How To Lose 10-20 Pounds By Thanksgiving - Part 3
It's rampant, contagious, and has infected most Americans.
It kills millions each year and puts an enormous strain on the healthcare system. And the antidote is not an mRNA vaccine, peptide, or antibiotic.
The disease is Allornothingitis.
Patient zero: Venice Beach, mid 1970s.
From there it spread worldwide through documentaries, magazines, and eventually Instagram. It infects the host, infiltrates the brain, and convinces them that if they miss one workout, eat one meal off plan, or can't maintain 10% body fat, the correct response is to quit forever.
Mechanism of action
Allornothingitis takes hold in three main ways:
People confuse a deviation with a failure. One missed workout, restaurant meal, or weekend of drinking feels like evidence that the plan is "off." Once the person thinks they've failed, there's less reason to keep trying the rest of the day/week.
Restriction makes the pendulum swing harder. If someone thinks "I'm not allowed to eat pizza," all they can think about is eating pizza. Then they have a slice and think "well, I already screwed up, so I might as well eat everything." The stricter the rules, the more catastrophic breaking one can feel.
Fitness culture rewards perfection. Social media is full of people showing their most disciplined days: perfect meals, 5am workouts, 10k steps, meal prep. It creates the impression that this is what consistency looks like. True consistency includes a lot of imperfect days, and nobody posts those.
Risk factors: high performers
The bad news is this disease preferentially infects high performers. All-or-nothing has a great track record in your life because it closed the deal, shipped the project, and helped you ace the exam. It works anywhere with a deadline, but fat loss doesn't have one.
The good news: there's a cure.
Be consistently good enough
The only known cure is 75mg of GoodEnough, taken orally twice daily with high-protein meals. Side effects may include enjoying weekends, liking how you look, and losing 10 to 20 pounds by Thanksgiving.
Do not discontinue GoodEnough if you miss a dose. Missing a dose is the point of GoodEnough.
Remember, the only way to lose fat is to eat fewer calories than you burn (by eating less, moving more, or both).
Your physiology doesn't care about your thoughts or feelings. It doesn't care whether you eat your calories in the morning or at night, how hard you're trying, how badly you want it, or whether you think it's fair.
It cares about one thing: are you eating fewer calories than you burn?
Do that, and you lose fat.
And the best way to do that consistently is to shoot for 75%.
In other words, be okay with good enough.
My friend Matt frames this really well:
"There are two main reasons aiming for 75% will work:
You're already expecting failure. What messes most people up is not the singular "failure" from an unhealthy meal, it is their reaction to that so-called failure. One unhealthy meal Friday night turns into an entire "screw it" weekend. But if you're already expecting failure, it takes the pressure off. That same unhealthy meal Friday night turns into "oh, this was already part of my plan." And you get back on track the next day. Which leads to point two…
The consistency will add up over time. Some days you'll have 25% days, others 100%. But you'll likely be able to hit 75% on average, especially if you "automate" your first two meals of the day and go for a daily walk. This eliminates the all-or-nothing mentality and turns it into the always something mentality."
I love that last line. "Always something mentality" is the difference between people that lose 20+ pounds and keep it off, and those that are always starting over on Monday.
Zoom out
An effective adjunct treatment for Allornothingitis is 200mg of ZoomingOut.
In a single evening it can feel catastrophic if you rage-eat an entire pizza and go 1,500 calories over target. And seeing 3,500 in your food app when you're supposed to be at 2,000 does not feel good.
But pop a ZoomingOut and chill.
Let's say 2,000 is what you need to lose fat. That's 14,000 calories for the week and about 60,000 for the month, which means that in the overall context of you trying to lose fat, that terrible night was 1,500 out of 60,000. And for the year, it’s a rounding error.
Same applies to working out. If one week is absolutely insane at work and you get to the gym once instead of three times, it's a 33%, an F minus minus minus. It feels pretty bad when you look at it that way.
But again, take your ZoomingOut. Three workouts a week is 156 a year, and THAT's what your grade is out of, so two missed workouts in a week is nothing.
Now, this is a slippery slope and it can easily become an excuse, and you can't apply this generous style of thinking every week or you won't make progress. But on those tough days and tough weeks, just remember we're playing the long game.
And in a game of months, years, and decades, a bad day or a bad week means nothing.
Your desire for perfection is keeping you fat
To recap:
First, we covered the physics, and eating more calories than you burn is why you're carrying the fat. But everyone already knows that, and "just move more and eat less" has never been enough, because knowing the what was never the problem.
The next day, we learned that decision fatigue is keeping you fat.
And today we see that your all-or-nothing mentality is keeping you fat.
"Keeping you fat" is a harsh way to put it, but I'm doing it intentionally because I've worked with hundreds of clients who have had "move more, eat less" beaten into their heads so many times that they think decision fatigue and perfectionism are fluffy, nice-to-haves rather than need-to-haves in the fat loss process.
They absolutely are not.
They're two of the four primary causes that go beyond basic energy balance, and here's what we're fixing:
Too many decisions ✅
All-or-nothing mindset ✅
No strategy for weekends/social events
No clarity on what you want and why
Two down, two to go. Address all four and you'll finally lose the fat.
Next up is the one that wrecks the most people: weekends and social events. You can still lose fat while going to parties and work dinners and crushing a few beers on the grass at a Dave Matthews concert.
Tomorrow I’ll show you how.
Best,
John
P.S. If walking through the door at Thanksgiving 10-20 pounds lighter isn't enticing enough, how would you feel about less pain too?
Every client who signs up for the Healthy For The Holidays program gets a full movement assessment with me (a doctor of physical therapy) plus a prehab protocol built directly into their training program, so the knee/shoulder/low back that's been nagging you for the last two years finally gets addressed professionally (a $300-$500 value).
Fewer belt loops plus a body that doesn't complain when you get up off the couch sounds like a pretty sweet combo to me.
3 Steps You Can Take
Apply for coaching - If you’re ready to start, you can fill out a coaching application here (it takes 90 seconds or less). Best case, you change your life. Worst case, I’ll help you draw up a road map to get closer to your goals.
Sign up for my newsletter - If you’d like to hear more, sign up for my mailing list here.
Keep learning - You can check out my other articles here. Nobody asked me to, but I’ve spent a ton of time researching everything from artificial sweeteners to saturated fat to testosterone and more, so you don’t have to.
