Calorie Counting To Become A Smaller Individual
“I have said that food, and food only, causes fat.” (Lulu Hunt Peters, Diet & Health)
I try to steer towards simplicity when I can. Complexity takes up time and energy. If there exists a solid reason for this complexity, then engage in it, but sometimes there’s a more simplified solution.
At the first gym I worked at as a personal trainer there was an app we were supposed to use for meal planning/calorie counting for our clients(none of us used it). Being the bright-eyed bushy-tailed new trainer that I was I worked diligently to create meal plans for my clients who wanted them at first until one of the other/more successful trainers looked at me like…
“Oh bless his heart”
The app was a pain in the butt for both the trainers and the clients. It was just another conduit to drive more supplement sales.
My initial idea upon getting into personal training was to focus solely on increasing the physical capabilities of clients over time while slowly decreasing their intake of processed foods. Before this time I had been going down the carnivore/avoid seed oil rabbit hole. This combined with my knowledge of calisthenics would provide the one-two punch for better health.
I would of course include overcoming isometrics in all this using the various machines around the gym.
Many of my experiences and readings led me to this approach. One of them being an observer of the youtube calisthenics community with a significant portion of them being from prison and despite the lack of decent food still developing solid physiques which is nothing new…
“I had plenty of time to carry out my ideas[As a WW1 POW]. In fact, I had nothing else to do. And one of the things I speedily discovered was that for many hours could this kind of physical stimulation be kept up. Instead of wasting energy, this, on the contrary, was retained. Which was fortunate for me, in more ways than one, when the position I was in is remembered. For I did not get too much to eat, I must tell you, and what I did get was not of the most nourishing nature. And so I continued for about three months, gradually recovering my lost development and adding appreciably to my depleted strength and energy.” (p 116 Amazing Sampson)
Another was a book I read from of doctor on how he got his overweight patients to slim down…
It’s not so much counting calories but the improved energy function of our bodies through working out as well as the quality of the food we eat. Which I am still struggling with…
For myself, I’ve found brisk walking between 40min to an hour a day to be very beneficial in giving me a cut-up Bruce Lee/Jim Kelly look. It didn’t have to be all in one setting but the larger the session the more benefit gained.
But our onboarding process for the gym slightly steered me away from this approach as we were told,
“You can’t get slimmer just from working out.”
Certain phrases are like nails on a chalkboard to me. I don’t know why initially but then I stumble upon something years later and am like,
“Oh, that’s why.”
Certain phrases in our society come into being and are repeated until they are accepted as truth. Whenever you question it you are looked at as if you’re some cryptid in a clown costume or ostracized. One of these is the phrase, “Spot reduction” which is an anathema in the fitness community.
This idea that weight loss or improved body composition cannot be stimulated mostly through exercise is another one.
The food we eat does matter. But unless you’re a body-builder and are trying to get from 6% body fat down to 5.3761% body fat this 80%(diet)/20%(workout) I would argue is a bit inverted.
I was excited to find this narrative in a book from the early 20th century.
It is practically impossible to reduce weight through exercise alone, unless one can do a tremendous amount of it. (Peters, Diet & Health)
In the same book, we also get this…
“Tell loudly and frequently to all your friends that you realize that it is unpatriotic to be fat while many thousands are starving, that you are going to reduce to normal” (Peters, Diet & Health)
More on this individual later as I believe there were some reasons this narrative, “Took off.”
Through exercise alone and not micromanaging what she ate one of my older female clients remarked that her clothes we getting baggy. My knowledge back then was garbage compared to now. Just train the body to move better and watch what you eat.
Can the same be done with machines and weights? Improved body composition? Maybe. I’m not an expert on that.
Moving your body through time and space, like it was meant to, has an effect. You are teaching your body to adapt. If you teach your body to move better over time your tissues(muscle and fat) will adapt.
There might not be many studies on this because you can’t make as much money off of progressive calisthenics vs working out in a gym. #followthemoney But I’ll work to make sure the world knows of these benefits….
But how did this whole calorie counting get off the ground? How was it determined how much energy different foods contain?
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