NEW YEAR, NEW YOU In 5 Simple Steps

So, the New Year is upon us and you’ve decided that this is the year that you're really going to get fit and lose the weight.

So how are you going to go about doing it?

There are numerous ways, many of which have proved very successful with lots of my clients, but on balance, the following method has proved to be the most fruitful and therefore the reason I want to share it with you.

1.  Set yourself a target.

Just as a game of archery without a target proves futile, for many people (not all) so does trying to lose weight without having a calorie target.

So how do you set yourself a target? Some experts recommend you base it on your current weight, others recommend you base it on your target weight, that is the weight you’d like to be in future.
Either way there are numerous apps out there that will do the maths for you! But if you do fancy yourself as a bit of a Carol Vorderman (minus the Botox) a relatively quick and easy ESTIMATE as recommended by leading nutrition expert Lyle McDonald is 10-12 calories, per 1lb of body weight per day. Note that I highlighted the word estimate because it is just that, and will likely have to be adjusted.

As with all methods of calorie estimation be they done using an app or the method used above or something similar, they will probably have to be adjusted based on how you respond to the diet. For example, if you are extremely active you may have to increase the total, if you are really inactive or drastically overweight you’ll probably have to reduce the total. But at the very least it’s a starting point from which you can work from.

At this point, I would also recommend setting a macronutrient target, that is working out what percentage of the total daily calories should come from fats, proteins and carbohydrates, but I realise this may be a little to detailed so please do not hesitate to get in touch with me if you’d like some help with this. But at the very least, try to get plenty of your calories from protein (the reasons for which I've written about HERE previously). 

2. Act like your nosy, curtain twitching neighbour and track everything.

Now that you’ve got a calorie target, spend the next few weeks tracking what you eat. Inspect food labels, weigh your food, work out portion sizes, in fact do whatever you can to make sure you become more aware of how many calories you are consuming and exactly where those calories are coming from.

Now I know this may seem about as much fun as a night out with Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg (don’t know who this fella is? Google him, he makes Michael Owen look like Keith Richards) but you won’t have to do it for long, just for a few weeks. From then on you can begin to guestimate things based on your new-found knowledge rather than measuring all the time.    

3. Train like an Olympian (well kind of).

In an ideal world, you’d have the physical capacity, as well as the time to begin training like an Olympian, that is, be able to do plenty of weight training and plenty of cardio without any repercussions to your health. But we don’t live in an ideal world (if we did, I’d be Brad Pitt rather than just an exceptionally good lookalike) and many of us simply can’t train at the same level of intensity as an Olympian (as I've written about HERE previously). So at the very least try to find some form physical or sporting activity which you enjoy doing and aim to do it roughly 2-3 times per week and if you could throw in some form of weight training too that would be a real bonus!

4. Be like Madonna and holiday (not fall over at the Brit Awards, or wear a cone-shaped bra).

As Madonna famously sung ‘If we took a holiday…it would be so nice’ and as we all know, a holiday is nice. But don’t worry I’m not suggesting that you book 2 weeks in Barbados but I do recommend that 6 – 8 weeks into your diet you should book yourself a 1 week break away from it.

And in that diet break don’t treat it as an ‘all-inclusive’ where you shovel food and drink down your old Gregory Peck (neck) with reckless abandon, but approach it as time where you can relax a little and treat yourself to, well a few extra treats here and there! Now I know this may seem counterintuitive to some, but taking a diet break allows you to relax and ready yourself psychologically for the further dieting that is to come. 

5. Go back to the start and repeat the process.

After your diet break, revaluate your calorie target and get straight back on with your diet and training. After all, by virtue of the fact that you have been on a diet for at least the previous month and a half, there should be less of you i.e. you should have lost weight and now be smaller in size than you were at the start of the diet, meaning you now require less calories each day.

Once you’ve set yourself a new calorie target revaluate your exercise too. Could you increase this a little? And of course, don’t forget to plan yourself another diet break somewhere in the forthcoming weeks.

Thanks for reading.

If you’re interested in finding out more about other methods of weight loss which have worked well with my clients please get in touch.

