How I help my clients achieve maintainable fitness results
When you’ve worked with as many people as I have, you start to see patterns, for what works best and what doesn’t. I don’t just mean knowledge that could have been learned from a text book, I mean how things play out in real life for real, busy people.
This means that I’m well acutely aware of the common mistakes and misunderstandings many people have when it comes to fitness, which left uncorrected will negatively impact their results.
I’ve covered all of these subjects in more detail in my comprehensive fitness guides, but here is a rundown of 36 rules for success in health & fitness. Each one has contributed heavily to the results my clients have achieved.
Fundamental rules of fitness
Consistency is king
It’s not sexy but it’s true, more than any fancy training program, supplement or diet trend, consistency is what delivers when it comes to fitness. We all know the fable of the tortoise and the hare. In the realm of exercise, you’ll achieve more as the tortoise. I consider the results you achieve on any training program to be only as good as your ability to maintain them. If you can’t sustain a healthy weight and aesthetic body year-round you aren’t yet in control. Which through a certain lens, suggests it was never really yours. Whilst it’s true that you might see short-lived success by over-doing things, the tax on that approach is going to have to be paid soon enough. And it will be in the form of fatigue and burn-out. Ultimately, a failure to make healthy living and exercise a habit, negates the utility of any program because no matter how well-designed, it’s only ever going to be effective if you actually implement it.
Entropy chases us all
Many people view achievements in fitness in the same way they would in other more linear areas of life, almost as if it was attaining a qualification or levelling up in a video game in that once you have it, you’re fundamentally operating at a higher level or are entitled to some kind of benefit or treatment. Unfortunately, the laws of nature don’t work that way, earned physical abilities aren’t permanent, at least not without maintenance. Inactivity invites entropy, which means on a long enough timeline what you’ve worked for will be lost unless you find a way to maintain the minimum threshold of activity your body needs to halt this process. Which means once you’re in, you’re in. Think about your fitness efforts as a framework and set of habits rather than simply a workout program. The difference is that a framework represents how you live in your everyday life in which exercise has a permanent role. Whereas an isolated workout program like a couch to 10k or a photoshoot preparation has a start and an end, so you must have a plan for the day after any specific program or your results will be short-lived. The point I’m making here is that if the way you attain your results in fitness, isn’t sustainable as a lifestyle then don’t be surprised when what you achieve can’t be maintained. For this reason, it is best to approach your goals in a manner that ultimately could be continued year-round that way once you’ve accomplished it, nothing has to change.
Hard work pays off, but it's nuanced
You’ve got to push yourself if you want results. And I mean that literally, your body is only going to respond with a positive adaptation if it’s taken beyond what it’s currently comfortable with, which means that you have to train outside of your comfort zone or you won’t reap the full benefits of the workout. But there is a caveat here, which trips up many people which is that there is no linear relationship between work and results because there is always a parachute on your ability to just keep pushing, which is your ability to recover. If you train harder or more frequently than your conditioning or lifestyle allows you to account for you will burn out and It happens very often. There is also an exception here, but that’s good because the exception proves the rule. If you have a weight loss or a fat loss goal, I could show you get results, just by eating well in a modest deficit and walking more, so weight loss is a bit of an outlier in the discussion, but if we’re talking about muscle gain, better fitness, more strength, agility or power you’re going to have to be willing to work at the threshold of what you can do, or the workouts just won’t deliver for you.
Beware the all-or-nothing mindset
Be careful with labelling yourself as an ‘all-or-nothing’ person, you’re effectively labelling yourself with an identity trait that condemns you to never achieve lasting success. What you’re describing isn’t your character, just previous behaviour, and that need not be the same moving forward. Most attempts at ‘all’ are brief and lead to burnout, and ‘nothing’ isn’t maintenance, it’s the beginning of losing your fitness, strength, endurance and a decline in body composition due to the nature of entropy as we’ve just discussed. You don’t have to let fitness take over your life, but it should feature in some capacity year-round or you’ll simply never be able to maintain what you achieve. Developing the right mindset for fitness is crucial, and actually more important than the nuance of an exercise program or getting your calories and macros right because if it’s your mindset that holds you back it won’t matter what the strategy is. Sometimes this takes some accountability to help you get your initial momentum.
Don't sweat the small stuff
Every day we’re exposed to hundreds of social media posts and ads, not to mention decades’ worth of fitness magazines debating the best exercises, workouts and training splits ad nauseam. But if your mindset and lifestyle aren’t set up to support your goals all those Instagram tips and insights won’t amount to much. Instead focus on the fundamentals and almost any workout program will deliver results for you. Workout program design matters, but it’s just the final 20% of the puzzle, the icing on the cake. The core message here is that you simply won’t get optimal results from a great workout plan if you’re physically compromised by stress and fatigue alongside a poor diet so fix that first and don’t overthink the details.
Break the chains of comfort
If you simply cannot bear to start exercising, it makes sense to establish the new habit with any activity you enjoy. It’ll lower the friction you feel and be your best shot at making it pleasurable enough to persist. However, if you’ve historically built your exercise routines based solely on what you enjoy, you might benefit from assessing how much of a deviation your preferences might be from the most direct route to your goal. For example, let’s say you want to gain muscle, using dumbbells instead of barbells. That’s a preference and that’s fine. Because this goal can easily be achieved with either. But attempting to gain muscle without some form of resistance training and only doing cardio or mobility work because that’s what you enjoy wouldn’t help you because you almost certainly can’t gain muscle that way. Now let’s say you had the goal of burning fat and you’d like to pursue it with distance running because it’s your preferred type of cardio. Once you’ve been taught what actually helps you burn fat, that decision becomes self-sabotage in the name of preference. This is more common than you might think. Put simply, your preferences can get you started, but if they are held too rigidly they can also hamstring your progress.
