Christina: This is Christina with the DVCC and today I’m joined with Greg, trainer at the DVCC’s Northampton location. We’re going to discuss how to eat to complement your training and lose body fat.
So Greg, is there a magic solution for losing weight and if there is, can you please share? If there isn’t, can you then maybe sum up the best ways to lose fat to keep fit?
Greg: Good question – I’d love to say there was. I think everyone is looking for a magic solution or a quick fix, but unfortunately it takes hard work, a lot of training and good nutrition.
And most importantly, that would be done consistently over a good amount of time, so to make a really life changing transformation as such, you’re looking at a good 6 months to a year minimum, depending on where you started from.
So the best way to lose fat and keep fit would be consistent good training and smart nutrition.
Christina: So it’s not going to happen overnight then?
Greg: Unfortunately not.
Christina: And do you think that the fact that it does take a while might make some people disillusioned when they have slow progress? Maybe they’re on a diet and they don’t see results soon enough so they end up giving up?
Greg: Yes, definitely. I think it comes from two angles; one is a lot of people just measure their weight as opposed to actual body composition, so in actual fact sometimes they are making good progress but the scale won’t move. So you could gain 2lbs of muscle and lose 2lbs of fat, but the actual number on the scale doesn’t move; that will cause people to be disheartened if they’ve trained very hard for a week.
And the other thing is, often when you start losing weight it will come off quite quickly, so you might lose 2 or 3lbs a week for a few weeks, at which point it can slow down. And if you’re only losing ½lb to 1lb a week, people might think that’s too slow, but actually 1lb is quite a lot, and if you lost 1lb every week for a year, that’s 52lbs of fat, which is a lot.
Christina: Exactly. So the key is, basically, consistency and steady losing, we shouldn’t be expecting to lose 5lbs a month, or a week, for example.
Greg: Exactly right, yes. Slow and consistent is the best way.
Christina: Ok. Somebody who is working out regularly and dieting, are there any other reasons why they’re not losing weight, is there something they might be doing wrong?
Everything they’re in control of, in terms of what they’re eating and the training they’re doing might be completely right, but there are just lots of other factors that can affect things.
One, for example, that plays a large role is your stress, or cortisol levels. If these are high, say you’ve had a hard week at work or something, then it’s not necessarily something you can control, that might lead you to not losing fat for that week.
Also something else that can largely affect you is sleep; if you don’t get a very good quality of sleep, maybe you’ve slept four hours in the night and it wasn’t unbroken sleep, then due to hormone levels, cortisol levels again, you’re also going to struggle and have a difficult time. There are lots of different things that can affect it.
Christina: So being stressed can affect your weight loss?
Greg: Yes, 100%. Your body’s stress hormone, cortisol, has a massive effect on things. So if you live a highly stressed life then yes, you’re going to have a tough time.
Christina: So that’s another good reason to hit the gym then!
Greg: Training itself will relieve stress anyway, so it’s only going to help you.
Christina: So what do you say then, to those people who lose motivation while dieting?
Greg: If people are struggling with their motivation, I think it’s good to go through their goals again, to remind them where they are trying to get to. With it being quite a long process, you can get bogged down in day to day life and find it quite difficult. But if you’re reminded what you’re trying to aim for, that can help bring your motivation back up.
Likewise, reminding them of where they’ve come from. So if someone’s lost 15lbs and they are in a bit of a slow period, they might start to lose motivation, but if you think back to where you were 6 months ago, you’ve come a long way since then so you just need to push on and keep going really.
Christina: Great. So basically, be constantly positive.
Greg: Yes, always be positive.
Christina: What’s the best kind of exercise plan to have if you’re trying to lose body fat?
Greg: You want to look for something that’s high intensity and something that’s fun as well. The high intensity stuff you need, intervals etc, are scientifically proven to burn fat so you want the majority of the exercise you’re doing to be based around that. That said, there’s still a place for some kind of cardio type exercise, but it’s not as effective.
Also with the high intensity, interval stuff, it’s much more time efficient. We’ve had a session before where someone burnt around 800 calories in 40 minutes; you’re not going to do that if you’re jogging round a park.
The second thing is you want it to be fun and sustainable; if you’re going on a run that’s going to take an hour and a half, for most people that is going to be quite boring, they’re not going to keep it up for very long. If you’re doing intervals, you can get down to about 30 minutes, have some fun with it. It’s much more sustainable for a lot of people.
Christina: It sounds like quite a new way of doing cardio, because I think most people have in their mind that you need to do something such as an hour of running on the treadmill or an hour of cycling; but you’re saying that the high intensity interval training is actually more efficient.
Greg: Yes, it is fairly new; I think the traditional thought is the kind of steady state cardio. But yes, it’s becoming more and more popular that intervals are the way forward.
Christina: And you can also get it done quicker.
Greg: Yes, 100%.
Christina: That brings me to my next question: how often should I be working out – how often do I have to go to the gym?
Greg: This can vary from person to person. Minimum really, you’re looking at about three sessions per week. Having said that, in my opinion, the best bet would be between four and six.
