Hey there,
Every week from now until… the end of time, I’m going to be doing these weekly journals. Hopefully artificial super intelligence comes to fruition before I die so my consciousness can be uploaded and these can continue (probably much better than they’re going to be while I’m alive).
The goal of these journals is mostly just for myself. For reflection and learning. Getting more out of my own experiences. I’m sharing them because I’ve been able to connect with and learn a ton from others doing similar things.
The goal isn’t to be as accurate as possible or an intricate writer. In fact, I’ll probably be wrong about most things most of the time. My grammar and writing will probably be subpar most of the time as well.
The goal is to reflect on my learning, reading, experiences and expand on them. Maybe help some folks out along the way.
Bear with me as I get started with these. I may miss some weeks. Being a paramedic, working 12-hour rotating (days and nights) shift work can sometimes take a toll and breaks may be needed.
Let’s dive in.
Data Over Feelings
I learned this phrase a while ago (not sure when, maybe 2020 or so) from Layne Norton. He’s a diet/nutrition and strength training expert and science communicator.
This phrase really resonated with me because well, I’m a human and humans have a lot of feelings. I also have a lot of feelings. There’s nothing wrong with having feelings per se. But in the world of diet/nutrition, people have A LOT of feelings. People tend to be tribal about their nutrition practices and treat it as a religion, especially on social media.
“High carb diets are bad for you.” “High fat diets are bad for you.” “High protein diets are bad for you.” “High carb is okay, but absolutely no sugar.” “Okay actually you can have sugar, but absolutely no artificial sweeteners.” “You can only eat things that are natural and organic.”
These are just some of the things you might see or hear on social media.
What I love about data > feelings is that it tends to lead you down a path where you can actually achieve your body composition, performance, and lifestyle goals by eating the foods that you actually like to eat.
You are a special snowflake, but you’re not that special of a snowflake. You’re still a human being.
You can be healthy and achieve your goals with a variety of nutritional approaches. This is a beautiful thing. I can work with people, meet them where they’re at, and help them achieve their goals without pushing my personal, feeling-based narrative on them.
When something works well for you, you’re going to have some feelings about it. When something doesn’t work well for you, you’re going to have some FEELINGS about it. That’s okay, have those feelings. But don’t push your nutritional practices onto other people because you have those feelings.
Science isn’t perfect. Science takes time. Science self-corrects over time through replication.
Remember data > feelings.
Showing Up When You Don’t Feel Like It
There is a case to be made for taking a day off, skipping a workout, vegging on the couch, watching netflix, etc…
But, consistency is always king in any pursuit of success.
You won’t always be inspired or motivated. No matter how many jacked guys and girls you follow on Instagram. Sometimes external circumstances can mess with your daily habits. For example, a family or friend needs your help or has an event which throws you off your sleep, training, and nutrition habits that you’ve spent a lot of time ingraining into your routine. Even if you have the passion and derive a strong sense of enjoyment out of the process of achieving your goals, you’ll still run into times where it doesn’t play out the way you would like it to.
This is where discipline comes into play.
There will be times when you’re tired, under-slept, under-nourished, or simply don’t feel like putting in the work. These times shouldn’t be chronically occurring. If they are, that’s a different problem. You don’t have the systems in place to be carrying out the process of achieving your goals anyway, and that’s the thing you’ll need to work on.
A lot of the time the issue comes from initiating the thing you need to get done. Here are a few of tips that have helped me get over the hump:
5-second rule. Mel Robbins wrote a whole book on this and I would highly recommend you check it out. Essentially, when you’re faced with a decision whether or not to do the thing you don’t feel like doing, try and make that decision in the first 5 seconds of thinking about it and start moving towards getting it done right away. Action it right away. This will increase your likelihood of choosing to do the thing over not doing the thing.
