Many people think that putting on weight is a result of genetics. At least once a month, I would hear someone at our gym talk about how fit people are lucky because they have good genetics. Sure, genetics do play a role. However, there seems to be a misconception that some people can stuff themselves as much as they want with crappy food and still stay lean and healthy. This can only happen to very young people and is always temporary.
Here is an example – I have a good buddy named Jean. He has a very muscular body and a very low body fat percentage. He is in the gym two or three times per week, works out very hard and knows exactly what he is doing. Sometimes, when we are out you would see him order extra-size pizzas and stuff them down with whole milk. Then he would have ice cream biscuits for desert. If you didn’t know him, you would think that he eats like that constantly and is just lucky to have a good-looking body. In reality, he knows exactly what he is doing. He is aware how intermittent fasting works for men and has carb-recharging days (usually every Sunday), which involve eating large amounts of cabohydrates. Little do you know that after that meal (which is his post-workout one too, when his glycogen stores are low) he plans on fasting for 20 hours.
Sure, some people start out with exceptionally good genetics and can remain fit up until they hit thirty or so, despite being on a fast-food and calorie surplus diet. However, your eating habits sooner or later catch up to you and if you don’t know how your metabolism works (which is especially true for women), you can put all your effort into losing the weight, without much success.
What I am trying to say is that genetics will not stop you from losing weight fast. However, what absolutely will stop you is not having the right knowledge and not understanding how weight loss works for your metabolic type. If you don’t know what works and what doesn’t you can spend all the energy in the world focusing on weight loss with very little success. On the other hand, people who know what they are doing seem to be losing weight effortlessly. Most often than not, however, those people do not know consciously what they are doing or why it’s working. It’s just that they have arranged all the pieces at the right places by simple luck. When you look at someone like that, it seems that they just have good genetics for weight loss. However, if you were to know the principles behind what they did, you can replicate the exact same result even faster.
Usually, the difference is very subtle and non-obvious. This is why if you ask that person what they did and you try to do exactly the same you will most likely fail. They missed out a key component of their approach, which they didn’t even notice or think is relevant.
I’m going to say this again to ‘drive the point home’ so to speak:
Having the right knowledge = Fast weight loss
Not knowing how your metabolism works and trying to exert effort to lose weight = Eventually failing and doing your body more harm than good
There are no exceptions to this – do the right strategy and the results will be astonishingly fast and obvious. Do a strategy that you found out about on a TV show or someone said it will work and you will usually fail.
