The first week of the nutrition course is under way and the team has started strongly. But with every course I put on and teach there comes many rejections to the course too. It’s always interesting to see why people don’t want to commit to something and I think it also goes someway to explaining why the obesity pandemic is so out of control.
Now first of all what tends to happen is that the nutrition course gets compared to any ‘diet’ experience the person has had before. I’m talking about some sort of restricted approach that’s done for a certain time frame and avoids something. Maybe it’s low fat like weight watchers. Maybe it’s low or zero carb like Atkins and Keto. Or maybe it’s really restrictive on calorific intake like the Cambridge diet. Whatever it is, people expect something that falls into the same patterns as these diets do. You’ll get told what you can’t eat and by not eating it and exercising loads you will lose the fat. The ‘diet’ culture that we have seen globally has let people down. It’s worked for a few but destroyed the majority’s confidence and motivation. It’s a failure from the industry as a whole. There is good information out there but it get’s drowned out by marketers. Most people have tried a ‘diet’ or even multiple and found that it’s been tough and doesn’t accommodate their normal food choices. They struggle to stick to it but will try and try until they achieve some results. Then it ends and they break and go back to the old habits which see’s them either return to the original weight or even surpass it. So why try again? It doesn’t work and committing and working so hard for such short lived results would hurt anyone’s confidence. This is where we start. On the course you don’t get told what to eat, you choose what to eat. I’ve been eating Mcdonalds and microwave meals since starting it myself to show that you don’t have to lose convenience food or just eat chicken and rice. All dietetics governing bodies will encourage a balance between focussing on reducing body fat percentage and still maintaining satisfying eating habits such as a meal out, take away or eating chocolate/’bad foods’.
The reality of any diet approach is that if it is too far from your normal food choices then you will never sustain it. We need to start thinking of diet as everything you’ve ever eaten and drank. That way we can just make adjustments to your normal patterns to reduce the difficulty and aversion to the process while also encouraging sustainability. That is key. The reality is that given where the majority of people are with regards to their body composition, most people would need to accept that adherence to the new approaches they take on will have to last for months and then carry on to create lifelong habitual changes. It’s a huge commitment but the quick fix route hasn’t worked and never will. It is time to make smaller and longer lasting changes.
One of the main comments I get when speaking to people about diet and undertaking the course is ‘I know what I’m doing with diet though’. There is an obvious follow up there which is maybe rude, but if you really know what you’re doing, why aren’t you doing it or why can’t you do it? The reality is that people do not know what to do with regards to food. For years the industry has misled the public by persuading them that exercise plans, supplements or specific diet plans are the way forward. They are not. These are just physical products people can sell. They have an effect but again it isn’t sustainable which ensure the supplier repeat business. It’s something that from a moral standpoint I can’t be more against. Even with training sessions in the gym, my style has always been to try to teach people to carry on without me there. Yet companies jump on the band wagon. You have new versions of things come out with high protein, Snickers come to mind. We all know that if a product has high protein then it’s good for you, especially after working out, and marketers capitalise on this. But wait, the body can only absorb roughly 17g of protein in a single intake, so why is the average protein shake over 40g of protein? Well because you’ve been taught what you know about diet by people working in sales and these people want you to use their product twice as fast so as they make twice the money. Ironically, post workout, your most important intake is carbohydrates yet aren’t they bad for you? Not at all, but there’s a huge belief that carbohydrates lead to weight gain and yet these claims have never been supported.
So what else do we know for sure? What can we be certain of as something we know is correct and there’s no way it’s a marketing ploy? How about, if you want to lose weight you just need to eat less and move more? That seems reasonable. But actually it’s not so simple. Eating less makes moving more difficult, maybe you move plenty already. It’s also possible to eat too little and the effects from that can be just as bad as eating too much. What do you eat less of? Is it carbs? Fat? Everything? What happens when there’s events or I just fancy eating more or drinking etc? There are so many considerations to be made in tailoring the approach to this. The message certainly isn’t wrong. It’s very right. I feel it needs to be more specific however and say something like, to lose weight you need to consistently eat the right amount and move and train in a manner that’s considerate of your intake while allowing you freedom to still live your life. Far more difficult to do but actually with practice and a good understanding of the methodology it’s pretty good when you get going. It’s certainly more likely to give you the long lasting results that unfortunately we need to accept that we now require as a species. The quick fix approach has been around for years and the figures on overweight and obesity have only got worse. We tried, we failed, we learn, we improve.