But I wouldn’t necessarily take someone who has never exercised before and throw them into six sessions a week, because they wouldn’t be used to it; they wouldn’t recover in time and they might get injured. Their cortisol levels would probably go up too, so for a complete beginner, maybe start with three and then after a week add in a fourth, then a fifth and then a sixth.
But there’s no harm in doing more; I know people who train twice a day, five or six days a week. It’s just that they’ve started low and built it up over time so they get used to it.
Christina: And those people have the time to do that as well; not many people have the time to spend so long in the gym.
Greg: Yes, that’s a good point; not a lot of people have time to go twice a day.
Christina: So, going along with the training, how many calories should a person be eating a day when they’re losing fat? Or is there a way that they can diet without counting the calories?
Greg: It’s an interesting topic because it strikes debate among a lot of people. At the end of the day, in its very simplest terms, you need to be burning more energy than you’re taking in. Energy is measured in calories, so you want to be eating less than what’s going out.
For a lot of people, counting calories isn’t really the most effective way to diet or live, so you can eat in a way that will, the majority of time, have you under that level. For example, the nutrition we have at the DVCC allows our clients to make the correct food choices which will bring them under this level so that they will lose body fat.
Christina: So they don’t need to be constantly counting calories every time they go for a meal?
Greg: It links in with what I said about the long, steady state cardio; at the end of the day you’ve got to have something that’s sustainable, so if you ever aren’t going to count every single minute of every single day, then it’s not going to work.
Christina: Exactly. Going on from that, are we ever allowed to cheat, or do people have to stick to this food regime?
I like to have mine on a Saturday because it’s normally when I do something with my girlfriend, we might go out to dinner or something. And in that meal I will just kind of relax and have whatever I want to eat. It’s one time a week; so that one meal a week, as long as you don’t go absolutely crazy, isn’t going to be detrimental to your results, and in actual fact it might be beneficial.
There are two reasons as to why we have these reset meals; the first is there’s a hormone in the body called leptin and, when you eat a carbohydrate restricted diet, your leptin levels can decrease. Leptin is responsible for burning fat, so when you eat a reset meal, for example, that’s high in carbohydrates, your leptin levels will increase and you’ll burn more body fat.
The second is it just keeps you sane really; you don’t want salad and chicken every day of the week forever!
Christina: Exactly; it gives you something to look forward to as well every week, I guess.
Greg: Yes, definitely.
Christina: A lot of people who are dieting, as you mentioned, do cut down on their carbs. Can this be a problem for people wanting to train?
Greg: On their carbohydrates, it can be a problem if you completely cut them out. For most people, if you cut out carbohydrates or cut down on your carbohydrate intake, it will lead to losing fat. But carbohydrates are important for muscle recovery and replenishing your glycogen stores, which are the body’s store of carbohydrates or store of energy.
So on your training day, for example, you’d want to eat some carbohydrates after the exercise, but it would have to be the correct type. So you wouldn’t go and eat a load of sugar after exercise; you’d probably eat something more like a sweet potato or some brown rice.
Christina: Can you give us some examples of sensible eating while you’re working out?
Greg: Yes, if we take a day for example, saying that you were training in the evenings; I’ll just run through an example of what a good day might look like.
For breakfast, you could go for something like three boiled eggs, maybe throw some cold meat on there too, some bacon or something. For a mid morning snack, you could have a handful of nuts with a protein shake.
Then lunch, you want to stick to no carbs at this point, so maybe a salad and some chicken. Mid-afternoon, have an avocado or something like that. Then you would train and for dinner after that, this is where you get your carbohydrate in, so you could have meat or fish etc, with some sweet potato and vegetables. And that would be a pretty good day’s worth of food.
Christina: So that is fairly low in carbohydrates, but you’re still getting some carbohydrate in towards the evening.
Greg: Yes, just around the training period.
Christina: What about vitamins or supplements, do you recommend that people take any while they’re working out?
Greg: We do recommend that they do; you don’t need to, you’ll still get good results even if you don’t take them, but they are only going to be beneficial and enhance your results.
You have to think of it in order of importance; you wouldn’t get very good results if you trained well, took supplements and then didn’t follow the nutrition, but you would if you followed nutrition and trained well. But then you’d make even better results if you did supplements on top. So they are what they’re called, they’re supplementary to it.
The three that we think are most important would be fish oil, magnesium and protein. Protein will help with recovery and muscle growth, Omega 3 fish oil will help reduce inflammation and improve your insulin sensitivity. And then finally, magnesium will help with what we talked about earlier, with stress levels, so it will help reduce cortisol and it will help you get a better night’s sleep.
Christina: Tell me a bit more about the DVCC. Do men and women both do the same training programmes or do they have to be different for men and women?
Greg: They are actually the same; everyone will follow the same programme but, that said, they can be individualised if need be, to men or women.
Christina: So probably the differences would be the amount of weights lifted or the repetitions?
Greg: Yes, it’s normally the weights, but that doesn’t go for everyone; there are some females who are stronger than some of the males; but yes, I guess in a general sense that would be the case, the weights would be different.
