Mark, what were your goals when signing up with me?
Look good & increase strength.
What reservations if any did you have before we started working together?
I didn’t really see how results could be achieved with the approach you took to dieting. Pizza and abs don’t really go together. I also thought that tracking calories and training would be too intense, and that I wouldn’t be able to stick to it.
How was I able to help you with your reservations?
Just by being there to answer all my questions, explaining everything clearly. Also the resources you provide in addition to the programming helped me understand everything in a simple way. Plus results came which was evidence enough.
In point form, can you list your achievements training with me thus far?
Significantly stronger.
Increased lean muscle mass & reduced body fat percentage.
Massively increased knowledge around diet, training and the human body.
Improvement in form in all lifts.
Better mentality.
A more varied diet with improved cooking skills as a result.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
I honestly have had a great time. Although I haven’t grown significantly in size, I look better, I’m stronger and have a much better understanding of how to do so.
Mark came to me wanting to look good and get strong, like many of my clients. He was new to flexible dieting and planned training programmes. Initially we cut fat for a month, due to holding a little excess body fat, before then entering a lean gaining phase. This put Mark in the best position possible, able to learn technique and drop unwanted fat in the first month, to then really push forward to gain lean muscle there on. Mark has been a pleasure to work with, always asking questions if he was unsure and really embracing the flexible diet.
Interested in online coaching? You can check out what I have to offer here.
Struggling to gain weight? You need to consume more calories. Simple fact is, if you are not consuming more than you are burning, you ain’t gonna put on size son. I have found the ultimate solution to every hardgainers problem; sugar laden soft drinks. Fruit juices, ‘full fat’ Coke, none of that ‘diet’ sugar free rubbish.
If I catch any dude in the gym who says ‘I eat loads but never put on weight’ I am gonna hand them a coke. Why?
1) Sugary soft drinks contain a lot of calories. As said before you need to consume more calories than you burn if you want to gain weight. Liquid calories such as those from fruit juices or even better lucozade are very easy to consume and they are macronutrient dense.
2) They have no impact on our appetite. Studies have shown that people who drank full fat variety soft drinks didn’t compensate by eating less later on. That means they ate what they normally would and had these drinks on top of that. For the hard gainer this is mega handy, it means you can effortlessly increase your calorie intake.
3) Sugar sweetened soft drinks can increase our consumption. Yup they can actually make you eat more than you normally would, a double whammy for weight gain. Studies have even shown that if you feed people the same number of calories in sweet form rather than sugary drink form you’ll compensate and eat less. So as a hard gainer you are better off drinking your sugar than eating it.
So there you have it, sugary drinks are not just easy to consume in addition to our diet, they actually make us eat even more. Hence why they are the hardgainers solution, they ultimately will lead to weight gain.
What can we learn from the above?
Sugary drinks if awesome for hardgainers, those actively seeking to put on weight, who have a hard time eating enough, are therefore pretty awful for the rest of us.
1) They are ’empty calories’. They provide zero micronutrition, unless of course you opt for a fruit juice, but you would still be better off eating the whole fruit. Plus by eating the whole fruit you get fibre, which is very important for a healthy digestive system.
2) We don’t get any fullness from them. I suspect due to the lack of fibre and the ease of digestion our bodies don’t compensate for their consumption. This means we could easily end up over consuming total calories for the day and putting on weight.
The Solution
Right now I hope if you are a hardgainer you are sipping on a can of Coke, but anyone else reading this you are hopefully thinking sugary drinks are a no no. However, there are some ways around this fact.
1) If you track your nutrition they can be incorporated. The fact is our bodies might not be good for compensating for the sugary drink, but if you actively track your calorie intake then you will force a compensation. This is how a lot of my online clients drop fat, gain muscle and get in terrific shape, we track our nutrition. This also means we can enjoy everything and everything, just not always the amount we want. This approach to dieting is called flexible dieting or some know it as IIFYM (if it fits your macros).
2) Milk does get compensated for. Any liquid drink that contains milk or milk proteins has shown to be the equivalent to food. So our bodies do compensate for those calories by eating less. So please do not stop drinking milk.
3) Drink diet drinks. In the video below, that I made years ago and probably look and sound like an idiot, I explain how the current scientific studies don’t show any reason why we cannot drink diet sodas in moderation. Personally I drink a can of Pepsi Max once or twice a day. This also gives us a solution to those who currently drink sugary drinks and want to lose weight. Switch to a diet variety. A simple switch of 2 cans of Coke vs. Diet Coke would save you around 300 calories, if you drank 2 a day, over the course of a week that would save you 2100 calories, enough to spur weight loss.
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