TO BOOK YOUR FREE HEALTH AND FITNESS ASSESSMENT, OR YOUR FREE PERSONAL TRAINING SESSION, OR TO BOOK A PLACE AT MY BOOT CAMP CLASS, PLEASE DON’T HESITATE TO GET IN TOUCH.

Matt

     matt@mlrpt.co.uk                 www.mlrpt.co.uk                          07939316401 www.twitter.com/mlrpt      www.facebook.com/mlrpt        www.twitter.com/mlrpt

IF, it’ll leave your stomach emptier than Katie Hopkins’ heart, but does it work?

Before I talk about if it works or not, first I must explain what IF actually is.

IF is short for Intermittent Fasting, which in simple terms is the act of eating nothing at all, or very little for varying degrees of time and then eating normally for the remainder of time. Probably the most popular form of this is the 5:2 diet, where by you eat normally for 5 days per week and for the other 2 days you drastically reduce your calorie intake in the hope of losing weight.

The 5:2 diet was popularized by celebrity doctor, Dr Michael Mosely in his BBC infomercial, sorry I mean documentary (I’m sure it was purely coincidence that Dr Mosley released his number one selling book ‘The Fast Diet’ just after the documentary aired). 

But there are many other forms of IF too. Such as alternate day fasting, where by you eat normally for one day then restrict your calorie intake the next and then repeat this throughout the week. And yet another form is daily fasting whereby you are allowed to eat for certain periods throughout the day and then fast for the remainder of the 24 hours.

As you’ve probably already realised, the term intermittent fasting is a deliberately convoluted one with many different protocols to choose from, but essentially they are all just variations of a theme.

So, does IF work for weight loss?

The simple answer is yes, but only if you manage not to overeat during the periods when you are not fasting and by and large the research shows that most people are able to do this.

It is also pretty good at maintaining muscle mass too!

A major concern of mine when clients lose weight is that they don’t lose loads of muscle in the process. Luckily the research shows that IF is pretty good at not allowing this to happen too drastically (unlike many of the fad diets out there) which is great because muscle mass if the key to long term fat loss.

Great sign me up, when can I start IF?

Whoa there, hold your horses, just because the science has demonstrated that IF can help you lose weight it doesn’t necessarily mean that is the best option for you. It’ll probably work for you if you hate counting calories or if you prefer eating larger meals (rather than the smaller portion sizes seen with traditional diets). However, for some people especially sports people with performance goals, should remember that IF may interfere with their training and levels of performance.

In summary…

IF represents a good way of losing weight for those who it suits, however it has no superior metabolic advantage over more traditional diets. If you don't think the IF approach is for you, why not try this more detailed approach to weight loss.

Thanks for reading.

Matt

TO BOOK YOUR FREE PERSONAL TRAINING SESSION, OR TO BOOK A PLACE AT MY BOOT CAMP CLASS, PLEASE DON’T HESITATE TO GET IN TOUCH.

    matt@mlrpt.co.uk                 www.mlrpt.co.uk                          07939316401 www.twitter.com/mlrpt      www.facebook.com/mlrpt        www.twitter.com/mlrpt

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3 WAYS TO DEAL WITH WEIGHT GAIN DURING THE DECEMBER BENDER!

As we navigate our way through the month-long drinking and party odyssey known as the Christmas period AKA the December Bender there are a number things that we must accept will happen:

1. We will all have at least one friend with the same level of sincerity as Boris Johnson, inform us that ‘I’m not sending cards this year as I’m going to donate the money to charity instead’ when you know full well they aren’t. They simply can’t be bothered to send you a card and they use the charity bit as a way of softening the blow.

2. Facebook friends will continue to post soppy pictures of their Christmas trees as if they’re the first, last and only person to have ever thought of wrapping some lights around a flippin’ tree. (Only joking Facebook friends, I love your trees really).

3. After attending numerous parties, festivals and functions, some happily and some with the enthusiasm of a World War II conscript, one thing is for sure, many of us will gain some weight.

And here are my top 3 tips on how to deal with this weight gain...

