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Diet vs Exercise To Lose Weight: What Is More Important?
Sometimes I like to think I have a secret.
A secret that no one else in the world will ever know.
A secret so important for the well-being of mankind that I’m scared to share it because it will just blow the minds of everyone and create a new world order.
This secret might be bigger than Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
It might change the world more than when Sir Isaac Newton discovered Gravity.
Heck, it might just change your life.
This is actually far more important to me than changing the world - which is the premise of this Blog Post. I can’t change the world at once - but I certainly can change the mind of one person at a time through words like these, and slowly over time that might help make a change in the world.
But if it doesn’t - at least we had this moment. You and I. And that means an awful lot to me - so much in fact that I would love to have a few more moments with you.
Without sounding too creepy - I just wanted to ask you to be my friend.
As your friend, I will send you some very important things, like educational material, inspirational material and maybe just some stories from my life which you can enjoy reading with a coffee, beer or glass of wine.
See - I told you we could be friends.
If you would like to send me a friend request then please just fill out the form below and I will be in touch once you have finished this article.
Table of Contents for:
What's more important Diet vs Exercise vs THIS to lose weight?
How does Diet help you lose weight?
How does exercise help you lose weight?
My secret: How does Imperfect Action help you lose weight?
Being Optimal is a privilege
To Conclude…
How does Diet help you lose weight?
I have failed to see a scientific study that doesn’t look at the topic of weight loss and explains that in order to create weight loss a Calorie Deficit must be achieved.
And I have read a lot of these studies:
“Health professionals recommend that individuals with overweight and obesity lose weight by reducing energy intake while maintaining a healthful diet” [1]
“Individuals interested in losing weight should continue to be advised to regularly self-monitor energy intake and expenditure as well as to create a consistent daily energy deficit” [2]
“Individuals can lose body weight and improve health status on a wide range of energy (calorie)-restricted dietary interventions” [3]
“With the increasing obesity epidemic comes the search for effective dietary approaches for calorie restriction and weight loss.” [4]
“Overall, for significant safe weight loss, an energy deficit was required, which was commonly achieved by reduced fat intake” [5]
“An energy deficit is the most important factor in weight loss” [6]
*She* sadly I don’t get to make sure GIFS are balanced…so please don’t get offended if you are a female reading this.
But I think you get my point when it relates to just how important a Calorie Deficit or Energy Deficit is for losing weight.
Being in Energy Balance you will maintain your weight.
Learn how to maintain your Calorie Maintenance Level in my blog post that has helped thousands of people so far
To create a Calorie Deficit you will need to do one of three things:
Adjust the energy in (what you consume through diet).
Adjust the energy out (what you burn).
A combination of both.
When I set a client up, who has a weight loss goal, I will always work on their dietary intake to create the calorie deficit first.
It is incredibly easy to overeat due to a number of factors.
Emotional Overeating:
It is not uncommon for us to use food to soothe our emotional state and thus compulsively overeat without realising it to meet unmet needs from our childhood [7].
Food is Addictive:
This sums me up pretty well, sat here, in a coffee shop, writing this post.
A study called "Food Addiction: Implications for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Overeating” concluded that:
“There is evidence to suggest that, for some individuals, food can induce addictive-type behaviours similar to those seen with other addictive substances” [8]
With this pretty awesome graphic attached:
This graphic also gives us great insight into other reasons we can easily overeat:
Stress
Social Difficulty
Cravings
Vulnerability
Impulsivity
Other emotional responses both positive and negative
You can see the complex web of why, when looking at weight loss as a goal for someone, we must always address Energy Intake.
There are also many studies that advocate for all different types of dietary control to aid weight loss.
Whether that is:
The Keto Diet (please do not do this and find out why here)
Intermittent Fasting
Low Fat, High Carb
Low Carb, High Fat
High Protein
Slimming World and Weight Watchers
Paleo Diet
Vegan Diet
Carnivore Diet
Vegetarian Diet
Celery Juicing
Essentially it doesn't matter what diet you do from a purely physiological point of view - if it gets you into a Calorie Deficit it will work.
This does not mean I am advocating for all of those dietary behaviours - I am simply informing you that they are all designed to create a calorie deficit. In fact, of that list, I would probably advocate for only one or two of them in general terms.
cough - I am a vegetarian - cough
But in terms of being able to adhere to it for long enough, to protect your relationship with food, or at the very least rebuild it, many of the diets I have listed will be absolutely damaging to you regardless if you achieve your goal or not.
And this is why diet is so very important in the discussion of weight loss.
You will eat every day, and relatively speaking it is easier for you to manage your food intake throughout the day to create an energy deficit than it would be to exercise.
Let us say you are working on a 500kcal deficit diet each day.
All else remaining equal, that is simply not having the Venti Iced Mocha with Whipped Cream at Starbucks each day which comes in at ~450kcals.
That’s an easier thing to adhere to than getting into the gym each day to try and burn 500kcals.
Its easier to learn an element of portion control and increasing lower calorie foods in your diet than it is to show up to the gym for 75 mins a day to burn calories.
It is better for your overall well-being to increase your vegetable and fruit intake to help create a calorie deficit each day than it is to panic about getting to the Spin Class at 5 am when you have a family at home - or a stressful job to go to.
How does exercise help you lose weight?
I’m not sitting here, denying science.
Exercise does burn calories.
But it doesn’t burn enough calories for you to get into a deficit each day irrespective of your food intake.
It is also incredibly hard to know how many calories you are burning in a workout. Believe it or not having a watch on, made by a computer company, isn’t that scientifically accurate, in fact, this study [9] found them to be up to 60% inaccurate.
The other issue I have with using the Gym to burn calories is that it creates a hamster wheel scenario.
When you get into the habit of burning calories in the gym, you also get into the habit of demonising food - and you end up on this perpetual path of trying to undo the calories you ate, which destroys your relationship with food and exercise.
In an average strength session, you will be lucky to burn 300kcals.
On a Cardio Machine you will burn more in the moment, but less over time - and the more you eat the more time you have to spend burning calories.
Which only damages how you feel both on the inside and the outside.
This is why it is incredibly important to separate the two.
Allow your diet to dictate your Caloric Deficit and make sure you exercise to get strong.
Not just in the body, but in your heart, in your mind, in your soul.
When working out, ask yourself:
Does this exercise make me feel stronger?
Do I feel accomplished for completing it?
Do I want to get that feeling again?
And if the answer is yes, regardless of calories burned, then you are exercising in a way that will make you feel good.
And that is what is most important in this scenario.
Exercise can help you lose weight in other ways too...but these take time.
Preservation of Muscle Mass
By lifting weights, you will preserve or potentially increase your muscle mass. Which over time will increase your metabolism because muscle is more efficient at burning calories than adipose tissue (fat).
When you only diet and eat fewer calories to lose weight, without exercise you will lower your metabolism by up to 20% [10].
As you lower your calories to lose weight, you need to work against this as a lower metabolism will not help you in the long run - and the best way to prevent this lowering from occurring is by lifting weights.
Regulation of Hunger Hormones
Our two friends: Leptin and Grehlin.
Grehlin is like a little gremlin that sits in your stomach and whinges at you telling you that you’re hungry - even when you aren’t.
Grehlin = Gremlin.
And in people with higher-weight bodies, their ability to control the production of grehlin is reduced - and their sensitivity to listening to it is increased.
This study called: “Acute Exercise and Appetite-Regulating Hormones in Overweight and Obese Individuals: A Meta-Analysis” [11] concluded:
“An evidence synthesis of the six studies on overweight/obese individuals indicated that a moderate reduction in acylated ghrelin occurs after acute exercise”
By exercising, the effects of grehlin are reduced and therefore over time will help you achieve a calorie deficit.
Now onto Leptin.
Leptin is the hormone that tells you you're full.
And its tricky. The more Adipose Tissue we have, the higher levels of Leptin in the body - but when levels are increased for so long, we develop a resistance to it.
Creating a “Leptin Resistance”.
This resistance is more prevalent in Obese Individuals and inherently runs through families [12].
And as you can expect…Exercise might be one of the best ways to combat Leptin Resistance as this study from the University of Oslo confirms [13]:
“Long-term changes in lifestyle consisting of decreased intake of dietary fat and increased physical activity reduced plasma leptin concentrations in humans beyond the reduction expected as a result of changes in fat mass.”
Which is a conclusion I love for two main reasons.
“Long Term Changes in lifestyle” is something I am on board with. There’s little point, to try and change things quickly for a short period of time hoping those changes will last a lifetime.
Engaging in long-term physical activity and reducing your dietary fat in the long term has better results for your Leptin Resistance, and probably your overall health (a fair inference) than just losing weight.
How I Like To View Exercise For Weight Loss
Use it as your guiding light, as a signal for you to stay on track with your diet.
