Train Big and Eat Big or Train Little and Eat Little

 

Some Thoughts on Training and Eating

     When it comes to “getting in shape,” the average gym-goer tends to go about it wrong.  Man.  Woman.  Doesn’t matter.  The problem typically made is that they train “tough” and they also eat “tough.”  By this, I mean that one usually starts doing a hard-as-hell, bust-your-ass workout plan combined with a dietary regimen of very little calories.  Oh, this works.  For the short term.  Until it stops working completely, not to mention the fact that it’s mind-numbingly painful.

     You can forgive the “average” person, I suppose.  They probably watched too many episodes of that god-awful “Biggest Loser” show, where such tactics of pain-as-progress were put on the television for the world to see.

     But when you train big and eat little, you’re doomed to fail.  Training a lot and eating a little is the primary reason, I have a feeling, that most people don’t succeed at their fitness goals.  At least, not in the long term.

     I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again (this essay is really just the same thing I’ve written about a few other times, but tackled from some slightly different angles): You have essentially four choices with how you can train and eat.  Two of them suck.  Two of them are good—and one is by far the best.

1. You can train a lot (train big) and eat a lot.

2. You can train a little and eat a little.

3. You can train a lot and eat a little.

4. You can train a little and eat a lot.

     The aforementioned stupidity of The Biggest Loser fits into number three.  It’s what most people do.  As said, it doesn’t work.  

     Obviously, number 4 doesn’t work, either.  But more people do it than you, or I, probably realize.  If you’ve been eating little aside from fast food and Little Debbie snack cakes, and washing it all down with 32 oz. fountain drinks from the local 7-11, only to discover that your butt (or waist) has grown to three-times its normal size, so you decide you’re going to “do something about it,”  but “doing something about it” only involves going for a nice leisurely stroll without changing your dietary habits one iota, then, sorry, but you fit this group.  And, no, this doesn’t work.  But I suppose in some ways it’s better than option #3.  You may get depressed because you keep having to buy bigger pants, but at least you won’t have to experience the sheer pain and misery of suffering through tortuous workouts while eating little other than lettuce.

     Let’s be honest.  That’s probably the reason most people don’t even begin an exercise program or a dietary regimen.  They think of it as pain and misery.

     Before we move on to the stuff—numbers 1 and 2—that really does work, let’s look at one possible way that #4 would work, as well.  If you have been training with a lot of volume, and have been limiting your caloric intake while doing so, or if you’re just skinny (i.e. a “hardgainer,” though I really don’t care much for that term) then you may get good results by training a little and eating a lot.  This is why H.I.T. training, as much as I generally loathe it, works well when first attempted, or something like Randall Strossen’s “Super Squats” program.  Sometimes it’s advantageous to only train a couple days each week and eat everything in sight on a daily basis.  Of course, you can’t half-ass it when you go to the gym on one of those programs.  If you do, then you may gain weight, but it won’t be in the “right” places, so even that suggestion has its caveat.

     Now, back to that “pain and misery” stuff, what the general population, even the general workout public, thinks makes a “good” workout program.  If you don’t enjoy your workouts, then there’s no way you’re going to stick with them, which also means that there’s no way on God’s green earth that you’re going to make gains.  I think that training big and eating big or training little and eating little can both be enjoyable ways to go about making progress.  And once you settle on what really works for you, you won’t just enjoy the results of your workouts, but you will come to enjoy the workouts themselves, even if you don’t at first.

     When you train big—and by “big” I don’t necessarily mean “heavy” but with longer, more frequent, more voluminous, and, yes, harder workouts—then your appetite will naturally increase.  Your body will want you to eat just as big as you train.  It’s at this point that lifters either begin to see great results… or their plan goes off the rails.  When I say “eating big,” I do NOT mean that you need to eat everything in sight.  Oh, if you’re a young man who’s trying to “bulk up” this will most decidedly add bulk, but that bulk will be in a combination of muscle and fat gain.  When eating big, you need to eat in a way that will add muscle mass while either decreasing your waist size, or, at the very least, allow it to stay the same size as it currently is.  You may not even lose any bodyfat, but you will look leaner because you’ve gained some muscle size while keeping your waist under control.

     This doesn’t have to be complicated, by the way.  If your food choices look like this, then you’re on your way to looking, and performing, great: lean meat, vegetables, water.  Depending on just how much energy you’re expending on a daily basis, you also need some carbs, but just make sure that they’re as close to their natural source as possible.  That means fruit along with starches that don’t go much beyond potatoes, rice, or oats, because those three starchy food choices can be purchased exactly as they came out of the ground.  You can also add some “healthy” breads or pastas on occasion, but, as you get older, I think you need less and less starch alternatives.  Potatoes, rice, and oats do the trick for almost any lifter I’ve ever met.  (If you enjoy eating them—personally, I’m not a big fan—you could add buckwheat or quinoa to that list.)

