Eat, Train, Progress Interview with Steve Troutman
SideSteel
Posts: 11,068 Member
Hello everyone!
Welcome to our first of hopefully many interviews.
Sara and I are both big fans of Steve Troutman. He's not only been a useful resource here on myfitnesspal, but he's also taken his time to personally help me with various questions I've had about fitness and training.
Steve owns and operates Body-Improvements West, which is a training studio located in Pottstown, PA. He has also found his fit reaching people on the World Wide Web. He is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist by way of the National Strength and Conditioning Association and Certified Personal Trainer and Performance Enhancement Specialist by way of the National Academy of Sports Medicine
You can read a wealth of quality information on his site, at www.body-improvements.com and I am going to additionally recommend that everyone read the following from his site. This is something I've linked in the past and this is really stuffed full of quality information.
http://body-improvements.com/resources/eat/
Sara and I would like to extend a big thank you to Steve for taking the time to answer these questions in great detail. Normally with an interview like this, we would ask follow-up questions but he was so detailed that we don't have any.
Steve:
Firstly I'd just like to say thank you for the interest in interviewing me. Hopefully your members enjoy the Q&A and are able to take something of value away from it. My apologies in advance for the total lack of succinctness.
ETP:
It's a somewhat "common recommendation" for people to aim for a deficit around 20% under TDEE. We promote that in our group as a very "general" starting point, but of course that's not always going to be ideal. Can you talk about criteria/context in which you'd recommend someone go with a significantly greater deficit to achieve faster fat loss?
Steve:
By and large I do suggest eating as much food as possible while still allowing for an appreciable rate of weight loss. There are plenty of other hurdles that need to be cleared when it comes to long term weight management including our obesogenic society, our easy-to-store-fat physiology, our flawed need-it-now expectations, etc. In most instances I really don't see a sense in making it harder than it has to be by running an aggressive deficit. In very general terms, deprivation and consistency are inversely related. Put differently, the harder most people diet, the less success they tend to have over the long term.
Granted, hardly anyone wants to hear that. They spend a lifetime getting fat but they expect to lose 5 lbs every single week and have the body of their favorite celeb by the end of the year. And there's an endless array of bull**** marketing and hype that bombards them from every angle on a daily basis that helps solidify these beliefs and expectations.
When you take a step back from it all though, what you realize is people are putting all their chips on short term motivation. They get all revved up for whatever reason - summer's approaching, it's a new year, a beach based vacation is planned, a wedding is approaching, a flashy new diet or program catches their attention and reinvigorates their desire to get sexified. Whatever. In the heat of the moment this blast of motivation feels awesomely powerful... they're going to knock down mountains to reach their goal physique.
Unfortunately for them, this sort of motivation is fleeting and what they’re striving to accomplish is a very arduous, long-term effort.
They fall for the same old pattern every single time. Their motivation is like wobbly stilts that are holding up a heavily traveled bridge... only here, when the bridge crashes down (motivation runs out), you plunge into a raging river of calories that you can't keep from entering your mouth!
As a culture, we're actually damn good at losing fat. It's that whole "keeping it off" bit that tends to elude us.
A discussion about the vulnerability of short term motivation is well beyond the scope of your question. Hell, that could take us down rabbit holes dealing with repressed feelings/beliefs, genetically inherited weaknesses in brain chemistry that drive willpower (or lack thereof), illnesses of the mind that can also influence brain chemistry, mismanagement of life (stress overload), and the use of tools such as mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy, and rational emotive therapy to help build a more robust mindset in relation to willpower and focus.
Obviously we don't want to go there today.
But coming full circle, I tend to agree with you that, more often than not, a slight calorie deficit is the best approach given all the other "stuff" that can make this harder than it has to be. If that deficit is 20%, that's fine by me. I tend to throw out 25% but the initial starting point is hardly important compared to the process of regulated adjustment that follows it.
However, there are exceptions to that rule, which is ultimately what you're asking me about. I'll only speak to my experiences with clients, but to name a few exceptions I've dealt with:
1. Obviously weight-class athletes have different demands and time frames than someone who's looking for long term fat loss. Since eating hypocalorically isn't ideal for facilitating performance and fueling the workload of most athletes, I tend to want to minimize the amount time spent dieting. This is where I'll sometimes consolidate, run a steeper deficit, and essentially expedite fat loss when/if needed. At the extreme I'll run something like a protein sparing modified fast a la Lyle McDonald's Rapid Fat Loss Diet. This isn’t to say I do this with all of my athletes, but it is something that I’ve relied on a number of times.
2. While I hate it, over my tenure as a trainer I've encountered at least 50 clients who hire me because they have a social event that they want to turn heads at. This group of people, no matter what I tell them, is going to diet aggressively. They're desperate to impress and they usually wait until they're only a couple of months out from the event. Of course they're also the group who is typically the least successful with finding a more sane balance after the aggressive deficit. They run it, as expected they lose a good chunk of weight, they go to their event and feel victorious, and then they binge. There's absolutely no long term perspective in their minds.
I generally don't enjoy taking these people on as clients. That being said, I'd be lying if I said I turned them all away. At times it was about putting food on my table. In other cases I genuinely liked the person and since I knew they'd do it anyway, I figured their chances are better under my supervision.
3. In general overweight and obese folks can tolerate larger deficits, physiologically speaking. This certainly doesn't mean everyone who's overweight should be rocking an aggressive calorie deficit - just because you can doesn't mean you should. If it fits the individual's mentality, though, it's something I'll consider. It's tedious when you have 15 lbs to lose... imagine when you have 50-100+. A temporarily big deficit (maybe something as high as 50% in some cases) can really jump start a longer term, balanced approach to weight loss. The initial massive drop in weight reinforces the possibility of successfully losing weight. It empowers them and as lame as it might sound, belief goes a long way when it comes to long term weight management.
I've found that more than a few of the obese people I've worked with start out truly believing it's impossible for them to lose appreciable weight. An aggressive diet smacks them in the mouth with some reality that, hey, you can do this... this whole calorie deficit thing, when adhered to, actually works. if you stop the over-consumption, weight will normalize over time.
Of course this has to be paired with tight management of expectations of life after the aggressive deficit. We can't have them expecting huge losses every single week indefinitely. A bit of education goes a long way in making sure they know this is a temporary kick starter to a much longer term approach.
4. For clients who are like me... meaning they hate dieting... running bigger deficits make some sense. I'd rather be punched once in the nose than have it flicked 1,000 times. I'll generally reserve this for more advanced clients who have great relationships with their bodies, their weight, and food in general. I'm sure a number of people can relate to this though, and if so, there are ways of maximizing the rate of fat loss without losing too much muscle
Those are really the big 4 that I've run into. I'm sure we can come up with other scenarios but I simply haven't encountered them personally. In the 4 that I listed, though, hopefully you're picking up on the recurring theme... everything that I do as a coach is context dependent. This is the very reason why 90% of my responses to questions and emails starts with, "It depends."
Is a 20% deficit the best place to start a calorie deficit?
Yes, somewhere around there is probably best for most. Ultimately though, it depends.
ETP:
What are some remedies or solutions that you have provided to your clients in the past, when motivation seems to run out?
Steve:
This is a very tough question to answer. Admittedly I almost skipped over it. I briefly brought up motivation and willpower in my previous answer.
I've always been interested in philosophy, psychology, and behavior. I enjoy the process of figuring out what makes various people tick. This has been an invaluable trait as a trainer since I tend to have more empathy toward personal struggles with weight than most other trainers I encounter. I respect the fact that we're all coming from unique places - environmentally and genetically.
I recently battled a round of shingles. For anyone who isn't familiar with shingles, it's a virus that's left in your body after you've had chickenpox. That's right... if you've had chickenpox, you have shingles in you! For whatever reason, mine were activated and 3 weeks of agonizing pain ensued. I was so uncomfortable that I couldn't sleep - straight up insomnia. A combination of the meds, the sleep deprivation, and the effect on my nervous system led to my first bout of anxiety in my life. I'm talking straight up panic attacks, a general sense of doom and gloom, and at times fear of nothing in particular. It was crippling. I've always been a very driven and generally happy guy and I've never dealt with anything like this.
My family said I was a mere shell of my former self.
What I took from the experience is confirmation that chemical differences in the brain really do alter the playing field for various people. Make no mistake, many of the variables that influence our minds and how we think are inheritable. Beyond that, they’re certainly alterable due to environmental stimuli, illness, drugs, etc.
I mean this acute and (hopefully) temporary bout of anxiety and panic attacks truly altered the way I see the world. It tinted everything in a depressing hue. Things that I was once excited about - things like seeing my kids after a long day of work, my desire to train, corresponding with clients, hiking and biking, and being outside in general - entirely lost their appeal. It was soul-sucking for lack of a better term.
What about people who have more extreme chemical imbalances that are more chronic in nature? Do we even know enough yet to really reach these people? And if we do, I can tell you straight up that the first step in reaching them isn't likely to be some trainer or coach. No matter how awesome of a trainer you claim to be, I'm guessing that without some pharmacological intervention or some qualified therapy (some of which can be self taught), none of your "scientific advice" is going to matter for some folks.
I have a couple of points, but the big one is motivation is extremely complex in and of itself. Add to it the fact that we're all coming from different places in terms of readiness, reasoning, neurochemistry, genetics, environment, history, etc. This makes for a tangled and layered web of confusion that's going to transcend pretty much any trainer or coach's scope of practice.
This doesn’t mean that a trainer shouldn’t dabble in motivation and psychology. Heck, I think a good trainer should immerse him or herself in some of the “over the counter” psychology tools that are available. It does mean, however, that there are some people who you’re simply not going to be able to reach. Either they’re not ready for this kind of thing at this point in their lives or, as a trainer, your delivery style doesn’t jive with them.
I fully admit that I've dealt with more people than I care to remember who I couldn't reach. In my early years I'd chalk it up to lack of education... if they only knew what I know they'd commit. I'd spend oodles of time talking at them and what's crazy is I actually felt good about myself. Never mind the fact these clients weren't making progress. The fact that I was "educating" them provided me the illusion that I was doing something right. After a while, when education proved futile, I chalked it up to some people just being too lazy. And I think that's where a lot of trainers stop. They've very quick to pass judgement on anyone who doesn't listen to them or on anyone who struggles to commit to a plan that they prescribe.
