Another tip coming your way....
Hopefully, you are enjoying these tips. Maybe you have even put one or two into practice by now!
The first tip that I offered in the last email
was:
If you want to diet aggressively, make the time period in a calorie deficit shorter (in my case, I am consuming a deficit of ~800 calories per day for 5 weeks) and vice versa. Aggressive dieting has its place, but if you are someone who really struggles with dietary adherence, it may not be for you.
The second tip offered
was:
Consume 2-3g protein per kg of bodyweight, to promote muscle retention, satiety and potentially a minor increase in energy expenditure.
The third tip I offered was related to nutrient density, where the take home points were as follows:
Consume a diet that is composed
primarily of nutrient-dense, whole foods. Within that, we recommend 8-12 servings of vegetables/fruits per day, if not more. Other foods worth including would be meat (daily), whole eggs (daily), organ meats 1-2x/week, fatty fish here and there, legumes (daily) and generally aim to consume more fibrous sources of carbohydrates that have a decent profile of micronutrients to accompany the carbohydrates themselves (e.g. sweet potato, white potato, squash).
This time, we are talking about training volume.
I am confident that this is something you won't have heard talked about too often before, as the wider fitness industry tends to promote the exact opposite of what I am about to advise. Time and time again, we come across people who try to do MORE training when dieting. The purpose of dieting is to induce an energy deficit. Therefore, your body has less energy coming in to facilitate the repair and regeneration of muscle mass (and other bodily systems). If you are increasing your training volume and training yourself into the ground, you run the risk of essentially inducing a "debt" of recovery and potentially poorer adaptations to the training that you are doing. You should look to preserve your strength as much as you
can and even progress it, but adding more sets to what you normally do is probably not the best idea.
The thing is, deep down, people know this. Let me explain. When people eat in a calorie surplus, they will be very aware that it is an optimal state for recovery, performance and growth (if growth is the goal). Therefore, they
train more, train harder etc., all with additional progress in mind. When they then begin dieting, they acknowledge that it is more challenging to continue performing, recovering and adapting at the same level.
But what do people do?
They train MORE. Rather than being more mindful of their recovery capacity, they throw it out the window and beat
themselves into the ground. As a result, they end up performing and recovering even poorer, arguably resulting in more muscle and strength loss.
To give you some take-home points.....
- If you couldn't recover from it in a surplus, it's unlikely you will be able in a deficit.
- You have less potential to gain
muscle when in a deficit, so don't keep increasing your training.
- If you are performing more than 5 weight training sessions per week, you should probably have a fairly good reason for doing so (very advanced, low life stress, each session is low volume or another valid reason).
- If you are adding in additional challenging cardiovascular exercise, that is going to compromise your
recovery from your weight training, so again, be mindful.
- Most people are not going to need more than 10-20 sets per muscle group per week. If you are doing 30+, you should probably re-evaluate your approach.
- If you are getting weaker, it's more than likely down to your training approach, as opposed to the deficit itself.
I hope you found this helpful. If you did, why not share
some of the tips on social media? Just tag us!
Yours in Health,
Gary McGowan
Triage Method
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