Cast aside your crutches
Establishing a consistent exercise practice takes grit and resilience, forged in the fire of showing up no matter the circumstance or how you feel. In a sense, for many exercise is more of a mental challenge than a physical one. The goal should be to be capable of showing up for a workout with nothing more than a focused mindset. Headphones, a training partner, a pre-workout supplement or even a personal trainer waiting for you at the gym are all nice to have, but if you won’t train without them, you aren’t yet fully in control and that’s a precarious place to be.
Workouts must have a purpose
If you aren’t where you’d like to be with your health & fitness right now, there is no time to waste. I don’t mean you should rush, more that you should make any time you spend exercising count. So each workout should have a deliberate plan of action. You should always know ahead of a session what your workout plan is, and it’s purpose. That purpose is to ask slightly more of your body than it’s currently comfortable with, this forces an adaptation which is how progress is made. To make predicting this process possible, you must plan and track your workouts. Once you are exactly where you want to be, fill your boots with diverse workouts you love, but until then you should have a plan and the more uncomfortable you are with where you are right now, the more direct route to progress you should take.
Habits vs goals
There is a difference between having a short-term fitness goal and a habitual exercise practice. The former is aimed at achieving a particular outcome, but won’t necessarily help form lasting habits. Let’s say you start your relationship with exercise with the goal of running a marathon, what happens the day after the race? Or perhaps you want to lose 50lbs, what do you do once you’ve achieved it? In the running example would you continue to run as far as 20 miles in one go? How long could that be sustained? In the weight-loss example, would you remain in a caloric deficit despite achieving your goal weight? Probably not advised. So regardless of your current training goal, seek to establish a lifestyle framework that includes eating well, regular activity, and a diverse portfolio of exercise. This way whenever you achieve a specific goal you can easily return to a very effective baseline. Essentially, some goals require a gargantuan effort to achieve, and that’s great. Just don’t conflate that with what you have to do year-round as an effective baseline, because you might find yourself stuck in an all-or-nothing mindset with an unsustainable training load.
Don't take your cues from athletes
In the social media age, we’re bombarded with inspirational fitness messages from all avenues, many come from popular bodybuilders and athletes. But it’s best to differentiate between inspiration and practical advice, because sometimes hardcore messages won’t contextually apply to your situation. Most busy people just don’t need more than 3 hours per week of actual training to make a huge positive impact. So when you see fitness influencers of all descriptions working out 6-7 days a week at high intensity, remember that’s their hobby and profession, it’s not necessarily yours. Their workload is not your entry price for getting results. Starting out and getting results takes far less than that. The further down the road you are in a sporting discipline or with exercise generally, the more you’ll have to settle for incremental improvements and that’s where all the pros are. Whereas right now if you’re returning to exercise after a lay-off or a beginner with exercise a little will go a long way for you, and you’d be better served focusing on developing a consistent training schedule you could maintain year-round than adopting a routine from someone that has years of consistency and experience behind them. You’ll get there too, it just shouldn’t be where you start because it creates a perceived barrier to efficacy that just isn’t going to be helpful.
Be active every day
Our bodies evolved to move and be active. So at the risk of sounding alarmist, inactivity kills. However, this is where we need to make a nuanced distinction between a workout, and general activity. We’ve discussed that a workout must have a purpose. Which is to ask just enough of the body to promote positive change. Conversely, activity is simply something the body needs each day to function well, it could be sports, a hobby, manual labour or simply getting out for a walk in nature. Workouts and activity certainly cross over, but they serve very different purposes. Let’s say this, fitness goals aside, you don’t need to ‘workout’ to be healthy, but you do need to be active. This allows us to touch on step count. Many people look at step count as a contributory factor to fat loss i.e. “I get my 10,000 steps” the disconnect here is that, yes, steps are a health marker, and getting your steps in is great for your spine. So whilst it’s true that a consistent step count counteracts inactivity and is good for your mental health, but don’t mistake it for fat burning. Whether you make a dent in your fat loss goal walking or not will come down to the heart rate you do it at, not the number of steps. Let’s say you and I go to a theme park tomorrow, with all the queues and walking around we might clock up 20,000-30,000 steps. But do you think we’d get ‘shredded’ if we went to a theme park every day for the next 6 months? However, let’s say instead we go for a little 40-minute hike on a cross-country trail, we’d clock up about 6,000 steps in that block of activity, a quarter of what we got at the theme park. But our average heart rate would have been around 100-120 BPM and at that heart rate, fat is being used at a higher proportion of your calorie burn in the moment. Whereas at the theme park, it would have been around 70-80 BPM all day (except on the roller coasters) a subtle difference, but an absolute game changer if you actually want to lose fat. I think the message here is make sure you’re meaning and tracking the right things.
Don't mistake knowledge with experience
If you were to read every word on this website it would take well over 100 hours, which is just my health & fitness blog so that’s before you even discover the podcast. In fact, I’ve made sure there are enough free resources to equip you to pursue just about any fitness goal. However, there is a big difference between knowing how fitness works and having the experience of implementing the methodology, because what ‘works’ should always be viewed through a contextual lens, meaning it must be matched to your current circumstances, which I’m sure you’ll agree is a moving target. So what works today because it’s novel won’t work perpetually, not because of a problem in the methodology but because you’ve changed to the point where it is no longer a challenge, and that’s how conditioning works. This is where hiring a fitness coach can pay dividends as even when you know how to achieve your goal intellectually, you may benefit from working with a fitness coach who can help you see around corners and determine what should come next.
