Just eat healthy. What does that mean though?

It's pretty good advice, although somewhat generic. I see variations on the theme all the time in "motivational" type images on blogs and facebook and so forth; "skip the diet, just eat healthy".

Hard to argue with. Exactly what constitutes a healthy diet, though? It's worth asking, surely?

The problem with such a question is that once you've answered it, you've also defined what makes an "unhealthy" diet. That is... "here's what makes for a healthy diet, therefore anything else is unhealthy". That's how most people seem to think, from my observation. It is problematic.

The tendency I've noticed is to think of a list of all the things that are probably a good idea, and then if you're not doing all of them you have an unhealthy diet. And the logic continues that if you have an unhealthy diet, you'll not be successful in your weight loss or body condition goals. This is highly problematic.

So let's start at the opposite end of the issue, and discuss what would make for an unhealthy diet. It stands to reason that if we can define "unhealthy", anything else is quite suitable for good health and good results from training.

An unhealthy diet would be deficient in important vitamins and minerals.

This is important for good health in general, more than for weight management or performance and results at training. I had to double check this point with a client of mine who happens to be qualified as a Diet Tech (yeah that's right) to be sure, but generally speaking as long as you get your five (or more) serves of fruit and vegetables per day, you're not likely to be deficient in any micronutrients.

Especially if you eat a variety of different types, different colours ("eat the rainbow", as the saying goes) you're going to get a pretty good spread of vitamins and minerals. More's better, but 5 serves a day will do.

So that part is pretty simple.

An unhealthy diet would be excessive in calorific intake.

This is the obvious one. Now... depending on who you listen to and which blogs you read you'll be told that only carbohydrates are the problem, or only fats are the problem, or only certain types of one or the other from certain sources are a problem. That's all horse shit. Excess calories are excess calories, regardless of where they come from. If you consume more than your body has a use for, it will be stored as fat.

Now... it's normal and perfectly healthy to be carrying a certain percentage of body fat within a certain range depending on if you're a man or woman. Excessive body fat though... we all know it's not healthy whether we want to face up to that or not. There are host of other symptoms that are associated with excessive intake, clogged arteries, heart disease, inflammation and so on... people like to argue about which source of calories is responsible, but this is missing the point entirely. The issue is that we are in excess of our requirements, not the source of the excess calories. Regardless of the source, if we were not in excess there would be no issue as the body would find something productive to do with these energy resources.

So, rather than worrying about which food choices are healthy or unhealthy, simply focus on not being in excess of your requirements. However...

A diet that is of an insufficient total calorific intake would also be unhealthy.

As explained above, we don't want to be in the habit of regularly consuming in excess of our energy requirements. But with that being said, energy is still an important resource that we require for good health. Especially in active people who are trying to create a lean and athletic body condition through hard and strategic training, to be insufficient in energy intake can mean that all of that training is actually to the detriment of your physical health.

It is somewhat baffling to me that so many people in the industry or just fitness enthusiasts believe that the way to achieve great results from training is by depriving the body of an important resource, usually carbohydrates but quite often just "all" forms of intake. It is not enough simply to meet your micronutrient requirements, or even your protein requirements. A diet that does not provide sufficient energy to maintain a healthy body weight while accounting for the type and amount of activity your participate in is unhealthy.

An unhealthy diet would be rigid and inflexible, with no regard for your psychological needs.

We're designed to enjoy food. Even within a fine tuned nutritional plan designed to produce elite level performance and results from training, there should be a focus on meeting those requirements from choices of foods that you enjoy and will look forward to eating, rather than on choices that don't enjoy but are "good for you". There should even be room for some choices purely for indulgence.

Rigid diet plans that ban any indulgent choices, that are based on will power and discipline, that imagine that your body treats calories from more enjoyable sources differently to ones from more "virtuous" sources, and leads to feelings of guilt or failure associated with the perfectly natural human behaviour of enjoying food, is clearly unhealthy and an entirely irresponsible thing to promote.

So, what then would a healthy diet mean?

Get your five or more serves of fruit and vegetables, get enough protein, enough dietary fats, enough carbohydrates and fiber, enough total energy intake, but not too much. Boom you have a healthy diet.

Oh and all this talk about it being too expensive to eat healthy? It’s as expensive as your tastes dictate. That’s all.

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Precision and Pump, Shoulders Workshop

I'll hopefully redo this with my half decent camera soon, and even talk you through it if there's not too many people around. Here's a little bit of terrible quality video from my phone for now though.

Hitting some anterior (front) and medial ( middle) deltoid muscles, Precision & Pump style at the end of today's training session.