For me, laziness simply didn't cut it. How could it be something so simple as these folks not wanting it badly enough? Being individually focused since the beginning, I’ve always done extensive interviewing with my clients. I would (and still do) inquire about their families, their biggest struggles, their goals, their reasons behind their goals, their bucket lists, their perceptions about various nuances of nutrition and exercise, and much more. These clients who weren't consistent with my prescriptions weren't lazy. If anything, my interview process indicated anything but laziness. These folks would lose and gain the same 30 lbs over and over and over again. They were resilient. They busted their *kitten*.
This led me down the path of asking, "What is motivation?" Maybe if I knew the answer to that, I'd be able to understand why some people seem to have more of it than others. And maybe I could help juice up the capacities of those who seem to run thin on motivation.
As I elluded to in my previous answer, this was and still is a long and deep rabbit hole. Some of which is well outside the realm of my understanding and scope. Over the years though, the number of books in my library dealing with psychology and such has surpassed the number of books dealing with training and nutrition. There’s a ton I don’t know and I’m still doing my best to learn everyday.
What I do know for a fact is that the solution is going to vary from person to person. And I can say with reasonable certainty that some people aren’t reachable. It’s not simply a lack of “motivation” that’s derailing them… it’s deeper and more complex than that. The lack of motivation is merely a side effect or a symptom of something deeper. This doesn’t mean they’re permanently unreachable. And maybe under the guidance of another trainer or a different sort of professional they’ll come around faster.
But as I mentioned above, two things I’ve learned over the years is i) I can’t force clients to do something they’re not truly ready for and ii) not everyone is going to be receptive toward my personal methods and delivery.
That doesn’t mean that at the first sign of struggle or noncompliance I throw in the towel. Hardly! The process of trying to “motivate” my clients, though, is too “off the cuff” to outline it here, which is why it’s nearly impossible to answer your question. It’s very individual and based on what the client is telling me directly and indirectly.
I’m constantly trying to uncover the causative mechanisms behind noncompliance in these clients. Is it the program or diet itself? is it something in their environment throwing them off? is it their beliefs about the possibility of reaching their goals? Is it their goals themselves? Is it their perspectives and mindset? Is it something that’s beyond my scope? On and on it goes… and the sooner you can hone in on triggers the sooner you can find ways to either fix or dance around them.
To show just how individual this is - and prove why answering this question has been so hard for me - here are some samples from my interactions with clients in recent memory:
a) I’ve had numerous clients maintain journals in an effort to stay more on top of the unconscious, automatic, and powerful parts of their minds. This sort of mental accounting helps uncover “whys” to questions that they never thought to ask before. Awareness feeds conscious thinking and that’s a huge start toward dampening automatic impulses that tend to derail people. I’ll usually pair this with having them read a book or two on cognitive behavioral therapy as some of the principles behind it can help the journaling and mental assessment be much more productive.
b) I’ve had some clients hang signs in conspicuous places (like the food pantry) to remind them to interject some presentness or consciousness before going off the deepend into unconscious, calorie seeking madness.
c) For others it was obvious that although the type of programming I initially prescribed was likely optimal for their goals, it was stuff they weren’t ready for. Just because a form of exercise or a way of eating is likely optimal for an individual or goal, that doesn’t mean the client is at a place where they can stomach it yet. Programming - exercise and nutritional - is tailored to the client. Too many trainers have that reversed. They think they know The One True Way of programming and they try and brute force every client they encounter into that singular model.
When I think this is the trigger for lack of compliance, I begin experimenting with the programming to find a better fit. Consistently applied “suboptimal” programming is likely going to get clients closer to their goals than sporadically applied “optimal” programming.
d) I was recently working with a web coaching client who had joined the same gym as her husband. Over a couple of months, her pattern of consistency was very hit or miss. When I started digging in, it became very clear that she hated this particular gym. It was chock full of meatheads, there weren’t many female members, and she simply wasn’t comfortable there. Exercise is hard to adjust to by itself for some… it’s damn near impossible when those same people are trying to do it in a place they hate. Some trainers may have been quick to write her off as lazy of lacking motivation. Me? I simply persuaded her to try 1 month at a different gym in her area and she’s been 90% consistent during the 6 months since.
Sometimes it’s bigger picture, or deeper, than the obvious. Changing programming, hanging some reminders up, and changing gyms are easy fixes - the writing’s on the wall so to speak.
I had another client this year who struggled a lot with consistency and I couldn’t find any obvious reasons why. When I started really digging in, I noticed that she was shouldering a ton of the responsibility at her work and home. She was literally doing it all. Research confirms that we have finite capacities of self control or willpower. If she’s “spending” all of hers on the things that “have to get done” at home and work, how much is left to allocate toward exercise and diet? In her case, it turned out to be not very much and inconsistency ensued.
I had her start focusing on things like delegation. She got her husband to agree to split the household chores with her - he was doing none previously. She also hired a secretary at work. I also had her read a couple of books on mindfulness and stress. The idea was to a) make her aware of ways to create some space in her mind to focus “mental energy” on her fitness goals and b) get her to ease up on herself a bit - help her realize that not everything needs to be accomplished this very second.
I can’t say her “motivation” problems are cured, but her consistency has improved drastically over the course of the year.
Another client who hired me 5 months ago had all sorts of beliefs and perceptions that were derailing him. He was stuck on the big picture - blinded by his ultimate physique goals. While he believed he could get there, the daunting prospects of spending a year or more chasing this goal zapped his energy on a weekly basis. He’d have a few good days and then - bam! - he’d fall off the wagon. Every. Single. Week. My hunch, after chatting about it for a couple of weeks, was that his long term perspective was psyching him out. I simply employed ways of forcing him to focus on the short term… like a 30 day challenge of compliance and things of that nature. The idea was twofold:
1. I wanted him to focus on how the steps along the way matter as much, if not more, than the end goal itself. This helped get him thinking more about the process than the goal… or the journey rather than the destination if you will.
2. It gave him something that he believed was attainable. What’s 30 days? That’s what he’s thinking… “I’m strong enough to commit myself for 30 days!” All along I’m thinking that it’s enough time to start shifting/changing some of his negative habits and perceptions.
So far his consistency is improving profoundly.
Do you regret asking me about this yet, haha?
To sum it up, motivation is complex and I don’t have any universal tactics that I use with everyone. And sadly, I can rattle off a number of cases where, even after a lot of digging and a lot of experimentation, I couldn’t help them stick with a plan.
One thing that I do think is worth mentioning is I’m not a big fan of passing off motivational infographics trying to light fires under butts with pretty pictures and catchy phrases. That seems to be the extent of psychological intervention trainers are offering their clients nowadays and I think it’s a joke.
There’s more to it 100% of the time.
ETP:
When it comes time to increase or re-establish a caloric deficit, what criteria do you use to decide whether or not it makes more sense to remove calories from the diet, or increase activity to create the deficit?
Steve:
Hunger and schedule primarily.
Let me provide some important context here. In almost all instances I start on the conservative side of calorie deficit and exercise volume prescriptions. This being the case, I'm provided the luxury of flexibility when manipulating energy balance. In most instances I have plenty of wiggle room to play with on either side... I can either pull the deficit deeper through a further reduction in intake or push it deeper via more exercise/expenditure.
When I'm first getting to know a client, I'm focused on understanding their lives, their schedules, and their willingness to commit time to training. In fact, I come right out and ask on my initial interview questionnaire how many hours per week they're currently exercising and how many they'd be willing to realistically commit to ongoing.
Thankfully, more often than not, people who hire me are ready to commit more than enough time to training. On the low end I see 3 hours per week. On the high end I see 10 hours. My recommendations almost always fall somewhere in the middle. Again, since I start out conservatively, I might only have 2-3 full body strength sessions and 1-3 "cardio" sessions thrown into the mix depending on the client and their goals. Hell, in some instances I might only have 2-3 prescribed bouts of exercise per week to start out.
In conjunction with this, once the training relationship ensues, I'm constantly monitoring things like hunger and desire to train. I have clients rate these sorts of metrics on a scale from 1 to 10. I'm also monitoring their actual performance in the gym - seeing if they're getting stronger, seeing if performance is improving.
When you're actively monitoring on this level, it's pretty easy to intuitively get a feel for where adjustments should be made. If, after a number of weeks the scale and measurements haven't budged and the client has been consistent, I'll make my judgement on where to "get more" deficit from based on the feedback they've been providing me.
Obviously if their hunger's through the roof even though they've been doing everything to combat it (like sufficient protein, fat, and fiber consumption as well as focusing on high volume, low energy density foods for a large chunk of their diet), I'm likely going to try and push the deficit deeper by adding exercise.
If they're not rating high on the hunger scale, I'll sooner drop calories before adding more exercise into the mix. That's ultimately going to depend on the person though and where I start them in terms of exercise volume.
Now as you go deeper and deeper into dieting in terms of severity and time, obviously your wiggle room tends to shrink.
On the nutrition side of things, there's a floor to how low calories can go. No, I can't pull that exact number out of a hat for you... but suffice it to say we don't want to go so low where we're compromising the ability to get adequate nutrition in (protein, essential fats, fiber, vitamins, minerals, etc). And even before that point, we don't want to go so low where we're compromising performance in the gym since we need a quality training effect in order to build a better physique.
On the exercise side of things, obviously we're limited by one's schedule. We lead very busy lives and there are only so many hours we can dedicate to training. Not to mention the fact that overtraining is a real concern for me... especially in the context of a calorie deficit. When energy intake is shortchanged, so too is recovery ability. Training volume tolerance, or recovery ability itself, can adapt just like every other facet of our physical makeup. By that I mean we can "train" our bodies to handle higher and higher volumes. But again, there's a limit before we totally outstrip recovery ability while dieting.
That's the gist of it though... I start conservatively and keep the end-ranges of the limits in mind. The in-between is my wiggle room. From there, I monitor my clients closely and make adjustments based on what they're directly and indirectly telling me.
I'm sure most people are looking for something sexier. They want to to know "At X % of deficit you should change variable Y by Z amount." But that's not how real training works... at least not as I see it.
I’m constantly and gently nudging my clients’ bodies and performance levels toward improvement. It’s a very subtle and deliberate process that varies depending on the client and his or her situation.
ETP:
Have you ever reached a point with a client where fat loss stalls out, and you're not comfortable decreasing calories further, and there's no room to add additional activity? If so, what can you do?
Steve:
Liposuction? Amputation?
Just kidding…
Yup. This happens quite a bit with my smaller female clients who are trying to get leaner. For a variety of reasons women's bodies are more resilient against losing fat than men's. This is magnified the further down the spectrum of leanness we go.
First and foremost I'll work with the client in assessing where they're at in terms of fat and muscle mass relative to their hypothetical limits. That might sound sketchy to some, but no, I'm not sitting there with some fancy calculator that spits out the maximum amount of muscle a certain frame could hypothetically achieve and then comparing that to their current lean body mass (there are such calculators out there).
