Before you remove gluten, do twice a day training or start a supplement program tick the following boxes first. You might not need to do as much as you think to get what you want! How releiving would that be.
You want to get your result as easily as possible right? Good science involves changing only one variable at a time to see what changes occur. If you change too many variables you don’t have any good data as to how individual changes are working. Plus making multiple changes at once seldom works for most people. Make one change a week.
Contrary to popular belief most people don’t need to make a lot of changes to get what they want. Sometimes when they make a bunch of changes they dont know what is working and what isnt. You could be doing something unnecessary. A good example is when someone starts taking a supplement but also starts exercising and changes the way they eat. They then claim the supplement did the work. How do you know? It could of been the training, it could of been the food. You don’t.
So check out the following as to what i think is a good order to start change…
One : Start training a minimum of 4 times if not 6 times a week for 60 mins.
Don’t change what you eat. People derive so much happiness from food nowdays that drastically changing it causes a lot of discontent and unhappiness. So don’t. Just get moving! What you eat might be perfectly fine and the exercise is all you needed.
Everyone is looking for a single magic reason as to why over the last 40-50 years our weight has exploded and obesity is almost an epidemic. Its gluten, its dairy, its sugar, its pesticides… but few people want to look at the simple fact that we sit down for so much longer now and are too exhausted to do any exercise in our spare time. Even the Australian government recommends adults exercise for 30 minutes a day INTENSELY on 6 if not 7 days a week to MAINTAIN your weight. 30 minutes intensely to MAINTAIN your weight. That’s to halt the weight gain. So what do you think you have to do to lose it?
Start with the basics. Move more. It might be all you need. And if it is, how good would that be?
You might not have to go paleo, you might not have to go low carb, you might not hve to go low dairy, you might not have to go gluten free. All you might need is exercise.
Keep it simple 3-4 days of weights – 2-3 days of long endurance cardio. This is what has worked for decades and will continue to do so.
Two : Determine Your Caloric Needs
So you’re exercising and nothing is happening? You might still be over eating even though you’re now exercising. Even more importantly you may be under eating. This happens more than you think. Eating too few calories and stalling your metabolism is more common in women than men but its something you need to tick off the list.
Simply place yourself in a 300-500 calorie deficit depending on size and gender and see if that works. You might not have to go paleo, you might not have to go low carb, you might not have to go low dairy, you might not have to go gluten free.
Until you do this you have no frame of reference. I’ve had 60kg girls lose 9kg by simply lowering calories and moving every day. No protein goal. No carb goal. No organics. No gluten free. Chocolate with their tea.
Three : Sleep
Those who carry high amounts of body fat tend to sleep less than those with a normal body fat. Studies suggest that people who sleep fewer than 6 hours per night gain almost twice as much weight over a 6-year period as people who sleep 7 to 8 hours per night.
Most people hate this fact. And there’s no way to say this one dramatically enough to get people to realise how important sleep is. When I say lack of sleep will make you sick , fat and stupid, you just gloss over it don’t you. It’s too simple. It’s not complicated enough. Peoples heads rexplode –BANG! – how can lack of sleep be detrimental. I’m fine with 6 hours!
Until you start getting 8-9 hours EVERY night you have no frame of reference that you’re fine. People think living in pain is normal. Its only when you take them out of pain do they realize what normal feels like.
The no.1 reason people dont get 8-9 hours sleep is because they spend so long working that in order to get 8-9 hours they practically have to go to bed when they get home from work and so they want to stay up and feel as if they have a life. A bit of time for themselves. I get it. If your job is so demanding you have no life but you also want a life – either make your job your life or change your job.
One of the biggest influences lack of sleep has on people, is they crave quick energy in the form of simple sugar because they are tired! Throw in the Grehlin and Leptin hormonal disruption and you have even poorer food choices. When you are not tired you don’t crave quick energy and caffeine. Is it the sugar or are you just tired all the time? Don’t beleive me? Go shopping hungry and see what you buy. Then go shopping the next day full.
Four : Remove Sugar and Processed Food
Here we are step 4 and only now are we looking at the devil sugar. Im only talking about simple sugars here. Chocolate, ice cream, soft drink, lollies…I’m not talking about high fibre carbohydrates. Simple man made sugars in cheap foods with almost zero fibre content react very differently in the body to sugar in fruit or carbohydrates.
But don’t I deserve a treat every now and then you may ask? If you are doing all the above of course you do but I prefer the phrase EARNT IT. Have you earnt it by doing all the above? It’s about getting away with eating a delicious sugary snack.
If you haven’t earnt it then you dont deserve it. What are you treating yourself for? Are you rewarding yourself with food for something? If you reward yourself with food you may have a slightly unhealthy relationship with food. Were you conditioned as a child with food as a reward. If you behaved did you get a doughnut? Are you still seeking happiness in food. Get my drift – doughnut boy.
(that was me by the way. If i let my mum do the shopping in peace and didnt rage around like the 6 year old anti christ I could be, I got an ice cream. I love ice cream. It makes me happy for some reason )
Five : Stop Binge Drinking
I had one lady completely convinced the reason she couldn’t lose weight was because she had food allergies. No matter what she tried, the weight wouldn’t budge. She then told me she drank more than 10 drinks, 3 times a week. i said “do you think the 3 days of binge drinking a week could be holding you back? Im not willing to even look at your food allergies theory until you stop drinking”
No. Definitely the food allergies and there was no way she was giving up drinking.
I’ve never heard from her again.
Make no bones about it, alcohol will hinder your strength, weight loss and fat loss. And yeah, this is one of the toughest things anglo’s struggle with when it comes to dieting
It comes down to calories. Think about this :
Red wine (13.5%) 150ml 100 – 120 calories
White wine (11.5%) 150ml 70 – 120 calories
Sparkling wine (11.5%) 150ml 70 – 120 calories
Full-strength beer (4.8%) 425ml schooner 155 calories
Premix gin and tonic (4.5%) 375 ml can 320 calories
Rum and cola (4.6%) 375ml can 248 calories
Vodka with soda (40%) 30ml spirit plus 150ml soda 64 calories
Gin and tonic (4.5%) 30ml spirit plus 250 ml tonic 200 calories
Piña Colada (13%) 150ml 290-480 calories
Say you average 150 cals per drink. If you drink 10 of the over the course of a night ( which in Australia isn’t unusual come on don’t lie ) you’re up to 1500 calories. Add the food you know you always buy when you’re pissed. Could be a little as 500 calories or a full 1400 calories maccas binge and you can be consuming up to 1800-3000 calories in a night. That’s an extra days worth of eating sometimes two days of eating for small females. Do you really think that’s not going to have an impact? What if you do it twice a week? And you’ve been doing it every weekend for years and years on end. And you don’t exercise? And you get poor sleep and are always tired? Yeah, must be the gluten
So my advice is only after ticking all these boxes should you consider messing with gluten or paleo or dairy or food sensitivities or organic or non gmo or intermittent fasting or keto or low carb or supplements or high fat or zone or westbeach or { insert new fad here }
See you in the gym!
Brad Stocks
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