1. Train like your half deaf Gran trying to watch telly and increase the volume!

With all the festivities, undoubtedly extra calories will be consumed and you’ve got to find somewhere to put them if you don’t want to pile on the pounds. And what better excuse is there to get away from watching another crappy rerun of a Christmas special first shown in circa 1970 than getting out and doing a bit of training?

If you’re used to running for 5 miles consider going for 6 or even 7, if you’re used to lifting weights for 3 sets of 10 try to do 4 or even 5 sets. Basically, treat your training like your half deaf Gran trying to watch the TV and increase the volume of it, after all these excess calories need somewhere to go and they may as well fuel your training rather than you’re spare tyre!

Think of it as a win-win, not only do you get out of the house over the Christmas period (which can seem like a boring eternity for many) but you also get to spend some time away from your visiting uncle knob-head, whom you only see once a year…for a reason…as my mum would say ‘You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family’.

2. Act like a girl desperate to fit into a particularly tight dress and DON’T eat.

Before I got into personal training I was blissfully unaware of the lengths women would go to, to ensure they fitted into their favourite tight dress. Having heard countless testimonies from clients the most common and preferred method appears to be starving oneself throughout the entire day thus ensuring they are able fit into the dress come the evening. Now I am not condoning this practice as it is often supported by ridiculous amounts of cigarettes and other unhealthy lifestyle choices all in the name of fitting into a dress.

However, if you are planning on highly calorific feast in the evening, the premise of reducing your calorie intake in the daytime in readiness for the impending excess calorie consumption is not necessarily a bad idea. Think of it as saving your calories till later in the day, which can simply be done by skipping breakfast or lunch or even both. In essence it is a form intermittent fasting which is gaining traction amongst the scientific literature as an effective method of weight loss and I've written about it previously HERE.    

3. Behave like a newbie at an alcoholics anonymous meeting and accept it.

As regular readers’ will know, often my advice runs counter to some of the advice you see spouted about by other fitness ‘experts’ and once again I am not going to disappoint with my final tip.

The third and most important tip is to accept that weight gain is probably going to happen.

At any time of year let alone Christmas, there is nothing worse than when you’re out out, as a certain cockney comedian would put it, than having some fun-sponge friend sitting next to you saying ‘oh I can’t eat that, it’ll make me fat’. So rather than boring your friends with the macronutrient content of your desired meal, sod it and opt for whatever you like and accept that yes, it may not help with your weight loss, but it does dam taste good and it is Christmas after all!

Of course, don’t approach every meal over the festive period with this mindset or you’ll end up piling on the pounds quicker than Donald Trump collects wedding rings but a little excess here and there certainly won’t be the end of the world! After all you’ve got January and beyond to burn it off!   

Thanks for reading.

TO BOOK YOUR FREE HEALTH AND FITNESS ASSESSMENT, OR YOUR FREE PERSONAL TRAINING SESSION, OR TO BOOK A PLACE AT MY BOOT CAMP CLASS PLEASE DON’T HESITATE TO GET IN TOUCH.

Matt

     matt@mlrpt.co.uk                    www.mlrpt.co.uk                          07939316401 www.twitter.com/mlrpt        www.facebook.com/mlrpt       www.twitter.com/mlrpt

Yet another thing to blame your parents for!

I know it’s tough but for a moment do a John Lennon, and by ‘do a John Lennon’ I don’t mean sod off to India and study transcendental meditation, I mean imagine. Imagine a just and fair world where each of us are born equal with the exact same potential for achieving whatever we wanted to. In this just and fair world the only barrier to us achieving success would be the amount of hard work we were prepared to put in.

The trouble is we don’t live in a such a world. It would be great if we could all look like Arnold Schwarzenegger provided we trained hard enough but we can’t and there’s no point pretending we can. Some people are simply high responders to exercise, some are not.

It comes as no coincidence that myself and my two brothers barely need to train at all before appearing noticeably more muscular and athletic. And who do we have to thank for this? A large amount of gratitude must go to our parents. Old pictures of my dad show he had biceps that most bodybuilders would die for despite him never actually going to the gym, and to this very day many people still marvel at the strength my mum displays when helping us out with the odd DIY construction project.

