When it comes to long term success and permanent results the ultimate solution is to embrace the body sculpting lifestyle and become fascinated with your ability to continuously enhance your physique throughout your lifetime.
There is a reason why 95% of people who lose weight end up gaining it all back. It’s not because their diet failed them. It’s because they no longer have a goal to aim for. They achieved what they set out to do, but lost the passion for improving their physique. They treated this one transformation as the end all goal… achieve the goal and then get back to living a “normal life”.
A body sculptor or “Physique Artist” as I like to refer to myself as, strives for continuous improvement. They always have something to aim for. The word maintenance takes on a bit of a different meaning. It’s more of an active maintenance. The goals don’t always have to be monumental and there are times when you can rest a bit, soak up all of your victories, and look forward to the year ahead. I call this the Seasons of Growth and discussed it in great detail in an article at Tom Venuto’s Burn The Fat Inner Circle called, Life After Contests. I encourage you to read that article after you read this post.
One of the best ways to illustrate my point is to share an example of someone who is living the body sculpting lifestyle. I can’t think of a better example than a friend of mine from Tom Venuto’s Inner Circle, Brian Norberg (photo to the right).
When Brian began his journey back in 2007 weighing 296 pounds and was 46.9% body fat. During the next six months he released 50 pounds and that’s when he came across Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle and adopted the body sculpting lifestyle.
During his first year of following the Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle diet plan Brian released 72 more pounds and got down to 6.7% body fat. The result is what you see in photo below on the left hand side…
At this point Brian had achieved his goal. He now weighed 122 lbs less than he did 18 months earlier and he even gained 5 pounds of muscle in the process.
…But Brian wasn’t done at this point. He had caught the body sculpting lifestyle bug. It was now time to enhance his physique by adding lean and sexy muscle. After a few months on a muscle building phase he went back to a fat loss phase to release the little bit of fat that he gained while on the muscle building phase.
The end result of this is pictured in the middle photo above where he had gained 7.5 pounds of muscle and was now at 4.7% body fat.
What an unbelievable visual impact it made for Brian to add muscle to his physique. After his initial weight loss you can see that he had some loose skin. Adding muscle and releasing a bit more fat (plus time), helped his skin tighten up BIG TIME!
Brian is lean in that first photo after releasing 122 lbs and achieving 6.7% body fat… but after gaining muscle and burning a bit more fat he was totally RIPPED!!!
Continuing with the Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle plan and living the body sculpting lifestyle, Brian then went on to do another muscle building phase followed by his 3rd fat loss phase. The end result is seen in the photo to the right pictured above where he now had gained an additional 9 pounds of muscle and measured in at 5.9% body fat, which is a little higher than his previous fat loss phase.
…and Brian is still not done. He just completed another muscle building phase and is about to begin another fat loss phase. He has truly embraced the body sculpting lifestyle and treats this as a lifelong journey of self improvement and self discovery. The most important thing… he’s enjoying the journey and the process itself.
It’s been 4 1/2 years and Brian continues to improve his physique. While others worry about being among the 95% of the population that will regain the weight that they lost plus more, Brian counts himself among the 5% who succeed in the long term. By embracing the body sculpting lifestyle and treating your body as a work of art that can continue to be sculpting for the long term, Brian can basically guarantee that he’ll never gain that weight back.
Brian is also proof that the Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle plan is a diet that can be followed for life. He applies the strategies when he’s burning fat, building muscle, or maintaining his weight. Diet isn’t temporary… calorie reduction is temporary. By the way, Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle is exactly what I follow. When it comes to body sculpting nutrition, there is nobody that I trust more than Tom Venuto.
I hope that you too will embrace this body sculpting lifestyle and discover the joy in the process itself. The key point that I hope you take away from this post is to view your personal transformations as Seasons of Growth. There’s a season for fat loss where you grow and learn from that process. There’s a season for muscle building where you physically and mentally grow from the process. And There’s seasons where you may want to relax a little bit, maintain your weight, but improve in other areas such as flexibility or mindset.
One of the great benefits of viewing your body transformation in different “Seasons” is from the motivational angle. When you are getting toward the end of a fat loss phase and busting your butt to burn off that last bit of stubborn fat, you can begin to get excited about the muscle building phase that is just around the corner. This in itself can give you the incentive to push hard for the next few weeks, knowing and understanding that you will get to shift gears soon and set new goals to achieve.
One more recommendation that I have is to read Jim Rohn’s book called Seasons of Life. You can find it on Amazon or at your local bookstore. It’s a quick read, but it really puts this philosophy into perspective. I highly recommend it.
Alright… that’s a wrap! I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic. please take a moment to share your feedback in the comment box below.
It’s time to ROCK!
Sculpt a Masterpiece,
Scott Tousignant
About The Author
Scott Tousignant, BHK, is a Certified Fitness Consultant with a passion for transforming fitness enthusiasts into physique artists. His most recent program, Metabolic Masterpiece guides you through the process of sculpting your body into a work of art, by applying what Scott has coined, “The A.T.T.R.A.C.T. Formula.
With his synergistic, boredom busting body sculpting workouts you will melt stubborn fat and gain muscle while skyrocketing your metabolism!