Out of Balance

I'm a people watcher. Always have been. I find human behavior and the root causes of that behavior fascinating. That's probably why I added a psychology degree to my other degrees back in college -- the subject was just too interesting to pass up.

Naturally, given my psych background and my career as a writer and editor in the fitness/muscle field, I'm always trying to get into peoples' heads when it comes to fat loss and muscle building issues. With close and extended observation, you can notice certain behavioral patterns and commonalities in people at the gym (and even in internet communities.)

Here's one thing I've noticed. Maybe you've noticed it too in others or even yourself:

Most people trying to get fit, lose fat, and build muscle are "out of balance" when it comes to the "Big Three" foundational elements: training, nutrition, and lifestyle.

In other words, all their attention is focused on one area while the other areas are neglected or outright ignored. (And by the way, we could probably add recovery and supplementation to this list and make it the Big Five, but let's assume that those areas are already part of the Big Three.)

Lose sight of one or two of the Big Three and you get:

1) Slow results

2) No results

Or even. . .

3) Regression

All Training, No Diet

Here's the most prevalent example: chubby guys who train their asses off.

I see this daily. These guys bust their butts in the gym. They train hard and I respect them for that. But why do they have love handles and big, nine-months-pregnant guts that never seem to get any smaller?

Answer: They ignore one of the other areas -- nutrition.

Yep, they train like pros and eat like schmoes. Do that for a long time and what you usually end up with is a fairly strong guy who looks like he's about to deliver twins. There's muscle under there, but you can't see a lick of it. And no, I'm not talking about competitive powerlifters, who have somewhat of an excuse. I'm talking about regular guys.

(By the way, there seems to be a sharp criticism out there of very lean guys who just don't look big in a T-shirt. They're often attacked for looking like they "don't even lift weights." I can understand that; the 140 pounder wanting to "get ripped" and be 130 needs a head check, but this goes in reverse too -- these "big" chubby guys don't look like they lift either; they just look like fatties with manual labor jobs, or as TC once put it: fat guys with great forearms.)

Sure, there are some young guys, genetically blessed guys, and steroid-using guys who can get away with training hard and neglecting diet (for a while at least), but most of us can't. As I always say, we just can't out-train a shitty diet.

And the opposite of this is true as well, just not as common: the hard-training skinny guy who can't gain much muscle because he eats like a 10 year old girl. Most men tend to go the other direction though: training hard but still eating too much crap. Their internal rationalization seems to be "I train hard so I can get away with eating junk. I need the calories anyway."

As a trainer friend of mine says, "How's that workin' for ya?" Judging by the central adiposity and the love handles, not too well. Remember, you're eating to build muscle, not hibernate for the winter, tubby. There is a difference.

All Diet, No Training

Then there's the nutrition snob who trains like a lil' ol' lady.

This person counts every gram of protein, takes a dozen different supplements, regulates his fiber intake, times his carb intake, has a poster of John Berardi in his kitchen. . . then he goes to the gym and wimps the fuck out, just going through the motions and choosing the easiest exercises.

This person knows everything about nutrition and supplements, but just doesn't "bring it" in the gym, so all that meticulous work in the kitchen doesn't do much for him.

Generally speaking, women do this more often than men. A typical woman will adopt the craziest of restrictive diets, but balk at the idea of weight training. The result: yo-yo dieting.

The Lifestyle Self-Saboteur

Finally we have the person who trains hard, eats in a manner supportive of his goals, and takes good supplements, but then pisses it all away by his poor lifestyle choices: no sleep, excessive drinking and drugging, zero stress management. He may not look all that bad, but he's greatly hampering his results. A lot of college guys fall into this trap.

But some lifestyle choices can really come back to bite you. Kinda hard to train and eat right when your Saturday night in the bar turns into a weekend in the bar, and that turns into a four day weekend, and that turns into you drinking alone at home, and that turns into full blown alcoholism.

And eating right and training hard don't have much of an effect if you're sleeping only three hours a night because you're up playing Warcraft.

The tricky part of the lifestyle element is that you can get away with it for a while, especially if you're young, but man, that backlash is vicious and unforgiving.

Look For Balance

I think we've all slipped when it comes to the Big Three. We've focused a little too much on one area while neglecting the others. Most of us love training, but slip when it comes to diet. It can be quite a learning experience.

Most people start off focusing on training, then gradually learn the importance of diet, then lifestyle. I remember being a newbie and skipping right over the nutrition articles in magazines. Gotta read the "Blasting Boulder Biceps!" article first, right? It's pretty natural to be out of balance in the beginning.

I can see this on T-Nation as well. The latest training article might get a ton of replies and views, while the latest Dr. Lowery nutrition article gets only modest attention. That's too bad, because as I mentioned above, diet is the missing element for most folks. But people don't pay much attention to nutrition until they get frustrated by their lack of progress.

The cool thing is, most of us eventually learn to achieve a good balance. We know when we're balanced and when we're not. We can feel it in the gym and see it in the mirror.

And nothing feels better.

Chris

I see athletes fall into this trap too. There are way too many of them that work their ASSES off in the gym, or on the track.........but eat junk ALL DAY. Never improve, wonder why they are stuck or fizzle in the 4th quarter. Coaches are just as guilty of LETTING This happen. I hear it all of the time from coaches "I just dont get it, we are in GREAT condition, but can finish a game".

