Society has enabled unhealthy behaviors under the guise of “moderation,” and people get frustrated when, unbeknownst to them, this “moderation” is the underlying reason they don’t 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, “Keep making small, sustainable steps in the right direction. You’re right; moderation is ok. Slowly over time, you’ll make more and more positive changes with the result being better health, longevity, and aesthetics!”
It’s as if I MUST add the part about moderation so as not to hurt someone’s feelings. Why don’t I just say, “Start with small steps. Over time, those small steps will have a compound effect, and you’ll get closer and closer to your goals. Before you know it, these new healthy behaviors will be second nature, and you’ll have better health, longevity, and aesthetics—provided you don’t fuck it up with all sorts of subversion you want to call “moderation.” I sometimes do say that, depending on my audience, and it’s the truth!
Rather than think in terms of moderation, I suggest changing the perspective. I’m going to preface what follows suggesting you try to see the forest despite the trees; look at the overall theme of what’s 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, let’s 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, isn’t it?) hit this person full force and he’s dead.
On the far-right side of the continuum, we have someone who is… ripped? Jacked? Super lean? No, let’s 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. Wouldn’t that be malnutrition too? Yea, but we’re 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, I’m not “dieting” 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.
I’m happy being ripped right now and am content to stay here. I don’t want to make the changes necessary to move more to the right, nor do I want to move in the opposite direction. I don’t 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 I’d go back to the right, right? Sort of. I’d 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 wouldn’t 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? You’ll 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 you’re 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 who’s 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, let’s say you’re closer to the left to start. You’re 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. You’re doing great, congrats! Down 20lbs of fat—woo-hoo! Now, at 30lbs of fat down, you’re stuck. You’re eating healthier than you’ve ever eaten, you’re 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, you’re 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 “moderation” is holding you back. Actually, don’t think about it as moderation; think about it as choices that pull you to the left of the spectrum. It’s 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 you’re 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 what’s going to take you to the next level. You’re going to need to accept that and step outside your comfort zone.
Notice, in our example, we said drop “fat”, not drop “weight.” You can calorically eat an appropriate amount of twinkies, starting tomorrow, and drop lots of pounds! However, you’re 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 “moderately” healthy eating plan, having three cigarettes a week, having a cheat day on the weekend, two Reese’s 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 you’re this person, and you want to experience what it’s 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, you’re going to need to make some changes!
There is no such thing as moderation, only choices—choices that bring you closer to your goals or further from them. I truly believe it’s important to understand that. My heart goes out to people who’ve made some amazing positive changes, saw some incredible results, and then find themselves stuck and frustrated. Oftentimes, it’s simply because society has ingrained this idea of moderation in our head, and they don’t 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.
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