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#163 - 12 Common Fat Loss & Fitness Mistakes (With Solutions!)
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This episode breaks down the biggest mindset, nutrition, and training mistakes that keep you stuck even when you feel like you know what to do.
• Why all or nothing thinking keeps you spinning your wheels and what to do about it
• Why knowing what to expect with fat loss, muscle building, and habit change is a huge key of staying consistent long term
• Nutrition mistakes that make fat loss harder than it needs to be and how you can simplify it to focus on the things that get you the most progress
• Why random workouts, chasing calories burned, and not training with progression keep you from building the body you want
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Transcript
Introduction to Fit-ish Project Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome back to the Fit-ish Project with your host, Lathan Bass, where we make fitness and health simple for regular people like you and I. We got the weekly episode for you, as we always do.
00:00:14
Speaker
Before I get into that, if you can leave a review, continue to share this with people who you think would get some value, I greatly appreciate that. Continue to help people get the information that they need. to live better lives, feel better, look better, all the things that we want and why we are into health and
Common Mistakes in Fat Loss and Fitness
00:00:32
Speaker
fitness.
00:00:32
Speaker
The topic for this week, I wanted to do a topic on common fat loss and fitness mistakes that I see quite a bit of people making. At this point, I've been in fitness for quite a while. So I've personally been lifting weights since I was in like sixth grade, I think, which is around 17 years now. I've lost 100 pounds. I've been in this whole fitness world for probably a decade, you know, helping other people lose weight. I've had conversations with hundreds, if not thousands of other people. I've helped people with training sessions and spent countless hours in the gym around other people, helping them to lose weight, build muscle, build habits, all those different things. And so at this point, I've realized there's a few common trends that I see quite often. So there's certain patterns that will hold people back. And
00:01:21
Speaker
everybody has good intentions when it comes to improving their health or hitting some sort of fitness goal or just getting into fitness in general. Like we all know that being healthy, eating a quality diet, focusing on our health and all those things are really important and things that we should be putting our time into. But the thing is, good intentions don't necessarily get you the results that you want.
00:01:41
Speaker
I think when we break this down, there's three main categories that we can put these mistakes or these things that people fall short on. And so we have the mindset part, we have the nutrition part, and then we have the training part. And I think to get the best results, to make sure that you can not only get results, but that you can get results that you can sustain and keep for a very long time, you need to have all three of these things aligned, at least to a somewhat
The All-or-Nothing Mindset and Consistency
00:02:08
Speaker
decent level. You don't have to be pro in all these different things. You don't have to be obsessed with fitness. You don't have to spend hours in the gym or nitpick over every little thing that you put on your plate or in your mouth. But I think having a good understanding of each of these three parts and making sure that these three things are aligned is crucial to actually getting the results that you want and then being able to sustain those results for a long period of time. And so I have 12 of them that I came up with after just thinking about this for a while and with my own personal experience and just experience with others.
00:02:39
Speaker
and broken it down into these three categories so we're going to jump right into this starting with the mindset part because i think this right here is one of the pieces that i think a lot of people overlook and don't really ever take a good look at to actually improving and it's the one that holds a lot of people back because again when we think about health and fitness lots of people have at least part of the things down like they know what certain things they should be doing as far as like diet as far as exercise like moving more getting more exercise and lifting weights when it comes to diet they know they should be eating more protein more whole foods turning down maybe some of those other things that aren't quite as good for them more often than not.
00:03:19
Speaker
But people struggle to do this. And a lot of that comes back to the mindset part of this. And the way that you think about these things, the perspective that you bring to these things makes a really big difference on if you're able to be consistent with this or not. So there's four of them here that I'm going to go over. And the very first one, the mistake that I see often is the all or nothing mindset.
00:03:41
Speaker
Without consistency, nothing else really matters. The biggest threat to consistency is people thinking that I'm either all in or all out because I've seen this time and time again. It's not that healthy and fit people and people who seem to be really good at this health and fitness stuff don't ever fall off. It's just the fact that they get back on track a lot sooner than other people.
