Chris Adams Personal Training
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    • Exercise Guide
      • Lower Body Exercises 1
        • Stiff Legged Deadlift
        • Hip Thrust
        • Back Squat
        • Glute Ham Raise
        • Trap Bar Deadlift
        • Deadlift
        • Leg Press
        • Romanian Deadlift
        • Safety Bar Squats
        • Bulgarian Split Squat
        • Good Morning
        • Front Squat
        • Paused Squats
        • Calf Raises
      • Upper Body Push Exercises
        • Bench Press
        • Overhead Press
        • Incline Bench Press
        • Incline Dumbbell Bench Press
        • Close Grip Bench Press
        • Dumbbell Bench Press
        • Low to High Cable Crossover
        • Standing Cable Fly
        • Dips
        • Pin Overhead Press
        • Floor Press
        • Lateral Raise
        • Arnold Press
      • Upper Body Pull
        • Pull ups and chin ups
        • Shrug
        • Seal Rows
          • Face Pulls
        • Band Pull Apart
        • Dumbbell Row
        • Rear Delt Rows
        • Prone rows
        • T-Bar Machine Row
      • Arm Exercises
        • Dumbbell Curls
        • Hammer Curls
        • Cross Body Hammer Curls
        • Tricep Push Down
        • Barbell Curl
      • Farmers Walk
      • Core Exercises
        • Grip Exercises
        • Reverse Hyper
        • Cable Side Bends
        • Wheel Roll Outs
    • Strength and Gaining Muscle
      • 330 Method
      • Dead Stop vs Touch and Go Deadlifts
      • Macro loading-Dan John-Big Plates
      • Linear, Wave and Step Loading
      • 6 Mistakes When Trying to Gain Muscle
      • Push-Pull-Legs Training Split
      • Record Your Lifts to Improve Your Form
      • Rest-Pause Sets
      • Not Everyone Can Deadlift
      • Breaking Through Plateaus
      • Myo-Reps Sets
      • Drop Set
      • Strength Training for Old Age
      • Cluster Sets
      • Five Ways to Progress Without Increasing the Weight
      • 50% Sets
      • 350 Method
      • Super Sets
      • Gallon of Milk a Day (GOMAD)
      • Two Days a Week Strength Training Program
      • Density Training for Strength
      • Double Progression
      • How to do Warm Up Sets (Ramping Up)
    • General Training and Health
      • General Training 1
        • The Importance of Consistency
        • Starting Personal Training When You're Older
        • The Importance of Mobility Work
        • Can You Target Certain Areas of the body to Reduce Fat From?
        • Women and Strength Training
        • MyFitnessPal
        • Training in Your Late Thirties
        • How to Survive the Weekend Without Ruining Your Diet
        • Common Questions From Clients
        • Do You Need to Push Yourself to The Limit?
        • Dangers Of Health Risks Associated with Obesity
        • Rehab After Injury (Tearing Rotator Cuff)
        • Six Pack Abs
        • Training with Lupus
        • Boxing Pad Work
        • Hill Sprints
      • General Training 2
        • Mainstream Media on Nutrition
        • Sleep
        • Cardio and Conditioning Exercises
        • Healthy Shoulders (Face Pulls and Band Pull Aparts)
        • SETTING GOALS - S.M.A.R.T
        • Body Transformation
        • Tips on Losing Weight
        • How to Deal With Bad Workouts
        • Focus on What You Can Do
        • Keys to Success : Intensity, Consistency and Time
        • Walking
      • General Training 3
        • My Gym is Too Busy
        • The biggest mistake beginners make is listening to other beginners
        • When it comes to weight loss, your nutritional habits have a much bigger impact than your training.
        • Strength Training and Osteoporosis
        • The Scales Don't Always Tell The Truth
        • More Exercise is Not Always Better
        • How to Make Cardio Less Boring
        • The Problem with Before and After Pictures
        • Returning to Training After a Break
        • Blood Pressure
        • How to Survive the Weekend Without Ruining your diet
    • Nutrition
      • Multivitamins
      • Fish Oil (Omega 3)
      • Vitamin D
      • Tracking What You Eat (MyFitnessPal)
      • Caffeine
      • Magnesium
      • Gift Vouchers
      • Are Your Friends and Family Sabotaging Your Diet?
      • Healthy Eating on a Budget
      • Supplements
      • Alcohol and Training
      • Creatine
      • 10 Foods That Are Great For Bulking
    • Real World Fitness
      • 8 Reasons You Should Look For a New Personal Trainer
      • Why Choose Real World Fitness?
      • Client Results: Only Training Two Days a Week
      • Personal Trainer in Nottingham
      • Gym in Nottingham
      • Outdoor Group Fitness Training in Nottingham
      • Most Personal Trainers Are Useless.
      • PAR-Q
    • Equipment and Books
      • Weightlifting Belt
  • Prices
  • Testimonials
  • Contact
  • Booking
  • Home
  • Articles
    • Exercise Guide
      • Lower Body Exercises 1
        • Stiff Legged Deadlift
        • Hip Thrust
        • Back Squat
        • Glute Ham Raise
        • Trap Bar Deadlift
        • Deadlift
        • Leg Press
        • Romanian Deadlift
        • Safety Bar Squats
        • Bulgarian Split Squat
        • Good Morning
        • Front Squat
        • Paused Squats
        • Calf Raises
      • Upper Body Push Exercises
        • Bench Press
        • Overhead Press
        • Incline Bench Press
        • Incline Dumbbell Bench Press
        • Close Grip Bench Press
        • Dumbbell Bench Press
        • Low to High Cable Crossover
        • Standing Cable Fly
        • Dips
        • Pin Overhead Press
        • Floor Press
        • Lateral Raise
        • Arnold Press
      • Upper Body Pull
        • Pull ups and chin ups
        • Shrug
        • Seal Rows
          • Face Pulls
        • Band Pull Apart
        • Dumbbell Row
        • Rear Delt Rows
        • Prone rows
        • T-Bar Machine Row
      • Arm Exercises
        • Dumbbell Curls
        • Hammer Curls
        • Cross Body Hammer Curls
        • Tricep Push Down
        • Barbell Curl
      • Farmers Walk
      • Core Exercises
        • Grip Exercises
        • Reverse Hyper
        • Cable Side Bends
        • Wheel Roll Outs
    • Strength and Gaining Muscle
      • 330 Method
      • Dead Stop vs Touch and Go Deadlifts
      • Macro loading-Dan John-Big Plates
      • Linear, Wave and Step Loading
      • 6 Mistakes When Trying to Gain Muscle
      • Push-Pull-Legs Training Split
      • Record Your Lifts to Improve Your Form
      • Rest-Pause Sets
      • Not Everyone Can Deadlift
      • Breaking Through Plateaus
      • Myo-Reps Sets
      • Drop Set
      • Strength Training for Old Age
      • Cluster Sets
      • Five Ways to Progress Without Increasing the Weight
      • 50% Sets
      • 350 Method
      • Super Sets
      • Gallon of Milk a Day (GOMAD)
      • Two Days a Week Strength Training Program
      • Density Training for Strength
      • Double Progression
      • How to do Warm Up Sets (Ramping Up)
    • General Training and Health
      • General Training 1
        • The Importance of Consistency
        • Starting Personal Training When You're Older
        • The Importance of Mobility Work
        • Can You Target Certain Areas of the body to Reduce Fat From?
        • Women and Strength Training
        • MyFitnessPal
        • Training in Your Late Thirties
        • How to Survive the Weekend Without Ruining Your Diet
        • Common Questions From Clients
        • Do You Need to Push Yourself to The Limit?
        • Dangers Of Health Risks Associated with Obesity
        • Rehab After Injury (Tearing Rotator Cuff)
        • Six Pack Abs
        • Training with Lupus
        • Boxing Pad Work
        • Hill Sprints
      • General Training 2
        • Mainstream Media on Nutrition
        • Sleep
        • Cardio and Conditioning Exercises
        • Healthy Shoulders (Face Pulls and Band Pull Aparts)
        • SETTING GOALS - S.M.A.R.T
        • Body Transformation
        • Tips on Losing Weight
        • How to Deal With Bad Workouts
        • Focus on What You Can Do
        • Keys to Success : Intensity, Consistency and Time
        • Walking
      • General Training 3
        • My Gym is Too Busy
        • The biggest mistake beginners make is listening to other beginners
        • When it comes to weight loss, your nutritional habits have a much bigger impact than your training.
        • Strength Training and Osteoporosis
        • The Scales Don't Always Tell The Truth
        • More Exercise is Not Always Better
        • How to Make Cardio Less Boring
        • The Problem with Before and After Pictures
        • Returning to Training After a Break
        • Blood Pressure
        • How to Survive the Weekend Without Ruining your diet
    • Nutrition
      • Multivitamins
      • Fish Oil (Omega 3)
      • Vitamin D
      • Tracking What You Eat (MyFitnessPal)
      • Caffeine
      • Magnesium
      • Gift Vouchers
      • Are Your Friends and Family Sabotaging Your Diet?
      • Healthy Eating on a Budget
      • Supplements
      • Alcohol and Training
      • Creatine
      • 10 Foods That Are Great For Bulking
    • Real World Fitness
      • 8 Reasons You Should Look For a New Personal Trainer
      • Why Choose Real World Fitness?
      • Client Results: Only Training Two Days a Week
      • Personal Trainer in Nottingham
      • Gym in Nottingham
      • Outdoor Group Fitness Training in Nottingham
      • Most Personal Trainers Are Useless.
      • PAR-Q
    • Equipment and Books
      • Weightlifting Belt
  • Prices
  • Testimonials
  • Contact
  • Booking
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When it comes to weight loss, your nutritional habits have a much bigger impact than your training

