Devlin Brown at the water cooler: Real change takes time and a healthy dose of honesty

I am becoming disillusioned with my lack of progress. I embarked on a gym, cardio and diet programme months ago and I swear there’s been no change, possibly even a regression. Is this normal?

France is known for its cuisine, Ireland for drinking, Japan for resilience, Germany for efficiency, and SA, well we’re surely right up there as the land of pervasive disillusionment.

It’s quite normal to feel disillusioned when you don’t see progress. We’re witnessing how egos, an infantile understanding of political wins and losses, and unbelievably daft own goals can kill off any green shoots of progress before they even have a chance to take root.

Just like a body, a country’s failure to transform can be self-inflicted. It makes one question the sanity, or worse, the intention of those propped up by millions of voters desperate for improvement in their lives.

One wonders, is a bill marketed as a solution to unlock universal healthcare actually intended to collapse a private healthcare system that ironically keeps our extremely well-fed politicians vertical instead of horizontal? Are the recently gazetted proposals for the private security industry designed to rein in rogue and non-compliant providers or to incapacitate the only thing keeping communities marginally safe while the police sit at the local KFC drive-through?

Disillusionment is real. But it need not lead to a paralysing realisation that you have no option but to accept failure and quit. That’s not the SA way. And so, rather than behave like a startled gnu, galloping and jumping wildly to evade a lion it can’t yet see, take a breath. Pause and take stock. How did you get here? What should you be doing differently? Be honest and make the decisions most likely to deliver results, not those designed to reinforce your own biases, which got you here in the first place.

If you take the time to look for it, you’ll find that research suggests it takes anywhere from two to six months to start seeing meaningful results. And these “meaningful” results include fat loss, muscle gain and improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness, strength and power.

Yes, we have all seen the “transformation challenges”. I have done one. You can see remarkable results in as little as three months, a complete overhaul, if you will. But these challenges are incredibly intense, with diets that are not sustainable for most people. And so, sustained results and long-term lifestyle changes are not guaranteed. There could be overtraining, an unwillingness to feel hungry any longer or even just a healthy dose of feeling gatvol — another thing South Africans are known for.

It’s not impossible to find people who use these challenges to embark on a lifelong journey. I’m married to one, but the sustainable path she’s on now, while not feeling hungry, is a million miles from the three months it took for her to win Body For Life more than two decades ago.

The truth is that real change takes much longer than a challenge. A year, maybe two. Progress is only really visible when you look back. The improvements are so tiny you may not see any for months. Progress is not a linear upward trend, the graph’s line is erratic and volatile — it reflects the coalition of life.

Here’s the bit that requires honesty. Are you really eating the right amount of protein, the right portions and at the right times? Are you consuming hidden calories? A wedge of watermelon, that’s 1/16th of a whole fruit, cut up and eaten has all the nutrients you may be aware of, but it’s also the equivalent of six teaspoons of sugar. An apple has the equivalent of just under five teaspoons of sugar.

Don’t misinterpret this. No-one is anti-fruit. The point is you may think you aren’t packing sugar into your body when, in fact, you are. This thought experiment could be extended to dairy and breads, to fatty meat and grains. Nevermind the sweets. Find a professional, get the right diet advice for you, and stick to it.

Make sure you are training with the right intensity, the right resistance and the right frequency. If the diet is in check, the training is good, hormonal and other medical issues have been ruled out, then your progress is on its way. Trust the process.