00:04:02
Speaker
Oftentimes I will see people who want to get into fitness and they're going to say like, I'm going cold turkey on all the unhealthy stuff. I'm only going to eat clean. I'm going to do a fast I'm going to jump on this diet and I'm going to get in the weight room for six, seven days a week and spend a bunch of time in there. And so they do this for a while and then
The 80/20 Rule in Fitness
00:04:22
Speaker
ultimately they fall off and they can't sustain this and then they just say screw it. And so you find these people starting over every Monday or waiting till the first of the month to start this new trend or this new diet or this new workout program or waiting till the beginning of the year to start their New Year's resolutions. And so they never really make any real meaningful progress because the consistency just isn't there. They're not consistent enough days out of the week or out of the month or out of the year to actually see any sort of meaningful progress. And so it's no wonder they don't stick with it. And I think weight loss is a super simple example with this. So you could have somebody throughout the week who eats really well six days a week, and then they get to maybe a Friday or Saturday, and they just say, this is my cheat day, or I'm just gonna, you know, kind of do what I want or relax a little bit. And,
00:05:07
Speaker
You could be in a calorie deficit all week long. And then that Saturday you eat whatever you want. Maybe you go out to eat a couple of times. You have some alcohol, you have some extra portions, and you just wiped out a 3000 calorie deficit with one single day. Like that happens all the time. And so you feel like you are making progress towards this goal and that you're being consistent because you are six out of seven days of the week. You're pretty consistent, but that one day is enough to knock you off track. And I also see this with training quite a bit. Like you'll have people who really get on that bandwagon of like, I'm going to be super consistent in the gym. So they are for a week or two, like they're in the gym five days a week and they're crushing it. And then work gets busy, life gets busy, something comes up and then they don't get in the gym at all the next week. And then maybe the week after that, they only get in the gym one time per week. So when you look back on the total month, they got two solid weeks in, but then two weeks where they didn't really do anything. And then now they're kind of starting back at ground zero every single month because they're not really putting in good, solid training versus if you would take a little bit better approach of like, let me just get in the gym three times per week and make sure that I nail those sessions. rather than trying to be in there five, six, seven days a week, which I know is going to be unsustainable. But even when you're busy, even when things get stressful, you can very likely probably get in the gym three times per week. And that's something that is much more manageable. Now you're not only keeping that momentum going, but you're also just making better physical progress too, because you're being more consistent. And so you're not allowing your body to revert back after that two weeks on, two weeks off, two weeks on, two weeks off. That's just not a very good way to develop good habits. And that's also not a very good way to make progress.
00:06:44
Speaker
And so when we put this into practical things that you can do, I'm a huge fan of the 80 20 rule when it comes to diet, when it comes to training, when it comes to life in general, There's a very small handful of things that you have to get right in order to see really good progress. So when you think about dieting, think about the course of a month. If you are 80% consistent, that means that you are on top of your things 24 out of the 30 days of the month. So you're eating mostly whole foods. You're not overeating. You're getting enough protein. You're hitting your steps. You're lifting weights. You're doing those things that you need to be doing in order to hit your goals.
00:07:20
Speaker
And as long as you're doing that, at least 80% of the time, you're going to see some good, meaningful progress. Again, now you can't be on those off days, those six other days, they can't just be completely just doing whatever you want. But if you go over calories a little bit, or maybe you don't hit protein on one of these days, or maybe you have a little bit of extra on one of these days, like you have an extra dessert or you go out to eat or something like that.
00:07:42
Speaker
you can still continue to make progress as long as you're having that balance and you're having that moderation. Or when you look at your training schedule, maybe out of the week, you have a session where you aren't able to get the entire workout in, or you have a day that you do have to miss. And so you only get two sessions in rather than three, or you have a day where you go in and you just kind of go through the motions and you don't really train that hard. So if you are being consistent at least 80% of the time, you're still going to be able to see some solid progress.
00:08:12
Speaker
When you're understanding your type of goals, this also is important to think about as well, especially if you're just trying to maintain, like if you're just trying to maintain a good level of fitness, you're trying to feel good, you're trying to look decent, you're not trying to chase any specific goal, you have a little bit more flexibility, and it's pretty easy to maintain as long as you get a couple of things right.