First up, Front Raises targeting the (appropriately enough) front deltoid muscle. Usually I use a barbell for this but I went with a plate today for a little variety. A plate is good because if you do not control it properly on the way down, you'll smash yourself in the genitals and learn an important lesson.

What I'm trying to do here is raise it to about a position where my arms are horizontal / parallel to the floor. Now if you can imagine trying to just hold that heavy ass weight out there for any length of time, it would be quite horrible and difficult, right? So... we want to try to put a little pause in at the top of the movement, and then resist the force of gravity by controlling the weight as we come back towards the starting position.

Note I said "towards" and not "to" the starting position. At the starting position, we're just holding the weight with our hands, we haven't actually activated that anterior deltoid muscle. So, when performing the exercise we want to stop just short of that point. We're gradually releasing the muscle contraction as we lower the weight, and then BOOM we contract hard again to raise the weight, hold it for a moment at the top, and repeat.

Much the same for the side lateral raises to target the lateral deltoid. I like to do these seated, as it doesn't allow you to cheat by using momentum to swing the weights up. Also for my money this is a real "precision" exercise and I'm much more concerned with strict form than with trying to throw heavy weights up in the air. For me, this movement is all about abduction and not about rotation at the shoulder. Maybe other people have a reason for doing it that way that I don't know about... but for me, I feel that this abduction movement better targets the lateral deltoid the way I want it to. Again, note I attempting to pause at the top of the movement, control the rate of descent, and change direction just short of that starting position.

This is all about maximising the time under tension and keeping the targeted muscle activated at all times while performing the desired number of reps.

To be honest... all of these reps felt a lot slower while I was doing them, than what they look in the video!

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Like, not to brag or anything but...

I'm pretty chuffed with the new layout I've set up for my Lose Weight No Bullshit page.

For those of you who just don't know, that's my FREE weight loss education AND exercise program, and also my weight loss scam busting blog where I pick fights with dickheads corrupting the industry. It's just a free theme that I tweaked a little and made my own header for but as previously stated, I'm pretty chuffed with how it looks now.

Also I'm pretty chuffed with this new entry over on my main business website talking about Why Diet And Exercise Doesn't Work. That might seem like a strange thing for me to say, but really it's quite true, isn't it?

People who are always going on and off diets only seem to keep getting further and further away from their goal of simply being a "historically normal" size and condition. And all those machines and exercise programs on the TV that all claim to burn more calories than anything else... how many people do you know who ever got into shape just mindlessly trudging it out on one of those things in the name of "burning calories"?

None I'll bet.

Now like I say over on the main article... a diet is something you go on to make up for being inactive. If you're activity level is less than normal, you only need to eat a normal amount and you'll get fat. Now, most people are both inactive and eating more than would be required for a moderately active person, so their outcome is more dramatic than just getting a little fat and a bit out of shape.

Dieting alone is a poor strategy, as it ignores your psychological need to be able to enjoy plenty of delicious foods every day. Being inactive means you just can't put all that much fuel to use, so you're quite limited in what choices of foods will not put you into excess of your requirements. So, I don't like any of these restrictive diets that are popular nowadays but for an inactive person with such low fueling requirements, you could see how they would be necessary. Necessary, but still impossible to stick to.

When you're inactive, you need to limit to a low level of intake. Now, the way most people exercise with a focus on nothing other than "burning calories" is a way to achieve the same ends. You simply burn off all the fuel, so in effect you end up at the same amount. But that's not good.

Now when people are both restricting their intake AND exercising with a view to burning hundreds of calories, this is really a destructive course of action. Unfortunately, it's also the one that most of this industry as well as a bunch of other dangerous morons on the internet will promote.

Starving and burning calories off like this is no way to achieve your goal body type and condition. You need to train strategically to build your goal body, not just to destroy the body you have now. By training strategically for strength, health and functionality, we require more fuel. This means we will see better results even while eating more, and including some of whatever makes us happy.

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So i took my phone number off my business website

It was only on there in the form of a photo of my business card, anyway. Same with my email address, it was on there but with an [at] instead of the @ symbol, trying to avoid spammers.

It doesn't work though. Emails you expect by now anyway but from day one I'd have phone calls from jerk offs wanting to sell me a business system, a franchise, search engine optimisation, web design, "priority listing" on some search engine no one's ever heard of before... some of them are really persistent too and won't take no for an answer, and even try to TRICK you into authorising them to start billing you for some crap you just told them you didn't want. One in particular was real bad and after a little while I learned that you can't use patience, politeness or good manners with these scumbags, you just have to tell them to "fuck off and never call me again" and then hang up.

