We all know, calories in and calories out, together is what helps us get our dream physique. If one is losing weight, calories in must be lower than calories out and vice-versa for anyone gaining weight, but why do most of us fail to reach our goal, if the mantra is that simple. Where are we going wrong?
Calories in and calories out, together is what helps us get our dream physique.
Well, the answer is we are counting calories wrong and I am not here to tell you, it’s your fault, because it’s not. Practically, no one can track calories accurately.
We are counting calories wrong.
Have you seen labels on food packaging that says 1 cup serving size or 1 tablespoon or teaspoon serving size? They provide the nutrition table according to that serving size. Now, the cup, the tablespoon and the teaspoon weight is considered different in different countries. So, the nutrition label on the packet becomes insignificant with these differences in these relative measurements methods across the world (However, if the serving size is mentioned in grams, the accuracy improves significantly.)
It’s difficult to track calories of items like bread, cheese slices and similar items. Every slice of bread and cheese are different in size and width. Even if you know, the total calories of the pack and can weigh out every slice to find the right calories per slice but it just too impractical and time consuming for me. Many people simply use apps like myfitnesspal or similar apps to track calories and macros which makes approximate estimations to track daily calorie intake and thus, compromises some accuracy along with it.
It’s difficult to track calories of items like bread, cheese slices and similar items. Every slice of bread and cheese are different in size and width.
Lastly, even if you track everything right. You do all the calculation manually, you can still be incorrect, considering the fact that labels lie. This is somewhat of a marketing gimmick used by companies. There are a lot of companies, that shows less calories per serving than in real. If lower calories per serving is mentioned, the sales will go up because people will be more willing to buy it.
Now, this article is not to discourage you to track calories. It’s just that you need to know, we are just tracking it with significant approximations, so the total calorie intake that you track is always somewhat incorrect. So, along with tracking calories, it’s important to track your weight daily and measure the weekly progress. Along with daily weight check in, use the mirror to track your progress.
The Internet can be an endless ocean of knowledge or a completely messed environment at the same time. When you learn from the Internet, you sometimes learn about a bit incorrect information or sometimes too much information can just befog your brain.
Here are the top 4 overrated things in the fitness industry, that you should not overthink about. I have done the mistakes, learnt things the hard way, I don’t want you to do the same.
1. Mind Muscle Connection: If you are somewhat interested in muscular hypertrophy and did a bit digging on the internet, it’s most likely that you have heard this term. Mind Muscle Connection in a layman’s term is feeling the engagement of the particular muscle or muscle groups, you are training at the moment. Mind Muscle Connection is in the list because most people out there just say, have a mind muscle connection but the problem is people who are new to lifting weights can’t exactly feel the muscles at the first place. So, if one is lifting weights and just don’t have a tuned mind muscle connection, it’s not correct that the muscle is not being trained at the first place. Mind Muscle Connection comes with training experience and you will understand it well, after you dedicate some time to training. Even if you don’t understand it in the beginning, keep training with proper form and you will get better at it.
2. Range of Motion: Every exercise movement has a range of motion. It’s basically the pathway of the movement of the resistance while training a muscle or a muscle group. Again, it’s quite possible that you might have heard some influencers talk about full range of motion and how people ego lift with a minimal range of motion and to some extent that’s true. But what if you’re training with the right form, you are training with light weights and still can’t cover the whole range of motion? Every time you try to go for the whole pathway, you sacrifice some form. Is it worth it? Definitely not, range of motion in an exercise is important and I agree to that but at the same time, we must understand it’s different for everyone out there. We all have different biomechanics, we all have different flexibility levels, so the correct range of motion for a individual in a particular exercise is the one where he sticks to the right form and tries to cover most of the movement possible with his current flexibility level.
The correct range of motion for a individual in a particular exercise is the one where he sticks to the right form and tries to cover most of the movement possible with his flexibility level.
3. Short Rest Periods between the sets for Weightloss: I have personally done this stupidity for a year and I can say it’s one of the dumbest and most misleading advice. Weight Training is for building muscle and strength and you don’t want your weight session to be cardio. If you really wanna burn some calories, a cardiovascular exercise will help you way more than weight training anyway. If you are training with short rest periods between sets, you will not be able to lift heavier and will be stuck at a particular weight, hence minimising the scope of hypertrophy. I generally go for 1-2 minutes rest period between my easy sets and on the top sets, it increases to 2-3 minutes or even more. You need to rest properly between sets to lift heavy. Even if you are resting short, any weight session is just gonna burn 100-160 kcals for a 60 minutes session and a moderate intensity cardio session for the same duration on the other hand can burn up to 500 kcals approximately. So, leave the weights and go for cardiovascular exercises, if you wanna just burn more calories.
I generally go for 1-2 minutes rest period between my easy sets and on the top sets, it increases to 2-3 minutes or even more. You need to rest properly between sets to lift heavy.