I'm taking a higher level view of it all.
In many cases it's quite obvious that there's not all that much more fat to lose and there really isn't all that much muscle. Call it skinny fat or whatever you’d like. The bottom line is they’ve ridden the fat loss wagon as far as it goes and given that they’re not happy, there’s only one other manipulable variable - muscle.
In these cases my recommendation is to shift focus from fat loss to muscle gain. Granted, this is typically met with a lot of reservation. When someone's been programmed to believe “weight loss = winning” and “weight gain = losing”... having them ramp calories up to maintenance and beyond can be a tough sales pitch.
Normally I'll reduce my sales pitch down to a simple analogy that goes something like this… suppose you have a bed sheet, a mattress, and a ream of paper. You place the mattress over the ream of paper and the sheet over the mattress. The sheet is your skin, the mattress is the fat that resides directly under your skin and on top of your muscles, and the ream of paper is one of your muscles.
The goal is to expose that ream of paper, but as it stands now, it’s not visible. We have two options at our disposal. We can either add more reams (build muscle) or we can reduce the thickness of the mattress (lose fat).
Traditionally, these processes are mutually exclusive - fat loss and muscle building. They don’t happen simultaneously… at least not to any meaningful degree. Building muscle is a very intensive process, energetically speaking. Calories are our source of energy. In order to support additional muscle growth, we generally need to eat more calories than our bodies need – a surplus.
On the contrary, losing fat requires an energy shortage, which in turn, causes the body to rely on its existing stores (fat) in order meet its energy needs.
So which do you focus on?
It’s really going to depend on where you fall on the spectrum of fatness. Generally speaking, the fatter you are, the more you should focus on fat loss. Building muscle under a bunch of fat isn’t going to do much for increasing definition.
There are a number of groups that should be focusing on muscle growth though. One such group, coming full circle, would be the individual who has lost most of their fat and they’re still looking for more out of their physiques. Their problem is that their mattress is very thin, but their ream of paper is much too small to drive any sort of meaningful definition. Maybe they simply carry a minimal amount of muscle genetically or maybe they’ve dieted off some of their muscle (muscles don’t really fall off or shrink to nothing while dieting… but muscle loss can occur, especially if nutritional parameters aren’t dialed in, and especially with females who have lower bases of muscle to begin with, this can make getting lean extremely hard).
If I can get the client to subscribe to this line of thinking, typically I can gradually get them on board with eating more food and putting the scale away for some time. It’s a wrestling match though since people are so ingrained to seeing this multifactorial process (fat and muscle manipulation) in singular terms (fat loss only).
I mean I’ve yet to meet a client who comes to me with the goal of looking anorexic, shapeless, or like a crackhead. Yet, I’ve encountered many clients who are on the verge of looking sickly who are still rocking very low calorie intakes (interspersed with binges) and chasing weight loss.
But if you push the question of, “Do you really believe that your physique is magically going to fall into place with a few more pounds of weight loss,” generally you’ll start shifting mindsets. They eventually understand that fat loss and a reduction in weight isn’t always the road to victory.
So again, my opinion is that, in these specific cases, they should shift goals temporarily and move into a muscle building phase. This will give their bodies a break from the constant onslaught of a calorie deficit. What's more is the fact that it'll build a bigger engine. No, I'm not talking about every pound of muscle they build burning an extra 50 calories or whatever the crap myth is nowadays. I'm talking about your base of muscle being the engine to leanness. Without a sufficient base of muscle it's damn tough to get lean. You can get skinny, sure. But lean... at least the kind of lean most are shooting for... ain't happening without a decent base of muscle.
It’s worth mentioning a couple of other situations I’ve encountered…
With some other clients I’ve found it’s not necessarily a lack of muscle that’s a problem but rather an addiction to being in a deficit. If they’ve been a deficit fiend, sometimes simply giving their bodies a break from energy deficiency works wonders. You can only beat your body up so much before it starts rebelling against your efforts. I think a lot of this pertains to water storage due to tons of stress and cortisol… and of course a degree of it is stemming from metabolic slowdown shrinking the actual size of their assumed deficits.
The longer they’ve been in a deficit, the more gradually I’ll ramp calories up to maintenance and the longer I’ll stay at maintenance. In many cases, some weight is gained during this period, but it’s important to be mindful of how you’re defining success.
A few upticks on the scale isn’t cause for concern in my world in the context of bringing calories up in the face of adaptive thermogenesis or whatever you want to call it. The few upticks is merely a symptom of productive measures that are being taken to jump start weight loss again.
Lastly I’ve dealt with other cases where it’s really a matter of unrealistic expectations. Not everyone is meant to be figure/physique competitor lean. It’s just not going to happen for some people. And for others it might happen but only at the expense of any and all enjoyment in life. Not everyone is built to be an elite sprinter, right? Why would getting lean be any different? In this case it’s about formulating more realistic goals while keeping the client engaged and hopeful for improvements. You don’t want to suck the hope out of them - otherwise you can kiss any sort of commitment goodbye. And the fact of the matter is there’s good reason for hope as pretty much everyone has more room for improvement. But a tough conversation is in order sometimes involving the massaging/tweaking of unrealistic expectations.
Of course it’s worth mentioning sometimes clients think we’ve reached a floor where calories are low, there’s no room for additional exercise, and their weight is stalled when, in actuality, there’s a very different truth. That truth is that they’re eating more than they care to admit or more than they can remember. Their “monster” deficit isn’t as monstrous as they believe. And let’s not forget that typically, in these cases, we’re working with relatively small folks. And the smaller they are, the lower their calorie requirements are. The lower calorie requirements are, the less room for error.
So I’m not necessarily talking about huge inaccuracies in reporting. Simply being off by a mere 50 calories per day, which is very easy to do, can be the difference between seeing losses and not seeing losses in some cases. It’s really worth considering accuracy and consistency - or lack of these variables - before worrying about whether someone has run out of room for making more deficit.
ETP:
Can you help our group members become better prepared for those who wish to hire a trainer? What sort of characteristics, qualifications, or traits would you look for if you're somebody trying to hire a trainer?
Steve:
I wrote an entire article about this on my website which you can read here:
http://body-improvements.com/articles/industry-articles/how-to-select-a-personal-trainer/
To sum it up and add some additional commentary:
One of the most relevant considerations to my personal business is whether to hire an online or in-person coach. Web based coaching has become a substantial part of my business and for good reason - it works well for my clients. Gone are the days when the only choice you had was to hope for luck in finding a quality local trainer. Web based training has really lowered the barriers to finding a quality professional. That being said, how do you know which direction to go? For starters, I’d be considering in-person training if:
you know of a quality professional who is located reasonably close to you
you know that you’re not likely to actually do the workouts unless you’re going to a scheduled session to see a trainer in-person
you have no experience with resistance training
On the other hand, I’d be considering the web based route if you:
desire the ability to run things by a professional when questions arise (I tell all of my clients that I’m essentially on call for them)
can’t seem to find a qualified trainer in your locale
would prefer to work with a seasoned professional at a fraction of the cost of in-person training
would prefer to train on your own time opposed to being confined to an in-person trainer’s schedule
Regardless of which route you go, you should be considering the person behind the credential or job title. No matter who I’m working with, in-person or over the ‘net, personal information is exchanged and ultimately close bonds are established. You should be very selective in terms of who you let into your “inner circle”. Do you like the person? Does their personality jive with yours? Considering you’re going to be spending considerable time with this person each week… I think it’s very important that you have compatible personalities.
In the world of in-person training… are they an owner of their gym/studio or an employee. It’s a generality for sure, but more often than not the owner/trainer is move invested in the actual art and science of training. They live and breathe it to a point they’ve decided to start their own business. It’s a true passion. On the flip side, many of the trainers who are parked in some big box, national chain gym tend to fall into this profession simply because they were a good athlete back in the day and they love the idea of wearing sweatpants to work. Their a few steps ahead of monkeys with clipboards. Of course that’s not always true… but given the level of uncertainty when it comes to quality in this profession, I think it’s important to do all that you can to increase your chances of finding a “good one.”
In the context of web based trainers, have they or do they work with anyone in real life? I don’t care how much they read and help out on forums… until they get their hands dirty working with a variety of clients in the actual gym setting, there’s a ton they don’t know. Some of this is quantifiable. On the floor of gym, when you’re training 10-12 people per day, you get very good at knowing how different types of people move and how to best build customized training around them. Some of it isn’t quantifiable. For lack of a better phrase… you develop a sort of sixth sense in terms of program design and individualization when you’re training a ton of people in-person. I’m not saying there can’t be awesome web trainers who have zero experience training person in real life… I’m sure that there can be. I’m simply saying that if I were in the market for a web trainer, I’d want someone who has experience “on the floor” too.
What sort of formal education do they have? On paper, a certified trainer with a degree in a related field is probably better than a certified trainer without a degree who’s probably better than an uncertified trainer with no degree. There’s a lot more to the story than that so you can’t use schooling and credentials as the sole metric for measuring trainer quality, but it’s a start. If they have a certification, ideally it’s from a reputable organization such as the National Strength & Conditioning Association, the National Academy of Sports Medicine, the American College of Sports Medicine.
Obviously price is an issue worth considering. Personal training is a fringe benefit that tends to be relatively expensive. I’ve seen in-person training range from $15 per session to $100+ per session. In fact I met a trainer this year who charges $250 per session with a minimum commitment of 10 sessions! I’ve seen web based coaching range from $50 per month to $500 per month. The bottom line is you want to price things out and do some comparing between options. Don’t hire without shopping first. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’re looking for the lower priced option as you’ll typically get what you pay for. I’m simply suggesting to be an informed consumer before jumping in and opening your wallet.
What are they reading and how are they staying abreast of their continuing education? Don’t be afraid to ask them where they get their information? And if you want to verify the quality of their sources of information, you can always drop me an email or hit up any quality fitness forum and ask.
Come right out and ask how they go about prescribing programming? I **** you not that I’ve seen trainers at my local LA Fitness pulling out handbooks that corporate gave them and using that to drive the programming of their clients. Whether you’re working with a trainer in a gym or over the ‘net, the heart of programming needs to be individually tailored programming that’s customized to your needs and desires. If they’re not giving you the impression that this is what they’re in the business of doing… run away! I’d simply ask, 1) How do you come up with the workouts you give your clients, and 2) When do you change the workouts?
