Enjoy Exercise Responsibly This NEW YEAR!

Over the years life has certainly got physically easier, an obvious example is shopping. My grandparent’s generation were used to shopping on the high street going in to many different shops to get their groceries.  My parent’s generation had it easier by doing their shopping all under one roof in a supermarket and nowadays it seems many of my generation feel personally affronted if they have to actually go to the shops, opting to do it all online instead.

WHY ARE YOU BANGING ON ABOUT SHOPPING I HEAR YOU CRY?

Well the point I am getting at is that over the years we have become increasingly used to absolving ourselves of many of our basic responsibilities, instead opting to get others to do stuff for us, and getting someone else to do our shopping is just the tip of the iceberg! Heck, remember back to doing your homework in your school days. I’m sure like me you’d have spent many an hour in the library, nowadays you don’t even have to do that, all you have to do is look on your phone and all of the answers are there in seconds – no hassle, no fuss, no effort!

YOU ONLY TRAIN FOR 1 HOUR PER DAY, WHAT YOU GONNA DO WITH THE OTHER 23?

Now in the New Year in your quest to lose weight I’m sure many of you will begin a new exercise regime, for some of you this will involve joining a gym, for others it may involve using the services of personal trainer. Whatever method you choose do not absolve yourself of your responsibilities. Training (whether in a gym or with a personal trainer) will only take up one hour of the day, you’re still responsible for how much you eat and how much activity you do in the other 23 hours!

During my career, luckily, I’ve only had a few clients who’ve struggled to lose fat, but the one thing they had in common was that they absolved themselves of their responsibilities. During our sessions together they would train hard and have lots of fun but away from the training they would never stick to the physical activity and calorie-reducing nutrition targets we had agreed together.

SHERLOCK HOLMES!

 

They’d often come to me bemoaning the fact that that had done loads of physical activity and really reduced the amount of food they had eaten yet had still not lost any weight.  It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to work out that they weren’t being entirely truthful! After all if you use more calories than you consume, you will, overtime lose fat as the body starts to use its fat stores as energy.  In short these clients of mine were massively over estimating how many calories they burnt each day and massively underestimating how many calories they consumed, which incidentally is a common theme among individuals who struggle to lose weight.

IF THIS WEREN’T THE CASE NO-ONE WOULD EVER DIE OF STARVATION!

Now please bear in mind here that weight-loss is not linear. If you’re definitely in a calorie deficit (you are using more calories than you are consuming) you will definitely start to lose weight, now you might not lose weight at the same rate each week but over time you will definitely lose weight, there are no two ways about it.  Heck if this didn’t happen (and please don’t think I’m being flippant about the subject) no one would ever die of hunger and starvation.

LOSE FAT, NOT MUSCLE

 

Lastly when it comes to weight loss what you should actually try to do is lose fat and maintain your muscle mass. How you do this is to reduce your calories appropriately whilst maintaining a relatively high protein intake and combine this with resistance training.

If you would like more detailed advice about how to set your appropriate calorie intake or help with designing a balanced resistance training please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

 

Good luck with your training!

 

Matt

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