Losing Fat is Hard – Part 2

How to get past the hurdles

Last time we touched on why losing fat is hard, and now we are going to delve into each of these hurdles. I am going to give you some tips and tricks on how I approached these and got over them. Fat loss is hard, getting into single digit body fat is even harder, but the same principles apply, just I have had to find every trick in the book.

So what’s so hard?

Making sure you’re in a calorie deficit.

How do you know you’re in a calorie deficit? You first have to estimate how many calories you burn, there are various calculations that can be performed for this one you might want to try can be found here. Once there you need to create a deficit by moving more and eating less. Now you should be in a deficit you need to track your progress to make sure you actually are. This means taking weight measurements, I recommend you take these at least 4 times a week first thing, and take the average for the week. A loss of 1% of total bodyweight is a healthy and quite sustainable rate for most. If your losing much more or less, you need to adjust your calorie intake or output. For women you might also need to take weekly photos and focus on monthly weight changes instead of daily or weekly, due to the hormonal differences between the sexes.

When fat loss stalls, what to do?

So you will come to a point where the fat just won’t budge anymore, this is when you need to either reduce the amount you’re eating again or increase your output. What you decide to do is very much individual, and down to many aspects. Yet the key is to get into a deficit again. I will note however that dropping 25g of carbs each day would account to 100kcal a day and 700kcal a week. Think how long it would take to do 700kcal vs. dropping a slice of bread out of your diet a day, one seems much easier. However, when food intake gets low the idea of doing 700kcal of cardio gets more appealing. There is a careful balance to be made.

When are refeeds/diet breaks appropriate?

The only people who should be having a refeed are those who are lean. If you are pushing above 15% body fat as a male or 25% as a female you don’t really have a need for a refeed. However, diet breaks may be necessary for anyone, because these have many purposes over and above reducing the negative impacts on your metabolism. A general rule is for every 12 weeks of dieting you take a break. A catch all approach would be to eat at maintenance for a period of 2 weeks. This can vary depending on body fat levels, hormonal responsiveness and psychological factors.

When social occasions arise, what to do?

Plan plan plan. This is my main tip. Diets should be permissive, not restrictive. However, this means you need to plan occasions in. So if you know you are going out later for a meal with family, put it in your food diary early and adjust round it earlier in the day. If you find it hard to avoid treats available at work, make sure you have your own snacks on hand, that fit within your diet. Whatever you do, don’t stress out, if you do slip up, just make sure to get back on track.

Keeping motivated for training.

Getting weaker is no fun, feeling tired is no fun. I know what this is like and training gets tough. What you must do is focus on the process, know you are lifting at your best, and take you eye off the number of kgs pressed and focus on doing your best. The key is to get the work done, performance losses are inevitable and stressing about them doesn’t help the situation.

Find foods that keep you satiated.

This was an interesting one for me, high volume foods seemed to do the trick for a very long time. Such as going for veggies, slow cooking your oats and eating things such as puffed wheat. Great choices are butternut squash, mushrooms, cucumber, leafy vegetables, puffed wheat, beans, lentils, salsa, american mustard, egg whites, courgettes and many more. Yet the point will come where nothing fills the hole. I also found I was bloated a lot of the time, but still hungry, and this wasn’t good for my training and wasn’t comfortable. So I made a switch to starchier carbs, and focussed on making meals and enjoying my foods. Tricking yourself into thinking your eating more is also useful, using smaller bowls, plates, and cutlery. I like to stuff my smaller bowls and eat with a tea spoon, this makes it look like more food and it takes me longer to eat.

Cravings, making you want to break your diet.

This is where flexible dieting really helped me. No foods were off limits, but the amounts were, I have to account for everything. However, so long as I account for what I eat and adjust my other choices round it, I could pretty much eat anything I wanted. That was a major plus. However, sometimes there are things we just cannot fit into our diets. So good ways round it is to make homemade varieties, such as using low calorie wraps for pizza bases, and switching to low fat cheeses. You can also make great tasting protein pancakes and cakes themselves. Something else that helped me was chewing gum, coffee and diet sodas, these gave me a sweet kick and curbed hunger for a period of time.

Low energy levels.

This is almost unavoidable, you have to accept it. However, small things can go a long way. Such as caffeine, energy drinks and coffee have been very handy indeed. However, don’t abuse these as we do get de-sensitized to caffeines effects. I personally restrict myself to 3 larger caffeine servings a day. This is normally 3 Americano’s, I could easily drink more but I know more would lead to more, so having a limit is a good idea. Another thing that helped me in times of low energy was sugar free gum, the flavour it provided kinda hyped up my brain, sounds odd but there is some research showing that flavours can actually help with energy levels. Furthermore, having some good music can really help.