Coping vs thriving
You’re probably stronger than you’ve given yourself credit for. No doubt you’re keeping your head above water despite stress, work pressure and what might feel like a gulf between where you are right now and where you would like to be, physically, financially or emotionally. Whilst coping is admirable and we must all do it at times, you might be surprised how far from optimal you actually feel on a day to day basis. This often happens because it’s been so long since you last felt at your best. Many people get so used to poor energy, digestive discomfort, dehydration, immobility, aches and pains, poor sleep and more insidious, even looping thoughts about being out of shape or knowing something has to change that they’ve forgotten what normal feels like. Don’t settle for this, with a few small lifestyle changes you could open up a whole new quality of life. My internal client survey consistently reveals the massive impact even simple changes like a daily mobility practice, staying hydrated or maintaining a short mindfulness practice can make.
Perfectionism kills progression
Exercise doesn’t work like some other areas of life which operate on more of a pass/fail basis. Obviously, pass is good and fail is bad. If you’re used to this type of scenario the world of fitness can be a little jarring because progress is actually deliberately and necessarily built on a foundation of failure. It sounds strange, but in fitness, particularly resistance training we must court failure. Constantly rubbing up against the threshold of your current ability is the way progress is made. Basically, there’s not much progress to be found in the comfort zone, if you started an 8-week training program and it never taxed you enough to at least make you question whether you can complete a workout, then the program won’t have been maximally successful. After all it’s not an exam. The body must be exposed to challenges in order to force a change. This could be exercise itself or hormetic stressors like cold, heat or fasting. Your body is an ‘anti-fragile’ system and will grow stronger when exposed to challenge. Essentially you’ll benefit from putting your body in a situation where you only just get through a session successfully (obviously with proper technique) so that it effectively ‘thinks’ to itself “Well if you’re going to do that again, we better be bigger and stronger to handle it”. Embracing this concept and being willing to risk failing is difficult if you have excelled in academia because it works on the complete opposite understanding of what failure represents. But it won’t make it any less true. I’m talking to you doctors, mathematicians, coders, lawyers, scientists, engineers and architects. Interestingly, the more advanced you get with exercise the more there should be a mild sense of trepidation before every workout because you know you’re working at the threshold of your capabilities. To be clear, I’ve been training for more than twenty years, and in every new 4-8 week training program I build myself, I will fail-repeatedly at achieving my intended rep range, and that’s how I know it’s working. If you can come around to this way of thinking, you’ll be free from the chains of perfectionism for good.
Age is no factor
The frequency with which age is cited as a cause of declining health and body composition on my consultation calls tends to leave me a little solemn because more often than not an implicit decline and ceiling on achievements is being referenced as fact. Strangely enough, more so by those who’ve just turned 30, than those in their 40s, 50s & 60s, which I think shows that it’s largely a perceived limitation rather than a real one. I can tell you at 30, there is a negligible difference in what you’re capable of compared to yourself at 25, almost without exception what has changed is not your body, it’s your lifestyle. I would hazard a guess that like most people, in the pursuit of your career or in devotion to your relationship and family responsibilities you probably sleep less, eat more, suffer from all sorts of new forms of stress and generally get less activity than you did through your twenties. The funny thing is that belief in what one is capable of tends to see a resurgence at age 50, just have a look at my client testimonials. Do you want to know why this is? Because things haven’t changed all that much physically, in terms of what we’re capable of and at some level conscious or otherwise we know that. The data shows that the decline in metabolism and muscle loss with age amounts to about 6% a decade. That’s hardly the anvil-dropping-off-a-cliff effect we all fear. Not only that, but statistics can be misleading, that 6% decline is a 6% decline of your maximised potential. But let’s say you didn’t do much exercise throughout your thirties and forties and then you arrive at age 50 and decide to eat well, lift weights and stay active every day it only stands to reason that by age 55, you could have 10-15 lbs more muscle than you ever had in your thirties, notwithstanding the change to your metabolism – it’s all relative. The good news is that age is not the factor you thought it was. The bad news is that it’s not going to offer the excuse you thought it would either.
You must value rest
One of the most important aspects of your ability to get results in fitness is going to be how you interpret and respond to your need to rest. Consider this: a workout is only as effective as your ability to recover from it. If we take that to be true, this must then inform how often you should exercise, and at what volume. Which then needs to be cross-referenced with how you are managing other lifestyle factors like stress, sleep and nutrition. This means you could have two very effective workout programs on paper, but if one calls for an unrecoverable workload for you, you’ll burn out. There is no linear relationship between more work and better results in fitness, because the rate-limiting factor is always going to be recovery. It’s a fundamental mistake, don’t make it. So many well-intentioned people burn too bright, too soon and actually work themselves into poor results, as counterintuitive as that sounds. A good analogy might be, if you had a machine in a factory that you kept running 24 hours a day, it may run for 2-3 weeks at full pelt and you’d have an amazing output, you’d think you were going to be rich! But before long it would start to overheat. Parts would wear down and break. Quality would suffer and you’d have to pay money to hire someone just to spot defective items. Eventually, the machine would grind to a halt, forcing total shut down and you’ll have to spend unproductive time and money fixing it before you can operate again. Or you could run the machine on a 16-hour daily output, and utilise 8 hours for cool down and daily maintenance. This way you might be able to operate at 80% optimally for years without ever having a forced shutdown. In fitness, that first approach invites ‘overtraining syndrome’, the second is how you get sustained results.
