This article is to help you take a step back and look at what you're doing, time to get real and get serious. Ask yourself: are you achieving what you set out to achieve with your exercising and diet? Do you fit into those jeans yet? Is your six pack still hiding underneath a layer of padding?
If you've stayed committed, trained to your exercise routine and kept to your diet and your results have hit a bit of a plateau, then this is the article for you. Take the time to seriously review your diet and training and make a plan! Sit down and take the 20 to 30 minutes to review and renew your plan; the time taken to do and put into action may give you better results in two weeks than the last two to three months you've spent working in the gym or out on the pavers with the old plan. The following is a few pointers to help you review your current program. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of stupidity, and if you're losing motivation, there is nothing more motivating than getting results.
1. Nutrition - Are you feeding your body what it is made of?
Remember the body is made of water, protein, fats, vitamins, minerals, and a small store of carbohydrates in our muscles. Your body is not made out of McDonald's, salt, oily curries with rice, alcohol and highly processed packaged foods. Feed your body what it is made of and it will flourish. Skipping meals, counting calories and following the good ol' food pyramid from the 1950s is not the way to do it. Take calorie counting, for example. Say a 55kg female who leads an active lifestyle requires 1500 calories per day. If she makes up that 1500 calories in cans of Coke, donuts and takeaway foods, do you think she's going to be feeling great and be in shape? Your body doesn't know how many calories you're feeding it! All it knows is the volume of food you're putting in and what it's going to use or store those nutrients for. Feed your body the right things and you'll never have to count calories again. Time for a new plan! Get your required protein intake (click here for a reminder), eat green veggies like they're going out of fashion, get your intake of essential fatty acids, eat your carbs in the morning and after training. As crazy as it sounds, most people need to eat more to lose more fat!
2. Carbohydrates - Your body's preferred energy source?
How many people who try to "eat healthy" do you see snacking on fruit and low-fat yoghurt throughout the day? Firstly, the low fat content in yoghurt is compensated with extra sugar (same as in low fat milks) and full of lactose. Lactose is a dairy sugar, which we become less able to digest properly as adults, causing digestive complications in a high majority of people. Just ask yourself, how many other animals do you see suckling on their mother's breast after infancy?
Now for a quick fact on our little friend, fruit. Fruit's sweet taste is due to high levels of fructose (the sugar found in fruit) which is the highest fat-forming sugar available. Fructose is sugar for the liver, of which the liver only stores and requires a very small amount of. So unless you've completely depleted your body's carbohydrate stores (though high-intensity resistance training or long-duration cardio) your "healthy" apple's fructose is incapable of being stored as energy for your body and is converted to fat for storage. So if you love your fruit and want to keep the nutritional benefits and anti-oxidants they give you, make it a handful of mixed berries. Fruit, like all other carbohydrates, should be consumed first thing in the morning and after exercise. Yes, carbohydrates are your body's preferred fuel for moderate to high-intensity exercise, but don't expect your body to utilise your fat stores for energy when you're not exercising if you're continuously feeding it carbohydrates.
3. Fuel - Going hard on an empty tank.
It's a crime you see countless times (women generally being the most guilty), going hard on an empty tank. 30-60 minutes in the cardio room before hitting the weights or a jog/bootcamp session before breakfast is a surefire way to lose weight... notice how I use the word weight, and not body fat?
If you train hard when your carbohydrates stores are low, your body will break down your muscles and other body tissues and organs to fuel that workout. The only time you should work out when you're depleted of carbohydrates is EASY cardio first thing in the morning (on empty stomach) or after a high-intensity workout. Easy cardio training during these times will burn fat and aid recovery. So unless you want to be skinny-fat, look after your muscles by having fuel in the tank beforehand and refuelling afterwards, then in turn your muscles will look after you by using fat for energy for the other 23 hours of the day.
4. Routine - No direction or set purpose?
Do you wander around the weights room aimlessly looking for machines that you like to use? Do you decide, instead of your high-intensity afternoon aerobics session, to take a stroll down on the Strand? Get a routine! Plan your week's worth of training, especially if you use weights/resistance training. Using the same muscle groups for resistance training day in day out does not give sufficient time for them to recover. Split your muscle groups (legs, chest, back, shoulders, arms) up throughout your weekly training sessions. This will allow for adequate recovery and the ability to put focus and attention to the muscle group you are trying to train. For those of you who like to hit the pavers, do your walking when your body is in a state to burn fat for fuel! That time is first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. Take this at a moderate pace; go too hard and your body will break down itself instead of your fat stores. You can aid this fat-burning morning walk with a black coffee (no sugar), or some L-Carnitine (available at your local supplement store, like ASN).
5. Getting too advanced?
So you've done your basic exercises like squats, bench presses, push ups, lateral pull downs and some barbell curls and gotten some great results. Now you think it's time to move onto some more 'advanced' techniques like doing one-armed dumbbell presses whilst balancing on a swiss ball with one leg in the air. This is not how to get more advanced, and the only thing performing weights on a swiss ball gets you is imbalanced, lifting lighter/less effective weights and put you closer to embarrassing and/or hurting yourself. If something gets you results, stick to it! The next step is ramping it up with intensity techniques. The techniques as listed in the link will help you to bust through any plateaus and keep training challenging and interesting.
6. Train - Don't maintain.
You work out so you can get fitter, healthier, stronger, leaner. There are a lot of people out there who are simply going through the motions with a 2kg dumbbell in hand, pumping out 30-odd reps, getting bored and thinking that it is going to make a change. The body is an adaptive, protective organism, and unless you push it to exhaustion or failure, your body has no need to adapt and change to these stresses which you are placing it under. Failure means you lift the weight til you can no longer physically lift it any more. The ideal rep range for muscular growth is 8-12 reps, and failing within that range; you might need to lighten or increase your weight load to achieve this. For the girls who don't want to increase the size of their muscles, your rep range is 15-20. But take a realistic look at your body or particular parts (legs especially) and determine how much of it is muscle and how much is actually fat that is contributing to the size. Plus, don't worry about getting massive, as females have much lower levels of testosterone (the hormone required to build larger muscles).
So have a good look in the mirror and ask yourself: do I have what I want? Am I full of energy? Do I feel fit? Do I feel confident? Review your current training and diet, and remember - do what you always do, and you'll get what you always had.
Leon Price is a Personal Trainer certified in Bodybuilding & Contest Preparation from the International Academy of Physique Conditioning.
