves in reasonable shape? And that part of that effort has to involve deciding on a sensible eating regime – i.e., a diet – and sticking to it – i.e., discipline? And if the person, after doing this for a period of time, perhaps years, begins to succumb to the temptation to miss days of exercise, have that chocolate muffin or whatever, is that always the fault of the diet the person chose to follow? Or is it sometimes that the person gets a bit slack and stops following it – i.e., lack of discipline?
I’m not saying that there are no bad weightloss diets. The protein only, no oil, paleo, Pritikin, no doubt many others, they’re all essentially fad diets and hopeless for the long term. Two Dogs didn’t say that he was on one of those, he said he was on a strict diet regime, and discipline slipped. My 1450 calories a day is a diet regime, and if I get slack over Christmas and bust the limit day after day and put on weight, I regard that as my fault, not the diet’s.
In today’s society keeping control of your weight really does require constant attention to what you eat and how much exercise you do. There’s no effortless diet, and wherever effort is required, there’s always the temptation to relax, just this once. And just this once more. And again.
Sure, so called discipline is important but what’s MORE important is to figure out why your eating what you’re eating. Boredom? Angry? Tired? Happy? Sad? Etc etc. If you can dig deeper and figure this out and work on it then discipline is unnecessary.
What about just, “All this salt and sugar and deep fried food tastes good, and filling up on it and washing it down with a Coke makes me feel nice and full. And if I cut out the mid morning snack of muffin and latte with two sugars then I get hungry.” I mean there’s a reason why junk food contains all that crap: it tastes good and it gives you instantaneous satisfaction. Why is it always some psychological reason rather than the fairly obvious one that it’s nice to eat lots of tasty foods and sitting on your aarse doing nothing is easier than getting off it and working up a sweat?
I lost just on 20kgs about five years ago through a very strict exercise and diet regime. It's slowly all come back on as the discipline slipped. It's very easy to give up and I'd got to the very sad point last week where instead of being able to do the 300 challenge without too much trouble I was barely capable of doing 5 minutes on a cross-trainer. This thread inspired me to get off my fat ■■■■, embrace exercise again and, trust me - it's they key- watch what I eat. Thanks guys!
Your problem wasn’t discipline. Your problem was the diet you were on sucked. If you can’t do it forever it sucks. Fullstop. If your TV stops working you don’t blame yourself, same with stupid diets.
Megz, you’ve said that sort of thing before, and I know you’re a dietitian, but don’t you think that for many people, keeping their weight under control really does require some discipline?
In the past many people didn’t have enough to eat, food availability depended on the season, junk food didn’t exist, advertising of food didn’t exist, TV didn’t exist to entertain us and keep us indoors, and the way you got to the shop to buy food was by walking there.
Life’s different now. Food is everywhere, portion sizes are immense, we’re bombarded with saturation advertising telling us to have a Mars bar or a sweet sport drink or a “snack” (the eqivalent of a small meal) mid-morning at Maccas. Malnutrition is (with a few exceptions) a thing of the past, obesity is an epidemic and getting worse, and the average Australian is significantly overweight.
In the face of all that temptation, don’t you think that many people need to make a real effort in order to lose weight and get themselves in reasonable shape? And that part of that effort has to involve deciding on a sensible eating regime – i.e., a diet – and sticking to it – i.e., discipline? And if the person, after doing this for a period of time, perhaps years, begins to succumb to the temptation to miss days of exercise, have that chocolate muffin or whatever, is that always the fault of the diet the person chose to follow? Or is it sometimes that the person gets a bit slack and stops following it – i.e., lack of discipline?
I’m not saying that there are no bad weightloss diets. The protein only, no oil, paleo, Pritikin, no doubt many others, they’re all essentially fad diets and hopeless for the long term. Two Dogs didn’t say that he was on one of those, he said he was on a strict diet regime, and discipline slipped. My 1450 calories a day is a diet regime, and if I get slack over Christmas and bust the limit day after day and put on weight, I regard that as my fault, not the diet’s.
In today’s society keeping control of your weight really does require constant attention to what you eat and how much exercise you do. There’s no effortless diet, and wherever effort is required, there’s always the temptation to relax, just this once. And just this once more. And again.
Sure, so called discipline is important but what’s MORE important is to figure out why your eating what you’re eating. Boredom? Angry? Tired? Happy? Sad? Etc etc. If you can dig deeper and figure this out and work on it then discipline is unnecessary.
I tried all these diets, all at once, ate everything mentioned and put on 10 kg!