00:08:30
Speaker
You have a specific goal, whether that be a fitness goal or a weight loss goal or something like that, you're probably going to have to be a little bit more consistent. So maybe trying to hit that 90% consistency throughout the week or throughout the month is going to help you to make better progress.
00:08:43
Speaker
But again, just understanding that it's not all or nothing here. You don't have to be all in or all out. You want to continue to think about always doing something. Something is always going to be better than nothing. And one last little piece of advice that I would leave you with on this is that You're always just one choice away from being right back on track.
00:09:02
Speaker
Oftentimes people will have a one off meal or maybe an off day or miss a workout. And that turns into several workouts or several meals or several weeks of just being off of their game. And that's the stuff that causes people to spin their wheels and never make any progress. And so just remembering that you're always just one workout, you're one meal, you're one choice away from being back on track is super helpful.
Beyond the Scale: Measuring Fitness Progress
00:09:24
Speaker
Number two, letting the scale dictate your actions. When it comes to fitness goals, one of the things that people use to measure their progress on whether what they're doing is working or not is the scale, which is detrimental in a lot of ways. And I'm actually a pretty big fan of using the scale to measure certain areas of progress, but it shouldn't be the only thing that you use to measure your progress. And A lot of people don't really understand how the scale actually works. And especially if you're using the scale to measure your progress on a day to day basis, it's a really bad idea because the scale can't tell you a whole lot from day to day because of just the water fluctuations that are going to happen. You can go up or down on the scale, three pounds, five pounds, seven pounds in a single day. And so it doesn't really tell you a whole lot from day to day. You could eat perfectly.
00:10:12
Speaker
You could get great workout in it and that scale could be up the next day, three, four, or five pounds. And you could have the absolute opposite thing happen as well. You could eat crappy and you could not exercise. And for whatever reason, that scale could just drop on that day. So looking at the scale on a day to day basis does not really tell you a whole lot.
00:10:29
Speaker
Scale fluctuations or just scale data points tell you a lot more about the trend. You want to be looking at Am I seeing a downward trend if I have some sort of weight loss goal or fat loss goal? Or maybe you're just trying to maintain like over time. Am I maintaining? Am I seeing that scale trend in the direction that I want to see it? The other thing to realize is also that outside of weight loss, there's still tons of reasons that you want to prioritize your health, that you want to exercise, that you want to focus on.
00:10:55
Speaker
eating whole foods that you want to focus on healthy habits like walking and getting in sleep and managing stress because even if you never lost a single pound doing those things is still going to improve your health it's still going to make you feel better it's still going to have tons of benefits and so only focusing on the scale causes people to miss out on so many of the benefits that you get by prioritizing your health and fitness When it comes to some practical things to think about with this, understanding that that scale will fluctuate. And if you are going to measure yourself because you do have some sort of weight loss goal, I think it's a really good idea to spend some time tracking for multiple months and preferably weighing yourself three to five times per week, maybe even daily, just so you get used to those fluctuations. And then you can start to
00:11:43
Speaker
Check out those trends and see if you're trending in the right direction. One of the analogies that I like to think about when it comes to weight loss and just making sure that you're paying attention to the right things and not jumping the gun on whether or not the things that you're doing are working is like when you think about getting paid, a lot of people don't get paid daily. They get paid on a weekly basis, maybe every two weeks or maybe every month.
00:12:03
Speaker
Just because you're putting in work on that day and then at the end of the day you don't get paid, that doesn't mean what you're doing is not working because you probably get a direct deposit or you get your paycheck every couple of weeks, but that's based on all the work that you did two weeks prior.
00:12:17
Speaker
So that might not show up in your bank account. You might not get that money for multiple weeks and the scale is the exact same way. You could be doing everything right and that scale for whatever reason is not really dropping a whole lot and then After two weeks or after a month, you look back and you see, oh I've lost seven pounds or I've lost five pounds or that scale is trending in the right direction. So don't get too upset over the scale because it can't tell you everything that you need to know. and The last point that I would make on this too is just to make sure when it comes to fitness, when it comes to health, even when it comes to specific like weight loss or fat loss goals, make sure you are also measuring other things like measure the right things because that scale is only one small part of this. There's a lot of physical things that you can be measuring that can help you out. so
00:13:01
Speaker
Thinking about progress pictures, thinking about if your clothes are fitting better, thinking about if you are losing inches around your waist or around other different body parts. All those are good signs that you are making physical progress.