Christina: How about the diet then; does that vary as well, according to men and women?
Greg: Not really, again it’s the same for both. Again, it could be changed if necessary, but most of the time it’s just followed that both are the same.
Christina: Next question; do you have to very, very disciplined to get a healthy, beach ready body?
Greg: I guess the answer to that question depends on how far you want to go with it, so it depends on what your vision of a beach ready body will be.
You do have to be disciplined to achieve any goal; how extreme your goal would be. So if you want to get between 5% and 10% body fat, you’re going to have to be much more disciplined than you are to get to 15%. So it really depends.
Having said that, we understand that everyone has a social life; so as much as you want to be disciplined as much as possible, you still want to enjoy yourself and go out for a meal with friends and stuff like that, you don’t want to cut yourself off from the world to achieve it.
Christina: Exactly; you’ll be alone on the beach!
Greg: Yes, you’ll have no friends to go with!
Christina: How about if I’m very busy; I’m in the office a lot or in my car, and I don’t have time to cook any elaborate foods - what kind of meals or snacks could I take with me that are easy to buy or easy to make?
Greg: Now actually, the choices that are available, even just to buy, are much better. In most supermarkets now, there’ll be a lot more salads and things like that, that are actually pretty tasty. They might not be perfect, but they’re much better than they were before.
Christina: So you don’t have to be snacking on snickers bars or packets of crisps. There are actually healthier options out there.
Greg: Yes, there are much more options out there; you just have to find them.
Christina: What about takeaway foods; are there any takeaway foods that are healthy or ok to eat, or do I have to give that one a miss?
Greg: In terms of takeaways, it’s difficult because of what a takeaway would normally be; I think most people’s takeaways would be things like Chinese food, Indian food, pizza – that kind of stuff. None of that is every going to be ideal in terms of losing fat. You can still fit it in if you had it as a reset meal, but otherwise it would be a no-no.
Eating out in restaurants is a little different; you can get away with it a bit more. You can always grab a salad or a steak; you can ask them to miss out some ingredients. For example, what I like to do a lot is I’ll order a burger and just get no bun with it and then maybe I’ll have a salad instead of some chips.
I think most restaurants can be quite good in the way that they will change things for you. The only issue with them is that you don’t know what they use to cook with, so the best oil for cooking would be coconut oil and I’m going to go ahead and say now that probably no restaurants ever use coconut oil because it’s expensive; they will only use cheap oils like vegetable oils, which won’t be ideal.
Christina: Does coconut oil make the food taste like coconut, or you can’t feel it?
Greg: Not really, only if you use a lot of it. If you just use a little bit, then it’s fine.
Christina: What’s the benefit of coconut oil?
Greg: Coconut oil is high in what is called medium chain triglycerides, so it’s basically a type of fat that your body will use for energy, ahead of things like vegetable oils.
Christina: What’s the absolute worst food you can eat if you’re on a diet and working out - is there one?
Greg: For the worst food, there are loads of choices! You want to avoid anything that’s really high in sugar when you’re trying to lose body fat, as the sugar will create an insulin spike which will make you store fat and probably leave you more tired than anything.
But in terms of the worst combination of nutrients, would be fat and sugar, so things like maybe a slice of cheesecake or most cakes, pizza and that kind of stuff, which are high in fat and carbs. They are the ones to be avoided most times.
Christina: So we’ll keep those off the menu then. Is there any food that you should not leave out of your diet when you’re working out; what’s the worst food not to eat?
Greg: The worst food not to eat would be protein; if you were not to eat protein during your training, then you just wouldn’t recover in time. What happens when you’re training is that your muscles are on a minimum leptin level; they are broken down and you get muscle damage. So if you weren’t to consume any protein, by the time you came to train again you would still be very sore and you just wouldn’t recover in time, so you want to keep that high.
Christina: How long have you been a personal trainer and how long have you been with the DVCC?
Greg: The answer to both those questions is the same; the DVCC was my first personal training job and that was September last year, so just over a year.
Christina: What’s the most satisfying part of your job, would you say?
Greg: Definitely helping clients achieve the amazing results that they get and seeing them change their lives for the better. So when you think back to how they first walked through the door, seeing them 30lbs lighter, happier, got more energy, hearing about how well they are doing at work, stuff like that, then that’s a great feeling for us.
Christina: What about the hardest part?
Greg: Probably when people lack the self belief that they can make the change and they maybe stop attending; it’s quite frustrating because you know that they can make the change and you want to help them do it, but if they’re not coming in it’s obviously very difficult to help them.
Christina: Thank you very much Greg, do you have anything else to add?
Greg: I would just say if you’ve been considering training or starting to help your lifestyle, then the best time to start was yesterday; don’t put it off any longer, just get stuck into it as soon as possible!
Christina: Now the DVCC has centres in Bedford, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Hitchin and shortly in Stevenage and Central Bedfordshire. So if you’ve been listening to this interview and you’d like to find out more about how the DVCC can help you, then please book an appointment for a DVCC Right Fit phone call, at www.theDVCC.com/signup.