Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach. Religiously tracking calories over the winter holidays isn’t often practical or enjoyable.
However, I completely understand if you’re anxious about taking a break from it because you worry that you won’t be able to maintain your results, what with all the festive food available in the office or at the store, and the social meals you may have planned. Nevertheless, while tracking can be a very helpful tool, it’s not the main contributing factor to your results, even if it can feel that way. The real contributors to your success so far are the new nutrition- and movement-focused habits that you’ve been building while calorie- and macro-tracking. If you maintain these habits, you will maintain your results, whether you’re tracking or not. That’s why in this article I want to focus on these five tips to help you maintain your fitness and health-focused habits should you choose not to track for a couple of days over Christmas, New Year’s Day, or any other holiday you may be celebrating this month:
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If you’re trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I’ve had them, everybody has had them. But obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it. Do you ever feel like you have a harder time losing fat than other people?
First and foremost, you’re not broken. The rules of energy balance still apply to you. These rules state that eating more energy than you consume over a prolonged period of time will cause fat gain, and the opposite will produce fat loss. However, there are certain factors that can make the consistent application of these rules in your daily life more challenging. Some of these factors can influence your physiology, psychology, or both, in a way that makes adhering to a diet legitimately more difficult than it is on average. Other factors can slow down or mask fat loss. So, although you’re getting results, you may not be able to detect them on the scale within the timeline you expected, so you could convince yourself that you’re doing something “wrong” when that isn’t the case. In this article, I’m going to cover four of these factors and what you can do about them, if anything. Importantly, they make fat loss challenging, but not impossible. Even if you can’t change them, you’ll still be able to achieve your goals with consistency, patience, and the guidelines I’m going to offer. Let’s get started. The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written. We can help write that story by setting goals. According to research, fitness goals are some of the most popular New Year’s resolutions.
However, most “New Year’s resolutioners” are unsuccessful. When I was working as a personal trainer in a commercial gym, I witnessed the same cycle every year. Come January 1st, the gym would be flooded with new members. By March, most of them would disappear, never to return… until the following January. So, if you’ve ever set fitness resolutions that didn’t stick, you’re not the only one. Of the few studies conducted on this topic, most seem to show that the majority of participants abandon their resolutions after a few months. For example, in 1985, a study by Norcross and colleagues reported that 77% out of 200 participants stuck to their resolutions for a week, but only 40% were still keeping up with them after six months. If you’re thinking that a 60% failure rate after six months sounds pretty grim, that’s not all. In reality, if you’re volunteering for a study measuring the success rate of New Year’s resolutions, you’re likely more motivated to achieve your goals than the average person. Moreover, after the participants set their resolutions on an initial phone call with the New Year’s Resolution Project staff, they received seven follow-up phone interviews for the next two years. If you know someone’s going to check on your progress every few months, you’ll probably take your resolutions far more seriously than if you were left to your own devices. So, in real life, New Year’s resolutions likely fail even more often than in research. However, since you’re reading this blog post, you are more motivated than the average person. By applying the four steps covered in the article, you’ll have better-than-average odds of succeeding, too. You’ve come to the right website. Let’s start your year with a bang. Useful Links: A Comprehensive Guide to Your First Bulk A goal without a plan is just a wish. Weight loss diets are all the rage, but most people don’t succeed.
I wanted to write this article to change this outcome for you by answering the following questions:
The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That’s what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no matter what happens. To build muscle effectively, you need to train hard.
Muscular or technical failure is the epitome of “hard training”, but doing this all the time can have a number of downsides – like an increased injury risk and an inability to recover – that can actually prevent you from maximising your progress. However, it’s easy to tell when you hit failure. On the other hand, it’s not so easy to stop before failure and still train hard enough to stimulate meaningful muscle growth. The reps in reserve-based (RIR) rating of perceived exertion scale (RPE) is an evidence-based tool that helps you do exactly that. I’ve personally applied it in my own and my clients’ training with great success for the past three years. If you want to learn more about what the RPE scale is and how to use it, read on. |
Nikias TomasielloWelcome to my blog. I’m an online fitness coach with a passion for bodybuilding, fantasy, and bread. Want to work with me? Check out my services!Archives
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