The Weekender, Fitness Blog: A Health, Fitness, and Sports Blog

What's the best diet?

4/23/2019

The best diet it is the one that you can sustain and that will sustain you.

Often we become obsessed with the newest diet fad, we chase it and then we let it go like all those that came before it. But the biggest mistake we make is thinking of a diet as a one-and-done undertaking instead of a long-term strategy. It's great if you can jump on a keto diet, follow it for a few weeks, and lose those extra pounds that you wanted to...but then what.....what happens when you get off of the keto diet? As with most diets, the moment they end is the same moment that the pounds or bad health effects start coming back. This is why one of the most important parts of undertaking a diet is the pre-diet and post-diet plan. You should always develop a pre-diet plan that allows you to gradually eliminate (over the course of a few weeks or months) some but not all of the items that you will be removing on the actual "diet". This serves 2 purposes:
1) you get to gradually work on eliminating the worst offenders, alleviating a sharp and often self-sabotaging physiological response, while getting to experience many of the health improvements even at this early/easy stage of your journey.
2) just like when you start to weight train, you do yourself a dis-service by jumping right into the most advanced workout regimen, instead you could be seeing great gains and improvements even with novice level training, which allows you to continue to progress into more intense training, experiencing continuous results the entire way instead of plateauing or sabotaging your progress right at the start. Dieting works the same way.
The post-diet plan on the other hand is akin to an exit-strategy. Upon successful completion of your diet you want to be able to transition into a healthy and sustainable lifestyle that takes away some of the most valuable or most liveable components of your deit and incorporates them into your daily life moving forward. Examples might include: removing 90% of refined sugar; replacing 90% of high-carb and/or high glycemic meal side dishes with vegetable and/or low-glycemic side dishes; removing meat from your diet except for post workout meals; removing 100% of dairy/gluten/other aggravating foods; etc. The number of examples, just like the number of diets are endless.

So the takeaway here is:
1. based on my next diet, what gradual changes will I make in the weeks/months leading up to starting?
2. once on my diet, I will commit 110%, there are no things such as cheat days!
3. based on and after my diet, what lifelong (or at least year long) dietary changes will I take away and make a part of my daily lifestyle moving forward?

Enjoy the journey and see you at the gym,
Team Fitness Etc

How do I gain muscle?

3/18/2019

One of the main goals for anyone that spends time in the gym is to gain muscle. I find that a lot of people believe that to gain more they have to workout more. While there can be some truth to this belief, it does come with a big caveat: more training will lead to more gains ONLY when your body has the capacity to do so. What this means is, that in order for you to benefit from more training, a lot of stars have to align...do you sleep enough, do you eat right, are you functioning mentally, physically, and emotionally well, do your genetics support more training/muscle, are you on ergogenic aids that support more growth, etc.

With the belief that you have to train more to gain more, it is very common for trainees to over train. Over training is one of the leading causes of both plateaus and injuries. Just because you feel really sore it doesn't mean that you've done an awesome workout and you're going to reap way more benefits as a results. In fact, it often means the opposite...you've exceeded your capacity and are now more likely to reap less benefits. Now sure, over training can be a tool for progress, but in the real world, this is really only true in the hands of advanced trainees and/or trainers. In almost all other cases, it's akin to a scalpel in the hands of a bear.

If you really want to gain more muscle you have to learn exactly how much, and what type of training is perfect for you and when. If you're well rested and everything else is on point maybe you will benefit from a strong 55 minute workout. Whereas, if you're just getting into the gym for the first time, or back into the gym after a long time, you will probably benefit more from starting with a 25 minute workout, working your way back up to more volume over the next 2 weeks and benefiting from each session and increase, than pumping out a killer 75 minute session your first day in and handicapping the rest of your training and physical adaptations for the whole week.

So the next time you're getting ready to hit the gym, just try to keep one thing in mind...your level of soreness does not equate to your level of progress.

TRY THIS: on your first training session back into the gym, try to see if you can make yourself sore the following day by doing just a short but intense 25 minute workout. If you can, a job well done, this is something you should be able to do if you train hard enough despite your workout only being 25 minutes long. From there you can gradually increase your training time to accommodate more volume or higher intensity sessions (require longer breaks) as needed. After about 4 to 8 weeks of the same focus, you can switch it up and start back with a new focus and a 25 minute starting session.

See you at the gym,

Team Fitness Etc

The power of...

3/11/2019

You may have the strength to sprint a mile without stopping and then lift 400lbs off of the floor, but why can't you seem to sprint 1.5 miles and then lift 450lbs off of the floor

When the question is one of margins, the answer is almost always - a lack of mental fortitude. Mental strength is one of those special ingredients that separates the strongest from the strong, the best from the great, and a meter from a mile.

When most of us do our workouts, we spend a disproportionate amount of time focusing on strengthening the body without focusing on strengthening the mind, and therefore, focus itself.

Let me say that focus is never the only reason, but it is a big reason. A bodybuilder for example spends a great deal of time and effort developing their mind-body connection, a focus on muscle contractions that are both stronger and last longer than those that you or I perform when we workout. The same goes for an iron man, an mma fighter, and anyone else competing on a professional level.

Often what separates you from the professional that you watch on tv, whether that professional is an athlete, an entrepreneur, or something else, is that they possessed the focus to see their way to the big stage and you did not....that's it....many professionals aren't any more physically gifted than you or I, but they were, and are, more mentally focused.

The next time you hit the gym for a workout, make a conscious effort to intentionally work on the strength of your focus....pick an activity and whether it's pushing for another rep, adding another 5lbs, or running a minute longer....start getting used to working past your mental thresholds and reaching higher levels of achievement.

See you at the gym,

Team Fitness Etc

Watch out ahead!

2/3/2019

We all set goals and whenever we set goals we tend to get really eager about finding the fastest way to reach the finish line. While reaching the finish line is the goal, it is usually wise to take a moment to assess the situation, do some homework, prepare with some forethought, and take a more methodical approach than most people do. In fact, most people do the exact opposite, they just want to get started and buy/do/add whatever they can get their hands on that might speed up the results.
I'm not saying that getting started is bad, it's better than being too paralyzed to start or continually procrastinating, however, starting without a little more in-depth thought and planning does come at a price down the road. Moreover, while it is true that for someone who hasn't been active, just about any activity will work...how long will it work, and what are the consequences, are things that should be considered. Think: plateaus, injuries, loss of motivation, time wasted, etc.
Without action, nothing happens, but without planning, bad things usually happen. So what do you do...take planned action. Before trying to speed towards your next goal, before looking to add more things in, to do, to take, to use, or to worry about, look at what obstacles are preventing you from reaching your goals and work on removing those first. By removing obstacles, the results of your newest efforts will improve exponentially. Only then, after some time, should you consider gradually adding in more. Subtract before you Add. The game of "adding-in" is really a game of margins and subject to the law of diminishing returns.

STEP 1
Remove the crap that gets in the way of sleeping properly every night.
Remove the crap that you put in your mouth every day.
Remove the crappy excuses for not being active daily.
Remove the crap.
STEP 2
Take some time learning the basics and start from there.
Slowly adding things in will benefit you much more than trying to do it all at once.
STEP 3
Trust the process and enjoy the journey.

See you at the gym,
Team Etc

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