Why Sane Fat-Loss Matters
Why is there this expectation that dieting, more specifically contest prep, should be as aggressive as possible while doing as much as you can possibly tolerate? It should actually be the other way around – the goal should be to eat as many calories as you can, do as little cardio as possible, and still see progress. More is NOT always better. There is often a cost associated with super speedy progress.
I was honestly baffled by this feedback from an LBC client who is currently in contest prep. She has even admitted in past biweeklies that she cannot believe how sane this prep is compared to her previous competition preps:
“My first show is coming up in less than eight weeks and I am very excited and nervous at the same time. I see steady results and the way my body is changing with almost half physical effort I used to put in my competition prep….The other day, I met with one of the IFBB pros for posing session and she’s had many compliments about my physique (except having smaller shoulders) but when I told her how often I trained and did cardio, she could not believe her ears. She told me that I should ask myself if I deserved to win with training regiment like this, while my competitors train ‘very hard six to seven times a week’. Needless to say that my ego was hurt.”
Not deserve to win because one didn’t put their health on the line in order to prepare for a competition? Absurd.
This would be a great time to cover some of the negative consequences associated with speedy progress and putting your body through TOO much. We have covered these many times before, but here is a recap:
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1. Faster metabolic adaptations. Basically this means that what you’re doing will catch up with you and will require you to do more and more activity or eat fewer and fewer calories for sub-optimal results. Don’t care? Who needs food anyway right?
2. You not only set yourself up for fat loss, but you are creating an environment that will cause you to lose lean body mass. You didn’t really want to be bulky anyway right? The only issue with that is that muscle isn’t the only thing you should put into that category. How about brain function? Your memories are still important to aren’t they? Bone mass? All of these things are affected.
3. Hormone levels. They will drop. All the sudden fat loss slows, you look skinny fat, you’re having monthly cycle nightmares, your irritable, your unbearably hungry, you’re not sleeping well, life looks a little more grey. Couldn’t be your behaviors though because you are just being healthy right?
4. You no longer have time to spend with your family/friends because you are so busy spending hours at the gym. In fact it has become a part time job every day. They don’t understand your dedication, so avoidance is best. Besides even if you had the time, who has the energy?
5. You have kids? All of the sudden they are looking down at their plates questioning if they eat too much, if they look fat at the swimming pool, and wonder if they should be embarrassed by the body that they see in the mirror. After all mommy/daddy said they are ugly about themselves and I have a belly too.
6. You can develop an eating disorder. Not everyone who suffers from eating disorders had a bad childhood or some kind of traumatic past. Food issues can be created by tight boundaries and dietary restriction.
7. It makes future fat loss attempts so much harder. It may be working for you now, but when you can’t add more activity and you can’t cut calories anymore you have to eat more. Likely you will experience a horrendous rebound as the body fights to bring itself back into homeostasis and find its set point. During that time you may end up even heavier than when you started as an attempt to protect you from future starvation. When you try to lose fat again, your body knows what is going on and will down-regulate your metabolism much quicker this time around.