You have doubtless heard the cliché, “Abs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym”.
Like all clichés, it is largely true in most cases – albeit lacking in nuance causing the sheeple who follow it blindly to fall off a cliff into a pit of misery and despair.
In this instance, that is repeatedly falling off the wagon on the fitness front because too much attention is paid to diet and too little to training.
Yet still, most people bang on and on about diet, sometimes to the point of obsession.
Why?
Dieting doesn’t actually require much material effort.
Sure, you have to cook food from scratch (although there are bountiful options out there to remove even this slight burden), put up with a little hunger, and say “no” to stuffing your face with pizza and ice cream every now and again.
On the other hand, training asks much more of you:
* There are practical considerations (getting ready, commuting to and from the gym, cleaning up afterwards),
* Skills that require great patience to develop well enough to enjoy significant results (stretching, lifting weights, bodyweight exercises, running, sprinting, cycling, and so on),
* Learning about how to train for specific goals, critically thinking about how your body is responding, then modifying your approach without throwing the baby out with the bathwater,
* Responding appropriately to injuries that inevitably crop up by figuring out ways to train around them that speed the healing process rather than make things worse.
So it makes a lot of sense that people tend to focus more on the diet side of things.
But here’s the problem:
While dieting doesn’t require much effort, it’s still beyond awful.
Unless…
You have a darn good reason for doing it.
This is why I am fond of a “training first” approach.
By that I mean most are better off dispensing with the dietary minutiae until training is a fixed, firm part of their lives (to the point that they cannot imagine not doing it).
By that point (and, often, a little bit before) a desire to eat better to perform better in the gym and out on the road arises naturally.
It’s for this reason that, insofar as I can remember, the word “diet” appears three times among the circa 15,000 words that comprise the three Real Paper Handbooks I send to clients who embark upon my three month programme “Silver Era Secrets”.
Here, the focus is entirely on getting you training with discipline and intent by equipping you with the tools you need to write your own programmes.
Total self-sufficiency in the fundamentals of efficient, effective training for the man (and, occasionally, woman) who cannot have their life revolve around the pursuit of fitness is the aim.
To learn more, go here:
https://philtyreman.co.uk/programme/
Thank you,
Phil Tyreman