People see what they want to see and interpret it as they please
Ideal theory: Reasons why your body shape doesn't change with diet and strength training, and countermeasures: Table of Contents
Practical application: Training records one year after onset
*This is not a recommendation of the exercises described, but merely a personal experience. Please consult your doctor and exercise according to your own medical condition and physical state.
*Omitted in the text Glossary
From the end of August 2025 to the end of March 2026, I succeeded in a diet of -11.5kg (9.5% reduction in body fat percentage, 0.8kg reduction in muscle mass).
April-May was lean bulk, June was Recomp, and I shifted to lean bulk in July.
As of July 1st, the total is -10.3kg (9.5% reduction in body fat percentage, 0.3kg reduction in muscle mass), and I have increased muscle mass by 0.5kg while keeping the body fat percentage the same.
(In reality, this is the result of maintaining muscle and losing fat in June, following the muscle and fat gained in April-May.)
What I feel there is that people wonder, "Why are you losing weight when you aren't exercising?"
Training recordsThose who know my will understand that I am exercising quite a bit.
However, to those who go to the same gym, I seem to be perceived as "a guy who doesn't really exercise."
I would like to try to unravel this cognitive bias.
If they aren't at the gym, they don't see me (Visibility Bias)
Currently, I go to the gym 6 days a week.
However, if the observer doesn't come to the gym, they cannot recognize that I am exercising.
Suppose they come to the gym twice a week; they always see me (since I am there every day it is open) and mistakenly believe I only come two days a week.
In other words, they wonder, "Why are you losing weight when you go to the gym about as much as I do?"
They only see my training on the days we meet (Intensity Illusion)
Even if I go to the gym 6 days a week, I don't do high-intensity training every day.
On some days, after yoga, I just walk in the pool.
Seeing that, they think, "They only do yoga."
Of course, there are days when I participate in BodyPump or BodyCombat and move intensely, but they don't see that, and they don't care that the quality of movement is different from their own.
They only see me in specific places (Scene Bias)
For example, people who almost only go to the pool only see me at the pool.
Also, people who only do strength training with machines only see me in the machine gym.
Even in the pool, due to schedule constraints, there are days when I can only walk for a little less than 30 minutes as active rest after participating in other programs at night.
"I walk for two hours, so why is that guy losing weight after 30 minutes?" they think.
They don't know the latest training theory (Outdated Theory Bias)
Even in the machine gym, I don't do 3 sets of 10 reps.
I don't spend over an hour on strength training or push myself to the limit.
This is because I am performing more effective training that separates metabolic stress from mechanical tension.
If they don't know that, they probably see me doing only 2 sets of chest presses and think, "Pfft, already done."
In the first place, muscle hypertrophy is just a means to increase the load in BodyCombat (making the engine and chassis bigger to worsen fuel efficiency) and to lower body fat percentage throughout the body; it is not the goal, which might be the gap between me and those around me.
They see and interpret things conveniently (Self-Justification Bias)
In conclusion, I am probably a convenient mirror.
If they interpret it as, "They are losing that much weight while only doing that much exercise."
And then, they are confronted with the reality that they don't lose weight even if they exercise like me (who is a phantom image because I exercise in places they don't know about).
The results are generally in 3 patterns.
They ask how I lost weight (Learning type)
Increasing exercise volume as if competing (excessive effort type)
Attributing success to talent (envy type)
In the case of 1), they are answering honestly.
The person asking is a slightly overweight woman, so I suggest, "Why don't you try walking in the pool or doing some light strength training?"
Of course, the weight loss effect from that is short-term, but if they get results, they might ask again.
In the case of 2), I watch with lukewarm interest.
Even if you walk in the pool for two hours or participate in BodyPump after BodyCombat, if your heart rate is not in the aerobic zone, I have written many times that the disadvantages of catabolism are greater than the benefits of fat burning.
If you do it for a long time, efficiency drops due to fatigue, and doing it for two hours doesn't mean you get double the results of one hour.
As a result, you lose weight, but you also lose muscle, so the efficiency of your exercise continues to worsen.
To lose the same amount of weight as the previous month, you need to exercise for even longer, the amount you can eat decreases, and you won't be able to keep it up.
In the case of 3), I can only sneer.
In the first place, (you may have forgotten) the reason I started exercising again was because I became unable to move due to vestibular neuritis and gained a massive amount of weight, and I was trying to do something about it.
I have a constitution that prioritizes carbohydrates and burns little fat, so if there is a "talent for gaining weight," I have that.
Furthermore, I hated exercise and loved eating and drinking, which led to middle-age spread, and I started exercising out of necessity due to deteriorating health conditions like high blood sugar, dyslipidemia, and high blood pressure; I have not a shred of talent for exercise.
In other words, I just made an effort to lose weight through self-analysis and self-experimentation.
Well, if envying others brings you good results, go right ahead.
(Perhaps due to stress, I only see them getting worse.)
If they analyzed it a little more, they would realize that if they acknowledge the cause of "I haven't changed, but others have" as the other person's effort, they would have to admit their own lack of effort.
That is why they want to achieve mental stability by replacing the cause of results achieved with "the same level of effort" as themselves with "talent."
Goals are good, but "envy" is a denial of effort
Regarding the goal of "wanting to be like this," I think it is perfectly fine to have the feeling of "I want to be like this person."
However, "envy" is a word that denies that person's effort.
It is no different from the aforementioned "attributing success to talent (envy type)."
I also have people I look up to who go to the same gym, and every time I see them stretching, doing strength training, or learning choreography, I think I have to work harder to catch up.
And the effort visible to me is only a few percent of the whole picture.
(That's why they go even further ahead, and I can't catch up.)
Since we are not top athletes, I don't think the difference in talent matters.
After all, this is just a story about body makeup at the level of an ordinary person losing or not losing weight.
Instead of worshiping or envying a phantom image you have hallucinated on your own,
the only path is to acknowledge that they are a person of effort and to make an effort yourself.
For now, I will present the method I used to lose weight (low-insulin maintenance diet method).