A lot of people look to their training when they want to lose weight and not their diet. They are convinced that loads of cardio is what they need to do and should be the priority even if doing that hasn't worked for them in the past. Cardio has many health benefits, and it does contribute to you being in a calorie deficit, but it makes a very small contribution when compared to your diet.
The saying that you can't out train a poor diet is largely true​​​
You can easily get lean without doing any cardio if you're eating an amount that puts you in a calorie deficit, however no amount of training will make up for you eating too much. ​
​Failure to lose weight is in almost all cases due to not being consistent enough with your diet. ​
This doesn't mean I think cardio is a waste of time when you're trying to lose weight. I always encourage my clients to increase their daily steps and to try to be more active, but understand it's your diet that will make the biggest difference. Don't make the mistake of looking at their training first instead of looking at your diet.
 ​The reality is that neither cardio or weight training do a lot to create an energy deficit
​when compared to simply eating a calorie controlled diet.​
According to the American Council of Exercise, if you weigh 120lbs (54.4kg) jogging for 45 minutes burns approximately 418 calories. That's around the same as a two slices of Dominos pizza, or a large slice of cake which I could eat in five minutes. For a 180lbs person this increases to 625 calories. Looking at this you should be able to understand how much more important your diet is compared to exercise in putting you in a calorie deficit.
Picture
Other than walking, I haven't been doing any cardio for the past year, but I have been very consistent with my diet. As a result I am the leanest I have ever been. I'm much leaner than when I was younger and I was doing 1.5 hours of intensive Muay Thai 5 or 6 days a week, ran at least 3 or 4 times a week, cycled around 55 miles a week to work which was an active job. 
Stop looking for fat lose routines.  If you're not focusing on your diet you're focusing on the wrong thing.

