In this podcast:
05:47 – we’re not made to be able to eat massive amounts of foods
09:01 – everyone is looking for the easy route
11:15 – if it’s too easy, it generally won’t get you results unfortunately!
13:36 – 15 reps of things every time would not produce the right hormones
14:34 – resistance training with interval type work
15:43- the way to increase metabolism
18:26 – one part right and three parts wrong
19:14 – Health is far more important nowadays than weight loss
20:23 – There’s always a chance to make a massive difference to your health
Hi. This is Mark and Stephen from ILoveWeightLoss.co.uk. Welcome to another podcast. I hope you are well. Stephen you may speak.
Stephen: I hope you’re better than I am right now actually. I’m sitting here with a hot water bottle on my neck in massive amounts of pain, probably enormous amounts of pain that people would never had, well, it’s very, very painful. I’m trying to make it clear how sore it is, basically, I’ve got a neck spasm.
Mark: Good example of fitness you are.
Stephen: Great example of health and fitness I am, but it’s my fault, very stupid of me. I’ve had had bit of a neck issue since I started upping my training twice a day for rugby season starting soon. So I knew I had a neck problem, I’ve seen a physio a couple of times, but rather than letting it heal, I thought I would go and do an exercise that I actually knew, I pretty much knew that was the exercise that caused it in the first place, but I just thought I test it. Because it’s much easier to tell people the right things to do than to do it yourself. I tend not to listen to myself that often. And yes so, it was a log press, which is a awkward lift and I felt it this was yesterday, Sunday evening, I felt it, but I damaged it slightly at the time and then that evening, it got really, really bad, but then this morning, my God, I can hardly move my neck. Maybe there’s a lesson in this. Obviously the lesson is don’t be an idiot about injuries and things. I trained that morning as well and that was fine. I could get around the neck thing doing other things but I decided just to try and push through, which was the stupidest mistake, but so now what I’m doing is I’m actually heating it because I’m trying to relax off the muscle. I want the spasm to relax, for your spasm then heat to relax it, and then I have an appointment with a physio actually. I’m seeing Mary, who is a lovely client in the Bedford Center. She is going to look after me because she is actually a great, great physio. She is going to hopefully sort me out and then in the future, I’m not going to be an idiot. I’m going to give it a bit of a rest for the next week on that type of exercise. I’m not going to rest, I’m going to still train and do other things but not just things that are going to spasm up. Because spasming just basically means that the muscle around the issue of spasm is trying to protect it. So it’s more painful than damage that is done type of thing. I have not done that much actual damage. I think it’s more of tightness in basically my back, the middle of my back. It is tight and so therefore I’m just stressed on my neck which….
Mark: I think that’s enough there. I think we’ve bored the listeners into not really minding out about your neck issues.
Stephen: I hope everyone is feeling sorry for me.
Mark: Sorry for themselves more like and to listen to that. Let’s give the listener, the lovely listener who listens to us right now some actionable weight loss thoughts, I guess, that we’ve kind of been thinking about over the last couple of weeks, different points that have been made even more clear to us or from our learnings. Just a couple of each, we just test ourselves and we just basically said right come up with a couple of things that you have learned in the last couple of weeks that will help people lose weight and basically get healthier. Stephen you go first…you’re number 1.
