Despite what it might sound like, we are not here to talk about elementary school level math today. Today I want to talk about adding in subtraction in relation to your health and wellness journey, specifically those of you who are trying to lose weight or recomposition your bodies.
SO many times we hear athletes coming into the gym saying , or “I need to cut out carbs, I need to cut out sugar. I need to stop cheating on my diet” or “I need to add more cardio to my routine, it’s gonna help me lose weight”.
What we need to understand is that if we are thinking this way, we are looking at what to subtract and what to add to our health and wellness journey all wrong.
Let’s talk about nutrition first. It is common in diet culture to think we need to subtract the “bad” things from our diet. Now there are certainly things that make up our diets that we all know aren’t the best for us. I would love to be able to live solely off hot honey and pepperoni pizza and Richardson’s cookie dough ice cream but we all know that isn’t happening. However it’s also not sustainable to think that we will never eat those things. So why would we expect ourselves to cut them out of our lives completely? That doesn’t sound very sustainable to me and it also doesn’t sound like a very fun lifestyle! So in this case we want to think less about cutting carbs, cutting sugar, cutting fat, aka cutting happiness, and more about fueling ourselves up with the things that we need to to build a healthy baseline.
You’ve probably heard us say it before and you’ll hear us say it again but we need to be adding to our diet is protein protein protein. That along with fiber in the form of fruits and vegetables will set you up with a baseline of success. You would be surprised that you still have room for some of the things that you love and don’t need to cut out. Bread, pasta, the occasional sweet treat, these things are not the enemy. As long as we have the baseline we discussed there will always be room for the things we love. Now if we think of each meal as what can I add for protein to start building this meal, then what can I add for fiber and fruit/veg we are reframing the way we look at meals in a whole new positive light. Not to mention these are going to be the foundations needed to absolutely crush our hypertrophy training block in the gym so there’s a bonus in that!
From there we move on to the Fitness side of things. Again, there’s something ingrained in our culture that tells us that more cardio is going to contribute directly to more weight loss. Now do we need to do cardio for our heart health? For sure. But should we be running ourselves ragged on the treadmill or crushing ourselves on the stairmaster as a way to sustainably lose weight? Absolutely not. It takes far too much time and energy to actually burn a substantial amount of calories doing cardio than it does to simply take a closer look at your diet and at your weight training schedule. Do cardio because you love it, do it for your heart health, do it as a stress reliever, but don’t punish yourself with hours and hours of cardio thinking it is going to be a sustainable way to lose weight and keep it off.
What we need to be doing here is looking at using our time efficiently. If we think about having one hour a day to work out, we need to make the most of that time. The majority of the days of the week we need to be spending that hour lifting weights. Adding weight training to your regimen and doing it properly is going to be what gives you the most recomposition of your body in terms of fitness. Now, if you’re already lifting weights, take a look at your actual workouts. How challenging are your sets? How proper of technique are you using on your reps? Are you leveling up in terms of weights? Are you cashing it in and taking things easy week after week? Lifting weights the majority of the week and then using my other days to do a type of cardio that I actually enjoy is going to be the best use of my time.
This is all to say that it is OK if this has been your mindset for a long time, like I said it is ingrained in our culture. Try adding positive some of these positives to your routine, if you’re going to subtract anything make it be distractions, outside noise and negativity. And remember, the coaches at TW are here to help you break out of that stigma and figure out a game plan that works best for you. If you are already an athlete with us, don’t be afraid to ask for help. If not, come check it out we would love to have you!