00:13:14
Speaker
And the other side of this too is to focus on non-scale victories as well. How you feel? Are you having better energy? Is your confidence increasing? Are you gaining strength? Is your mobility getting better? do you have less aches and pains? Are you able to do more of the things that you want to do because you are now focusing on exercise and eating better and just having better health? Because again, regardless of whether you ever lose a single pound, eating better, exercising, getting good sleep, managing stress is going to improve your health and make you feel better. So don't solely just focus on that scale.
Setting Realistic Fitness Goals
00:13:46
Speaker
number three on this list is having unrealistic expectations this is also a massive problem lots of people have really skewed expectations about what this whole process is supposed to look like and this is honestly one of the reasons that i try to do this podcast and to share so much of my own experience and experience of people that i help because it gives you a more realistic view of what this stuff is supposed to look like and certain things that you can expect So when it comes to popular goals that people have around fitness, people think that they're supposed to lose 20 pounds in a month, which is just very unrealistic. In reality, if you're losing a pound a week, that's great progress. You lose a pound a week for an entire year, and that's 52 pounds that you have lost. That's realistic. That's sustainable. But for whatever reason, social media, people think that they should be losing a lot faster than they are. when you think about something like building muscle, that also takes time. You're not going to slap on a bunch of muscle in a couple of weeks or even a couple of months. It takes a good solid six to 12 months of hard, good training to make a noticeable difference with muscle. And again, six to 12 months seems like a long time, but that time passes and you can have a very, very different looking physique by adding five, 10, 15 pounds of muscle. And so just understanding that this stuff takes time.
00:15:04
Speaker
When you think about building better habits, I think about my experience from this and I lost 60 pounds in my first year of really getting into this stuff, but it probably wasn't another two to three years before I really felt like I had a good grasp on this stuff.
00:15:18
Speaker
Obviously, I was making progress. I was getting better. I was improving confidence and getting a lot of those benefits. But to like really feel like I had a good grasp on all this stuff, it took me two, three years before I really felt like I had a lot of these things nailed down. And so, again, understanding that this stuff is going to take time, but that time is going to pass regardless. So at the end of the day, why not put in a little effort and intention to get something out of it And the fourth one under the mindset mistakes that I see people make is the mistake of chasing quick results.
The Danger of Quick Fixes in Fitness
00:15:50
Speaker
This is notorious in the fitness world, in the weight loss world, in the health world, is people looking for quick results. And when you do things with unsustainable methods, the results are typically going to be unsustainable. The things that get you results have to be things that you are willing to do pretty much forever, like for your entire life, which is why you hear people say you need to make this a lifestyle. So the simple basic things that I've talked about so many different times that you've already heard a lot is that you need to eat pretty well, eat a lot of minimally processed whole foods, focus on protein, fiber, those sorts of things. You need to lift weights, be active, get steps in, prioritize sleep and managing stress, and just do those things a lot.
00:16:31
Speaker
And you can see this in so many different examples, but for whatever reason, people still think that they're going to be the exception to the rule that they can just lose a bunch of weight really quickly doing something crazy. And they're going to be able to keep it off. And in reality, that's just not how it works.
00:16:44
Speaker
Any certain way that you look at weight loss, you can see this example really well. So people who take a GOP-1 and then come off it. a large majority of those people will end up gaining that weight back.
00:16:54
Speaker
People who crash diet and then no longer can sustain that, they gain the weight back. People who have some sort of weight loss surgery, most of those people end up gaining the weight back. And the reality just comes back to, you have to build the right habits, you have to build the right skills, you have to build this into your lifestyle and do things that you're going to be able to do for a very long time.
00:17:15
Speaker
And so if you're not going to be able to do these things for years at a time, it probably means that you need to find a different approach with your fitness goals or weight loss goals or whatever your goals may be.