Tell yourself you just need to do the thing for only a few minutes and then if you really feel like it, you can stop. Not sure where I got this one from. This works really well for getting yourself into the gym. You’re tired and you tell yourself “okay, I just need to get in there, put a bit of work in, then I can go home”. But really what happens is that you start the workout, get into the groove, and usually end up getting through the full thing.
Have a why. This one is so goddamn crucial. If you don’t have a why, you’ll always be able to find ways out of doing the things. Having a why can give you that added motivation and drive to do the things when you really don’t feel like doing them. It’s a bit of a fear of failure concept if your why is solely attached to something external to you (ie. winning a competition). It’s okay to have outcome goals and external motivations. But, shifting your why internally is likely going to increase your adherence and compliance with the work required to achieve your goals.
Weight Gain Overnight
I see a lot of people out there who demonize the scale to measure progress for body composition change. They weigh themselves, notice they’ve gained a significant amount of weight overnight, give up on their goals, and start binge eating. No shade (a little shade), but typically I see it from women, and I can think of a likely explanation as to why that is. Women tend to have a greater amount of water weight fluctuations in a given time frame than men.
There are a bunch of different ways to go about measuring your body composition progress in the gym. You’ve got the body weight scale, circumference measurements, progress photos//mirror checks, skinfold assessments, the way your clothes fit, BIA, and if you want to drop some serious cash, maybe even a DEXA scan.
The scale is a great tool to see if you’re on track to achieve your body composition goals. Whether you want to build muscle in a small calorie surplus or at maintenance, or you want to lose fat in a calorie deficit. It’s a great tool even though it doesn’t actually tell you anything about the composition of your weight (ie. lean tissue, body fat %, etc.). Yes, even the BIA scales out there aren’t really telling you much about your body composition and have some pretty significant accuracy issues associated with them.
What the scale does tell you is whether or not you’re eating the requisite amount of calories on average to build muscle (in a small surplus or at maintenance) or lose fat (in a deficit).
Some common mistakes I see from people when it comes to using the scale:
- They’re weighing themselves inconsistently at different times of the day.
- They aren’t weighing themselves frequently enough throughout the week.
- They think a single body weight increase automatically equals fat gain.
- They weigh themselves after they know they went significantly off track with their training or nutrition.
What’s a better way to think about and use the scale?
Weigh yourself multiple times per week, at least two, but more is better. Weigh yourself at the same time of day. Typically I recommend in the morning when you wake up, after you’ve used the bathroom and before you eat or drink anything. This will help to reduce the degree of seeing significant water weight fluctuations.
Use and compare the weekly averages not the daily weigh-ins to see if you’re making progress.
Understand that when you have a significant increase or decrease in weight from the day before, that most or all of that weight change can be attributed to water weight fluctuations.
Motherf***er, you think that you gained 3lbs of fat overnight. Let’s break that down. It takes approximately 3500 calories OVER your maintenance calories to gain 1lb of fat mass. That means if you’re 3lbs up from yesterday, you would have had to eat 10,500 calories OVER your maintenance calories. If your maintenance calories are 2500, that means you would have had to eat 13,000 calories yesterday in order to attribute that weight increase to fat mass.
Your body weight can fluctuate based on so many factors including your salt intake, water intake, carbohydrate intake, stress level, sleep quantity and quality, a particularly hard training session, etc, etc, etc…
If you only weigh yourself once every couple of weeks or you’re weighing yourself at inconsistent times of day, you’re setting yourself up to see these large fluctuations.
The scale can’t tell you how much muscle mass you have or how much fat mass you have. But if you use it correctly, it’s a really good proxy to see if you’re moving in the right direction with your nutrition and training to reach your body composition goals.
Most of the time I find that body weight in combination with another measure of progress (ie. photos/mirror checks) works best for most people.
For those of you out there with diagnosed mental health issues or psychiatric illness, don’t listen to me. And don’t listen to any other fitness professional out there trying to tell you how you should think. Go see a real professional and work that in, in combination with a fitness professional.
Peace out friend,
Jamie