#52 SSR: Are You Subscribing To A Pet-Theory or Doing What Works?

Reasons or

Results! 

Fitness Nutrition Training

Sovereign Michael Valentine

SPN, CFT, Eft, Yft, Cft, SSc, SSF, GFI, CMCht, CERT, Reiki Master

206.225.9647

email: sovereignmv@gmail.com

web: bnbbs.myshaklee.com

Special Report #52

Part of the

“I see you to succeeding"

series.

Are You Subscribing To A Pet-Theory

or Doing What Works?

One of the most sad situations I consistently see in the fitness industry is when people get attached to what I refer to as a "pet-theory" regardless of whether they are experiencing any measurable results.

Some examples that we may all have seen are people who are self proclaimed vegetarians or vegan, but suffer from the side effects of malnutrition (iron deficiency, etc.).

What's even worse is when these people are promoting their pet theory to others even though their own health is reflecting the side effects of their pet.

I think what happens is that people get attached to an idea or a model, for the sake of being attached to a model, without knowing they need to establish a standard of whether the model they have chosen is actually healthy or not.

To compound the problem, the more malnourished a person gets the more defensive they get to the possibility their model might be doing more harm.

As a result of decades of personal and professional experience I have learned that what I think about my ideas and what I teach my clients is irrelevant if their health isn't improving as a result of the model I teach.

One of the things you routinely hear from clients is about their conversations with their physicians about their attempts to lose weight and get healthy. In that regard you also figure out that, as a legitimate trainer, you have to develop at least a couple ways to scientifically measure whether what you're recommending is actually improving health and vitality (aside from rapid weight loss, appearing smaller or clothes fitting better).

One of the things I looked at over the years, especially during my days at Gold's Gym, Capital Hill, Seattle where I would work with six or more clients each day was how to hold myself accountable to my clients' success, how to know what to do if they weren't making progress, how to accurately measure progress the clients would be happy with and how to measure in a way that made sense to physicians and satisfied the physician's standard of healthy, sustainable progress.

In my extensive experiences, it doesn't matter what I think of a program if the client's blood chemistry doesn't improve as a result of the nutrition and fitness program I suggest.

When I talk about blood chemistry  & physiology

improvement, some of what I'm talking about are :

a1C (3 month average of blood sugar)

Blood Pressure

Triglycerides

High Density Lipoprotein

Low Density Lipoprotein

Total Cholesterol

Bone density

Iron

Metabolic panel

Without improvement in these blood chemistry and physiological markers, any changes that appear to happen on the outside are superficial and likely short lived. The reason being that without an improvement in these markers, the program is likely enabling weight loss based on inadvertent malnourishment which will likely revert within a short time. Without improvements in these markers, you really can't validate your theories to your client's physician.

On the other hand, when these markers do improve, you can bet the cells themselves are being nourished and likely will replicate themselves resulting in overall improvement in health and vitality.

What I also found was that when these markers improve, through proper nutrition, clients don't tend to have cravings, binging or unplanned eating or attraction to S.A.D.C.R.A.P.

In other words, when the body is well nourished, versus withholding nutrients in the name of weight loss, overall health and balance improves without causing harm. That's the standard I use and recommend. I realize some trainers simply don't have the experience to juggle all the factors (resistance training, cardio and nutrition) until they have a enough experience under their belt, seeing what definitely doesn't work.

What tends to happen with aspiring trainers is that they hear about a theory that 'sounds' like it calls to a higher ideal...take vegetarianism for example and it's proported benefits beyond improvements to the clients' health, and then go about promoting the model more so based on how it affects factors beyond the clients' health. In some cases, trainers become so preoccupied that they consider the side effects of a pet theory a casualty of a 'higher calling" and can't to the best of their intentions get their clients (or their own for that matter) blood chemistry to improve, since the model itself prohibits optimum health.

Unfortunately, the more malnourished a person gets, the more they resist doing the changes that would improve their health.

The second way I assure that my clients are happy with the results they get is to measure their body composition once a month. If you don't measure body composition, resting heart rate and calorie requirements (based on body composition) the first of every month, then all efforts of exercise and nutrition are random and based on chance...meaning a wasteful approach in terms of time, energy and money since it isn't based on the clients current level of conditioning or physiological requirements to make continual progress.

So, as you know there are thousands of models of fitness and nutrition but if they don't improve blood chemistry and body composition, they aren't taking your individual physiological requirements into account and any short terms improvements will likely regress in fairly short order.

Pet theories take the trainer's ego into account but often do not address the factors which actually improve health from the inside out.