Follow up

Further to yesterday's post Dietary Habits, check out the new T-Nation article. Specifically the part about trying to out-train bad diets. Also after taking a look at the exercise program that is suggested to be able to out-train your diet, I think I'd rather just eat properly.

Commitment and Consistency

You cannot have success without commitment and consistency. It doesn’t matter whether you want to improve your personal relationships, financial situation or health and fitness you must be committed and consistent in your approach. Committing to a nutrition and exercise plan will do wonders for your health and fitness. Consistency of effort allows you to improve quickly.

The great thing about being a beginner is that your progress can be rapid. To make the most rapid progress you need to commit to your plan. Three to five hours of exercise a week along with a solid nutritional plan will see you progressing very quickly. Committing to that amount of exercise is the key. Whether you decide to train for ½ an hour a day, an hour every second day or some other plan of attack, make sure you can fully commit to the plan. Having a regular schedule helps immensely as does having a training partner or personal trainer. By training with someone else you cannot afford to skip sessions or you will be letting them down as well as yourself.

Once you have committed to a plan the next key to success is your consistency of effort. It is no good just going through the motions when you are training. Approach each session, day or week with focus and endeavour to improve yourself each time. If you consistently put in the effort required you will achieve progress.

If you wish to do more than maintain what you already have then you must be committed and consistent in your training and nutrition.

Food vs Supplements

I bet you could construct a diet completely out of products that are considered dietary supplements. In fact I’ve seen it done. The V-Diet is quite popular and seemingly effective for a short time frame. My issue is not with the use of dietary supplements but the overuse and over reliance on these products.

There is a supplement for everything, from fast loss to sleep enhancement you can readily get a pill or powder to help. Despite this I don’t see people making great gains or huge progress. Why is this? Could it possibly be due to the fact that supplements aren’t the answer to looking great and feeling healthy. You would have to think so. In fact your real food diet and training program are much more likely to determine your success than your supplement program.

There is no point in spending time and money on inefficient supplements without first having your real food diet in place. Real food is the backbone of your progress. It should be able to provide you with the energy to not only get through the day but your training sessions also. By taking the time to establish healthy eating strategies you are giving yourself skills that can be used effectively forever and provide more benefit than the latest fad supplement.

It is only once you have your real food diet and training program in place and working effectively that you should consider adding in supplements. The best supplements are those that are found in real foods but are not easily eaten in the quantities that you’d like. Protein powders, fish oils and creatine are well studied and effective examples. Take your time in adding supplements to your diet, only add one at a time and measure it’s effectiveness before continuing to use it. Don’t become over reliant on supplement products and make nutritious whole foods the staples of your diet.

Pre and Post Training Nutrition

Your nutrition in the hour before and after training is critical to your success. By using good pre-training nutritional practices you are not only preparing yourself well for the session, you are also getting a head start on recovering well from the session.

Choosing what to eat isn't too hard, anything you would eat post-training is a good place to start. Keep it simple and easy to digest and make sure you don't overeat. There is nothing worse than training with an overfull stomach. If you experience any sort of nausea you have probably eaten to much or eaten the wrong type of food. Some of you who have been training for a while may be used to training on an empty stomach and may experience some discomfort initially. Start with very small meals and gradually increase them. Making sure you're muscles are full and ready to go before training provides a huge performance boost.

Post-training nutrition is so obviously important it's surprising that more people don't take it seriously. The post-training period is when our bodies are most receptive to anything we eat and therefore the time when most gains can be made. Even for those on low carb plans should be sure to include some, if not most of their daily carb allotment into this period. Your muscle glycogen stores are depleted by training and you will be at your most insulin sensitive, so any carbs eaten post training will be used to replenish muscle glycogen and won't be stored as fat. Protein is also very important as your muscles have been broken down and ingestion of protein creates the amino acid building blocks of your muscles.

How much protein and carbs to ingest depends on your size and weight but a 50:50 protein:carb ratio is often suggested. Convenience is often a factor in post-training nutrition and a large portion of the enormous supplement industry is devoted to products catering to post-training nutrition. Everyone has different requirements and tastes so I don't want to recommend any one product. Don't always choose the cheapest though as the quality can vary substantially and remember there are plenty of real food options for this important meal as well.

Combating Rising Obesity Rates

This question “Doesn't it seem a total waste of time for us to be debating about the best fat loss methods (and I admit - I'm also guilty of this), when we're pretty much failing as a profession to actually make much of a difference?” from Alwyn Cosgrove is telling. Browsing through fitness related websites illustrates how many different approaches and options there are when it comes to training and nutrition. For the person just starting out on their pursuit of a healthy lifestyle the huge amount of different approaches can be daunting. Good training advice and readily available exercise equipment isn’t the problem, so what is?

The issue to me is the perceived time and commitment to benefit ratio. If exercise is seen as too hard or complicated then it’s unlikely that sedentary people will take it up. How then do we help them up off the couch and down the healthy lifestyle path? So much of out time and effort is spent preaching to the converted and nitpicking over the various details. Wouldn’t we be better off just trying to convince everyone to just do something, anything?

Getting sedentary people to realize that exercise doesn’t have to be complicated and that eating a healthy diet is just as easy as eating an unhealthy diet is a big challenge. Until we meet this challenge obesity rates will unfortunately continue to rise.

Adherence to the Plan

Any plan is better than none. In health and fitness even a relatively poor plan can create good results if you believe in the plan enough. Plans don’t need to be complicated to be effective in fact the most effective are simple and easy to follow.

There is simply no point in creating a complex plan that incorporates every possible training system and convoluted nutritional program. It is not enough however to say, “Just eat well and exercise.” The plan must have some specifics. The number of training sessions you’ll complete in a week or month even if you don’t necessarily designate the exact days you’ll train on. A list of food you can eat and a list you’ll avoid, without counting calories or macronutrient totals. These are the beginnings of a plan.

Next you need to plan the type of exercise you’ll do. From aerobic based jogging and swimming to heavy strength training you have a huge range of options and plenty of different approaches can be chosen. Find a few that suit you and your goals best. This shouldn’t be too hard using the internet, t-nation and men’s health have a huge range of articles and there is plenty of running and aerobics based sites out there. Once you’ve found the plans you like and established that you have the time and equipment to perform them, try following each of the separately for a month or two. At the end of each time period evaluate your results, what you liked or disliked, what worked or didn’t work and your adherence to the plan.

This process can be followed for nutritional plans as well. Make sure to give yourself enough time to evaluate each plan. If you change them around to quickly your body won’t be able to adjust and your results will be hard to judge. Once you’ve been through a few different plans you’ll know what works best for you. You can then take your knowledge and create your own plan specifically tailored to your needs.

Remember non-adherence to the plan is the same as no plan at all. Dr John Berardi, a noted nutritionist and exercise scientist works on the 90/10 rule which suggests you need 90% adherence to be able to evaluate a plan’s effectiveness.