Stephen: Mine is more of a mindset thing really well. I was just like enough to be away on a holiday for a week and went for a little toll and it was on an island, likely enough, to go to an island, Granada. I’ve got some family there we went to visit and they grow cashew or cashew nuts. Cashew nuts are on a tree and it really struck me because the guy was explaining how cashew nuts they actually produce the actual nut that we eat and it’s a really laborious process. It’s not just the case of picking off the tree and eating it. There’s a lot that goes into it. So he’s explaining it from the aspect of why cashew nuts are quite expensive was because of all the man hours that go into actually getting the nut that we eat. But for me, it was the mindset shift because I looked and thought if we didn’t have all these people doing these for us, there is no way we would be able to eat as many cashew nuts as we want to eat for example. It made me think that we’re actually not made, we’ve not evolved to be able to eat as much as food as we want to be able to eat, and even something that healthy like a cashew nut, we were in the past never able to actually eat unlimited amounts of it. But nowadays, we are so used to getting packets of whatever we want and we can have as much as we want – realistically you can go and eat two tons of cashew nuts right now if I wanted to. You could. Because you can go to a shop and there would be enough around. Tesco would have some, Waitrose would have some, everyone would have some and I could get an enormous amount of cashew nuts and eat them all if I wanted to, but that’s not the way it should be. So I was thinking if we’re able to actually unlimited amounts of healthy foods, which are actually harder to come by, then no wonder there’s such a weight issue, obesity problem in America, England or westernized nations because we’re able to get as much food as we want to get. Even healthy foods we can make unhealthy because we’re not made to be able to eat massive amounts of food. It then made me think about one of the key principles for weight loss that we talked about is eating until your 80% full, which I don’t think many people do because we’re very used to being very gluttonous and eating until we feel full and then 20 minutes later, we feel too full and we feel lethargic and we feel like we’ve eaten too much. So one quick thing I thought was that we shouldn’t be in the mindset where I should be able to eat as much as I want of something because, not that many years ago, we weren’t able to eat as much, even cashew nuts as we wanted. Now you can get cashew nut butter, you can have a couple of tablets of cashew nut butter if you wanted and you think you are being healthy because cashew is healthy, however, that’s not the way it should be. We shouldn’t be able to eat as much as we want of something. So bear that in mind when you are actually eating your meal, you shouldn’t go more than 80% full when you’re eating and just bear in mind like, should you be able to eat as much of something as you are actually eating and often the answer is no.
Mark: Exactly. So good point and I didn’t know that, well I kind of did, but cashews if I thought about it grow in trees.
Stephen: They do. Yeah.
Mark: You kind of think in the ground wouldn’t you?
Stephen: You would, but they’re not, they’re definitely on the tree.
Mark: Do you actually help in the process at all?
Stephen: No, I just stopped and looked at them and then we drove off.
Mark: Ah. Interesting. My point then, what shall I say? Actually I just want a quick interlude. I’ve just seen actually one of our clients in Milton Keynes shared a Daily Mail article. Before I talked about the article quickly, basically the Daily Mail if they’re sharing health advice, you can kind of think that it’s been talked about five years previous because they are very slow in their uptake, but at least they are trying to help people get healthier and I’d say 50% of the time, they’re correct, 50% of the time, they’re not. But this one, they’re relatively correct in the headline and the headline is ‘The Fashionable Way To Lose 10 Pounds In 12 Days – Eat More Fat.’ So basically they’re talking about…Actually, I think if you go back you could probably even put the phrase into search box on iloveweigthloss.co.uk…but we basically said how it’s often said by very, very good and clever nutrition people that the more healthy fat you can eat, the more fat you will lose and we actually get our clients to eat a lot of fat or what is considered by them a lot of fat compared to what they have in the past, and that’s coconut oil, that’s avocado, all those types of things and actually this is talking about, I think is, a craze, a new exercise craze and it has you working out 15 minutes but then they have them eating good fats and that they’re losing weight. So they’re kind of attributing the fact that they’ve eaten…and that’s the thing. Actually this goes into my point realistically that the thought that everyone is looking for the easy route, so that’s why VibroGym or VibroPlates whatever were pretty popular because people thought that you could stand and have your butt shaken for 15 minutes and you lose weight or whatever and you be healthier and all these types of things and it wrangles me very much because if it was that easy I wouldn’t have had to spend 15 years of relatively hard exercise to get into the shape I’m at and health that I’m at and if it was that easy I would have just simply done 15 minutes.
Stephen: Is that not what you’ve been doing all the time?
