Castle Personal Training
Castle Personal Training is a Corstorphine, Edinburgh based company who specialise in weightloss/toning and Pre and Post Natal exercise.
Blog 23-12-13; 5 Silly things I’ve heard this year (Busting myths)
Hi guys,
As I said in the last post; It’s the end of the year and it’s a good time to reflect. This gives me a great chance to go over the silly things I’ve heard other people say or post. Whether it’s said by people in the gym, on Facebook or even other Personal Trainers, these things really bug me and I reckon this is as good a time as any to address them.
1; Taking Herbalife, or other meal replacements, is the same as having a post work-out Protein shake.
I heard this one from another PT recently. At David Lloyd they have a course called “Lose and Shape up”. You pay £129 for 12No 2-hour classes. 1 hour is about nutrition and the 2nd is Group PT. A pretty good program really but a lot of it depends on the person delivering the course. I was talking to one of the personal trainers at David Lloyd Newhaven Harbour who is one of the PTs delivering the course. This guy has been around a while and is a solid guy. My issue is with the course. Session 4, or 5 I forget which, is all about meal replacements. I think meal replacements are such a big part of the fitness industry these days that they obviously have to be discussed. My issue is with selling them to people on a course like this. I think everybody knows my feelings on Herbalife by now so I won’t go into that. It is the one David Lloyd have decided to sell and I have a real issue with this. One of the people delivering this course has no formal nutrition training and has actually only ever had a Herbalife sales-course training. So you can imagine the way the course goes when she delivers it, the conflict of interest is massive. She makes commission on every sale and everyone on the course expects her to have the answers to their weight-loss struggles. She does…”Buy my Herbalife” is it.
I spoke to the guy about this and he basically agrees, though he still sells Herbalife to certain people. He tried to make me see his point by saying that he believes there that a post workout protein shake, which I take, is the same as a Herbalife MRP.
It’s very clear that protein shakes are NOT a meal replacement, they are a supplement. You don’t have a protein shake instead of breakfast, where as Herbalife/Slimfast and all those type of things are sold to do exactly that. Could you sit down, straight after your workout and have a chickenbreast or 2 instead of a protein shake? Sure, but that doesn’t mean they replace a meal and it’s a silly thing to say…though obviously not if you’re trying to justify flogging unnecessary MRPs onto the unsuspecting public.
2; Shakes are healthy.
Team Beachbody is big on this; “Healthiest meal of the day”. It is simply complete and utter non-sense. Of course if your diet is terrible you’re better off having one of their shakes. But this “It’s very difficult to eat healthy” is just wrong. It’s remarkably simple; Eat plenty of vegetables, and a good variety of them,don’t eat too much over-processed food and don’t eat too much. Job done, healthy eating pretty much complete. It’s a doddle and a hell of a lot cheaper than a $4 shake!
3; You need to go on a New Year’s detox.
No you don’t. Just don’t even go there. There is NO scientific evidence behind any detox program. Go and read this if you’re still considering detoxing.
4; You have a PT so don’t need to work hard anymore.
I have come across this a lot this year. some people genuinely believe that they can drink as much alcohol as they want and eat as poorly as they always have and it will now all be off-set because they have a weekly PT session. A good PT will give you support, motivation, nutrition- and lifestyle- advice and design a good program for you but you will still have to take the advice on board and work your bum off. Losing weight, bulking up or getting healthy simply is not easy. Hard work is most definitely required and it will be you who has to do it.
5; Nuts are a good source of protein for vegetarians.
Vegetarians can have a tough time meeting their protein macro and a lot of the time you therefore hear people telling them that nuts are the answer. This is a myth that came out of the bodybuilding world and it completely ignores the calorific and fat content of peanuts.
Let’s look at this a bit closer and grab a bag of peanuts. Peanuts contain approx 26grams of protein per 100 grams. The 100 grams contains 567’ish calories and 75% of the daily recommended allowance of fat (35% of the RDA of saturated fat). Now compare this to chicken; 25 grams per 100 gram of chicken. 100 gram of chicken is approx 215 calories and only 20% of the RDA of fat. Hence nuts are not your answer.
Now, for all your vegetarians, let’s look at spinach. 2.9 grams of protein per 100 grams of spinach. 23 calories per 100 grams of spinach. So you can eat 1Kg of spinach and you’d take in 29grams of protein whilst only consuming 230 calories. Kale, as an alternative, is higher in protein, approx 4.3 grams per 100 grams, and also slightly higher in calories, 49Kcal per 100 grams. So 500 grams of Kale would get you 21.5 grams of protein and you’d consume 490 calories.
Obviously the quantities of vegetables you require to even maintain your muscle mass (1gram of protein per Kg of muscle mass) are hard to consume which is why juicing is so very powerful. I always recommend juicing to my vegetarian clients, it simply makes soo much sense. Please note that I don’t recommend juicing to replace a meal! you still need to eat, it’s just a way of making sure you get enough of your macros without going over on calorie intake. Even if you’re not vegetarian juicing is very powerful and means you can easily make sure you get the required nr of vitamins and minerals by just having a little glass of juice every day.
Well that’s the main lot for me for today, tomorrow it might be a different top 5 but I really want to end the year with some positive blogs so that’s what I’ll do 🙂
It’s only the 23rd today, I am sure I’ll have some more stuff up by the end of the year.
Take care, have a great Christmas and I’ll see you on the other side, in the mean time listen to Pharrell;
Your friend.
Peter
Castle Personal Training 