A Science Project for Everyone

I was giving a corporate presentation last week and someone came up to me afterwords and asked, "What's your secret? How do you get into the kind of shape you're in?" I replied, "It's no secret, you've got to get your diet under control. Get your diet right and the rest will follow." The questioner kind of rolled his eyes, and said, "Yes, but what are you doing? Weights? High reps? How many hours a week?"

This happens a lot. People don't want to hear about the diet. It's too obvious an answer. It's not sexy. They think they know all about that diet stuff and they want to skip ahead to the good stuff.

But your diet is the good stuff. It's the secret. It's the silver bullet. If you got your diet right and didn't do a single push up or sit up you'd still look fantastic. I feel like Cassandra repeating this week in and week out and still having people think I'm holding out on them.

So I'm going to give you a little science project. You will need a note taking device such as your smart phone or the good old pad and paper.

Now, for the next few weeks, when you go to the supermarket, I want you to snoop on your fellow shoppers. Your first task is to judge what kind of shape they're in. Here are the categories:

Group 4
High body fat. Neck will seem short. Face will be jowly. Fingers will appear close together. Movement will be somewhat labored. Clothes will bulge at certain points and be baggy at others.

Group 3
Average body fat. Clothes look ok but around the waistline and chest there will be a bit of bulge. One area in particular will be storing a lot of fat, usually the breast, the buttocks, or the face.

Group 2
Low body fat. Shirts will hang from the rib area without visible contact with the skin. The neck will seem longer and the face more elongated. Some of the larger veins will be visible on the arms and hands.

Group 1
Very low body fat. You know what this looks like, as you are bombarded with images of it in every advertisement in the supermarket you're in!

So, once you've assigned the person a group, I want you to add the letter (S) or (W) to their rank. S stands for strong. This person seems to have a lot of muscle, either visible or under the surface. They move with confidence and have no trouble getting through their tasks. The W stands for Weak and means that the person is carrying very little muscle. Their movements will be somewhat hesitant and unfocused. The "S" and "W" ranks are a bit tricky to evaluate but you'll get the hang of it soon enough.


So, some examples:
This woman is a 2W. Do you see how her bent arm has almost no tone?

This woman is a 2S. See how the arm has visible musculature underneath, and check out that sternomastoid!

This guy is doing his best to hide that he's a 3W. The sloping shoulder line and lack of width in the chest where the stripe on his sweater are giveaways that there's not much muscle underneath.

4S. Her posture tells us she's got some muscle under there. A close call though.

1W. The classic "skinny girl". Sloped shoulders and baggy sleeves indicate there's not a lot of muscle mass in her body.

4W. Let's make a future where this ranking is obsolete!

2W. Lack of leg tone and weak shoulders!

See the triceps and calf? Those lines tell you low body fat and high muscle. The posture with the shoulders back and squared is another giveaway. 1S.

This guys jowls show that he's just barely a 3. The arm held in that position should have more structure to it, which makes me give him a 3W, although it's not far from an S.

You get the idea. We're not going for absolute accuracy, here. Just ballpark rankings. And remember, we aren't making value judgments about the character of these people. We're just trying to get a handle on where their bodies are at this moment in time. Don't be emotional about this exercise. Be scientific!

Now that you've categorized your neighbor, we're ready for the fun part.

Look in their shopping cart. When you have a chance, note the products and quantity of those products. Try to capture info on three or four different body types per shopping trip.

And that's it! Do this for three weeks. After those three weeks I'll post again with what I've found doing this experiment and would be happy to discuss what you've found. Get out there and discover for yourself what makes a body look like it does.

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