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I’ve been going to commercial gyms for a very long time. And going 4 days a week for months on end you end up recognizing a lot of faces.

People I’ve “known” (I don’t really know them lol. When I go to the gym my headphones go on and I’m in the zone. So I don’t do much chatting when I’m lifting) for years still look like they did when I first laid eyes on them.

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that a lot of people just don’t understand what “working out” actually means.

Yeah, working out can be as simple as walking, for people that have been sedentary for years, but after a while people have to grasp the reality of why they hit the gym but look the same year around.

5 Reasons You Look Exactly The Same As Last Year

  1. Mindless Eating
  2. Careless Lifting
  3. Cardio Overload
  4. Sleepless Nights
  5. Stressful Stress

1.Mindless Eating

Most people have no clue how important calorie counting actually is when it comes to body transformation.

When you first start out, just switching to better food choices will have a huge impact on your physique.

But when you stop seeing results with that method you have to rely on tracking your calories.

What I’ve observed most people do is eat foods without the understanding of what affects that specific meal has on their bodies.

For example, let us take the basic American diet. 

It’s a high carb diet that usually comes from food like products. Most people would call these empty calories.

So if I were to describe a basic American diet it would go something like this:

Breakfast:

  • Iced Coffee
  • Cereal Bar

Snack:

  • Iced Coffee
  • Muffin

Lunch:

  • Subway Footlong

Dinner:

  • (Insert Italian dish here)

Now, this example could be on the extreme end. Fortunately, nowadays a higher percentage of people realize the importance of healthy eating, so I feel like most try to make healthy choices.

Which is good but don’t fall for those frozen dinners with the label “Healthy” on them.

Always read the ingredients list.

The Fix

So to fix this issue we have to start looking at food from a refueling standpoint and trust me this thinking doesn’t take away from enjoying the foods you love.

If you workout (that shouldn’t even be a statement) you need to refuel.

There’s no question about it. You’re breaking down your body when you train, so you need the necessary foods to rebuild yourself back up.

I’m going to go through a quick rundown of what you need to know:

Protein

Protein is the material used to repair your tissue. Now this includes all the tissue in your body, especially MUSCLES!

So if you’re trying to build some more mass while also burning some body fat, protein definitely has to go up.

Simply adding 2 eggs to your breakfast and a chicken breast to your dinner can add at least 50 grams of protein to your daily intake.

Carbs

Now I know what most people think, carbs are the enemy.

Not so fast. You’re half right and half wrong.

Carbs can benefit you greatly if you need them and if you get them from a good source.

I probably don’t need to say this, but you should know that avoiding processed carbs is a must.

Processed carbs fall in the categories of breads, pastas, sugars, cereals, etc.

You don’t need these kinds of carbs, especially on a regular basis. So ditch these types of foods and reach for whole real foods.

So for example:

  • Potatoes (Red, Sweet, Golden, etc)
  • Jasmine White Rice
  • Fruits
  • Vegetables
  • Gluten Free Oatmeal 
  • Sprouted Grains

These are the best types of carbs since your body actually gets to use the nutrients provided by the food.

Now for the sake of not making this a 10,000 word post. Let me give you the simple explanation on who should be eating carbs.

Nate Miyaki talks greatly about using carbs to refuel your glycogen stores, which is your bodies stored energy.

So if you sit for most of the day and don’t work out, your carb requirements are miniscule. You’re not burning much energy so your body doesn’t need to replenish that energy.

If you keep ingesting carbs (or calories to be exact), they’ll just spill over into fat stores.

So if you want to eat a lot of carbs without being negatively affected by them, then you need to be very active.

Workout, hike, run, go have fun outside.

All these things burn calories and that’s whats going to allow you to transform your body.

Fats

There used to be a time when fats were looked upon as an evil thing that caused heart disease.

Research now totally goes against the old belief that fats kill. (1)

It’s now understood that fats play a vital role in our health. Our bodies use fats for a variety of different reasons, the most important ones being vitamin D and hormonal production (2). Cholesterol is a precursor to anabolic hormones which are steadily decreasing in our population. 

2.Careless Lifting

To me, lifting is an art. To be able to train your body to remember movements with the correct mechanics, to be able to completely change the way you look, to be able to move heavy ass objects. All this and more is something I’ve always been a fan of.

