Society has enabled unhealthy behaviors under the guise of โmoderation,โ and people get frustrated when, unbeknownst to them, this โmoderationโ is the underlying reason they donโt hit the entirety of the body composition/health results they seek. I fall into the trap as well when I end some of these articles or real-life conversations with some sort of sentiment like, โKeep making small, sustainable steps in the right direction. Youโre right; moderation is ok. Slowly over time, youโll make more and more positive changes with the result being better health, longevity, and aesthetics!โ
Itโs as if I MUST add the part about moderation so as not to hurt someoneโs feelings. Why donโt I just say, โStart with small steps. Over time, those small steps will have a compound effect, and youโll get closer and closer to your goals. Before you know it, these new healthy behaviors will be second nature, and youโll have better health, longevity, and aestheticsโprovided you donโt fuck it up with all sorts of subversion you want to call โmoderation.โ I sometimes do say that, depending on my audience, and itโs the truth!
Rather than think in terms of moderation, I suggest changing the perspective. Iโm going to preface what follows suggesting you try to see the forest despite the trees; look at the overall theme of whatโs being presented rather than getting caught up in nit picking minutiae to make yourself feel better about your personal hang-ups or vices. I could quibble over my own article all day; instead, letโs be fun and a little over the top about it.
Think of aesthetics and health in terms of a continuum. As I elegantly diagrammed below, on the far left, we have someone who is DEAD as a doornail. This person is malnourished to an extreme: either obese or emaciated. Any one or more of the plethora of diseases or health problems that could possibly affect someone as a result of malnutrition (which is all of them, isnโt it?) hit this person full force and heโs dead.
On the far-right side of the continuum, we have someone who isโฆ ripped? Jacked? Super lean? No, letโs make them DEAD too. Call them the other extreme. Super roided up bodybuilder dude who took too many drugs and is dead. Or exercise addicted, obsessive compulsive person, who literally exercised and dieted themselves to death. Wouldnโt that be malnutrition too? Yea, but weโre just having fun, and rolling with this, remember?
Now somewhere in between those two extremes are all of us, and EVERY nutritional decision we make pushes us closer or further away from those extremes.
Where am I? I train 5x per week because I want to be happy about the way I look, and just as important to me is my health. I love life and want to live for a super long time. Nutritionally, Iโm not โdietingโ right now but am training my body to eat more and more good food whilst getting leaner and stronger at the same time. My digestion feels incredible. I follow my nutritional numbers close to 100%. As a result, I currently classify myself as ripped.
Now, if I want to get sliced, which is one level leaner than ripped, I need to move further to the right on our continuum. I would need to make some changes. I would start cutting out some of the extras I use: ketchup, A1 sauce, tartar sauce, BBQ sauce. I would be stricter with my meal timing. I would be even more precise with my measurements: if my carbohydrate allotment called for 300g of blueberries on a food scale, I would not allow myself 312g, even if a few extra blueberries fell out of the container. I would feed myself like a racehorse: the same thing, at the same time, every day. I would also, eventually, need to change my portion sizes and training.
Iโm happy being ripped right now and am content to stay here. I donโt want to make the changes necessary to move more to the right, nor do I want to move in the opposite direction. I donโt eat pizza because pizza will push me further away from being ripped, and I would start to move toward the left on the continuum. If I ate a pizza tomorrow night, I may temporarily move over to the left, but eventually Iโd go back to the right, right? Sort of. Iโd most likely put on a modicum of fat, depending on how much was eaten (YES! You can put on fat from one meal!), my stomach would be bloated for a few days (I wouldnโt be able to see my abs as much), and my digestion would be funky for longer than that. How long would it take for the inflammation to die down in my body? Youโll get a different answer depending on the source, but all answers have one thing in common: a long freaking time.
How long would it take for the inflammation to die down in my body vs. yours? Unless youโre currently in the ripped category, I would recover faster than you by a long time. The rules are different depending on who you are. This is another reason moderation sucks. Me having some pizza vs. someone whoโs trying to lose 50lbs, or even 5lbs, having pizza is going to have a completely different effect in how far to the left of the continuum we get pulled. And the more I engage in that pizza behavior, over time, the harder it will be for me to bounce back to the right.
Now, letโs say youโre closer to the left to start. Youโre 50+ pounds overweight and you want to drop some fat to look and feel better as well as improve your health so you can live for a long time. Living is awesome. You start making some healthier food choices and exercising, and you start moving closer to the right of the continuum. Youโre doing great, congrats! Down 20lbs of fatโwoo-hoo! Now, at 30lbs of fat down, youโre stuck. Youโre eating healthier than youโve ever eaten, youโre exercising and engaging in all kinds of new behaviors that should be moving you closer to the right on the continuum. At the same time, youโre engaging in all sorts of behaviors that are pulling you to the left, albeit moderately: drinking only on Saturday nights, cheat meal on Friday, crackers on Sunday, whatever. Your โmoderationโ is holding you back. Actually, donโt think about it as moderation; think about it as choices that pull you to the left of the spectrum. Itโs that simple!
Where do you want to be? Do you want to see your abs? You need to be doing all the things that push you to the right and virtually none of the things that throw you to the left. Have you lost 30 pounds of fat, and now youโre stuck? You need to start doing more things that push you to the right and less that pull you to the left. Are you lean and you want to get ripped? What got you lean is not whatโs going to take you to the next level. Youโre going to need to accept that and step outside your comfort zone.
Notice, in our example, we said drop โfatโ, not drop โweight.โ You can calorically eat an appropriate amount of twinkies, starting tomorrow, and drop lots of pounds! However, youโre certainly not ever going to have a lean, shapely physique or a healthy one at that! You could probably live a long life hanging out in the very middle of our continuum: exercising 5x per week, following a โmoderatelyโ healthy eating plan, having three cigarettes a week, having a cheat day on the weekend, two Reeseโs cups every other night, and balancing an incredibly stressful work life with a completely relaxed home life. You will have some extra pounds around the midsection and a greater potential of a possible health scare here and there, but you could conceivably last a long time. However, if youโre this person, and you want to experience what itโs like to have amazing energy and vitality while being completely comfortable in your own skin and any outfit you would ever choose to wear and also mitigating any potential health scares to a minimum, youโre going to need to make some changes!
There is no such thing as moderation, only choicesโchoices that bring you closer to your goals or further from them. I truly believe itโs important to understand that. My heart goes out to people whoโve made some amazing positive changes, saw some incredible results, and then find themselves stuck and frustrated. Oftentimes, itโs simply because society has ingrained this idea of moderation in our head, and they donโt realize that it is their choices that are keeping them from what they want.
The takeaway: if you want to get leaner and healthier, do more healthy things and fewer unhealthy things. The greater an imbalance in favor of healthy things, the further you can take your health and aesthetic goals.
About the author
Chris Rombola
Chris is the owner of Fit House. He's run the training departments at several commercial gyms, and after years of seeing how awful those environments were for his clients, he opened his own studio. He is devoted to getting people strong, lean, and healthy.