Tag: fitnessmotivation

Tuesday Tip: Weights won’t make you bulky 💪🏼

Many female clients often tell me they don’t want to lift weights because they’re afraid of getting too big or bulky. What they mean when they say this is that they don’t want to put on too much muscle mass – they have visions of chunky thighs, thick necks, huge biceps, heavy set shoulders etc.

The reality is that over 30 you’re losing lean muscle at a rate of 3-8% a year if you don’t regularly do resistance workouts. As you age oestrogen levels drop which contribute to this loss. So getting ‘bulky’ is actually a pretty big uphill battle.

To get to a bulky or body-builder level of muscularity, you’d not only have to train and diet in an extreme fashion, but you’d have to keep at it for years. I’ve got clients actively trying to ‘bulk’ and it’s a slow process that requires dedication to weight training and to eating … a lot! Body builders and those types of athletes work extremely hard to look the way they do; you won’t end up there by accident, I promise. If you want to gain significant amounts of muscle mass, you’re looking at five to six days of heavy lifting a week, every week for months and months. Doing a few weights workouts a week, or a few pump classes will not make you bulky. Gaining muscle mass comes from a combination of heavy weight training and an excess in calories.

So if you are aiming to lose fat and are at a calorie deficit (or even maintenance/ slight surplus ) then doing weights workouts 3-4 times a week won’t result in large amounts of muscle growth. What it will do though is increase your lean body mass. This has two benefits – it increases your metabolic rate which means you’ll burn more calories at rest. It will also help provide the ‘sculpted’ or ‘toned’ look many people want. By working those muscles you’ll create a solid muscular base so that as you lose fat you’ll start to see the shape you’re looking for. It will also make you feel strong – and that’s a great feeling!

So don’t be afraid of lifting weights – they’re an important component of any fitness program. They’re also vital – especially for women as we age – as a way to help protect against osteoporosis. So try to to get over the fear of getting “too muscly”, and step away from the obsession with thinness and instead focus on getting stronger!

Happy Tuesday 🤗xx

Tuesday tip: Calorie balance and Bank balance 💵

View your calorie balance like your bank balance and budget accordingly. I often use this analogy with my clients and some people don’t like the comparison because it over simplifies a complicated thing like why we eat/make food choices/ emotional eating etc. But that’s exactly why this analogy works – because how we spend money is just as complex and illogical (sometimes) as why we eat.

We spend money to impress people, to fulfil social norms we don’t actually care about, because it was on sale (even if we didn’t want it) etc. We refuse to look at our credit card statements because we don’t want to acknowledge debt; a bit like refusing to weigh yourself to see how much weight you’ve gained. We think about money differently depending on where it came from. You might go and blow the £100 you won on the lottery but you are far less likely to do that if you worked overtime for it. Yet it is the same £100 (this is known as mental accounting).

We experience loss aversion: we prefer to avoid losing money than to gain the same amount. Much like how when you lose 1kg ‘its nothing’ but when you gain 1kg

‘it’s loads!’

We over spend and over eat to make ourselves feel better or when we are bored/lonely/emotional/ stressed. We assume we will be happy when we earn X much like we assume that we will be happy when we weigh X.

My point is that many factors influence how we eat just like many factors influence how we spend money. We certainly aren’t logical in either but we would likely do better if we were. This is why it is so interesting to question your decisions.Understanding your own cognitive biases helps you make better and more logical decisions. So try viewing that calorie budget the same way you view your financial budget and see how you get on.

Happy Tuesday 🤗

xx

Tuesday Tip: Fasting for fat loss 🚫

I’ve had quite a few people ask me about this recently so thought it was worth revisiting. Various forms of fasting have become extremely popular in the past few years, due to purported health and weight loss benefits. There are various methods – from ‘eating windows’ of 6-8 hours a day (intermittent fasting), to 24-48 hr fasting etc. The claim is that fasting will

accelerate weight and fat loss and sometimes that it will ‘reset’ your metabolism/system etc. However, the data doesn’t actually support these claims.

A recent 2021 study investigated fasting and the impact on fat loss. It tested 3 protocols – fasting with a calorie deficit, fasting without a calorie deficit and a calorie deficit with no fasting. The group that fasted without a calorie deficit overall did not lose fat or weight. Both groups with the calorie deficit lost body weight. However the group that fasted lost less fat and more

muscle. Whereas the group that just had the calorie deficit lost mostly fat. There was no impact of fasting on their metabolism either.

So in short, fasting had no overall benefit in terms of fat loss and in fact could result in increased muscle loss rather than fat. It is actually the calorie deficit that causes the weight or fat loss.

There are claims that will boost your metabolism but research suggests that fasting has the same or negative effects on metabolism compared to a calorie deficit from other ‘diets’. When you severely limit calories, your body slows down basic functions to conserve energy. Instead of boosting your metabolism, you may experience a reeducation of up to 20% your BMR.

So there is nothing ‘magic’ in fasting, the only way it aids weight loss is if it helps someone create a calorie deficit (with the proviso it may result in some muscle loss too). So it really is just another tool to help you create a calorie deficit – it may work for some people, and if so that’s great but it’s not for everyone and it doesn’t offer any significant benefits to any other method of reducing calories.

It’s also worth noting that fasting can have impacts on gastrointestinal health and increases the risk of acid reflux etc so should be undertaken with caution.

Happy Tuesday 🤗

xx