Don't over-correct
One of the biggest mindset pitfalls to avoid in fitness is resisting the temptation to over-correct after a lay-off, setback or missed training session. It circles back to the idea that more is not inherently better and is the kind of thought process that betrays an all-or-nothing mindset. Instead, If you suffer a setback, just get back to your optimal program as soon as you can. No need for overcompensation, if your program is well-calibrated to be maintained year-round, simply get back to it and it will self-correct. Don’t treat a workout program as a to-do list, you can’t treat it with brute force because your output will always be anchored to your ability to recover. Plus when you consider that what likely caused a setback will typically be illness, stress, lack of sleep, travel or an injury doing more than would be of utility immediately following this event would be the very worst time to overwhelm the central nervous system, so you can see how you can get yourself into a lot of trouble with that approach.
Fitness vs sports
improving your fitness, changing body composition and making general health improvements, are the kind of goals a personal trainer is likely to help you achieve. It’s important to acknowledge that these fall into a wholly different realm from sports. Philosophically, athletes acknowledge that they may face a point in the pursuit of sporting prowess in which they actually have to knowingly and deliberately take a deviation from what could be considered ‘healthy’ or ‘optimal’ to achieve great things and that’s a personal decision to make. Think of the medical treatments between sets in tennis, or the simple act of getting up after being knocked down and potentially concussed in boxing, you wouldn’t do either simply to complete a workout because the long-term downside would massively outweigh any upside a single isolated workout could give you. Very different if you’re in the Wimbledon final or fighting for a title. So unless you have specific sporting goals, you might not want to take your training cues from competitive athletes, at least not until you’re physically and mentally ready to perform like them. Whether historically accurate or not, there is a lesson to be learned from Pheidippides and the Battle of Marathon. But what of Crossfit? you may be thinking, it’s true that contrary to what I’ve said above Crossfit is literally the ‘sport of fitness’. Whilst that’s a great workout, it might be useful to think of it as one of the best expressions of being at optimal fitness, but not necessarily the most linear route to getting there especially if you are currently fighting fatigue and burn-out.
Weight management
Cutting calories can inhibit wight loss
Whilst it’s true that a caloric deficit is the way to achieve weight loss, the degree of the deficit is crucial. Because it isn’t a case of the lower calories the better. Firstly, if you go too low, it’ll just be unmaintainable and force a break. Typically in the form of bouts of snacking and unintended over-eating. Which is often accompanied by a ‘rebound’ effect and the regaining of any lost weight. Secondly, from an evolutionary perspective, you are sending what could be thought of as ‘famine signals’ to your brain. And as what is effectively a survival machine the last thing your body is going to do under such circumstances is willingly jettison stored body fat. Because as far as your body is concerned those fat stores represent energy to be used later for sustenance, so it would make sense to hold on to it until the ‘famine’ is resolved. Only with a moderate deficit, in the real of 10-30% of your TDEE will you be in the sweet spot between effectiveness and sustainability.
Weight loss 'unlocks' fat loss
One of the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to weight loss is failing to understand when it’s time to move on from weight-loss methodology, not because it doesn’t work but precisely because it already has. At a certain point, once you’ve lost enough weight your focus must change to body composition over weight because when you reach your intended weight, you’ll be better served by aiming your workouts at gaining muscle and losing fat, or you’ll face two problems. Firstly you’ll likely never be able to lose that last bit of body fat, because the methodology doesn’t support it. And second, you will always struggle with caloric intake as the only way you know how to eat that actually works for you is a large calorie deficit. By definition, you will have to re-tool for maintenance, and that takes a different caloric intake, workout methodology and focus. Remember, weight loss and dieting are both inherently temporary measures. So at some point, you’re going to need a new strategy or you’ll never land the plane, which is the cause of many stop/start attempts at weight loss and a whole portion of the diet industry that perpetuates yo-yo dieting.
Not all lost weight is equal
Traditional weight loss methodology is primed to celebrate any and all reduction of weight on the scale. However, through the lens of your metabolism by which I mean your basal metabolic rate, losing weight is not an inherently positive change. There is no achievement in losing water weight unless you are weighing in for an event, and there is no practical utility in losing muscle. So if you find yourself above what might be considered a healthy weight, it may be true that you should lose weight, but it’s better to think of this process as a long-term fat-loss goal. That way weight loss is a natural output of reducing body fat, but not the goal itself. Certainly not the pursuit of moving the scale by any means. Ultimately, body fat percentage is a better marker of success than weight. Think about this, if you lost 3kg of muscle today you’d weigh less but you’d have a higher body fat percentage and you would burn fewer calories at rest (your basal metabolic rate would be lower), which effectively means you’ve slowed your metabolism. Conversely, if you gained 3kg of muscle today you would weigh more on a scale, but you’d have a lower body fat percentage due to the ratio of lean mass vs fat mass. You would also be burning more calories at rest and you would have changed your physical appearance in the direction of an athletic body. For these reasons, it’s crucial to be clear on which measurements matter and which are fundamentally arbitrary to your day-to-day lived experience.
Don't invest in the 'sweat economy'
The sweat economy is how I refer to the fundamental assumption that the more calories you spend on exercise or the more you sweat the better a workout must be. This is an old-hat weight loss mindset and completely bypasses the intricacies of designing an effective workout program. Next time you see a 1000-calorie workout class or boot camp, that’s an impressive workload, but is it actually conducive to your goal? If you frequently hit this kind of training session and you’ve also overdone your caloric deficit you are on the road to burn-out. If sustained weight loss was as simple as this, everyone would just go on a weight loss camp every January and be in shape for the rest of the year. Don’t treat your fitness program like a game show, find a habit set and workout structure you can maintain year-round and stick with it. If it’s built correctly you’ll be on a linear path to achieving your ideal weight and body composition in a way that can actually be maintained. This means the day after you’ve achieved your goals, you just keep everything the same. Not something that could ever be said about dieting.
