MY FAT LOSS FAILURES

I spend a lot of time educating others about achieving their fat loss goals. But in order for a coach to be knowledgeable they must of had their own failures that they have learnt from themselves. Today I will tell you about a big mistake I made in my younger years.

 

When I was 17 and coming to the end of my college years I had spent a long time bulking up and had gone a bit over the top with my food intake. I ate whatever I wanted as long as the scales were going up. It wasn’t healthy and I’m not proud of it, but I was desperate the get as big as possible!

 

Anyway, I realised that I had pushed my body fat too high and it was time to pull it back down and reveal my hard work from underneath the body fat. 

 

The night before I began trying to strip down my body fat, I watched a YouTube video for some advice. It was called “Arnold Schwarzenegger: Blueprint to cut”. It was full of dodgy advice such as “Use lower weight and just do higher reps to burn fat and tone the muscles”. But the main piece of advice was “cut out all carbohydrates from your diet”.

 

As a young, dumb 17 year old looking to replicate Arnold’s physique, I obviously followed the advice.

 

I set off to college the next day with a belly of just eggs… No bread. And sat there at lunch resisting the need to eat a sandwich and just eating chicken breasts and drinking a protein shake. All carbs were removed.

 

I didn’t feel too bad at first, maybe a little tired, but I really believed this would work. Until I got to my next lecture.

 

I sat there listening to my lecturer in my nutrition lecture, funnily enough. I felt like I really couldn’t concentrate and I felt really weak and light headed. (Now although I couldn’t concentrate in most of my education, I genuinely enjoyed learning about nutrition so this worried me). I told her how I felt and she explained to me that I needed some carbohydrates as I was obviously running off fumes.

 

I was so confused that Arnold had mugged me off and I nearly flew to Austria to get my revenge.

Not really.

 

But I was super frustrated that it hadn’t worked and I felt mentally weak because of the fact that I couldn’t stick to my diet. My lecturer, who was quality in all fairness to her, educated me that it was all about my overall calorie intake not my carbohydrate intake.

 

After the lecture, I ran to Tesco and absolutely annihilated a whole pack of giant salted caramel cookies. I can assure you that I felt 10 times better after this.

 

This goes to show that when you aggressively restrict yourself, the impact can be devastating. Notice how I went through a whole pack of cookies that probably contained 1000 calories or more because my body was so weak. This is what can happen when you remove a whole macronutrient from your diet.

 

As opposed to just having some bread with my eggs and some pasta with my chicken which would have only added around 500 calories.

 

Don’t restrict yourself too much and appreciate that carbohydrates do not make you fat. They are your main tool for energy!

 

Comment below your biggest training, nutrition or lifestyle mistake!