Do they have a referral network of other professionals who are beyond the scope of most personal trainers? Hopefully they acknowledge that they actually have a scope or range of expertise. Trainers aren’t medical professionals although many seem to enjoy pretending they are. Generally speaking, if other professionals are willing to align with them, it’s likely saying something about their quality. I have great relationships with a couple of chiros, a great massage therapist, a physical therapist, and a few dietitians who I rely on when I’m presented with cases that are beyond my know-how.
I highlight a number of other things to look for in the aforementioned article, but this should be a good start.
I’d be sure to go into an initial meeting with a trainer equipped with a list of pre-planned questions. This way they know that you mean business and you are sure that you’re hitting all the points you want the trainer to address. As a trainer, I’m always most impressed with the prospective clients who come to me with this sort of readiness and concern. If a trainer is turned off by it, I’d question their motives.
I’ll leave you with this.
When you hire a trainer, you’re wanting them to facilitate a certain outcome. If after a few months there’s no progress to speak of toward said outcome, don’t be afraid to move onto the next trainer. Unfortunately there’s only so much you can find out ahead of hiring a trainer. You’ll learn the most after the point of hire, and by that time, sometimes then is when you find out that it’s not a good fit. You can’t be afraid of firing a trainer.
ETP:
I've heard you talk about manipulating carbohydrate timing for partitioning benefits. Could you give us a general description of how you would implement this and who believe would benefit from this, and who wouldn't?
Steve:
Again, let’s apply some context.
For starters, I’m generally not touching a cyclical approach when someone has an appreciable amount of excess fat to lose. How much? I don’t really keep tabs of it… I go more by looks. If I had to throw out numbers I’d say guys above 12% and women above 20%. Below that threshold, give or take, is when I’ll consider a cyclical approach.
The exception to this rule is when/if I get the impression that a cyclical approach is going to fuel better compliance for the individual. I’ve found that to be the case in certain individuals regardless of level of fatness.
In addition, regardless of fatness, I’m generally not touching a cyclical approach if the client has an aversion to diet complexity. Make no mistake about it, once you start cycling calories or carbohydrates you’re increasing the complexity of the diet.
At the end of the day, how much benefit are we deriving from a cyclical approach compared to a linear approach? Honestly, we’re not going to be able to quantify that. My gym and training practice certainly isn’t a controlled environment. But yeah, over the years I’ve developed a sense that cycling can improve partitioning to a degree in leaner folks.
That improvement isn’t worth chasing, though, if complexity turns you off. Consistently sticking to a linear approach will always beat out inconsistently flopping around with some cyclical approach.
Most of it started for me when working with relatively small women who were trying to get leaner. It seemed that regardless of how compliant they were and how patient we’d be, in order to get fat or weight to move we’d have to drop calories to lower levels than I was comfortable with. After speaking with some other trainers who had far more experience than me and doing some experimenting of my own, it seemed that doing a few small refeeds across the week made a noticeable difference in this population. I’d essentially keep carbs lowish on “off” days and structure the refeeds around training a handful of times each week. The size and length of time of the refeeds depended on the client.
From there I really started experimenting and frankly I don’t have any hard/fast rules nowadays about how I set things up when and if I go cyclical. If we zoom out, I tend to keep carbs higher on training days than I do on non-training days. I also tend to stack my starchy carb intake post workout. I’m constantly adjusting things though based on feedback and response.
And even when I’m going linear, there’s still a longer term cyclicality to it all. Put differently, I don’t like to keep anyone in a deficit for too terribly long of a time. How long will depend on the individual’s mindset and level of overweight, but a very loose range is 4-12 weeks. Meaning every 4-12 weeks, assuming consistency has been high, I’m likely bringing calories and carbs up for a period of time. This can be by way of structured refeeds or flat out diet breaks.
That’s about it. I hate to disappoint but I don’t flash it up anymore than that as any of my clients can attest.
By and large I’m mostly concerned with my clients hitting their daily calorie targets above anything else. Second to that I’m concerned with their daily (and loose) nutrient targets. Cycling, nutrient timing, supplements, and all that other stuff comes in a distant third.
I’ll add that I have used cyclical approaches beyond the context of improving partitioning and such. One strategy that I’ve used with some success with some of my overweight clients is what I refer to as rotational dieting. I’ve encountered some overweight folks who have very low tolerance for restriction. Even with conservative deficits, they tend to lose steam rather quickly. In some of these cases, I’ve found that doing a period of moderate deficit dieting rotated with maintenance dieting has worked quite well.
It might be a daily rotation for those who are really struggling. One day is a moderately aggressive deficit followed by the next day, which is set at maintenance. Maintenance, however, feels like a “treat” relative to the prior day’s deficit. In other cases I’ve experimented with everything between 2 day rotations to weekly rotations depending on the person.
It’s certainly not magical or anything but for some people it seems to jive.
ETP:
Many times on the forums, the general advice given for everyone, regardless of context, is "lift heavy". It wouldn't surprise me if I've been guilty of this in the past. In my opinion, there are certainly contexts in which "lift heavy" isn't going to be the right advice since it doesn't consider goals, preferences, abilities or limitations of the individual.
So having said that, can you tell our readers what sort of general advice you'd give someone who is moderately overweight to obese, and they're just getting started on their fitness journey. What sort of exercise should they do? What would they do if you were their trainer?
Steve:
I tend to think in terms of spectrums. In this particular case we have lean on one end and obese on the other.
LEAN <
> OBESE
The further along to the right you go, the more important things like energy expenditure and glycogen depletion becomes. The more they’re moving, the better off they tend to be. This doesn’t mean there will be no resistance training programmed. It simply means that I’ll tend to keep their resistance training geared toward metabolic / energy expenditure. Think of it more in terms of lifting weights with the intent of burning calories and depleting the muscle of fuel.
The further to the left you go, the more important things like muscle maintenance and relatively heavy loading become. The leaner you get, the greater the chances of unwanted muscle loss occurring comes into play.
So in the former case, things like 15-20 rep sets, timed sets, minimal rest / continuous movement strategies are the norm. In the latter case, more of the traditional strength/hypertrophy training is the norm where loading is kept primarily in the 4-12 rep range with more rest between sets.
Keep in mind that we’re speaking in general terms here. There are instances when I have obese folks do more strength oriented work and instances when I have leaner folks do more metabolic oriented work. It isn’t an on/off switch by any means.
So what does this actually mean in terms of implementation?
It’s nothing sexy, really. For the obese client I’m likely going to utilize some variant of circuit training. As one example, I’m literally copying and pasting this from one of my client’s workout spreadsheets, but this is something I’ve done with one of my obese clients recently:
Goblet Squat
Standing Cable Rows
Barbell Romanian Deadlift
DB Bench Press
Tire Slams (with a sledge)
Rope Slams
This was cycled through 3 times with a few minutes of rest between each circuit. During the down time I worked in various mobility/activation exercises to keep them moving. The first 5 exercises were done for 15-20 reps a piece. The rope slams were done for 45 seconds. When we finished 3 times through, he was pretty smoked. However, he said he had more in the tank so I took him outside for some sled drags.
Now a couple of notes are in order here.
- This particular client has trained with me for a while now and we’ve built his capacity up over that time. I’ve had obese clients come to me who would never be able to pull off this workout off the bat. I scale programming based on my clients’ comforts and abilities always.
- This client is also a former football player, so he had an athletic base that helps support this style and volume of training.
- I tend to avoid floor based exercises with obese clients simply because getting up and down from the floor can be challenging/embarrasing.
- I also tend to avoid many forms of calisthenics. To the normal weight, strength trained client, bodyweight exercises are likely a cinch for the most part. But when you’re carrying around a hundred or so excess lbs of non-functional tissue, bodyweight exercises can be extremely difficult.
- I also tend to avoid unilateral lower body work since balance and center of gravity tend to be a bit “off” in this population
- The goal here is lots of volume and lots of movement, and these variables have been progressed over a number of months.
- There are points in time where I do sprinkle in some normal strength oriented exercises into this particular client’s programming. This is namely because he loves getting stronger and I think it sets him up for more productive training once he loses a good chunk of his fat.
I’ll also prescribe some additional forms of exercise if the client has the tolerance and desire for it. I’ll typically keep this in the low impact, steady state arena - think swimming, elliptical, stationary bike, walking, etc I’m also the first to invite clients of all shapes and sizes along for some fun in the woods - have it be mountain biking, backpacking, etc.
Every client’s program is going to look different, but the theme of my programming for the overweight or obese client is going to be centered on calorie wastage within their limitations. More often than not it’s also about figuring out programming that they enjoy in order to keep them coming back for more. I’m not as worried about continuity in this population… meaning I’ll tend to switch up programming much more frequently to keep them excited and raring to go.
*****************
In closing I wanted to leave an invitation. My door’s always open… I love hearing from people. It doesn’t have to be an inquiry about one of my services. Maybe you want me to look at your current programming. Maybe you want my help troubleshooting a plateau… maybe a little outside perspective can shine some light on an obvious problem. Maybe you want a book recommendation. Maybe you want to know where the best mountain biking trails are in SE PA. Please don’t hesitate dropping me a line.
Thanks again for the interview, Great questions!
Welcome to our first of hopefully many interviews.
Sara and I are both big fans of Steve Troutman. He's not only been a useful resource here on myfitnesspal, but he's also taken his time to personally help me with various questions I've had about fitness and training.
Steve owns and operates Body-Improvements West, which is a training studio located in Pottstown, PA. He has also found his fit reaching people on the World Wide Web. He is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist by way of the National Strength and Conditioning Association and Certified Personal Trainer and Performance Enhancement Specialist by way of the National Academy of Sports Medicine
You can read a wealth of quality information on his site, at www.body-improvements.com and I am going to additionally recommend that everyone read the following from his site. This is something I've linked in the past and this is really stuffed full of quality information.
http://body-improvements.com/resources/eat/
Sara and I would like to extend a big thank you to Steve for taking the time to answer these questions in great detail. Normally with an interview like this, we would ask follow-up questions but he was so detailed that we don't have any.
Steve:
Firstly I'd just like to say thank you for the interest in interviewing me. Hopefully your members enjoy the Q&A and are able to take something of value away from it. My apologies in advance for the total lack of succinctness.
ETP:
It's a somewhat "common recommendation" for people to aim for a deficit around 20% under TDEE. We promote that in our group as a very "general" starting point, but of course that's not always going to be ideal. Can you talk about criteria/context in which you'd recommend someone go with a significantly greater deficit to achieve faster fat loss?