Lifting has done so much for me and I know it will do the same for you.

I see people all the time attempting to lift.

And I mean attempting in the nicest way possible.

There’s so much more to working out than just lifting the bar up and down.

People need to understand that mechanics mean everything. If you’re not deadlifting correctly, you’re not engaging the muscles you’re trying to train. If you don’t squat correctly you can totally change the engagement from hip dominant to quad dominant.

Also having an understanding of parameters, the importance of picking the right sets, reps, rest periods, tempos, body splits, exercises, and right environment is important if you want to be successful in the gym.

If you currently only run on the treadmill and use machines than read this article. It’ll help you get a better understanding of how to layout a proper workout.

Learn how to design a REAL workout

3.Cardio Overload

If you ask any of my friends they’ll tell you how much I hate cardio.

Serious, I despise it.

I’ll sprint 1 or 2 times a week, but you’ll never see me jogging for long distances.

I feel like most people go overboard when it comes to cardio. Running is awesome for fat loss, cardiovascular health, and many other reasons but to be completely honest I think it’s boring.

There are a lot of other ways to train your cardiovascular system while still burning body fat that will make long distance running look like a 3 hour chess match.

What happens to most people when they want to start working out is they hop on the treadmill and run for an hour or more. Unfortunately the next day they end up waking up with knee pain.

This is because running adds a ton of impact to your knees. So people who haven’t done shit for years, and one day want to get in shape SHOULD NOT start by running.

More than likely they’ll end up with knee pain and quit.

The way I like to get my cardio in is in my actual workout.

In order to do that I decrease rest periods. Keeping it below 30-45 seconds between exercise will have you huffing and puffing through the whole workout.

You can also add a conditioning exercise at the end of your workouts by adding some kettlebell swings or battles ropes and doing it for time. Each week increase the time by 10-20 seconds.

4.Sleepless Nights

Sleep is pretty important. I know I don’t need to tell you that.

When you’re head hits the pillow, this is the time you actually want to focus on. This is when your body starts to repair itself. The longer you sleep, the longer time you have to repair.

I recently listened to one of Chris Kresser’s podcast with Dan Pardi.  (Listen Here)

I was amazed to find out that there were multiple studies done that correlated less sleep with a higher chance of getting heart disease.

According to Dan Pardi; 

“These studies were followed up with short prospective-term studies where they took healthy young men and they would subject them to, you know, 4 hours of sleep per night, and then they would monitor some of their homeostatic hormones like leptin and ghrelin, and they noticed that both leptin and ghrelin, which affect feeding, energy regulation, sympathetic nervous system activity — all things that will eventually help to control or influence body weight — would adjust in a manner so that you were more likely to be hungry and more likely to be storing fat, and less likely to be burning energy.  So that’s been followed up multiple times both in animal studies and in humans, and additionally we also see that there is a pretty immediate and significant impairment in glucose regulation.  So the thinking is that chronic sleep deficiency is going to not only predispose you to obesity, and by the way, 81 out of 89 studies that have looked at this have found positive findings, and the risk seems to be that lack of sleep or chronic sleep restriction will increase your risk for obesity about 55%.”

So basically if you don’t get enough sleep you’re forcing your body to be fat and unhealthy.

Get more sleep my friend.

In the podcast Dan stated that the average time of right around 8 hours was where most of the people in a study maintained the lowest weight.

5.Stressful Stress

Nothing sucks more than being stressed out.

Unfortunately everyone goes through it, but on the plus side there are some good stresses that are required for your growth, not just physically, but in life itself.

Today we’re talking about the bad stresses that most people have.

Now anything can pretty much be stressful. Internal and external stresses will signal cortisol and adrenalin to be excreted.

Since most people are stressed 24/7 that means they’re getting a constant supply of these catabolic hormones that should only be released during certain times and for short periods.

I’ve written a previous article explaining what I do in order to live a Stress Free Life.

So after reading through this whole post would you say that you’re probably committing one, if not all of these mistakes?

Mistakes that have led to wasted years trying to change your body?

Well, now things have changed.

With a new found perspective on the mistakes you’ve been making at the gym, you can now go in confidently knowing that what you’re doing is actually worth your time.

Stay strong my friend,

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