GUEST POST TODAY!!
I had the pleasure of talking with Jaclyn Evans, a nutrition and fitness coach in my area of Massachusetts. She is the owner of Move The Needle Nutrition and a great coach all around. She was kind enough to write up an article for my page and I want to share that with all of you, enjoy!
Which Matters More: Nutrition or Fitness
A good coach won’t be so quick to answer that question.
My answer is it depends.
It depends on what your goals are, but also it will depend on your history as well.
Let’s start with the most common goal I see, fat loss.
Yes fat loss not weight loss. Your goal should never be weight loss. This will set you up for weight regain, but we can get more into that later. Different rabbit hole!
If fat loss is the goal, in my opinion 80% of your results will come from Nutrition, with the other 20% coming from not just exercise but really split up between sleep and stress management as well.
Fat loss is really simple when you say how it works out loud.
To lose fat you have to eat less energy then you burn in a given day, consistently for a time period ranging from 8-16 weeks.
AKA eat in an energy deficit.
Sounds good on paper right? Kind of like those workouts you look at on paper and think, “oh hey not too bad.” Those are always the worst I think! If it looks good on paper, it is probably hard to execute.
Where it gets complicated is understanding the kinds of calories that will keep you satisfied and keep cravings at bay. Sure a calorie is a calorie and I am not here to argue that calories in calories out do not matter, they do! If you ate JUST 800 calories of McDonalds everyday for two months straight, I promise you will lose weight.
You will also feel horrible. Digestion will suffer, sleep will suffer, forget feeling motivated to workout and just feel good in general.
The types of calories we eat matter. Both CICO and this can be true at the same time.
Choosing real whole foods for 3-4 well balanced meals will keep you full and satisfied, and staying full and satisfied when your calories are low needs to be the priority, not just total calories. Otherwise you are playing the game of white knuckling your way through a diet which will eventually impact your consistency. Without consistency in nutrition the diet will not work. Anyone can stay in a calorie deficit for a week, but a week won’t yield the results you are looking for. We need to be consistent over a period of time, and staying consistent for that time means making it SUSTAINABLE.
With weight loss calories are king, macro and micronutrients are second to making sure we can create that consistency and keep our hormones IN CHECK for an extended period of under-eating, which can prove to be no easy task.
When fat loss is the goal I favor some form of resistance training, as this will signal to your body, preserve lean mass. You may not get stronger while dieting down, that’s not the goal.
You do want to maintain the muscle mass you have, and that can be at risk if you diet too low cal, eat low protein, and do not resistance train. (hey hey fat loss not weight loss!)
During a fat loss phase exercise should be lower stress i.e. less intense (put the orange theory and crossfit on the back burner.) As dieting is a stress and your recovery is now lower with calories down (which is why sleep plays a major role when dieting)
Training while dieting should be used solely to maintain strength, maintain health, and to allow for a certain number of daily calories based on your activity level. Meaning, if you’re sedentary you will be dieting pretty low calorie.
When fat loss is the goal, focus on a training plan to maintain your strength that won’t kill you, lots of added gentle non-exercise activity (aka NEAT) that helps reduce stress and adds to calories burned for the day. Very lightly dosed cardio can also be used to bolster, not create, results. Keep it minimal as this can drive hunger cues in a diet, and remember keeping overall calories at your diet baseline is the key and pesky hunger hormones can make that hard.
OK but what about if your goal is to gain muscle? Or run a race? Or just perform better in your chosen sport or fitness routine??
This changes everything, and for this type of goal I feel we are looking at more like 50/50.
When we want to build muscle, get stronger, or perform better, we MUST be properly fueled.
You also MUST be doing specific training that reflects your specific goal.
Nutrition and fitness go hand in hand here.
If the goal is to build muscle we need to be in a caloric surplus, i.e. eating a bit more then we burn in a given day consistently for a period of time. AKA bulking, massing.
You also need to be engaging in strength training with progressive overload in mind. This means you’re repeating big compound lifts with the goal of more volume. Better form, greater range of motion, more sets, and everyone’s go to more weight will all play a role in muscle growth. Your workouts should be challenging but smart.
That said your program could be perfect in nature, executed flawlessly and you still will not see muscle growth if you do not overfeed. Now (hold on another rabbit hole coming) some newcomers will see muscle growth at low calories, they will also see fat loss at the same time and we call this recomposition. You get smaller, the scale barely changes, hello recomp! This only lasts for a period of time before you become a slave to the process like the rest of us 🙂
Without well executed nutrition in a caloric surplus, you can expect to see little to no muscle growth despite the perfect plan, so it goes without saying this is a 50/50 split for this goal.
I say again, if you are questioning your program effectiveness because of lack of muscle growth but you are NOT eating enough food, start there.
If the goal is just to perform better overall and not necessarily add muscle then eating ENOUGH aka maintenance calories should be the goal. Simply meeting the calories you burned that day should be enough to keep you feeling well fueled and general energy high!
If you have any questions or need any help discovering what these caloric ranges may look like specific to you, please feel free to reach out! I am active on social media and welcome questions and discussion! You can find me here.
I hope you enjoyed this post from Jaclyn. She linked her pages above if you have any questions or would like to reach out to her.
In good health,
Jeff