Mark: No, I haven’t been standing on the VibroPlate and getting my butt shaken for 15 minutes and you know got healthier and lost body fat. Maybe initially it would do but realistically over the long term you weren’t. You got to start looking at professional sports, right, and the people that paid millions and millions of pounds to be the best that they can ever be. You will not see them for the majority of their training to improve, stand on a Vibroplate or anything that’s easy for 15 minutes, anything that seems too easy, to get the result because that is their adage that short-term pain for long-term gains is the same thing is if something seems too easy to get the results is generally is. So all these places for their advertising 15 minutes to work out and getting in a great shape. First look at the instructor generally, it’s kind of like Zumba to be fair. The Zumba instructors that I know and that’s not less like to get into the shape they’re at and a lot of them are in very, very good shape. They are not Zumba instructors solely and just do Zumba to get into that shape. I mean I know one, I think she’s an international presenter and she’s actually a fitness model, and she does lot of resistance work, a lot of exercise that we have prescribed and teaches Zumba. The thing that gets her in that great shape is the resistance work not the Zumba. Whereas obviously people would like to think it’s the Zumba that gets them into that great shape. Unfortunately, for the 99% of people, it won’t. So that is my point. If it’s too easy, it generally won’t get you result unfortunately. But then if everything in life was easy, it would be no challenge and it would be boring.
Stephen: True. Well, my point actually was following on from that a little bit is that I was speaking to a couple of people. They like our podcast, listen to them, great information, but what type of exercise is best for fat loss, and I’ve thought, well, we actually don’t talk that often about the best type of exercise for fat loss. They were like, ‘I’m thinking you’ve mentioned resistance training before. Is it resistance training?’ Yes, the correct form of resistance training is the most effective way to lose fat, get healthier, stronger, fitter. That’s one thing that a lot of people don’t realize. And also improve your longevity. One of the ways they measure longevity, I think we mentioned before were not measured…one of the ways as they say the most effective way to increase longevity is to maintain your muscle. So yes, resistance training with dumbbells, weights and things. Now people say, what’s wrong with the bar and they do lots of different reps and stuff, what’s that called?
Mark: What type of training?
Stephen: You know the class, it’s a class.
Mark: Body Pump.
Stephen: Body Pump. They were like, ‘Oh, what about Body Pump, that’s using weight?’ Unfortunately what happens with Body Pump is with weight training, there’s something called progressive overloads. As your body adapts, it gets stronger, it’s able to do things more effectively, so you need to keep challenging it and that’s what the problem with these classes is that they aren’t able to keep challenging you because you’re doing the same routines, you’re doing a lot of reps, you’re doing like 50 reps of something, 100 reps of some other things that actually becomes aerobic training not anaerobic or lactic acid producing type training which is what you need from your resistance training. So if you haven’t done any sort of training, you felt a little bit sick or you felt a little bit like you need to have a little lie down, that’s often lactic acid causing that and that’s the thing that you really want to produce when you’re using resistance work because it produces something like growth hormone and different hormones that really, really increase fat burning or encourage you to lose fat. So if you are thinking that you’re using resistance training but you’re doing 50 reps of things every time, then you’re actually not going to be producing the right hormones to lose fat, it’s actually becomes aerobic type training, so therefore actually you encourage fat storage around stomach like we’ve talked about quite a few different times. If you want to do any sort of typical type things like running or cycling anything like that, the most effective way to then incorporate that into your program is to do interval type training where you’re doing really sharp fast burst to really high intensity followed by some recovery type exercise, so you might be sprinting and then walking or jogging if you are able to and then sprinting again and the thing with those types of work out is they don’t need to be long, 20 to 25 minutes is ample. So what we do actually at our centers is that we combined the two. So we used resistance training with interval type work. So our clients are producing a lot of lactic acid and therefore that’s why they burn so much fat because they’re producing the right hormone.
Mark: There we go, a little irate, a little rant.
Stephen: More than that, and then I’m going to move back into my position for my neck by the way. I just got a bit excited and I just jarred my neck.
