I'm going to focus this article around the New Year transformation bootcamps that you'll no doubt see advertised everywhere in a couple of months time. It is now officially the run up to Christmas and the time for extra socialising and additional calories is upon us - yay!
Jennifer West writes an exclusive piece for Female First
As January 1st hits you're ready to feel fresh, fit and face the next 12 months head-on! You log into instagram or walk into the gym and see advertised a 'New Year, New You' Transformation Bootcamp. Great! Look at all those amazing before and after pics on that board! And with no knowledge about the coach running the course or maybe how it is even structured, you sign up! It's a good deal and you'll lose loads of weight. Right?
This is where I lose my rag!
My problem with these transformation bootcamps? Often the person running the bootcamp doesn't care about your health particularly, or teaching you the tools to make changes permanently. Oh no! They just want to ensure people think they're an amazing coach because they've helped you stop putting cake into your mouth and lose bags of weight. They want good before and after pics for their PT board and website.
Now I would like to put this out there that I am NOT saying this is every coach, by any means. I've ran New Year bootcamps myself and I didn't do what many coaches are going to do come January 1st.
Many however, will make you reduce you calories to that of what a child should be eating. You will spend the next eight to 12 weeks of your life on 1,200 calories and be absolutely hating life! They'll most likely tell you what food to eat too; queue the chicken and broccoli! No one should be surviving on such low calories. You'll have no energy, bad sleep, lack of quality skin, girls you may even lose your period if your body becomes so stressed by it!
Basically it's not what a qualified coach should be advising if they actually care. You can lose weight without having to drop your calories to such low numbers. Your coach should ideally work out your BMR (the amount of calories your body needs each day to survive) then work out how many cals you could have from this.
They give you about 67,000 HIIT workouts to do each week to ensure you lose fat! It's not really sustainable to be doing five HIIT sessions a week. It's very taxing on the body and what's crazy is you don't need HIIT training to lose body fat! But my gosh will social media make you believe you do.
Ideally the coach will give you a variety of exercise to do over a week to keep you motivated and improving. These sessions should also be progressive! A great coach in my eyes will ask you to be doing regular weight training sessions to increase your lean mass (muscle), as the more muscle you have, the higher your BMR will become and you'll lose weight easier. They should know this and they really should set this for you.
Also, if your goal is to tone up in the New Year, then weight training should be the main bulk of your sessions. If you're a female then you'll have to work so much harder than men as our bodies contain way less of the hormone testosterone which means it's harder for us to get even lightly toned.
The reason they give you lots of HIIT? It makes you sweat, it's tough and it does burn a decent amount of calories during the workout. It's easy for them to set that and the likelihood of you losing weight initially is high. Particularly if you're on 1,200 cals!
But the more fit you become and as you lose weight, you will burn less calories during the HIIT session than before and your results will slow down. The only option then is to do more HIIT for longer and harder. This isn't realistic and it isn't sustainable and what's worse is you don't need to be doing this to lose weight either.
I've had clients also tell me than when they've done transformation camps they've been told to stand slouchy and not smile for their first pic. Then in 12 weeks when they're tired, moody, hungry and quite frankly glad the whole affair is over are told to smile and breathe in. Again, I'm not saying this is what all coaches do but let me just say I've heard it more times than I care to remember.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't get sucked in by the before and after picture you see being advertised; there is a high chance that since that pic was taken the person in it drove straight to McDonalds after for a big Mac and fries (as one girl told me!)
Yes, you lost weight, but due to such low calories and intensive workouts your metabolism is now not as affective. Mentally you're out! You can't keep going on your strict regime. There is often no aftercare advice on how to carry on with your training and diet after three months of being strict. Fast forward to four, maybe six weeks later and all of the weight is back on. Inevitably! So did it work? I would say no. Because you're back at square one and probably feel worse about yourself than before.
My advice to you if you're looking to transform your body in the New Year is to not rush and be patient. Speak to the coach running the transformation camp and ask them plenty of questions to find out if it is just a quick fix that will leave you miserable if you even manage to make it to week 12.
You want to look for a long term plan, stop looking for quick fixes!
Transformation bootcamps will make you hungry, tired and be missing out on social time too, because you can't eat out on your chicken and broccoli plan!
I promise you by summer time you'll be already on your way to making amazing changes and all the people who joined those camps will literally be back at square one again - YOU won't be! You'll be stronger, leaner, increased your BMR, enjoying all types of food, socialising and enjoying your crazy energy levels as well as getting results! And next New Year you wont want to join some transformation camp because you'll already be making amazing progress yourself.
If you're a coach and you're planning on doing a New Year transformation camp think about how you're going to structure it. Let's stop encouraging people to look for quick fixes that aren't actually going to help them. As coaches you can feel the pressure to deliver results and I have more people coming to me for quick fixes than long term goals. I won't help someone if it means I have to make them unhealthy! I wont help them get abs in six weeks if I know they have to be crazy unhealthy to get it. Screw the before and after pic! There are so many quick fixes in the fitness industry and clearly its not working! Let's start educating people and stop being enablers.
Tagged in fitness tips