My brothers and I were obviously very lucky to have inherited those strong genes from our parents, but some people are not so lucky…  

In one study which looked at muscle growth in people following the exact same resistance training programme, the high responders increased their muscle size by 50% with some of the low responders increasing their muscle size by a depressing 0%.

This type of response isn’t just limited to muscle growth. A study of 1000 people looking into the effects of training on stamina and endurance found that roughly the top 10% of the participants were super responders and made dramatic improvements, whereas the bottom 10% were low responders who made very little improvement at all (with the remaining 80% of people falling somewhere between the two extremes).

Not only does genetics play a large role in determining how much muscle you can build or how long and far you can run for, it also (amongst other things) plays a role in regulating how much fat you have, and where about on the body you store it.  

Now before you hold up the white flag and surrender on your plans of getting fitter because you think your parents dealt you a bad gene-hand, bear this in mind, genetics do not account for 100% of a person’s physique, there are a number of other factors involved which you can control and just because your body maybe genetically predisposed to store more body fat, it is not an excuse to deliberately let it do so. It just means you have to work harder than other people to overcome that problem, yet at the same time remain realistic about the limitations that our bodies impose.

Thanks for reading,

Matt

TO BOOK YOUR FREE PERSONAL TRAINING SESSION, OR TO BOOK A PLACE AT MY BOOT CAMP CLASS, PLEASE DON’T HESITATE TO GET IN TOUCH.

    matt@mlrpt.co.uk                 www.mlrpt.co.uk                          07939316401 www.twitter.com/mlrpt      www.facebook.com/mlrpt        www.twitter.com/mlrpt

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Perfection is poison to your diet success

Google the term ‘diet’ and ‘weight loss’ and page after page after page appears extolling the virtues of diet after diet, most of which are downright ridiculous (as are the credentials of most of their proponents for that matter). Anyway, regardless of which diet you follow, in my experience one of the major reasons why they fail is because people expect perfection. That is, when they are on a diet, they are ON a diet and they will not deviate from that righteous path. To do so would be regarded as abject failure.

Now this approach is great when everything is rosy and you feel super motivated but what happens when you’ve had a bad day and your mood is lower than a snakes’ belly? And your cravings for that chocolate digestive are higher than Pete Doherty on a Saturday night? Simple, you reach for that chocolate-topped biccy and munch through it with gusto, and do you stop at just the one? Of course not, just like Taylor Swift and her celebrity boyfriends, you go for another and then another and then another. By this point you’re so upset and despondent with yourself that you are now officially OFF of your diet and you end up eating the whole blimmin’ pack of biscuits.

The following morning you wake up with more regrets than a vertigo sufferer who’s just go a job on the waltzer, and because you’re now no longer ON a diet you spend the day eating rubbish. A day turns into a week and a week soon becomes a month. Before you know it, you’re back at square one with regards to weight loss and that’s if you’re lucky. Often, if you’ve followed a fad diet you’re worse off than you were to start with because you’ve ended up losing a lot of muscle mass when trying to shift the fat.

If you adopt this attitude, that anything less than absolute perfection is a failure, unfortunately, just like Danny DeVito entering a high jump competition, you’re pretty much doomed from the start. The trouble with dieting, as with most things, is that life gets in the way.

So what is the antidote to this perfection poison?

It is something called the 80/20 principle, which basically states that if you follow your diet for 80% of the time, the other 20% doesn’t really matter too much, not unless you make it an issue of course. So don’t strive to be perfect all of the time, just most of the time. Think of dieting as learning to ride a bike – you have to expect to fall off now and again!

Another way is not demonising certain foods or food groups. For example, if biscuits weren’t regarded as sinful, perhaps they wouldn’t be the catalyst for binge eating the whole pack. But that’s not to say that biscuits are ‘good for you’, of course an apple would be a better option, but then again eating shed loads of them would have their down sides! Perhaps renowned songstress Cheryl (formerly Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, formerly Cheryl Cole, formerly Cheryl Tweedy) summed it up perfectly in her hit song ‘Fight for this Love’ when she sang ‘Too much of anything can make you sick’. As my old nan would say ‘a little bit of everything does you good’.