That’s the problem with diet advertising. They don’t say it explicitly, but the implicit message is, You can really pig out on all this delicious stuff day after day and you’ll look like Elle McPherson in a couple of weeks!
It’s not surprising that most people who sign up don’t last the course.
Statistical fact (at least as of 2011): less than 10% of people with a Fitness First gym membership use it over a 6 month period, and something like 70% have never used memberships they have paid and signed up for
There’s a gym chain in the US I was listening to a podcast about, all of their gyms have 10x more members than the place can hold at once. Because they know no-one turns up. For the ones who do they come to use the massage chairs while the workout gear is hidden in a back room.
Yup
You think, that gym’s capacity maybe is 50 per gym. So 500 members total paying $10-15 a week
Basically the gyms are getting $5000-6000 a week for nothing lol
It’s the same model Fitness First, Goodlife, Snap, Anytime etc work off
They don’t want you to turn up, otherwise you effectively become a cost for them as the equipment needs maintenance, showers, dunnies, they’d probably need to hire 1-2 more employees etc
I tried all these diets, all at once, ate everything mentioned and put on 10 kg!
That’s the problem with diet advertising. They don’t say it explicitly, but the implicit message is, You can really pig out on all this delicious stuff day after day and you’ll look like Elle McPherson in a couple of weeks!
It’s not surprising that most people who sign up don’t last the course.
Statistical fact (at least as of 2011): less than 10% of people with a Fitness First gym membership use it over a 6 month period, and something like 70% have never used memberships they have paid and signed up for
There’s a gym chain in the US I was listening to a podcast about, all of their gyms have 10x more members than the place can hold at once. Because they know no-one turns up. For the ones who do they come to use the massage chairs while the workout gear is hidden in a back room.
I ask because I have been moved by all this talk to find a scale, & at 6’ 2" weighed in at exactly 87, or 13.7 stone, and thought I could do with losing half a stone or so, also found that that weight was OK, but on the verge of an unhealthy BMI.
People are built differently. My brother is about 5’10" and he weighs about 72kg. 32" waist. He’s built light. And he is fit.
I ask because I have been moved by all this talk to find a scale, & at 6’ 2" weighed in at exactly 87, or 13.7 stone, and thought I could do with losing half a stone or so, also found that that weight was OK, but on the verge of an unhealthy BMI.
I tried all these diets, all at once, ate everything mentioned and put on 10 kg!
That’s the problem with diet advertising. They don’t say it explicitly, but the implicit message is, You can really pig out on all this delicious stuff day after day and you’ll look like Elle McPherson in a couple of weeks!
It’s not surprising that most people who sign up don’t last the course.
Statistical fact (at least as of 2011): less than 10% of people with a Fitness First gym membership use it over a 6 month period, and something like 70% have never used memberships they have paid and signed up for
I’ve been losing weight since two years and one month ago when my brother asked how much I weighed while we were on holiday.
I said, I dunno. 96, 97 maybe.
He said, pfft, you’re easily over the ton.
So I got home and weighed myself and I was 102.5. sighgoddamnit.
So since then I’ve been saying no to chocolates and lollies and biscuits and stuff, unless I really, really want to eat some. Then I do.
I just try not to be stupid about what I eat anymore. I was eating those four packs of glazed donuts from 7-11 on the special occasion that I was coming home from an evening shift. So I cut that out.
I lift a 5kg dumbell when I can remember, which is about twice a week.
I’m 91 now. I find I lose weight quicker easier in the winter.
Other than that?
I’m not on a diet. I’m trying to lose weight. Sort of. If it turns out I’m gaining again I’ll make some adjustments, but that hasn’t really happened yet. I put on a couple of kilo over Xmas, holidays, but I’ve lost that again already.
I know it’s slow, but I’m happy with that.
I’d like to be 87 by the end of the year.
I tried all these diets, all at once, ate everything mentioned and put on 10 kg!
That’s the problem with diet advertising. They don’t say it explicitly, but the implicit message is, You can really pig out on all this delicious stuff day after day and you’ll look like Elle McPherson in a couple of weeks!
It’s not surprising that most people who sign up don’t last the course.
If you have a chance listen to Joe Rogan and Mark Sisson podcast (3 hrs) so download onto our mp3 player
Listen a couple of times to the podcast, he talks alot about nutrition - very interesting and insightful - especially around the exercise (he maxs the gym to twice a week)
Isn’t he a comedian?
An MMA fighter, and well known for his UFC commentary, and reality tv hosting is Rogan. I used to like him, before I listened to a podcast of his, and found out what a complete effing jerk he is.
You’d need to listen to more than one podcast of his to really get a sense of him. He’s alright, but his podcast his awesome because of his guests, not him.
