Why Diets Are A Good Thing & 3 Reasons Why You Might Want To Do One

Article reposted with permission from Liam O’Hagan. Article reposted from https://www.ohagancoaching.com/single-post/Why-Diets-Are-A-Good-Thing-3-Reasons-Why-You-Might-Want-To-Do-One

First off, if you’re one of my fellow personal trainers hear me out. I’m usually one of the trainers that goes against diets but today I had a sudden realization and kind of wanted to challenge my own current thought processes on this topic.

The idea for this came about when I got a notification about someone posting on my free Health & Fitness tips & advice group on Facebook (if you want to join click here). It was someone who was saying that ever since they stopped eating after a certain time they feel less bloated, has less digestive problems and it helps her to lose a little bit of weight/body fat.

Now, this is a myth and has been proven wrong so many times that you don’t have to stop eating at a certain time to lose fat/weight. But, before I replied just saying “this is a myth”, I looked at the bigger picture of what it had done for her and then realized well if it works for her, why would I tell her not do it?

Diets are now often demonized or loved depending on where you read them. (Good) fitness sites usually say that they’re bad and do more harm than good, whereas if you read the latest women’s magazine all they do is go on about the next big diet. And whilst I’d say I’m still against diets (or rather extreme ones), they do have some benefits that people can find valuable.

1. It Teaches Discipline.

One of the main things that people can get from diets is the discipline aspect. Let’s say if you’re on a diet and that diet tells you that you have to restrict something like sweets for it to work, a lot of people follow it for however long that they do the diet. Now, what they may or may not realize is that they now know that they don’t need that one thing and can live without it, so now they can say no to it just that little bit more the next time it’s offered.

I would say that’s a bit of a valuable thing when it comes to losing fat, wouldn’t you?

2. People Become More Aware.

This again kind of goes in line with the restriction thing and having to eat certain things when you’re on a diet. People might start to notice how their body reacts to eating certain things, take for example the ketogenic diet where you severely limit carbohydrates in order for your body to switch the main focus of using glucose (sugar) as energy and into ketones (fat). For some people this might work better for them rather than a normal diet, where they just restrict calories overall, because maybe their body is just better suited to running on fat as the main source of energy rather than sugar.

It’s because people forget when it comes to health, fitness & nutrition we’re all similar but yet so different it’s hard to say what works for everyone.

3. They Give People Guidance.

Most people when it comes to wanting to lose fat or change their body shape feel so confused and lost and I don’t blame them. So if they find something that they’ve seen has worked for other people then I’m sure most of us would try and emulate that for ourselves, right?

I’m not saying all diets give a great guidance but at least people get given some form of a plan to follow and that’s what most people want. Besides, if you follow a plan you’re bound to get some results, after all it’s better than following no plan and getting frustrated and angry about it.

When You Shouldn’t Do a Diet

Now there are certain things you should avoid when looking for when looking for a specific diet to follow to make sure you’re following something that isn’t going to damage your health:

When you feel tired and hungry all the time – whilst you should feel a little hungry on a diet (because you’re now eating less than you’re used to), you shouldn’t feel tired & hungry and you definitely shouldn’t feel it all the time. This would suggest that you’re not getting enough energy to get through the day, so either stop the diet or increase your food intake a little.

When they just sound crazy – think of the “baby food diet”, “the charcoal cleanse”, “the vision diet” (last one you eat with blue sunglasses on – weird I know). These diets are only ever made to get whoever created them famous by coming up with the most ridiculous thing that they can think of to get more publicity, whether it’s good or bad. It’s just common sense.
If they tell you to completely remove one macro-nutrient (carbs, fat, protein) – generally these diets just aren’t good for your health as all of the macro-nutrients serve a purpose in the body and without one of them you’ll struggle with certain functions. Whilst it’s fine to reduce some of them, it’s not a good idea to cut them out completely.
Avoid juice or any other cleanses – not only are they a waste of time and money it’s unnecessary to only consume kale laced smoothies for 3+ days or sticking a coffee enema up your butt (yes, this is a thing). Besides, you have a liver & kidney to do that for you, just feed them good food…

Conclusion

I usually recommend my clients to focus on lifestyle and behaviour change when it comes to food but if you want to get technical about it, then technically that is a diet of some sort. So ultimately we have to sacrifice some of our favourite “bad” foods to get in the shape we want.