Steve:
By and large I do suggest eating as much food as possible while still allowing for an appreciable rate of weight loss. There are plenty of other hurdles that need to be cleared when it comes to long term weight management including our obesogenic society, our easy-to-store-fat physiology, our flawed need-it-now expectations, etc. In most instances I really don't see a sense in making it harder than it has to be by running an aggressive deficit. In very general terms, deprivation and consistency are inversely related. Put differently, the harder most people diet, the less success they tend to have over the long term.
Granted, hardly anyone wants to hear that. They spend a lifetime getting fat but they expect to lose 5 lbs every single week and have the body of their favorite celeb by the end of the year. And there's an endless array of bull**** marketing and hype that bombards them from every angle on a daily basis that helps solidify these beliefs and expectations.
When you take a step back from it all though, what you realize is people are putting all their chips on short term motivation. They get all revved up for whatever reason - summer's approaching, it's a new year, a beach based vacation is planned, a wedding is approaching, a flashy new diet or program catches their attention and reinvigorates their desire to get sexified. Whatever. In the heat of the moment this blast of motivation feels awesomely powerful... they're going to knock down mountains to reach their goal physique.
Unfortunately for them, this sort of motivation is fleeting and what they’re striving to accomplish is a very arduous, long-term effort.
They fall for the same old pattern every single time. Their motivation is like wobbly stilts that are holding up a heavily traveled bridge... only here, when the bridge crashes down (motivation runs out), you plunge into a raging river of calories that you can't keep from entering your mouth!
As a culture, we're actually damn good at losing fat. It's that whole "keeping it off" bit that tends to elude us.
A discussion about the vulnerability of short term motivation is well beyond the scope of your question. Hell, that could take us down rabbit holes dealing with repressed feelings/beliefs, genetically inherited weaknesses in brain chemistry that drive willpower (or lack thereof), illnesses of the mind that can also influence brain chemistry, mismanagement of life (stress overload), and the use of tools such as mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy, and rational emotive therapy to help build a more robust mindset in relation to willpower and focus.
Obviously we don't want to go there today.
But coming full circle, I tend to agree with you that, more often than not, a slight calorie deficit is the best approach given all the other "stuff" that can make this harder than it has to be. If that deficit is 20%, that's fine by me. I tend to throw out 25% but the initial starting point is hardly important compared to the process of regulated adjustment that follows it.
However, there are exceptions to that rule, which is ultimately what you're asking me about. I'll only speak to my experiences with clients, but to name a few exceptions I've dealt with:
1. Obviously weight-class athletes have different demands and time frames than someone who's looking for long term fat loss. Since eating hypocalorically isn't ideal for facilitating performance and fueling the workload of most athletes, I tend to want to minimize the amount time spent dieting. This is where I'll sometimes consolidate, run a steeper deficit, and essentially expedite fat loss when/if needed. At the extreme I'll run something like a protein sparing modified fast a la Lyle McDonald's Rapid Fat Loss Diet. This isn’t to say I do this with all of my athletes, but it is something that I’ve relied on a number of times.
2. While I hate it, over my tenure as a trainer I've encountered at least 50 clients who hire me because they have a social event that they want to turn heads at. This group of people, no matter what I tell them, is going to diet aggressively. They're desperate to impress and they usually wait until they're only a couple of months out from the event. Of course they're also the group who is typically the least successful with finding a more sane balance after the aggressive deficit. They run it, as expected they lose a good chunk of weight, they go to their event and feel victorious, and then they binge. There's absolutely no long term perspective in their minds.
I generally don't enjoy taking these people on as clients. That being said, I'd be lying if I said I turned them all away. At times it was about putting food on my table. In other cases I genuinely liked the person and since I knew they'd do it anyway, I figured their chances are better under my supervision.
3. In general overweight and obese folks can tolerate larger deficits, physiologically speaking. This certainly doesn't mean everyone who's overweight should be rocking an aggressive calorie deficit - just because you can doesn't mean you should. If it fits the individual's mentality, though, it's something I'll consider. It's tedious when you have 15 lbs to lose... imagine when you have 50-100+. A temporarily big deficit (maybe something as high as 50% in some cases) can really jump start a longer term, balanced approach to weight loss. The initial massive drop in weight reinforces the possibility of successfully losing weight. It empowers them and as lame as it might sound, belief goes a long way when it comes to long term weight management.
I've found that more than a few of the obese people I've worked with start out truly believing it's impossible for them to lose appreciable weight. An aggressive diet smacks them in the mouth with some reality that, hey, you can do this... this whole calorie deficit thing, when adhered to, actually works. if you stop the over-consumption, weight will normalize over time.
Of course this has to be paired with tight management of expectations of life after the aggressive deficit. We can't have them expecting huge losses every single week indefinitely. A bit of education goes a long way in making sure they know this is a temporary kick starter to a much longer term approach.
4. For clients who are like me... meaning they hate dieting... running bigger deficits make some sense. I'd rather be punched once in the nose than have it flicked 1,000 times. I'll generally reserve this for more advanced clients who have great relationships with their bodies, their weight, and food in general. I'm sure a number of people can relate to this though, and if so, there are ways of maximizing the rate of fat loss without losing too much muscle
Those are really the big 4 that I've run into. I'm sure we can come up with other scenarios but I simply haven't encountered them personally. In the 4 that I listed, though, hopefully you're picking up on the recurring theme... everything that I do as a coach is context dependent. This is the very reason why 90% of my responses to questions and emails starts with, "It depends."
Is a 20% deficit the best place to start a calorie deficit?
Yes, somewhere around there is probably best for most. Ultimately though, it depends.
ETP:
What are some remedies or solutions that you have provided to your clients in the past, when motivation seems to run out?
Steve:
This is a very tough question to answer. Admittedly I almost skipped over it. I briefly brought up motivation and willpower in my previous answer.
I've always been interested in philosophy, psychology, and behavior. I enjoy the process of figuring out what makes various people tick. This has been an invaluable trait as a trainer since I tend to have more empathy toward personal struggles with weight than most other trainers I encounter. I respect the fact that we're all coming from unique places - environmentally and genetically.
I recently battled a round of shingles. For anyone who isn't familiar with shingles, it's a virus that's left in your body after you've had chickenpox. That's right... if you've had chickenpox, you have shingles in you! For whatever reason, mine were activated and 3 weeks of agonizing pain ensued. I was so uncomfortable that I couldn't sleep - straight up insomnia. A combination of the meds, the sleep deprivation, and the effect on my nervous system led to my first bout of anxiety in my life. I'm talking straight up panic attacks, a general sense of doom and gloom, and at times fear of nothing in particular. It was crippling. I've always been a very driven and generally happy guy and I've never dealt with anything like this.
My family said I was a mere shell of my former self.
What I took from the experience is confirmation that chemical differences in the brain really do alter the playing field for various people. Make no mistake, many of the variables that influence our minds and how we think are inheritable. Beyond that, they’re certainly alterable due to environmental stimuli, illness, drugs, etc.
I mean this acute and (hopefully) temporary bout of anxiety and panic attacks truly altered the way I see the world. It tinted everything in a depressing hue. Things that I was once excited about - things like seeing my kids after a long day of work, my desire to train, corresponding with clients, hiking and biking, and being outside in general - entirely lost their appeal. It was soul-sucking for lack of a better term.
What about people who have more extreme chemical imbalances that are more chronic in nature? Do we even know enough yet to really reach these people? And if we do, I can tell you straight up that the first step in reaching them isn't likely to be some trainer or coach. No matter how awesome of a trainer you claim to be, I'm guessing that without some pharmacological intervention or some qualified therapy (some of which can be self taught), none of your "scientific advice" is going to matter for some folks.
I have a couple of points, but the big one is motivation is extremely complex in and of itself. Add to it the fact that we're all coming from different places in terms of readiness, reasoning, neurochemistry, genetics, environment, history, etc. This makes for a tangled and layered web of confusion that's going to transcend pretty much any trainer or coach's scope of practice.
This doesn’t mean that a trainer shouldn’t dabble in motivation and psychology. Heck, I think a good trainer should immerse him or herself in some of the “over the counter” psychology tools that are available. It does mean, however, that there are some people who you’re simply not going to be able to reach. Either they’re not ready for this kind of thing at this point in their lives or, as a trainer, your delivery style doesn’t jive with them.
I fully admit that I've dealt with more people than I care to remember who I couldn't reach. In my early years I'd chalk it up to lack of education... if they only knew what I know they'd commit. I'd spend oodles of time talking at them and what's crazy is I actually felt good about myself. Never mind the fact these clients weren't making progress. The fact that I was "educating" them provided me the illusion that I was doing something right. After a while, when education proved futile, I chalked it up to some people just being too lazy. And I think that's where a lot of trainers stop. They've very quick to pass judgement on anyone who doesn't listen to them or on anyone who struggles to commit to a plan that they prescribe.
For me, laziness simply didn't cut it. How could it be something so simple as these folks not wanting it badly enough? Being individually focused since the beginning, I’ve always done extensive interviewing with my clients. I would (and still do) inquire about their families, their biggest struggles, their goals, their reasons behind their goals, their bucket lists, their perceptions about various nuances of nutrition and exercise, and much more. These clients who weren't consistent with my prescriptions weren't lazy. If anything, my interview process indicated anything but laziness. These folks would lose and gain the same 30 lbs over and over and over again. They were resilient. They busted their *kitten*.
This led me down the path of asking, "What is motivation?" Maybe if I knew the answer to that, I'd be able to understand why some people seem to have more of it than others. And maybe I could help juice up the capacities of those who seem to run thin on motivation.
As I elluded to in my previous answer, this was and still is a long and deep rabbit hole. Some of which is well outside the realm of my understanding and scope. Over the years though, the number of books in my library dealing with psychology and such has surpassed the number of books dealing with training and nutrition. There’s a ton I don’t know and I’m still doing my best to learn everyday.
What I do know for a fact is that the solution is going to vary from person to person. And I can say with reasonable certainty that some people aren’t reachable. It’s not simply a lack of “motivation” that’s derailing them… it’s deeper and more complex than that. The lack of motivation is merely a side effect or a symptom of something deeper. This doesn’t mean they’re permanently unreachable. And maybe under the guidance of another trainer or a different sort of professional they’ll come around faster.
But as I mentioned above, two things I’ve learned over the years is i) I can’t force clients to do something they’re not truly ready for and ii) not everyone is going to be receptive toward my personal methods and delivery.
That doesn’t mean that at the first sign of struggle or noncompliance I throw in the towel. Hardly! The process of trying to “motivate” my clients, though, is too “off the cuff” to outline it here, which is why it’s nearly impossible to answer your question. It’s very individual and based on what the client is telling me directly and indirectly.
