Custom Personal Training Programs in Latrobe Valley

As you may know, I'm currently dividing my time between Brunswick and my new home away from home at the Fitness Centre in the Latrobe Valley. It's quite a hike out there and back for half the week, every week, but I'm enjoying it there and helping a lot of nice people on their way to achieving their goals in health, fitness and body composition.

So, I just wrote a double entry over on my main site, talking about Effective Custom Exercise Programs and how I come up with mine. I've been doing lots and lots of programs lately. People really like them, and I know if they follow them closely and try their best they'll get great results.

Trafalgar fitness centre.

I was talking about Personal Training In The Latrobe Valley over on the other blog and the big news is that I'm now dividing my time between my usual location here in Brunswick, and the new gym in Trafalgar.

I should be kept nice and busy in the weeks ahead, and expect to have a lot of success stories to report.

So. Of course I'll be bringing my rather unique (but 100% successful) combination of weight training + IIFYM nutrition strategy. I say unique although I actually stick just the very very simple, logical, common sense stuff which funnily enough is the stuff that works. I think it is true for most things in life, when you have experience and understanding of something, it isn't about taking a complicated approach to be successful. You might think that the more you know, the finer details you can go into and achieve more than someone armed with only half the knowledge. In actual fact, success usually comes from understanding something well enough to make it simple and straight forward, rather than complicated and intricate.

So in trying to know too much and over complicate things... we end up with too much information, too many "rules" to abide by and it becomes like a puzzle with pieces that don't go together.

IIFYM puts this into practice by discarding all the false information that is either (a) simply not factual or (b) not important to the goals of ordinary people trying to get into extraordinary shape. Similarly my workout programs are very simple and focus on simple push, pull, bend & extend movements, rather than any fancy, complicated or difficult exercises that a trainer might use to demonstrate how advanced their abilities are.

I say keep it simple, stick to the stuff that gets the best results easily, and throw out anything that doesn't work.

There is no reason you can't get into great shape and stay there, IF you actually want to.

I was thinking about reasons a person might fail to lose weight, get into shape, or whatever you want to call it. I posted the other day about how the people who actually want results, get results and how lately I'm getting a lot more legit clients who actually do want to know how to achieve their goals. These people actually follow my advice and, well you can see the comments they leave me, within a week or two they are seeing and feeling a big difference.

I spent a lot of years trying really hard and not getting such great results due to not really knowing what I was doing, not understanding nutrition, listening to too much bro-science and urban myths from guys who thought they knew what they were talking about but really didn't. So now... well I got qualified as a PT, started only listening to seriously knowledgeable PTs and body builders, threw out everything that was bullshit or over complicated... and now it is actually VERY VERY SIMPLE.

And that's what I'm passing on to my clients and online clients and really just anyone who asks (if I think they're actually sincere and will follow the advice. I test 'em out a bit first!). Like I say... the ones who listen, who actually want to know how to get results, are always very successful quite quickly.

"Starvation Mode": fact or myth?

Quite a hotly debated subject it seems!

Well... if you've never heard of it before, the theory of starvation mode is that if you do not hit a certain minimum level of calories, your metabolism slows down and your body will start to store more fat.

It's a subject of contention because, well some would say "you cannot put on fat unless you are eating MORE calories than are required to maintain your current weight". And that seems quite logical to me.

HOWEVER there's a bit of a hole in this argument. I'm thinking when people make that argument, it's based on saying "well you're this age, this height, this weight; therefore your maintenance calories is this amount and you cannot gain fat unless you eat more than this". I don't think that's correct.

In most cases you can do the math as described above (also taking account for gender and activity levels) and predict a person's maintenance requirements with reasonable accuracy. Everyone is a little different and interpretations of activity levels can vary but still you can end up with a ball park figure that's pretty close to correct. From there, you just pay attention and tweak things a little as necessary.

Of course... here's the big problem that I think people are forgetting. This equation assumes that we are talking about human beings under normal (medical) circumstances. So, you have the rather odd logic where someone says "if you do this, it'll screw things up and you'll put on fat", and the response is "no, under normal circumstances that is impossible", and the first guy rightly points out "that's why I said 'screw things up', it is no longer normal circumstances". You guys following me on this?

So the theory goes that due to being under-fuelled the body says "ok I need to conserve energy". Metabolism slows and hormonal balance changes. Often the thyroid is affected and stops (or reduces) production of hormones that effect how we burn fat stores. Cortisol production can increase as well, which also encourages the body to hang on to those fat stores.