FitBit's are useless when it comes to measuring how many calories you have burned

Many people use FitBit' or some other brand to measure how many calories they used during a session. You shouldn't use how many calories you used as a way to measure how good a session is anyway, but these monitors are  so inaccurate for calculating calories that they aren't worth using to measure your energy expenditure during a workout. They normally overestimate how many calories you burned during a session. 
In a study published in 2017, Mattsson tested the calorie counters of several wrist worn monitors. The most accurate one was off by an average of a massive 27%. And the least accurate was off by 93%. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5491979/

"Median error rates across tasks varied from 27.4% (24.0%–30.8%) for the Fitbit Surge to 92.6% (87.5%–97.7%) for the PulseOn. For EE, the lowest relative error (RE) rates across devices were achieved for the walking (31.8% (28.6%–35.0%)), and running (31.0% (28.0%–34.0%)) tasks, and the highest on the sitting tasks (52.4% (48.9%–57.0%))."

"N
one of the devices provided estimates of energy expenditure that were within an acceptable range in any setting."

Another recent study tested four trackers. The Apple Watch Series 4, Polar Vantage V, Garmin Fenix 5, and Fitbit Versa. and concluded that while they did well at measuring heart rate, none of the four should be used to monitor energy expenditure the intensities and durations tested.

Ignore how many calories it says you burned during a session.

What you should focus on to lose fat

  • ​Eat adequate protein
  • Manipulate your fat and/or carb intake to achieve a calorie deficit
​Then I recommend
  • Weight train 2-4 times a week 
  • Do a moderate amount of cardio for heart health and to help towards being in a calorie deficit. 

You will lose weight if you do this consistently. Don't over complicate it. It really is this simple.

