You Can't Outrun a Poor Diet

By Rob Maxwell

This book is how to lose weight. It is my experience as a teenager and my expertise as an Exercise Physiologist. This is the way to lose weight that is based in science and experience. It is a non-fad, straightforward book on how to lose weight the correct way and to keep it off. It is not a fad diet book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Nov 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662928475

Book preview

THIS IS HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT

You may read the title of this book and think to yourself that there is no way the world needs another weight loss book. Are you thinking that? I wouldn’t blame you one bit. I’ve rallied against there being so many different weight loss books in the past.

My opinion now is that the world does need another weight loss book. Why? People are either not losing weight and keeping it off or not losing weight at all. Look at the data. You’d have to have your head in the sand to not realize that we are getting more and more overweight as a society. According to the CDC, as of March 2017, 41.9% of the United States is Obese.¹ And according to Healthline, another 32.5% of people in the United States are overweight.² If you put these statistics together, that means over 70% of the U.S. is overweight and/or obese.

It is my opinion that we need another weight loss book also because many health and fitness experts aren’t actual experts. Most states in the United States do not require a license to work as a personal trainer. Many diet books are written by professional bodybuilders or fitness influencers. I know this because I myself have a master’s degree in Exercise Physiology, I am certified by the American College of Sports Medicine, I am certified by the National Strength and Conditioning Association, and I am a licensed Sports Nutritionist. A statement I use a lot at my gym is you don’t ask a race horse how it got fast. What I mean by this is that just because a person may look fit, it doesn’t mean they know how the science works. The diet industry is a billion-dollar industry, so you must make sure that the person who you are taking advice from in this area has an advanced degree in exercise physiology or nutrition. I want more books on weight loss and fitness to be written by people who have experience, yes, but also by people who have credentials such as education. When I look at the bookshelves in this genre, I see too many experts who look the part but don’t have a lot of titles after their name.

I recently just published a book called There Is a Method to the Madness, which is a book written about different subjects regarding health and fitness. Among many people’s favorite parts is the chapter on weight loss. It’s a small part in the book, but I realized that people want to know even more about weight loss. I consider myself to be an expert on this. I have the credentials, as I make clear above, but I have also worked over twenty-eight years in the industry with countless clients who want to lose weight. But most importantly, I learned firsthand how to lose weight at an early age, and this experience sparked my desire to get into the field—which led to great passion.

Have you ever had so much confidence in a skill that you don’t have to look anything up or you don’t need to seek counsel from anybody else on the subject? That’s how I feel about weight loss. I feel this way about many things in the health and fitness industry, but this is about weight loss, and I feel this way. I really do know the proper way to lose weight, and I know why many people don’t follow this way: it’s hard! But I also know tricks to help people through that! It frustrates me when I speak to people who won’t just commit to the proper, proven way and who continue to try to follow all the silly tricks and schemes of fitness influencers. Follow the right process, and you will be successful. It is so hard for people to follow a process and follow rules. We find this difficult as a species. I want to put a book out there specifically about weight loss because I want the people who I know to have all the information. If they choose to follow it, they will reach their goal; if they go back to half-doing it, I still did my part and put the information out there.

I once heard a phrase from a mental health counselor. He told me, You can go all the way around the world when all you have to do is turn around. This always stuck with me. To me, this is what I’m talking about when talking about losing weight. I’ve studied it all. I can say for sure that I’ve really searched all over for the right information. The reason I did, and do this, is because it matters to me. I care about the subject. Losing weight changed my life, and ever since then, I have studied it. It’s an interest. What do you do when you have an interest? If you like cars, you try to find the best way to make your car faster, right? If you like playing the piano you continue to learn and improve your craft, right? I’m not saying that weight loss is my only interest. I’m saying that it’s a major interest. My searching for the miracle pill that doesn’t exist benefits you because it gives me all the information you need. You will learn as we go that I already knew how to do it when I was young, and most, if not all, the educating I did for myself just proved I already knew what I needed to know.

As a trainer, fewer things are more frustrating than trying to help someone lose weight. Ask any trainer or expert and they will agree. Part of the problem is that people really don’t want to change—bad enough, at least. Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die is a saying a client of mine says often, and I believe it pertains to this subject. For those people, it would be nice to have a concrete formula for them to follow. Sadly, marketing has misled them, and there is bias in most information that goes public regarding these things. The science has been available and true for the most part. Has it changed some? Of course. We’ve learned more. We are supposed to evolve in our knowledge. Where it goes off the rails isn’t so much in the science but in the marketing of selling products; and often the product is diets. Weight loss is a billion-dollar industry.

A saying I’ve seen come true so many times in my career is don’t tell me what to do, tell me what you do. This is so true. I watch many young trainers go around telling people what to do, and that is their job, in part, right? Yes, but so often if, as a trainer, you have what someone wants (a more fit body) you must tell them what you’ve done. This means you must live it. I can think of countless times when I’ve been discussing the science of weight loss and what works to lose weight and a client will ask, Is that what you do? It’s a great question. I’ve always said that in the field of personal training or any other allied health-related field, you must practice what you preach. That doesn’t mean that you can’t ever have bad foods. I don’t preach that, anyway. What that means is that if you tell people how to eat to lose weight or maintain weight and if you are doing a not-so-great job if it yourself, then the message will go flat. Often, I have run into clients at the grocery store. You can guess what one of the first things they do is, right? Yes, they look in my cart. They won’t get that gotcha moment; I live what I preach. Do I need to lose weight? No. But I also don’t want to gain it, and don’t want to lose my fitness, so I eat the way I preach to eat.

I learned at a young age how to lose weight. I was a teenager. If I’m being exact, I’d say it was at the age of seventeen. It was the summer before my senior year of high school. Thank God I got inspired that summer because it absolutely changed my high school experience. I firmly believe that I learned how to