12 - Debunking Fitness Myths with Tom Whitaker - Part 1

Welcome to Happiness, Health and Relationships podcast. If you're looking for inspiration on powerful healthy habits, you've come to the right place. I'm Angeline and I've been working with people for over 10 years in therapy and this podcast will cut through the myths and misinformation on healthy lifestyle.

I'll be interviewing experts in their field, providing top tips and motivation for six elements of living medicine. The six elements are reducing stress, exercise and fitness, nutrition, sleep, reducing addictive substances and how to master healthy relationships. Let's get started.

I'm excited. We've got Tom Whitaker here today. He's a master's of science in strength and conditioning.

He's got loads of experience in working with different types of people from athletes training for the Olympics to, you know, running classes for predominantly women but men as well. So we're going to get into some myth busting today. We're going to get into some great top tips and advice.

What would you say is the biggest misconception about exercise? I think for most people when they're first starting out, the biggest misconceptions are just that you have to or there's one thing that's better than anything else. It's like people often tend to like assign themselves to like camps like they're a runner or they're a weightlifter or they're a footballer. Like they'll pick one camp and just commit when most people you don't need to and you probably benefit from doing a combination of things.

Now I understand from a community standpoint obviously if you don't have a running club like those sorts of things can be good. But I think for most people is the other just tend to kind of slot themselves into camps that they don't know yet because when a lot of people start the gym is they're scared of the weights they just do cardio or they hate cardio so they just do weights. When in reality is one's not better than the other you probably need a combination of all of it.

And I've heard people say that before that in gyms especially women tend to go for the cardio machines because maybe they're not as confident using the equipment but actually strength training is really important isn't it especially for women you know once we hit our 40s 50s everything starts to fall apart. I think everyone should do some form of resistance training because being stronger and I'm not talking like you have to get ridiculously strong and try and be like a competitive lifter just some form of strength training because being stronger makes everything in your day-to-day life easier. Walking up the stairs carrying your shopping playing with your kids or as and again as you said as you get older it maintains your fitness and your abilities for longer and even people who come into fitness in later life find they're better than they were during some of their middle age because they're doing things that they couldn't before.

And like I said particularly for women as they age like bone density and muscle loss is greater than in men so particularly yeah for women who like menopause and onwards tend to lose bone density a little bit quicker than men so for them it can be really important for maintaining stuff like that. Just to maintain mobility really and I know from my own personal experience starting to get aches and pains and just feeling really weak I could actually feel especially my arms feel myself just getting really weak and that's when I thought you know I need to do something about this. Why is it so difficult to maintain healthy habits? We're going to be getting into the six pillars of lifestyle medicine today or living medicine because we are kind of living breathing systemic structures if you like and we fuel we need you know we are hugely impacted by the six pillars which are stress, exercise, nutrition, sleep, reducing substances, addictive substances and relationships.