4. Lower Body Fat Percentage: We all want to look like our favourite instagram influencers who is obviously bigger and leaner than our current state. A lot of times, there are PEDs involved and that’s why attaining and maintaining that low of a percentage is often difficult naturally. For being shredded, being natural, sometimes some muscles are sacrificed, the sex drive goes away, the energy levels crashes down and it’s not fun overall. So, everyone who’s trying to lose weight, just go slower with the process. I know it takes a lot of patience but it will be worth it and just try to maintain a body fat percentage where you feel healthy and have energy to push yourself in the gym.
After writing the 8 mistakes for beginners blog, I actually decided to make it a series where I can point out the mistake and say why it’s wrong. I do think it’s a better way of learning in general.
So, here are the 7 common mistakes that most people in the gym make, that’s slowing down their progress.
1. Suppliments over a Proper Diet: This is by far the most common mistake, that people make. They think food suppliments are an absolute necessity when it comes to nutrition in general but on the contrary as the name itself suggest suppliments are the products that help you fulfill your requirements that you can’t satisfy from whole foods. They are not a replacement for food itself. If you can satisfy your protein requirements for a day from whole foods, you absolutely don’t need to invest in protein powders. You don’t need to invest in fat burners for getting lean, you can just do it by making smarter food choices and reducing your total daily calorific intake. I mean if you are filthy rich and want to buy those suppliments, sure you can but I am not one of them and don’t wanna buy those super costly suppliments when I can fulfill my requirements from food itself, just a personal opinion. I am not against the use of suppliments but just wanna convey the message that you don’t need to buy all of them. You just need to get the ones that are an absolute necessity.
A well balanced diet is all you need to make progress in your fitness journey. Don’t fall into the marketing gimmicks of the Suppliment Companies and choose to buy the suppliments, that are an absolute necessity and save yourself some bucks.
2. Underestimating Warmups and doing it the wrong way: Warmups are one of the most undervalued topics when it comes to fitness discussions. Warmups are hands down a must. It keeps you injury free, helps you lift more and perform well in the gym. However, people either skip the warmups or do it the wrong way. Have you seen that person in the gym who reaches the weights arena and starts with his static stretching routine? Yes, I just wanna say, don’t be that guy. That’s stupidity or maybe lack of knowledge but whatever just don’t do it. There are various studies done regarding the topic and the conclusion of the studies is static stretching before a weight session, doesn’t do any benefit, rather it decreases your strength and makes you more injury prone. If you really wanna stretch before the workouts, go for the dynamic stretch and save the static stretching for the end of the workout. I don’t do stretching in my warmups. I generally do a moderate intensity cardio for 5-10 minutess and then, 2-3 warmup sets with weights for the particular muscle, I am training for the day.
Static stretching before a weight session, doesn’t do any benefit, rather it decreases your strength and makes you more injury prone. If you really wanna stretch before the workouts, go for the dynamic stretching and save the static stretching for the end of the workout.
3. Neglecting Cardio: I was that guy, you will always see in the weights room but never in the cardio room. Everyone likes those massive biceps and the badass chest and shoulder muscles but at the end, we need to remember the heart is what helps us to function efficiently. THEHEART IS THE MOST IMPORTANT MUSCLE. Doing cardio will not only help your cardiovascular health, help you live longer and a healthier life but it will also help you in lifting by improving your endurance in general. So, when you do cardio regularly, it’s more likely that you will perform well in those sets with crazy high rep ranges. An average of 20 minutes of cardio is recommended for a person in a day at minimum and it’s advised to be done all days of the week. Now, when I say cardio must be done, it’s not necessary to do all of it in the gym itself. For me, I do the warmups with cardio itself, then I brought in some minor daily life changes which help me hit my cardio duration target for the day by taking stairs whenever possible and walking or cycling to nearby places I need to visit.
An average of 20 minutes of cardio is recommended for a person in a day at minimum and it’s advised to be done all days of the week, regardless of the weight training schedule.
4. Underestimating Sleep: If someone asks me, what’s the most important thing to improve your recovery and overall performance, my answer is always gonna be sleep. Now, the duration of sleep required for an individual to be at peak performance varies from person to person. There are people who require just 6 hours of sleep a day to be at optimum performance and there are people like me who require a good amount of 8 hours to 9 hours of sleep to be at my peak. So, find the sweet sleep duration for yourself and don’t make the mistake of underestimating the importance of sleep required for your daily performance.
5. Not using Internet to it’s Full Potential: In the last article, we have discussed about getting a trainer and how strong of an impact, a good coach have to one’s fitness journey but the only truth is very few people actually have access to a well learned trainer. This is when the internet gets into the conversation, being an extremely powerful tool to educate yourself. Now, the Internet do have a lot of fitness influencers who spew nonsense for more attention but there are good educated people too. You just need to find the right people to learn from. If you want to learn about form and exercise movements, I highly recommend the 3 ‘How to’ playlists from ScottHermanFitness on YouTube. If you want to learn about dieting and weight loss, I highly recommend you to check out Greg Doucette on YouTube.