Finding a Sustainable Balanced Diet
00:17:26
Speaker
Getting into the second section, so the nutrition mistakes that I see often, number one would be being too restrictive. There's a time and a place to cut some things out. And by definition, if you have some sort of weight loss or fat loss goals, you're going to have to be restrictive in some manner or another, whether that's cutting out certain foods or whether that's managing and tracking your calories, whether that is only eating in a certain time period, so like a intermittent fasting style of diet, you're going to have to be restrictive in some sort of way in order to get those results. And the same thing kind of goes with fitness goals. Like you're going to have to make trade-offs with certain things.
00:18:03
Speaker
But you have to find a way to include some balance and some moderation. So what are the things that you can maintain for a very long time? And you're probably going to have to try some different things to figure out what things really gel with you because people will always ask the question like, what's the best diet or what's the best training program? The reality is,
00:18:23
Speaker
all the diets in most training programs they work along the same principles but you have to find something that you can actually do for a long period of time because if you can do it for a long period of time and you're going to be consistent at it you're going to get pretty good results it doesn't have to be some crazy plan it doesn't have to be all that complicated it just has to be something that you are willing to do for months or years at a time in order to see really good progress and so With this one, again, I think that 80-20 rule works very well, finding a diet that you can sustain for a long time.
00:18:55
Speaker
And I think that 80-20 rule fits really well into this because it allows people some of that flexibility. It allows people to be a little bit more balanced. It allows you to go out to eat every once in a while, have some alcohol, have some pizza, have some ice cream. But then 80% of the time, you're just really locked in with good meals that you feel good about that are higher protein, lowering calories, lots of fiber, lots of whole foods. And this just gives you that flexible approach that you're able to sustain for a really long time. And so something to think about or maybe something to try. And I've done different podcasts about the 80-20 rule or about flexible dieting. So you can check those out as well if that is something that you're wanting to try.
Understanding Energy Balance
00:19:33
Speaker
Number two would be not understanding energy balance. When it comes to your goals, if you have weight loss goals, or if you have building muscle goals, or even if you just want to maintain, one of the principles that you need to understand is energy balance.
00:19:49
Speaker
And I see people miss the mark on this a lot because I see people labeling foods as healthy versus unhealthy. And to me, that's always a little bit of a red flag. I know what people mean when they say this, like, oh, I can't eat this. This is super unhealthy. But a lot of times people just don't really understand energy balance. And when you understand energy balance, you can stop labeling foods as just good or bad.
00:20:10
Speaker
We all know there are certain foods that you should eat more of and certain foods that you should eat less of. But when you understand calories, it allows you to fit in some of those things that you might think are unhealthy so that this is actually more sustainable.
00:20:22
Speaker
And so what I mean by understanding energy balance is that you need to understand the amount of calories that you are eating. If you're eating too many calories, you're gonna gain weight. If you're eating less calories than your body needs, you're going to lose weight. And if you're eating the right amount, you're going to be able to maintain your weight.
00:20:37
Speaker
Why this is so important is because it plays into that whole sustainability thing because you can eat completely healthy things or things that people would label as healthy, all whole foods and still gain weight. And you could also eat things that people label as unhealthy and lose weight. And there's been plenty of examples about this. People who have lost weight eating strictly McDonald's or McDonald's. There was a professor who did this little study who lost, I can't remember how much it was, but he lost weight eating a strictly wholly processed diet. So he was eating like Twinkies and i think potato chips was like the bulk of his diet.
00:21:13
Speaker
Obviously, that doesn't mean that you should follow that approach. like you should still aim to eat things that are more nutritious, but understanding energy balance allows you to have some of that balance that I think most of us really want to have.
00:21:25
Speaker
Because if this is something that you're going to be doing for a lifetime, it's probably important that you follow a diet that allows you to have some flexibility and have some moderation and enjoy yourself a little bit. So having a good grasp on energy balance and really understanding that principle allows you to think about food in a better way that is more sustainable.
