The Best

What is the Best? 

Fitness Professionals are forever being asked question like: 

What is the best way to lose fat?
What is the best way to get a flat stomach?
What is the best way to get big biceps?

I urge all Fit Pros to not answer these questions because there is no 'best; for anything. We are all different and we all respond to things differently. Sadly the internet, paper media and social media is full of supposed 'best' ways. People need to stop reading these articles and instead think about the principles behind whatever they are trying to achieve. 

Example 1 – Fatloss 

In order to get your body to burn stored body fat you need to create a sustained calorie deficit. You eat less than you burn. How you achieve that is down to the individual, all that matters is you actual create a calorific deficit and you sustain it. You want to cut carbs, great it will work. You want to cut fat, great that will work. Want to cut out junk food and replace it with fruit and veggies, great that will work too. The best system is what works for you. If you love pasta then low carb is probably not going to be sustainable, you love eggs and steak then low fat isn't going to work that well long term. Trying to create your deficit entirely through exercise is going to be fun for the first week or so, but after that you are going to struggle to find motivation to workout with enough intensity/time to burn the number of calories needed. There is also absolutely nothing wrong with combining strategies: 

 Mon, Wed, Fri - deficit through exercise only 
Tue and Thu – low carb 
Sat and Sunday – no junk, lots of fruit and veggies, low fat. 


Example 2 – Building those Biceps 

Supersets, 21s, pre-exhaust, post-exhaust all work but what will work best for you no one knows. The principle of stressing the entire range of motion and creating an appropriate (will differ from person to person) time under tension we do know. If you are using the entire range of motion and actually putting tension in the muscle then there is a pretty good chance the muscle will grow. How many sets, reps and how many times a week you will need to train will again vary. However, 3-5 sets  2 times a week is probably a good starting point. You may be a high responder so almost anything will work, you may be a low responder so even if you have the best training system for you growth may be slow. Do something consistently well enough for a long enough period and then change as appropriate. 

Stop looking for specific exercises to follow or foods to eat and meet the general principles. It is a lot easier and a lot more effective. 

Stop looking for what is best and fitness professionals please stop telling people what the 'best' is because, lets be honest, none of us know.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Low Carb Fraud Part 2 - NuSI and Gary Taubes

Image
Low Carb Fraud 2 – NuSI UPDATE: NuSI have redesigned their website so some links no longer work. Maybe they didn't like getting found out? In 2012 journalist Gary Taubes and doctor turned low carb activist Peter Attia founded the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI). Their objectives can be found here  but the following extracts summarise the main elements: Almost 40 years ago the Dietary Goals for the United States was established for all Americans to follow. Inconclusive scientific data were the basis for the guidelines. DRAMATIC RISE IN OBESITY AND DIABETES RATES Dietary guidelines have rarely been supported by research, with most studies being inconclusive. With guidelines that remain largely unchanged and no direction to Americans, obesity and diabetes rates continue to climb. The need for additional nutrition and disease research is undeniable. NuSI wanted to ask some questions: And all of this is done within an overarching strategy that systematical
Read more

Low Carb (is it) Fraud - Marika Sboros

Image
I thought it was time for a snapshot of Low Carb Enforcer Marika Sboros. Why enforcer? Well she seems to be the one who will report anyone who doubts the magic of low carb to their employers, fat sham or mock you. She is also constantly on the look out for vegans to attack. Her other prime role is to promote any books or products low carb advocates sell. These books are only sold to help people though, not to make money from because making money off the sick is wrong. So the only reason than an unproven treatment isn't supported is because MDs and drug companies can't profit from it? The opposite surely? The MD she has retweeted has of course written a book and guess what the general theme is???? Does anyone genuinely think the doctors just want to pump people full of drugs? I have no doubts there are a few bad drs out there on the take but the majority will want their patients healthy and off all medication. Luckily Dr OMara does't want you to buy expensive drug
Read more

The LOWCARB (is it) FRAUD Files - Gary Taubes

Image
If low carb diet work for weightloss (and it does), then why do low carb authors distort, mislead, cherry pick and makes stuff up in their books. This post is designed to serve as a library of these wrongs for Gary Taubes. It's up to you to decide what is going on here. 1.  An Open Letter to Gary Taubes Highlights include: "That’s four experts for just one article saying you did not relay the reality of what they were telling you, and instead twisted the facts to push your own preconceived narrative." 2.  Interfering with the Kevin Hall NuSI Study after the results of the study did not support his insulin hypothesis of obesity. The details below were tweeted by Kevin Hall. Further details covered in this article  THE COLLAPSE OF A $40 MILLION NUTRITION SCIENCE CRUSADE 3.  Kevin Bass created this excellent thread on Twitter. Highlights include: when I was reading GCBC, I was struck with two facts: first, Gary's unparalleled grasp of
Read more