Don't weigh yourself daily
Weight naturally fluctuates on a daily basis. It’s perfectly normal for water retention, carb intake, digestive motility and hormones to influence your weight. If you are concerned with what you weigh and measure yourself daily you will with 100% certainty give yourself a turbulent time. Which often leads to de-motivation or over-correction, neither is good. You’ve only got to consider how you would feel if you were doing everything perfectly only to see increased weight on the scale. All it takes is a day of slower-than-usual digestion for that to happen. Make sure you have a program or fitness coach you believe in, and trust the process. I strongly suggest that you only weigh yourself every two weeks, it’s a large enough distance for your efforts to have made a significant impact and you’ll save yourself a great deal of emotional turmoil. To drive the point home, let’s say you and I share a microwave pizza tonight, let’s even say you have one to yourself. The average pizza weighs about 1.5 pounds, and it’s not uncommon to weigh-in 2-3 pounds heavier the day after eating one. It can’t double in size once you’ve eaten it, that’s impossible. But the salt and carb intake can make you hold on to the water that you subsequently go on to drink, which is where the weight comes from, yet so many people would see this as 2-3 pounds of fat gain, it just doesn’t work like that, so please don’t make weight loss so hard on yourself.
Calories must match your goals
Counting calories can be a chore, and you certainly don’t have to live with the precision of a bodybuilder to achieve great things in fitness. However, you do have to have some bearing on the amount of food you’re eating to be sure you are going to get results. You could be doing everything right in the gym but if the numbers don’t add up in the kitchen, you might be making it a mathematical impossibility to achieve your goals. This primarily applies to goals that seek a change in weight or body composition. Should you have performance or fitness goals, don’t worry so much about the numbers just fuel your activity. It’s worth noting that if you’ve experienced disordered eating in the past, calorie counting may not be comfortable and you might be better with a more intuitive approach to managing food may be best done with a meal plan build by a qualified nutritionist or dietician.
Macronutrients matter
You could have your calories perfect, but if the ratio between protein, fats and carbohydrates isn’t correct, you may significantly undermine what you’re working toward. For example, a low protein intake when looking to build lean muscle or an unnecessarily high carb intake for a fat-loss goal could completely hamstring your ability to achieve results. Calories don’t have to be perfect, and neither does your macronutrient split, simply aim for the best combination of both on a daily basis, and as long as you stay there or thereabouts you’ll be fine, seeking ridgid precious is a callback to all-or-nothing thinking, which we’ve discussed in the context of exercise above.
‘IIFYM’ works on paper, not in practice
It’s tempting to think about food in a very two-dimensional way, which is that it’s basically all just numbers and if the numbers work then the goal will be achieved. When you’re looking to change your weight or body fat percentage, this can certainly be true as was demonstrated in the famous Twinkie diet experiment. But in my experience, that’s not the end of the story. Our bodies don’t operate like a mathematical equation and taking the view that, a calorie is just a calorie may not give you the full picture. Calories from different food sources act differently in the body when it comes to hormones, appetite regulation, inflammation, git microbiota and long-term metabolic changes. This matters when it comes to being able to predict your intended composition change, and even more when you consider the health implications, Dr. Olivia Lesslar and I discuss this on my podcast. Fitness results don’t operate in a vacuum, seek aesthetic change at the cost of your health and you might regret it later. Absolutely Work within calorie guidelines, but aim for high-quality, nutrient-dense food and listen to what your body tells you about it. Put it this way, if all that mattered in losing weight was calories why don’t we work out exactly the number of calories to lose weight and then just eat that number of calories from jelly babies and doughnuts? it would be delicious, we would achieve our weight loss goal, and we could feed ourselves for about £10 a week. I think the answer is obvious, what you eat matters not just how much even if the former would indeed help you move the needle on the scale.
Fat loss
For fat-loss, weight is arbitrary
If your goal is to lose body fat, what you should be measuring is your body fat percentage. Or if you want to take the low-tech approach simply study side-by-side progression pictures, as you begin to look more lean and athletic it’s safe to say that your body fat percentage is lowering, whether by losing fat itself or gaining muscle, ideally both, as would be the case with a recomposition program. To be clear, weight loss is an output of fat loss, but not necessarily indicative of fat loss success itself because you could be dieting down and overexercising whilst failing to protect your muscle.
Cardio bookends
To get the best results from cardiovascular training as far as fat loss, think of it as a spectrum, with the best types of cardio being at either bookend. At one end, you have light work which is a little more than just activity, it’s not really a workout. Think Hiking, cycling, swimming etc all completed at a relatively low heart rate. At the other end, you’d have the various forms of HIIT training i.e. Tabata, circuit training etc. To achieve the best results combine extended periods of time spent in light activity, with short bursts of high-intensity work. Not necessarily in the same training session, but as valued parts of your exercise portfolio. Crucially, avoid the middle if you want linear results. It’s where you’ll find activities like jogging which will certainly get you fit, but doesn’t offer a very sharp tool for fat loss.
