IntroductionReflecting back to my lifestyle change 5 years ago, I could never understand why my progress was slow or why I regularly plateaued. I made so many mistakes primarily down to conflicting information in health magazines, TV, journals and social media. The purpose of this post is to provide an insight into the most common 10 mistakes, which people make when trying to lose weight or body fat, based upon my own personal experience and from working closely alongside clients who have also made similar mistakes prior to working with me.
'Excessive Cardio'A woman once approached me in the gym asking for advice on weight loss and fat reduction. “I consume only 1200 calories per day and I do 6 cardio classes per week as well as factoring in a run daily, I can’t understand why I am not losing weight or changing shape?”. People tend to go overboard with cardio. Excessive steady state cardio for over 60 minutes or more than 30 minutes of HIIT (high intensity interval training) in one session could actually be too much for the average person. Excess cardio coupled with an incorrect nutrition strategy will make the body become catabolic, breaking down muscle tissue for fuel. An example of this is ladies who regularly attend cardio classes or busting their ass on the treadmill trying to reduce their bodyfat as well as maintain a 'lean muscular physique'. Have you ever noticed that they never appear to change shape? or still hold a high level of bodyfat despite their frame? The reason for the lack of change is down to muscle wastage, as well as their metabolism dropping due to extreme daily calorie deficit due to the low volume of lean muscle mass. Consuming Fat Free & Low Fat FoodsWhen a person makes a conscious decision to diet, they immediately start swapping their normal food sources for the alternative diet, low fat or fat free option. Did you know that a food item is allowed to claim it is diet or low fat providing the macro nutrient / calories are less than the original? Even if it’s only marginally lower? Foods are marketed in a particular way to sell the product. The better the marketing the more the product sells. If opting for the Reduced or Non Fat product it does not mean it’s healthier, in most cases all you are doing is substituting fat for sugar and chemicals, which can actually contribute to weight, gain. Reduced Fat options involves replacing animal fats with unsaturated vegetable oils. In most cases this means altering the structure of the vegetable oil replacing solid fats. This involves a process called hydrogenation, which creates a solid or semi solid fat. However these hydrogenated fats increase the levels of the dangerous trans-fats, which are bad for the heart and cholesterol levels. As well as replacing animal fats, reduced fat or fat free options has lead to the increase of sugar to ensure that the taste and texture is maintained in the product. The main issue with fats is lack of proper information and education. We often believe that in order to reduce body fat and weight we must cut out carbs and opt for low fat options. However we all need ‘healthy’ fats in our diet. Nuts, oily fish, and seeds are just a few great sources. These types of fats are essential for maintaining blood vessels, hormone control, the functioning of our central nervous system as well as the absorption of certain vitamins. Extreme Low Calorie IntakeUnder eating puts the body into a catabolic state. By starving yourself and eating too few calories you may potentially be gaining more fat. There is also a huge number of health implications when following a low calorie diet long term, leading to nutrient deficiencies, metabolism reduction, muscle loss, and bone loss. You may have heard of the term ‘Body Intelligence’ this is the term used to describe activities performed by the body which are controlled by our autonomous nervous system. Which involves the body taking care of processes or actions without our awareness or interference. When you under eat, the body will start to realise it is being starved and begin to store everything you feed it (normally as fat). Low calorie diets are unsustainable long term and when you do go back to ‘your’ normal way of eating or worst still binging, your body will rebel very quickly. You will gain weight, and in most cases putting on more weight than when you first started. Other side effects include weakness, irregular menstrual cycles, constipation, dizziness, fatigue and more receptive to colds and flu. Your body needs a certain amount of daily calories to carry out vital functions, and this amount varies from person to person, dependant on their age, height, and weight and activity level. For weight and fat loss to occur you need to implement a negative energy balance. You need to decrease calorie intake while keeping energy expenditure the same, or alternatively increase energy expenditure while keeping calories the same. Finding the right balance is key. A 1200 calorie controlled diet will not work for everyone; again this is because we are all different (height, size, level of activity during the day, metabolic rate etc.). When we receive completed questionnaires from clients the short-term goal tends to be ‘reduce body fat and have lean muscle definition’. However an extreme low calorie diet forces the body to take energy from other sources, so you could be more likely to burn muscle as opposed fat. Following the latest FAD DietsWhy put yourself through the trials and tribulations of an aggressive and restrictive diet for results, which are not long lasting? Why not take your time, and change your physique and lifestyle in a healthy and sustainable way, which allows you to maintain your results long term? Fad diets may get you the quick fix for your holiday, wedding or night out, but in reality you are setting yourself up for failure. More often you will end up in a worse off state mentally and physically than when you started. Your health is far more important than a FAD diet, but so many people fail to see this. You should avoid any ‘fad diet’, which claims to:
If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is! You believe the content of Fitness MagazinesJust because your favourite fitness magazine states that you need to exercise X amount of times per week, or eat particular food groups does not mean its fact. A great deal of journalists writing for health and fitness magazines have no qualifications in the topics they are speaking about or have based their articles upon research of sports nutrition papers or recently published academic studies. Your favourite TV presenter undergoing a body transformation does not mean they are experienced and qualified to give advice. They are simply being paid to write a column in a fitness magazine, to increase sales of that publication. The world of health, nutrition and fitness is an ever-changing science. What we believed yesterday is superseded by evidence today. Another factor to remember is every Personal Trainer will have an opinion, and their opinion is normally based on the success they have with clients. If you have signed up with a Personal Trainer or Online Coach, follow