Thanks for reading,

Matt

TO BOOK YOUR FREE PERSONAL TRAINING SESSION, OR TO BOOK A PLACE AT MY BOOT CAMP CLASS, PLEASE DON’T HESITATE TO GET IN TOUCH.

    matt@mlrpt.co.uk                 www.mlrpt.co.uk                          07939316401 www.twitter.com/mlrpt      www.facebook.com/mlrpt        www.twitter.com/mlrpt

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Superfoods are just like Superheroes - pretend

As a kid growing up I’m sure you, like me, were obsessed with superheroes, enthralled by their gravity defying superhuman skills and seeming immortality. I can remember dreaming about being Spiderman, firing out webs to fend off supervillains and I am sure you were the same.

Not content with our good guys being superhuman we had to have bad guys that were not just bad but Superbad! We’d have been about as happy as Joey Essex in a library if Superman spent all his time fighting your common or garden criminal (the type that sold class C drugs from a bedroom in his mum’s house) so we got Lex Luthor, a power-mad billionaire, inventor and scientist intent on the annihilation of Superman.

What’s this got to do with exercise and nutrition I hear you ask, well if you think about it, the fitness industry is not too dissimilar, it loves to have superheroes and supervillains. Search the term superfoods on the internet and you’ll come across any number of blogs, vlogs and articles extolling the virtues of a seemingly infinite number of superfoods (many of which have been written by people with an admirable and enthusiastic zeal for the topic yet have little or no formal qualifications).

But do these superfoods actually have superpowers?

Not so, if you listen to many experts, namely the scientists working on behalf of the NHS who look at all of the available evidence (not just cherry pick pieces of research which suits their cause) they’ll tell you that so called superfoods do not have superpowers. Beetroot, blueberries, goji berries, green tea, pomegranate juice, wheatgrass [or insert any number of superfoods here] can certainly benefit us but perhaps be nowhere near as mind-blowingly beneficial as many would have you believe, especially if not consumed in ridiculously high doses. In the vast majority of cases they are no more beneficial than more common, cheaper types of food. Don’t believe me? Have a look at the vast number of nutrients contained in blackberries – the fruit equivalent of a homeless person – the fruit which most people walk past without noticing, which are found growing abundantly in hedgerows up and down the country and cost absolutely nothing.     

So what about the nutrition equivalent of the supervillain?

Well for this you can almost take your pick. It seems at some point or another almost every major foodstuff has been cast in the role of supervillain. Recently it has been sugar, before that it was carbohydrates (incidentally sugar is a form of carbohydrate too) and before that it was fat, heck even protein hasn’t been without criticism.  

So what’s the problem with having foods classified as super good or super bad? The problem is it can lead to disordered eating. For example, many people will eat the occasional superfood believing the powers held within it will trump the negative effects of a poor diet. Similarly, those people who are perceived to be very health conscious and endlessly ‘watch what they eat’ might have a very bland and even nutrient deficient diet if they believe that certain foods are super bad for them.

The take home message…

Think of nutrition in terms of cops and robbers not superheroes and supervillains. There is no one supervillain (super bad food) that can wreak untold damage, just like there is no one superhero (superfood) which can save the world, just plenty of everyday police officers working together (the equivalent of a nutrient dense and balanced diet) to fight against everyday criminals.

Thanks for reading.

To book your free trial personal training session, or to book a place at one of my bootcamp classes, or of course for more detailed nutrition advice please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Matt

     matt@mlrpt.co.uk                               www.mlrpt.co.uk                              07939316401

  www.twitter.com/mlrpt                www.facebook.com/mlrpt            www.twitter.com/mlrpt

How can a rubbish X Factor wannabe help you lose weight?

As the X Factor returns to our screens we will no doubt be treated to an endless stream of auditions. Clip after clip (set to the obligatory emotional music of course) will tell of the heart wrenching ‘journey’ that these wannabes have been on, culminating in some teary-eyed twenty-something crying to the camera talking about how they’ve overcome the tragedy of the death of their school’s goldfish and how they are now ‘doing it’ for their aforementioned fishy friend.

