The half truths of the fitness industry
By the end of this blog you’ll join the few that understand health and fitness to the point where you won’t fall for time wasting tactics or financial black hole products but first I have to provide context so this will be easy to remember and hard to shrug off.
Anyone can make you tired or put together a workout that roasts you, so feeling beaten up after a workout is not a sign the workout was effective. Being sore is also not a great indicator (there are plenty of studies that suggest you are mainly feeling your facia or connective tissue broken down not your muscle tissue) instead look at your body composition, how much body fat you're actually losing, how well you feel throughout the day.
If I had to estimate the amount of unhelpful information out there in health and fitness I would go with 95% unhelpful 3% somewhat helpful and 2% amazingly helpful. So congratulations you found in my humble opinion the later.
The most popular sites, blogs, gyms, apps, personalities, videos, trainers often push this one romantic idea of health and fitness; work hard, eat little to nothing until you get results and if you give up before you reach your goal, well of course you didn’t reach your goal, you gave up. This is easy to sell for so many reasons, people are often too hard on themselves. It takes a lot to rid yourself of the negative talk in your head, I know I’m still working on it myself. This romantic idea is what I like to call a half truth. Yes, it takes a lot of hard work but it looks 80% different than what is being sold to you. There is a such thing as overtraining and this is simply the realm where most people workout. There is nothing romantic about overtraining, it lowers metabolism, degrades sleep, increases irritability, and makes it easier to gain weight.
Until 3 years ago I was in the same camp, the work hard and get no results so work harder camp. Until I found something in that 2% amazingly helpful camp. Bigger leaner stronger: second edition by Mike Matthews, was by no means perfect but it provided so much and lead me down the path I’m on today as an Integrative Health Practitioner and personal trainer and I will be forever thankful. One of the cold hard complicated truths of health and fitness is that a lot of things work for a lot of different reasons and this book showed me how to get consistent sustainable results and what to do when I hit a plateau. Unfortunately against the intent of the author it also lead me to view food differently as numbers and not nutrients. To be fare I didn’t view food as nutrients before either and my relationship with food was also not so good before the book, so I am not blaming the book. If you start off with an eating problem that you are unaware of you have no one to blame… except the school system I believe we should be teaching our children how to be healthy and what we are doing now clearly doesn’t work. For more on that look for my food pyramid blog
if it isn’t already linked up it will be soon.
So back to BLS, the book basically teaches the concepts of effective strength and muscle building, dietary strategy to cut, bulk or maintain body fat and what the most time worthy exercises are. The book is great for teaching you how to change your physical appearance not for getting healthy which leads us to another half truth; fitness models. People who look healthy can be really unhealthy.
The Cardio Trap (Half Truth)
Much like the
ouroboros, when overdoing cardio the body breaks down (
eats) muscle. When most people try and lose weight they are effectively slowing their metabolism down. As the fat and muscle is reduced because it is not being utilized, the need to perform greater cardio is increased for the same weight loss effect. Less muscle, less metabolic demand.
In other words your body is very flexible in terms of adaptability and the first priority it has is to stay alive not to lose its emergency energy stores (fat) until you reach a healthy body fat percentage. What really happens when you do an hour of cardio everyday is that your body tries to get really effective at cardio by losing seemingly unnecessary muscle (muscle is costly in terms of energy to maintain) which slows your metabolism, then it gets really efficient at reducing the calories it takes to perform the cardio. Yes, this even includes lifting weights fast in a cardio like fashion like high intensity interval training (HIIT) or Crossfit, these are also cardio.
Cardio has its place but if your trying to lose weight and keep it off, the most effective method is to work on it from the root level, by increasing muscle mass or maintaining muscle mass and focusing on using a good weight loss strategy for you, which is too big of a topic for this blog but feel free to contact me if you need any help.
Most people minds jump to a picture of themselves “jacked” when you mention trying to gain muscle but I promise you will not be surprised to wake up one morning ready to enter into a body building show. Besides the initial increase in muscle a new de-conditioned person will experience, gaining muscle takes along time naturally.
The Muscle Confusion Trap (Half Truth)
While it is true that you should change your workouts to get more results from it, it should be changed every 4-8 weeks not everyday or every week. By constantly changing your workouts you are missing out on several beneficial adaptations that you are actually looking for, namely boosting your metabolism.
Imagine getting so skilled at a full body exercise like a barbell squat. You would be able to push every muscle to it’s fullest. Imagine the same exercise with little practice, you would be off balance with bad technique or movement dysfunctions or restrictions. The same goes for every exercise because every exercise is a skill that needs to be perfected in order to get the most benefit (Mindpump quote).
The Best Exercises
We’re all human here (unless you're a sentient AI interested in fitness) we only have so many ways to move. Push, Pull, rotate, squat, gait, hip hinge, lunge. Try to include some form of these in your workout.
The best exercises are not going to be in a machine. The human body doesn’t move in isolation so isolating your body in a machine is inefficient. The best thing you can do is learn how to move your body properly with and without weights.
The best exercises in general are exercises that are scalable. Exercises you can grow with, by that I mean you can make these exercises more difficult. The best exercises put you in a bio-mechanically sound position, nothing weird that puts you in a bad position, unless we’re talking about corrective or mobility exercises but that’s another day.
Squats
Deadlift
Overhead press
Bench press
Rotational exercises and the variations of these exercises are all great and worth your time as long as you continue to try and progress with them either in weight or reps or technique.
The Root Level Method
By changing your body composition you are effectively working on the root level. Increasing muscle mass through strength training. Having a healthy micronutrient rich diet so your body can feel safe to shed excess energy stores (fat). By sweating every day to help with detoxifying. By getting consistent good sleep so you reduce cortisol when it’s not needed. By not overtraining so that you can’t recover before the next workout. And finally learning to respect and listen to what your body is telling you.
I’ve used all three methods mentioned here, the overtraining method, the focus on macronutrients and the focus on micronutrients.
Overtraining
is unsustainable and produces little visual benefit and wrecks your central nervous system.
The macro focused method
works visually don’t misunderstand but it’s most likely at the expense of long term health.
My favorite method, the micronutrient focused
approach fixed my sleep, mood, skin and nails and energy levels throughout the day. You can eliminate dependence on protein shakes, preworkouts, post and intraworkout supplements and your strength will go right back to where it was and eventually surpass your previous records. It requires more time and education to do this method but it’s worth it for a longer healthier life.
It really doesn't matter how many calories your workout burns, that is not the full picture, its not even half the picture of what you should be focusing on. That killer workout can all be undone by one meal, one sandwich, one pint of ice cream. But by having a body composition that is healthy and burns more energy, that cannot be undone so easily.
Final tip:
While focusing on your macronutrients can effect your outer appearance and body composition there is also a way of affecting your outer appearance from focusing on your micronutrients that will yield a much bigger payoff. The payoff is so huge that you can naturally balance hormones by focusing on micronutrients, which would be powerful for anyone who has trouble with mood, sleep, losing weight or gaining weight, menstrual cycle…everything basically.
I hope this helps if you have any questions comments or concerns feel free to contact me. Thanks!