How do you know if what you are reading or being told is what you are reading or being told? When it comes to exercise and diet there seems to be some pretty basic words that are used, and focused on. Carbs, fat, sugar and cardio are pretty much what I hear. These simple terms are spoken, but do you really know what happens to your body when you eat “carbs”, fat, or do cardio for 5 hours? What really happens is rarely researched and even if someone tries to understand, they may pick up some popular health and fitness magazines which are filled with garbage in my opinion. Maybe keeping it simple is the easiest way to go. However, I am a firm believer on knowing what happens when you ingest a particular food, the effects, the hormones involved, and the influences that particular food can have on our metabolism. Ask anyone of my clients, when it comes to them, there is no shortage or loss with me. I want anyone who wants to know or have a healthier life to understand what they are doing to their bodies and how it can be corrected or improved upon. This is why I can go on for hours. I just want them to GET IT so it can be permanent. That is my ultimate goal as a trainer.
If you want to lose fat, gain muscle and feel younger then you need to know more than just how to lift some weights, sweat for 45 minutes on the treadmill, or follow some program that is a copy of the last one which is just packaged in a different pretty box, or given a more marketable name. In fact, the average person will spend most of their lives following one stupid program after the next, looking for some easy fix. While they are bouncing from one ridiculous program to the next they may lose some weight (usually muscle which gives you a slower metabolism no matter how it is sold to you). But once they realize it wasn’t the miraculous secret that all trainers know but refuse to tell you so that you will continue to train with them, they move to another program. How about researching for yourself, or educating yourself on why you are gaining weight, or not losing regardless of your many attempts.
You will have to excuse me. I am becoming more and more passionate over some of these topics because people tend to read magazines or hear a new phrase, program or word and will debate it and sometimes argue a point that really has no point just because they read it in a magazine. My point to all of this? Read all you want but then research it! Don’t just look it up on the Internet only to find another article written by another trainer (yes, even like me). Look up actual clinical and scientific studies and research. Find science books on biology, hormones, anatomy and so on. When I read, I don’t just read a book on “How to lose 20 pound in the next five days” or “ Lose 15 pounds eating only grapes”. I don’t read books written by Jane Smith, a typical middle aged woman with no education on training or diet who lost weight drinking Tabasco lemonade while doing isometric exercises on the elliptical machine for 2 hours a day and claims she lost 100 pounds and looks like she is 13. I go for books written by doctors, even scientists. I am not going to lie, sometimes those books are over my head. But even if I don’t get it all, I will read another, and then another. It is amazing how they all start to connect and I start to gain an understanding that I wasn’t even trying to get.
Once you start to understand the in’s and out’s of your body it becomes harder to eat poorly, or neglect daily exercise. And best of all, you learn what is best for YOU! We are all individuals and we can’t all do the same thing like exercising the same way, eating the same way and so on. We have different families, jobs, stresses and genetics. So we need a program (diet, exercise, rest) that is specific to us as individuals. And as for genetics? I am a firm believer that genetics is not the end-all-be-all. We can change or alter our genetics. If our parents have diabetes, we don’t have to go down the same path. We may be at higher risk, but we can alter our physical destiny. We don’t have to look at our parents and grandparents and fear our future. And if you don’t believe me, then RESEARCH IT! Don’t just read some article some trainer wrote. Dig deep and find the truth!
It is frustrating, annoying, and even insulting when someone quotes something from a health magazine with articles written by some “Jane Knowitall” filled with opinions by self-proclaimed experts. Clients show up for their sessions armed with this bogus information ready to debate. I am not a know-it-all and I have plenty to learn. But I guarantee I wont be studying out of a magazine you can pick up at the checkout stand in your local grocery store.
Do yourself and your health a favor. Find out for yourself, unless it doesn’t really matter to you. But if that is the case, your weight loss or lack thereof is truly a choice you have made. Make a better choice and research everything you read. Eventually you will be able to weed out garbage from gold.