I used to play badminton with my best friend - and after every session, he would want to go for a beer - which made no sense to me.
Yes. I enjoy Beer like the best of them.
But, I used to think to myself what was the point of slogging it out on a court for 90 minutes to then harm all of your recovery efforts with a couple of Beers.
I used the movement as a way of improving my willpower and my desire to keep my diet in better place.
And if you can do that over time - you will then see the effects and benefits of weight loss as a result of your movement.
Because it will lead to better dietary choices.
It will reduce stress which will lead to better dietary choices.
It will help your Mental Health which will lead to better dietary choices.
But either way, you are looking to use exercise to improve your dietary choices and create a better balance in your life in favour of your goals.
My secret: How does Imperfect Action help you lose weight?
This secret is the greatest superpower you will need in this whole “weight loss thing”
It is understanding the concept of imperfect action.
I think, it is fair to conclude that to lose weight you need to combine both Diet and Exercise to help you.
But knowing this doesn’t necessarily help.
Because as you can see, the complex hormonal balance in your body just from Leptin and Grehlin is a hard thing to control, combined with the fact that not everyone finds the ability to, or the enjoyment out of exercising in a manner that might be “optimal”.
I was on a call with one of my online Clients on the Strong & Confident Program the other day and I was explaining this concept to him.
He is a very high Politician in the UK - and as you can imagine he, therefore, has a very crazy life. He also sits on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee - and at the time of writing this - Europe is at War.
Nonetheless, he has big goals and wonderful aspirations and it is my pleasure to help him.
And at the moment, helping him the most is putting the brakes on him.
Telling him not to work out, rather than do more.
He wants to try and aim for four workouts a week - and I am having to tell him not to. I am a fan of four workouts a week, truly I am, but not when it means that you will only be able to do it for a few weeks, and missing workouts will have a bigger negative effect on your feelings of accomplishment and strength than only doing three workouts a week.
But no one needs perfection. You need consistency and setting up a system that
will inspire consistency over perfection is imperfect action at work.
I know one thing to be true for him, if he gives up, nothing will change - and therefore making sure that he is set up in a way that will not make him feel like he can’t stay on top of everything will lower the likelihood of him giving up.
There is a point of diminishing returns in all things we do.
When doing more, is actually counterproductive.
MRV stand for Maximal Recoverable Volume.
You want to get the best bang for your buck - especially if you struggle with adherence over time. Therefore staying where the curve is steepest is best.
Doing more isn’t worth it - and what determines what is recoverable is dominated by one thing: Stress. The more stressed you are, the lower the amount of maximal recoverable volume you will be able to take on.
And how much exercise do we know to be too much?
That’s determined by time - not necessarily the amount of workouts.
Previously I stated that I like clients to do 4 workouts a week - Upper, Lower, Upper, Lower.
However when I program this, I don’t program four hours of workouts.
I try to keep my workouts to 30mins of working to intensity for my clients. This would be the time outside of a warm-up and a cool-down, but from the load, they will really need to recover.
You need to keep between two and three hours a week.
That’s all you need to do.
Examples of Imperfect Action
Can’t get to the gym for an hour? Go for 30 minutes.
Can’t get to the gym for 30 minutes? Go for 20 minutes.
Want to have pizza for dinner? Order a massive salad with it too.
Have a night out? Maybe substitute Pints for halves. Mixers for Soda Water. Large Glasses of wine for Smaller ones.
When I was at Drama School we had to write our own film - and they bought in two professional writers to help us learn how to do it.
The very first thing, and most useful thing that these two writers told us was:
“Don’t get it right, get it written”
And that is the best way I can sum up Imperfect Action.
Nothing needs to be perfect or exact. Nothing needs to be optimal.
It just needs to be done.
If getting it done means it might not be perfect….then get it done anyway.
Do you know how many of these blogs I have written with spelling errors in them?
A fair few.
Because if I fretted over getting everything right all the time, I just wouldn’t get as much work done as I need to and I comprehend that the quality of what I write and how I help people is more important than the odd spelling error.
Over time, all of these imperfect actions add up. They compound within you, inspiring more action, more results and more motivation.
You see, no one gains weight from missing one workout, no one gains weight from eating one McDonald’s.
It is the build-up of these behaviours over very long periods of time that creates weight gain.
And therefore the reverse is true.
It is the opposite of the all-or-nothing mindset you need to approach this with, because all-or-nothing mindsets always lead to nothing - if that wasn’t true - you wouldn’t be sitting here reading this.
Tick off and sweat the small stuff more.
Being Optimal Is A Privilege
Privilege is a word that is banded around a lot these days. I do feel that sometimes it’s on the verge of being overused.
However, this concept is very important to understand when it comes to imperfect action.
In fact, privilege is important to understand full stop. I remember when I first grappled with this idea during the Black Lives Matter protests and it took a lot of interesting and eye-opening conversations to understand the concepts set behind my privilege.
I also remember my birthday in 2021 was almost ruined by being attacked online for “not understanding my privilege” when I commented on a post about how progressive overload works.
I was described as an “SIS White Man, who has a genetic advantage over the rest of the world and has never had to worry about his health and therefore has no right to comment or to help those who have had struggles I would never understand”.
I have a 7-inch scar down my chest, which I have had my entire life because I have to worry about my health each and every day. In fact, I was born with a condition that means I will have had to have gone through open-heart surgery twice in my lifetime - and at the moment, I am just waiting for the day I am told “let’s go in again”.
Never judge a book by its cover.
When you are on the Socials seeing people “succeed” you have no idea what privilege is afforded to them that isn’t afforded to you:
Genetic
Societal
Family
Occupational
Health - Mental and Physical
Financial
I used to struggle with this.
I honestly used to believe that if Chris Pratt could change his body the way he did, then I should be able to too.
But what that doesn’t take into account is the fact that I have a very different life to him.
He has chefs who manage his food each and every day.
He has Personal Trainers paid for by Hollywood Studios in order to make sure he changes the way he needs to.
He also has the allure of being able to put in the work because at the end of it is a $3m bonus, on top of actually being contractually paid to workout and change his body.
I do not.
He has a significantly greater privilege than me to help him manage his change.
And that’s not his fault, that’s not my fault.
Its just fact.
You may not have the ability to execute what is optimal - and understanding the concept of Imperfect Action is a release from the pressure of making sure you are “doing everything right”.
You need to do what you enjoy.
And setting yourself up for an optimal diet, an optimal workout plan and an optimal weight loss journey is more than likely setting you up for failure.
Because you simply do not have the privilege that is required for an optimal environment.
To Conclude…
To lose weight your diet is the driving force.
To help make that process easier. and more maintainable exercise is the driving force.
To make the journey as easy as possible with self-compassion and taking pressure off of your shoulders…
To allow you to coach yourself through the journey and to talk to yourself with self-love…
To keep your mindset in the place that will help you most…
Imperfect Action is the driving force for long-term sustainable habits that will build up over time and make it easier as you go.
The National Weight Loss Registry [14] is a database of over 10,000 members that have lost over 30 pounds and maintained that for one year or more.
They conclude:
98% of Registry participants report that they modified their food intake in some way to lose weight.
94% increased their physical activity, with the most frequently reported form of activity being walking.
There is variety in how NWCR members keep the weight off. Most report continuing to maintain a low-calorie, low-fat diet and doing high levels of activity.
78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
If you want to lose weight, I urge you to not look at the picture of one vs the other.
Diet vs Exercises.
This isn’t a competition.
It’s a blend of behaviours that create a bigger picture over time.
Balance everything always.
What’s Next?
I hope you found this article useful, and that you feel a lot better about your struggles at the moment.
If you would like to join my free Facebook group: Straightforward Fat Loss then click below:
Added to all of that, if you would like a Free Calorie and Macro Calculator then just put your email here:
References:
Tatiana Andreyeva, Michael W. Long, Kathryn E. Henderson, Gabrielle M. Grode, Trying to Lose Weight: Diet Strategies among Americans with Overweight or Obesity in 1996 and 2003, Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Volume 110, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 535-542, ISSN 0002-8223,
Robert A. Carels, Kathleen M. Young, Carissa Coit, Anna Marie Clayton, Alexis Spencer, Marissa Hobbs, Can following the caloric restriction recommendations from the Dietary Guidelines for Americans help individuals lose weight?, Eating Behaviors, Volume 9, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 328-335, ISSN 1471-0153, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eatbeh.2007.12.003.
Thom G, Lean M. Is There an Optimal Diet for Weight Management and Metabolic Health? Gastroenterology. 2017 May;152(7):1739-1751. doi: 10.1053/j.gastro.2017.01.056. Epub 2017 Feb 15. PMID: 28214525.
