Making the Grade

This article comes from a friend of mine. Read through it. Ask yourself the questions she proposes. How do you stack up?

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Making the Grade by Marlene Harris, NSCA-CSCS, NASM-CES

While chatting about knots and kinks in nutrition and fitness efforts, I inadvertently stumbled upon a concept that seemed to resonate with a couple people. In this edition, I’m going to cast a broader net highlighting the discussion in hopes that it may stimulate thinking about where your own efforts shake out on the continuum.

In one instance, following a somewhat lackluster weigh n’ measure, I was discussing nutrition efforts with a gal at the gym, and I asked her to name, as a percentage, the amount of time she was “on task” in following her program. She reported “about 70-75% of the time”. I responded, “Oh, a “C”.

She looked at me quizzically, so I followed up with; “You’re getting a “C” as a grade, you’re doing C (average) work.” She responded; “Wow! I never thought of it that way!” This seemed to clarify things for her, and she noted that perhaps some improvements were in order to spark better results.

Most of us are brought up in educational systems that assign a letter grade as a representation of the quality or quantity of our efforts. Add to this my protracted (understatement!) tenure as a college student, and assigning a letter grade to a percentage is about as automatic as Pavlov’s pup’s response to the dinner bell. Outside of academia, the idea and has a good track record here in the rest of life as well; wonky efforts, wonky results, average efforts, average results, above average efforts, above average results, and so forth.

Here’s the connector; recent research is suggests that, in order to make any measurable and motivating progress on fat loss, you need to be “at least 90% compliant” in your chosen plan of attack. In other words, you need to be following your plan at least 90% of the time and over the long haul, not just for a day or a week or two. Of course, in the world of grades this 90%+ designation is the equivalent of maintaining an “A” average, doing honor’s level work.

So, how’s your progress? Try to step back and, as objectively as possible, assess the percentage of time you’ve been true to your game plan. Don’t have one? Well, there’s the first issue. If you don’t have a game plan, get one. Words to live by: “Fail to plan, plan to fail”. If you do have a game plan, that’s a great start, but you actually have to follow the fool thing in order to get any results. Yes, I know, that’s the tough part. But, what percentage of time are you true to your plan? Below 20%? The big F. Epic fail. 50%? Better than nothing, but still, essentially a fail. 60%? Below average—how’s those results looking, D list? 70-ish? Well, we already have some idea of how that plays out (yawn..). 80%? Not bad, but you’re not fast trackin’ it are you? 90%+? Things should be looking pretty good for you, unless, of course, your plan is flawed (as in, you’re really, really good at following a really bad plan).

All that aside, be honest with yourself as you look at your fitness and fat loss efforts. How’s your report card looking? How are you doing, really? Assign yourself a grade based on the percentage of your efforts. If you’re doing “A” work and getting the results you want, use that as point of congratulations and put yourself on the honor roll. If you’re not, use the unfavorable grade as sign that you need to step up your efforts, same as in school. Want to make the grade? Up the percentage of your efforts, pretty please!