What drives human eating behavior? Emotional eating? Boredom? Social gatherings? Culture? How can we be proactive in our strategies to adhere to our dietary goals? The health and fitness industry can be very confusing with the rise of “fit influencers” giving out horrible advice. Worst is books, programs, and fad diets being high on the rise in today’s market. People are looking for quick fixes/”fat loss hacks” instead of intelligent and sustainable approaches.
Next thing you know your friends say they lost an “x” number of weight by following said named diet. Now they are 100% bought in to that specific approach preaching to you and influencing you. Guess what? What works for them isn’t likely going to work for you and likely not sustainable. Even worse when trainers do one bodybuilding contest prep or also follow named diet then suddenly they know everything it takes to losing weight sustainably and charging you $200 a month/ $100 an hour for shitty nutrition advice that worked for them. What worked for that trainer, isn’t again going to work for you. No wonder why people are constantly confused. Hopefully your trainer has various tools and strategies to help you with your nutrition goals along with experience with a wide variety of people. It can be a never ending cycle of misinformation that couldn’t be far from the truth.
Common questions that trainers get from clients:
1.) What exercises are good for fat loss?
2.) What diet is best for losing weight?
3.) Won’t carbs make me fat? My friends lost a lot of weight not eating carbs! Oh, and I also read on the internet that gluten is bad for you! Shouldn’t I avoid it?
4.) Why am I not losing weight? I’ve tried “everything”!
5.) Won’t lifting weights make me bulky and gain more weight?
6.) Shouldn’t I be doing more cardio since I want to lose weight?
7.) Isn’t sugar bad for you?
8.) What type of cardio should I do for fat loss? LISS (Low Intensity Steady State Cardio) or HITT (High Intensity Interval Training?)
……the list goes on….
Here’s the secret to fat loss…
……BEING IN A CALORIC DEFICIT.
Following AND being consistent in a regimen that you’re going to adhere to on a long term bases will give you results. If you want to follow a named diet like: Atkins, Paleo, Keto, Mediterranean, If it Fits your Macros (IIFYM), Intermittent Fasting or create your own way of doing things that’s all totally fine…just as long as you’re in a caloric deficit and sustain/adhere to it. These named diets worked because you go from not paying attention to what you eat and over eating this whole time/enough to maintain that when you follow said named diet suddenly you’re pay attention what goes in your mouth which is putting you in a caloric deficit unknowingly….which again is how you lose fat.
Your strength training workouts is what builds your body composition while fat loss is about what youre doing with your eating habits. As strength trainees you’ll want to preserve your hard earned muscle you have built in the gym. Nutrition should reflect that and in fact work in concert with it to MAXIMIZE results. You DO NOT need to add endless amount of cardio nor do you even need cardio to begin with. Plenty of studies on the internet to support this. Yet, if you like to do it then of course enjoy your life and do it! Now are there benefits of doing cardio? Absolutely, but that’s for another article. Stay tuned.