Skip to main content

Fairytales from the gym: The copycat program


Story time.

Once upon a time fitness nutrition was all about carb loading. Endurance athletes were king and they needed a lot of carbs to fuel their long, punishing training regimes.

People who wanted to be fit, but weren't professional athletes followed their lead and ate loads of carbs. But they weren't running for 8 hours a day, I was too young for the fitness world then but I imagine they were doing something like this for an hour a couple of times a week.


So funnily enough, fuelling your body like an endurance athlete, when you aren't an endurance athlete isn't a great plan. What happens is you take on too many calories which your body helpfully stores as fat. Also people started interpreting "carbohydrates" as highly processed starches and sugars, rather than wholegrains and vegetables. So then people started saying that carbs were terrible and we should perhaps cut them out completely because they made people fat.

So then people started saying, "let's eat loads of protein and fat, because it's carbs that are bad, not fat". And that was great for some people, but for others it was just the pits, because people are not all the same in terms of physiology or activity. Also, once again, when these diets were originally tailored for athletes to fuel specific training schedules, the general populus who tried this were taking in the fuel for a regimen they weren't taking part in (or were only doing a small part of) and the excess fuel was..... stored as fat.

It makes sense that when we are inspired by athletes and admire them, that we might choose to train like them, or eat like them. But the gym myth I want to consider today is the idea that you can take a selective part of a pro's balanced training regime and expect a scaled version of their results.

Let's take a common example. Body builders train super hard in the gym, every day. They do a lot of damage to their muscles and many take some form of hormone supplementation to accelerate muscle growth. As a result they need to consume a lot of calories to fuel their workouts and enable them to bulk up. They also need a lot of protein to build and repair muscle fibres. They tend to eat very carefully balanced diets but to ensure that their protein needs are met, they consume protein supplements (often shakes). They eat an unusual diet to fuel an unusual lifestyle.

Now the guy who turns out to the gym 2-3 times a week is living a lifestyle far closer to "usual" than "bodybuilder". If that guy starts consuming 6 protein shakes a day, is he going to get bodybuilder results? Probably not. He's consuming 6-1200 calories of expensive drink. Either he is going to be over his calorie needs - in which case it is wasted or stored - or he'll not be getting enough of his calories from fats and carbs, potentially missing out on the micronutrients that come with those. It would be much better that he ate balanced meals including fresh veggies and a portion (or 2) of protein with every meal, and perhaps added on a shake after resistance training.



There's nothing wrong with protein supplementation, but it is a *supplement* which means you need to be sure that you are eating a healthy, balanced diet to start with and just using the shakes to "top up" when you need it.

The point I'm trying to make here though isn't about protein shakes, or any specific regimen. I mean to highlight that it is not appropriate to take a small sample of a programme and expect it to work. If you want those results, you can't pick out the bits that look appealing, because they work only as part of a greater whole. And you can't necessarily clone someone else's programme and expect it to work for you in exactly the same way - we are all individuals. 

That's why Personal Trainers like me work primarily with individuals, to understand their unique circumstances, along with the measures that they are willing and able to implement to get the best results possible.

It's great to have idols and people to look up to. It's fascinating to find out how elite athletes train and fuel their training. It's also fun to chat with other fitness fans and find out what is working for them. If you are looking for the best plan for yourself as someone who exercises for fun and health, then your best starting point is the general guidelines for healthy living, and small adaptations from thereon.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Managing Fibromyalgia flares

I've written before about living with EDS and Fibromyalgia ,  much of my personal fitness and health practices are geared around managing those conditions and keeping me as well as I can be. When managing a chronic health condition, particularly one that involves fatigue and potential flare ups, pacing, good nutrition, good sleep and generally taking care of yourself is always the first priority. Ideally we want to have as few flares as possible. But sometimes they still happen, and when they do, it's good to have a strategy in place. And I'm going to be talking in fairly general terms, because while EDS and Fibro are my personal experience, there is so little understanding of the mechanisms behind these conditions, that most strategies are going to be applicable to a number of conditions where crashes of exhaustion and pain are a feature. So what is a flare? A flare is a period where someone with chronic illness suffers increased symptoms for a short while. The

Wellbeing is not a competition

I want to have an in depth look at another aspect of the Free Living Fitness manifesto .  Wellbeing is not a competition. Sports are competitive by their nature, some fitness activities like body building are also competitive, but taking care of your body should not be, that's between you and your body. Often when I am in the gym, I see people lifting weights with bad form. They lift the weight, then drop it, not completing a full cycle of the rep. Or they lift too fast to properly get the benefit of using the whole muscle. Or they use form that reduces the isolation, for instance using more of their back than necessary in a shoulder exercise. All of these things achieve one "false" result: They allow you to lift a heavier weight.  Why lift in a way that reduces the efficacy of the exercise, gets you slower gains and potentially hurts you? Because the number on the weight is bigger, and being able to quote a big number puts you ahead in the gym competitio

Confused about your online fitness options? I'm here to help!

Isolation fitness is the new gym (for now) With Covid-19 measures limiting our movement at access to fitness, the internet has become a chaotic explosion of workout options. All the online retailers are sold out of home fitness equipment (ask me about my quest to find a pair of 20kg olympic plates...) and there is a definite shift in consciousness - I have never seen so many people talking about their exercise - and I surround myself with fitness people! In a way it is heartening to see a universal shift where people are becoming very aware of their health. It's necessary when, in all likelihood, many of us will have to fight a respiratory virus - the healthier you are to start with, the better your chance of a full recovery. Doctors have suggested we should prepare ourselves as we would for surgery. As a fitness professional it is always in my mind that I am "the front line of preventative medicine". Fitness, nutrition , recovery and a balanced mindset make measu

Step away from the scale. Why weigh ins and weight loss don't match.

I have a persistant bugbear when it comes to health coaching, and it's this issue of "weight". People are often talking about "losing weight", the number on the scale becomes a focus. "If only I could just get under 65kg" they say. Or worse I see advertised "buy this supplement and you can lose 20kg in a fortnight". I've found myself frequently sitting with a weight-focussed client and asking "if you were 2 dress sizes smaller, fit and toned, but you weighed the same as you do now, could you be happy with that?" You might be surprised how challenging a question that can be. For many people, particularly those who have struggled with weight loss, that number is the absolute key. They can wake up, feeling energised and full of life, slip into those jeans that used to live hopefully in the bottom of the drawer, check themselves in the mirror and love what they see... then they step on the scales, see the number is half a kilo

My top apps for supporting a healthy lifestyle.

The hardest part of making healthy choices and lifestyle changes is making it a habit. It's easy to make a decision to "eat better", "exercise more" or whatever your current plan is. It's a lot harder to stick to it on the rough days, for long enough that it becomes a habit and part of your life that you can't imagine being without. I love a bit of tech. I am a super geeky science nerd and finding ways to use technology to support my health and fitness makes me very happy. So with this in mind I thought I'd give a quick run down of my favourite smartphone apps for developing and maintaining healthy habits. Habitica I'm starting with this one because it's mad and I love it. Habitica is basically a to-do list app, but it's specially for the gamers among us. If you are familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, and all the games that grew out of that system and fantasy world, you will recognise Habitica. The app allows you to create 3 t