Latest / Cameron's Conversations: The last weight loss podcast you'll ever need. / Episode 97: Why being more boring, might make you more successful with weight loss
Transcript
- Cameron: Welcome to the Cameron's Conversations podcast. And in today's episode, I want to talk a little bit about the idea of being a little bit boring, potentially making you a little bit more successful. So, one of the things that I think is really interesting about nutrition and sometimes training to an extent as well is that embracing a little bit of repetitiveness is actually hugely helpful. So I remember being ⁓ because I've been a coach for about a thousand years now. So I've been a coach for how long I'm being coach for I'm 19, so well I'm not 19 now, I was 19 when I started. So I've been a coach for about 12 years, right? So a long, long, long time. And one of the things that I saw a lot of in gyms was people were very driven by or excited by variety. And I get it. It's kind of new, it's stimulating, it's exciting when something's Different, right? And what that would mean is people would program hop all the time. And I did this for a period of time as well, where I'd have one training plan, there's a 10-week training plan, do it for three weeks, then do another one for three weeks, do another one for two weeks. And something I often come back to is the period of time in my life where I made the very most progress was I trained three times a week and I did the same training sessions three times a week and I progressed them for six months straight. And that's all I did. And I suppose in part I was relatively young, so I was probably 18, 19. So that would be part of why I was making such good progress, I guess. But there was also an element of, and I had been training for a few years up until that point, to be fair, so it's not like I was new to training at 18, but the reason I made so much progress is because I consistently did the same exercises, the same movements, the same lifts, and I progressed them time after time after time after time. And it was the period of time. Where I most felt like it added a good chunk of muscle in my life. And it's really, really interesting because I had that six month period of being really successful. And then I went back to my ⁓ habit of kind of hopping from program to program and doing different things. And the thing about it was I didn't even stop that program because I'd stopped progressing. The thing was, six months in, I was still progressing. I was actually doing really, really well and getting seriously strong and kind of at that stage where, you know, if I trained with some of my friends where they were a like, Crikey, like you've gotten seriously strong. Like they'd maybe comment or say something, be like, I'm like, they were obviously quite impressed with how much I was lifting, which, as a not huge guy, right? I'm not like six foot five and not a hundred kilos, that that was a good place to be because I was often training with a lot of people that were playing rugby and blah blah blah as well, who also trained. So one of the things that's really interesting about that is I changed simply because I was bored of it, just needed a change up. And there's nothing wrong with that. And if someone said to me, you know what, after six months I feel like I need to change, I think that's pretty valid, you know what. You've probably done that session quite a few times. But what's really interesting is that sometimes people will do two weeks of training and then they'll kind of be like, So when do we change up the training plan? Now that is not the right kind of approach we want to take. We want to be thinking at minimum, probably about eight weeks before we change up a training block realistically. Now, I want to caveat that. When I start with a lot of clients, one of the things that we do is we spend quite a bit of time making sure that the training plan we have is right for them. And very often there'll be some initial tweaks. So I'm kind of talking after that stage where I'll sort of say, actually, do you know what we're going to tweak this because we've got a bit more time than we thought. Or actually that machine's always in use. We thought that'd be a good option. It's probably not such a good option. Let's change that up. That's one of these things that we we will kind of tackle. But beyond that, once we're a couple of weeks in, we're a bit more settled and we're two weeks in from that, that's not the time we need to change. Because actually at that point we should be making tons of progress. We should be seeing our Our reps go up, we should be seeing the weights go up. We do not need to change it up. So one of the things that's really, really useful in context is being a little bit more boring, focusing rather on rather than thinking, ⁓ that's an exciting new movement, which I get completely. And look, we all need a change a change in training plan every so often. For most people, running it for six months is too long. But if you are making great progress, right, if you are adding weight or reps to the leg press almost every session, and you've been doing that for a few months. There's nothing wrong with changing up if you're