The Importance of Nutrition and Adherence

Below is a post from one of our clients, Reece, who came to see us for some help with his nutrition plan.

Reece Body Comp Before and After 12 Weeks

"Before: 105.2kg, 17.9% body fat, 86.5kg lean muscle mass - After: 96.2kg, 10.6% body fat, 86kg lean mass - Signed up with @totalhealthperformance to assist me with my nutrition and my results are beyond what I could imagine, even after my training going from 6 days to barely any 2 weeks in, we still reached the goal of 10%bf. Thanks to Nathan i’m leaner than I’ve ever been and my lowest weight since I was 13 years old. Signed up again for a nutrition/training program and can’t wait to see what I can achieve with THP this time. #goals #nomoreheavyweight #newweightclass"

As Reece mentions in his post, he went from grappling 6 days a week to barely training at all due to the lock down. By being disciplined with his nutrition, he was still able to lose 9kg, 7.3% body fat, and only lost 0.5kg of lean muscle. These are very good results.

What it really highlights to me is the importance of having a proper nutrition plan in place. I see way too many people doing a lot of training sessions that they would not otherwise have to do if they just prioritised their nutrition. It is like the old saying “you can’t out train a bad diet”, but in a lot of cases I see they kind of do. A lot of athletes remain in decent shape despite a pretty poor diet but only because they do so much more work than they need to be doing to maintain that level of body composition and conditioning. If they were to prioritise their nutrition, like Reece has here, they would have more time and energy to dedicate to other things like technical skills, strength, recovery, or just have more time to be able to do things they enjoy in general.

The other thing Reece’s results show, is the importance of discipline and adherence to the plan. He even had a buck’s party in Melbourne during this time, and he still managed to stay on track enough to get the results he was after. It doesn’t matter what advice I give, if Reece didn’t implement the advice given, he would not get the results. The perfect plan not implemented is worthless. This is the biggest problem I face. It is whether or not the client really wants to change or just likes the idea of it. Too many people say they want this or that but then don’t ever implement the things needed to achieve their goals. They may for a week but they get lazy and decide to stay as they were. I can want them to be successful as all I want but if the individual doesn’t want to implement any advice, there is nothing I can do about it.

Obviously, I try many different tactics to try and get them to make some small changes and hopefully get them to develop some new habits, but the simple fact is, people either really want to change or they don’t. This will show in their actions. I am not a psychologist and don’t want to be so it is not enjoyable for me trying to convince people to make changes in their life. It doesn’t really matter to me. If you want help, I’ll help, but if you don’t do the things that need to be done, I’m useless.

Someone like Reece is a pleasure to work with. It makes me happy to see him get the results for his hard work and dedication. I look forward to seeing further results from him in the coming weeks, and when the restrictions from this virus are lifted, watching him compete.

Fat Loss - Jon Bovard

August 9, 2018

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Nathan Waters - Total Health Performance

It is always good to see your clients happy with their results and how they are progressing. Jon started working with us a couple of months ago and has had some great results. This is what he posted on Facebook just the other day:

"this year, at 41, I finally decided to do something.

Before I was 97kg, 27% bodyfat and grumpy.

Now after 3 months of eating right, training hard, and driving my poor wife crazy, I am 12kg lighter and grumpy.

thanks to my poor wife Lou for putting up with me, and THP - Total Health Performance Nathan, for the advice and keeping me honest."

Jon has also dropped 10% body fat and increased his lean muscle mass. He has also won a few jiu jitsu medals over the past month or two and is preparing for nationals in Melbourne this weekend, so we wish him all the best. 

We do get people to lose a lot of weight so if you thought we were just for athletes, it isn't the case, we can also help you reach your fat loss goals.

Tags:

Fat loss

body composition

body weight

muscle mass

Jiu-Jitsu

TeamTHP

SJJA

Dr David Ludwig Lecture

August 15, 2017

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Nathan Waters - Total Health Performance

Today I would like to share with you this lecture by Dr David Ludwig. In it he explains the difference between the calories in v calories out model and a diet that controls insulin. It is very much like we have spoken about many times in our writings and a lot of what we explain to our clients. 

I like at the beginning where Dr Ludwig explains how as people started following the food pyramid guidelines and started following a low fat diet, the obesity epidemic actually exploded. In studies the high fat-low carb type diets actually work better at losing weight than the conventional caloric restriction approach and that the caloric restriction model is not a good way as keeping weight off long term. 