Johnstone A. Fasting for weight loss: an effective strategy or latest dieting trend? Int J Obes (Lond). 2015 May;39(5):727-33. doi: 10.1038/ijo.2014.214. Epub 2014 Dec 26. PMID: 25540982.
Ramage S, Farmer A, Eccles KA, McCargar L. Healthy strategies for successful weight loss and weight maintenance: a systematic review. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2014 Jan;39(1):1-20. doi: 10.1139/apnm-2013-0026. Epub 2013 Nov 4. PMID: 24383502.
Kim JY. Optimal Diet Strategies for Weight Loss and Weight Loss Maintenance. J Obes Metab Syndr. 2021 Mar 30;30(1):20-31. doi: 10.7570/jomes20065. PMID: 33107442; PMCID: PMC8017325.
Miller KD. Compulsive overeating. Nurs Clin North Am. 1991 Sep;26(3):699-705. PMID: 1891402.
Adams RC, Sedgmond J, Maizey L, Chambers CD, Lawrence NS. Food Addiction: Implications for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Overeating. Nutrients. 2019 Sep 4;11(9):2086. doi: 10.3390/nu11092086. PMID: 31487791; PMCID: PMC6770567.
News.iastate.edu. 2020. Activity Trackers Not As Accurate For Some Activities, ISU Study Finds • News Service • Iowa State University. [online] Available at: <https://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2015/08/19/activitytrackers> [Accessed 22 June 2020].
Fat facts. (n.d.). Retrieved March 18, 2022, from http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/fatfacts.html
Douglas JA, Deighton K, Atkinson JM, Sari-Sarraf V, Stensel DJ, Atkinson G. Acute Exercise and Appetite-Regulating Hormones in Overweight and Obese Individuals: A Meta-Analysis. J Obes. 2016;2016:2643625. doi: 10.1155/2016/2643625. Epub 2016 Dec 27. PMID: 28116150; PMCID: PMC5223036.
Lee, J., Reed, D. & Price, R. Leptin resistance is associated with extreme obesity and aggregates in families. Int J Obes 25, 1471–1473 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ijo.0801736
Reseland JE, Anderssen SA, Solvoll K, Hjermann I, Urdal P, Holme I, Drevon CA. Effect of long-term changes in diet and exercise on plasma leptin concentrations. Am J Clin Nutr. 2001 Feb;73(2):240-5. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/73.2.240. PMID: 11157319.
“National Weight Control Registry.” Nwcr.ws, nwcr.ws/default.html
How To Love Exercise Again
One of the greatest DMs I ever got happened about 6 years ago when I was working in London as a Personal Trainer.
This wonderful human messaged me asking for details about my Personal Training…and I asked her why she wanted to work with me?
Her response was:
“All of your clients look like they are having fun”
Amy became a client for two years. Her partner and now fiancee…soon to be husband, and I can’t wait to see them get married...became a client for 3 years.
I miss Amy and Howard every day and when I got that message, it lit me up.
It got me in the feels.
Many many many of the friends I work with usually come to me because they believe that I have the key to helping them love exercise again.
They see my balanced approach, my forgiving tone, and my ability to program to their needs, and I think I make them feel safe and special.
As a Personal Trainer, my job is to make you feel two inches taller when you walk out of the gym than when you walked into it - sadly, just tracking your weight loss doesn't do that.
But rebuilding your relationship with exercise so that you can learn to love moving again is one of the most important things I can do for anyone who comes across me - and I want to help you improve your relationship with exercise.
And as you are here…I want to show you exactly how to do that here in this article. Show you precisley how to love exercise again.
But first, let's be friends. The fact you are here means so much to me. And if we become friends I’ll email you things. Sometimes they will be educational, sometimes they will be inappropriate, and sometimes I might just want to know how you are; either way…it would be delightful to connect with you.
Just send me a friend request by filling out the form below…
Oh, and I will also send you some free fitness goodies to help start our new friendship off on the best foot possible.
TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR “HOW TO LOVE EXERCISE AGAIN”
Terminology Matters
Why are you exercising?
Releasing expectation: The All or Nothing Mindset
Ask Yourself How and What?
The Success Loop
Terminology Matters
I have to start here.
Not because I don’t think you need to learn how to talk.
But you probably do need to learn how to talk about exercise…
The words we chose, and the verbiage we work with each and every day is very very important. View the way you talk about movement in your life as micro messages for your relationship with it.
Words carry great meaning in our lives and if you are trying to rebuild a relationship - or even begin a relationship with movement then the words you use will frame the way in which you think about what it is you are doing.
And there are some key things you need to change here.
The fitness industry thrives from talking about extremes because extremes sell. They create a void between you and the outcome and therefore you will spend money on making that void smaller.
What the fitness industry sucks at in terms of its verbiage is balance - and the more you use words and terms that promote balance in your thoughts, the better your relationship with movement will become.
Say: “Movement” not Exercise
A paper called “Move Your DNA: The Difference Between Exercise and Movement” [1] which was published by the Journal of Evolution and Health in 2017 it outlines a very interesting concept between the two words of Movement and Exercise.
It states that: “Caspersen et al. (1985) define “physical activity” as “any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that result in energy expenditure” (i.e., calories utilized) and “exercise” as “physical activity that is planned, structured, repetitive, and purposive in the sense that improvement or maintenance of one or more components of physical fitness is an objective.”
The paper then goes on to define the movement as:
“Movement” is a term used abundantly in discussions about evolutionary health, yet has not been clearly defined—especially as compared to related terms like “exercise” and “physical activity.” However, the effects and benefits of movement are not limited to caloric expenditure and physical fitness; movement facilitates operations in almost every human system (e.g. immune, digestive, nervous)”
And it concludes with the proposed definition of movement as: “any motion that creates a change in the shape of a body or parts of a body”
Which is a phrase I like. A lot.
Previously I stated that words carry great meaning - and the word Exercise is wrapped up in feelings of struggle, punishment, diet culture, expelling calories, and Physical Education classes you muddled through and hated doing…
Whereas Movement.
Well, we all move. All of the time.
We all have to move all of the time, and therefore all movement matters.
When you look at your Workout Plans and understand that they are a very small concept of your overall movement for the day you fall into line with the Science.
And when you are trying to lose weight, being aligned with the science as opposed to being at odds with it will help give you perspective and allow you to rebuild that relationship with exercise.
When you workout you are merely burning 5% of the Calories you will burn overall for that day.
It’s a small piece of the pie.
But when you look at Movement in total it’s 90% of the calories you burn every day divided thus:
70% is your Basal Metabolic Rate - your metabolic baseline
15% is your daily movement outside of prescribed exercise - we call this NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis).
5% is your prescribed movement session or a “workout” (Activity Thermogenesis)
And when you can see your movement in this way, you see that all movement matters, all movement is important…and missing a workout really isn’t that big a deal.
In fact missing a workout should be seen as an opportunity missed to get stronger, not a moment where you failed and gained weight. When you see it as a missed opportunity to get stronger, you can easily recuperate that moment by doing one thing…giving yourself the opportunity again.
To learn more about your Metabolism please read my article that has helped hundreds of people understand the science of burning calories and help them improve their relationship with exercise
Food is nourishing, not good or bad
We have grown up in a society where we divide foods into two groups.
Food that is good for you, and food that is bad for you.
However, neither is true.
Foods can be more nutrient-dense and less nutrient-dense. Foods can have higher calories or lower calories. Foods can make us feel more energised or less energised.
And that is it.
Of all my clients on the Strong and Confident Program I ask one thing of them when it comes to diet, and that is to use their guiding light as the word “nourishing”.
Because there are times in your life when a Pizza (especially when there is Pineapple on there) is going to nourish you, and there are times when a Pumpkin Salad will nourish you also.
Sometimes you need to nourish your cells with nutrient-dense foods. Sometimes you need to nourish your emotions with food that is like getting a warm hug.
Both are valid and neither take you away from your goals, so long as you are giving yourself absolute permission to enjoy the food you are eating and therefore can enjoy it without guilt attached.
A key metric in being able to do this is understanding how much weight the human actually gains from overeating.
A study [2] produced by the American Diabetes Association looked at just this. It took 29 men and made them eat at 40% above their Maintenance Calories for 8 weeks every single day. This varied between 1200kcal and 1500kcal ABOVE their maintenance calories. Every. Single. Day.
In two months of overeating in a controlled environment, they gained just 9lbs of body fat, or 0.16lbs of fat a day.
By having some food when you need to nourish your emotions, it isn’t going to make you gain a stone overnight. It’s not going to derail all of your progress. This doesn't mean don’t take actions that help you process your emotions and your stress levels, of course, I would always recommend that, but one very key aspect of managing those stress levels when you are working towards a goal in movement is to comprehend what really happens to your body when you indulge, as opposed to what you think is gong to happen.