just bored to death of it and you're almost not looking forward to it. Fine. Absolutely. But if you are in that position where you're not that bothered, you're quite happy just to keep seeing progress. And that's the thing you're most focused on is actually be making really good progress in the leg press. That will take you a long way. It'll actually do a lot for you to kind of lean into that. I say boringness, but you know, it's not actually that boring. But you just kind of say to yourself, do you know what? I'm making good progress on this. Why would I change it? And I often say that to clients when they sort of say to me about if I'm kind of talking about doing a bit of a training plan refresh, which we might do every eight, ten, twelve weeks, depending on the client and depending on where they are in the training block, depending on how much disruption there's been, you know, if someone has three holidays in eight weeks, it probably doesn't make sense to change up, you know, your training block at that point, or if they're away with work and they aren't able to train because of the nature of their work whilst they're away, then you think, well, there's probably not much point of changing it there, because I've only actually got five weeks of training and it's not been consecutive at that. But let's say someone is kind of saying, right, okay, and and the last is like, you know, how should often should I change it up? I will talk them through exactly this. That actually variety in training is more of a psychological need than it is necessarily a need for changing your body composition, for progressing, for getting into better shape. You can probably do the same thing that you're doing for longer than you think. Now, I'll caveat this a little bit. If you are at that point, you're sick of it, okay, that's a bit different. You maybe need to change it. If you have not made any progress for weeks now and you're pushing yourself as hard as you can and you're just getting bloody nowhere, absolutely change it up. But I think it's good to know that when it comes to training, there is definitely that psychological need for variety. And everybody has it. For me, I would probably say I was at the upper end of the spectrum, happy to run a block for six months. And to be clear, I changed nothing in that time. I just did roughly the same rep ranges and I just pushed the weight up. you know, I'd work within maybe eight to ten reps on one movement or six to eight on the next, whatever it was, and I would just progress my reps up or progress the way up. I didn't change even one movement. Where a lot of people, what they'll they'll do to kind of if they're maybe making good progress, and this is something I sometimes do with clients, is they'll do you know what I'm really enjoying this training block, wouldn't mind a bit of a change up because I'm maybe getting a little bit more repetitive at this point. Then what we'll say is well well if we're not feeling too fed up of it, what we can pick is maybe three or four of the movements we're least enjoying or making the least progress on. change those up and that sort of 20, 30% change is enough, right? It's enough novelty to be like, okay, cool. The order of the sessions maybe changed a little bit. We're maybe tweaking the reps we're aiming for and some of those movements or we're making slight adjustments to technique. These kind of small changes alongside maybe three or four movement changes and that might be sufficient. So there's definitely value in leaning into being a little bit more boring and or repetitive if you like. And it doesn't have to feel boring because if you get excited about your progress, if you're like, ⁓ I've gone up yet again on that leg press. That's bloody awesome. That puts you in a great spot. And not only that, the same thing applies through nutrition as well. One of the things that I sometimes see is people kind of value variety with food too much. Like, ⁓ but I'd like to have a different breakfast every day, a different lunch every day, a different dinner every day. That's fine, but understand that that comes at a cost, and that cost is effort. You can't be that person and also be the same person that says, ⁓ it's an awful lot of effort to cook. Well, those two things go hand in hand, right? If we want loads of variety, we're probably gonna have to cook loads of different things. We're also gonna have to spend more time meal planning. Our shopping's gonna be more effort as well. So it's not to say have no variety, but a good kind of rhythm for most people is to have similar breakfasts, similar-ish lunches across the weekdays, and then when it comes to dinners, have more variety. That tends to work well. You might have that mini menu of two to three breakfasts, that mini menu of three to four lunches on weekdays, and then you have Dinners and you might run that for months where the dinners vary a little bit more, you've got more flexibility there. But that breakfast, that lunch doesn't vary all that much at all. That can work really, really well. Right now, this probably this entire week, I will have a smoothie every single day and I will have pasta and chicken with lots of veggies every day. I'll