So at the very least... you could see that the effect might be that the body stubbornly holds on to those fat stores, and perhaps stores more fat at the expense of lean mass. That's assuming we still accept that "you cannot gain weight at below maintenance calories".... so, what we're talking about here is more fat without an increase in weight.

I actually think the human body is far more mysterious than that though. And when you mess with it and make it unhealthy (in this case by under fuelling, perhaps combined with over training), all bets are off. The rules do not apply any more. Results are completely unpredictable. That's why you get people who are quite overweight or obese, despite eating way too few calories to be healthy... or, maybe they're just lying to me about how much they really eat?

Anyway consider this. There was a story not so long ago in the news about a guy who had this massive, like MASSIVE 96kg tumour that needed removed for obvious reasons. Now, I forget where this happened but it wasn't a western country so there were issues with the medical facilities and so forth... so, I'm thinking 3rd world conditions, not an affluent society. So my point is, you're telling me this guy who is otherwise very lean is eating enough to support an extra 96kg of body weight in the form of a tumour?

I mean... I had a tumour once (thyroid) but I was a bit fat and unhealthy at the time and it was maybe a kilo or two (fist sized) not fricken 96 kg. Where the hell does the human body get the resources to grow that thing?

I dunno how it works. I'm not saying that I do. My point is, when we're outside of normal medical circumstances, usual expectations of how things work do not apply. So when you screw with your body with ridiculously low calories, I'm prepared to accept that it's possible to put on weight in the form of increased fat.

Here's the thing though about starvation mode. I'm saying I think it does exist / happen, BUT not in the way that a lot of people talk about it. It's not going to kick in just because you under eat one day for some reason. We're talking about the effects of prolonged under eating, not just skipping a meal or two.

So the bottom line here is; if you're active, training hard and expecting to see a great physique when you look in the mirror, you had better be eating right! Not too much, not too little.

I've been doing some online PT lately and also just giving advice to anyone who asks for it, and rather a lot of people have been coming back to me saying "since I increased my calories like you told me to, I'm seeing much better results already".

More on this subject? Check here: Too Much Exercise, Too Little Food?
Also: Over Training While Under Eating

Getting into shape? Forget everything you've been told.

One of the hardest parts in helping people to successfully lose weight and get into shape is in overcoming all the misconceptions they have and bad information they've been given (usually by other people who are not in very good shape and in no position to be advising anyone!)

So, I'm writing a few new articles to try clear some of this up! Have a read at my personal training website.

I keep saying this over and over again; it is NOT about trying to do more and more (exercise), on less and less (calories). It's all about finding the appropriate diet and activity levels to get into shape, and STAY in shape.

Scam of the week, volume 1: Kevin Trudeau

So, a friend on facebook who happens to also be a health and fitness professional showed me this. I hadn't heard of the guy before but apparently in the Americas he's sold a lot of books about "health" and stuff. Eh, just watch...



So... it's like I keep saying. The more outlandish and outrageous the lie, the more people will buy into it. So you come out with some book or some ridiculous product (and I'll posting all of them too!), you can get rich because people will buy it up hoping for a quick fix or easy answer. But just point out the simple common sense stuff that's actually true and useful... I dunno, it seems to be harder to get people interested.

Why is that, people?

Anyway my mission is to bust every myth, scam and lie in the world of health, fitness and weight loss... and I'm still putting together my new package "No Bullshit, No Excuses" which is just the simple, logical stuff that can't possibly fail. And that boils down just "eating the right amount, and doing some resistance training".

Simple, right?

Diets are such a scam

I made another video talking about diets and why they're a bunch of garbage. People are always telling me about this diet or that. Some fad diet their friend went on and lost a heap of weight at first, but couldn't stick to it and put all the weight back on and then some. When I was a corporate square I'd watch people going on ridiculous starvation diets as well and just making themselves miserable. Just eating soup for example, or a yogurt for breakfast and then nothing all day. Again, they're absolutely miserable while they're on it, and then within a week of quitting the diet they blow up like a balloon even fatter than when they started.

Then there's all the "I'm cutting out bread because carbs make you fat" conversations... people actually pulling ME up on my meal choices (yeah, ME) because "oh look how much carbs you are eating" even though I look like a classical sculpture of a pagan god and they look like... well lets not get carried away. But anyway, I do look a bit better than the average person who for some reason has the audacity to try and "correct" my nutrition strategy based on it not fitting with some urban myth they picked up from some other out of shape person.

SO bottom line, what stuff do you have to cut out to lose weight and look good? Can I clear all this up and make it simple and easy to understand? Of course I can, don't be ridiculous. Just watch the video ok?

Wanna know more? This ties in nicely with an article I wrote a little while back talking about the If It Fits Your Macros nutrition theory.