Say: Stronger, not Slimmer
This will be the title of my next book.
And yes, if you’re a publisher reading this please drop me an email, because I REALLY WANT TO WRITE THAT BOOK (adam@thegymstarter.com)
You have been told your whole life that slimmer is better. Thinner is sexier. But it’s not true.
The truth here is that getting stronger is more accessible to everyone.
There is this phenomenon in life called “Set Point Theory”. The fact it is referred to as a theory has always cast doubt in my mind about its validity, however, the more I have looked into it, the more I understand where the “theory” comes from and the truth behind it.
In this study called: Is there evidence for a set point that regulates human body weight?
”Taken collectively, these data provide evidence for the idea that there is biological (active) control of body weight and also weight stability (and thus a set point at a healthy steady-state) in response to eating healthy chow diets. By contrast, this regulation is lost or camouflaged by Western diets, suggesting that the failure of biological control is due mainly to external factors”
The study proposes that there isn't so much a “set point” but a range described as a “settling point”: upon which adult bodies exist at.
Colloquially I have known this to be true as well. When I became a Personal Trainer I dreamed of the transformation pictures I was going to create for my clients where they looked like totally different humans, but what I have found to be true is that in those photos you see on Instagram, they nearly always are different humans, or at least the photos are incredibly heavily edited.
I learnt this lesson about two years in when it just dawned on me that for the majority of my clients, who could afford Personal Training, they had a very set environment - a stable job, a stable relationship, a stable home life, very regular habits, and they were for the most part very comfortable in their environment - which meant when it came to losing weight with them, we were discussing losing a few pounds, not a few stones.
And surprisingly the clients who were the most consistent, the most engaged and the most interested in their fitness journey’s were those who focussed on getting Stronger - not slimmer.
The study cited above concludes that your body does have biological settling points, but it is actually your environment that is masking over what these true setpoints are - and changing your environment is really hard to do - because as we grow older we build our responsibilities on our stability.
I would also argue that the word environment refers to both internal and external environments. The study cited above only look sta the physical environment. But your mental environment here is just as powerful and must be dealt with as much due care and attention. The way in which you view yourself, speak about yourself to yourself and others is as much a part of your environment as the physical world you live in.
This is why getting stronger is a much more accessible way to focus your movement compared to losing weight.
Stronger, not slimmer.
It’s also why I created the Strong & Confident Program, not the Slimmer Is Better Program.
Say: Energy, not Calories
Calories are a unit of measurement of energy in your food. However, Calories are often associated with over restriction and/or overeating.
They can be used as a method to count your food amounts and therefore control what it is you are eating. This isn’t true in all cases with all people, I personally am a proponent of being Calorie aware, but if you are someone who is trying to learn how to love exercise again, or even trying to learn how to love exercise period, then focussing on calories might not be useful for you.
Instead, look at your food with a wider angle lens.
Look at it as Energy - and when you are managing your nutrition throughout the day ask yourself what kind of Energy do I want from what it is I am eating.
Sometimes that energy will be of comfort. Sometimes that energy will be of absolute nourishment. Sometimes it will be that of community.
When you view your food as an energy source, as opposed to a calorie source, you will choose foods that relate far deeper to your needs of hunger and nourishment compared to if you just focussed on the calories and the macros involved with the food you are eating.
Say: Exploration, not Right/Wrong
I repeat this message daily to my clients on the Strong & Confident Program.
I have to repeat it daily because in some cases for 50+ years they have been told that what they are doing is wrong - and what they should be doing is right.
Undoing 30+ years of micro-messaging from diet companies, fitness magazines, lifestyle magazines and modern media is hard work.
But its work that I personally see as an honour to have to do.
If you are familiar with my work, and that of Kamala, you will know the phrase you are about to read. If you are new to my work, then this is the single most important thing I need you to understand when it comes to movement and nutrition.
Are you ready?
““There is no right or wrong, just exploration””
You can’t get a movement plan wrong. You can’t get your nutrition wrong. You can’t get anything on a fitness journey wrong.
A fitness journey means that it exists without judgement.
If you constantly think that what you are doing is right or wrong, then you are constantly living in a world with judgement. You aren’t on trial, you aren’t in front of a jury - and if you think you are…then you need to recover that relationship yourself.
Living through judgement is very stressful, both internal judgement and external judgement - and this work can be hard enough as it is, without that added stress being added.
Why are you exercising?
And if it is to “put the ab in fab” then you need to stop. RIGHT NOW.
I touched on this above but I wanted to go a little bit deeper into this particular theme.
I have trained many many people who wanted to lose weight - and the reasons for this are multi-faceted. It could be because they want to look good at a wedding, it could be because they feel uncomfortable in their skin, it could be because they think losing weight will improve their self-confidence.
I want you to take a moment and think about when you have engaged with movement before. What was the reason you did it for?
“Did you want to lose weight because of ‘X’?”
And if so…ask yourself why can X only happen in the context of weight loss.
Why do you need to lose weight in order to:
Look good at a wedding? Feel comfortable in your skin? or have self-confidence?
The truth is that you simply do not need to lose weight in order to achieve any of those things. You need to be able to give yourself permission outside of losing weight in order to explore those feelings.
There are two great ironies in terms of weight loss and exercise.
The first is as I outlined above in the sense that it is counterintuitive to your metabolism to engage with prescribed exercise for the sole reason to create weight loss.
The second is that dieting undermines your confidence. You are literally pulling the rug from under your feet every time you diet. You are making yourself constantly question your validity, question your choices and question your freedom around movement and exercise in the name of reducing your body size.
As opposed to giving yourself permission to enjoy what it is you are doing, what it is you are trying to achieve.
This is why changing the framing of why you are wanting to move is really important.
Changing it from “to lose weight because of X”
To:
“Get strong enough to fight a bear in the woods”
This will take away food guilt and frustration because suddenly foods that were off your imaginary fat loss table are now in play - because to get strong enough to fight a bear, my friend, you’re going to need the calories and you will feel the need to choose foods that nourish your goals, rather than withdraw you from them.
100% of my clients who only moved to reduce their body size have all struggled to be consistent with their movement schedules.
100% of my clients who move to get strong enough to fight a bear in the woods have a relationship with exercise that is based on discovery and investigation.
A relationship with exercise that excites them with the possibility and releases them from the guilt of diet culture.
Losing weight may well be a consequence of their actions, but when they have a framing of getting stronger they see their movement plans as opportunities of growth, opportunities of development and opportunities of discovery.
And if you miss an opportunity that’s ok.
But when you believe that your movement schedule is the key to losing weight, and you attach the all or nothing mindset to it, then you will attach far too much guilt to missing a movement session which will eventually lead to you giving up and feeling like a failure compared to having a more balanced perspective.
Move to get strong in your body, in your mind and in your soul.
That is a much more inspiring message to tell yourself than because you want to fit in a dress because society deems that more acceptable.
Releasing expectation: The all-or-nothing mindset
When you approach movement and nutrition with an all or nothing mindset you always end up with nothing.
Extremes lead to extremes.
You may well be able to give your movement a 100% attitude for a period of time, but when you have done that, and you can’t keep up with it, like the vast majority of people who are not professional athletes can’t, then when you grind to a halt because of stressors in your life like work, family and other things, you again end up feeling like a failure and giving up.
Some people can give movement their all for 6 months.
Some people can give movement their all for 6 weeks.
Some can do it for a week.
But they all end up stopping when they believe that the only way to success is by giving it all.
Those who incorporate a balanced approach to their movement success end up being more consistent over much longer periods of time and being able to adopt a balanced mindset is much easier said than done.
How to adopt a balanced mindset to movement and nutrition?
My best piece of advice for this is to adopt what I call a wide-angle lens.
Zoom out on your life.
Stop listening to diet culture that makes you think that you should be able to lose 10kgs in 12 weeks. Stop allowing yourself to feel like a failure when you have a Pizza with pineapple on it because you believe it has made you gain 3lbs of fat.
Stop calling yourself fat.
You have fat.
There is a difference between those two statements.
You must comprehend and understand and truly internalise what I outlined previously about the body’s settling points. Great change of your body requires a change in both your internal and external environments, and that is not something that is accessible to all people.
But getting stronger is.
You must realise that one movement session will not give you muscles like Arnie. That one can of Spinach will not make you look like Popeye.
And that missing one movement session will not undo all of your progress.
Or that eating one bag of chips will not make you gain 6lbs of body fat.
Nothing in life changes that quickly - and that is a good thing.
I would even argue you could miss a month from moving and the progress you “lose” is finite.
By comprehending this, you will find freedom in both your movement and your nutrition. You will be able to give yourself full freedom and permission to enjoy foods you want to eat, and you will be able to remove the guilt and stigma from your life that is associated with your actions.
