Food & Fitness Advice to Stay Away From

Today's post is about that type of food and fitness advice that you want to stay away from, if you want to actually be healthy.

The other day, I was listening to a podcast about achieving body goals through what they called “sustainable eating and exercise” but had to stop it before the episode was over. It was just too much and I wanted to scream “NO!” at least half of the time.

What Healthy Food & Exercise Doesn't Look Like

There were so many rules that made my head spinning and my heart hurting for all the people who actually do all this.

I'm not against body change. I do believe (and have experienced myself) that some people have to gain weight in order to be healthy. But there are others who will have to lose weight. Weight loss for aesthetics can be done responsibly, but I am against the extreme things that many coaches are telling their clients do.

Here are some things that were mentioned in this podcast:

🔺Clients have to take weekly measurements of neck, chest, waist, arms, legs and send this information to their trainers
🔺Clients have to report their daily weigh-in numbers
🔺They have to take weekly photos and send them to their coach
🔺They have to stick to their daily macros with no exceptions or excuses
🔺They're allowed to eat mostly high volume foods only
🔺They have to do cardio 4-5 days a week and lift weights 4-5 days/week
🔺They're expected to do double workouts couple of days a week

🔺They have to do fasted cardio
🔺They're eating 1500-2000 calories a day.

But Who Cares About Their Metabolism and Health?

Not a single word was mentioned about monitoring clients sleep, recovery, menstrual cycles, thyroid and adrenal health or mental health while going through all this. Not a word.

Does the body change with this approach? Yes, absolutely, the body changes with this approach, but what about people's psychology? Who's going to fix that?

Here's What Obsessive Training and Food Restriction Cause…

A coach who tells her client to do all this is no longer there when the client gets severe anxiety because she

🔺didn't meet her daily macros
🔺gets paralyzed at restaurants because no food seems to fit
🔺loses her mind because she's out of egg whites
🔺stops having normal relationships because all this leads to a lot of tension and isolation.

This coach is not there when the client sits at home with her lean abs, isolated from the outside world, bingeing her face off and feeling absolutely miserable because her body and mind are breaking down.

You Won't Get Happy By Overtraining

If the desire to be so lean is so big that we're ready to do all the things mentioned above, I really believe that there's some deeper wound that needs to be healing. And this wound has NOTHING to do with getting lean abs or losing more weight. Maybe some mindfulness would help instead?

Listening to this podcast got me super emotional but also frustrated because I don't ever want anyone to have to go through this. It takes YEARS to overcome the physical and mental damage caused by this bullshit.

Would you follow a plan like this?