We often meet people who say: “I lost or gained “ an absurd number of” kilos in a month with this new diet and workout program!”. After a while, we run into this people once again, and they are now very unmotivated because they are back to their starting point after all the sacrifices they went through (and there is no doubt that they made that effort). This is why we decided to speak about a subject that is quality weight gain or loss during a diet and training regimen.

SEE ALSO: JOANA’S 16 WEEK TRANSFORMATION

Since a few years ago we have been guiding and coaching athletes in the fitness industry, so we know that good progress is that which is consistent but relatively slow. In fitness, our goal is to make the athlete build as much muscle as possible within a given time frame (this is obviously according to the athlete’s specific goals) and after that fase, lose as much fat as possible maintaining as much muscle as he can. Despite this being our goal, there are huge limitations within our body in terms of how much muscle it can build and how much fat it can lose within a specific time frame.

In other words, when someone tells us he lost too much weight while on a diet, the first thought that comes to mind is that that person extremely restricted his body from calories during the diet period, making the body use it’s fat resources. Also, he lost some water and muscle in the process. This process normally translates into a danger sign for our bodies, because our body’s function is to keep us alive and balanced.

Well, when our body feels threatened because it is being given very little food, it will starting orienting it’s efforts to reduce the caloric expenditure and start saving all the calories it possibly can.

Now you can start to understand why, as soon as you get off the diet it looks like you ruin all your results after a little while, your body was in an extreme deficit and is trying to hold on to everything it can to stay alive, because it felt threatened with the lack of energy it had access to. So, from those 10kg you lost, 4 or 5 were  a good quality loss (fat) and all the rest were a bad quality loss (water, muscle – signs that your body was desperate to reduce caloric expenditure, seeing as the amount of calories you burn is largely related to the amount of muscle you have).

SEE ALSO: CAN FIBRE AID FAT LOSS?

The opposite happens when somebody wants to pack on muscle mass. There are those who say: “With this new trendy workout I put on “an absurd number of kilos” in a month. In this case, we start to worry immediately about adjusting the person’s diet to a diet with less calories, because the body can’t build that much muscle in the said time frame, because the biological process of building muscle is extremely complex and requires the body to work immensely. So, odds are that most of the weight gained isn’t actually muscle, but mainly unwanted fat mass.

Our solution:

Like we said in the beginning, when your diet requires a lot of sacrifice, it’s usually a bad sign. What is important is that you maintain a lifestyle that can provide results without making you feel like you are jeopardizing your daily life. After a while, you will look at yourself and not believe that you are much better than you were and you didn’t even feel the time go by! This is the rule that makes us endorse flexible dieting and implement it in our lifestyle. Our athlete members (amateurs or not), all went through a fase where they did very restrictive diets, 100% clean, low in fat, extremely high in protein, where they couldn’t eat out, go out at night, etc. All this effort in order to obtain a body free of fat and with aesthetical muscular proportions. We got to a point where our quality of life was being compromised. Nowadays, with flexible dieting, everything has changed. Our quality of life has improved dramatically, we don’t restrict ourselves from the pleasures of life, and we have exactly the same results (maybe even better ones) than we had before, seeing as we don’t have any eating disorders or deficiencies. This way, we stay much more faithful to the plan, and we are able to progress at the right speed so that the progression has as much quality as possible. Sometimes we aren’t even aware that we’re dieting. Also, we don’t lose our results when we transition from the fat loss fase into that maintenance or muscle building fase.

So don’t forget, if you’re making too many sacrifices, something is wrong.

If you liked our article, like our Facebook page. Also, if our advice changed your quality of life, increased your self-esteem and brought you results regarding body composition like it did to the #TeamTransformerz members, please leave your testimony on our page.

Key points in this article:

• The success rate of a person who is coached is significantly superior to the success rate of a person who does everything on her own;
• Learning everything alone can take many years. You will fail in trying to make what works for others work for you;
• Despite it being simple to make things work once you know your stuff, there are many approaches to dieting that should be taught by someone who can get us better results, and make us become autosufficient in record time. Specially if you want to follow a diet that isn’t painful, like flexible dieting;
• Being coached gives meaning to the saying: “do what I say, not what I do”. A person on her own is prone to straying from the right path due to many temptations and even new trends. A coach won’t let you stray from your “Yellow Brick Road” which will bring you the best results, will keep you motivated, and will also give you the best opinion on any fitness trend you have questions about.
• The coach’s mission is to support you and give you reasons to keep motivated. The process is much less hard when we have someone helping us in these aspects;
• Look at being coached like “Going towards your goal by aeroplane instead of walking”. By walking, you’ll eventually get to your destination, unless you get tired of walking. By going on an aeroplane, all you need to do is let yourself be guided, and you’ll arrive at your destination in much less time, and with much less sacrifice;
• Achieving a good physique doesn’t make the person in question an expert on the matter. It does however make that person know what needs to be done in her personal case. If you want a coach, choose one who has helped many people achieve their goals.