You will be able to find peace from second-guessing everything that you do - because you can begin to realise that it just isn’t that big a deal.
I’m a personal trainer, I have a roster of clients that rely on me every day for my expertise in this field, and there are times that I don’t work out, there are times that I eat pizza three days in a row, and there are times I may have alcohol every night - erm 2021 and lockdown is calling.
The only reason I am able to do this is that when I look at myself over the years I know that I have been consistent with my movement and nutrition more than not.
And consistent means at a maximum 25 days out of 30 in a month.
Not 30 days out of 30 - that’s perfection.
You will always need to have respect for your work, your home life, other demands on your being like socialising and travelling - and by making sure you have a wide-angle lens on what it is you want to achieve you will always be able to make movement and nutrition fit in around these things. But when you have the all or nothing mindset…when bigger priorities like paying your mortgage kick in, you will feel like you are letting yourself down, when in fact you are just being a beautiful human being.
There will always be pressure from all angles of your life - and therefore the more we can work on releasing pressure from your movement, you will be able to build a much better relationship with it. Take Kevin for example, if we can take exercise out of his hot pot, he might not be so overwhelmed and might not drop everything on the floor….and that’s the goal.
To view the movement as something that stops your cup from overflowing - not adds to your overwhelm.
I found this when looking for GIFs about Balance.
And it brightened up my day - I hope it does yours too.
Ask Yourself How and What Questions
You have more than likely seen many a Personal Trainer talks about your “Why?”. Some dude in a room in a gym that knows nothing about you pretending to give a shit about why you want to “get fit” and that his methods of Heavy Barbell Back Squatting will magically answer all the problems associated with your marriage, relationship with children and take out the stress from work.
This dude who is 25 years old, lives with his parents and has no idea how hard you find moving and how nervous you were to ever step foot in the Gym because well let’s face it, he has the empathy of a Goldfish.
Finding out about clients’ “Why” is nothing other than a sales tactic, and unsurprisingly it sets you up for failure. It focuses you on all of your insecurities, and it focuses your mind on fixing those insecurities.
It turns your main focus into a results-based solution.
A “why?” question is what’s known as an extrinsic motivational question.
And the issue with extrinsic motivation is that it fades quite quickly. Especially when the lived experience is not what your expectation was at the start. When those results aren’t as forthcoming as quickly as you think they should be, or when your life takes over and you can’t show up as much as you hoped, you think everything is going wrong and that you will never be able to achieve what you hoped for.
You need to get down and dirty with intrinsic motivational questions.
This is why as your Coach I would ask you different questions. I would only ask you:
How are you going to achieve your objectives?
What are you going to do to achieve your objectives?
And your mind will be razor-focussed only on the next week or two.
This way you throw yourself into a process.
Carol Dweck in her book “Mindset” states:
“Becoming is better than being”
If you really want to learn how to love exercise again the greatest thing you can do is forget about the why - and enjoy the process.
Become who you want to become. Rather than try to live up to being who you want to be.
You have probably heard Personal Trainers all over the internet tell you to enjoy the process without you actually being told how that happens. I know I have experienced this.
I have been told it so many times, I almost feel guilty that I don’t enjoy the process because no one showed me how that part works - they just told me to enjoy it.
No one actually laid it out for you in a way you can actually comprehend. But I am going to do that for you…
To truly enjoy the process you must see your movement as an investigation.
And each time you do a movement session, you will give yourself one goal, one new thing to investigate. Lifting weights and building strength is a skill. Developing movements is a skill, and skill is developed in one way.
Through mindful repetition.
There is a very famous quote that states:
“Repetition is the mother of skill ”
I would also like to add the word persistence to that quote.
“Persistence through repetition is the mother of skill”
Especially in relation to building strength.
It’s not just enough to repeat something, without being present with it, and in order to bring your mind with you to your workout, you need to investigate what it is you want to achieve.
When I was on Stage, one of the very best Directors I ever worked with every night at the half-hour call would come on the tannoy and announce:
“Your theme for tonight’s performance is X”
And he would insert a theme that he knew was a feature of the story, and he would want us to see how that thought would enhance our ability to tell the story for that evening’s audience.
The themes he came up with would be both technical and emotional:
Love
Money
Sex
Hatred
Poetry
Positioning
Listening
Friendships
Loss
Danger
Super Objectives
And the list goes on. Each night, we would allow this one word to resonate through our performance and see how that might change the rhythm and the presence of our performance.
Performing a Play for a total of one hundred performances is going to get monotonous and stale. There is a trap that many ensembles fall into where they just phone in the performance because they know it that well, and they can run it on auto-pilot.
Ever felt like that in the Gym? Of course, you have.
But your movement session should not be phoned in. You should try your hardest to not make it seem like you’re just there doing the work for the sake of the work - this can’t be avoided every time of course - but investigating a theme when you workout it can reduce the chances of this happening to you.
Investigation cues I use with clients are:
Develop the range of motion
Explore the floor
Root the Glutes
Stack your joints
Tempo
The feeling of strength
What muscle are you trying to activate?
Intensity of Exertion
How does one movement pattern inform another movement pattern?
Some of these are more complex than others, and some of them require more context than I can get into here on the Blog - they are always ongoing and deep discussions with my clients on how they can get the most out of their movement and develop the skill.
The Success Loop
In my article, “How Do You Get Motivated To Lose Weight and Exercise?” I outline the idea of the success loop.
The success loop is something I have designed to help people understand the science behind motivation and how they can make sure that motivation is the last thing they rely on in order to love exercise again.
Many people think that beginning fitness starts with Motivation.
They see their journey thus:
Get Motivated -> Take Action -> Get Results
However, Motivation actually works this way:
You take action first, then you get results and those results are what keep you motivated.
Or as I say it:
DO -> TRACK -> REPEAT
The Success Loop takes this one step further, and looks like this:
Here you can see I have added in a very important aspect of what continues to perpetuate your motivation to investigate movement - and it is education.
Because educating yourself can keep you inspired to carry on.
As you look to rebuild your relationship with exercise, I want you to think about how much are you learning on this journey. Heck, you wouldn’t have a hobby and not learn how to do it. Many many people think exercise is something you justhave to show up for, tick the box and away you go…
But when you start investigating what and how you are going execute your movement, you start to look at educating yourself in the process - and the more you learn, the more awesome your movement will become.
So read Blogs, follow people who focus on educating you, not showing off in front of you, question the choices your personal trainer makes with them and ask them insightful questions about how you move and why things are they way they are in your sessions.
Education leads to empowerment.
And an empowered human is a Strong and Confident human.
And Finally…
Before you consider everything in this Blog Post the heartbeat of how you move, what you move in what way and how to truly love exercise again is that you have to enjoy it.
At the very front of the success loop, at the very front of what you chose to do, before you even think about about what to do and how to do it you must ask yourself - what do I enjoy doing the most?
This whole article has been about how to change your outlook on movement.
To promote a more balanced view of fitness in your mind, because being imbalanced is probably the reason you feel out of love with movement in the first place.
Every human I have ever worked with, who had the sole desire to move in order to lose weight, has had an awful relationship with exercise, and we have had to do some really hard work to refocus them onto the thought of getting stronger and more confident.
Because there is nothing inspiring about reducing the size of your body.
You should love yourself more than having a mentality of diminishing yourself.
You should love yourself so much that you do things you enjoy - and learn how to enjoy them more.
Have fun. You deserve to have fun, just like Amy wanted to all those years ago.
And, in my most personal of opinons, that is a far more insipiring thought than going to the Gym to just burn some calories.
Did You Find This Useful?
Firstly I want to say a huge thank you for reading my article, and I hope it has given you some food for thought in relation to rebuilding your relationship with movement.
Across this website, I have other Articles all about managing your relationship with exercise:
I would also love to invite you to grab some free fitness goodies from me, including a free month of coaching on The Strong and Confident Program
You also have a unique opportunity to grab a Free Month of Coaching from me as a thank you for being here.
Thank you so much for reading my article - I really hope you found it helpful.
References:
Anon, Move your DNA: Movement ecology and the ... - escholarship.org. Available at: https://escholarship.org/content/qt1k6948g0/qt1k6948g0.pdf?t=q3qtt8 [Accessed November 14, 2021].
