This week I include some questions and answers from clients over the last couple of weeks. This includes the issue of judging muscle gain during a bulk, knowing how much to move and stopping a period of bad eating:
How Do I know If I have gained Fat or Muscle?
This comes down to the time period you are judging that fat gain while factoring in how much muscle/fat can you gain in a month/year.
For muscle, you could maybe gain 0.25kg (half a pound) a month which would give 3kg (6 lbs a year). This is a very very good rate, as you are an experienced lifter and not a newbie
Body fat you can gain prob 3kg a month if really overeating (half a stone ish – 6.5 lbs), which would be 36kg a year (6 stone – 80 lbs). It is very rare to see people gain that much tbh. It is usually that people gain fat say for a month, then break even for a while, then gain through Xmas etc. Massive weight gain almost always happens over many years.
So I would look at your last month for recent changes, anything over 0.25kg you would say is fat gain. Likewise for the last few months, anything over 1kg is fat gain. Your clothes will guide you on this too as will your lines of muscle definition.
A good general rule is, if you feel you are gaining muscle really quick then you are almost definitely gaining fat too fast (This may not apply if you were taking PED’s, but you are natural so not an issue).
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How much should I increase my steps / change my food?
As a general rule of thumb from Day 1 when I meet someone, it is to try to increase steps by 50%..which would be more 10.5k average on your current movement.
If you then eat sensibly (leave food, make sensible choices) it usually starts fat loss. This sounds too simple to most people to make a difference. This is because almost everyone drops into a huge energy deficit (e.g. every January they barely anything), then they stick to it for two weeks before quitting. A sensible energy deficit feels nothing like this.
If you are breaking even weight wise, then you are in energy balance, so creeping up the movement and slightly reducing the food is enough to get the body changing.
If you were gaining weight week on week then a bigger shift is needed ..but you aren’t, so like most people you are static fat loss wise. This happens as the body is great at getting you into balance.
As your weight is stable on low steps (6500-7000) then it actually shows your food intake is not as bad as you may think … Which is a good sign! I have seen people gaining fat on 20k steps a day…so they are eating way too much and thus will need a big change in food…
While we need to look at your food, right now you background movement is worse than your food intake (energy wise)… Moving more is so simple to do, especially as you are fit with your nice running times etc ..
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I keep eating all the croissants, cakes and chocolates at work….help!?
Oh dear!… but you have hardly killed someone so calm down.
First thing to do is to stop the mad eating …to do this your goal is to simply breakeven do not try to start a hard rebound strict diet tomorrow. The mere thought of this is probably extending this bad eating period.
You also need to check you are not trying to ban all the ‘bad’ foods going forwards, this pattern happens a lot so it is probably at play to some degree. Reminder, we are not trying to ban *any* foods. Simply change the threshold/frequency so you can get results.
By banning foods or expecting a strict diet tomorrow it continually creates a scarcity feeling and create this excess eating cycles…the ‘I will have it later’ attitude we discussed is much more helpful… and then you need to let yourself do it at some point you…did you read the Intuitive Eating handbook in the end?
Other ways to stop eating today:
-Eat a load of protein.
-Drink a load of water, and/or add salt to the water if you are low in minerals.
-Reduce amount of normal meals so you can get back to break even energy wise even if much of this is from worse foods.
-Eat some healthy feeling foods (foods that make you feel healthy), for me any green type juice I immediately feel different, this is linked to mood states I talk about in the book.
-Eat foods you know fill you up, my best meal is tuna and potato which I used for my bodybuilding shows and like the taste of.
-Do an exercise session, getting out of breath, lifting weights, stretching can stop this in its tracks (note – it can sometimes worsen it if you do loads of exercise).
-Do some EFT, meditations (use this link for follow along videos – www.benwilsonuk.com/pt/ etc…) on current day stresses.
We discuss more tomorrow when we meet.
What This Means For You
These questions may or may not apply to you so take the information as needed. If you have any questions then feel free to message me.
Photo – Talking of clients, here are some pics of their dogs that came to my sessions this year:
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