"The body weight is controlled more by biology then will power over the long term". Dr Ludwig explains the primal mechanisms that are in built that help us control body weight. If we restrict calories and have strong enough will power to restrict calories long enough our bodies fight back in other ways, like slowing metabolism. So the combination of rising hunger, the slowing of the metabolism, and stress hormone secretion is a recipe for failure when trying to lose weight.

The opposite is also true. If you over-feed people, they lose all interest in food. They lose attraction to those foods and actually feel just as bad as the people in the starvation studies. Their metabolisms speed up trying to shed the extra calories and once the protocol ends their weight comes back down to where it started. 

This is why planned re-feeds are an important part of any fat loss plan.

This suggests we have a body-weight set point but Dr Ludwig asks the question "why then has this set-point increased over the years?" He explains that we are storing more calories in the fat cells, and that the body only looks at the calories available in the blood. So we actually have to few calories in the blood, the fat cells are on a feeding frenzy, and the rest of our bodies are actually starving. The brain only sees the amount of calories in the blood to fuel metabolism, not the calories in the fat cells, and this is why we get hungry and why our metabolism slows down as we are trying to conserve energy, thinking we are in a famine. This is why you get tired on a low caloric diet, you are trying to conserve energy. 

What is triggering our fat cells to over store calories?

Insulin. He uses an example of a child with type 1 diabetes, who can't make insulin, will come to attention due to weight loss no matter how many extra calories that child eats, even 5-10,000 calories more. When given the right amount of insulin the child's body weight will return to normal, give him too much insulin and he will predictably gain more weight. 

What drives the insulin secretion?

Excessive carbohydrates, mostly processed carbohydrates and carbohydrates that spike the blood sugar rapidly, like we have said many times before. Insulin is a storage hormone so when it is spiked very high after a meal, if you are insulin resistant, a lot of the calories eaten will be pushed into the fat cells. Adrenaline also rises after a meal that causes a high amount of insulin to be secreted. After a high sugar breakfast subjects selected 600-700 calories more throughout the day.

What is the impact on the brain?

The fast carb type meals trigger a part of the brain, that deals with rewards and cravings, and is seen to be triggered in many addictions like cocaine addiction, even 4 hours after the meal. So if you are hungry and this part of the brain is triggered you are going to perceive junk foods to be much more tasty then they actually are. If you eat excessive amount of a food, you no longer think it tastes as good as it did before you were full. Just the same, if you haven't eaten for a whole day, whatever food you do eat tastes great. So it isn't so much the taste of the food that we are addicted to.

The good news is when you stop eating these foods it doesn't take long for you to stop craving them. They lose the power of controlling our basic neurological responses as Dr Ludwig points out.

Fast carbs vs slow carbs  

Dr Ludwig shows the results of a rat study that were quite interesting. They took rats and put them on either a fast carb or slow carb diet for 16 weeks, which is about 10 rat years he says. They tried to keep the weight of the rats the same in both groups. To do this, in the fast carb group they had to restrict calories to achieve this and the fast carb group also had 70% more fat mass. The fast carb group also had very high risk factors for diabetes and heart disease.

This is more evidence that if you eat quality foods and control your blood sugar, you are able to eat more and still maintain your ideal body weight. This is why many of our fat loss clients actually say they can't eat all the food we give them.

A study done on humans, which Dr Ludwig discusses in the video, also showed that on a low-fat, low-calorie diet, the metabolism dropped by about 400 calories per day but on the high- fat, slow-carb diet this didn't happen. 

In conclusion

If you want to lose weight, maintain your weight, or be as healthy as you can be, then it is important to control your insulin levels. We talk about this all the time so I think the video is a good explanation of why you should do this and it comes from a doctor not just a strength coach. 

Calories are not the whole story. Whilst they do play a role, it is only up to a certain point. The types of foods you eat are far more important.

This video talks about one aspect of how to lose weight but there are many more such as sleep and gut health and the make up of your gut microbiome for example . Controlling insulin is a very important point, especially in today's society as we tend to eat excessive amounts of processed carbs. 

Tags:

Calories

insulin

Dr David Ludwig

hormones

metabolism

Fat loss

weight loss