Singapore Personal Trainer: I eat too much!

If you have heard me talk about my previous (i.e. fat boy) life, you will know that I like eating! My favorite "sinful" food is ice cream and warm chocolate cake - the one with the oozing liquid chocolate in the middle. Yummy.

While I don't eat sinful foods often - 1 or 2 times a month. And I do have healthy habits 90% of the time or more... I have trouble getting REALLY lean, not just visible abs (which for me is now normal because if the good habits) but really really lean.

I simply eat too much!

I eat healthy food but I eat it in unlimited amounts.

Now I'm going to eat them in limited amounts. Even good stuff like fruits and lean meat will be limited. The only unlimited things will be green veggies!

Singapore Personal Trainer: What If I trained, but ate anything I want?

If you are trying to lose fat, exercise without proper nutrition will not work.

You will gain the health benefits, and you will "feel" better than not doing anything at all. BUT if you want the visible changes, you will need to change your diet and nutrition as well.

But a recent study by one of my fellow fitness professionals in the US came to a pretty shocking (but very commonly observed) result. A group of sedentary people with high body fat (which is most people nowdays!) did 12 weeks of hard training - 3 hours/week of weights and 2 hours/week of cardio and did not have any dietary control.

Their average results:
Gain 1kg muscle, lost 1/2kg fat, change in fat percentage -1%... which is VERY discouraging for that amount of exercise which is more than most people do anyway.

I cannot overstate the fact that dietary changes are super important!

Good diet is a big part of the reason our clients get results:

• A very overweight client dropped 17kg in 1 month of training
• Another large client dropped 9kg of weight, lost 12kg of fat and gained 3 kg of muscle in 2 months
• Yet another lost 10cm on his waist in just 5 weeks

This happens when the "switch" goes off and says... wow I better not be eating so much crap!

Singapore Personal Trainer: Obesity and Brain Function

Yeah as a personal trainer and fitness coach here in Singapore, its my job to tell people exactly how bad obesity is. It leads to more sick days and costs employers money. So its bad for the country and the economy.

If you don't care about your boss and how much he earns... you should at least care about your brain because nobody's responsible for that except you.

New research shows obesity linked to increased chance of dementia in old age! Ugh. thats SCARY!

Like just about every major illness in developed countries, it goes away with diet and exercise... no surprises there!

Singapore Personal Trainer: Nutrition Thoughts

No matter who it is, personal training clients, athletes, group training clients - Everybody needs to think about what they eat. I have had many guilt looks when I ask my clients what they had for lunch. It takes time to wean yourself off bad foods.

I just read an interesting article in TIME magazine. About "Why we eat so much". Sure to us in the fitness industry those things should be common sense but it was an interesting read with nice pictures of food.

The main point I took away form it is that food is mental. It is a habit. And to achieve great health and a great physique, you need to break the bad ones and build great new ones.

I always talk to my clients about the "rubber band" that is the 28 days it takes to build new habits. If you just do 1 week (which is how many "quick fix" solutions work") you are just stretching the rubber band a bit but then it returns to normal and there are no long lasting effects.

When you push through and build great habits for 28 days or more, the rubber band is broken and you are free to live your improved life. That is what I work a lot with my clients on.

That is one reason I recommender T-nation's Velocity Diet. It is mostly a supplement only diet for 1 month. It is safe and it is effective. But most of all, it drastically reduces cravings for evil food.

You can get similar effects on other strict diets which are made from health foods. But I have not witnessed as much of a taste bud change as from the velocity diet.

My results and the results of my client Annie are here in the forum.

Annie and I, check out her results here.
She started out at 64kg (before even starting training) and now is a nice lean 51kg:) 25 inch waist and visible abs at 16-17% fat - which is AWESOME for a lady!

How Important Nutrition Is - Now I have something to tell my clients

My first taste of what good nutrition is was many years ago when I realized that it was not good enough just to be large and strong. I was carrying excess fat.

I did not look obese but I know that I could have been quicker and leaner.

I decided to go on the first "diet" of my life! Well actually it was just cleaning up my nutrition habits.

• Eating often keeps metabolism high
  
• Eating no starchy stuff unless after training (replenish glycogen stores, after training starches don't make us fat).
• Eating more fruits and vegetables (I'm starting to really like some veges, broccoli, spinach:) hehe never thought id see the day!).
• Drinking only water and green tea.
• Eating more protein with each meal.
• Eating healthy fats from nuts and fish.
• Eating un-processed foods. (best foods are from their natural packaging, things in pretty packages with shiny wrappers are usually 99% of the time BAD for us)
• 3 months later I was down 10kg and looking alot better!

I did NOT count calories, weight food or starve myself. I simply trained hard and made good food choice.

For history's sake, here are the before and after pics from that diet many years ago.

92KG Before

82kg After