He blinded me with broscience?

beachgod

Quick intro to me: I'm 52 and skinny/fat; fairly normal build but have a gut and moobs. I signed up here last week and my settings have my caloric goal at 1,500/day. I'm actually fine with how much I weigh, I just don't like the way it looks (re: moobs & gut). This isn't my first time to work out and watch what I eat but I let myself slide downhill for over a year. I'm a firm believer that 99% of bodybuilding/health supplements are garbage based on personal experience and that of others. OK, here we go:

I joined a gym last week and had a freebie training/nutrition session with a certified personal trainer today. We started off talking about food. Everything was going OK until I told him I drink 1 cup of black coffee a day with breakfast. He said I should ditch the coffee and take this instead. It turned into an Advocare sales pitch real quick.


I should also do this cleanse and restore system.


Then he said I should be eating over 3K calories/day over a 6 meal span and the eating plan he showed me is basically Phase 1 of the South Beach Diet which is zero dairy and minimal fruit or carbs (good or bad ones). Here is the eating chart except his had oats and whole gain pasta and bread in the Avoid section:
Left click on photo and drag to address bar then release to view full image.


He also said I should drink 1 gallon of water a day. I've seen this argued both ways. I don't get anywhere near that much.

So, is all/some/most/any/none of this a load of baloney? Most of this goes against everything I've read, except maybe the water part. Cleanses and 6 meals a day are supposedly old wives' tales and I can't believe taking a packet of chemicals (the energy drink) is healthier for me than a cup of black coffee and doubling my calories seem excessive. I was eating 2,000 calories when I started my account here.

Thanks for looking, feel free to reply, flame, troll, add me as a friend etc. Also, please let me know if it is not cool to post those product photos in this thread. It doesn't look like it violates forum rules because I am in no way advocating buying them, quite the opposite.

onwarddownward

I would question a diet that is that unbalanced. You know what's been working for you. I'd look for a trainer that you click with and who's not trying to sell you.

86_Ohms

No, don't listen to him. Sounds like he started out ok, then went a little crazy with suggestions.

Coffee isn't bad for you. If you drink a gallon a day, then maybe it will be for caffeine and teeth staining, but that's about it. Plus, you'll sweat coffee and that makes the ladies at the office want starbucks and not you :huh:

Also, it looks like you're trying to LOSE weight. Eating over 3k calories/day is 100% for strength training and you want to GAIN weight for muscle development. The 6 meals a day don't matter, though it might be easier to digest 3k calories if they aren't packed into 3 average meals. You will indeed get stronger, but the gut isn't going away any time soon with that.

I would still do weight lifting to lose weight. It will make you strong and energetic again as you lose muscle density as you age (you're not using it as much as you did as a kid/teen/young adult and have to think of your eating habits over the years). The anabolic recovery time while your muscles repair will also help in metabolism and raise your BMR slightly.

You won't gain much/any muscle on a calorie deficient, but you'll re-invigorate the ones you already have. But once you get down to a weight you like, then feel free to gain some back while getting any muscle needed as well.

SirBonerFart

No, don't listen to him. Sounds like he started out ok, then went a little crazy with suggestions.

Coffee isn't bad for you. If you drink a gallon a day, then maybe it will be for caffeine and teeth staining, but that's about it. Plus, you'll sweat coffee and that makes the ladies at the office want starbucks and not you :huh:

Also, it looks like you're trying to LOSE weight. Eating over 3k calories/day is 100% for strength training and you want to GAIN weight for muscle development. The 6 meals a day don't matter, though it might be easier to digest 3k calories if they aren't packed into 3 average meals. You will indeed get stronger, but the gut isn't going away any time soon with that.

I would still do weight lifting to lose weight. It will make you strong and energetic again as you lose muscle density as you age (you're not using it as much as you did as a kid/teen/young adult and have to think of your eating habits over the years). The anabolic recovery time while your muscles repair will also help in metabolism and raise your BMR slightly.

You won't gain much/any muscle on a calorie deficient, but you'll re-invigorate the ones you already have. But once you get down to a weight you like, then feel free to gain some back while getting any muscle needed as well.

I'd like to see some peer reviewed research about coffee sweat

JTS_go

Excellent recap of the broscience experience. As a rule, I wouldn't eat anything packaged in a NASCAR theme. Probably cutting sugar down and upping protein a little plus strength training will do wonders for your gut and moobs.

Rottnme

Get your money back and go to a different gym. I hate it when these "trainers" start shoveling it in deep when what you really need at this point, IMO, is some basic info to get started and a whole bunch of encouragement so that you stick with it. From there you can move on to whatever but it never ceases to amaze me that so many people don't do gyms when the people who should be autorities bury noobs with all of this stuff.

beachgod

Cool. I appreciate the replies. I'm no health and fitness expert but I seem to be doing OK on my own and with research and reading labels.

SirBonerFart

Excellent recap of the broscience experience. As a rule, I wouldn't eat anything packaged in a NASCAR theme. Probably cutting sugar down and upping protein a little plus strength training will do wonders for your gut and moobs.

Sugar and protein have the same number of calories....

timbrom

I will say that most of the popular lifting programs on here (starting strength, stronglifts, etc) do recommend eating 3000+ calories (even 4, 5, 6000 in some cases) in order to build muscle. The idea is that building muscle is hard and will only happen if you are running a calorie surplus (plus some other things), and if you add some body fat while you are building muscle it's easy to burn that fat off later given that you have a lot more muscle mass.

But yeah, the rest is pretty much the stuff that happens after a cow is done digesting grass.