Focusing on Nutritional Fundamentals
00:21:46
Speaker
Number three for nutrition mistakes would be majoring in the minors, focusing on the things that don't really move the needle all that much, that aren't that important. So people will want to get into fitness or nutrition or just being healthier, and they'll immediately think about supplements, or they'll focus on cutting out this specific food, or not eating this chemical, or the perfect eating routine, or the perfect macros and different things like that. And you just have to focus on getting a few things right and if you get a few things right like you get a handful of things right you can get the bulk of the benefits and by doing this it allows you to focus in on less things so that it becomes less overwhelming and it also gives you a much better chance at actually being more consistent and making these things stick because if you try to do everything you end up doing nothing
00:22:33
Speaker
And we've all been there where we've tried to take on too much too soon and it just doesn't work out. And this is the exact thing that so many people get into with nutrition where they start focusing on, should I follow this diet or this diet? Should I eat six small meals or eat three large meals? And there's just so many little different things that you can start to nitpick on and just start to focus in on the minors that you never really get the big rocks right. And then when you never get the big things right, you don't really ever see any progress.
00:22:59
Speaker
Figuring out the main things that you need to get right is important and really just focusing on that. And then over time, if you want to get into some of those details and start to expand your knowledge and try different things, then you can absolutely do that. I think about the things that I know now versus the things that I knew back then.
00:23:16
Speaker
I know infinitely more now just about the knowledge of nutrition and all those different things and little supplements and different things like that that I can now think about or maybe add into my routine. None of those things really make a huge difference, but if I want to add in some of those things now, I can do that because I have all the big rocks right.
00:23:35
Speaker
I eat mostly whole foods. I focus on protein. I know that I'm not overeating calories because I spent a lot of time tracking food. Once you get those things right, like two or three or four of those things right, then you can start to add in more things if that is what you want to do. But get the big rocks right first rather than focusing on the little pebbles, and you're going to make much better progress.
00:23:56
Speaker
Number four, and the last one under the nutrition section is overcomplicating what to eat. And this builds really well off that last one, because these are the things that you should be focusing on if you want to really dial in your nutrition and get those big rocks right. So number one, as always, is going to be sticking to mostly whole foods.
00:24:14
Speaker
This helps with lots of things like not overeating, with staying full and satiated, with getting better nutrients and feeling better and all those different things. so getting mostly whole foods your lean proteins your fruits your vegetables things like that hitting a certain calorie goal especially if you have goals around weight loss or fat loss maybe spending some time tracking your calories would be a very good idea that I recommend for a lot of people.
00:24:38
Speaker
Third would be hitting a protein goal. We know how important high protein diets are. And I've talked about that many time. So I won't get into the details on that. And then the last thing I would tell you about this is just making sure that you are picking foods that you like, picking foods that make you feel good and picking foods that align with your goals. Because again, if you're trying to eat a diet that you don't enjoy, you're probably not gonna stick to it for very long. If you're eating foods that make you feel like trash, even if they are considered healthy, probably not a good idea. And if you're eating a diet that doesn't help you hit your goals,
00:25:10
Speaker
that's also probably not a good idea. So take some time to figure out what these meals look like, what this diet may look like. And then over time, it's probably going to change a little bit. So depending on where you're at in your life, depending on your goals, depending on your lifestyle, you may have to tweak those things a little bit, but spend a little bit of time creating a good diet based on these big rocks and based on the principle of energy balance. And then once you get those things right, you just continue to build up that consistency and repeat these things over time. And you're able to see more progress.
Structured Training Plans vs. Random Routines
00:25:40
Speaker
Third and final category is our training mistakes. So some things to avoid with this, there are four of these as well. Number one would be following random workouts. I see this all the time.
00:25:52
Speaker
There is a difference between exercising and there's a difference between training. When you're training, you have a goal. When you're exercising, you're just getting out there to move your body. And don't get me wrong, there's tons of benefits for exercising. And to me, all movement is good movement as long as you're not hurting yourself.
00:26:09
Speaker
But if you have some sort of specific goal, which a lot of people do, that's a reason that a lot of people get into exercise. A lot of times that's goals around how you look. Maybe it's goals around performing better. Maybe it's goals around living longer, but having some sort of goal means you probably should have a training program rather than following random workouts. Because if you follow random workouts, you're probably going have random results. So Following a good progressive training program with your goal in mind is going to be helpful. That way you can keep track of your weight, your reps, different things like that. You can make sure that you're making progress, you're getting stronger, maybe you're getting faster if you have some sort of endurance goal or whatever the case may be. But having some sort of training plan is going to help to make ensure that you are making progress. It's going to help you with accountability. It's going to help you with consistency. It's going to make sure that you're not just wasting your time.