Mark: I want us to go back just quickly then to the article that I’ve actually just read all the way through. Again it’s so frustrating, it’s the whole thing looking at the world through a straw. So they got one thing right in that they’re talking about this people eating fat and good fat. Actually this is to do with a franchise gym actually and there was one in Bedford but I believe, actually I remember going to see it maybe five years ago, and it is one of these things where you work out for 15 minutes, you just do resistance work and then you do, according to this article, you do 80 sit-ups to increase your metabolism which, Stephen just screwed his face up….
Stephen: Which is ridiculous thing correct! If you think about increasing your metabolism doing resistance work increases your metabolism but the way to increase metabolism is to use as much muscle as possible. So doing a sit-up uses very little muscle. Your rectus abdominis and the other obliques and different abdominal muscles, core muscles are really small compared to say, for example, some caudal-posterior chain which is all the muscles from the back down to your legs, backside of your body basically, produces far more hormone release that would increase metabolism so much more than doing some sit-ups. If they actually think doing 80 sit-ups would give you a flat stomach, that’s ridiculous.
Mark: Exactly. So listen to this. ‘Overseen by the instructors, I’m to do 15 minutes of weights a day and then 80 sit-ups to speed up my metabolism, and sure I lose fat not muscle.’ Actually the real result of this lady, quite interesting, is you heard that thing to ‘lose fat and not muscle,’ she loses 10 pounds in 12 tough days, 7 of which is pure fat, which actually means she didn’t achieve what they were trying to achieve. She lost 7 pounds of fat and 3 pounds of muscle. So she is going to end up unfortunately firstly that weight loss will slow down and actually regress because she’s losing muscle. So like Stephen says your insulin sensitivity goes down, your metabolism slows down with the more muscle you lose and then you’re going to end up with the same issues. So all these people have done is they’ve kind of combined one good point in that they should eat healthy fat but again, they’re just looking it through the straw. So this lady is talking about how actually one day she woke up and she was so tired and have so much little energy, she couldn’t go to the gym. She couldn’t go and exercise and that’s only 15 minutes in this little chamber pretty much and she couldn’t do it because she was so tired and because they are just getting her to eat steak and fat, which is good, you’ll good energy or lose fat, but there are no vegetables, they’re just once again looking at things as a diet which is a short-term impact and result and she’s not changing her eating habits, she’s not actually being that healthy. She lost a lot of weight in the short period of time but like I said she is going to get a rebound realistically in the future and it’s just annoying that the first thing that they’ve given air time in the national paper, because I’ve just looked at all the comments below and there’s a lot of comments and it only actually has gone up because obviously a national paper or international maybe paper and some of the responses are pretty interesting because obviously they’re incorrect and everyone has they’re pretty much old wives tales a lot of people coming up with but it’s once again annoying thing of looking at the world through a straw and they got one part right and three parts wrong, which is very frustrating. Can you tell?
Stephen: Very frustrating but yeah, really, really silly and the problem is this is why a lot of people we meet and clients when they come in for the first time had so much misinformation literally. I mean you read that and you think why it was in the paper, it has to be true, doesn’t it? But unfortunately things that they write in the paper do not have to be true. Therefore with everyone is given so much misinformation, how can they know what is the best way. Actually one thing I just remember what I was going to interject with is that you talk about vegetables and health and things, and for me health is far more important nowadays than weight loss. Because certainly if you have become healthy, you are going to lose weight anyway. So if you’re thinking that you can wait 10 years and then think about your health and that you’ve become 100% incorrect. Me, I’m 30, but I know now that if I’m not thinking about my health, then 10 years is a long time I could quite easily have health issues later. People tend to not think about their health until they’re 50. But nowadays you can’t. There’s no way with cancer rife, with loads of other disease being so rife, that you can’t be thinking about dieting and things and think at all, ‘I’ll just get this weight…diet myself to this weight. Don’t worry about health and then I’ll start thinking about my health a little bit later on.’ Life is too short for that. You can’t. If you want to live a long and healthy life, you need to be thinking about your health today. It doesn’t matter whether you’re 18, 40 or 45. I mean obviously the younger the better, but don’t be put off by your age because there’s always a chance to make a massive difference to your health.