Prioritise preserving muscle
One could argue that a weight loss goal is typically health-led, whereas a fat-loss goal is more of an aesthetic goal. We could debate targeting dangerous visceral fat, or pontificate that a weight-loss goal is really just contextually a fat-loss goal with a longer timeline as I’ve already suggested. Regardless of any of that, something that not many consider is that even when your articulated goal is fat loss or weight loss, the unspoken understanding that few focus on should be that it never comes at the cost of a loss of muscle. Too much cardio or too few calories can jeopardise hard-earned muscle, so making sure you never put it at risk naturally constrains your caloric deficit, and your temptation to over-train which offers a great set of checks and balances. This is important because it’s far harder to gain muscle than it is to lose fat, a proposition that becomes gradually more apparent with age. Therefore it makes sense to protect it. Let’s use the analogy of a car, there’s the exterior, we’ll call that body fat, and there’s the engine, we’ll say that’s your muscle mass, because of how it drives your metabolism. If you focus on the exterior but fail to maintain the engine, you could find yourself in trouble. Think of it this way, you could easily chip away at refining the exterior over time, but it’ll be quite a project to have to replace an engine.
Time restriction beats calorie restriction
Simply turning up the intensity of exercise and reducing calories can only go so far in the pursuit of fat loss. Luckily there is a third pillar you can introduce into the equation, and that’s time-restricted eating or ‘intermittent fasting’. Time-restricted eating allows you to establish a further fat-burning vector in your health & fitness framework without actually cutting calories. To be clear, you’re eating the same amount of calories as normal, just in a condensed period of time. This works by increasing the duration growth hormone is active in your system overnight plus affording you an opportunity to burn stored fat for energy while glucose isn’t as readily available. Not only that, behaviourally it offers a self-imposed rule under which food is not permitted past a certain time at night, and it’s the unwinding hours where most people are likely to eat something they didn’t intend to.
Muscle gain
Building muscle is predictable
Many people suffer from considerable guesswork and inertia when it comes to their ability to gain muscle. But if you understand how muscle building works, there really shouldn’t be any question as to whether your training program is effective. It’s not something you have to play out to determine, it should be as apparent as a blueprint. Like it would be building a house. If you eat in a modest calorie surplus, practise progressive overload and successfully manage lifestyle factors like sleep and stress it should be inevitable that you gain muscle. Studies have shown that there are differences in the amount of muscle each individual stands to gain, actually, one study highlighted muscle gains of anywhere from 3-10lbs of muscle gained over 12 weeks, a considerable variance, but ultimately what is important is that if all of the elements of the equation are in place you will with certainty see results.
Keep the body guessing
When someone asks ‘What’s the best training program to gain muscle?’ Firstly the answer will be contextual. There are different amounts of training volume appropriate for different circumstances. For example, if you’ve just come through a very stressful period or you’re struggling to sleep, perhaps a high training volume isn’t prudent. Likewise, if you are a beginner to exercise, low rep ranges and heavy weight is unnecessarily risky. The point is that there are dozens of programs that work, but they won’t all be contextually appropriate for everyone. Secondly, it’s a moving target. There will never be one single training program that will serve you forever, because a workout program will only work as long as it’s a novel enough stimulus to force an adaptation. So a better question would be “What sequence of training programs should I complete this year, and in what order” This way you could plan your whole training year, stacking effective programs one after another. In doing so you ensure that you get longevity from your efforts and that your body remains in a state of adaptation. This is the only way you’ll keep getting results over time. I’ve consistently found that my clients get the best muscle-building results training three times per week, with anywhere between 30-65% of their one rep max, counter-intuitive, but we’ve discussed a number of times now that more isn’t always better.
Mindset
Fitness is the tip of the iceberg
We don’t always recognise the role activity plays in mental health. When you think of the benefits of exercise what often comes to mind is weight loss, muscle gain and getting fit, all very good. But what is often overlooked is the role it plays in maintaining a positive mood and feelings of well-being, you only have to observe how bad you feel if regular exercise is temporarily taken away due to injury or illness. Picture it as a fitness benefits iceberg, all of the obvious benefits are above the water, but the emotional, mental and mood-regulating benefits are hidden under the surface. Exercise has long been demonstrated to contribute to lowering feelings of anxiety and depression, it’s another poignant reminder to jettison an all-or-nothing mindset because even if circumstances dictate that you can’t carry out your program perfectly the little you can do might be exactly what keeps you through those same challenging circumstances. At any given time you might not be consciously aware of just how much exercise it’s helping you on the emotional and psychological planes, so allowing it to go to nil during a rough period isn’t just dropping the ball, it’s tantamount to self-sabotage.
Stoicism in motion
There are a number of lessons from the philosophy of stoicism we can apply directly to health & fitness. Life can be difficult to control, so it’s logical to focus your attention only on what you can influence, and not lament what you can’t. This plays out in two interesting ways when it comes to fitness. Firstly, there will never be a perfect time to begin a training program of decent duration. Because there will always be something scheduled that’s going to be an impediment to progress. Letting this stop you would be like waiting for every traffic light to be green before starting a cross-country road trip. That’s not necessarily a bad thing either, you want a battle-tested habit set. If your workout regime only works when everything is perfect, it’s not very robust. Try to develop a training framework that works even under the busiest, most stressful circumstances, and better yet, still works if you only do 80% of it. Because realistically that’s what’s likely to happen. The second relevant stoic teaching is found in avoiding the ‘domino effect’ as soon as something goes wrong. One of the biggest challenges I help people overcome with my coaching service is to resist a knee-jerk reaction of abandonment to their first isolated setback. When something goes wrong, and it will, you have to find a way to lean into an area you still have control of. Need to eat with clients? Ok. make sure your training is great. Can’t get to the gym? OK, eat well and do some bodyweight work. Sprained an ankle on a run? Ok. Work your upper body. And so it goes, in every setback, there will be an opportunity. This is the benefit of looking at health & fitness as a framework with multiple component parts that can be siloed rather than just a singular workout program, it ensures no single setback can ever totally derail your progress.