One or two of the auditionees will be good, pretty dam good in fact. But most, will, at best be moderately talented (which of course won’t harm their careers none, Posh Spice is testament to this). But a few will be rubbish, downright rubbish and it’s these guys, the rubbish ones that I’m concerned with for they see themselves as something they clearly are not.

It’s as if they’ve spent hours working with a sports psychologist visualising themselves as popstars, and have therefore become popstars. Either that or they are, to coin an outdated and potentially offensive phrase ‘a few sandwiches short of a picnic’; but there’s no way ITV would exploit vulnerable people just to fill air time would they? Then again have you watched an episode of Jeremy Kyle lately? No I’ll take that back just in case the ITV lawyers are reading and I end up like many a ‘70’s entertainer - in the slammer!

So what lessons can we learn from these completely compus mentis auditionees, firstly it is how we can harness the power of the mind to help us reach our goals. Just as they look in the mirror and see a bona fide rock star staring back at them, an overweight person trying to shed some timber should not look in the mirror and dwell on what’s staring back at them but instead focus on how they want to look in the future.  Many psychologists believe that motivation tends to be stronger if we are aiming for something positive rather than trying to get away from something negative, so if weight loss is your goal, stop focusing on the size of your bingo wings or your bulging belly and instead spend your time focusing on how you really want your body to look in the future. (Putting a picture of a person with a physique you really admire on your phone’s wallpaper can really help to motivate you here).

Secondly you need to start behaving like the future you. Just like the X Factor auditionee who dons a pair of saggy jeans, an oversized t-shirt and a flat peaked baseball cap suddenly begins behaving like a rapper, talking in some pseudo Jamaican accent, you need to start behaving like a fitter and healthier new you. As much as possible act in a manner that is in accordance with the future you, go out and try to be as physically active as you can, and be mindful of what types of food you eat and how much you eat. In short go out and behave as if you were already in great shape and it won’t be long before you are actually in great shape. As for the rubbish X Factor wannabe, they’ll just continue to be like many a reality TV star – deluded of their talents!

Thanks for reading.

To book your free trial personal training session, or to book a place at my bootcamp class, or of course for more detailed info on how to motivate yourself to exercise and lose weight, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Matt

     matt@mlrpt.co.uk                               www.mlrpt.co.uk                              07939316401

  www.twitter.com/mlrpt                www.facebook.com/mlrpt            www.twitter.com/mlrpt

Let Them Eat Steak

It seems that you can’t stroll past a health food store nowadays without your eyes being drawn to the immense and often bewildering array of protein products on offer. Heck, protein is so popular it seems that no self-respecting gym goer would ever be caught post-workout without their protein packed milkshake.

But is its popularity warranted?

On balance, the simple answer is yes, especially if you are on a diet and as Uncle Bryn of Gavin & Stacey fame would say “I’ll tell you for why”.

First and most importantly protein helps preserve your muscle mass. Unfortunately, when you reduce your calories in a bid to lose fat your body can lose muscle faster than Jeremy Clarkson loses his temper, and believe me losing muscle is something you don’t want to do, as purely from an aesthetic point of view the more muscle you have, generally the better you look (up to a point of course). Secondly muscle is metabolically active, meaning it constantly burns calories and because it constantly burns calories, the more of it you have, the more calories you burn and the more calories you burn the less likely you are to put on fat. Research shows that eating more protein when dieting can reduce this muscle loss from happening quite so drastically.

'Unfortunately, when you reduce your calories in a bid to lose fat your body can lose muscle faster than Jeremy Clarkson loses his temper'

There are, mind you, many other reasons to eat more protein.  Another huge benefit is that it makes you feel full. Compared to carbohydrates and fats, protein leaves you feeling much fuller, which for most people is really important when on a diet. As I’m sure you’re aware that feeling of never being quite satisfied is the reason why many diets fail. Increasing your protein can help combat this. Some studies have even shown that eating a high protein meal leads to less calories being consumed in subsequent meals.