The research shows that these six pillars if we can incorporate those healthy habits if you like then we're far more likely to be happy, healthy, longevity you know all that kind of thing and most people know that especially the nutrition and exercise the doctors have been telling us forever haven't they that we should be eating well and we should be exercising. Why is it so difficult for people to maintain any exercise regime or nutrition? There's a couple of reasons I think the big one is psychological which you'll know better than I do because a lot of people particularly while fitness is very very popular now among younger people 30 years ago young people other than playing a sport they weren't in gyms they weren't being taught about health they were kind of told do this but not how to manage it themselves and so for a lot of people they've grown up without that background and then in later life when you've got extra stresses you've got extra priorities and then now with the internet age having so much information and not all of it correct is it can be a bit overwhelming because they don't have that background in it. I know it well because I've spent years studying it whereas most people don't have that background and then again in terms of psychological stuff particularly when it comes to nutrition there can be like emotional responses to food which is a whole different topic in itself and then I think the other one with building habits is you're often overriding old ones because a lot of people talk oh yeah I'm going to start this new habit and they act as if they are a complete blank slate of a person yeah but they've got no previous habits it's like okay I'll just do this now when in reality particularly again if you come into fitness in later life is you've got decades of previous habits that will always try and override the new one as soon as things get a bit difficult yeah so there's almost that extra level of having to overcome something at the same time as trying to add something in which again it can get very overwhelming when you're trying to do multiple things at the same time and then I think on a physical standpoint is unrealistic expectations and again some of this is peddled by fitness professionals who set unrealistic standards in terms of what you have to be able to do or what you should be able to do in a certain amount of time that kind because a lot of people will go from not doing anything deciding that they want to do something which is great but then going to the extreme of oh I've never run in my life I'm going to do a marathon next year or they're going to go oh I've never lifted a weight before but I want to do what that person's done in six months yeah that person's been training a decade and sometimes people bite off more than they can chew there's no longevity in any of that is there you know we're bombarded by these messages that we you know these quick fixes really do this diet and do this type of exercise don't do this and you know a lot of it is confusing we don't know what to do yeah but also you know it's it's just then that makes it difficult to sustain I think because we start to get confused and also we live such stressful lives as well these days don't we people are people are tired I think our culture has become not conducive actually with living medicine with healthy lifestyle you know we're all of our energy we can't we're kind of taught to work hard do this you know running around after the kids and that's you know there's there's lots of people that you just don't have anything left at the end of the day and then you know to try to get motivated to cook a meal or you know go to the gym personally I have to go in the morning because if it gets to night time I'll just talk to myself out of it by that time you know it's it's almost like a cultural thing now that we don't have time you hear that I'm sure you hear that all the time we don't have time to put these healthy habits in place but actually it's it's a lot it is a lifestyle thing you know that we can form these habits where do we start what's what's doable yeah so the good thing is that when you're new to something you you get a lot of response out of a small stimulus so by that I mean you don't have to do anything drastic in the beginning because your body will respond pretty well early on so from a nutrition standpoint for most people is get a minimum of your five a day because what a lot of people forget is that the five a day is like minimum not oh you've got five you've done amazing it's to get things that you need to be healthy five a day to get enough protein and again you'll hear a lot of people in fitness they're talking about really high amounts that high level athletes and very muscular people take you don't need quite that much getting enough protein is important and actually carbs and fats as long as your calories are accounted for in terms of what goal you're trying to achieve probably doesn't matter that much in terms of how much carbs like neither one's bad neither one's better than the other so five a day get your protein and then a calorie target or an eating routine that fits the goal you're trying to achieve from a training standpoint is honestly break yourself in gently couch to 5k's a lot of clients have come to me asking about running and i tell them to do the couch to 5k because i couldn't it's pretty well written and anything i did differently would be different for the sake of it not because it's better so anything that starts you off nice and gentle and slowly ramps you into something it's perfect i like that cheaper way at it yeah what you'll know from the classes is if there's someone who's only been in it a couple of weeks i'm not pushing them the same as i would someone who's been in it for a year because as people who are stronger is i if i know they've got a little bit more in the tank and they're they're adapted to that stimulus that training style i know they can handle a bit more but someone who's new they might be a little bit sore the next day or their technique might not be as good yet so then it's then just do what they can and don't push them beyond that because it's probably gonna backfire and have fun with it as well you know don't don't take ourselves too too seriously i guess where well you know my motto is just keep turning up do and do what you can and just like you say i really like that that chip away at it play in the long game you know just keep turning up do a bit of something you know even when you don't feel like it just going to turn up and do do something and that's one thing i think general population can take away from athletic populations so like you mentioned like olympic athletes is they've got a four-year plan right one olympics to the next they're not thinking oh what we're gonna do for the next six weeks they're thinking right in four years time this is where we want to be or even for some of them