I know people who do this very well, and I’ve had a few clients whose success was largely because they were outstanding intuitive dieters. They had a wonderful understanding of satiety, didn’t overstuff themselves, and were mindful of what they were putting into their bodies.

I’ve always wanted to be that person, so I gave it a whirl with this most recent diet.

I was miserable failure.

Sometimes intuition is not your best ally.

Why Did I Fail?

Two months into the diet, I hadn’t made any reasonable progress whatsoever. I know eight weeks isn’t a ton of time to see a ton of progress, but I should’ve noticed something. The scale, my pictures, and my measurements told me my progress was nil.

“Our sanity depends on our ability to make sense of things via stories. Without this tool, we’d go insane. With it, we still manage to do some incredibly dumb things.”

Maybe I’m not a great intuitive dieter. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried this knowing that during that eight-week period there would parties, a wedding, and a holiday. All things that derail diets.

Or maybe I fell victim to nasty psychological phenomenon known as narrative bias.

Every single day, our brains receive an immense amount of information. Too much information to process, make sense of, and respond to, in fact. For example, we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 85 billion neurons. A cat has one billion. This means we have to sense, understand, and respond to a lot more than the average cat and we have developed highly evolved brains to keep up with the world around us.

In order to do this, our brains like to receive and organize info in the form of a story. Our sanity depends on our ability to make sense of things via stories. Without this tool, we’d go insane. With it, we still manage to do some incredibly dumb things.

How Narrative Bias Gets in the Way of Our Diet

Dieting is a difficult process. It requires patience, determination, good habits, some willpower, and a little bit of luck. Think about the last time you dieted. Think about when you went off the tracks. It may have been a minor slip up for one meal, or it may have been a weeklong binge where you ate everything in sight.

Now think about how you justified that to yourself. What did you say to make it acceptable? Did you YOLO your way through it all and convince yourself you didn’t want to be deprived or that you should just live a little bit?

Everyone else can see you’re messing up – except for you.

That’s narrative bias in action. You’ve justified a decision by making it fit within the story of your life, even if that decision wasn’t a smart one.

The funny thing about narrative bias is that we’re often blind to it when we do it, but it’s painfully obvious when others do it. Think about your friend who is a chronic dieter. We all have this friend. Every few months he starts a new diet, and we’ll be out with him when he orders something we know doesn’t fit within the context of his diet.

“We’re not lost in his brain, getting mixed up trying to explain his life in a story. We have an outside view, and can see things as they are.”

But if we ask him about it, how does he justify it? He’ll say something that to him is likely a completely rational justification, but to us it brings on an intense urge to slap some sense into him for being so ridiculous.

This is because we’re removed from his personal narrative. We’re not lost in his brain, getting mixed up trying to explain his life in a story. We have an outside view, and can see things as they are. This is where dieting and narrative bias gets tricky for every individual, and why trainers or accountability partners are so vital.

The Importance of Coaching

Trainers, accountability partners, or even food tracker apps serve as a way to help us cut through our own narrative bias. They allow us to see what is actually going on, and why we may not be making the progress we expect.

This why I’m an advocate of tracking food intake. It provides us a way to look back on our meals and see what has really gone on. We may lie to ourselves through narrative bias, but food logs don’t lie.

“Trainers, accountability partners, or even food tracker apps serve as a way to help us cut through our own narrative bias. They allow us to see what is actually going on, and why we may not be making the progress we expect.”

In my own personal situation, I know I justified far too many nights of an extra helping, a beer or two, or a piece of candy. I often used some justification like, “I worked out hard today, and I’ve earned it.”

Fast forward eight weeks and far too many narrative bias justifications, and I have no progress to show. I had given up my main tool to fight narrative bias – the food log. I couldn’t look back on the previous two months’ worth of data to find things that didn’t belong and strategize accordingly. I was left depending on my memory and my personal perspective. Not a good place to be.

Keep a food log so you can track progress and hold yourself accountable.

How Can You Fight Narrative Bias and Successfully Diet?