Exercise builds confidence, but not the way you think
Social media and mass marketing have taught us to covet a certain aesthetic, I’ve been there myself and whilst I certainly help people achieve aesthetic bodies, I like to view my coaching program more as a vehicle for success than simply a drive for a better aesthetic. It would be easy to think that once you get six-pack abs, a bigger butt or just generally like what you see in the mirror, that’s where you’ll finally get those much sought-after feelings of confidence and self-esteem. However neither my experience coaching thousands of people nor the literature point to this ‘pot of gold at the end of the rainbow’ model of confidence. The truth is feelings of self-esteem are built on following through on the promises you make to yourself, It’s that simple. The very act of implementing a health & fitness program consistently is enough to see a marked improvement in self-confidence. Following through on something you consider important is an act of self-respect and when done consistently over time, naturally makes you think about what else you could go on to achieve.
Exercise, a game you can win
In my view, the most compelling reason I could ever give you to start a health & fitness practice is that it offers a unique opportunity to compartmentalise an area of life, in which you are in control of the progress you make. Which in my observation is a rather rare proposition. It’s also a field where you will always have access to and be able to generate a personal win. Exercise is the great equaliser, there are no gatekeepers and no barriers to entry, the world economy doesn’t affect your ability to exercise, and neither does your relationship status, your boss or the health of your business. You can begin anywhere at any time. This could mean something as simple as a quick bodyweight circuit or a walk around the block. It’s a great source of comfort to know that no matter what’s going on in your life, or the world at large, you always have the option to go out and make something positive happen. Even when the world feels like it’s crumbling down around you, sometimes just having that idea in your back pocket is the difference between giving up or not. At least that’s what exercise has done for me, and that’s why I became a personal trainer in the first place.
References
The relationship between HIIT training and fat loss
Julian et al. (2021) – Impact of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) versus moderate-intensity continuous training (MICT) on bone density, geometry, and strength.
https://karger.com/ofa/article/15/1/46/828890/Bone-Response-to-High-Intensity-Interval-Training
Khammassi et al. (2018) – Impact of a 12-week high-intensity interval training without caloric restriction on body composition and lipid profile in sedentary healthy overweight/obese youth
Optimal HIIT training protocols for fat loss
Reljic, Wittmann, & Fischer (2018) – Effects of low-volume high-intensity interval training in a community setting
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-018-3845-8
Poon, Little, Sit, & Wong (2020) – The effect of low-volume high-intensity interval training on cardiometabolic health and psychological responses in overweight/obese middle-aged men
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02640414.2020.1766178
Efficacy of ‘Tabata’ workouts for fat loss
Yining Lu, Huw D.Wiltshire (2023) – The effect of Tabata-style functional high-intensity interval training on cardiometabolic health and physical activity in female university students
Ljubojevic, Gerdijan, Pavlovic, Sebic (2023) – Effect of Tabata training program on body fat reduction in healthy inactive women
Optimal frequency of resistance training for hypertrophy
B. Schoenfeld, J. Grgic, J. Krieger (2019) – How many times per week should a muscle be trained to maximize muscle hypertrophy? A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies examining the effects of resistance training frequency
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30558493/
Effect of low to moderate intensity steady state cardio on fat loss
Zhang, Tong, Qiu (2017) – Comparable Effects of High-Intensity Interval Training and Prolonged Continuous Exercise Training on Abdominal Visceral Fat Reduction in Obese Young Women
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5237463/
Chiu, Chen Ko, Shan Wu, Peng Yeh, Wen Kan (2017) – Benefits of different intensity of aerobic exercise in modulating body composition among obese young adults: a pilot randomized controlled trial
Health benefits of walking
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4453623/
Kelly, P, Murphy, M & Mutrie (2017) – The health benefits of walking
Relationship between exercises and mental health
Mahindru, Patil, Agrawal (2023) – Role of Physical Activity on Mental Health and Well-Being
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9902068/
Sharma, Madaan, Petty (2006) – Exercise for Mental Health
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470658/
Exercise reduces anxiety
Aylett, Small, Bower (2018) – Exercise in the treatment of clinical anxiety in general practice – a systematic review and meta-analysis
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6048763/
Anderson, Shivakumar (2013) – Effects of Exercise and Physical Activity on Anxiety
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3632802/
Singh, Olds, Curtis, Dumuid, Virgara (2023) – Effectiveness of physical activity interventions for improving depression, anxiety and distress: an overview of systematic reviews
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/57/18/1203
Exercise and reduced feelings of depression
Craft, Perna (2004) – The Benefits of Exercise for the Clinically Depressed
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC474733/
Singh, Olds, Curtis, Dumuid, Virgara (2023) – Effectiveness of physical activity interventions for improving depression, anxiety and distress: an overview of systematic reviews
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/57/18/1203
Exercise improves creativity or mood
Steinberg, Sykes, Moss (1997) – Exercise enhances creativity independently of mood
Chen (2024) – Exploring the impact of acute physical activity on creative thinking
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44202-024-00114-9
Zhao, Qin, Shu, Liu (2022) – Effects of short-term aerobic exercise on creativity
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871187122000360
Best rep range for strength gains
Schoenfeld, Grgic, Every, Plotkin (2021) – Loading Recommendations for Muscle Strength, Hypertrophy, and Local Endurance
Krzysztofik, Wilk, Wojdala, Golas (2019) – Maximizing Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review of Advanced Resistance Training Techniques and Methods
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6950543/
Calorie intake for weight loss
Kim (2021) – Optimal Diet Strategies for Weight Loss and Weight Loss Maintenance
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8017325/
Liu, Huang, Yang, Wei, Zhang, Guo, Lin, Xu, Li, He (2022) – Calorie Restriction with or without Time-Restricted Eating in Weight Loss
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2114833
Low protein intake and energy levels
Pezeshki, Zaplata, Singh, Yee, Chelikani (2016) – Low protein diets produce divergent effects on energy balance
Schoufour, Franco, Jong, Trjanoska, stricker, Brusselle (2019) – The association between dietary protein intake, energy intake and physical frailty
Does a mindfulness practice lower stress?