Johannsen DL, Tchoukalova Y, Tam CS, et al. Effect of 8 weeks of overfeeding on ectopic fat deposition and insulin sensitivity: testing the "adipose tissue expandability" hypothesis. Diabetes Care. 2014;37(10):2789-2797. doi:10.2337/dc14-0761
Müller MJ, Bosy-Westphal A, Heymsfield SB. Is there evidence for a set point that regulates human body weight?. F1000 Med Rep. 2010;2:59. Published 2010 Aug 9. doi:10.3410/M2-59
Why You Don’t Have To Earn Your Calories In The Gym…
I chose this photo for this blog post for many reasons. Number one its what the world is doing…or at least its what the world wants you to do. Run away from the food you have eaten..or more…try and banish the food you have eaten from your body. Secondly, she has a smile on her face. This smile could mean two things:
She has realised that she doesn’t need to run anymore from the cake and ice cream, and banishing the calories you have eaten through exercise is a daft thing to suggest.
She is just enjoying movement because the movement is there to make us happy.
I fear I am being overly optimistic about the photo. I think the photo in truth was designed to promote the banishing of calories from your body.
This article arose from a TV Programme that was aired here in the UK. It was called Horizon. The tag line for this show is the following:
“Horizon tells amazing science stories, unravels mysteries and reveals worlds you’ve never seen before”
This particular episode was focussing on “The Restaurant that Burns Off Calories”. All you need to know at this point is that a Doctor and a Restuarant Owner teamed up and built a restaurant full of the UK’s “favourite dishes” and built a gym behind the restaurant where there were about 40 Gym Bunnies all ready on Cardio Machines to burn off all the calories that were consumed in one service in the restaurant. The whole menu had been calorie counted, and then the figures were totalled up, and those on Rowing Machines, Treadmills and Exercise Bikes saw this figure ever-increasing and had to keep working towards the final of total of, 45,687 calories.
The show came into much criticism on Social Media as it is promoting the idea that you “have to earn your food in the gym”. Which you simply do not. And anything that promotes this notion is going to be criticised for helping push people towards very real and dangerous eating disorders.
In this article, my aim is to move your mind away from the very worrying and potentially damaging thought that you have to “earn your food”. I would also like to say right from the start, I have never had an eating disorder, and I am also not an eating disorder professional. Throughout the article, I have cited where I have got my information from, and the sources that I believe to be very credible.
My sole purpose in this article is to try and show you how all food including, cakes, donuts, crisps, alcohol, sweets and ice cream as well as exercise and training play two very important roles in maintaining both your physical and mental health. And above all…why you do not have to earn your calories.
If you have found this article, and are suffering from an eating disorder please stop reading, and seek professional and medical advice right here: https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/support-services
We will go through the following:
The Dangers of “earing your calories”.
The Dangers of overtraining.
Why did the BBC Produce this TV Show? and the problems within it.
The best foot forward…
THE DANGERS OF “EARNING YOUR CALORIES IN THE GYM”
This article arose from a TV Programme that was aired here in the UK. It was called Horizon. The tag line for this show is the following:
“Horizon tells amazing science stories, unravels mysteries and reveals worlds you’ve never seen before”
This particular episode was focussing on “The Restaurant that Burns Off Calories”. All you need to know at this point is that a Doctor and a Restuarant Owner teamed up and built a restaurant full of the UK's “favourite dishes” and built a gym behind the restaurant where there were about 40 Gym Bunnies all ready on Cardio Machines to burn off all the calories that were consumed in one service in the restaurant. The whole menu had been calorie counted, and then the figures were totalled up, and those on Rowing Machines, Treadmills and Exercise Bikes saw this figure ever-increasing and had to keep working towards the final of total of, 45,687 calories.
The show came into much criticism on Social Media as it is promoting the idea that you “have to earn your food in the gym”. Which you simply do not. And anything that promotes this notion is going to be criticised for helping push people towards very real and dangerous eating disorders.
When we equate the food we eat in a direct correlation to the amount of exercise we have to do to burn it off…it is a battle we will always lose, because you cannot exercise that much. Or if you do…it will likely lead you towards very excessive behaviour patterns and destroy your relationship with what exercise is, and what your food is.
When you adopt purging behaviours (verb. to physically remove or expel (something) completely) you are treading a very very dangerous line between both your mental health and your physical health.
Here some infographics I once made:
From @thegymstarter on Instagram
As you can see from the infographics…it is merely impossible to:
Do 239 minutes of running at 6mph every time you have a Pizza.
Do 526 minutes of walking, just because you ate Christmas Dinner.
Do 24 minutes of walking every time you consume a Glass of Red Wine.
The sheer thought that you might think, when you sit down on December 25th to enjoy your Christmas Dinner that you will then be faced with nearly 4 hours of walking (depending on your weight) will suck out all enjoyment of that dinner and the true meaning of Christmas. Despite the fact, I don’t know many people that will willingly engage in that much time on a Treadmill (I ran a half marathon on a treadmill once…I do not recommend it).
So what is the other option…you purge the food away.
Every time you do this you are setting up a neurological behaviour that equates food with pain. We all need to eat food. We all need calories to survive. Without them, we will die. This is a fact of life.
And when you become overwhelmed with the idea of how much exercise you will have to do in order to banish the food from your body you will look for the shortcut…which will then lead you into directions such as:
Avoiding social situations.
Living with a feeling of shame.
Relating food enjoyment to painful behaviours.
Changing your brains chemistry to a reward system for these behaviours (1).
Engaging in compensatory behaviours can become addictive. Self-induced vomiting can actually change an individual’s brain chemistry, affecting serotonin levels and releasing endorphins.
This can result in a high that those with purging disorder might strive to recreate following a meal. Similarly, it can be difficult to cease laxative use if an individual’s body has become reliant on them to produce bowel movements (1)
Studies have shown that living on a Very Low-Calorie Diet typically less than 800kcal a day, but can be as little as 1000kcal a day it can have the same physiologically as total starvation (2).
CAN THAT MUCH EXERCISE BE DANGEROUS AS WELL?
Overtraining is a serious subject as well…and if you start walking down the path of “earning your calories” you will have to engage in copious amounts of exercise to compensate.
As I mentioned above, I once ran a Half Marathon on a Treadmill, and it was not a good decision. It took me 2 hours. And yeah…it left its mark. So much so I wasn’t able to train for 4–5 days. But that was a one off stupid incident during marathon training from someone who was very well versed in the ability to run. If I did that day in and day out over a long period of time other issues will begin to arise such as:
Increase in weight
Heavy mood swings
Constant muscle aches (different to DOMS)
Overstressing of muscles leading to frequent injuries
Fatigue and exhaustion
Sleep quality has decreased
In order to actually create a change in the body through training, it must be backed up with a very disciplined regime of sleep and nutrition. Without these two things, you will not build that body you want, and therefore you will always be chasing your tail. If you are considering your food as something you have to burn off, and you educate yourself on the calories contained in foods, then you will be moving towards poorer nutritional choices (ie too few calories), combined with a tendency to overtraining.
According to a study in May 2002, approximately 80 percent of patients with anorexia nervosa and 55 percent of patients with bulimia nervosa compulsively exercise. Female eating disorder patients who exercise report higher levels of psychological distress and psychopathological traits than non-exercisers (3).
Therefore you can see how it will begin to affect both mental and physical health.
WHY DID THE BBC PRODUCE THIS SHOW AND THE PROBLEMS WITHIN IT
A piece of research came out in 2019 from Loughborough University that stated when people know how much exercise they will have to do to burn off their food, as displayed on a food label (knowns as PACE labelling) they are likely to reduce their caloric intake by 103kcals a day (4)
An NHS Blog post (5) states this as the conclusion:
Researchers found:
1. people were less likely to buy a sugary soft drink if it was labelled with PACE information, compared to no label.
2. people selected on average 64.9 fewer calories if food or drink was PACE labelled, compared to no label or other labelling (95% confidence interval (CI) -103.2 to -26.6)
3. people ate on average 80.4 fewer calories if food or drink was PACE labelled, compared to no label or other labelling (95% CI -136.7 to -24.2)
I remember when this story broke as I was invited to talk about it on BBC Radio 5 Live. I was merely approaching it from the relationship of PACE labelling and weight loss. I didn’t really see the relationship this would then have with eating disorders until I looked into it more.
The premise is a fair one. Let's get that out the way right now. The idea that anything that reduces our caloric intake could be a win-win is always going to be a “good idea” especially when we are facing huge increases in obesity globally. But I would like to think that the first half of this article has made you realise the very serious consequences labelling food like this can have.
The show itself was very lukewarm on two fronts. One, its dietary information and the message it tried to get across, and two its understanding of the role exercise plays in our metabolism.
I could pull the show apart, trust me, I made enough notes on how sensationalist it was at times throughout the programme. But also just how sensationalist the whole premise was. Having 40 or so people, all who were not a cross-section of society in terms of their exercise habits, their age and weight working out on Cardio Machines to burn off food others had eaten is simply sensationalism. And the fitness industry has dabbled in sensationalism far too much. This is one reason why eating disorders are on the rise (6) because of Diet Culture and unrealistic expectations of what is achievable being spouted left right and centre to everyone.