When it comes to getting through long cardio sessions, having a distraction is great. I could get through 500kcal of low intensity cardio easily if I had someone to talk to. If there isn’t anyone around, and for the most part there wasn’t for me, then podcasts are a good alternative.I hope some of my experiences and tips help you in your fat loss pursuits!

Losing Fat is Hard

Mindset & Fat loss

Fitness professionals like to make out how easy losing fat is, I mean it’s just moving more and eating less right? Well yeah it kinda is just that, producing a calorie deficit by using more energy than you take in. Yet, what isn’t spoken much about it how hard it is to actually achieve this. Here I am going to touch on some of the areas people struggle with and create a bit of a troubleshoot, to hopefully help some of you guys drop fat. I’m not an expert but I’ve been consistently losing weight for the past 7 months, coming from just over 190lbs to now under 170lbs.

So what’s so hard?

Making sure you’re in a calorie deficit.

This is really the start of your fat loss journey, and to be frank it can make or break the entire process. Why? Because most people plunge deep into a diet, they drop calories too fast and add in cardio too quickly. End result is a short term loss in weight, followed by a rebound binge or complete stall. Either way you are not going to be losing fat for long. So you have to find out how to create a deficit, and make it sustainable.

When fat loss stalls, what to do?

Now if you have created a deficit there is going to come a point where you stall out, because our bodies adapt down to burn less energy. This is inevitable and predictable, and will happen. So whatever amount of calories and exercise you previously did now no longer produces a caloric deficit. This can be a real sticking point, especially if you are already doing a lot and not eating a lot. And like I said above, how hard this sticking point is depends on how well you initially set up, but regardless of that each stall gets harder and harder to get over.

When are refeeds/diet breaks appropriate?

Many people will have heard about refeeds, and probably know that they can be a very useful tool in fat loss. However, many have no clue how to go about them successfully. So people decide to wing it, and many use these days as an excuse to have a cheat meal. These can really damage your progress if you are not careful, because typically cheat meals consist of a lot of food, high in fat and therefore high in calories. They are un-calculated and can get right out of control, doing the opposite to what we want them to do.

When social occasions arise, what to do?

This is a biggy, because our social environment really impacts our diet. Say you work in an office and someone brings in treats from their holiday. Or it is someones birthday and you are invited to have some cake. Or god forbid someone invites you out for a drink or meal. These can be approached successfully but are often not, they are often seen as an opporunity to break their diet. People see having a treat as failure, and once you have failed you may as well eat your heart out right. One slice of cake turns into two, plus a cookie and maybe a tub of ice cream later. Just like a cheat meal, this can undo a tonne of hard work.

Keeping motivated for training.

When you are in a deficit you obviously have less energy, as you get leaner this energy deficit gets harder and harder. You go to the gym and cannot hit the weights you used to, progress just doesn’t come. There are no personal records being made, your 1 rep maxes are falling. Not only do you get weaker but just getting through your workouts and recovering takes a lot longer. A session that used to take an hour to complete takes two. This makes training very unappealing.

Find foods that keep you satiated.

The food you once ate becomes less and less filling. You seem to be constantly hungry, even after porridge and egg white omelettes you are searching for food. You hit your macros by midday and try and get through the rest of the day. This might build for days, leading an inevitable diet break, and for some a full on binge, that might last days.

Cravings, making you want to break your diet.

You have a meal plan and want to stick to it, you’re sticking to the 10 foods that burn the fat. Or maybe you just eat clean, and that means nothing processed, you are restricted. There are no no foods, you’re not allowed. And like anything you are told you can’t have you want it more. Your cravings grow and grow, until you snap and what comes next? You guessed it a binge.

Low energy levels.

It’s common sense that when you are trying to burn more than you eat you are going to be low on energy. Especially because so many either drop calories very fast and particularly carbohydrates, our bodies main fuel supply. This makes training hard, let alone life in general. Personally being a full time personal trainer having low energy levels is hard to deal with. Many eventually give in to this, again either binging or dropping their NEAT (non energy activity thermogensis) so low that fat loss stalls.There are many more factors making losing fat hard, but there are so many easy and simple things you can do to make things a hell of a lot easier. As you can see there is a recurring theme here, not setting up the diet right and restriction, causing problems and leading to an inevitable binge and a fat loss journey ruined.