Once again how anti what you know about dieting for fat loss has my diet been in the first week of the course? I have put in pictures of some of my daily intakes of food in the article. McDonalds, curry, pizza, microwave burgers, sweets, hot chocolate, nesquick milkshake, surely you can’t have that and lose weight? But I lost 1.3kg of weight and 0.7% body fat. I like convenience, I’m not a big fan of cooking and I love sweet things. Could I long term stick to a diet of chicken and vegetables? Absolutely not. I don’t think I would last a week. I’m not saying that the food I have been eating is healthy. But I have reduced my bodyfat and considering that bodyfat reduction is seen (currently) as the most significant influencer of health, I am actually improving. In this case I am intentionally creating an extreme opposite to what generally perceived as a ‘diet’ and I’m not saying we should all go and eat Mcdonalds! But do you need to lose what you like? Not at all. The added benefit obviously is that with the results I will feel I look better and build more confidence etc but even without bringing attractiveness into it, I’m probably eating ‘worse’ than a lot of people and yet my bodyweight and bodyfat percentage is decreasing and at a decent rate too. So again, do you really know what you’re doing when it comes to food? Do you believe carbs are bad and protein is good? Were you aware that protein absorption is limited? Did you know that you can incorporate fast food and ‘bad’ foods into your diet without sacrificing results? If you did know all this and you’ve not got your bodyfat percentage to where it needs to be then why not? Would you maybe benefit from learning more? Would you benefit from learning how to make less drastic and restrictive choices that still benefit you? There are so many misconceptions out there it’s actually scary. This course teaches you that there isn’t good and bad food. There’s too much and too little and numerous other considerations to be made but with gradually implemented simple guidelines, you can have so much choice in dietary approach and reap major rewards from your efforts that are long lasting.
“The fool thinks himself to be wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
William Shakespeare
That’s not to say that not understanding optimum dietary approaches integrating physiology and psychology makes you a fool. But learning more is something no one can regret. I know myself that the field is ever changing and what I know to be true now may not be true next year. Accepting that we have more to learn will at least give us a fighting chance of making meaningful change.
Finally, another major objection I get to the course is cost. I think that’s the case for most products people try to sell. It is a risk. People may feel more confident paying £20 for a diet plan or trial pack that may or may not benefit them but if it doesn’t you’ve only lost £20. It’s not so easy to stick to that mindset when you are looking at over £100. In all honesty I am forever being told that the course if too cheap for what it is. Given the amount of hours of work I have to put into it I would be inclined to agree but I work with groups. Every few months I update the course booklet which takes at least a day or 2 of work. That then leads to me updating the slides I use in the course. I review everyone’s progress each week and advise them on focus points for the next week. There is a group chat which I respond to constantly. Including the 10 hours of teaching sessions Id estimate 40-50 hours of work minimum for each course ran. At the end of the day though you get what you pay for. We all know it but everyone loves a bargain. It seems sensible to put less in financially and keep the risk low. However, if you think back to how much you’ve spent of protein shakes, meal replacements, detox diets, diet books or even money we happily throw away on buying food at the work canteen or in town as we didn’t prep any food, takeaway coffee etc, it suddenly becomes a much smaller sum to worry about. I would never tell someone to buy something if they aren’t sure that they will benefit from it. But I would encourage more people to inquire into anything that offers to expand your knowledge and certainly look into methods that combine psychical diet with psychological approaches. Whatever the cost, these are the way that you will start to make real changes to your body and your health.
So overall, it’s been a good start. I plan to keep writing about the progress I make and the guys that are signed up. I’ll try to cover some of the problems we encounter and the coping strategies we come up with too. Hopefully if you are someone that wants to make a change to yourself but maybe has lost that trust in the industry or are confused by the sheer mass and variety of approaches available, you will start to see that maybe the services offered here are for you. After all, how long have you wanted to be able to work a McMuffin meal into your diet 😊!
Stay safe
James