Get Your Body To The Next Level: Part 1

Joined the gym....Check!
Started watching what I eat...Check!
Hired a trainer....Check!

You have begun making small changes, feel better, look better and your confidence has been growing, but then you start feeling like progress has stalled.

'What's wrong?'

First of all, you must understand that the more advanced, stricter, healthier, stronger, fitter, and leaner you get, the more challenging it can be to continue making progress.

'Why do we stall?'

Usually because the body likes to be comfortable and sometimes it does perceive your initial changes as being stressful, even if they are healthier in the long run. Remember that your body doesn't know you have great plans for it, and it only assumes what you are doing right now and reacts to that.

'So what can someone who has already made impressive progress do to continue making progress?'

Here are some tips that might seem a little too simple at first, but will really challenge your passion and commitment to a healthier, more shapely body, for the long term. They are not quick fixes, but rather lifestyles changes.

1. Clean up your eating even more.

Not eating organic, whole foods yet? Begin adding more foods from the Clean Fifteen list to save money. But if you enjoy the ones on the Dirty Dozen list, then buy at least those organic. Long term weight loss, requires hard work, which requires solid recovery, which requires nutritionally dense foods, which will come from eating organic, whole foods, most of the time, for years to come.

Do you still enjoy snacking throughout the week? When trying to improve your shape, you might need to save all those special foods for the right time, like after training (see the next point). If you say things like 'I only snack once and a while,' then you might want to keep track, and slowly decreases your snacking habits, focusing on 'full meals' instead, in order to make your eating more conscious.

If you enjoy having a cheat meal/day, once/week, you should evaluate how well you feel the next day and the days following; Do you feel bloated, tired, sore, inflamed, and does your weight not come back down until the end of the week? If this is the case, you should consider making a cheat day a cheat meal instead, or even make your cheat meal a little cleaner. As you become more advanced, there is no reason to make yourself sick eating the wrong foods. Remember, you're stronger than that. And although your body might now be healthy enough to deal with junk, you still need to eat cleaner to look leaner.

2. Cut back on the alcohol

Yes I know, "But I only have a glass of wine every night, and they say it's good for you." Well, the evidence is not completely clear, but should be a strong enough warning. On the other hand, if you like to save all your alcohol for the weekend, it will probably do the same thing as stuffing your face uncontrollably once/week.

If you want to get to the next level, get rid of all alcohol for at least 2 months and then tell me how you feel.

Also, if you are going to drink, do not mix your alcohol with food or spread them far apart. You body prefers to get the alcohol out, so it will burn that first, leaving the carbs and fat you ate to be stored in the wrong places. If you wait a few hours after dinner, or skip dinner altogether, you will not have to drink as much to 'feel good.' To create a safer situation, your dinner should include a good dose of lean protein, some essential fats and vegetables, in order to decrease the blood sugar you start with before drinking. In the end, however, the long term effects of alcohol on your liver and hormonal health should help you decide how important this step is for continued success.

3. Make sure you train for results and not to impress or "feel" like you trained

You can lose fat with callisthenics, weight training,cardio, interval training, etc, but if you try and do all of them, you won't get anywhere for long, and you will likely crash. We do prefer weight training, as it has less tendency to overtrain and stress someone in the long term, when approached safely, with consistent progression in both strength and work capacity.

You can pick what you are good at, or what you want to be good at. Keep trying to improve your push-ups/chin-ups, squat/deadlift or sprinting mechanics and speed. You can add another discipline for variety, or a challenge (which you can keep trying to improve every month or so).

You need to be making steady improvements in your strength and endurance to get the best results. Change things when you stop seeing progress, but don't confuse a lack of progress with a challenging workout that requires you do dig a little deeper.

Lastly, balance does not mean trying every type of exercise, workout, stretch, etc. Some people will need more variety than others (not only because results are lacking, but to keep them interested), but variety is just one part of the equation that needs to be monitored. Let life provide you with variety in your friends, your interests, the foods you love and the places you visit.

In part two of this article we will look at another three strategies for getting to the next level.

Thanks for reading!