We’ve all started programs and then somehow petered out and not achieved our goals.
I want this to change so that we can get to the real meat and potatoes of the program, creating a different hormonal environment within your body.
But first, you need to be aware of 2 factors, namely program stagnation, and metabolic slowdown.
Let’s tackle the latter first:
Metabolic slowdown
Most diets rely on creating a caloric deficit. That is, – you take in fewer calories than you expend. This is why most diets do work… for a while. You could lose weight by eating cupcakes, as long as you are burning more cupcake calories than you’re taking in.
– but the scale would stop moving after a while… This is because the actual results happen with the help of your hormones. The cupcake diet would come to an abrupt end because of leptin. When leptin drops dramatically, it’s because your body has entered starvation mode.
Once your body feels that it’s in starvation mode, other hormones join the party. Oestrogen is produced and will make sure that your muffin top stays glued to your hips. Insulin, or rather your resistance to it, will make sure that your belly fat stays precisely where it is. And the Stress of starvation will send your cortisol levels soaring, which will keep your abdominals hidden under a thick layer of flab.
There are profound health implications for having these hormones wreak havoc in your system. Still, if you reprogram your hormonal environment, then you will not only reprogram the way you look and feel, but you will also be adding years of health to your life.
Program stagnation
Lift Heavy, Eat right and pack on muscles… – if only it were that easy. Most guys will walk into the gym armed with a program that they downloaded from a fitness site. – If it worked for Ronnie Coleman, then why should it not work for me, right?! – wrong…
When you do this, you’re ignoring two factors…. – Periodisation and your hormones.
You may have copied Ronnie Coleman’s final two-week program, which has enormous training volume in it, and thus overtrain yourself to such a point, that you end up putting your body into stress mode, extra Cortisol, and indeed less fat burned. If your program takes you straight to contest prep, then you have missed out on the all-important foundational build-up to this.
At this point, you may not be completely convinced that our particular program will do the trick – after all, you have never had a program that does the trick.
There’s an old cliché that defines madness as the repeated doing of the same thing, whilst expecting different results. My question to you would ask what you have to lose by trying a new approach if the things you tried previously didn’t work.
Maybe you need a lifestyle system that does not feel like a diet. Maybe you need to make those small changes, which stack up and have a compounding effect and boost you to amazing health.
Food for thought – Take Care
Thorsten
