WHY WE RECOMMEND RECORDING FOOD INTAKE
There’s a tendency to focus on the wrong things when aiming to make positive changes with diet, health, and body composition goals.
A common question we’re asked is why we propose our members track food intake. While it can seem trivial, it is in fact a key cornerstone of successful body composition. Here are a few reasons why:
1. Feedback
Monitoring food intake and comparing this to the trends in body weight and composition will help us make the necessary adjustments to your plan to keep you progressing towards your goals, whether this be fat loss or muscle gain.
2. Learning
The more you pay attention to what you’re eating you’ll begin to learn how your body responds to certain food types and what foods you do better with. This will not only mean you feel better, but you’ll perform better also.
3. You can eat your favourite foods
Having an idea of how much food you’re eating will allow you to fit in your favourite foods without worrying about overeating. This in turn will mean you’re better able to stick to your diet and achieve your goals.
4. No more confusion
A common issue people have is eating healthfully, exercising hard and still not seeing results. This can be quite demotivating and is a common cause of many people quitting on their fitness goals. Having an idea of how much you’re eating means you have tangible data to work with to overcome fat loss plateaus and ensure progress is happening.
5. Prevent 'fuckit' mode
Ever overeaten at one meal and then thought ‘fuckit, diets blown’ and then spent the whole weekend ‘off’ diet? By tracking your intake you’ll realise that the amount you thought ‘blew’ your diet wasn’t actually that disastrous and if you simply got back on track the following day no harm will be done to progress.
6. Scientific
Studies have found that one of the key habits of people who have lost a lot of weight and maintained this weight loss after the diet ended, is tracking food intake.
7. It's a life skill
Once you’ve tracked food intake for a while you’ll eventually be able to eyeball or ‘guestimate’ food quantities without having to meticulously track and weigh food intake.
WHY DIETS/MEAL PLANS WORK
Meal plans are a great way for you to decide and plan out in advance what you’re going to be eating the following day/week.
Even though a flexible approach should be taken when constructing the meal plan, meaning, fitting in foods you enjoy – having something to ‘adhere’ to or ‘follow’ will enable you to make better choices and stick to your diet.
Preparing in advance will also ensure that you are consuming adequate vegetables, fruits, and other nutrient rich foods that you may not be able to get if you’re constantly on the go and eating out.
Some further considerations
1. The plan should be made by you. This will ensure that you are eating foods that you enjoy (and can actually eat - allergies etc)
2. Learning how to create your own meal plan teaches you about food: macronutrients, micronutrients and how your body responds to certain things.
3. It’s a process that enforces the creation of good habits: Consciously thinking about the foods you’re going to consume and why you’re consuming them will encourage good eating habits.
THE IMPORTANCE OF STRENGTH TRAINING
When people think of fat loss there’s a propensity to think of cardio. And this wouldn’t be too far wrong – compared to an hour of weight training you will, in fact, burn more calories doing cardio, the problem however is weight loss does not mean fat loss.
When the goal is to lose fat, we’re looking to build or maintain muscle mass while reducing body fat. In order to do so we need to provide the body with a suf cient stimulus, in our case weight training. With weight training comes a plethora of health, wellbeing, and of course vanity bene ts.
Increased muscle and strength
Not that we really need to justify why both muscle and strength are awesome, but strength training is quite possibly the closest thing we have to an elixir of life. More muscle and strength will help prevent osteoporosis, help you live not only a longer but healthier life. It will also make you more resilient to injuries.
Cognitive benefits
Strength training can help fight depression, elevate mood and even increase cognitive function. It’s also a great way to bust stress after a hard day at work and has even been shown to reduce anxiety.
Improved health
Strength training can help Increase High Density Lipoprotein (the good cholesterol) and decrease Low Density Lipoprotein (the bad cholesterol), help reduce risk of diabetes and even cancer.
Boost metabolism
Lifting weights can also help increase your resting metabolic rate. While the increase isn’t as big as some people will claim, it still adds up. Also bear in mind that as you age your metabolism begins to slow down (due to a reduction in muscle mass, mainly) which is a big contributor to fat gain later in life; lifting weights from early on will help offset this to quite a degree.
Sleep better
There is research to indicate that physically active people tend to have healthier sleep patterns and are at a much lower risk of sleep apnea than non active individuals.
Better sex life
This goes without saying, the fitter you are the better you will perform.
Improved body composition
Less fat, more muscle.
Improved posture
One of the common causes of poor posture is due to weak muscles. By strengthening these muscles (like the upper back) your posture will also improve. This can prevent muscle imbalances and stave off injuries while also improving the overall aesthetic of your physique.
WHEN/WHY WE USE CARDIO
As mentioned previously, our main tool when looking to burn fat and gain the heap of benefits that come with it: will be strength training. However, there are some instances when cardio can be helpful.
The main thing to remember is that cardio is a tool that we use with a specific purpose. Some of the occasions cardio can be beneficial.