Other issues I noticed with the show was that there was no given metric as to how they were monitoring how much exercise the subjects had to do. They didn’t look to me like they were wearing heart rate monitors or were going through a VO2 Max Test as they were doing it to determine truly how many calories they were actually burning.
The lack of information about how the exercise subjects output was being monitored might lead some people to jump on a treadmill and take the numbers that the machine gives you as fact. The numbers of calories burned on a Treadmill, Exercise Bike or Rowing Machine are to be disregarded at all times. They are wildly inaccurate and will nearly always give a higher reading close to 15–20% than what you actually did.
This is important to know because you will be giving it your all on a Cardio Machine, tracking that number…not seeing results that you think you deserve and then you will want to give up again.
I also felt that nearly every shot of the exercise subjects you saw, they looked downtrodden, deflated and absolutely exhausted. I mean…who wouldn't be? Having to do that much exercise.
The meals that the restaurant were serving might have been “typical” to the UK, but they are only typical to the UK when we are eating out. Something that we do not do all day every day. So to directly correlate the very stark image of that many people, looking that hot and sweaty, because of food that someone has eaten, is falsifying the truth. Home Cooked Food vs Restaurant Cooked Food is always going to have big variances in the Caloric value due to things like Oil, Salt and other flavourings that are used in the food.
One of the hosts gave a very simplified version of how your Metabolism worked, and she followed this statement up with “you can’t do much to influence your BMR”, again, which is not giving you the full truth. Which is what makes this programme so very wrong indeed. The sheer fact that the programme is telling you only what you can and cannot do in one exercise session to burn away your calories is very misguided.
The show took in no regard for what happens over long periods of time when you add muscle to your body, and how that helps you maintain your weight. The show gave reference to the fact that Muscle requires more calories to maintain than body fat…but it didn’t look into that any further — which again is giving a very imbalanced view.
It also didn’t mention EPOC (Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption). EPOC is responsible for the continuation of burning calories post-exercise. It occurs both in Cardio work and Resistance Training. However, it occurs to a greater degree in resistance training (7), although the studies I could find do say it is a small difference, and it is an incremental difference over long periods of time.
One last point on the show which I think sums the whole thing up. There was a moment when Angela a middle-aged woman who was enjoying a meal ordered a dessert. The waiter then showed her the PACE labelling for the item she ordered. Angela changed her mind to a different less calorific dessert. However the look on her face would have suggested that she was neither happy about choosing ice cream, and she seemed even less impressed that she felt guilt-tripped into having it.
She also says as her husband is eating the Cheesecake “I have pudding envy. I really wanted the cheesecake”. She was out having a nice meal and has now had her dinner somewhat spoiled by the fact that she now knows she saved 335kcals on her meal.
They went on to ask her about this and she said that she has a goal in mind to fit into a dress for a wedding…and this choice will get her one day closer to getting into that dress.
Which is a nice thought? But it won't help her. It won’t help her because she is encouraging herself to move away from the enjoyment of her food and into a place where she is having to avoid things she enjoys, simply because she is viewing her food as like for like exchange for calories, and weight. She also states later in the programme that “she isn't careful about the food she eats”.
Which brings me to my last point in this section. You can’t build good habits with food if you are building it on a foundation of sand. Shocking people into better choices will not work, because an awful lot more goes into why people chose the foods they eat each day. It's down to their emotional behaviours, their environmental factors and their relationship with themselves.
Not their relationship with their food labels.
THE BEST FOOT FORWARD AND CONCLUSION
So what should we do? If PACE labelling isn’t the answer what should we do instead?
Like with most things two words spring to mind.
Education and Balance.
The education required would be to acknowledge that Exercise is responsible for just 5% of your Daily Metabolic burn.
Read that again.
Exercise is responsible for just 5% of your Daily Metabolic burn.
Above is your Metabolism each day set out as percentages. And you can see Exercise Activity is responsible for just 5% of that.
So I ask the question…why was the show expecting people to burn off 100% of their meals?
Energy In vs Energy Out is what it is important here. And that bar in my infographic is 100% of your energy out. Therefore a keener focus on the big sections of the bar would be useful.
You can improve your BMR by lifting weights, maintaining muscle mass, sleeping better, eating more protein and enjoying the compound effect of these lifestyle changes over a long period of time will help improve your metabolism.
Increase your NEAT. This is your Daily Movement. Fidgeting, Standing, Climbing Stairs, Walking, Gardening, Dancing and everything in between.
We can even increase our Thermic Effect of Food due to making sure the food we eat has a higher Protein focus.
Add all that up and you are increasing 95% of your Metabolism. Yes, it will take time but this isn’t nor should it ever be a like for like situation. Your metabolism is a lot more complex than Exercise = Calories, and the sooner we can understand that the sooner you will start protecting your future self from increased weight gain.
If you want to lose weight and don’t want to spend all day on the treadmill just because you ate a burger …then you can need to do the above.
I would also suggest that you get yourself Calorie Educated. Spend time learning what calories are in your food, and learning how that can work into your numbers for each day. I repeat:
You do not have to earn your calories eaten in the gym.
I have a system called the Five Awesome Rules For Fat Loss Life which I outline in this video which will be a great place to start your understanding of how this all weaves together and why not equating calories eaten to time spent on a Rowing Machine is a good idea.
Did you find this useful?
You can Join The Fitness Collective which is my Membership Group. In there I give Monthly Updates, Live Q and A’s, I provide you with new workouts each and every month, and write guidance on your fitness journey. To find out more about The Fitness Collective you can click here: The Fitness Collective
Please share this with your friends and anyone else you may know who is worried about training in a gym, and feel free to follow me using the links below… And if you want to get updates on when I publish new articles, publish new podcasts or anything else then please remember to sign up below.
And above all remember this…for as long as you are trying your best no one can ask for more from you.
Coach Adam
References:
1.Ekern, B., 2020. Purging Disorder: Signs, Symptoms — You Need To Be Aware Of This. [online] Eating Disorder Hope. Available at: <https://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/blog/purging-disorder-signs-and-symptoms> [Accessed 23 April 2020].
2. Uclahealth.org. 2020. Very Low Calorie Diet (VLCD) Plan : RFO Weight Loss Program | UCLA Center For Human Nutrition. [online] Available at: <https://www.uclahealth.org/clinicalnutrition/vlcd> [Accessed 23 April 2020].
3. Eating Disorder Hope. 2020. Exercising And Eating: What Are The Risks And Effects Of Over-Exercising. [online] Available at: <https://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/information/orthorexia-excessive-exercise/risks-over-exercising> [Accessed 23 April 2020].
4. Davis, N., 2020. Exercise Advice On Food Labels Could Help To Tackle The Obesity Crisis. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/dec/10/exercise-advice-on-food-labels-could-help-to-tackle-the-obesity-crisis> [Accessed 23 April 2020].
5. nhs.uk. 2020. Exercise Advice On Food Labels Could ‘Change Eating Habits’. [online] Available at: <https://www.nhs.uk/news/food-and-diet/exercise-advice-food-labels-could-change-eating-habits/> [Accessed 23 April 2020].
6. Marsh, S., 2020. Hospital Admissions For Eating Disorders Surge To Highest In Eight Years. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/15/hospital-admissions-for-eating-disorders-surge-to-highest-in-eight-years> [Accessed 23 April 2020].
7. Unm.edu. 2020. Resistance Training And EPOC. [online] Available at: <https://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/epoc.html> [Accessed 23 April 2020].
How To Do A Push-Up and Why It Took Me 15 Years To Be Able To Perform One
How To Do A Push-Up and Why It Took Me 15 Years To Be Able To Perform One
The Push Up is a very hard exercise to execute…and only after 15 years of hard work on the movement have I actually managed to achieve it. This article is going to explain how you can practice and progress your push-up but also I want to delve into why we the Push Up is one of those exercises that make us feel so useless when we cannot perform it.
Also…before we get into it…Push Up or Press Up? I’m going to use the term Push Up for this article for two reasons. 1. My Grammar App prefers it. 2. It is a Pushing Movement of the body. Press would indicate speed…and my Push-Ups are not fast. At all.
15 Years….seriously?
I kid you not. I remember when I was an Air Cadet at the tender age of 15 and one of my punishments, yes punishments, for something like not having shiny enough shoes, would be to go out into a dark cold English Winters Night with an NCO and I would have to do 10 Push-Ups.
Now I am a very tall, very skinny, floppy eared human, and so the ability to do a Push Up was not something that would ever come naturally to me.
Nor is the cold dark environment of someone shouting at me likely to motivate me to succeed at this punishment. In truth, we were bordering on abuse, but it was cloaked in Military Discipline…so its alright…right?