Mark: Actually people that are searching for that kind of short-term fix aren’t the type of people that went to our center any more, maybe in the past before we worked ourselves around. The fact that the people we see, the people that we specialized are with are the people who have done all that in the past and we want to make them…It transformed their lives and then get them away from dieting, get them away from short-term fixes and create the habit, get them healthy and create the habits that will make them live longer, but make them leaner, make them happier and more confident but they are habits and they are not diets, not a quick fix.
Stephen: It’s in a healthy way because realistically, I mean our Project Cyrus program, if we wanted to we could get people to lose £14 in 14 days easy. We know how. It wouldn’t be healthy. They would lose muscle. It wouldn’t be healthy. We could do that, but we know that’s obviously ethically we wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it. It’s not the healthiest thing in the long term. Realistically, we can make things tougher for ourselves by doing it the healthy way, but obviously for what we’ve learned the people we are, we don’t want to be the ones that you give you misinformation and make things harder for you in the long term. It’s actually harder for us in the short term, easier for us in the long-term, same for you. Harder for you in short-term, easier in the long-term. Eating healthily and thinking long-term rather than thinking short-term.
Mark: On that as well, you do occasionally come up with, come to people and discuss your points that we make that are what we believe but I’ve totally believe in healthy discussion, but I won’t generally now have a discussion with someone who hasn’t researched or found out the information, they just going on old wives tales. So we’ve had a few discussions especially about children and babies and things. We’ve done a lot of courses around that and health for children and it’s obviously a fairly not contentious but a discussed point but the problem is people often form their opinions on children’s health by emotion as opposed to fact. When they’re talking about what their children should have or what they should eat, they have become very furciferous because they think the easy route is generally to give them child bad food. We have experienced this yesterday or the day before I think. We’ve got friends with kids and stuff and often a child would throw tantrum when they want bad food and I see a lot is that they give them the bad food because it’s easier for them not to have the tantrums but in an hour later or two hours, the child is running rife because they’ve had a massive sugar rush, a massive sugar high and actually they have caused themselves a lot more pain in terms of the adult, a lot more pain for the next couple of hours because the child is very misbehaved and that’s goes along the same line as my earlier point of often the short-term easier answer is actually the wrong one especially for weight loss and in most things actually in life, I guess. If it’s too easy, it’s not going to be correct. So what do you think of that?
Stephen: Not bad. Not bad. Well, I think we’ve probably covered enough today. I’m going to go off and heat my neck out a little bit more. Don’t be stupid like me. Learn from my mistake. If you feel an injury don’t just try and push through it like I just did.
Mark: I think give a workable point because you’re not being a good example of health here.
Stephen: Well, I am because I wouldn’t have told someone to do what I did. I still would exercise but I didn’t have to do that exercise that I actually kind of knew without really thinking about it was the exercise that caused the problem in the first place.
Mark: And you’re going to be straight back or doing exactly what you need to do?
Stephen: Yes, I’m going to do exactly that, that’s why I’m heating all day, I’m seeing a physio later on. I’ll probably have to get a massage tomorrow and still exercising, yeah, for sure. There’s million of different things I can do it was just I didn’t need to do the thing that cause the problem. I just didn’t need to be stupid and treat myself differently.
Mark: Silly Billy.
Stephen: Silly Billy.
Mark: Alright. I hope you got a few workable points. I know we’ve ranted a little bit. Kind of feel like we have sometimes been a bit, not scared, but when we put our opinion across we don’t want to cause too much, you know, people have different opinions but kind of given the point now, I think we have quite a few clients of ours because they value our opinion, they want to know what we think on things. Obviously these are our opinions but they are our educated ones. It is not like we just pulled them out of thin air or just from what our parents told us. These are all from research and courses and a lot of reading. For example, Stephen you read how many books in the last week?
Stephen: Four and a half books.
Mark: Four and a half books in the last week. There you go, lots of research, lots of learning. If you have any comments, any questions, do put them in the box below and we will be very, very happy to answer them. Love discussion on all these things. I hope to speak to you soon. Bye-bye.
Stephen: Bye-bye.