Anyway, i don’t think anybody was suggesting to listen to Joe Rogan for advice on weight loss. (In fact, as he is a peddler of snake oil and miracle supplements, I’d suggest not listening to him at all on that topic.)
His guest last week, Mark Sisson, is a fitness writer and former tiathlete. Big supporter of the Paleo diet. It was a very interesting podcast, and relevant to what’s being discussed here.
Spot on, wasn’t talking about Rogan - was referring to Sisson.
His take on diet is interesting, it is a Paleo diet under the name ‘primal blueprint’. For me the most interesting part was his opinion on why we ask how much we need to eat to maintain ‘x’ - he suggests you move the questions to ‘what is the least amount of food I need to eat’ and was talking about not eating if you are not hungry
I lost just on 20kgs about five years ago through a very strict exercise and diet regime. It's slowly all come back on as the discipline slipped. It's very easy to give up and I'd got to the very sad point last week where instead of being able to do the 300 challenge without too much trouble I was barely capable of doing 5 minutes on a cross-trainer. This thread inspired me to get off my fat ■■■■, embrace exercise again and, trust me - it's they key- watch what I eat. Thanks guys!
Your problem wasn’t discipline. Your problem was the diet you were on sucked. If you can’t do it forever it sucks. Fullstop. If your TV stops working you don’t blame yourself, same with stupid diets.
I was wondering how long you’d hold out.
Shelton10 I think you’re talking about a diet that is temporary - I’m going to stick to X calories for Y weeks. And it’s where a lot of people fall over in their efforts. What megz is talking about is a diet that is intended to be stuck to for the rest of your life. If you have an eating plan that you cannot see yourself maintaining forever then of course your discipline is going to slip up.
(before you chime back in megz, I couldn’t think of a better word than “diet” for both explanations)
Too many people set themselves up for failure when they start. " I plan to lose X kgs" will probably lead to either failure or putting the weight back on. “I am going to change my eating and exercise habits for good” is a better approach - weight loss is just a by-product of that change, rather than being the primary focus.
I wasn’t thinking of a temporary diet, but a permanent one. But I think you’re right that the word “diet” covers many different things. I was using it to mean an eating regime that involves watching how much food you put in and matching it to the amount of energy that you burn – or, if you’re trying to lose weight, making sure that it’s consistently less than the amount of energy you burn. And the point I was trying to make was that in today’s world that requires discipline and conscious restraint. If you’re starting from a position where you’ve been overeating, and eating crap, for 20 years and you’re grossly obese and probably incapable of sustained exercise, then the amount of effort required will be great, because it has to involve changing the habits of a lifetime and establishing completely new ones – and dragging spouse, children and friends along with you. If, like me, you don’t enjoy continually overeating and you’ve been brought up on a pretty good diet and you’re only relatively a little overweight, then the effort required is not so great. But even for someone like me, who doesn’t find sticking more or less within the limit too hard and quite enjoys the exercise component, it’s very easy to let slip once in a while, and the more you let slip, the more you’re tempted to do it again.
From what I’ve observed, for people who are severely overweight and go on a crash diet of some kind, what happens is that they stick to the diet religiously at first and the weight just falls off – 3 kg in a week!! – but after a month or two or six, when the weight isn’t dropping so quickly and the cupcakes are looking extremely tempting, the discipline cracks, and that’s the end of the penny section.
I hesitate to predict what Megz would say, but I’d guess that she’d say to a truly obese 30 year old that if he/she really wants to get back to a decent body shape and BMI, the important things are to realise a) that it’s a long journey involving a complete reshaping of your eating and exercise habits, b) losing weight necessarily involves eating less and/or exercising more, c) there’s no point adopting an all protein or paleo diet or something like that because it’s not practicable for the rest of your life, and d) that you need to be prepared to face temptation and say no – if not always, then almost always.
Cool. With you there on everything.
However I hesitate to use words like “effort” and “discipline” when it comes to describing my experience. That makes it sound way harder than it’s been. I saw it as desiring a better lifestyle - I wanted to be the kind of person who makes delicious healthy meals and exercised regularly (DEM ENDORPHINS YO), so the choices I were painfully obvious. Instead of having to go to the “effort” of not inhaling nachos, it was a matter of recognising that “the version of simmo41 that I want to be doesn’t inhale nachos” and eating something else instead.
Same deal with being active. “The version of simmo41 that I want to be gets off the train two stations early, loads up Paul’s Boutique on the iPod, and walks the rest of the way home.” Boom, done.
Very true about the language. Look at it positively, not negatively.
