We don’t have to stand in another’s shoes to provide insight. Being equipped to relate through personal experience isn’t a prerequisite to offer counsel or guidance. Rather, assisting in another’s human development is about interest and care.

A few days back, I received this message from a Dallas-based reader:

I seek your opinion on my particular situation. I understand completely if you can’t respond to all of your blog readers individually, but I thought I would send this out anyway. I am well overweight (I am 42, and weighed 326 lbs at 5’ 11” five weeks ago) and have been gaining since my college weight of 190. I have tried and had temporary success with a couple of diet approaches to weight loss and have lost the weight twice. However, at the end of each I always felt weak and inevitably put the weight back on. The result is my body fat % is very poor at over 50%, according to my Fit Bit scale. Worse yet, within the last year I found myself thinking in terms of just accepting that I’m going to be fat the rest of my life…….I’m getting off track… I wanted to write you to see if you had any advice specifically for individuals in my situation. I’ve searched some of the blog and received some good input on focusing on the process (Baseball is Life 10/19/14). That really is excellent and fits me.

Immediately, I think about energy, movement and the law of inertia. We get in motion and we tend to stay in motion. Physics are not unique to you and I or anyone.

Our reader may be fighting hormonal issues that I’m not dealing with. From authoritynutrition.com:

…the behavior, increased food intake and decreased exercise, is secondary to changes in the function of hormones (1). It turns out that there are well defined biological mechanisms that can explain how the foods we eat disrupt the function our our hormones, which makes us eat more and gain weight (2).

At the surface level, I have never seen the world through this reader’s lenses. I acknowledge that genetically, we are not terribly alike. I can’t offer advice based on personal experience. However, he and I share the commonality of having started a journey with quite some distance to travel. Years ago in Spring Training in Port Charlotte, Florida, I set out to learn to play the bass guitar. At the time, acquiring this skill seemed fairly overwhelming, but like our Dallas reader, I wanted the end result. Obviously, I grabbed my laptop, found a teacher and was off to the races.

This isn’t a particularly apt analogy. I wasn’t in a state of despair prior. Our reader had reached a point of dire straits. The bass and his thought that he might accept the fact that he’d be “fat for the rest my life” are not terribly similar, but there are basic principles that apply. Get moving, take a step, and create energy. Among baseball’s most antiquated principles is the idea that a good hitting or pitching coach must have been a professional player. This is utter BS. Player development is human development. If you can sharpen men, you can sharpen professional baseball players. See Belichick, Bill.

Additionally, I’m passionate about health, training, etc., so even though I can’t relate exactly, I will reach into my bag and offer up a few thoughts.

Right about now, our reader doesn’t care about our similarities or differences. He wants action steps. We’re aligned. I want to provide them. I have only three, and despite my inability to relate directly, I believe with every cell in my body that these are the only necessary adjustments. The ripple effect of the energy and movement coupled with the tangibility of step two will change this reader’s life.

1. First move, awareness. Carrying excess body fat doesn’t inherently say something negative about a human.
2. Cut out processed foods. “A study published in Nutrition Journal looked at the impact the Western diet and lifestyle has on people’s immune function. It found that the large number of calories in processed and fast food may lead to health problems such as increased inflammation, reduced control of infection, increased rates of cancer, and increased risk for allergic and auto-inflammatory disease.” Being ill doesn’t provide an optimal environment to reach fitness goals. Processed foods are keeping America fat.
3. Third move, awareness. Notice the tiny body adaptations. A muscle here, a belt size there. The incremental changes over time will lead to a different being, but it won’t happen tomorrow. Derive confidence from movement in the right direction. Inertia, baby.

At the end of the day, all of fitness goals have a ton of commonality. Reaching them require a lifestyle change. It’s a commitment to oneself to behave differently over the remaining days of our life. The most critical step of this staircase is the first one.