Next week I am going to give you some very simple approaches to help with your fat loss quest.

Part 3: Moving back to maintenance – ‘Reverse Dieting’

The ‘reverse’ diet – what, why, how?

So far in this series we have learnt about what our metabolism is and how it adapts to what we ‘feed’ it, we have learnt the importance of slow progressive dieting and how to incorporate ‘refeeds’ to help blunt the unwanted side effects of dieting. So we have the tools to best get down to our desired body fat %, now it is time to move out of the deficit, allowing our body again to reach homeostasis. However, this is the point at which can make or break your entire diet, this is where if you are not careful you can put back on all the fat if not more than you started with. Avoid the yoyo diet, and please continue to read about the ‘reverse’ diet.

The reverse diet is just as it sounds, when we diet changes are slow and progressive, the reverse diet is much the same, apart from the fact we slowly increase not decrease our calorie intake.

Essentially the aim is to bring our metabolism back up to what it should be, the easiest way to do that is to just eat more. However, if we just scoff a load more food you’ll put on a load of fat in a hurry, especially because our body wants to get back to its old self. To avoid this you have to increase your calorie intake slowly, allowing your metabolism to adjust upwards gradually. That is if you want to avoid as much fat gain as possible, there are cases in which a faster approach may be more suitable, but I am principally talking about people who have followed a successful and healthy diet.

Everyones metabolism is a little different, some are very responsive and others less so. Responsive metabolisms do very well off an increase in calories, and you can give them quite sizeable and frequent increases. However, others are not, and therefore you must take a slower approach.

I have a few approaches I like to put in place for my clients, but one that seems to work quite well is to increase carb and fat intake by 10-20% initially, getting them to maintenance. At this point you may want to lower protein in place for more carbs, because carbohydrates are the real ignitors for our metabolism and are protein sparring, plus you’ll be coming out of a deficit so the need for high protein intakes drops.

From this initial increase you’ll want to take visual and body weight measurements to then pick how next to act. Each week from here I would increase fat and or carbs by 5-10% depending on how they looked and how their weight responded. I have seen people drop weight and look better week to week while reverse dieting, but I have also seen others need very slow increases. Again like anything it is very much dependent on the individual. Also while doing the above you would be making sure to try and reduce the amount of cardio taking place. You would keep progressively doing this until the person was eating back up to a reasonable number of calories.

The above steps could be continued for a long time, especially if the person wanted to transition into a muscle building phase. I also want to note that some people actually find the reverse diet harder than the diet itself. This is because the changes are quite small, making it almost feel like you are still dieting. This can be very tough, especially when you do not have a particular goal in mind. I’d happily allow some people to speed up the reverse diet if they really couldn’t hack it. I personally feel that very small adjustments are silly, that is the best way I can say it. No one wants to continually feel like they are dieting, so an by increasing macronutrients by less than 10g really seems quite, well silly.

So now you have learnt how to get really lean in a healthy manner and then how to build yourself back up out of the deficit. Key is to remember everything our body does is to try and remain in homeostasis, our bodies don’t want to get really lean. So to get their we need to take it slow, and then once their we slowly need to build up our metabolism. Our metabolic rate doesn’t get damaged or break, we don’t enter some weird starve mode in which we can no longer burn fat. Our metabolisms are wonderful things that adjust to what we give them, treat them with respect and you can manipulate it to get the results you want in a healthy and sustainable manner!

If you enjoyed this or any of my newsletter content please like and share my newsletter, any support or feedback is much appreciated!

Part 1: Moving Back to Maintenance

‘Metabolic Damage’ sounds scary right?

As we diet down something unavoidable happens, our human biology changes. Our metabolism adapts, it has to and it is something people often forget. This is because our bodies are smart, they want to protect against ‘starvation’, so we experience changes to bring our metabolism lower.

You might want to achieve low body fat levels but your body doesn’t care for vanity, it strives to survive and will do it’s best to prevent a loss in weight. You will experience more hunger, you will get lazy and have lower energy and reduce your energy expenditure, each will be more intense the larger your calorie deficit. The changes are expected, and it is understanding these that’s most important.

So lets take an example, me. I started my fat loss journey on over 3500 calories, my metabolism was high, I had loads of energy and my hormones were functioning well. The weight dropped off, but after a few weeks the weight loss stalled, my metabolism had adapted down. This meant the calorie intake I once lost fat on was now enough to maintain my weight, bummer. So I either needed to drop my calorie intake further or increase my expenditure, that’s if I wanted to drop more fat. So this process continued, once consuming over 3500 calories with no cardio and dropping fat, to now over 30 weeks later on under 2500 calories and doing 4 cardio sessions a week. My metabolism adapted, because my body doesn’t want me to lose any more weight.

