- Q: I read about (insert diet or fitness program here) and it isn’t mentioned in this guide. Is it any good?
- A: Maybe. This guide only covers the basics, and fitness and nutrition are big subjects. Please keep in mind that there is a lot of huckster garbage associated with diet and exercise. You really need to be careful.
Signs someone is trying to rip you off:
- Extravagant claims of massive improvement in a short period of time with little or no effort. If it sounds too good to be true, guess what? It is.
- Claims of secret or suppressed knowledge that “the [diet/fitness/medical/exercise] establishment” doesn’t want you to know about. Claims that all well-established forms of exercise like running and lifting weights are wrong.
- Claims about spot reduction or converting fat to muscle, both of which are impossible. Losing fat and gaining muscle are possible, but you don’t literally turn one into the other.
- Use of meaningless language like “toning” or “sculpting” instead of talking about quantifiable changes to body composition, strength or endurance.
- Magical language. Your personal spirituality is beyond the scope of this guide, but appeals to vaguely defined concepts like “energy fields” that are never actually explained and “internal cleansing” of various “toxins” that always remain nameless are usually strong indicators that someone is trying to con you.
- Overuse of scientific-sounding language that is never actually defined. Real programs may have some jargon in them, but they will explain what the jargon means. At worst, you’ll be able to easily find the meaning of their terminology, because they’re using real concepts with a real scientific basis. Con artists just tend to throw lots of big words at you in the hope that you just give up and assume that they’re smarter than you are, and you can never find out what they actually mean, because they just made it up to sell you something.
- Q: I drastically changed my diet for the better, and nothing happened after a week. Or, I suddenly stopped losing weight for a week after weeks of weight loss. What happened?
- A1: Maybe nothing. Sometimes weight loss has minor hiccups for no apparent reason. Maybe you had an extra glass of water the night before, or just retained some extra water for some random reason. If you are sticking a good diet, give it another week or two before you worry about changing things.
- A2: All else being equal, to stay at 280 pounds takes more calories than it does to stay 180 pounds, even if the difference is all fat. So if you lost a lot of weight, this may be a contributing factor.
- Q: I’m really sore from working out. What do I do?
- A: Soreness doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it can be unpleasant. For a little soreness, just suck it up. If it is severe, you may want to take an extra day off, or do a reduced version of your regular workout until it improves. Ibuprofen is the over-the-counter painkiller of choice for muscular pain. I’m not going to tell you to ignore the instructions on the label, but prescriptions of 800 milligrams for minor pain are commonplace (the over-the-counter dose is 2 tablets of 200mg each). You can also remove soreness with a foam roller or any other types of deep tissue massage.
Note: Don’t confuse soreness with pain; outright pain is often a sign of an actual injury. If you injure yourself, stop working out the injured area until it is 100% recovered. If you experience severe pain and/or loss of range of motion, see a doctor.
- Q: I experience a sharp pain in my side when I’m doing cardio. What’s going on?
- A: Probably nothing more than a “side stitch”, a fairly common complaint of runners, especially new runners just getting into shape. Curiously, there is no good scientific explanation for this pain, but it will go away on its own. As your fitness improves, you will generally stop experiencing them.
- Q: I experience sharp pain in my shins from running. What’s happening?
- A: Probably “shin splints.” This is just caused by straining or overworking the muscles to the side of the shins. Taking a break from running until the pain goes away is generally all that is necessary. Normally the muscles adapt over time and you quit getting shin splints. If not, the problem could be caused by flat feet (fallen arches), which can be treated with insoles that help overpronation. A physiotherapist can aid with this part.
- Q: I’ve been lifting weights for a while, and have suddenly stopped making progress even though I’m trying hard. What happened?
- A1: You may have simply over-trained and need a rest. Take a few days off, and then go back at it again.
- A2: Your body may have adapted to the workout you are doing. You can’t keep doing exactly the same workout all the time and continue to get results quickly; at some point your body gets used to it and you start to have diminishing returns. To change things up, you can:
- Change the number of reps per set, while keeping the total number of reps about the same (for instance, going from 5x5 to 3x8)
- Change from dumbbells to barbells or vice-versa
- Change to a variant on the same exercise, or a different exercise that works the same muscle groups
- A3: At some point you will need to eat more food to continue making rapid strength gains. Of course, if you don’t want to get bigger anymore, at some point you will have to accept some limit on your strength gains.
- From liamrosen.com