Because of how long my levers (arms and legs) are, it naturally makes a movement like a Push Up a lot harder.
It comes down to Three Things, as the brilliant blog Art of Tall States,
Distance Travelled: The longer your limbs the more work you have to do to move your body through a range of motion. For every inch your arms are longer than someone of a shorter height you have to travel an inch further to execute a push-up. When you increase the distance you need to travel, you increase the amount of work you need to do!
Leverage: Push-Ups are a second class lever. Your Centre of Gravity hovers around your hips. Your arms do all of the moving. Gravity is pulling your body down at the Hips. Consequently, you need a certain amount of abdominal strength to complete a push-up, to keep your hips from sagging*. The taller you are, the longer your body and the further your hands and feet are from your hips. The further your base of support moves from the centre, your hips, the greater the amount of force that pulls the hips down.
*a point that will become very clear in the latter part of this article.
3. Muscle To Weight Ratio: Generally the taller you are the more weight you have to carry (more dense and bigger bones, longer legs). As you get taller, your organs and bones get larger and heavier, but you still build muscle at about the same rate as everyone else (regardless of height). So, if you are lean (like most tall people), you require a certain amount of strength to be able to execute a push-up correctly.
It’s usually a lack of strength coupled with distance travelled and leverage that makes push-ups harder if you are tall.
So unbeknown to myself at the time, as well as Lance Corporal Craig, a very short yappy thing…the kind of person that loved to exploit the tiny amount of power he had over anyone…I was at a significant disadvantage from the outset. But this didn’t stop the ridicule, the failure and the outright sense of uselessness I had from not being able to do a Push-Up.
It was a mental scar that was well and truly ingrained deep within me. It all linked to the bullying I would receive on a daily basis at school combined with the usual worries that a teenager would have about the world.
I was scarred from ever having to do a Push-Up.
Fast forward a few years, I’m now in the Gym. Having pretty much-avoided Push-Ups since I was an Air Cadet. I got through Drama School, travelled the world filming, played Soldiers in Films, I even Refereed in the FA Cup…but always managed to sidestep the P…U.
Until I started training Clients…I would have to joke about my inability to not demonstrate one correctly…and I would silently hear the other trainers mock me. Laugh at me…in my head they would say things like:
“Call yourself a PT and you can’t do a Push-Up????”
Well yeah. I did. I have many misgivings…and not being able to do a Push Up is (or was) one of them. Of course, this was all in my head but it still felt very real.
Then I decided to take my Strength Training seriously, I hit the Bench Press, The Overhead Press, The Pull-Up, The Barbell Row, I worked my Upper Body over and over twice a week (Legs was the other workout of the week) and I have done this now for 3 years until the other day I was in the gym with my fiancee and I was just hammering out a Push Up. Didn’t even think of it. It never felt smoother, it never felt more controlled…it did still make my face go red. But I was doing it. I then asked my fiancee to record it…onto Instagram Stories (follow me @thegymstarter) and I uploaded the video. It got a lovely response from lots of lovely people.
And I realised after 15 years my journey was complete.
Why was it so hard for me?
My mental block when it came to it.
The scars I had from my early exposure to the exercise, whether that was at school in P.E class or as an Air Cadet, it clearly made me put up a lot of walls in my mind whenever I was asked to execute a Push-Up.
Combine that with my physiology. But I’m not making excuses. I wasn't strong enough. Plain and simple. I could run a Marathon…but I couldn’t do a single push up. I had to build muscle…which is something that has always been hard for me… and that led to a long journey in being able to do the Push-Up.
Why is it so hard for anyone?
One of the most common things I hear from clients when asking them to do a Push Up is “Why can’t I do a Push-Up? I’m so weak it's ridiculous”
It's not ridiculous at all. In the world, there is a very common misconception that a Push Up is something we all should be able to do. We think of them as basic, simple movements that everyone in the world can do except for us.
Let's look at how heavy a Push Up is:
When in the Up Position of a Push Up you are lifting 69% of your body weight.
Therefore if you weigh 75kg you are lifting 51.75kg.
When in the Down Position of a Push Up you are lifting 75.04% of your body weight.
Therefore if you weigh 75kg you are lifting 56.28kg.
That's a heavy weight.
If you have attempted a Push-Up and felt like a failure…ask yourself this:
“Can I do a 55kg Bench Press?”
“A 55kg Overhead Press?”
“ Can I do a 55kg anything in the Gym?”
If the answer is no to just one of these questions then you are not a failure because you cannot do a Push-Up.
You are quite simply very normal.
How Do You Improve Your Push Up?
In order to develop your ability with any exercise that you are struggling with you can regress the exercise to try and make it more manageable for you to execute.
With a Push Up there are two regular regressions.
The 3/4 or Kneeling Push Up :
Or the Incline Push Up:
Of the two I favour an Incline a lot lot more. The Incline Push Up demands that you engage your Core Muscles* a lot more than the Kneeling Push Up.
*I told you I would come back to it
By getting used to the movement pattern with your Core Muscles engaged you are going to find the transition of from Incline to Flat a lot easier.
The other part of a Push Up that gets wildly ignored is the arm and head position in the lower part of the movement.
Many people believe that a Push Up goes straight up and down.
This misconception leads you to overuse of your arm and shoulder muscles and underuses your Chest Muscles.
We want to get the Chest engaged as much as possible in this movement pattern so that you can progress it with a much larger muscle group engaged…hopefully making the whole thing easier.
In order to do this we need two things to occur:
You need to lower your body tracking to the shape of a quarter circle. This way your head and chest will finish in the lower position further forward than the starting position, and your hands should then end up next to your nipples on your chest.
2. If you get point 1 correct then that should allow your arms to form the much needed Arrow Position which will help you with the Push Up also. Many people allow their arms to head into the “T” position, which compromises the shoulder joint, combined with putting too much strain upon muscles which are too small for you to be able to lift 74.04% of your Bodyweight. Seriously, try doing a Tricep Extension with 50kg….(I was joking. Please do not attempt this idea).
If you want to build up your ability to be able to execute a Push Up I would suggest throwing in practice to your upper body day. Remember:
Practice Makes Permanent
A good Upper Body Workout to get towards a Push Up would be:
Barbell Bench Press | 3 Sets | RPE = 8–9
Incline Bench Press | 3 Sets | RPE = 7–8
Overhead Press | 3 Sets | RPE = 6–7
Super Set of Lateral Raise | Front Raise | 3 Sets | RPE= 6–7
Inverted Row | 3 Sets | RPE = 7
Paloff Press | 3 Sets | RPE = 7
Plank | 3 Sets | RPE = 7
Push Up Variation | 3 Sets | RPE = 6–7
To Conclude…
The Push Up is far harder than the world has told you, and your misgivings in being able to complete it are fully understandable.
Stop thinking that using regression is a sign of failure. It's not. Its a sign of knowledge and understanding of what it takes to reach your goal. Its a sign of rejecting what popular opinion is, and making sure that you are working on your own track, for your own goals, in your own way.
It took me 15 years to be able to write this article for you, with authority. That’s a long time.
I can’t say doing a Push Up was ever an “active” goal of mine, and I do think if I was able to shake off my negative experiences with the exercise quicker then I would have shortened this time frame. But I avoided it.
I avoided it because it reminded me of my weaknesses. But the only person that lost out was me.
You may have some mental blocks when it comes to your Health and Fitness, and you may need more help than just this article.
But work on your goals. Because you have a lot to gain from them. Yes they will take a long time to accomplish, but if you can open up your time frames and understand that the art of building muscle and losing weight takes a long long time.
The more you can engage with that…the easier it all becomes.
If you have any questions…please put them below or reach out to me on adam@thegymstarter.com
Tall, A., 2020. Are Push-Ups Harder For Tall People? — The Art Of Tall. [online] The Art of Tall. Available at: <http://artoftall.com/are-push-ups-harder-for-tall-people/> [Accessed 30 March 2020].
Cooperinstitute.org. 2020. How Much Weight Is Really Lifted During A Push-Up? — Cooper Institute. [online] Available at: <https://www.cooperinstitute.org/2011/03/how-much-weight-is-really-lifted-during-a-push-up/> [Accessed 30 March 2020].
Did you find this useful?
You can Join The Fitness Collective which is my Membership Group. In there I give Monthly Updates, Live Q and A’s, I provide you with new workouts each and every month, and write guidance on your fintess journey.
To find out more about The Fitness Collective you can click here: The Fitness Collective
Please share this with your friends and anyone else you may know who is worried about training in a gym, and feel free to follow me using the links below…
And if you want to get updates on when I publish new articles, publish new podcasts or anything else then please remember to sign up below
And above all remember this…for as long as you are trying your best no one can ask for more from you.
Coach Adam