Should you follow a meal plan?

When it comes to nutrition coaching, the first thing I’m always asked is, “Will I get a meal plan?” and the response will almost always be no. While meal plans can be very useful for helping dedicated individuals reach their goals, for most people they’re almost impossible to follow, and a sure fire way to fail. 

So if most meal plans lead to failure why is it that most people still seem to want them? This probably comes from the fact that most people’s intro to health/fitness/nutrition is through bodybuilding, and meal plans are extremely common for these athletes to get stage ready and get to ridiculously low levels of body fat. While this approach has proven effective here, you have to keep in mind that these athletes are extremely committed and dedicate almost all of their free time to their aesthetic goals, which probably doesn’t fit in with most people’s lives. 

Another reason why meals plans aren’t the answer is that it assumes that you a) like the foods and meals listed out for you, and b) have the skills and/or kitchen tools to actually make those meals. While this may seem like a small thing, there can be a lot of anxiety in this if you’re not sure how or what to substitute because your local grocery store doesn’t have the ingredients you need. 

Meal plans also follow a basic calories in, calories out formula to determine how much you should eat to reach your desired weight…and while this is a good theoretical place to start, the actual application is much trickier as food labels aren’t always reported accurately, the body doesn’t necessarily absorb all the calories listed, and how many calories you burn is pretty difficult to determine and can be influenced by activity level, previous diet history, and all other aspects of your lifestyle.

So what do you do instead?

For the vast majority of people, the focus should be on reducing the number of processed foods that they eat, and instead opt for fresh produce, dairy, and meats. Slowing down while eating and stopping when satisfied should also be priorities, and these simple things will actually provide way more benefits than most people would think. These few steps are enough for most people to begin to see weight loss progress and improvements in their health, and it’s all done without having to pull out a food scale or do math at every meal.

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Supplement Don’ts

I often get asked about supplements and which ones people should take. While there are good products from established companies with good manufacturing practices, the vast majority of them are nothing more than a waste of money. 

A few common supplements that I’m consistently asked about are preworkouts, fat burners, and testosterone boosters.

While these are extremely popular products throughout the general population, you’d be surprised that most of the pre-workout products are basically just filled with caffeine and don’t provide any other benefits. Couple this with the fact that I primarily work with athletic populations and this is something I don’t ever recommend. You’re better off finding an activity you look forward to doing than putting these large amounts of caffeine in your body. 

When it comes to testosterone boosters, these provide false benefits if any at all. What I mean by this is that they don’t increase testosterone, or just slightly, but instead use different pathways to just increase libido without any other benefits. So basically false advertising, but again, won’t help you build muscle faster or actually increase testosterone. 

Finally, and the worst of them all are the fat burners. These have almost no evidence of working, and just use exaggerated advertising to target people looking for a quick fix. So unlike testosterone boosters these don’t even have fake benefits, they are just a complete waste of time and money. 

So while there are good products out there’s, these are just a few that I would completely stay away from.

If you’re curious about what products or brands are safe and effective, leave a comment below!

Why You're Not Losing Weight

So you’re not losing weight and you’re not sure what exactly is going on. Well there are a multitude of reasons as to why this may be happening, but I’ll go over the most common ones I see below.

Why You’re not losing weight

• Too many calories in - This one is pretty simple, you’re still consuming too many calories and not putting yourself in a caloric deficit.  Whether you’ve decided to go Keto, low fat, vegan, or whatever, if you’re still consuming more calories than you’re expending then you will not lose weight.

• Not enough calories out - Now you may be exercising consistently, but if you’re following the calorie trackers on most cardio machines then you’re probably not getting an accurate reading. While it can ballpark how many calories you burned, it’s just that and can be off by a whole lot depending on the standard person the machine is preset to. In addition, many people take exercising as an excuse to “eat however they want” and this just leads to too many calories in and not enough out.

• Too much stress - This is one thing that many people don’t think about. While calories in and out is extremely important to weight loss, too much stress puts our body on red alert so to speak and stimulates hormones to actually hold onto fat in our bodies. 