Yet another reason to eat more protein is that your body has to work hard just to break it down, some might say almost as hard as Amanda Holden’s plastic surgeon! Roughly 25% of the calories you consume from protein are used up by the body in just processing it, for fat it’s just 2-3% and for carbohydrate it’s 6-8%. So potentially if you replace some carbohydrates in your diet with protein, it could perhaps help you lose weight.

But isn’t too much protein bad for you?

Some people have suggested that a high protein diet is bad for your kidneys, however on balance it seems that as long as you don’t have any pre-existing problems, your kidneys can deal with it just fine. In fact, one study has shown no adverse effects on the kidneys with protein intakes of 2.8g per kg of bodyweight per day, which, if you have the time or indeed the inclination to work out is a hell of a lot of protein.

Thanks for reading.

To book your free trial personal training session, or to book a place at my bootcamp class, or of course for more detailed information on exactly how much protein you should be eating, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Matt

     matt@mlrpt.co.uk                  www.mlrpt.co.uk                       07939316401 www.twitter.com/mlrpt         www.facebook.com/mlrpt        www.twitter.com/mlrpt

The 50 Shades of Grey approach to exercise!

Just as Ana, the main protagonists in 50 Shades of Grey seems to get gratification from experiencing varying amounts of physical pain in the bedroom department, it would appear that many people have this same approach to exercise.

Just the other day I overheard a woman who had clearly not long finished an exercise class say to her friend “It was excellent, we did 500 squats and 500 sit-ups…twice. It hurt like mad but I loved it”. (As a slight aside, why on earth an obviously out of shape, deconditioned woman was doing 500 repetitions any single exercise is beyond me, but that’s a post for another day).

And this no pain no gain approach to exercise isn’t just confined to the woman in question. Go to any gym and you’ll likely see a muscle-bound body builder screaming like a parent on sports day desperately cajoling their training partner to ‘chase the burn’.  In the hope that this burning sensation (caused by the accumulation of waste products) will lead them to their fitness goals in double-quick time.

But what does the research say? Do you have to chase this pain to reach your goals?

An extensive review of the scientific literature showed that there is some evidence that muscle damage caused by exercise can help make that muscle grow larger. However, on the other hand there is evidence to show that muscle growth can occur in the absence of muscle damage.  It is just that muscle damage may well enhance muscle development further.

Great, so if you smash your body to oblivion in every session and make sure you damage to your muscles, you’ll get the quickest results?

Not quite, evidence seems to show that too much damage may interfere with the processes which cause your muscles to grow. Not only that but excessive damage and pain can impair your ability to train in the first place. For example, if a training session that you did three days previous was that hard that it leaves your whole body in pain (feeling as battered as a student’s liver during freshers’ week) will of course leave you unable to train. And this inability to train will have a detrimental effect on your muscle growth!

So how much damage should you aim for?

On balance current research indicates that training in a way that causes a moderate amount of damage, not too much, not too little, would be most appropriate for maximizing muscle growth. Perhaps we should approach muscle damage in the same way as we approach our wine intake. If you don’t have any at all you’re regarded as a bit of a kill-joy, if you have too much you’re seen as p***-head and having just the right amount leaves you the life and soul of a party!

However, bear in mind that the majority of studies have been carried out on novice gym goers, it is possible that muscle damage may be more important for building muscle in highly trained individuals…perhaps!

To book your free trial session, or for any fitness and nutrition advice please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks for reading.

Matt

     matt@mlrpt.co.uk                               www.mlrpt.co.uk                              07939316401

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HELP! Having my lunch later is making me fat!

The other day I was down the shops minding my own business when I overheard a girl say to her boyfriend “The reason I’m putting on weight is because I’m having lunch two hours later than normal” immediately my ears were pricked as my BS detector began sensing some activity. She went on to say “My personal trainer told me that my body thinks it’s going to starve so it then grabs hold of the calories and doesn’t let them go”. Needless to say my BS detector was off the scale at this point.

Starvation Mode

What this young lady was referring to was something called ‘starvation mode’ and unfortunately within fitness circles it is more common to hear about starvation mode than it is to see Ant and Dec on the telly!