Smaller people
This tends to apply to female trainee’s more so, but the smaller you are [height, weight] the fewer calories you will require to maintain your weight. And there is only so much we can reduce calorie intake via food before the diet becomes too difficult to stick to. Augmenting the calorie deficit with cardio can be a great way to increase the calorie deficit while allowing the trainee to eat enough food to stick to the diet.
If a member requires specific cardiovascular work
This could be to improve their conditioning (or health), we will often add in cardio to help with this.
If a member enjoys cardio
Of course, enjoyment is a prerequisite to adherence. If a member enjoys doing cardio, we will design the programme with this in mind
DOMS - UNDERSTANDING DELAYED ONSET MUSCLE SORENESS
Most people know what DOMS feels like – you know, the excruciating soreness felt after an intense leg day – but fewer people understand what DOMS actually are and why they’re not really a good sign of an effective workout.
What are DOM's?
DOMS is the acronym for Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness, and, as the name implies, is the muscle soreness you feel 24-36 hours after working out. While the term has the word ‘muscle’ in it, it isn’t actually the muscles that become sore, rather, DOMS is the in ammation that occurs due to tiny tears in connective tissue that sensitise the pain receptors in the body leading to heightened sensitivity to pain.
Why DOMS are not a good gauge of muscle growth and/or an effective workout
While DOMS are a good sign that you worked a certain muscle group, trying to ‘chase’ soreness, as many people seemingly do – you know the type, they’ll post about squatting until they puked, or how they can now barely move because they trained so hard – is not a good way to measure progress.
In fact, it may even set you back.
Firstly, ‘muscle damage’ may be one of the tenets of muscle growth, but it’s the least important out of the three (muscle tension and metabolic stress being two of the major contributing factors to growth).
Secondly, if you’re training so hard that you can barely move which results in you not being able to train as frequently, you’re going to hinder progress.
DOMS are simply an adaptive process, your body will be sore when you initially start to train but the more you train, the less sore you will be – in fact, increasing training frequency (how often you train) can help reduce and even mitigate muscle soreness.
The goal with your training should be to progressively progress session to session, whether this be doing more reps or sets or lifting more weight – if you do happen to be a bit sore, this is a byproduct of progressive training and not the cause. Chase progress, not soreness.
RATE OF PROGRESS/EXPECTED FAT LOSS
This is one of those questions where we have to, unfortunately, respond with ‘it depends’.
How fast you lose body depends on two factors.
1. Your starting level of bodyfat
The more fat you have to lose, the faster you will be able to lose bodyfat. This is simply because your body has more useable energy (stored body fat). Conversely, the leaner you begin the slower the fat loss the less chance of losing muscle mass.
2. Adherence
The more aggressive the calorie restriction the more likely you are to not stick with the diet. This results in yo-yo’ing from dieting, to overeating, to dieting and overeating. Even if you are able to stick with an aggressive rate of loss and lose fat, it won’t enable you to cultivate the good habits that will help you maintain the fat loss once the diet is over.
What is a good rate of fat loss?
Generally speaking, anywhere between 0.5-1% of bodyweight loss per week works well. This rate of loss will ensure that you aren’t feeling deprived on your diet [too few calories], while also providing you with enough energy to function during the day and perform in the gym.
There is some evidence to suggest that this range of
fat loss can also aid in building muscle while losing fat.
See research here!
Why percentages?
The benefits to using a percentage range for target weight loss over a set number are:
1. It scales with your bodyweight
If you’re a 200lb male: 0.5% – 1% of loss will equate to 1-2 lbs bodyweight per week. If you’re a 120lb female: 0.5-1% of loss equates to 0.6- 1lb bodyweight per week.
2. As you start to get leaner, the amount of weight you need to lose will also adjust by itself
If you started at 200lbs and were losing 1-2lbs per week, after a few weeks of dieting if you drop down to 170lbs you’re now needing to lose around 0.8-1.7lbs per week to ensure muscle retention and none of the side effects that come with too aggressive of a deficit. The percentage based formula does this automatically.
TONING
There are few things more polarising in the fitness world than the term ‘toning’. Now, just to be clear, the term toned by itself is perfectly fine – it’s no different than using the word ‘lean’, or ‘ripped’. The problem, and reason for it being so polarising, is how people – specifically ladies – interpret the meaning.
What people think it means
The lifting of light weights, for insanely high reps will result in the lean, ‘toned’ look (less body-fat, more muscle but not the big, bulky type – the slender, lean type).
Why this is misinformed
Regardless if you’re wanting to ‘tone’ or get lean; one thing will remain constant: the need to build muscle.
The number one factor that contributes to muscle growth is mechanical tension: simply, the need to lift enough weight to generate enough of a response from the body to force it to build new muscle. While research has now shown that a wide variety of rep ranges can work in pursuit of muscle growth, for optimal results we recommend staying between 5-15 reps. This will give you the perfect mix of strength and metabolic work.
The more muscle you begin to build, the more fat you will shed and the more ‘toned’ your physique will begin to look. So, regardless of what you wish to call it – lean, toned, ripped – the key to a better looking physique is more muscle and to build muscle you need to lift progressively.