Hey Team,
Thanks to everyone who made it along to train with us this week. It was our final week of Christmas hours (we were pretty much ‘full service’ with the exception of the 8pm sessions) and it seemed to work ‘pretty well’…though Friday night was a bit of a disaster in terms of attendance. Whilst a week without the 4am alarm clock was appreciated, it WAS nice to get back to normal operations and have everyone back training at their ‘normal’ times.
Before getting into it, there is a little bit of news to cover:
Beach Day: Targeting Sunday, February 9th.
28-Days-Later: Registrations will open Wednesday (Jan 15th) with weigh-ins to be scheduled for Saturday, Feb 1st
SPARTA classes: Tentative start date will be Tuesday, Feb 4th at 4pm. As noted last week, these sessions will be accessible to people who have a Strength Gym membership.
So, this week I am going to continue to (well, I am going to continue to TRY) to write about some strategies for your health and fitness for 2020. Last week I wrote about ‘Healthy Habits’ that you can pretty easily integrate into your day…today I am going to write a bit about food and training ‘RHYTHM’. Or, like I said, I am going to try to.
Let me start with this. When it comes to diet and training, NOTHING works like COMPLIANCE. We all have our own biases about what things work and what things don’t – but what 100% doesn’t work is flip-flopping between one training schedule and another, between one eating plan and another.
Now, of course there is a case to be made for the fact that if ‘nothing’ has happened after 3-months of ‘sticking at it’, well, then it might be time for a change. But even in this situation, the ‘change’ might need to be more about ‘YOU’ and your compliance than anything in particular to do with the program (training or diet) you have decided to follow. UNLESS of course, the ‘problem’ is that the training protocol you have selected or the eating plan you have chosen is making you so miserable THAT is why you have not been ‘doing it right!’.
Now, I’m going to TRY and back this up with some data so here goes. Back in 2018 (seems like a lifetime ago!) a study was conducted in the US (specifically around the San Francisco area) on a little more than 600 participants with the intention of determining whether or not a healthy, low-fat-diet OR a healthy low-carb-diet was more effective in reducing the BMI of the participant. Here is a link to the study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2673150
Now, whilst I would (of course) encourage you to go and read about the methodology used, I have cut out the conclusion and pasted it below:
Conclusions and Relevance In this 12-month weight loss diet study, there was no significant difference in weight change between a healthy low-fat diet vs a healthy low-carbohydrate diet, and neither genotype pattern nor baseline insulin secretion was associated with the dietary effects on weight loss. In the context of these 2 common weight loss diet approaches, neither of the 2 hypothesized predisposing factors was helpful in identifying which diet was better for whom.
So – what does that mean? Well, it means that whether people were assigned the low-fat group or the low-carb group they achieved pretty much EXACTLY the same weight-loss outcome (around 6kgs average per person). There is also a bit of a story in the study about the number of people who dropped out…
Now I can immediately sense the reaction about “well, if they only lost 6kgs what does it matter anyway”…and I ‘kinda’ get that reaction. But at the same time, if your goal is to drop a few kilos this year, imagine if you could get SIX (6) of them from just sticking consistently to a diet plan for 12-months? Wouldn’t that be something? Then, we add to that the benefits from your training…all of a sudden you are looking at (again, if you stick to it) a 10kg change in the next 12-months. That seems pretty damn good to me…but again, it is a strong reference to the fact that STICKING AT IT (compliance) is the single most important thing you can do.
Being consistent leads to compounding results. I talk about this a lot (and it is the basis for the 3x 52 stuff I’ve been talking about – 3x sessions per week, 52x weeks of the year!) but to me the best examples of where ‘consistency = results’ come from ‘outside’ the gym. If you have set a goal of reading 50x books each year, you don’t need to do any more than read for 30-minutes every day to achieve that target. Want to play a musical instrument? Don’t talk about what you are ‘gunna’ do – spend a bit of time every day practicing. Kids want to shoot free-throws or kick the footy ‘better’? Don’t wait for the team practice…get the ball out and shoot/kick the thing every single day.
Low and steady – but for a LONG time – leads to big results. Unfortunately, slow and steady for a short-time leads to not much of anything. Constantly ‘changing’ your approach in the ‘search’ for outcomes is probably not going to lead to much at all. This is more true than ever in the world today where it seems like every which way you turn there is another ‘option’ or a new ‘latest thing’ that promises to ‘shorten’ the road you need to travel. I understand why people flip-flop from one thing to another – Low fat one week, low carbs the next. Strength training one week, Boxing the next. Swimming one week, running the next. You have to stay the course and give things time to develop and unfold if you want to reap the benefits.
Now – of course, this doesn’t mean you should NEVER quit and move on. If you have given something a ‘good go’ – and the length of time here depends on what we are talking about but when it comes to food and training I would think somewhere around the 13-week/3-month time could be considered a ‘good go’ (3x per week for your training, 6.5 days per week for your food!) and either aren’t getting results or have simply decided it isn’t for you, well, fair enough. But if you want to stop ‘jumping’ from one thing to another and start reaping the rewards only consistency can bring, well, you have to stop ‘searching’ for something new and simply COMMIT!
Pick some meaningful goals for YOU! And set yourself some reasonable time-lines in which to achieve them – for example, if you want to lose 5kgs, that is a TWO Month goal, not a ONE Month goal – then STICK TO THE PLAN you have put together to achieve it. If you need help with the plan, well, that’s why we are here. If you are worried you aren’t making progress, well, reach out…that’s why we are here!
Anyway – that’s it for the week.
See you all in the gym,
Michael.
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