​

An article on the Importance of Consistency 
An article on Tracking What You Eat (MyFitnessPal)
Chris Adams
Personal Trainer in Nottingham

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Copyright © 2015
  • Home
  • Articles
    • Exercise Guide
      • Lower Body Exercises 1
        • Stiff Legged Deadlift
        • Hip Thrust
        • Back Squat
        • Glute Ham Raise
        • Trap Bar Deadlift
        • Deadlift
        • Leg Press
        • Romanian Deadlift
        • Safety Bar Squats
        • Bulgarian Split Squat
        • Good Morning
        • Front Squat
        • Paused Squats
        • Calf Raises
      • Upper Body Push Exercises
        • Bench Press
        • Overhead Press
        • Incline Bench Press
        • Incline Dumbbell Bench Press
        • Close Grip Bench Press
        • Dumbbell Bench Press
        • Low to High Cable Crossover
        • Standing Cable Fly
        • Dips
        • Pin Overhead Press
        • Floor Press
        • Lateral Raise
        • Arnold Press
      • Upper Body Pull
        • Pull ups and chin ups
        • Shrug
        • Seal Rows
          • Face Pulls
        • Band Pull Apart
        • Dumbbell Row
        • Rear Delt Rows
        • Prone rows
        • T-Bar Machine Row
      • Arm Exercises
        • Dumbbell Curls
        • Hammer Curls
        • Cross Body Hammer Curls
        • Tricep Push Down
        • Barbell Curl
      • Farmers Walk
      • Core Exercises
        • Grip Exercises
        • Reverse Hyper
        • Cable Side Bends
        • Wheel Roll Outs
    • Strength and Gaining Muscle
      • 330 Method
      • Dead Stop vs Touch and Go Deadlifts
      • Macro loading-Dan John-Big Plates
      • Linear, Wave and Step Loading
      • 6 Mistakes When Trying to Gain Muscle
      • Push-Pull-Legs Training Split
      • Record Your Lifts to Improve Your Form
      • Rest-Pause Sets
      • Not Everyone Can Deadlift
      • Breaking Through Plateaus
      • Myo-Reps Sets
      • Drop Set
      • Strength Training for Old Age
      • Cluster Sets
      • Five Ways to Progress Without Increasing the Weight
      • 50% Sets
      • 350 Method
      • Super Sets
      • Gallon of Milk a Day (GOMAD)
      • Two Days a Week Strength Training Program
      • Density Training for Strength
      • Double Progression
      • How to do Warm Up Sets (Ramping Up)
    • General Training and Health
      • General Training 1
        • The Importance of Consistency
        • Starting Personal Training When You're Older
        • The Importance of Mobility Work
        • Can You Target Certain Areas of the body to Reduce Fat From?
        • Women and Strength Training
        • MyFitnessPal
        • Training in Your Late Thirties
        • How to Survive the Weekend Without Ruining Your Diet
        • Common Questions From Clients
        • Do You Need to Push Yourself to The Limit?
        • Dangers Of Health Risks Associated with Obesity
        • Rehab After Injury (Tearing Rotator Cuff)
        • Six Pack Abs
        • Training with Lupus
        • Boxing Pad Work
        • Hill Sprints
      • General Training 2
        • Mainstream Media on Nutrition
        • Sleep
        • Cardio and Conditioning Exercises
        • Healthy Shoulders (Face Pulls and Band Pull Aparts)
        • SETTING GOALS - S.M.A.R.T
        • Body Transformation
        • Tips on Losing Weight
        • How to Deal With Bad Workouts
        • Focus on What You Can Do
        • Keys to Success : Intensity, Consistency and Time
        • Walking
      • General Training 3
        • My Gym is Too Busy
        • The biggest mistake beginners make is listening to other beginners
        • When it comes to weight loss, your nutritional habits have a much bigger impact than your training.
        • Strength Training and Osteoporosis
        • The Scales Don't Always Tell The Truth
        • More Exercise is Not Always Better
        • How to Make Cardio Less Boring
        • The Problem with Before and After Pictures
        • Returning to Training After a Break
        • Blood Pressure
        • How to Survive the Weekend Without Ruining your diet
    • Nutrition
      • Multivitamins
      • Fish Oil (Omega 3)
      • Vitamin D
      • Tracking What You Eat (MyFitnessPal)
      • Caffeine
      • Magnesium
      • Gift Vouchers
      • Are Your Friends and Family Sabotaging Your Diet?
      • Healthy Eating on a Budget
      • Supplements
      • Alcohol and Training
      • Creatine
      • 10 Foods That Are Great For Bulking
    • Real World Fitness
      • 8 Reasons You Should Look For a New Personal Trainer
      • Why Choose Real World Fitness?
      • Client Results: Only Training Two Days a Week
      • Personal Trainer in Nottingham
      • Gym in Nottingham
      • Outdoor Group Fitness Training in Nottingham
      • Most Personal Trainers Are Useless.
      • PAR-Q
    • Equipment and Books
      • Weightlifting Belt
  • Prices
  • Testimonials
  • Contact
  • Booking