their advice and protocol and do not confuse yourself by listening to others. If you were to take on board various sources of information/opinions from different people then all that will come of this is confusion. People tend to follow the advice from people that they agree with or like what they say. I once had a client who created their own nutrition and training plan based upon advice given by different professionals and non-professionals. In reality she only took the advice she liked from each person, for example one person told her that he cheated every Saturday and ate whatever he wanted. So she decided to implement this (even though it never met her goals), she then liked the training regime of another girl at the gym, so asked her for a copy of her plan and followed this. Next she took the prescribed supplements another girl took, because that girl had the abs she wanted and worse still she followed the macro targets given to her by a work colleague because “they were roughly the same build”. Unfortunately it does not work like this, and all your doing is delaying progress and pushing your goal further away. Remember magazines write articles that sell. They know people want a quick fix so they write articles about quick easy transformation. Weekend Blow OutsSorry ladies, but you tend to be the worst offenders. I am yet to have a male client tell me that they deviated from their short-term plan simply because it was the weekend or they had a tough day. Everything in moderation is perfectly acceptable but when you are regularly binging at weekends this will prevent you from achieving optimum results. Males following a nutrition plan in my experience tend to be a lot more disciplined and focused. Nine times out of 10 they are honest and state when they feel they need a treat. If I decide they can’t have it, they follow my advice. Rewarding yourself for being good Monday to Friday can lead to an enormous calorie overspill at the weekend. People can easily consume more than triple their daily intake just by eating take always, treats, and alcohol. Going back to the “excess cardio”, there is a type of person who attends these that I like to call “Off Setters”. They offset bad weekends by reducing their calories and making sensible food choices Monday to Friday, as well as excessive cardio and classes, to offset a weekend of nights out, binge drinking and eating. Their physique stays the same week in week out. There is nothing wrong with this, if they find this the best way to control how they look – but it has huge health implications long term. Over Eating after a WorkoutWe have all been guilty of this. Busting our ass in the gym, and then rewarding yourself with bad food, or generally just over eating. I tend to find that people who do excessive cardio are the worst offenders, they leave their cardio class (often starting to become lethargic), get home, open the cupboards and binge eat on anything they see (normally biscuits, crisps or confectionary), and then still sit down to a huge evening meal. In my experience this is down to a lack of nutritional education, which can be easily corrected. Planning ahead, making sure that there is good food sources at hand after your workout (maybe a protein drink) to sip on after your workout on the journey home? Prepping evening meals in advance? We provide our clients with educational support on nutritional fuelling and recovery and tips and tricks to prevent over eating after a workout. Limited Nutrition KnowledgeJust because a food source is labelled or promoted, as a super food doesn’t necessarily mean that consuming it in excess will be healthy. I once had a client who told me she put a teaspoon of coconut oil in every cup of coffee she had. On average she was having 4 cups of coffee per day, which contained 20g of fat… saturated fat via the coconut oil. Yes coconut oil is good for you – in moderation, but it is essentially a saturated fat, which can build up in your system, clog your arteries causing obesity and heart disease. Coconut oil is a great choice when cooking foods at high temperatures. Coconut oil:
Pick your role model wiselyOne of my biggest pet peeves is celebrity endorsed exercise and diet plans, which prey on vulnerable and naive women who believe that these heavily photo shopped celebrities have achieved their new bodies from eating salads, chicken and exercising 10 minutes per day at home. In my opinion the main culprits are ‘reality TV stars’ who are regularly photographed falling out of nightclubs or pap’d tucking into a kebab every week. They are then paid extortionate amounts of money to sell ‘diet pills’ on their social media along side a heavily airbrushed and photo shopped picture of themselves. PT & Client ConnectionIf you want to change your lifestyle, physique and achieve your goal, contact a professional Personal Trainer or Online Coach and don’t waste your time trying to do it yourself. Short list personal trainers that you are keen on working with and asking the below questions (the answers may be on their websites).
Once you have identified 5 personal trainers you are interested in working with, contact each one and ask to complete their questionnaires. (If they do not ask you to complete a pre-screening questionnaire I would be very wary of any advice given). It may be time consuming filling out the same information over and over again, but client and coach connection plays a huge role in the success of your transformation. The more information you provide a PT with the more equipped they are to recommend a suitable nutrition and training protocol. Upon receipt of your completed questionnaire the PT shall review your answer and should spend time giving you some invaluable ‘personalised’ feedback as well as tips and recommendations to where they can assist you in meeting your goals. If your feedback appears generic then most likely the plan they would devise would be generic also. When you read feedback consider the below:
First impressions count, and I am a huge believer that everyone should follow their instincts and gut feeling. Remember just because a PT posts some amazing photo shoot pictures of themselves looking super lean and ripped all the time on instagram, does not mean they are experienced, knowledgeable and can help you achieve your goals. At the moment I am going through my 4th body transformation and I do not look as lean and ripped as I normally do, and I would like to think that my new clients have picked me based on my qualifications, experience and recommendations for getting clients results – irrespective of how I look at this moment in time during my transformation. In Conclusion.....We are all designed differently and this is what makes us unique individuals, one approach does not fit all. If you want real results and to learn about your body and maintain your results, then invest in yourself and speak to a professional.
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AuthorsSharon & Lainey are Online PT & Nutrition Advisors with a combined 18 years experience in the Health & Fitness Industry. Archives
August 2018
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