The road to a better and healthier body can be a lengthy and challenging one. While some may grind out results within just 8 weeks, the process can take up to 3 months or more, more so when not done correctly. Many others fail to get going at all, with 48% of Americans today confessing that they feel they will eventually not hold up to their fitness objectives. We talked to the best personal trainer San Diego has to offer to establish just where most people are missing the mark. He had the following to say about common body recomposition mistakes and how to fix them.
- Underestimating diets and skipping meals
Hitting the gym is a crucial part of achieving your body recomposition targets. But that’s not all there is to it. San Diego fitness gurus confess it’s only just half the battle. The problem is that most view exercise as the only path to fitness, and thus don’t pay a great deal of attention to watching what they eat.
On the flip side, other people believe that skipping meals can further speed up their progress. However, when you do that, you send your body into starvation mode. It starts burning fewer calories as your metabolism stalls and your body becomes conservative with its energy spend. So despite eating less food, you may put on more fat.
You can choose to work with a personal fitness trainer to craft an appropriate meal plan that meets your needs in terms of:
- Specific body recomposition goals
- Lifestyle
- Taste and preferences, etc.
The right meal plan also ensures proper nutrient intake to catalyze recovery and muscle growth.
- Not setting realistic & specific body goals
What is your yardstick for body recomposition goals? For most people, the off-the-top-of-your-head answer is body weight. That’s understandable because it’s super easy to keep an eye on. It’s simple to track how much weight you’re losing over time. But that also means it’s easy to obsess over it.
Body weight is just one of many other important metrics that you should prioritize. You may not know a lot about the others, and the best gyms in San Diego advise that you have an expert to hold your hand when setting your body recomposition objectives.
For instance, when you work with a personal trainer, they can offer insight into other important metrics as well depending on your physiology, including:
- Percentage body fat
- Body fat mass
- Muscle mass etc.
Moreover, a trainer can also help you set body recomposition goals that are realistic, specific, and personalized, in addition to chipping in to keep you accountable.
- Not being consistent
Inconsistency is another huge chink in the armor. Today, we’re sold on the idea that fitness results come in a matter of weeks. But the reality is that it may take you months of toil before that tree bears fruit. And even then, the results might not quite live up to your expectations.
Approximately 9 in 10 people throw in the towel with their gym workouts after 12 weeks. If you’d like to get the body of your dreams, you must strive to be the expectation. The San Diego personal trainer we talked with says just as much. He further adds that if you’re making progress suspiciously fast with your body recomposition, that can be a cause of concern. It might indicate that you’re losing both fat and muscle.
So slow and steady wins the race. It’s not a short-term game. It’s all bout keeping in mind the big picture, going the whole nine yards, and putting in lots of consistent effort, even when you may not feel up to it.
- Improperly tracking your progress
Body recomposition typically involves a trade-off between fat and muscle mass. When the rate of gain and loss is almost similar, you may not notice any changes in terms of weight loss. Sometimes, you may even put on weight but that doesn’t mean it’s not working. It’s important to note that, compared to fat tissues, muscle tends to be more compact and weigh more.
So how should you track your body recomposition journey? A weight scale alone will do you no good. We reached out to a personal trainer near me, and he had the following ideas:
- DEXA scans- A DEXA scan is essentially a type of X-ray that evaluates your bone density. It is one of the most accurate ways to follow up on body recomposition
- Physical measurements- Including your arms, chest, waist, thighs, and hips, track changes in circumferences for a better gauge of effectiveness
- BIA scales- An acronym for Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis, BIA scales give you intricate detail on changes in body fat percentages
A wearable fitness tracker can also be of great use in terms of staying on top of how many calories you’re burning.
- Poor muscle-building workout plans
A body recomposition workout needs to address two things: fat loss and muscle gain. That means you have to be strategic with the exercises you go with. Most likely, you’ll require a combination of different workouts.
A personal training expert can help you figure out all the details. Ours recommends lots of cardio-centric aerobic exercises to take care of the fat loss part. To build muscle, he voices for heavy resistance training workouts- e.g. weightlifting- geared at accelerating hypertrophy.
While you should go hard at the gym, our expert also stresses the importance of rest and sleep. This is another area many go wrong yet recovery is crucial to give your muscles enough time to repair and grow. His view is echoed by one PubMed study, where researchers found insufficient rest can negatively affect changes in body recomposition.
Hang in there! It will pay off
Not too many people have a good understanding of what body recomposition is all about. If you’re here, you deserve a pat on the back because you’ve taken that first step toward growing your knowledge. It’s important to get a good grapple of the primary principles of losing fat and gaining muscle before you can truly succeed. Results may not come overnight. They could take months. Steer clear of these body recomposition mistakes, and work with an experienced personal trainer to fast-track your progress. Check out the IronOrrFitness website to learn more.