Keng,Smoski, Robins (2011) – Effects of Mindfulness on Psychological Health
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3679190/
Galante, Friedrich, Dawson, Alarcon, Gebbing, Suarez (2021) – Mindfulness-based programmes for mental health promotion in adults in nonclinical settings
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003481
Yoga effects on stress management
Shohani, Badfar, Nasirkandy (2018) – The Effect of Yoga on Stress, Anxiety, and Depression in Women
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5843960/
Woodyard (2011) – Exploring the therapeutic effects of yoga and its ability to increase quality of life
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3193654/
Hydration and health (consequences of dehydration)
Metab (2017) – Effects of Dehydration on Brain Functioning: A Life-Span Perspective
Liska, Mah, Brisbois, Barrios, Baker (2019) – Hydration and Selected Health Outcomes in the General Population
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6356561/
Healthy fats, cholesterol and testosterone
Whittaker, Wu (2021) – Low-fat diets and testosterone in men: Systematic review and meta-analysis of intervention studies
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33741447/
LowT Centre (2020) – Low Testosterone and Cholesterol: Is there a Connection?
https://lowtcenter.com/news-article/low-testosterone-cholesterol-connection/
Exercises and PMS symptoms
Pearce, Jolly, Jones, Matthewman (2020) – Exercise for premenstrual syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7465566/
Samadi, Taghian, Valiani (2013) – The effects of 8 weeks of regular aerobic exercise on the symptoms of premenstrual syndrome in non-athlete girls
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3748549/
Exercise and managing symptoms of menopause
Sternfeld, Guthrie, Ensurd, Croix (2015) – Efficacy of Exercise for Menopausal Symptoms
Galas, Dabrowska (2019) – High Physical Activity Level May Reduce Menopausal Symptoms
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6722698/
Sun exposure and energy levels
Soundelegger, Stein, Wadsak (2011) – Light-dependent alteration of serotonin-1A receptor binding in cortical and subcortical limbic regions in the human brain
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/15622975.2011.630405?scroll=top&needAccess=true
Balzer (2023) – How change in sunlight can affect your mood
Inflammatory effects of stress
Maydych (2019) – The Interplay Between Stress, Inflammation, and Emotional Attention: Relevance for Depression
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6491771/
Seiler, Fagundes, Christian (2019) – The Impact of Everyday Stressors on the Immune System and Health
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-16996-1_6
Stress and immunity
Segerstrom (2006) – Psychological Stress and the Human Immune System
Seiler, Fagundes, Christian (2019) – The Impact of Everyday Stressors on the Immune System and Health
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-16996-1_6
Sleep and testosterone
Luboshitzky, Zabari, Orr, Herer, Lavie (2001) – Disruption of the nocturnal testosterone rhythm by sleep fragmentation in normal men
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11238497/
Leproult, Cauter (2015) – Effect of 1 Week of Sleep Restriction on Testosterone Levels in Young Healthy Men
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4445839/
Sleep and hypertrophy
Lamon, Morabito, Lantz (2021) – The effect of acute sleep deprivation on skeletal muscle protein synthesis and the hormonal environment
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7785053/
Chen, Cui, Wu (2017) – Relationship between sleep and muscle strength among Chinese university students: a cross-sectional study
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5749041/
Stress from overtraining
Kreher, Schwartz (2012) – Overtraining Syndrome
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3435910/
Gleeson (2002) – Biochemical and Immunological Markers of Over-Training
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3963240/
The dangers of low-calorie dieting
WebMd (2022) – Very Low-Calorie Diets: What YOu Need To Know
https://www.webmd.com/diet/low-calorie-diets
NASM – Low-Calorie Diets: Dangers And Considerations
https://blog.nasm.org/uncategorized/low-can-go-risks-trying-lose-weight-low-calorie-diets
Pro-inflammatory food effect on health
Asensi, Napoletano, Sofi (2023) – Low-Grade Inflammation and Ultra-Processed Foods Consumption
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10058108/
Harvard Health – Do pro-inflammatory diets harm our health? And can anti-inflammatory diets help?
Gut- brain axis
Carabotti, Scirocco, Maseli (2015) – The gut-brain axis: interactions between enteric microbiota, central and enteric nervous systems
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4367209/
Appleton (2018) – The Gut-Brain Axis: Influence of Microbiota on Mood and Mental Health
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6469458/
Alcohol and exercise recovery
Vella, Smith (2010) – Alcohol, Athletic Performance and Recovery
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3257708/
Lakicevic (2019) – The Effects of Alcohol Consumption on Recovery Following Resistance Exercise
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7739274/
Alcohol and sleep
Park, Oh, Lee, Kim (2015) The Effects of Alcohol on Quality of Sleep
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4666864/
Helaakoski, Kaprio, Hublin (2022) – Alcohol use and poor sleep quality
https://academic.oup.com/sleepadvances/article/3/1/zpac023/6632721
Goal setting techniques
Bailey (2019) – Goal Setting and Action Planning for Health Behavior Change
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6796229/
Aghera, Emery, Bounds, Bush (2018) – A Randomized Trial of SMART Goal Enhanced Debriefing after Simulation to Promote Educational Actions