Guest Blog Series – Episode 1: Chelsea Knox
Doing Things Right
Chelsea is someone I completely respect and admire in the industry.
She has so much going on right now (can relate) and still finds time to be a completely awesome coach.
Have a read of what she’s saying here!
This is what happened in one week from my ONE SIMPLE TRICK.
It’s actually a bit complex if you want to get into mechanisms but I won’t get into that here. Refer to the links at the bottom if you’re the type of person that’s into that kind of stuff.
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When starting a diet and exercise program our first instinct is to go all in. We want to go HARD. We’re either intensely in or way out.
I see it even with flexible dieting. Incredible rigidity fuelled by anxiety, fear, shame, guilt or other negative emotions.
Our intentions are usually not negative. We think we are badass. We FEEL badass. We are #hardcore, going #beastmode.
We don’t care about later we just want results right now.
We go on our diet and drastically reduce calories. We are aggressive with our training and go from zero to five 1-2 hours sessions or classes a week. We want results NOW. Yesterday, even.
I’m sure many of you know what I’m talking about.
We can do well for a while on this, even for quite a long period of time. But the statistic that 95% gain back the weight (and often more) includes rebounds at any time.
That’s not to say these approaches don’t work for anyone, of course they do.
My own experience was post-contest. I did two per year and rebounded twice. My last show ended with a rebound of 30lbs in 6 weeks or so.
My body was so deprived I fell into a crazy binge cycle and truly thought it was metabolic damage that caused all of it, even the bingeing.
What people aren’t realizing is that there’s a problem with too much too soon if you have specific physique goals and expectations.
Our bodies are intelligent and fight back.
I won’t go into specifics but there’s an entire physiological cascade that happens to increase appetite, decrease feelings of satiety and fullness, decrease daily energy output.
You become more lazy and sloth like. Irritability sets in, hunger feels chronic and never fulfilled between refeeds or free meals. It’s all there to prevent you from starving to death.
This effect correlates positively to body fat levels. The leaner you are, the longer you’ve probably been dieting, the harder your body fights to make you feed it and preserve energy simultaneously.
Makes sense right?
I used to always think I just needed willpower to fight it but there are things that can be done to decrease or at least help manage these things while dieting.
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I had been dieting for a while. Dieting + exercise + life = stress.
Stress= water retention.
Water retention= weight gain/apparent lack of fat loss, especially as you get leaner and progress slows.
Life in general, with 3 young boys, and so much on the go meant stress had been high for a while. A family wedding trip was coming and I decided that instead of being strict on vacation I needed to ease up and back off. For sanity primarily but the side effects were awesome. I stopped tracking but still made conscious effort to make decent, though lenient choices.
Aka- not on or off any diet.
So I did and I came back with the results in the picture. My positioning probably exaggerated it a bit but the difference was certainly undeniable regardless.
I’d felt so much softer and even like I might be GAINING weight before we left for this trip. I indulged in alcohol freely but within reason (because 3 kids and hangovers are like a tortuous nightmare).
The difference was a bit shocking to me, to be honest and I don’t expect everyone’s body to react this way exactly depending on choices, activity, point of dieting and other individual differences.
It wasn’t a magic metabolic boosting of increased calories. I didn’t turn my body into a fat burning machine directly by eating more.
Eating more DID allow my body to upregulate, repair and restore energy stores enough to increase what I was willing to put out during daily activities, in workouts etc.
The psychological break worked wonders on my motivation and excitement for exercise.
You don’t need to feel guilty about backing off on diet and even exercise. It’s an integral part of progressing towards your physique goals and for sustainability that fits YOUR life.
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Conclusion:
For those of you too lazy to read the full article refeeds/free meals can be an important tool for indirectly increasing overall caloric output, especially when greater than 24 hours, but are not a way to boost metabolism. They can also be harmful, obviously, if taken too far. Eating more doesn’t boost metabolism more. Be mindful. Hire a coach if you’re struggling to navigate bumps in the road.
I took a week long (sensible) break, indulged and was active and whooshed a ton of water retention with the stress. I came back feeling refreshed, energized and motivated again for my lifts.
References:
Original post
Learn more here: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-full-diet-break.html/
Chelsea can be found @
The following Facebook page below. Take a look at some of her stuff, give her a follow!