They refuse to look at what those athletes are eating or NOT eating

Good article

Dan (Danny) John wrote something like this. He also mentioned 'All Training, No Life' but that falls under stress management.

I noticed recently that I have a problem with the diet aspect. I too make the mistake of saying, 'I had a good workout, I can eat...' and it goes on.

That is why I liked your 'Tighten Up' blog. It got me to think about what I need to do and I have started.

I got myself a step counter (said I would) and I started the Cheater's Diet and CW's WSP. I'm hoping that these things are going to help me find that balance I know I need.

Wow, a Warcraft reference Shugs?? How old are you? :)

I totally agree and thought I finally had everything together, my training is getting more intense day to day, my diet is really on track now and working great, but I do realize I am failing in the Lifestyle category. Not from drinking or anything bad really, just a serious lack of sleep and high stress.

I have an excuse for the sleep one, 3 week old baby at home, but the stress is something I need to learn to manage. I design $200 million dollar hospitals for a living and that can get pretty stressful at times, especially when you have 4 different ones in design at the same time all across the country. (Travel is a bitch).

I thought upping my training or controlling my diet better would help with the stress, but it doesn't seem to help much. Short of quitting my job, any advice? You have a fairly "stressful" job, considering deadlines and the like, how do you handle it?

Very nice blog Chris.

I have pretty much everything perfectly balanced except sleep.

I've spent my last 4 New Years Resolutions on "get more sleep"... hopefully I'll get it together one of these years.

Regarding the comment about Dr. Lowery's articles not getting much attention...I personally tend to read through them much more quickly than most other articles for the fact that I find it somewhat difficult to comprehend the importance of what he's saying. Perhaps its his writing style of (what I see as) downloading a huge number of great nutritional bits of information but jumping from idea to idea with a bit of a lack of a *clearly* common theme.

Most other authors on this site write articles that can be completed, comprehended, and digested into our heads within about 1 hour. Because of the intricacies of Dr. Lowery's articles I would have to spend a couple days to get to the same point. I just don't have time for that.

I find that over the course of the year I'll have time periods in each of these problems.

Biggest one I'll hit is the crappy sleep.

I've actually set out to work on that. One thing I have found that helps me is punishing myself and learning from it.

I used to go to sleep around 3 am and wake up between 8 and 11 depending on my obligations.

I've found the biggest help was to force myself to get up at 7. In the end I was more tired at night and needed to sleep between 1030 and 1130. As a result I am now sleeping better.

One of the biggest tips I've got from T-Nation came from a side comment by Danny John who said he believes the hours you get before 12:00AM are the most important sleep hours.

Whether it is true or not, it's a great philosophy.

I fall into 2 of them. I train hard, but I only get about 6 hours of broken up sleep a night. I'm currently trying to fix that, but years of late nights & alcohol/marijuana has caused a insommia sleep effect, but im working on fixing that. The other one is "bad eating" & "not eating enough", But i'm trying to fix that one too, exspecially being I want to gain about 40 pounds of solid muscle over the next 2 years.

Yup, i'm a good example of "out of balance", but it will all change soon, "come hell or high waters", it will, maybe not over night, but it will.

Stay strong CS,

Dragon

For those having trouble sleeping, this is a magic stack:

3 capsules of ZMA
3.0 mg of melatonin

Just allow yourself enough time to sleep 7-8 hours. In other words, don't take it at 1AM when you have to be up at 6AM. You'll feel groggy (from the melatonin).

This stack creates some wicked dreams and like-a-rock sleep.

I typically go to bed at 9PM and get up at 5 or 6AM. Wouldn't have it any other way.

A ritual helps too. I do this starting at 8:30: brush teeth, change into sleep clothes (or no clothes depending on the season and company), shut down computer, lock up house, read. I'm calm and quiet by the time the reading begins, plus the ZMA/melatonin stack is kicking in. A few pages in and I'm in dreamland and rarin' to go at 5AM.

I emailed Chris today about this. Just wanted to see if there was interest in this as an article:

Regarding balance - other than the three areas Chris talks about - I think there is a lack of balance within the training component for most guys (and I don't mean balance around the joints - although that's important too).

I touched on this in my last article, and someone touched on this in the response to Ellington's article today.

There is a tendency to think that training = weights. Or for endurance athletes, training = cardio. I think we need to strike a balance within the "Training" portion as well and think of our programs in a more well-rounded approach.

A full training and conditioning program (particularly for an athlete) has to include more than just the weight training portion in order for it to be balanced in and of itself.


AC
www.alwyncosgrove.com

I think the reason nutrition gets the short end is that it isn't easy to understand. Nutrition articles are also put in the too hard basket if they aren't a supplement article.

If it isn't as easy as stirring a powder into some milk or water then you have to change too much.

If you look on other boards, Nutrition sections are just supplement pages.

Yes my diet needs renovating, and my sleeping habits are up and down (life of a PhD).

Do any of you early to bed guys have kids?

My 4 year old is up and down all evening. Sometimes she is up as late as 10:30. It makes evenings very stressful and getting to bed very difficult.

My 7 year old is asleep at 8:00 everynight.

They both wake up at dawn.

I have not had a good night sleep this century.