     So even though you need to eat big just remember that you can’t out-train a bad diet.  Don’t get me wrong here.  There are some individuals who can stay really lean while training hard and eating absolutely everything they want to scarf down.  My youngest son Garrett is like that.  Any day of the year he looks as if he could step on stage for a classic physique competition, while simultaneously eating as many hamburgers, pizza slices, or milkshakes that he wants.  But he also doesn’t naturally want to eat that way.  In fact, he prefers lean proteins and veggies over anything else, with maybe a little rice on the side.  I don’t know, but maybe that also tells us something about how we all need to eat.   If we have “unnatural” cravings for fast food or sugary sodas, maybe it’s best we stay away from those things at all costs.

     When you train a lot and eat a lot of good food choices, that’s when the magic seems to happen.  Train daily, perhaps multiple times-per-day, get a lot of additional “movement” (such as long walks) even when you’re not in the gym, and eat a lot of the aforementioned foods.  If you’re still clueless about what to eat, or you just want some more detailed info, then here’s a grocery list that you probably can’t go wrong with:

• Chicken

• Steak

• Fish (preferably tuna or salmon), canned or fresh, doesn’t matter

• Pork chops or pork loin

• Various cheeses

• Heavy cream (I mainly use this for smoothies, though it’s great for coffee, as well)

• Eggs (I eat a minimum of 6 eggs daily, sometimes with the above heavy cream if nothing else than to honor Vince Gironda.)

• Real butter (This means NO margarine or any other “buttery spread.”  The only ingredient should be, duh, butter—and maybe salt.)

• Salad kits (I personally think this is one of the best things you can get at the grocery store for ease of preparation, not to mention “tastiness.”  I throw some chicken on the grill, open up a Caesar salad kit, and I’m “good to go.”)

• Fruits (buy more berries than anything else—blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries are the correct choices, along with some occasionally “starchier” fruits such as apples, peaches, and bananas; lemons and limes are also good for adding to water, salads, and even your cooked meats)

• Fibrous vegetables (if it’s green, then it fits the bill here)

• Olive oil (Use this to coat almost any meat that you bake or grill; it’s also fantastic for salads or even as a “shot” to start your morning along with your heavy cream-filled coffee.)

• Lastly, of course, the “good” starches: oats, potatoes (the more varieties of colored spuds, the better), and rice (brown or white)

     Train a lot and eat as much of the foods (5 to 6 daily meals is ideal) on the above list and you really don’t need to do anything else.

     Now, let’s move on to training little and eating little.  I actually think this is where the majority of folks should “live” in their training.  You might be surprised I wrote that, but think about it.  Even if you go to the gym 4 or 5 days-per-week, and work out an hour at each session but do little else (pun only slightly intended), then you really aren’t training big.  Let’s say you work out around one hour 4-days-per-week, well, that’s only 4-hours-per-week of training.  That ain’t much.  But I know plenty of guys who will tell me, “yeah, Sloan, but you just don’t understand.  I bust my ass when I’m in there for those four hours each week.”  Okay, good.  But that’s still not much training.  (And, remember, just because the workout was “hard” doesn’t mean it was actually “good.”)  The same guys who tell me that sort of stuff just use it, more often than not, as an excuse to then eat way too much food that they have no business eating.

     Maybe you workout 4-days-weekly but you go on an hour walk each morning before work or for an hour when you get off work.  That’s still training little, and that’s okay.  In fact, that’s probably all you actually need, assuming you couple it with eating little.  Remember what I said earlier: you can’t out-train a bad diet.  Training little sort of helps in this regard, as it keeps you from being ravenously hungry, and prevents you from thinking that you somehow “earned” that “meal” you just bought from a place that has a clown as a mascot.

     You should use the same grocery list as above, just eat less.  Seems obvious, I know, but it’s my experience that “obvious” is often the one thing the average trainee somehow misses.

     Try intermittent fasting.  Fast for 16 hours, then eat a large meal consisting of a handful of items on that grocery list.  The great thing about fasting is that, once you’re really hungry, the food just tastes better!  It’s amazing how much better that grilled chicken caesar salad tastes when you haven’t had any food for 18 hours.  Or how much like a dessert those blackberries taste—especially if you cover them in heavy cream the way I do.

     Even if intermittent fasting is not your “thing” (I don’t think it’s for everyone, especially women for some reason), you still need to fast.  Eat a couple of meals-per-day, and don’t snack at all in between meals.  Try this.  Eat your first meal around 10AM.  Make it more protein and fat-centric.  Some of those pork chops fried with a few eggs would be a great choice, for instance.  If you can’t cook, then try a smoothie.  I like one with a handful of raw eggs (that’s right, a handful), some heavy cream, and a cup or so of various berries.  Eat that, or something similar, around 10AM, and, trust me, you won’t even be hungry until dinner-time.  Don’t snack until dinner, and then have some more protein coupled with some veggies, and a good starch source.  Eat that way consistently for a few weeks, train a few hours a week, and you’ll understand the power of training little and eating little.

     Eat big and train big.  Or eat little and train little.  Remember, those are really, truly, the only good options.  The other options typically lead to failure, so attempt them at your own peril.