change up the veggies a little bit, and I will also, there's a bit of a trick here. So I basically prep the chicken, I just make the pasta as well, and then I split it between some ⁓ reduced fat pesto. And then I have a tomato, like a stir and tomato sauce as well on the other day, which means that I've got two different flavors. And then I can also vary the veg that goes in as well. Because I sometimes cook that separately and then just mix it in afterwards because it's a bit easier to do, ⁓ just in terms of like logistics for me. So that works really, really well because what I'm ending up with is slightly different veg, slightly different, obviously, like if you like sauce or base, if you like whatever want to call it, ⁓ whether it's the the reduced fat pesto or whether it's the ⁓ tomato, stirring sauce, but I'm still having basically pasta and chicken with you know veg our sauce but there's a bit of variance there so I won't have the exact same meal but it will just be a little bit different but there's it's kind of like a a very very similar base that we're looking for. That has a lot of utility and this is where I think that whole thing about being a little bit boring for success can be useful to think about. There is definitely merit if you can just be like, do you know what it's a bit boring but I'm gonna have the same breakfast every single day for a month like as an example. That person's probably gonna find their weight loss easier. There's no doubt about it. Yet they might be a little bit like, ⁓ whatever. But in my opinion, and this is something I'm quite honest about as well, like if you're dieting, and especially if you're dieting on slightly on the kind of faster side or slightly lower calories, let's say, you will typically find you're hungry before each meal. So every meal tastes really good. I have yet to have a day where I don't look forward to my smoothie. I haven't had a day where I don't want to eat it. And this is something I really try and hammer home to people, is that you do not need to eat foods you don't like. There are no meals in my week. Not one meal that I don't enjoy. There is not one meal that isn't hasn't got a good amount of flavour and I don't look forward to. Cause guess what? Chicken and pasta with lots of veggies, with some nice seasoning in it, works really well. And the the veggies have done well as well. Like it tastes really bloody good. Like I always look forward to it. I train a lot, I exercise a lot, I walk a lot, I'm pretty hungry before each meal. Like I look forward to it. And you know, typically if I've had quite an active morning, like I did with today before lunch, I was bloody well looking forward to it. I was starving beforehand. Well I say starving, I'm exaggerating, but like fifteen minutes before, twenty minutes before I was getting really hungry, and I was really looking forward to it. And I really enjoyed it. And this is the point, is that sometimes we overcomplicate it and it's like, but you're gonna enjoy it anyway. How much is that variety of value to you? Is that variety at dinner of value cool? Great. But does it need to be does it need to be the priority for breakfast and lunch? So this is definitely where it matters. And You know, showing up doing the same workout but progressing every week, showing up eating similar meals a good chunk of the time, not all the time, but a chunk of the time, doing the same thing. So you maybe get out and you go and hit your walk at the same time each day. There's an element of repetitiveness and maybe even boringness for some people. I quite again, I quite like just the routine of going on a set walk, you know, depending on where I am at that particular time, and going out for a walk in the morning. I like the routine of that. It makes me feel good. It Gives me structure to my day because I know my I get into the headspace of I do my my maybe my training first, then I maybe come back and do a short walk, then I get stuck into my work and I have a bit of a routine. I basically vary between two routines and I'm very routine within either one of those or the other. And that works brilliantly for me. So I think it's important to also sometimes accept a little bit of boringness to not use a very technical term, has a lot of merit and can be helpful. So just some food for thought there, as such, in terms of bit of repetition might be your best friend and might make this whole process feel a lot easier. Maybe trying to be less exciting and variable in certain places will make this whole process easier for you. And if you are struggling with your weight loss at the moment or you have suggestions for future episodes of the podcast, then if you go into the show notes, there is the link to my WhatsApp. You can click on that link and pop me a message there. Ask any questions you want about coaching or indeed if you've got any suggestions about future podcast episodes, anything you'd like me to go over, I'm always happy to take on new ideas. Do aim for five of these episodes a week. So we're always bringing up new topics and trying to cover off new ideas. So hopefully that was helpful. Hopefully the sun is shining where you are as it is here. And have a great week.