 RELATED: THE BEST TIPS TO CONTROL HUNGER!

Some of the members of #TeamTransformerz are fitness professionals, whether it be competitors, Personal Trainers or even Nutritionists. These same members (and the #TeamTransformerz staff in itself, seeing as we coach and guide each other) are sometimes exposed to questions like: “If you know so much about this, why do you need a coach?”

Well, in this article we explain exactly why it is that everybody needs a coach, guide or trainer (call it whatever you wish), what the great advantages that that brings you and why even the best aren’t afraid to ask for help.

Reasons why everyone should be coached:

• Learning how to do things takes time. If you’re coached, there will be less attempts and less mistakes.
• Most people make the mistake of looking up diets on the internet. By searching for diets on the internet you will end up with one of two results: You will have a fixed plan where your menu doesn’t change at all, and after very little time you will find yourself saturated. Or, you’ll start a diet that works perfectly for someone, but for you is simply inadequate. Normally, when you search the internet you can even end up with a mixture of both those mistaken diets. With a good coach, the diet model will be flexible and customized to your lifestyle.
• Along with the mistake of finding diets on the internet comes the mistake of following trend diets. There are no carb diets, high carb diets, low fat diets, high fat diets, cyclical diets, timing diets, among many others. When someone tries to do everything herself, sooner or later she will will soon find herself following a  diet that appears to be incredible in theory. But, in practice, it doesn’t work for her. Also, these diets tend to be inflexible, which makes them extremely hard to follow and diminish the quality of life of those following them. By being like this they bring the same results, or even worse, than a flexible diet that is adapted to each person’s lifestyle. If you’re being coached, you’ll only use one of these diets if it really makes sense for your case.
• Another very common mistake is learning or trying to learn nutrition tips from a guy at the gym. This is a huge mistake. Throughout the many years we have been in the business, we have coached many people, and of those many people, there are some who respond well to all stimuli, and others who only respond well to a certain stimulus. A person who responds well to any stimulus ends up reacting well to any diet. To show you an example of a person who reacts very well to any stimulus, a guy we personally coached for an international Men’s Physique competition, ate at sushi buffets and emptied condensed milk cans during his cutting fase, without it interfering with his results. The person in question knows quite a lot about the matter, but in around 90‰ of the time this isn’t the case, these people who react well to anything tend to not know much about what or why they are doing something because they never had to struggle to achieve something. So, they are not great to take advise from. However, we don’t consider it to be wrong to ask for advise from a partner or a professional that has shown the capacity to make any person reach their dream physique, and not just her own.

Learning how to train by yourself also has it’s inconveniences like: Badly structuring a workout (veja aqui como um treino deve ser estruturado),

• ), not evolving within training, starting a plan that doesn’t match your current physical condition, getting injured and not applying basic training principles. Without these basic principles you will have a hard time making progress. A good coach never let’s this happen.
• Teaching people how to diet, discovering the type of training that brings them the best results and adapting the plan to the person’s lifestyle is a process that isn’t built overnight. Even though the mechanism is created and the management within it being fairly easy, there are always many details to evaluate in order to decide what the most comfortable and efficacious way to evolve is. These details normally take someone who is untrained a lifetime to perfect, because all of the information available on the internet is right for a specific person, but normally not for us. This makes people try a number of things that usually go wrong, and a coach can help you choose what is going to work or not.
• The knowledge transmitted by a good coach/guide/trainer is individualized. What this means is that he is going to teach you how to work with your own body. At a certain point you will be able to manage your results by yourself without trying other choices or methods because your process is already ideal.