Am I saying that all diets are bad? No. Am I saying you should follow a specific diet? No. I am telling you to do what works best for you, even if it’s against what I recommend. If I tell you not to go on a diet but you come to me 4 weeks later and say you achieved the results you wanted then I’m nothing but happy for you.

The Importance of Mobility!

Our Personal Trainers in Abu Dhabi know that there is a lot more to training and being fit than just walking in to a gym and bench pressing and squatting as much as you can. While lifting and pressing and much as you can is fantastic, how long can you keep this up? At some point your body will start taxing you for the amount of stress you’re putting into it.

This is why our personal trainers encourage flexibility and mobility training. Flexibility and mobility play a huge roll in overall health and fitness performance. Knowing how to structure your training routine so that it includes mobility, flexibility, intensity and recovery is what will determine whether or not you can do this for the years to come.

There are many different ways of performing mobility and including it into your program. If you do not have a personal trainer, we recommend hiring one so they can guide you through this process, but if that is not an option for whatever reason use YouTube or Google to look for different examples and start including them into your daily routine until you find what works best for you.

Our personal trainers recommend that you start every workout with a 5-10 minutes of a cardio based warm up followed by 10 to 20 minutes of mobility work and then ending your strength training with 10 to 20 minutes of stretching. If you do this consistently you will notice how much your overall training program will improve and also help you avoid injury as much as possible.

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

If you have every exercised with a personal trainer, chances are they have made you do interval work. It is no secret in the fitness world and among personal fitness trainers that high intensity interval training (HIIT) has been shown to be the most effective form of cardio for fat loss and weight loss. Our personal trainers know that it’s not the only way of performing cardio, but since they usually only have one hour with their clients they know they need to have effective workouts that lead to the best results for their clients.

HIIT consists of short all out bursts of exercise, followed by rest intervals that will last between 1 and 2 minutes in order to recover before performing all out again. HIIT is usually in the form of running sprints (treadmill, outdoor, hills etc.) or sprints on a bike. These high intensity/low intensity intervals should be performed between 10 and 20 minutes. If you are able to perform for longer than this then the intensity was not high enough. Our personal trainers will make sure that you are working at your maximum capacity.

 To achieve the full benefits of a HIIT workout the all out periods should last anywhere between 10 and 30 seconds, if you can perform more than 30 seconds at a time, it means it’s not intense enough. So fire up the intensity and give it your all, you should have nothing left in the tank at the end of the all out period! After you have performed your 30 seconds of high intensity, drop the intensity right down to a slow pace for 1 or 2 minutes to recover. Repeat this process 10 or 20 times per session. Usually 2 or 3 HIIT sessions a week should be enough to help you achieve your fat loss goals if followed with a proper diet. Ask your Abu Dhabi Personal Trainer today about HIIT workouts and incorporating them in to your workout schedule!

More Weights, Less Cardio!

In whatever routine you are doing, there should always be room to do both cardio and weights. But here are Abu Dhabi Personal Trainers we believe that your main focus and energy should be spent on the weights! While cardio is a great tool to help burn extra calories, it can be detrimental to your muscle building and muscle toning goals! Too much cardio can help you lose weight, but is not so great for sustaining and growing your muscles!

Our personal trainers also believe in the mantra of more weights, less cardio because doing weights can help change your body composition for the better! Think tighter and more toned looking bodies! Weights aren’t just good for building muscle but also good and helping you lose weight! Ultimately, it is your muscle mass that is going to give you that athletic toned shape you’re looking for. Without that muscle mass you’re only going to achieve a soft skinny-fat look.

So ladies, don’t be afraid to pick up the weights!! Your personal trainer can help guide you through weight and recommend the best program for you!

