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Scott Spence

Why is anything intimidating?

3 min read
Hey! Thanks for stopping by! Just a word of warning, this post is over 4 years old, wow! If there's technical information in here it's more than likely out of date.

Stand back everyone, I’m doing pontification! I’ve had a couple conversations with my new found developer buddies about fitness, more along the lines of gym going and nutrition actually.

One friend in particular Danielle Ormshaw asked why is going to the gym so intimidating?

“Why is exercise so intimidating. Can you blog on that?” Is what Danielle asked, if you have seen me recently you’d know I’m not the best person to be giving out advice about going to the gym.

I will share my experiences about this though in the hope that someone else may find it useful and help them in their journey.

#RefactorYourBody

About four years ago I was convinced I was going to end up with type two diabetes.

Back then I knew relativity nothing about nutrition and fitness You probably will feel like a berk in the gym, I know I did, then you realise that everyone else there is there to do the same thing and they’re probably feeling like you or have felt like you feel now in the past at some point. No one is there to judge, everyone had to start somewhere.

A whole new world 🙃

I’m not an expert, the fitness industry is massive and unregulated, any gym bro can open a YouTube channel and be the de facto expert on whatever it is they’re peddling.

It’s like with any industry there’s shysters and there’s people who offer genuine advice.

People want to be given a sheet to work from and think hey that’s it, I do this then I’ll look like Anthony Joshua in a couple of weeks, easy! The truth is it’s hard, really hard, if it was easy everyone would be doing it!

Calories

Surplus = Gain weight

Deficit = Lose weight

Macros

What are macros?

Macros make up the calorie content of food:

  • 1 gram of fat = 9 calories
  • 1 gram of carbs (carbohydrates) = 4 calories
  • 1 gram of protein = 4 calories

Don’t treat any of them as bad, there’s no ‘bad’ macros

Plan your food

Stay consistent

nutrition first workout last

Be aware of the calories you’re consuming, this is hard I know and you’ll probably think your developing some form of obsessive compulsive disorder and you’ll be ‘that person’ when you go out with your friends to eat — this is where the consistency comes in.

https://tdeecalculator.net/

TDEE Calculator: Learn Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure Use the TDEE calculator to learn your Total Daily Energy Expenditure, a measure of how many calories you burn per day… tdeecalculator.net

Alcohol, stop it! It pains me to say that as I love a beer but beers are empty calories, you can fit it with your macros if you like but it’s better to limit it drastically, drink four times a week? Half it, drink once a week? Drink every other weekend, some sort of system like that.

What do you want to go to the gym for? Lose a bit of weight and ‘tone up’?

How do you think this ‘tone up’ is going to work?

Want to lose the love handles? Better do some core exercises, right?

Let’s do some isolation work on that

Ab work outs, crunches, sit ups, that thing where someone holds a 20 kg plate and leans over to the side… those will not target and burn belly fat, you can’t specify where you want your body to burn fat, that is a myth, you burn fat all over your body. Love handles is genetically where your body is designed to store your fat reserves.

Get your heart rate up!

You need to work for it

Program, 5x5

16/8 fasting

If it was easy everyone would be doing it

Get up and make it happen

There's a reactions leaderboard you can check out too.

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