they might not compete in the next it might be an eight-year plan for the olympics after that for some of the junior athletes and so there's always although there is variation over that time there's one overarching goal of an overall improvement in whatever they need but like you say a lot of fitness is oh um let me do this in 12 weeks and then they finish the 12 weeks oh what next and then they kind of hit a bit of a rut they feel like they've like kind of lost their mojo is what you hear a lot and they kind of just don't know what to do lose motivation and they fall out of the habits that got them to where they've got in the first 12 weeks and i think if a lot of people as you said looked at it as a longer term habit as opposed to a quick fix it would solve a lot of problems um because people would take their time with it they wouldn't feel as much pressure yeah which again it adds to the stress when there's pressure to do something in a certain time frame and you've just got a better chance of fitting it in with your life being aware of of the different industries as well like there's a whole protein industry now isn't there that you know when you go around the supermarket we've got protein pancakes or you know protein in in things that random things but being aware that actually people are pushing protein yeah because there's a there's a business there yeah yeah which like you it is important but not to the degree that's yeah no so again because i've competed in bodybuilding um the requirements in certain sports are a lot higher than what the average person needs just because the demand is higher but your average person who's just trying to be fit and healthy doesn't need anywhere near as much so for example if your average person i say roughly a gram to 1.2 grams for every kilo of body weight so if you weigh 80 kilos he say 80 to 100 grams okay now when i was getting ready for my shows i weighed again in the 70 to 80 kilo range and i was pushing 200 grams well again certain sports have higher requirements for a reason and you'll hear a lot of fitness professionals talk about those sorts of numbers but it's like but that doesn't apply people who just want to be fit and healthy there's a very specific and it's not necessarily health focused reason either that's the other thing that's really helpful so per kilo around about yeah yeah that sounds good and some might find for hunger reasons they need a little bit more because protein could be satiating obviously anyone with medical stuff or with consult your doctor with if there's any specific requirements and then people who want to push into the more extreme like training a bit harder competing in certain sports might need a bit more but again that'll vary depending on the sport you're doing so i guess you know the the biggest myth with with both of those because we were you know told for so long to eat less exercise more yeah and you know that's yeah job's a good one but actually we need we need fuel we need energy you know it's no wonder people are going around so tired and i know that before i started to go into the gym and started to learn a bit more about nutrition i wasn't eating enough and i was just so tired so that's new information as well into that we actually need to eat yeah you know more than we think really yeah more than i thought certainly the move more eat less is well meaning but an oversimplification so genetically everyone has kind of what you could consider like a set point which is kind of a range of body fat where their body is at its healthiest so going below that is probably meaning your body's having to work a lot harder to stay functioning properly and then if you go kind of above that that's again the body's just put under more stress to perform its bodily functions so it's not efficient and men tend to be a little bit leaner than women on average there's always exceptions but there's almost like a range in which this is where my body feels it's best and yes there might be the odd occasion you push a little bit lower say for like going on holiday you want to look that little bit better but it's a temporary thing if you want to be at your best there will be that little range which isn't necessarily as skinny as possible yeah because like you say and i know we've had this conversation before is when you get into those lower ranges of trying to be as skinny as possible is your body just can't fuel its normal daily functions at the extremes you are tired all the time eating dropping too low below your needs interrupts your sleep which then if your sleep's thrown off everything is made worse sleep is like hugely important i think the biggest one at the minute is because more people are overweight than in previous generations it was given as an oversimplification because the average person might need to lose a bit of weight to be in their personal healthy range but like you say is that the nuance of but there is such a thing too lean to be healthy yeah kind of missed off for a lot and so people did just like the supermodel look of just getting as skinny as possible thinking that was better for them um yeah it's not quite there is like a a diminishing returns at the bottom and that's why i like the the chip chip away at it approach the kind of keep turning up and you know if you do need to lose weight then you know to work with a a personal trainer a nutritionist to uh to know how much to eat because if you go too extreme with it you're going to struggle with the workouts you're going to strut you know you're going to it's just you're just going to hate it because it just feels it feels awful so again playing that long game chip away at it is is um yeah you you often find that the more extreme the intervention the more extreme the rebound and this has been seen but again both with people people i've worked with and in like medical studies is the more extreme you drop your calories the more extreme the training program if you're not used to it is again you end up hating it or the diet's so restrictive you can't enjoy your food or your life you can't go out to eat and socialize that kind of thing is eventually there's a breaking point and you basically just go nope i've had enough and then you often drop everything you'd been doing because it was horrible go back to what you're doing before and some people rebound even worse than they were before they decided to make a change and so we just kind of like they drop off and kind of return to where they were originally and then it's harder to get going again because it was such an awful experience yes when you've had a bad experience like with anything is you're very timid about trying it again and that's the end of part one in our three-part special with tom part two is next in our series if you'd like to find out more ways that you can work with me then head over to happinesshealthrelationshipspodcast.com and i'll see you on the next episode