Narrative bias is a surprisingly simple psychological phenomenon to fight. All it requires is an outside perspective. As we’ve seen, we can easily call out a friend when they’re falling victim to narrative bias. And most of the time, that’s what we need most.

“If you can’t afford to hire a coach, an accountability partner will do. Pick someone who has similar goals and can be there for you when you’re thinking about caving into temptation.”

This is where hiring a coach becomes an effective tool. It’s a coach’s job to cut through your narrative bias and call you out when you try to justify your failures. If you can’t afford to hire a coach, an accountability partner will do. Pick someone who has similar goals and can be there for you when you’re thinking about caving into temptation. Your accountability partner could be a friend, training partner, or family member.

Lastly, a food log and training journal are fantastic tools that can provide insight into your eating and exercise. This sort of data will allow you to notice habits that may not fit within the context of a fat-loss diet or a week of training that wasn’t exactly geared toward your current goals.

Use All Three Tools

In my own experience, a combination of those three tools – someone to hold you accountable, a food log, and a training journal – is the perfect approach to combatting narrative bias. That is, as long as I actually use them.

I now know I’m not ready to diet without food logging. That’s fine, I accept that. Some people can do it. I’m just not one of them. I’m going to start using my food log again, and use it to battle all those stories I tell myself.

More Like This:

• Is Low Calorie Dieting Dangerous?
• Do the Math to Make the Most of Micronutrients
• 20 Ways to Burn 500 Calories
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post How to Beat Narrative Bias and Find Dieting Success appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

We’ve all seen the people who go to the gym, hop on the elliptical for 45 minutes, never change their routine, and never change their appearance. These average gym-goers are an example of steady-state cardio gone wrong. If all you do is pump your legs on an elliptical machine and never take care of your diet, then no, you probably won’t ever see changes in your physique.

On top of that, steady state cardio has been sold to the lifting community as a surefire way to destroy all your hard-earned gains, get fat, and get hurt.

But here is the truth: steady-state cardio offer some serious advantages for lifters. If you start incorporating it into your routine, you will almost always see improved performance in the weight room.

Don’t be led astray by the hype – running can actually lead to your best strength gains.

Training the Energy Systems

To understand the value of steady-state cardio for lifters, we first need to understand what fuels our body.

ATP is the currency our muscles use to pay for the work we do. ATP is the most basic form of energy, and without it we’d be downright screwed.

“Aerobic training is easily incorporated into a program because it’s nature makes it low intensity and easy to recover from.”

We have three main energy systems we rely on to produce ATP:

1. ATP-PCr system: This system kicks ass, but can only do so for six to ten seconds at a time. It’s the fastest at producing energy, but requires more time to recover.
2. Glycolytic: This system is the intermediate one. It can hit hard and fast like the ATP-PCr system, but can’t sustain that for more than about 120 seconds of true work.
3. Aerobic: This bad boy is awesome when it gets going. It takes longer to get up and running, but it’s incredibly efficient, and you can count on it for hours at a time.

High intensity forms of cardio such as sprints, sled pushing, and other HIIT-type training work the ATP-PCr and glycolytic energy systems.

This form of exercise is quick, dirty, and straight to the point. You burn through a ton of ATP and glycogen in a short amount of time, and you need longer to recover.

Aerobic cardio, on the other hand, can seemingly go on forever. Once you’re in the aerobic system, you can crank out ATP for hours on end thanks its superior ATP production.

Why Go Aerobic?

Every single athlete or recreational lifter has hit the point of feeling completely gassed.

It’s perfectly normal to get to that point, especially if you’ve been hitting it hard for an extended period of time. But when that happens, are you done or are you able to recover and keep going?

Competitive powerlifting is a physically taxing sport that requires large periods of recovery.

A well-developed aerobic system makes for a better-conditioned athlete for two reasons:

1. It is superior at cranking out ATP, which makes it excellent at fueling long bouts of exercise.
2. It is superior at clearing metabolites and waste products.

Basically, the better an athlete is at clearing waste and utilizing energy, the longer the athlete will be able to perform at a high level. Aerobic exercise is necessary to making this happen.