• Endless cardio - If you’re only exercise is on the treadmill, elliptical, or exercise bike for an hour at a time a couple times a week, then this just isn’t enough. While you can eventually start losing some weight like this, it’s definitely not the most efficient or effective method for weight loss, and will take a ton of time to actually burn a significant amount of calories.

• Not Consistent - While everything above is important, this is by far the MOST important thing for weight loss. Whether you’re exercising or just starting new nutritional habits, you have to be consistent and give it time. You’re not going to lose weight overnight, or maybe even for a week or two… Your body is adjusting to this new amount of calories being consumed and burned and at first it will do what it can to remain at it’s current normal range. But after a few weeks of consistently following your plan, you should start to see some weight loss. And I’m going tell you now, it’s not going to be like on the biggest loser or what facebook ads say, you won’t lose 30 lbs in a month or even 3 months. It will probably be along the lines of 1-2 lbs per week if everything is dialed in. Anything higher than this and that could raise some red flags as that’s not healthy to do and could be a sign of muscle loss (which you don’t want).

So there you have it, these are some of the most common reasons as to why you’re not losing weight. Now are these the only reasons? Of course not, but start working on these areas and give it some time and let me know how things work out for you.

If you’re interested in online fitness and nutrition coaching, then fill out the form below for a free consultation.

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Now Offering Thorne Supplements!

I’m proud to announce that Graham Strength & Conditioning is now offering Thorne Supplements! Thorne products are some of the highest quality supplements you can find with proven results to back them up. With NSF certified products, Thorne is suitable for athletes who need to be mindful of what they use to enhance performance and recovery.

You can follow this link to find my online store and see what products I currently offer. All orders have free shipping with no minimum purchases!

If you have questions regarding what products are right for you just shoot me an email and I’ll help you get started.

Protein - How much and when?

Protein has long been used in the hopes of increasing athletic performance and improving body composition, however, the world of supplements is filled with landmines and false promises so it’s not always easy to determine what you should be looking for or if what you have has a high enough dose to work properly. I’m going to take a quick dive into protein to give you a better idea of what to do to maximize its benefits.

First let’s look at why, protein supplementation has been shown to increase muscle protein synthesis (MPS) and increases both muscle mass and strength when combined with a resistance training program. In addition to this, increased protein consumption has been shown to decrease fat mass even in highly trained athletes.

When it comes to these benefits from protein, it appears that in order to realize the biggest benefits, first you should make sure that you are eating a balanced diet with plenty of protein dispersed throughout the day. A good rule of thumb is to get 1g of protein for every pound you weigh. So for a 150lb person, you should get about 150g of protein each day. But, for athletes with more extensive training you should go up to about 1.5 g/lb each day, which would equal about 225g for the same 150lb person. This should be broken up throughout meals every 3-4 hours throughout the day with each meal having 0.2-0.35 g/lb of protein in it. This comes out to 30-55g of protein at each meal.

While in a perfect world all of this would be met through a food first approach, when it comes to eating this much protein it’s pretty difficult and for those who are pressed for time this becomes even more difficult. Having a source of readily available protein can help fill in the gaps of your current diet and make getting the amount of protein needed easier to come by.

So now that we’ve found a need for supplementation, what should you look for? First thing to do is to look for NSF certified products, while supplements are a messy business with little regulation, NSF certified products are regularly tested to ensure they include what’s on the label and nothing else. Next you should look for protein products that will provide 20-30g of protein per serving, with about 2-4g of Leucine in each serving. These amounts are shown to stimulate MPS the most, however larger amounts per serving haven’t been studied as extensively.

When it comes to timing, assuming that your total daily intake is good, and that you’ve spread this out throughout the day, it is best to consume a protein source within 45-90 minutes of beginning exercise. Whey protein has been shown to be one of the most bioavailable proteins, but other protein sources will work as well should you not be able to digest whey protein without discomfort. While in the past it was thought that you needed to consume carbs with protein to maximize the benefits this hasn’t been shown consistently, so I recommend finding a protein powder with a low amount of carbs so as not to add unnecessary calories.

Now that we’ve gone through the basics of protein along general recommendations, let me know in the comments any specific questions I may have left out or what you’d like to see next.