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

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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

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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

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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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