Reasons for our members with a degree to want to be coached:

• Coaches, even the best, don’t have a degree a lot of the times. What they have are years of experience within a specific field (teaching how to diet, fat loss, muscle gain, motivation, etc), and that can allow you to consider them experts in that area, as a pose to people with a degree who are apt to operate in general terms, but normally lack the specificity of knowledge only a coach has. This way, even having vast knowledge of various diets or workout plans, which they know have applications in many situations, with the help of a coach they are able o filter through that information and find what will work best for them!
• Another reason is the fact that the human being tends to be too soft or too extreme with itself, and this way normally doesn’t use the metrics it should for it’s own case (we mean that by ourselves, we tend to see what we want, and ignore what we want, and that tends to differ from reality).
• Just like we said earlier, even if you know a lot about the matter (which is the case of the #TeamTransformerz’s members), sometimes that knowledge is counterproductive. Let us give you an example: A person is following a low carb diet – a restricted diet, normally used for fitness competitions – that person knows her body has a carbohydrate reserve, and when that reserve is gone or almost, the carbohydrates will be kept in that reserve instead of being turned into fat. Well, someone who knows enough about the matter will use these “tricks” to have excuses to eat a few carbohydrates that she really craves, because it won’t make a difference. But it does. In these specific cases it does. Let us explain to you why: The purpose of these diets is to maximize the amount of hormones. And in this case of low carb diets, the purpose is to manipulate a hormone called insulin, being that carbohydrates, especially when the body craves the, are responsible for the release of this hormone. When you have a coach, that isn’t subject to any cravings (contrary to the person who is following a restricted diet, like any fitness competitor), will talk some sense into the person who is about to do this mistake. This mistake could be enough for the athlete in question to not place first in a  competition.

A coach will always use real metrics. It’s normal for a person to be extremely happy after losing 10kg in 2 weeks. However, a coach will make sure this doesn’t happen. Why? Because this isn’t a healthy loss, and isn’t just a fat loss (para saber mais a fundo, clique em qualidade do peso ganho ou perdido).

• Even for professionals it’s easier to accept vanity metrics than real metrics.
• By paying for a coach’s help, you’ll feel obligated to do things the right way, even though normally what you pay is nothing compared to the advantages and knowledge good coaching get’s you. Paying makes you feel the duty to follow the program without ant mistakes. At the end of the day, we’re paying the best in the industry to make us achieve our goals. If we fail it’ll be our responsibility, but no one fails at something really easy to obtain and that is totally in our reach, specially if we’re being helped by an expert. The success rate of who is coached is many times greater than of those who try to do it all by themselves.
• The Coach, like we have already mentioned, has proof of his worth seeing as he has already helped many people achieve their goals, and not just himself. That’s why a coach has to know how to deal with many types of physiologies and the many responses these have. This is the main difference between a coach and an athlete. The athlete knows what to do for himself, the coach knows what to do for many types of individuals.
• Not achieving results makes a coach’s credibility (someone with whom you probably will dvelop a good friendship) be questioned. Just because of these 2 aspects, people who are coached tend to be really motivated to achieve their goals.

These are the reasons why many of the members of #TeamTransformerz decided to be coached by us, despite any credentials they may have. A different point of view, someone who doesn’t let us stray from the path towards our goals, a friend we don’t want to let down. Above all, someone who teaches us to manage our path is a type of help that’s worth gold, but actually costs almost nothing, and #TeamTransformerz members are aware of that.

What you should retain from this post:

• Pump (swelling of the muscle throughout the workout) doesn’t guarantee you will build muscle;
• Muscle soreness on the days after the workout aren’t a guarantee that you will build muscle;
• Despite not being absolute indicators of the efficacy of a workout, they both indicate that the sore muscle was recruited during the workout;
• Progressive overload is the best indicator of muscle development.

SEE ALSO: HOW TO MAINTAIN YOUR DIET WHILE TRAVELLING!

Most gym goers want to get shredded or pack on as much muscle as they can in the shortest time possible. So, what serves as an indicator of them achieving their results? Instantaneous feedback, meaning pumps & pains.

The same thing applies to people who step on the treadmill for 30 minutes and lose 1kg. They think they lost 1kg of fat. Well, you wish. Sorry, life ain’t that easy.

Another example? Okay, we’re pumping through the workout, 5 sets of bicep curls supersetted with 5 sets of skullcrushers. Let’s measure the guns. Whoa!!! My arms grew 3 cm since I started the workout!! C’mon bro…if it were like that you’d have 60cm arms by the end of the week.

Instantaneous feedback when studying the efficacy of a workout lead to wrong conclusions, because they are based on short term measures and adaptations, instead of long term ones. To better understand what it is, let us explain the most commonly used measures in most gyms.

What is the famous “pump” we’ve all heard great tales about?
Pump is what is commonly called to the swelling of the muscle post workout. That swelling is due to increased blood flow in that area. The trained muscle becomes harder and swollen, hereby becoming bigger. The amount of “pump” is dictated by a few different factors like:

• Less rest between sets;
• Higher number of reps in a set;
• Total workout volume.