00:27:00
Speaker
Because again, a lot of people have specific goals or things that they want to achieve with why they are training or exercising. Following a plan is just going to help to get you to that goal faster and more effectively.
00:27:12
Speaker
Number two, training to only burn calories.
Healthy Perspectives on Exercise
00:27:16
Speaker
Being active is a really good thing for your health, but exercising alone is very inefficient to burning calories. And what I mean by that is it may take you an hour to burn off 500 calories.
00:27:30
Speaker
It takes you about 60 seconds to eat calories. So I could eat something like a piece of cake or a couple of cookies in under 60 seconds, and that's 500 calories, where to burn 500 calories may take me 45 minutes an hour as a use of your time or the efficiency piece around burning calories through exercise, it's just not very efficient. And it's not a very good way to think about it either way, because it just gets into a really bad situation where you're eating food or eating dessert or having extra food. And now you feel the need to burn it off. Like it's just not a very good place to be with exercise because then you start to kind of resent exercise and your relationship with food can kind of get messed up too. And so
00:28:09
Speaker
Thinking about exercise as only a way to burn calories, which I know is a main thing that a lot of people do, is just, it's not a very good thing to do. Being more active does allow you to have more flexibility, but at the same time, it's not a free-for-all.
00:28:23
Speaker
And to give you a little real-life example of this, like since I've gotten into running, I do burn significantly more calories, but I could easily eat those calories back and gain weight if I was eating tons of processed foods or eating a bunch more food. Like I'm probably burning an extra 300, 400, 500 calories. But again, that's so easy to add back in if I'm not careful. And so understand, yes, if you're being more active in moving around more, getting more steps, exercising more, you're gonna have a little bit more flexibility with your diet, but it doesn't just mean it's a free for all. And so the way that I've always thought about training and about burning calories is that any kind of calories that I'm burning through exercise, I strictly just think as a bonus. I want to focus on,
00:29:07
Speaker
my diet and what i'm eating and managing my calories that way especially if i have some sort of like weight loss or goals around like losing fat or things like that and then whatever calories that i burn through exercise is just a bonus on top of that so that's just kind of speeding up my progress and i think thinking about it in this way is a much more healthy approach to exercise so that you're not just strictly working out more to burn more calories Number three on this list is not understanding progressive overload.
Progressive Overload and Fitness Goals
00:29:35
Speaker
In the same way I talked about energy balance and understanding that principle for nutrition, progressive overload is the one principle that you need to understand for training because it is the most important thing. If you want to get stronger, if you want to build muscle, if you want to change your body, if you want to get faster, get better endurance, or or whatever the case may be, you need to understand progressive overload. So when it comes to something like lifting weights, progressive overload just means lifting more weight for more reps with better technique over time. When you're thinking about like building endurance or getting better with cardio, it's like you want to improve maybe running further distances. You want to improve your pace. You want to be able to see those improvements and you want your plan to follow a progressive approach where you're slowly building up your body's abilities over time.
00:30:24
Speaker
When it comes to getting some sort of change and some sort of adaptation in your body, the only way to do that is to force your body to change by giving it something a little bit harder. So if you go into the gym and you follow the same exact routine every single day for months on end, you're eventually going to plateau and not going to see any progress.
00:30:43
Speaker
or if you go out and you run at the exact same time, the exact same pace every single day, at a certain point, your benefits are probably going to start to drop off a little bit. So you need to do something a little bit more hard, a little bit more challenging, a little bit more difficult so that you're forcing your body to change. Because if you don't give it a reason to change, it's not going to change, especially around changing the way that you look.
00:31:07
Speaker
People don't train hard enough or they don't follow progressive overload enough. So they don't really see the benefits over time. Understanding that intensity and effort is important, but you also need to do it in a progressive manner. So focusing on this thing that we call progressive overload is a crucial thing that you want to do if you have specific goals.