In short; you provide your body less energy, it will burn less energy. It’s like when your computer gets to low battery and enters energy saver mode, we now function as a sub-optimal version of our former selves.

So now we understand that our bodies try their best to stop us losing fat, this is an inevitable safety mechanism we cannot avoid. We must just be aware of it, and by not rushing things we can slow it’s adaption. In part two we will learn about ‘refeeds’ or ‘cheat meals’, these little beauties can help reverse metabolic adaption, for a short while anyway.

Black Friday Coaching Special!!!

So it’s holiday season, time to enjoy time with others, relax and eat all sorts of goodies. Good on you, this shows you know how to live a little! And I’m going to give you one more reason to sit back and relax. However, you’ve slaved away in the gym all year, getting into good shape, and it required work. Now with less time, more opportunities to fall off or stall than ever. You might look to take a break, or give up all together, using the holidays as an excuse. I am here to help, by giving you THE SECRET WEAPON to add to your arsenal, to stay fighting fit. That is your own Personal Coach, me. Yes I am your secret weapon, and can be the difference between failure and success. I will be there for constant support, allowing you to stay on track. No more guessing, how many calories? how much cardio? which exercises? I will be there to cover your back, so you can focus your energy on doing the simple things. What do you get by choosing me as your coach? Nutrition guidelines built for you, allowing you to gain muscle, lose fat or just get fitter. Training plans individualised for your personal goals, lifestyle and experience. Accountability via daily tracking and weekly check-ins to keep you on track. Stress reduction through constant support via email, giving you peace of mind you have all you need to hit your goals. All of this is very affordable, and I will be offering a limited offer for Black Friday! To get in on these deals early be sure to contact me asap (snhall90@gmail.com). Join Team Revive Today!

Flexible Dieting – You’re Missing the Point

You’re Missing the Point

So recently I made a video on my YouTube channel regarding flexible dieting, and how people aren’t understanding it correctly, which can be found HERE. Some of you may not have heard of flexible dieting, and here is Lyle McDonald’s definition from his book ‘A Guide to Flexible Dieting’:

‘The basic idea of flexible dieting is that you aren’t expecting absolute perfection and strictness in your dieting behaviour. Rather, small (or even larger) lapses from your diet simply aren’t any big deal in the big scheme of things.’

Now flexible dieting and something called If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM) have merged into one, to bring out what I think is the best way to diet. Due to this convergence, let me re-define flexible dieting:

‘Flexible dieting is about having an understanding that everyone is different in terms of their dietary needs and requirements, depending on goal, activity & age amongst other things. It is inclusive of all foods and allows the individual to enjoy a wide varied diet, that is based around whole foods. The approach is prefaced on being stress free, allowing the individual to fit nutrition into their life.’

So what does this mean in practical terms? Using me as an example, I have a protein, carbohydrate and fat range that I aim to hit each day, not an individual number. I pick and choose the foods that allow me to land within that range based on preference, quality and availability. Typically ensuring that 80% of my choices are unprocessed whole foods, allowing me the flexibility to choose some discretionary items. I do not put any foods on a pedestal, I understand that the body just see’s nutrients and as long as I ensure I meet my micronutrient needs, all things being equal the impact on my body composition will be the same.

That means I can go out for meals with friends and family, enjoying the food with everyone else, but accounting for it. Furthermore, it allows me to travel and enjoy the food cultures that exist around the world. All this while heading towards my fitness, performance and aesthetic goals. I am accountable to what goes in my mouth, and I understand it’s impact and do not stress or worry about eating certain things.

What Flexible Dieting/IIFYM isn’t

Flexible dieting is not an excuse to fit as much ‘junk’ food within your macronutrient guidelines. It isn’t about the fact you can eat what you like and so long as the total macronutrients are the same your body will look the same.

What Flexible Dieting/IIFYM is

• Inclusive
• Social
• Evidence Based
• Enjoyable
• Results based
• Sustainable

The above bullet points are why I love flexible dieting, it allows me to smash my goals and live my life under my terms, not under some ridiculous rules based on nothing but hearsay. All my clients follow flexible dieting, and they love it too, join us 🙂

Scale Weight Fluctuations

Day to day changes in weight, what do they mean?