To sum this up, the more sets, with more reps, for more exercises you do, in a determined time period, the more pump you’ll have in the trained muscle(s).

Sore muscle, also known as “delayed onset muscle soreness”

As we are sure you’ve noticed, the pump is an indicator that goes away pretty quickly. That’s probably why muscle soreness is an indicator that is quite used, due to the time it takes to go away, and allowing you to wash your hands normally again (after a chest & Biceps session for example). Contrary to the pump, soreness is due to factors like:

• The type of exercise;
• How used your body is to a certain effort;
• A person’s body composition. For example, we can say that normally a man is less sore after training calves than a woman. On the other hand, women are less prone to muscle soreness after training hamstrings than men.

Why are the pump and muscle soreness (immediate indicators) not good indicators on the efficacy of a workout?

The reason is very simple! The purpose of a workout isn’t to have you limping for a week, or getting you biceps as big as Coleman’s for 15 minutes. The purpose is progression. So, if we give a huge amount of stimulus to a certain muscle, and the next workout we come in and don’t give it a bit more than we did the previous workout, the muscle won’t have a reason to evolve. The pump might be there, as well as the soreness, but if your workouts aren’t progressive, after a few months you will conclude that you haven’t made any relevant muscle gains.

SEE ALSO: MACRO NUTRIENTS: WHAT ARE THEY? WHAT ARE THEY FOR?!

The Cure: Progressive Overload

If you progressively overload the muscles, throughout a realistic period of time (which is the fundamental basis of all of our workout programs), your body will evolve despite the amount of pump or soreness you feel the next day.

However, the pump and soreness can be good indicators that the muscle in question was recruited during your workout. Don’t you go and be sore from your Lats after doing a Tricep workout!! That would be hard. But still, many people don’t know how to use their Pectoral muscles. Because of that, they end up putting too much strain on the anterior Deltoid and the Triceps. This way, the target muscle isn’t correctly recruited. Another example is when squatting, some people only use their Legs, and leave the Glutes out of the equation. The pump and soreness, in these cases, will be a good indicator if you managed to work the target muscle or not!

Just to conclude, don’t focus on the pump and soreness to evaluate the efficacy of a workout. What really matters is if your performance has progressed.

Well, word is that specialists defend that weight training combined with a healthy diet, allows you to burn fat up to 72h after the workout. But this isn’t for everyone.

Nick Tumminello, personal trainer and author of Strength Training for Fat Loss, declares to Reuters that weight training should be the primary form of exercise for all, except beginners.  If you’re looking to lose fat, go with strength training,”, says Tumminello. “Watch your diet to reveal your shape, and strength train to improve that shape.”, he continues.

SEE ALSO: HOW TO BUILD A PERFECT DIET?!

The trainer, currently working in Florida, USA, states that “The body-building model is great for maximizing body building, but for the average individual looking for fat loss, or to feel better, or to improve general fitness, this creates more of a metabolic disturbance,”.

Yeah, bodybuilding is F***ing hard. It’s really too intense for most people. So, Tumminello recommends that you start doing it  once or twice a week, and gradually increment the frequency of training. No, you can’t do this all at the same time and start out in a rush. You’ll be too fatigued to provide any decent amount of output in your training, so it will be pointless. The body needs to rest, so start off slow and build up.

Jenn Burke, a personal trainer and manager of a gym chain in San Francisco, tells Reuters that stable cardiovascular exercise, like running or cycling, should be used to urn calories and improve pulmonary and cardiac capacity. The main difference between this and weight training is that cardio mainly burns calories while exercising, not having much impact on the rest of your day. Weight training causes a significant rise in metabolism, hereby allowing you to burn fat up to 72 hours posterior to the workout.

To all you Ego Lifters, Burke states that it is not necessarily about the amount of weight you can lift, but about making the body more efficient, toned, lean and strong.

Jacque Ratliff is an exercise physiologist with the American Council on Exercise. She adds a few benefits to weight training, like mineral density of the bones and the strengthening of tendons, ligaments and overall tissue. “If someone falls, the more strength in their muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments, the less likely they are to be injured,” Ratliff said.

SEE ALSO: THE ROAD TO A MAGNIFICENT GLUTES!

To add to the already vast benefits of this type of exercise is muscle elasticity. The greater the muscle mass, the higher your metabolism will be while resting.