Cardio- Do or Don’t?

Firstly, Abu Dhabi Personal Trainers are not here to dismiss all cardio or tell you ‘only’ to complete certain workouts. No. We believe in balance but, more-so, it’s important human’s find activities that they enjoy. Similarly, it is great to set targets. One of our very successful client here in Abu Dhabi, Asma, wanted set her target as ‘run 5km without stopping’ which she quickly achieved and so (you guessed it) she moved to 10km. This was cardio and this was a target achieved.

This blog is more about the benefits of HIIT (high intensity interval training) like sprints and weight training over steady-state or continuous-cardio like jogging, cycling and swimming.

These days here at Abu Dhabi Personal Trainers we see a lot of articles and blogs which dis-credit those who prescribe cardio. There is a lot more promotion of weight and interval training. Steady-state cardio has been losing the popularity battle to HIIT, CrossFit, indoor- interval cycle classes and even high intensity yoga!

To summarise, it isn’t so clear. There are many studies out there that fight for each corner.

We here at Abu Dhabi Personal Trainers recently discovered an article published in October 2015 of the Sports Medicine (New Zealand) journal, hugely entitled: ‘Effectiveness of High-Intensity Interval Training (HIT) and Continuous Endurance Training for VO2max Improvements: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Controlled Trials’ (take a breath). It’s researchers analyzed multiple HIIT Vs cardio trials and took place and declared HIIT the winner. However, within the small print, researchers actually described the conclusion as saying HIIT had “a possibly small beneficial effect” over cardio.

HIIT isn’t called high intensity interval training for nothing! It’s tough and most people don’t do HIIT regularly because it is so hard.

According to this study some people prefer a longer, less taxing route to fitness. Whether or not the difficult intensity of HIIT is worth the benefits is up to the individual. ADPT’ see a lot of clients with limited time to train and so getting the most benefit to time ratio is our prescription.

Researchers compared the after-burn (the amount of O2 your body needs to return to its normal, resting metabolic state. Simply put: more oxygen needed, more calories burned) of the workouts. They concluded that both HIIT and weight training produced more after-burn than cardio for up to 21 hours post-exercise.

But going back to the original point, enjoyment. You need to move an you need not to hate it. Stay safe and be consistent!

Why Warm Up?

Here at Abu Dhabi Personal Trainers we hear a lot of stories about injuries that occur due to a limited warm up. If you are a client, a personal trainer, or are considering a change of a career to become a personal trainer then take a look at the information below:

What is a warm-up?

A warm-up is a session, which takes place prior to doing physical activity is commonly know as a warm up. The best personal trainers in Abu Dhabi will focus their warms up on the upcoming focus of the training session. Usually a warm-up will consist of light cardiovascular exercises combined with stretches.

What happens in a warm-up?

Most warm-up sessions will include a combination of cardiovascular exercises, stretching and strength drills. The cardiovascular exercises are designed to increase circulation, increase body temperature and bring the heart rate up, while stretching warms the muscles and prepare them for the movements they will be required to carry out during the activity. Explosive strength exercises, which may include sprint drills or jumps, gently increase the level of intensity and prepare the body for sudden movements in the game which will follow; these exercises should only be done once the muscles are warm; this will prevent injuries.

Effects of the warm-up

The warm-up should gently prepare the body for exercises by gradually increasing the heart rate and circulation; this will loosen the joints and increase blood flow to the muscles. Stretching the muscles prepares them for physical activity and prevents injuries. The warm-up is also a good opportunity for an individual to prepare themselves mentally for the game ahead and for a team to work together prior to the start of the game. Warm-ups can also be used to practice skills and team drills.

How long should a warm up last?

Most warm up sessions last between 10 and 20 minutes. This allows the body plenty of time to gradually get ready for physical activity and gives the client time to prepare them mentally.

Preventing injury

The most important reason for doing a warm up is to prevent injury during exercise; keeping the muscles warm will prevent acute injuries such as hamstring strains and will stave off overuse injuries by allowing the body to prepare steadily and safely.