The scale, some days we love it and others we hate it, if it doesn’t go in the right direction it can really screw us up. However, what do these daily fluctuations really mean for our body composition, should we get so emotionally attached to the scale? I am here to tell you why our bodyweight can vary so much day to day, and whether or not it’s important and how to accurately know whether you’re on track.

The biggest culprit for scale fluctuation is water. Everyone holds onto it differently, and it can also be impacted by our stress levels, hormones & foods we have eaten.

Someone who is in a harsh deficit and training intensely will hold onto more water, also if you consume foods high in sodium the water you retain will go up. In addition women have the added difficulty of their menstrual cycle, and even between females this variable can be very different in terms of its impact on water.

Furthermore, foods high in fibre can cause your weight to go up, because you’ll have more waste moving through your colon. If you have a higher carb day your weight will go up, because you will hold onto a lot more water. However, if you perform a glycogen depleting workout your weight will plummet because you will drop a load of stored water.

Finally a note needs to be made regarding body fat levels, because the leaner you are, the less important scale weight changes mean. Why? Because, you have less fat to lose and therefore the scale will not be an important predictor in body composition changes. So the leaner you are the less focus you want to give to the scale.

The Solution

• Keep your diet variables to a minimum– do not have large day to day changes in the amount of fibre or sodium consumed.
• Recognise when your diet variables change– if you have a high carb day, understand the impact on the scale.
• Have a long term view– take weekly or for women monthly averages.
• Use other measurements– remember the scale is only one way of tracking progress, you have the way clothes fit, how you are looking in the mirror and you can even take circumference measurements of your waist and other areas.
• Have a realistic weight loss target and make small adjustments, but account for performance– For the average person a 1% loss of weight per week is a realistic, if it is much above or below this then a 10% increase or reduction in calories is sensible. However, if performance is low then a reduction in calories should not be made.
• Get a good coach- a coach can prevent you being your own worst enemy, they can take an objective view that is unbiased and stop you stressing the small stuff.

Adjusting your diet based on daily changes in scale weight is never a good idea. It will lead to no progression towards your goals because you will adjust calories up and down pointlessly, based on a meaningless change in scale weight.

Please if you think anyone else can benefit from the above share via social media 😀 Thanks. If you want someone else to take the hard work out of assessing your weight and progress then check out my online coaching services, might be just what you need, just click HERE.

Harry Holland- ‘Having a knowledgeable coach to be accountable to each week makes all the difference’

We all know the best body transformations come from fat loss, going from podgy to lean. However, for those to look good you need to have a solid foundation to cut down from, that means muscle. Everyone therefore must go about adding weight to their body, trying to minimise fat and maximise muscle. Harry is a perfect example about how to go about it, and you can read more about how to go about it here. Harry has been very consistent, compliant and a joy to work with, below is his testimonial.

“I’ve known Steve for some time now from around our local gym – he’s always been happy to help out and give advice ever since we met. Even before he went professional I couldn’t fault Steve on his evidence based approach to nutrition and training.Since July this year Steve has been putting me through my paces, setting my nutrition and training goals each week, updating me via email. At university I row and  Steve  accounts for this change in lifestyle, adjusting my nutrition and training regime accordingly.

I came back from University before summer feeling pretty weak, having focused heavily on my rowing. Now I am stronger than I’ve ever been, and have gained around 4lb’s of lean mass.

Some lift increases for you..

July:
Squat – 80kg x 5
Deadlift – 120kg x 5
Bench – 70kg x 5Total: 1350kg

October:
Squat – 110kg x 4
Deadlift – 160kg x 4
Bench – 85kg x 5

Total: 1505kg

That’s an increase of over 10% in 3 months!

Regardless of whether you’re new to weight training, experienced, or even looking to step on stage I would highly recommend Steve’s services. Having a knowledgeable coach to be accountable to each week makes all the difference. No foods are off limits, and none are put on a pedestal (clean/dirty foods..) it’s all totally flexible within reason.

I couldn’t be happier with my training with Steve. His science based approach, passion for health & fitness, and drive to constantly be learning more are second to none.”

Harry has enjoyed great results, eating and training to preference. His results are down to being consistent and flexible at the same time, as if he wasn’t given the flexibility to enjoy University to the full he wouldn’t follow the training or nutritional protocols. Managing this is what has led to Harry’s success, and if that sounds appealing to you, then please be sure to contact me about my online coaching services at snhall90@gmail.com and you can see my services here.