I’m constantly trying to uncover the causative mechanisms behind noncompliance in these clients. Is it the program or diet itself? is it something in their environment throwing them off? is it their beliefs about the possibility of reaching their goals? Is it their goals themselves? Is it their perspectives and mindset? Is it something that’s beyond my scope? On and on it goes… and the sooner you can hone in on triggers the sooner you can find ways to either fix or dance around them.
To show just how individual this is - and prove why answering this question has been so hard for me - here are some samples from my interactions with clients in recent memory:
a) I’ve had numerous clients maintain journals in an effort to stay more on top of the unconscious, automatic, and powerful parts of their minds. This sort of mental accounting helps uncover “whys” to questions that they never thought to ask before. Awareness feeds conscious thinking and that’s a huge start toward dampening automatic impulses that tend to derail people. I’ll usually pair this with having them read a book or two on cognitive behavioral therapy as some of the principles behind it can help the journaling and mental assessment be much more productive.
b) I’ve had some clients hang signs in conspicuous places (like the food pantry) to remind them to interject some presentness or consciousness before going off the deepend into unconscious, calorie seeking madness.
c) For others it was obvious that although the type of programming I initially prescribed was likely optimal for their goals, it was stuff they weren’t ready for. Just because a form of exercise or a way of eating is likely optimal for an individual or goal, that doesn’t mean the client is at a place where they can stomach it yet. Programming - exercise and nutritional - is tailored to the client. Too many trainers have that reversed. They think they know The One True Way of programming and they try and brute force every client they encounter into that singular model.
When I think this is the trigger for lack of compliance, I begin experimenting with the programming to find a better fit. Consistently applied “suboptimal” programming is likely going to get clients closer to their goals than sporadically applied “optimal” programming.
d) I was recently working with a web coaching client who had joined the same gym as her husband. Over a couple of months, her pattern of consistency was very hit or miss. When I started digging in, it became very clear that she hated this particular gym. It was chock full of meatheads, there weren’t many female members, and she simply wasn’t comfortable there. Exercise is hard to adjust to by itself for some… it’s damn near impossible when those same people are trying to do it in a place they hate. Some trainers may have been quick to write her off as lazy of lacking motivation. Me? I simply persuaded her to try 1 month at a different gym in her area and she’s been 90% consistent during the 6 months since.
Sometimes it’s bigger picture, or deeper, than the obvious. Changing programming, hanging some reminders up, and changing gyms are easy fixes - the writing’s on the wall so to speak.
I had another client this year who struggled a lot with consistency and I couldn’t find any obvious reasons why. When I started really digging in, I noticed that she was shouldering a ton of the responsibility at her work and home. She was literally doing it all. Research confirms that we have finite capacities of self control or willpower. If she’s “spending” all of hers on the things that “have to get done” at home and work, how much is left to allocate toward exercise and diet? In her case, it turned out to be not very much and inconsistency ensued.
I had her start focusing on things like delegation. She got her husband to agree to split the household chores with her - he was doing none previously. She also hired a secretary at work. I also had her read a couple of books on mindfulness and stress. The idea was to a) make her aware of ways to create some space in her mind to focus “mental energy” on her fitness goals and b) get her to ease up on herself a bit - help her realize that not everything needs to be accomplished this very second.
I can’t say her “motivation” problems are cured, but her consistency has improved drastically over the course of the year.
Another client who hired me 5 months ago had all sorts of beliefs and perceptions that were derailing him. He was stuck on the big picture - blinded by his ultimate physique goals. While he believed he could get there, the daunting prospects of spending a year or more chasing this goal zapped his energy on a weekly basis. He’d have a few good days and then - bam! - he’d fall off the wagon. Every. Single. Week. My hunch, after chatting about it for a couple of weeks, was that his long term perspective was psyching him out. I simply employed ways of forcing him to focus on the short term… like a 30 day challenge of compliance and things of that nature. The idea was twofold:
1. I wanted him to focus on how the steps along the way matter as much, if not more, than the end goal itself. This helped get him thinking more about the process than the goal… or the journey rather than the destination if you will.
2. It gave him something that he believed was attainable. What’s 30 days? That’s what he’s thinking… “I’m strong enough to commit myself for 30 days!” All along I’m thinking that it’s enough time to start shifting/changing some of his negative habits and perceptions.
So far his consistency is improving profoundly.
Do you regret asking me about this yet, haha?
To sum it up, motivation is complex and I don’t have any universal tactics that I use with everyone. And sadly, I can rattle off a number of cases where, even after a lot of digging and a lot of experimentation, I couldn’t help them stick with a plan.
One thing that I do think is worth mentioning is I’m not a big fan of passing off motivational infographics trying to light fires under butts with pretty pictures and catchy phrases. That seems to be the extent of psychological intervention trainers are offering their clients nowadays and I think it’s a joke.
There’s more to it 100% of the time.
ETP:
When it comes time to increase or re-establish a caloric deficit, what criteria do you use to decide whether or not it makes more sense to remove calories from the diet, or increase activity to create the deficit?
Steve:
Hunger and schedule primarily.
Let me provide some important context here. In almost all instances I start on the conservative side of calorie deficit and exercise volume prescriptions. This being the case, I'm provided the luxury of flexibility when manipulating energy balance. In most instances I have plenty of wiggle room to play with on either side... I can either pull the deficit deeper through a further reduction in intake or push it deeper via more exercise/expenditure.
When I'm first getting to know a client, I'm focused on understanding their lives, their schedules, and their willingness to commit time to training. In fact, I come right out and ask on my initial interview questionnaire how many hours per week they're currently exercising and how many they'd be willing to realistically commit to ongoing.
Thankfully, more often than not, people who hire me are ready to commit more than enough time to training. On the low end I see 3 hours per week. On the high end I see 10 hours. My recommendations almost always fall somewhere in the middle. Again, since I start out conservatively, I might only have 2-3 full body strength sessions and 1-3 "cardio" sessions thrown into the mix depending on the client and their goals. Hell, in some instances I might only have 2-3 prescribed bouts of exercise per week to start out.
In conjunction with this, once the training relationship ensues, I'm constantly monitoring things like hunger and desire to train. I have clients rate these sorts of metrics on a scale from 1 to 10. I'm also monitoring their actual performance in the gym - seeing if they're getting stronger, seeing if performance is improving.
When you're actively monitoring on this level, it's pretty easy to intuitively get a feel for where adjustments should be made. If, after a number of weeks the scale and measurements haven't budged and the client has been consistent, I'll make my judgement on where to "get more" deficit from based on the feedback they've been providing me.
Obviously if their hunger's through the roof even though they've been doing everything to combat it (like sufficient protein, fat, and fiber consumption as well as focusing on high volume, low energy density foods for a large chunk of their diet), I'm likely going to try and push the deficit deeper by adding exercise.
If they're not rating high on the hunger scale, I'll sooner drop calories before adding more exercise into the mix. That's ultimately going to depend on the person though and where I start them in terms of exercise volume.
Now as you go deeper and deeper into dieting in terms of severity and time, obviously your wiggle room tends to shrink.
On the nutrition side of things, there's a floor to how low calories can go. No, I can't pull that exact number out of a hat for you... but suffice it to say we don't want to go so low where we're compromising the ability to get adequate nutrition in (protein, essential fats, fiber, vitamins, minerals, etc). And even before that point, we don't want to go so low where we're compromising performance in the gym since we need a quality training effect in order to build a better physique.
On the exercise side of things, obviously we're limited by one's schedule. We lead very busy lives and there are only so many hours we can dedicate to training. Not to mention the fact that overtraining is a real concern for me... especially in the context of a calorie deficit. When energy intake is shortchanged, so too is recovery ability. Training volume tolerance, or recovery ability itself, can adapt just like every other facet of our physical makeup. By that I mean we can "train" our bodies to handle higher and higher volumes. But again, there's a limit before we totally outstrip recovery ability while dieting.
That's the gist of it though... I start conservatively and keep the end-ranges of the limits in mind. The in-between is my wiggle room. From there, I monitor my clients closely and make adjustments based on what they're directly and indirectly telling me.
I'm sure most people are looking for something sexier. They want to to know "At X % of deficit you should change variable Y by Z amount." But that's not how real training works... at least not as I see it.
I’m constantly and gently nudging my clients’ bodies and performance levels toward improvement. It’s a very subtle and deliberate process that varies depending on the client and his or her situation.
ETP:
Have you ever reached a point with a client where fat loss stalls out, and you're not comfortable decreasing calories further, and there's no room to add additional activity? If so, what can you do?
Steve:
Liposuction? Amputation?
Just kidding…
Yup. This happens quite a bit with my smaller female clients who are trying to get leaner. For a variety of reasons women's bodies are more resilient against losing fat than men's. This is magnified the further down the spectrum of leanness we go.
First and foremost I'll work with the client in assessing where they're at in terms of fat and muscle mass relative to their hypothetical limits. That might sound sketchy to some, but no, I'm not sitting there with some fancy calculator that spits out the maximum amount of muscle a certain frame could hypothetically achieve and then comparing that to their current lean body mass (there are such calculators out there).
I'm taking a higher level view of it all.
In many cases it's quite obvious that there's not all that much more fat to lose and there really isn't all that much muscle. Call it skinny fat or whatever you’d like. The bottom line is they’ve ridden the fat loss wagon as far as it goes and given that they’re not happy, there’s only one other manipulable variable - muscle.
In these cases my recommendation is to shift focus from fat loss to muscle gain. Granted, this is typically met with a lot of reservation. When someone's been programmed to believe “weight loss = winning” and “weight gain = losing”... having them ramp calories up to maintenance and beyond can be a tough sales pitch.
Normally I'll reduce my sales pitch down to a simple analogy that goes something like this… suppose you have a bed sheet, a mattress, and a ream of paper. You place the mattress over the ream of paper and the sheet over the mattress. The sheet is your skin, the mattress is the fat that resides directly under your skin and on top of your muscles, and the ream of paper is one of your muscles.
The goal is to expose that ream of paper, but as it stands now, it’s not visible. We have two options at our disposal. We can either add more reams (build muscle) or we can reduce the thickness of the mattress (lose fat).
Traditionally, these processes are mutually exclusive - fat loss and muscle building. They don’t happen simultaneously… at least not to any meaningful degree. Building muscle is a very intensive process, energetically speaking. Calories are our source of energy. In order to support additional muscle growth, we generally need to eat more calories than our bodies need – a surplus.
On the contrary, losing fat requires an energy shortage, which in turn, causes the body to rely on its existing stores (fat) in order meet its energy needs.
