What You Can Learn From Kirstie Alley

Kirstie Alley was on Oprah recently discussing how she fell off the wagon and regained the weight she had lost. I won't go into all the details here but I want to address a couple of aspects of Kirstie's desired comeback.

The former Cheers star admitted that one of the main reasons for her backslide was that the Jenny Craig folks stopped coming to weigh her every week when she stopped being their spokesperson. She wasn't blaming them; she was simply explaining that she lost her forced accountability.

If you really want to drop some excess baggage and know that you have a hard time doing it on your own, make yourself accountable to someone else.

Join a group or transformation contest, locally or online. (There's a new Turbulence Training Transformation Contest starting today today. There are cash prizes and social support. You can check it out here ==> TT Transformation Contest.).

You can also have a friend or relative weigh you every week, just make sure it's not someone who will make excuses for you. Sign up for a bootcamp class or personal training. (If you're in Lancaster, you can contact me about either.)

Once you've met your goal, if you're concerned about falling off the wagon, continue to be accountable to someone for a certain period of time. Then, if you've maintained your weight loss, you can go it on your own or cut back to every other week or monthly weigh-ins with your accountability partner.

Besides the fact that she let her nutrition slide and stopped weighing in, Kirstie had all of her exercise equipment moved into the garage for storage. It was bad enough that her equipment looked like a machine circuit with lots of isolation exercises and no adjustable resistance but she wasn't even using what she had.

Listen, folks, as far as exercise and weight loss goes, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that you don't need to spend hours exercising. The "bad" news is that you have to exert yourself for best results.

Sweating is good. Breathing hard is good. Challenging yourself is good- mentally and physically.

So many people sell themselves short as far as what they're capable of doing. The Biggest Loser is a perfect example. I am absolutely not advocating those types of workouts but every season contestants talk about how they never believed they were capable of the things they end up doing on the show. Like the old Phillies tag line said, "You Gotta Believe!"

Here's the bottom line for Kirstie or anyone else looking to dump fat...

Concentrate of eating more whole, natural foods and less processed crap. Get moving about 30 minutes a day; break it up if you have to. Complete 2-3 total body strength training workouts per week on non-consecutive days and focus on compound movements (Squats, Lunges, Pulldowns, Pushups, Presses, Rows, etc.) Forget traditional cardio and incorporate cardio intervals and/or bodyweight circuits into your routine.

Kirstie, if you're serious about the strength training, call me. You'll get much better results in less time if you get your butt off those machines and work out the way I just described.