The 3 Biggest Nutrition Mistakes I See People Make Trying To Lose Fat or Build Muscle

Too many times people jump from diet fad to diet fad.

Or change their nutrition because they’re jumping from fitness goal to fitness goal.

It inevitably leads to just spinning wheels, frustration and a big lack of motivation and consistency.

You can’t out-train a bad lifestyle.

It’s time to learn how to take take the evergreen constant progressive results path.

We aren’t focusing on eating to ‘diet’ first we are eating to feel energised and radiant.

There will be a time and a place to ‘diet’…

As in a phase where we purposely change what energy pathway the body uses so it burns fat as the main source of energy whilst in a deficit.

Resulting in fat burn to reveal a lean physique. 

There will also be a place to eat to gain more muscle…

…Here we utilise nutrition partitioning and insulin sensitivity to achieve this effectively with minimal fat gain. 

However, first the goal of any fitness regime should be to develop a simple and solid framework for performance nutrition…

…that is NOT restrictive, limiting, or will require you to shift your life.

Here are The 3 Biggest Nutrition Mistakes People Make Trying To transform Their Body

Ant they often happen in this order…

Big Mistake 1: Trying to jump straight into an advanced fat loss or muscle building diet

A question I’ve been asked before:

“Adam…

Can you not just tell me the nutrition to build lean muscle super quick…

and burn fat even quicker?”

Whilst these statements may seem ridiculous, they are in fact not too far from the truth.

However, it is pointless attempting this unless we know, have mastered, and have been applying consistently – a simple evergreen and healthy nutrition framework (which I will come onto in further posts).

Because if the basics at a beginner level aren’t ticked and consistently done each day, then the application at an advanced level will not work.

It’s like building a house and rushing to finish the penthouse attic with the huge sun balcony, without ever laying solid foundations first.

It will crumble and fail.

The body and mind are the same.

Hence:

• yo-yo dieting
• get shredded in 30 days
• build huge amounts of muscle in 3 months…
• yadda yadda you get the point

Whilst the positive ones sound awesome! How do they all end?

Highs then a crash and burn, every single time.

I can say this because I’ve been there myself MANY times and I know you will have to, or know people that have.

A mathematician would not jump straight into solving a Pythagoras equation, which sounds awesome, without mastering his times’ tables, addition and subtraction first.

You’ve got to earn it for it to be effective.

Stick to the basics first:

1. Prioritise eating healthy consistently
2. Prioritise doing your suspension training or resistance band workouts consistently with effective technique

That’s it.

Big Mistake 2: Letting your ego rule or a bad trainer lead

The response to big mistake 1 is often…

“But Adam

I’m different I know I can handle it! Can I go straight to the advanced stuff?“

Ok so let’s assume you can and you ARE DIFFERENT…

How about if I told you it is the worst way to progress!

Because your body will never have anything to progress onto.

Huh? Let me explain…

Time and time again I see people throw everything at themselves:

• Every supplement
• An extreme advanced diet they’ve read
• Constantly tracking calories to absolute perfection.
• pushing themselves super hard in every single workout

…And every single time it’s led to a crash and burn with total frustration.

And inevitably giving up.

Until their willpower returns and they go at the cycle again.

I went at that cycle many times.

I look back and smile now because I see it was a beautiful learning curve that lead me to research deeper and further.

BUT, we’re giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you won’t stop and you won’t crash and burn.

So, let’s talk about your body and how it progresses the most effectively for fitness performance and transforming our physique.

It progresses best with small stepping stones.

Or, if we look at it as a mountain and the top is our dream goal.

It progresses best taking one step at a time to ascend the mountain.

Say you went all out with the above bullet points and did everything and you maintained it…

That’s like jumping over lots of stepping stones in one big leap to a rock. You might have made it and you might be able to stay there but you’ve now got fewer stepping stones to use.

In fitness terms, this means that when you plateau, and you will…

Where do you go?

How do you progress?

You’re already doing everything you possibly can, so where do you go?

The answer is you’ve actually hindered your body.

You haven’t allowed it to reach one stepping stone, plateau, and then move to the next stepping stone to progress.

Once we plateau again, we move to the next stepping stone.

All these stepping stones are like all the possibilities:

• nutrition
• supps
• calorie counting
• diets
• bulks
• training variables
• ….we can use to advance our fitness.

When used effectively the body constantly has something to progress on to.

And you know what it does when this approach is taken, it constantly progresses! What a wonderful thought that is.

Knowing once you begin to plateau you can simply pull out another nutrition tool to progress again.

The body progresses fantastic when it does it in bitesize chunks.

This applies to everything.

It’s how we learn as a baby, learn at school, it’s how we get better at a skill or a hobby.

The same principles apply.

Let’s master them, take small steps and endlessly progress!

Big Mistake 3: Focusing on just counting calories rather than healthy, high quality, and consistent food intake

This leads to the final question:

“But where’s the counting calories part using MyFitness Pal?”

Don’t get me wrong, counting calories is effective and needed at an intermediate – advanced stage.

But, counting calories needs to be combined with nutrition partitioning to be effective (this is something I’ll come onto in a later post).

Again counting calories is pointless unless healthy nutrition fundamentals are a habitual part of life, not a diet plan…. Not something that is done for a little bit of time.

It is done for LIFE.

I’m being harsh but I’m being honest.

First we turn the body into a performance machine with:

1. Prioritise eating healthy consistently
2. Prioritise doing your suspension training or resistance band workouts consistently with effective technique

NOT on dieting and restricting or flooding the body with unknown supplements….

…all of which put the body under additional stress.

Doing the basics consistently leads to amazing results!

Then you can layer on top of those results with more stepping stones to progress even further

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