00:31:27
Speaker
And last but not least on this list is not matching the plan to
Aligning Exercise with Fitness Goals
00:31:33
Speaker
the goal. So already mentioned that it's super important to have some sort of a plan. You don't just want to be doing random things, especially if you have some sort of specific goals.
00:31:41
Speaker
And again, all exercise is great. All movement is great. I love that people get out and get active, but if you have specific goals, not all exercise is created equal for every single goal. And so when we look at some of the most popular goals,
00:31:55
Speaker
If you want to look better, it's probably a really good idea to include some sort of strength training because there's not a better way to build and sculpt and mold your body than heavy strength training. Like building muscle is going to make the biggest difference in looking better along with losing fat, which is what you're going to do through your diet. But strength training is a huge part of wanting to look better. So if you have aesthetic goals or want to change how you look, it's probably a good idea to include some strength training. If you have the goal to feel better, which is a lot of people's goals as well, Here, honestly, anything that you really enjoy is going to be good.
00:32:28
Speaker
Some people work out because they want to have a little bit more community, so they want to join a gym. Some people work out because they want to get those mood boosting effects, so maybe they're going to start to do a little bit more cardio. Whatever thing that you enjoy doing, if it's going to make you feel better, then go ahead and do that thing. When it comes to performing better, i think it's good to include some form of strength training here.
00:32:50
Speaker
And then you may also include something that's more specific to the goal. So it depends on what you're trying to get better at. Are you trying to get better at some sort of cardio thing or run a marathon? Are you trying to do some sort of strength training event or hit some sort of goal that way? Whatever the thing that you're trying to get better at, it just makes sense to include some sort of activity that is similar to that thing.
00:33:09
Speaker
i think a lot of us can use some common sense when it comes to these things, but strength training is going to be helpful with pretty much any sort of performance goal. And so that's always going to be a good thing to use, but then also matching that with some sort of other activity that has some overlap or has some carryover to that goal that you may
Identifying Personal Gaps for Improvement
00:33:28
Speaker
have. And then the last one that a lot of people work out for or train for is because they want to live longer. Here, the prescription would be lift weights, do some sort of cardio, probably a good mix of maybe something higher intensity, and then Maybe doing some stuff lower intensity would be a good idea. And then third would just be to stay active. So a lot of these things are not that complicated. But again, I see people who have maybe a certain goal. So like sometimes people will be like, oh, I want to build a bunch of muscle. But then the only thing they do is like yoga or Pilates.
00:33:57
Speaker
That doesn't align with your goal. When you have somebody who's like, oh, I want to look better, like I want to look more toned or I want to look stronger, but then the only thing they ever do is cardio and they never lift weights. That doesn't match the goal. So you need to make sure that whatever goal you have, the plan that you are using and the activities that you are using matches the goal.
00:34:15
Speaker
And with that being said, that is all 12 of those. And I think just a practical thing to look at this, because this was a lot of information, is just to think about where that gap is for you. Is it nutrition for you?
00:34:27
Speaker
Is it exercise? Is it the mindset stuff? Because I think for a lot of people who get into health and fitness, like they have some of the pieces figured out, but they just can't put it all together. And so they're seeing some progress, but maybe not as much progress as they would like because there's a gap somewhere in here. Rather than trying to just always double down on our strengths, which is just typically human nature, we like to focus on the things that we're good at. So if you're a person who really is good at exercise, maybe that's the only thing that you focus on. And then maybe your nutrition is lacking, or maybe you are somebody who has always been pretty dialed with nutrition.
00:34:59
Speaker
but you just don't exercise hard enough or consistently enough, or maybe you've been pretty good with both nutrition and exercise, but it's always been a struggle. And maybe it's the mindset piece that is tripping you up. And so figure out where your gap is and then start to address that so that you can make better long-term progress. Because when you get all three of these things moving on the same page, your results take off. And then you're also able to sustain these results for a longer period of time. And so Hopefully this was helpful. A lot of information as always, but I do appreciate
Coaching Opportunities and Conclusion
00:35:30
Speaker
you listening. And then the last thing, the one-on-one coaching link is in the show notes. If you're interested in getting some help with this kind of stuff, that is exactly what I do. But again, i appreciate you listening and we will see you next week.