Elite Physique The New Science of Building a Better Body

34 Elite Physique
as half full can say research demonstrates that performing resistance training
while losing fat will help preserve your muscle and strength (Cava, Yeat, and
Mittendorfer 2017).
For explosive athletes there’s more good news: Losing fat can increase your
jumping and sprinting performance because you have less weight to move
through space (Huovinen et al. 2015). Since gaining muscle or losing fat each
requires its own type of diet, you’ll need to prioritize which one you seek every
six to eight weeks of the program.
How much muscle and strength you gain, or fat you lose, depends on a myriad
of factors (Institute of Medicine 2004; Pedersen and Febbraio 2012; Pion et al. 2017).
Some of those factors are in your control, such as how many times per week you
train, as well as your adherence to the nutrition principles we cover in chapter 11.
Other aspects are beyond your control, such as genetics and age (Pion et al. 2017).
It is clear that some people can more easily gain muscle or lose fat because they
were blessed with the right parents. The same is true with gaining strength and
speed. And a middle-aged person will most certainly have a more difficult time
transforming his physique than he did when he was 21. A typical guy in his 30s
has less muscle mass and testosterone than he did in his 20s, which negatively
affects his overall metabolism as well as what he sees in the mirror (Tsametis and
Isidori 2018). With each decade past his 30s, the problem only worsens, unless
he makes healthy training and lifestyle interventions.
The good news is that you can gain muscle and strength at any age with a
proper resistance training regimen. A lower level of testosterone, on the other
hand, is not as easy to correct. Stress is certainly a key factor for plummeting
levels of testosterone, even if that stress comes from exercise or nutrition. Indeed,
training and dieting hard for months leading up to a competition can result in
a natural bodybuilder’s testosterone level dropping to one-third of what it was
before dieting (Schoenfeld et al. 2020). Fortunately, testosterone will return to its
higher precompetition level within a month after a normal diet is resumed. The
point here is that extreme stress on the body, even if it’s ostensibly healthy, can
Are You Setting the Right Kind of Goals?
You need to know what your goals are and why you want to achieve them in order
to stay motivated. For some people, however, that might not be enough. Underlying
psychological factors you’re not even aware of could be sabotaging your results. If
you’re someone who has a tough time achieving goals, it doesn’t necessarily mean
you need to see a psychiatrist. Most people struggle with the discipline required
to stop eating before they’re full, or to skip dessert, or to make it to the gym four
times per week for months at a time. If we didn’t struggle, we’d all have six-pack
abs and bulging biceps.
This is where the advice of John Berardi, author of Change Maker, becomes
especially valuable. One of his steps for achieving success, whether in the gym,
home, or office, is to turn outcome goals into behavior goals. An outcome goal is
what you want, such as losing 15 pounds (7 kg) of fat. A behavior goal, Dr. Berardi
states, “is an action that you’d do or practice to move toward that outcome, such
as putting down your fork between bites, or practicing your running technique three
to four times a week.” So as you embark on this journey toward your best physique
and performance, Dr. Berardi recommends focusing on behavior goals, since “they’re
the things we can control.”