Develop a More Powerful Heart

Another major adaptation that takes place with consistent aerobic exercise is within the heart, specifically the left ventricle.

Essentially, the left ventricle grows. To be specific, the heart wall of the left ventricle expands. This means that with each heartbeat, the heart can pump out more blood since the left ventricle can fill with more blood.

“[W]hen done correctly, aerobic training won’t be responsible for destroying your gains in the weight room. In fact, it might be just what you need to move beyond progress plateaus.”

This is a major benefit during exercise because increased blood flow means increased nutrient and oxygen delivery to the muscles.

This also means a lower resting heart rate during periods of no exercise. If your heart can deliver more blood with less work, your performance and recovery will benefit. When it comes to serious lifting, the quality of our recovery can have big implications on our results.

Improved Body Composition

This is an obvious point, but one that must be stated. In terms of physique development, the combination of resistance training and aerobic training is unmatched.

This is likely due to the fact that resistance training increases metabolic rate, while aerobic training decreases hunger levels. Improved body composition also leads to increased leptin and insulin sensitivity, as well as increased testosterone and lower estrogen levels.

Improved body composition for strength athletes is a side benefit of aerobic training.

For an expert opinion on this topic, I went to Alex Viada, CSCS. Alex is the author of The Hybrid Athlete, and founder and co-owner of Complete Human Performance, a company that specializes in building athletes who possess exception levels of strength and unmatched endurance.

Alex isn’t only brains, though. He practices what he preaches – he is a marathon runner and triathlete who also boasts a 700lb squat.

The thought that “cardiovascular conditioning” only benefits endurance activities is fundamentally wrong – a stronger heart and superior circulation result in more oxygen and nutrients provided to working muscles regardless of the type of training being done. A better conditioned strength athlete will clear metabolites faster (including lactate after higher repetition sets), make better use of existing glycogen to fuel their training (more mitochondria in their muscles), and maintain better energy levels and improve recovery times between sets, which means training sessions can include more productive, high quality work in the same amount of time.¹

How to Incorporate Aerobic Training Into Your Program

Aerobic training is easily incorporated into a program because it’s nature makes it low intensity and easy to recover from. It also doesn’t take hours and hours of training time to start seeing aerobic adaptations.

When incorporating aerobic training, here are a few guidelines to keep in mind:

• Always stay within the aerobic range. Obvious, right? For some lifters, going high intensity is natural, and they have to work to dial it back. Don’t let your heart rate get above 85% of your max and work to stay within a 60-85% range.
• Less is more. You don’t need to spend hours pounding the pavement to get the necessary aerobic adaptions. Three or four thirty-minute sessions per week are plenty to get the job done.
• Get cardio in on your off days or as far away from strength training as possible. If hypertrophy is your main goal, it’s wise to perform cardio on non-lifting days in order to spare as much muscle tissue as possible. If you absolutely must perform cardio on lifting days, look to keep the two sessions as far apart as possible. If you lift in the mornings, perform cardio in the evenings or vice versa.

There are several ways to incorporate aerobic exercise alongside your strength routine.

Add Cardio to Your Routine for New Gains

One of the most long-standing arguments in the lifting world against aerobic training is that it wastes away muscle tissue. Lifters who have put in hours of work are worried they’ll see their hard fought gains disappear.

This is a fair concern, and one that does seem to be reality. If losing hard fought muscle mass is a concern, forms of aerobic work like cycling, swimming, rowing, or even time on the elliptical are perfect options for you.

The higher impact the cardio, the more muscle loss that’s likely to occur.

But when done correctly, aerobic training won’t be responsible for destroying your gains in the weight room.

In fact, it might be just what you need to move beyond progress plateaus.

Check out these related articles:

• Alpha-Male Style Cardio Training
• The Elliptical for Cardio? Smart Strength With Charles Staley
• How Do I Get Better Cardio Without Losing Strength?

References:

1. Alex Viada, email message to author, (June 13, 2015)

Photos 1 and 3 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Photos 2 and 4 courtesy of Breaking Muscle.

The post Cardio Doesn’t Kill Gains (and You Should Be Doing It) appeared first on Breaking Muscle.