So which do you focus on?
It’s really going to depend on where you fall on the spectrum of fatness. Generally speaking, the fatter you are, the more you should focus on fat loss. Building muscle under a bunch of fat isn’t going to do much for increasing definition.
There are a number of groups that should be focusing on muscle growth though. One such group, coming full circle, would be the individual who has lost most of their fat and they’re still looking for more out of their physiques. Their problem is that their mattress is very thin, but their ream of paper is much too small to drive any sort of meaningful definition. Maybe they simply carry a minimal amount of muscle genetically or maybe they’ve dieted off some of their muscle (muscles don’t really fall off or shrink to nothing while dieting… but muscle loss can occur, especially if nutritional parameters aren’t dialed in, and especially with females who have lower bases of muscle to begin with, this can make getting lean extremely hard).
If I can get the client to subscribe to this line of thinking, typically I can gradually get them on board with eating more food and putting the scale away for some time. It’s a wrestling match though since people are so ingrained to seeing this multifactorial process (fat and muscle manipulation) in singular terms (fat loss only).
I mean I’ve yet to meet a client who comes to me with the goal of looking anorexic, shapeless, or like a crackhead. Yet, I’ve encountered many clients who are on the verge of looking sickly who are still rocking very low calorie intakes (interspersed with binges) and chasing weight loss.
But if you push the question of, “Do you really believe that your physique is magically going to fall into place with a few more pounds of weight loss,” generally you’ll start shifting mindsets. They eventually understand that fat loss and a reduction in weight isn’t always the road to victory.
So again, my opinion is that, in these specific cases, they should shift goals temporarily and move into a muscle building phase. This will give their bodies a break from the constant onslaught of a calorie deficit. What's more is the fact that it'll build a bigger engine. No, I'm not talking about every pound of muscle they build burning an extra 50 calories or whatever the crap myth is nowadays. I'm talking about your base of muscle being the engine to leanness. Without a sufficient base of muscle it's damn tough to get lean. You can get skinny, sure. But lean... at least the kind of lean most are shooting for... ain't happening without a decent base of muscle.
It’s worth mentioning a couple of other situations I’ve encountered…
With some other clients I’ve found it’s not necessarily a lack of muscle that’s a problem but rather an addiction to being in a deficit. If they’ve been a deficit fiend, sometimes simply giving their bodies a break from energy deficiency works wonders. You can only beat your body up so much before it starts rebelling against your efforts. I think a lot of this pertains to water storage due to tons of stress and cortisol… and of course a degree of it is stemming from metabolic slowdown shrinking the actual size of their assumed deficits.
The longer they’ve been in a deficit, the more gradually I’ll ramp calories up to maintenance and the longer I’ll stay at maintenance. In many cases, some weight is gained during this period, but it’s important to be mindful of how you’re defining success.
A few upticks on the scale isn’t cause for concern in my world in the context of bringing calories up in the face of adaptive thermogenesis or whatever you want to call it. The few upticks is merely a symptom of productive measures that are being taken to jump start weight loss again.
Lastly I’ve dealt with other cases where it’s really a matter of unrealistic expectations. Not everyone is meant to be figure/physique competitor lean. It’s just not going to happen for some people. And for others it might happen but only at the expense of any and all enjoyment in life. Not everyone is built to be an elite sprinter, right? Why would getting lean be any different? In this case it’s about formulating more realistic goals while keeping the client engaged and hopeful for improvements. You don’t want to suck the hope out of them - otherwise you can kiss any sort of commitment goodbye. And the fact of the matter is there’s good reason for hope as pretty much everyone has more room for improvement. But a tough conversation is in order sometimes involving the massaging/tweaking of unrealistic expectations.
Of course it’s worth mentioning sometimes clients think we’ve reached a floor where calories are low, there’s no room for additional exercise, and their weight is stalled when, in actuality, there’s a very different truth. That truth is that they’re eating more than they care to admit or more than they can remember. Their “monster” deficit isn’t as monstrous as they believe. And let’s not forget that typically, in these cases, we’re working with relatively small folks. And the smaller they are, the lower their calorie requirements are. The lower calorie requirements are, the less room for error.
So I’m not necessarily talking about huge inaccuracies in reporting. Simply being off by a mere 50 calories per day, which is very easy to do, can be the difference between seeing losses and not seeing losses in some cases. It’s really worth considering accuracy and consistency - or lack of these variables - before worrying about whether someone has run out of room for making more deficit.
ETP:
Can you help our group members become better prepared for those who wish to hire a trainer? What sort of characteristics, qualifications, or traits would you look for if you're somebody trying to hire a trainer?
Steve:
I wrote an entire article about this on my website which you can read here:
http://body-improvements.com/articles/industry-articles/how-to-select-a-personal-trainer/
To sum it up and add some additional commentary:
One of the most relevant considerations to my personal business is whether to hire an online or in-person coach. Web based coaching has become a substantial part of my business and for good reason - it works well for my clients. Gone are the days when the only choice you had was to hope for luck in finding a quality local trainer. Web based training has really lowered the barriers to finding a quality professional. That being said, how do you know which direction to go? For starters, I’d be considering in-person training if:
you know of a quality professional who is located reasonably close to you
you know that you’re not likely to actually do the workouts unless you’re going to a scheduled session to see a trainer in-person
you have no experience with resistance training
On the other hand, I’d be considering the web based route if you:
desire the ability to run things by a professional when questions arise (I tell all of my clients that I’m essentially on call for them)
can’t seem to find a qualified trainer in your locale
would prefer to work with a seasoned professional at a fraction of the cost of in-person training
would prefer to train on your own time opposed to being confined to an in-person trainer’s schedule
Regardless of which route you go, you should be considering the person behind the credential or job title. No matter who I’m working with, in-person or over the ‘net, personal information is exchanged and ultimately close bonds are established. You should be very selective in terms of who you let into your “inner circle”. Do you like the person? Does their personality jive with yours? Considering you’re going to be spending considerable time with this person each week… I think it’s very important that you have compatible personalities.
In the world of in-person training… are they an owner of their gym/studio or an employee. It’s a generality for sure, but more often than not the owner/trainer is move invested in the actual art and science of training. They live and breathe it to a point they’ve decided to start their own business. It’s a true passion. On the flip side, many of the trainers who are parked in some big box, national chain gym tend to fall into this profession simply because they were a good athlete back in the day and they love the idea of wearing sweatpants to work. Their a few steps ahead of monkeys with clipboards. Of course that’s not always true… but given the level of uncertainty when it comes to quality in this profession, I think it’s important to do all that you can to increase your chances of finding a “good one.”
In the context of web based trainers, have they or do they work with anyone in real life? I don’t care how much they read and help out on forums… until they get their hands dirty working with a variety of clients in the actual gym setting, there’s a ton they don’t know. Some of this is quantifiable. On the floor of gym, when you’re training 10-12 people per day, you get very good at knowing how different types of people move and how to best build customized training around them. Some of it isn’t quantifiable. For lack of a better phrase… you develop a sort of sixth sense in terms of program design and individualization when you’re training a ton of people in-person. I’m not saying there can’t be awesome web trainers who have zero experience training person in real life… I’m sure that there can be. I’m simply saying that if I were in the market for a web trainer, I’d want someone who has experience “on the floor” too.
What sort of formal education do they have? On paper, a certified trainer with a degree in a related field is probably better than a certified trainer without a degree who’s probably better than an uncertified trainer with no degree. There’s a lot more to the story than that so you can’t use schooling and credentials as the sole metric for measuring trainer quality, but it’s a start. If they have a certification, ideally it’s from a reputable organization such as the National Strength & Conditioning Association, the National Academy of Sports Medicine, the American College of Sports Medicine.
Obviously price is an issue worth considering. Personal training is a fringe benefit that tends to be relatively expensive. I’ve seen in-person training range from $15 per session to $100+ per session. In fact I met a trainer this year who charges $250 per session with a minimum commitment of 10 sessions! I’ve seen web based coaching range from $50 per month to $500 per month. The bottom line is you want to price things out and do some comparing between options. Don’t hire without shopping first. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’re looking for the lower priced option as you’ll typically get what you pay for. I’m simply suggesting to be an informed consumer before jumping in and opening your wallet.
What are they reading and how are they staying abreast of their continuing education? Don’t be afraid to ask them where they get their information? And if you want to verify the quality of their sources of information, you can always drop me an email or hit up any quality fitness forum and ask.
Come right out and ask how they go about prescribing programming? I **** you not that I’ve seen trainers at my local LA Fitness pulling out handbooks that corporate gave them and using that to drive the programming of their clients. Whether you’re working with a trainer in a gym or over the ‘net, the heart of programming needs to be individually tailored programming that’s customized to your needs and desires. If they’re not giving you the impression that this is what they’re in the business of doing… run away! I’d simply ask, 1) How do you come up with the workouts you give your clients, and 2) When do you change the workouts?
Do they have a referral network of other professionals who are beyond the scope of most personal trainers? Hopefully they acknowledge that they actually have a scope or range of expertise. Trainers aren’t medical professionals although many seem to enjoy pretending they are. Generally speaking, if other professionals are willing to align with them, it’s likely saying something about their quality. I have great relationships with a couple of chiros, a great massage therapist, a physical therapist, and a few dietitians who I rely on when I’m presented with cases that are beyond my know-how.
I highlight a number of other things to look for in the aforementioned article, but this should be a good start.
I’d be sure to go into an initial meeting with a trainer equipped with a list of pre-planned questions. This way they know that you mean business and you are sure that you’re hitting all the points you want the trainer to address. As a trainer, I’m always most impressed with the prospective clients who come to me with this sort of readiness and concern. If a trainer is turned off by it, I’d question their motives.
I’ll leave you with this.
When you hire a trainer, you’re wanting them to facilitate a certain outcome. If after a few months there’s no progress to speak of toward said outcome, don’t be afraid to move onto the next trainer. Unfortunately there’s only so much you can find out ahead of hiring a trainer. You’ll learn the most after the point of hire, and by that time, sometimes then is when you find out that it’s not a good fit. You can’t be afraid of firing a trainer.
ETP:
I've heard you talk about manipulating carbohydrate timing for partitioning benefits. Could you give us a general description of how you would implement this and who believe would benefit from this, and who wouldn't?
Steve:
Again, let’s apply some context.
For starters, I’m generally not touching a cyclical approach when someone has an appreciable amount of excess fat to lose. How much? I don’t really keep tabs of it… I go more by looks. If I had to throw out numbers I’d say guys above 12% and women above 20%. Below that threshold, give or take, is when I’ll consider a cyclical approach.