Just like Tumminello, Ratliff argues that this type of exercise might be too extreme for people new to exercise. These beginners should be monitored and carefully advised. Again like Tumminello, states that practice should be kept at a maximum of twice per week in an early stage.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-fitness-strengthtraining-idUSBREA3K09N20140421

Ingredients:

• 150g egg whites;
• 80g whole wheat flour;
• 40g chocolate Whey protein;
• 20g low fat cocoa powder;
• 100ml low fat milk;
• 2 whole eggs;
• 5g yeast;
• Sweetener (around 10g).

Preparation:

• Pre heat the oven for 15 minutes at about 180º Celsius;
• In a bowl we mix the 2 eggs with the whole wheat flour, cocoa powder, whey, yeast, milk and sweetener;
• In another bowl we whisk the egg whites until fluffy;
• We slowly add the egg whites to the other mixture, until it is a consistent cream, the color of chocolate;
• We then put the mixture in a tray to put in the oven for around 15 minutes.

SEE ALSO: SWEET POTATO CAKE!

Nutritional Facts:

Amount per Muffin:

• Calories: 90.5 kcal
• Fat: 1.9 g
• Carbohydrates: 8.5 g
• Fiber: 1.9 g
• Protein: 9 g

Ingredients:

• 250g boiled sweet potato;
• 50g whole wheat flour;
• 250g egg whites;
• 2 whole eggs;
• 5g yeast;
• Sweetener (we usually use around 10g).

Preparation:

• Pre-heat the oven for 15 minutes to around 180º Celsius;
• The sweet potato has to be well cooked so that we can easily peel of the skin and make a puree;
• In a bowl we mix the 2 eggs with the wheat flour, yeast and sweetener;
• Next we mix the puree into the bowl, mixing everything together until it is consistent;
• In another bowl we whisk the egg whites until they are fluffy;
• We proceed to add the egg whites to the other mixture, so that it ends up a consistent cream the color of sweet potato;
• Then we put the cream in a bowl that can go in the oven, for around 20 minutes.

SEE ALSO: CHOCOLATE MUFFINS!

Nutritional Facts:

Amount per half a cake:

• Calories: 341 kcal
• Fat: 5 g
• Carbohydrates 41 g
• Fiber: 6 g
• Protein: 23 g

Note: If you wish to increase the amount of protein in the cake you can add a scoop of whey protein.

You simply cannot imagine the amount of times people have told us they want to gain some muscle and get slightly toned, but don’t want to pack on TOO MUCH MUSCLE or become TOO BIG.

Ok, fair enough. You don’t have to want to look like a professional Bodybuilder. But if they were able to build that much muscle and have so little body fat well, anyone can become a fitness model (which is 99% of people’s goal when they start working out and dieting).

This is not a concern exclusive to women, there are many men who don’t want to become excessively muscular. We all want to be in good shape and be fairly toned, but we also want to look elegant when we are dressed.

SEE ALSO: HOW TO EAT AT A FAST FOOD RESTAURANT WITHOUT RUINIG YOUR DIET!

Well… why won’t you become too muscular?

1. We aren’t going to avoid any taboos here, professional bodybuilders use anabolic steroids (the quantities vary according to their genetic potential and personal goals). Using them or not, and in which quantities is a personal decision, so if you don’t want to look like them, don’t do what they do.
2. We all have a genetic limit. It is very rare to see someone naturally packing on enough muscle to surpass what is considered a fitness model standard, or even that of an actor who played a role in a movie where he needed to be quite muscular.
3. Muscle building is an extremely slow process. No one is satisfied with their body, and suddenly wakes up the next day with too much muscle. That simply does not happen. The process is so slow, that if you are lucky, you will manage to put on 100g of muscle per week. Yes, really, really lucky.

 To achieve the body you have always wanted you simply have to:

1. Now that you have understood that you will never reach a disproportionate physiognomy by natural means, the first step is to follow a diet plan that gets you results, that allows you to have control over your results and that doesn’t limit your quality of life. Instead, it must make your lifestyle better (like our flexible diet method).
2. The second step is to strength train adequately. We have been to many gyms where most people commit the same mistakes over and over again. So don’t do the same as them, follow the basic principles that #TeamTransformerz teaches you through our articles.

By following these two steps, your body will never go beyond the limit you want it to.

SEE ALSO: HOW TO TRAIN YOUR CALVES

Just to wrap this up, we remind you that the process of building the new body you desire is right here for you to grab. You can have the physique you always wanted, because what will sculpt it will be your work and your decisions. You can eventually be oriented by other people with more experience. This 0rientation will only make the process of meeting your goals faster, nothing else. The decision of when to stop or change goals is totally up to you because it is a very slow process, where there are no significant differences from one day to the next. This means you will be able to manage your results according to your personal goals.