 

Part 3: Gaining Muscle without the Added Fat

Putting it all together

An overview of training & nutrition for lean muscle

Hey guys, so now we have an understanding about the speed at which we can gain lean muscle tissue, we know what we need to do with our training and to implement our nutrition. Things might seem complicated at first, but the simpler you keep things, the easier it will be to track and make progress. So always think ‘KISS’ Keep It Simple Stupid, get in a calorie surplus & train with progression in mind.

So lets re-cap what we looked at:
– The longer you have been training, the harder it is to gain muscle, and therefore the slower you should aim to add weight on the scale.
– Your workout programmes need to cover each rep range, to enable you to achieve every aspect of hypertrophy. The 6 – 10 rep range wants to be prioritised, and rep ranges can be periodised in multiple ways. Be sure to either progress the number of reps, sets or weight being used.
– To add weight you need to eat in a calorie surplus, make getting 1g per lean pound of bodyweight a priority, the amount of carbs and fat consumed is variable.

If you cover the three points above you’ll be doing everything right.

Some hurdles and how to overcome them:

‘However much I eat, I don’t seem to gain weight’ – My first question to this person would be is ‘are you tracking your calorie intake?’, likelihood is they’re not, and are not actually eating as much as they think. Yet, if you are tracking and are finding it hard to eat enough to grow there are some ways round this. Seek calorie dense foods; dried fruit, nuts, fatty meats & full fat dairy, use sauces, spreads & jams, blend your food, make calorie dense smoothies, have a protein shake with your meals, eat highly palatable foods. Essentially, you want to eat things that are easy to digest, nice to eat and calorie dense.

‘I was gaining weight, but now it’s stabilised’ – our metabolisms are not stable, they adapt to what we give them. So if you are now weighing more, you’ll take more calories to run, also our bodies are great at increasing our NEAT (non exercise activity thermogenesis), making the amount of calories burnt go up. Therefore, when your weight stable for an extended period you can be pretty sure you have hit a new maintenance, and you will have to eat more to gain weight once again.

‘I am not sure whether to continue gaining weight, or go for fat loss’ – This one is completely up to the individual, not comfortable with your current shape? Then do what makes you happy. Not bothered? Then continue as you are. However, I will add that if you are much over 15% body fat, but you want to gain more size still, you may want to introduce a ‘mini cut’. This in short is a fast, month long, fairly intense calorie deficit. Short enough not to impact our metabolisms, but long and harsh enough to drop a decent amount of fat.

So I hope you can now confidently go ahead and gain lean muscle tissue. Go on get jacked & strong in a healthy and sustainable manner! If you want more information or have any questions about what we have covered in this mini series, please feel free to contact me via email.

Scott Thomas- ‘performance in the gym increased dramatically’

Scott reached out to me explaining how he had developed a bad relationship with food and wasn’t seeing the results he wanted. Unfortunately he had got down to very low calories and was doing a fair amount of cardio to boot, his metabolism was far from healthy. Therefore, we decided it was best for Scott to start a reverse diet, building up calories slowly and bringing up his metabolic capacity before attempting to lose more fat. Scott managed to get from under 2000 calories with excessive cardio, to over 2500 calories with no cardio, after a brief fat loss phase Scott is now back re-building his calories up. I can proudly say Scott is now leaner, stronger and eating more than when he started, and has a great relationship with food.

Here is what Scott had to say:

‘I first became familiar with Steve through YouTube; I watched his videos as the content was always accurate, entertaining and honest.

I had been working with a online coach previously and although I had results I had now come to a point where I had developed a bad relationship with food and had begun to fear carbohydrates and eating in social and public. In addition to this I was at a point where I was not enjoying my training and was unhappy.

Finally I had enough and decided to branch out to Steve as I loved his outlook and attitude towards training and nutrition, a couple emails later and I had hired Steve.

Initially I came to Steve on very low calories couple with high amounts of cardio, Steve devised a plan to get my metabolism firing and bring my calories up to a healthy level as quickly as possible. After this we went on a short cut to reduce my body fat to a level appropriate for a long term lean mass phase.

I am now happy to say that after working with Steve the results have been fantastic, not only has my performance in the gym increased dramatically my whole outlook on nutrition has changed, I am now enjoying my food and do not fear food or “dirty” foods.

I am now in my reverse diet and have seen further results having a rebound and losing an additional 2lbs in the first 2 weeks while dropping all LISS cardio and substantially increasing macros.

All in all I would recommend Steve as a coach as he is very responsive to emails, approachable, very knowledgeable and honest. I look forward to working with him for the foreseeable future.’