So these days it's mostly just the "industry events" that I get calls from, or the occasional "buy a franchise with us and you'll never have to deal with competition again" jerkoffs. Really though? How's that going to work? If I spend however much money so I can use your branding, that's gonna cause all the other local gyms and trainers to close their doors? Or maybe you're gonna send some hired goons around to convince them?

Now when you think about it... it's the same sort of bullshit marketing the industry pushes on the public. "Just buy our product and all your problems will vanish and you won't even have to work hard for it". And that's the system you'd be buying into.

Well... by now I have my own training system, my own system of determining nutritional requirements, and I'm fortunate enough to be authorised to work out of one of the world's greatest gyms. Tell me again why I should throw all of that out to buy into your package of "stuff that people think they want but doesn't actually achieve anything" instead?

Of course THEN I had to go looking for all my business listings online and you can't actually remove your phone number from them, but you can put "no phone inquiries please use the form on my website" in your description. Come to think of it, there's a bunch of listings I never actually set up myself that I need to investigate too.

So hopefully less nuisance calls as a result. What about genuine inquiries from prospective clients though?

Well... we'll see. I prefer inquiries via my contact form as that'll give me all the information I need, and I can take a few minutes to think about how to respond. I'm at a stage now where my Online Coaching business is almost all I need, and with my new gym wear line about to take off, I can be more selective about which clients I'm available to work with locally. As mentioned, I have a good system that has produced tremendous results for clients all over the world... so people should sign up ready and enthusiastic to follow this system. Sometimes you get people who want to call the shots, or will question every choice of exercise or whatever else... and questioning because you want to learn and understand is one thing, but questioning as in "no, I want to do something else instead, you're going to have to convince me or I'm not doing it" is different. That shit gets so exhausting and just saps my enthusiasm.

So, I want the people who are going to follow instructions and get results. Directing people to the email form is a good way to see who can follow instructions.

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Results Are Non Negotiable.

It's me.
Rocking my brand new "Fitness Anarchist" gear.

When I was in security, a lot of times people thought things were up for negotiation or compromise. I did pubs, I did corporate sites and facilities management... you gotta follow the rules. And when you work in security your job is to be the guy who explains the rules to people because the bosses have better things to do than have the same conversations with different (and some times the same) people several times a day every day.

Now "the rules" might mean "the law" or "our licensing requirements" or it might just be "this is the way the client wants it". None of that is able to be debated or compromised on. You just don't have a choice on the matter... your boss or client doesn't want to hear "well the guy made a good point and I realised your policy is stupid so I let him go do what he wanted to do even though it's precisely what you told me not to let happen".

So you'd get guys show up to the pub without appropriate footwear, and they'll want to negotiate "well what if we just sit down some where to the side and no one will notice us?" but that doesn't work. You'd get contractors show up at the corporate site wanting to work on the infrastructure without the proper authorisation and safe work methods statements being provided, and that doesn't work either. Generally I always considered that my job was to help people out and if there was a problem try to resolve it so that things could get done... but there was only one way that could happen. AKA you gotta go through the correct procedure, arguing about it is just going to take longer and reduce your chances of ending up getting what you want. Not to mention increase your chances of being dragged out of the building and put on your arse in the street.

So anyway, training is in some ways similar and in some ways not so similar.

In a way... there's "one" way that you're going to drop any excess weight that you're carrying and improve your body composition. That's through an appropriate training program, and a suitable intake to support your goal weight and goal body condition on that program.

So... you've got to do something that's actually appropriate to your goal. That's not negotiable, but with that said there are a number of ways you can put your program together and there's room to compromise in some areas.

Still, energy intake must be appropriate. You can't get around this, but you can negotiate as follows. For some people it's "you've either gotta do more, or eat less", but more often in my experience the negotiation is "you've gotta eat more or cut back on the training a little".

How could that be though? People are supposed to "move more, eat less" aren't they?

Sure. But there's a law of diminishing returns and if you're not properly fueled you won't see continued results. And the more you do, the more fuel you require. Now if you have a healthy appetite that's fine, but if you are highly active, participating in multiple forms of training, sometimes multiple sessions per day... you can't think like a person "on a diet" to lose weight. You need to fuel up like an athlete.

This is a message you don't hear very often because not many people in the business or in the community seem to understand it. You don't force results by slashing calories ever lower and lower while pushing amount and intensity of exercise ever higher and higher. That's a recipe for absolute certain catastrophe.

So, that stuff is not negotiable, but there's still a variety of ways you can get into tremendous shape. If you're prepared to do the minimum that is required, there's less room for compromise on the training program but you can be highly successful by persisting with the right strategy. If you're enthusiastic about participating in a variety of activities very often, under eating is about the only way you could go wrong.

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