6. Socialising in mid of Workouts: Now, this is just a personal opinion but I actually consider socialising in between workouts as a mistake. It breaks your concentration, takes your mind away from exercising to every random topic possible. I don’t enjoy that and feel like concentrating on workouts just help me end with a better and more efficient workout in general.
7. Overcomplicating the Simple Path: When you learn from the internet, the obvious next thing that’s gonna happen to you is information overload. You will get advice to train in a particular RPE, train with a particular rep range for muscle hypertrophy. You will get advice regarding number of meals in a day and meal timings. You will get advice regarding the best workout timing and what not. The reality is you need to do things that give you results. There’s no best time for the gym. You just need to show up everyday. The rep range that gives you results is the best rep range. The number of meals in a day is the number of times, you feel hungry (however, the total calorific intake needs to be fixed, irrespective of the number of meals). You just need to keep things simple, train harder than last time, eat clean, learn forever and stay committed.
I have learnt a lot about fitness and dieting, the hard way. I have done some horrible mistakes, some minor ones but whatever they are, I don’t want you to do the same. I am not ashamed to talk about my mistakes and here are my top 8 mistakes as a beginner that you should avoid for getting better gains, the easy way.
1. Heavier weight over lifting technique or form: It’s all over the Internet. To build your physique, you need to lift heavier and I totally agree with it. However, there are few missing words. You, yes the person reading this, “You need to lift heavier with time but to an extent where you don’t compromise your form.” The exercise movements are designed to hit a particular muscle group or a set of muscle groups. So, when you forget about the movement pathway of the exercise and just focus on lifting the weight anyhow, the body will not follow the exercise form, rather it will find itself the strongest possible path. The problem with this is, you are not hitting the target muscle or muscle groups effectively with an addition of the risk of awfully injuring yourself.
You need to lift heavier with time but to an extent where you don’t compromise your form.
2. Trying all sorts of fancy exercises without having the proper foundation: Now, I don’t want you to get me wrong with this one. Trying new exercises is always great. In fact, I prefer shuffling exercises, after maybe 8 weeks of sticking to a particular training regime but here I am talking about absolute newbies. This advice is for them. You need to learn all the major compound movements and basic exercises like Squats, Bench Press, Deadlifts, Barbell Rows, etc before trying out all the fancy ones. Get a nice hold of the exercise movements, get stronger in the movements and then try out new stuff.
3. Neglecting the Negatives: Every exercise movement has basically 2 parts, the positive part where you lift the weight against the gravity, contracting your muscles and the negative part is where you bring the weight down, relaxing the already contracted muscles and in fact, more muscle damage is actually observed in the negative part of the movement than in the positive half and honestly this is something that most beginners totally ignore. They just lift the weight and drop it, there’s is absolutely no control in the negative half of motion. You need to stop doing that. If you ignore the negatives, you are really missing out on a lot of gains. Focus on the negatives.
4. Not getting a trainer: Now, this is a tricky advice but I do believe it’s a good one though. A knowledgeable and good trainer can absolutely take your progress to great heights but if you get coached by a not so qualified trainer, you can absolutely get into trouble. I can truly say, without any doubt, no amount of videos on the internet can replace the physical presence of a good trainer but finding one is also extremely difficult specially in India. If you don’t find yourself the right coach atleast at the beginning, be in search of one while you keep learning from the Internet. Few of my personal favourite YouTube channels are Scott Herman Fitness, Greg Doucette, Jo Lindner and Mountaindog1. Check them out, you will find quality information without any second thought.
5. Ego Lifting for Social Media Content: You know it, this thing is real. I have done it, you have done it but you just should not do it anymore. I agree we love showing off our strength over the social media and there’s nothing wrong with it unless, you ego lift to impress your followers. We have already discussed the problems and disadvantages, all of it in the very first point.
6. Trying to go all out in the initial days: Again, quite a common mistake. The major chunk of beginners make this mistake, some suck through the pain and make working out a habit and some just simply give up and never return back to the gym. You don’t need to push yourself too hard on the very first day. If you have never exercised your whole life and it will be difficult for you to adapt to working out but you need to give yourself the adequate time to adjust. Some people can take less time and some can take a longer period to adapt. Give yourself the time, you do not need to hurry the process. It’s okay to have slower progress.
8. Comparing you progress with others: I totally get it. We all compare ourselves with others and bet ourselves up. It’s totally normal but you just need to understand that any other person other than you, has a completely different body with different genetics and so their journey will be different, so will be their progress. You just need to stick to your fitness journey and you need to remember that you are becoming a better version of yourself. It’s always a win for you and you don’t need any other comparing parameter other than you yourself. To understand more about realistic expectations and somatotypes, check out my article on the same: https://chiru.fitness.blog/2020/11/29/realistic-expectations-for-natural-lifters-and-knowing-all-about-your-body-type-the-most-basic-yet-the-most-important-concept-for-a-successful-fitness-journey/
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