Are you obsessed with your calories and macros? Tracking them every day and making sure you hit them 100% ?
* How often do you hit them 100% and do you get anxiety when there’s some left over or if you’re slightly over?
* Or have you tried to track in the past and just found it very stressful trying to balance everything?
Then this email is for you.
It’s important to be mindful of calorie intake. But not at the expense of the other things that also matter
💪Workout quality and enjoyment
😊Happiness in life
🍔Enjoying food
Obsessing over exactly hitting your macros and calories every day is setting yourself up for failure
Because every day is different
Being flexible with your nutrition allows more adaptive eating for more productive workouts
Think about it, if you know you’ve got a big leg session coming up but you’re feeling hungry and tired do you:
😬Battle through it, you are a lion, a Peaky Blinders Viking meme
👍Eat 50g extra carbs to fuel your awesome workout
The extra carbs may place you in less of a deficit or even maintenance but the output from the workout will be incredible and you’ll feel awesome
This then leads into happier thoughts for the rest of the day and greater adherence to nutrition knowing you’ve smashed your training
It’s quite common that I’ll be on a coaching call with a client and we discuss the fact that their workouts are becoming slightly too hard as they feel tired.
They are focussed but there’s just not enough in the tank.
The Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) is a common measure when researching the effect of different exercise protocols.
It’s often seen that low carb diets increase the RPE of a workout to the subject even though output is the same or not significantly different to a higher carb diet.
“Well that’s ok then isn’t it as they are still doing the workout and burning the same calories” – I hear you say. Surely that means they will create more of a calorie deficit?
Yes – in theory but here’s the thing
The higher the RPE of a workout the harder it is for you to mentally engage to do it.
In research studies the subjects know they are being measured so there’s an extra motivation to do better.
Who’s measuring you when you drop your carbs to lose fat and then go training?
Unless you have a coach to keep you accountable then you’re relying on your own motivation……
“F**K”
The fact of it is that, for the majority of people I work with, they have many other considerations in their day.
Placing most people in a state of
* hunger
* low calories
* increased exercise
* and more resulting stress and friction
will 99% of the time lead to a binge on nice food.
Immediately the calorie deficit they’ve been trying to preserve is destroyed, obliterated by the incoming Weapon of Mass Consumption that sits in their snack cupboard.
All this could be offset by having a more flexible approach to nutrition and adding some extra food in when needed.
You aren’t at war, you aren’t a competitive athlete so suffering isn’t a requirement of your daily nutrition and training
Don’t ever think it has to be.
Remember the goal should not be
– Eat Less Move More
it must be
– Eat Smarter, Move With Purpose
Every single client I work with ends up eating more food to fuel their workouts and they see an increased rate of body composition change.
Be flexible with your eating and if you’re tracking make sure you’re interpreting that information properly to adjust your nutrition for continued success.
If need any help or want to commit to making a change, reach out on my social media or click the link below.
https://form.jotform.com/232073481715353
Have a great week
Tom
Recent Comments