The exception to this rule is when/if I get the impression that a cyclical approach is going to fuel better compliance for the individual. I’ve found that to be the case in certain individuals regardless of level of fatness.
In addition, regardless of fatness, I’m generally not touching a cyclical approach if the client has an aversion to diet complexity. Make no mistake about it, once you start cycling calories or carbohydrates you’re increasing the complexity of the diet.
At the end of the day, how much benefit are we deriving from a cyclical approach compared to a linear approach? Honestly, we’re not going to be able to quantify that. My gym and training practice certainly isn’t a controlled environment. But yeah, over the years I’ve developed a sense that cycling can improve partitioning to a degree in leaner folks.
That improvement isn’t worth chasing, though, if complexity turns you off. Consistently sticking to a linear approach will always beat out inconsistently flopping around with some cyclical approach.
Most of it started for me when working with relatively small women who were trying to get leaner. It seemed that regardless of how compliant they were and how patient we’d be, in order to get fat or weight to move we’d have to drop calories to lower levels than I was comfortable with. After speaking with some other trainers who had far more experience than me and doing some experimenting of my own, it seemed that doing a few small refeeds across the week made a noticeable difference in this population. I’d essentially keep carbs lowish on “off” days and structure the refeeds around training a handful of times each week. The size and length of time of the refeeds depended on the client.
From there I really started experimenting and frankly I don’t have any hard/fast rules nowadays about how I set things up when and if I go cyclical. If we zoom out, I tend to keep carbs higher on training days than I do on non-training days. I also tend to stack my starchy carb intake post workout. I’m constantly adjusting things though based on feedback and response.
And even when I’m going linear, there’s still a longer term cyclicality to it all. Put differently, I don’t like to keep anyone in a deficit for too terribly long of a time. How long will depend on the individual’s mindset and level of overweight, but a very loose range is 4-12 weeks. Meaning every 4-12 weeks, assuming consistency has been high, I’m likely bringing calories and carbs up for a period of time. This can be by way of structured refeeds or flat out diet breaks.
That’s about it. I hate to disappoint but I don’t flash it up anymore than that as any of my clients can attest.
By and large I’m mostly concerned with my clients hitting their daily calorie targets above anything else. Second to that I’m concerned with their daily (and loose) nutrient targets. Cycling, nutrient timing, supplements, and all that other stuff comes in a distant third.
I’ll add that I have used cyclical approaches beyond the context of improving partitioning and such. One strategy that I’ve used with some success with some of my overweight clients is what I refer to as rotational dieting. I’ve encountered some overweight folks who have very low tolerance for restriction. Even with conservative deficits, they tend to lose steam rather quickly. In some of these cases, I’ve found that doing a period of moderate deficit dieting rotated with maintenance dieting has worked quite well.
It might be a daily rotation for those who are really struggling. One day is a moderately aggressive deficit followed by the next day, which is set at maintenance. Maintenance, however, feels like a “treat” relative to the prior day’s deficit. In other cases I’ve experimented with everything between 2 day rotations to weekly rotations depending on the person.
It’s certainly not magical or anything but for some people it seems to jive.
ETP:
Many times on the forums, the general advice given for everyone, regardless of context, is "lift heavy". It wouldn't surprise me if I've been guilty of this in the past. In my opinion, there are certainly contexts in which "lift heavy" isn't going to be the right advice since it doesn't consider goals, preferences, abilities or limitations of the individual.
So having said that, can you tell our readers what sort of general advice you'd give someone who is moderately overweight to obese, and they're just getting started on their fitness journey. What sort of exercise should they do? What would they do if you were their trainer?
Steve:
I tend to think in terms of spectrums. In this particular case we have lean on one end and obese on the other.
LEAN <
> OBESE
The further along to the right you go, the more important things like energy expenditure and glycogen depletion becomes. The more they’re moving, the better off they tend to be. This doesn’t mean there will be no resistance training programmed. It simply means that I’ll tend to keep their resistance training geared toward metabolic / energy expenditure. Think of it more in terms of lifting weights with the intent of burning calories and depleting the muscle of fuel.
The further to the left you go, the more important things like muscle maintenance and relatively heavy loading become. The leaner you get, the greater the chances of unwanted muscle loss occurring comes into play.
So in the former case, things like 15-20 rep sets, timed sets, minimal rest / continuous movement strategies are the norm. In the latter case, more of the traditional strength/hypertrophy training is the norm where loading is kept primarily in the 4-12 rep range with more rest between sets.
Keep in mind that we’re speaking in general terms here. There are instances when I have obese folks do more strength oriented work and instances when I have leaner folks do more metabolic oriented work. It isn’t an on/off switch by any means.
So what does this actually mean in terms of implementation?
It’s nothing sexy, really. For the obese client I’m likely going to utilize some variant of circuit training. As one example, I’m literally copying and pasting this from one of my client’s workout spreadsheets, but this is something I’ve done with one of my obese clients recently:
Goblet Squat
Standing Cable Rows
Barbell Romanian Deadlift
DB Bench Press
Tire Slams (with a sledge)
Rope Slams
This was cycled through 3 times with a few minutes of rest between each circuit. During the down time I worked in various mobility/activation exercises to keep them moving. The first 5 exercises were done for 15-20 reps a piece. The rope slams were done for 45 seconds. When we finished 3 times through, he was pretty smoked. However, he said he had more in the tank so I took him outside for some sled drags.
Now a couple of notes are in order here.
- This particular client has trained with me for a while now and we’ve built his capacity up over that time. I’ve had obese clients come to me who would never be able to pull off this workout off the bat. I scale programming based on my clients’ comforts and abilities always.
- This client is also a former football player, so he had an athletic base that helps support this style and volume of training.
- I tend to avoid floor based exercises with obese clients simply because getting up and down from the floor can be challenging/embarrasing.
- I also tend to avoid many forms of calisthenics. To the normal weight, strength trained client, bodyweight exercises are likely a cinch for the most part. But when you’re carrying around a hundred or so excess lbs of non-functional tissue, bodyweight exercises can be extremely difficult.
- I also tend to avoid unilateral lower body work since balance and center of gravity tend to be a bit “off” in this population
- The goal here is lots of volume and lots of movement, and these variables have been progressed over a number of months.
- There are points in time where I do sprinkle in some normal strength oriented exercises into this particular client’s programming. This is namely because he loves getting stronger and I think it sets him up for more productive training once he loses a good chunk of his fat.
I’ll also prescribe some additional forms of exercise if the client has the tolerance and desire for it. I’ll typically keep this in the low impact, steady state arena - think swimming, elliptical, stationary bike, walking, etc I’m also the first to invite clients of all shapes and sizes along for some fun in the woods - have it be mountain biking, backpacking, etc.
Every client’s program is going to look different, but the theme of my programming for the overweight or obese client is going to be centered on calorie wastage within their limitations. More often than not it’s also about figuring out programming that they enjoy in order to keep them coming back for more. I’m not as worried about continuity in this population… meaning I’ll tend to switch up programming much more frequently to keep them excited and raring to go.
*****************
In closing I wanted to leave an invitation. My door’s always open… I love hearing from people. It doesn’t have to be an inquiry about one of my services. Maybe you want me to look at your current programming. Maybe you want my help troubleshooting a plateau… maybe a little outside perspective can shine some light on an obvious problem. Maybe you want a book recommendation. Maybe you want to know where the best mountain biking trails are in SE PA. Please don’t hesitate dropping me a line.
Thanks again for the interview, Great questions!
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:happy:0
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Great read!!!!!0
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:flowerforyou:0
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Thanks for taking the time to share this with us Steve, and thanks for sharing that with us Sara/SS!
It is completely refreshing to hear from a trainer who understands individual differences between clients can have a major impact on how you relate to them and help them to succeed.
As an aside, I like the idea of using a CBT framework as a tool to assist clients. I have seen this (and similar modes) have great effects on anxiety and depression and related disorders, it would be interesting to see how you integrate this into your practice!0 -
Thank you for very thoughtful answers.0
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Tagging to read later.0
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Tagging.
May I also suggest podcasts?
That would be totally awesome.0 -
Wow. Fantastic read, I don't say that lightly. What a great idea.0
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Great information. You guys keep going above and beyond. Thanks.0
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excellent.0
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Excellent read.
In particular I will be taking this phrase with me:deprivation and consistency are inversely related0 -
Very good read!!! The last question in particular resonated a bit with me in the way that I approach the "larger" question askers on the forum. I am definitely guilty of advising them to do strength training (I leave the type up to them), but I can understand the benefits of doing a higher rep circuit training routine as opposed to a heavy lifting routine. Obese people are more likely to have poor cardiovascular health as well, so a circuit training regimen with shorter rest periods could definitely be beneficial.0
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Thanks for this! It's very informative. And it shows that there's hope for me even though I don't/can't lift weights. Steve, Sidesteel, and Sara, y'all rock!0
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TL;DR
Just kidding, that was great. I actually love the lengthy replies - it goes to show that almost nothing in this field has an easy or short answer. Way too many variables across the board.0 -
Fantastic interview! Thanks Sara and Sidesteel for sharing and above all, thanks Steve for taking the time. I always look forward to your advice/suggestions/input on everything and anything
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Thank you! This was very thoughtful and a great read!0
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:drinker:0
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Thank you! Great read!0
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Thank you very much!!! Excellent read!!!0
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Great info! Tagging to finish reading.0
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Wow. Thank you *so much* for providing this. Super informative and helpful!0
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Thank you :flowerforyou:0
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It's taken me all day to get through reading this (5 kids on a Sunday and all :laugh: ) but that was very worthwhile! Thanks!0
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Thank you so much, SideSteel, Sara, and Steve!0
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Thanks for sharing.
Like him, my trainer wanted me to do more movement based things to get weight off quickly. I ended up not getting more sessions with him after I used up all of them. I'd rather do more heavy lifting than circuit training. I know it's slower, but it's a lot more fun. I'd rather enjoy myself along a scenic rout than take a busy, boring highway any day.0 -
Fantastic read!! Looking forward to more 0
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Fighting the urge to post a gif.
Must. Not. Give. In... Gah.
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In all seriousness, that was an awesome read. Thanks for getting the interview!0
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Thanks Steve for taking the time to answer, and to sidesteel and Sara!0
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Mmm, very helpful and interesting thank you. It makes me realise that my particular parameters (can't go more then 3x/week, family, aversion to deprivation and cardio) will limit what I can achieve - but that that knowledge will help me maximise it. Self realisation is a great thing!0
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