It centres on the idea that if you go without eating for more than a few hours your body senses this and thinks that is going to starve. The body then reacts to this perceived threat of starvation by decreasing it’s resting metabolic rate (the rate at which your body burns calories at rest) which in turn makes it easier for you to put on weight.

In short starvation mode is the idea that if you don’t eat regularly the rate at which your body burns calories slows down which in turn makes it easier for you to put on weight.

This is all pretty logical and makes perfect sense, right? Wrong!

The All Important Research

I know this may not be a trendy thing to do but if you have a look at the research there is just not the evidence to back up these claims. In a recent analysis of the numerous studies investigating whether eating frequent meals is beneficial for body composition, (amongst other things) the authors concluded that there is no evidence that the body goes into starvation mode.

Sssshhhh! Say it quietly but on this extremely rare occasion the girlfriend was wrong!

Now, the girlfriend in question can probably come up with more reasons as to why she was putting on weight than there are syllable’s in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s name but the likely answer is she was consuming more calories through food than she was burning through physical activity! Regardless of what time she was eating her lunch, or her breakfast or dinner for that matter.

Now I know this is not a very exciting notion but if you want to lose fat the most important thing you have to do is control your overall calorie intake. Going a few hours or so without eating matters about as much as the words that come out of Piers Morgan’s mouth – very little!  

To book your free trial session, or for any fitness and nutrition advice please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks for reading.

Matt

     matt@mlrpt.co.uk                               www.mlrpt.co.uk                              07939316401

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FITNESS LESSONS FROM A STAG DO!

Recently I was invited to friend’s stag do – a weekend away in Bournemouth, owing to the soon to be groom being such an erudite, debonair young man, he had many, many friends clambering to be part of the festivities (either that or they just fancied a weekend away on the lash).

Either way this led to a bit of dilemma for the best man for he was a stressed control freak and wanted to plan everything down to the most minor detail. This became glaringly apparent when making travel arrangements - he wanted to hire a coach so that everyone could travel together.

However, this was never going to happen, some were of course happy to travel by coach but some wanted to go by train and others wanted to drive.

This caused the best man to worry like an Olympic sprinter with the drug testers at the door, for he wanted everyone to arrive at our destination all together at the same time.

Fast-forward to the actual stag do itself and oddly enough despite the best man’s endless worrying and attempted interfering with everyone else’s travel plans, every single person arrived at our destination at more or less at the same time (give or take half an hour) whatever mode of transport they took.

The obligatory strip bar (it is a stag do after all)
Later that evening as the rest of the stag-do were enjoying the adult art provided by the extremely friendly ladies in the strip bar, I of course opted to wait outside (I had to put that in just in case my wife reads this) it dawned on me that I could draw parallels with the best man’s travel saga and people trying to reach their fitness goals, in that there are multiple paths to the same destination.

Just as some of the lads in the stag party preferred taking the train rather than the coach, some people prefer high intensity interval training (HIIT) to low intensity, long distance training.

Likewise, just as some of the gentleman chose to travel by car rather than coach, some people enjoy doing one set of as many repetitions as possible when weight training as opposed to doing multiple sets.

Anyway the examples are endless and I think you get my drift.

Tabata Training

There are numerous studies out there which back up one form of training over another and the vogue method of training at the moment seems to be Tabata which is great if you enjoy working really, really hard, however if you don’t and you prefer perhaps a more sedate form of exercise this is obviously not for you as you are not likely to do it and therefore not reap any of its benefits.

I of course have my preferred methods of training which work for me, the trick is to find which method works for you.

Sir Steve Redgrave

Perhaps Sir Steve Redgrave (British Olympic rowing legend) puts is best with his take on training. When discussing the huge success he enjoyed using different training regimes employed for each of his Olympic gold medals (which included HIIT, low intensity high mileage training, training with weights, not training with weights) he said “It probably doesn’t matter a great deal about how we train, we just need to do a lot of it and with plenty of variety”.

For help finding your perfect training programme and to book a free trial session, or of course just to find out what the hell Tabata actually is (don’t worry, once you know the whole truth about it you won’t be that impressed), please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks for reading,

Matt

     matt@mlrpt.co.uk                               www.mlrpt.co.uk                              07939316401

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