Our Brain Makes Body Recomposition Hard

Here are three ways to make it easier

The body recomposition concept is simple, but its application is hard. A key reason for this is our irrationality and the little tricks our brain plays on us.

I think you have a good idea of what you should do more of, and less of, to improve your fitness and nutrition over the next seven days.

Get to the gym and complete those runs.

Eat those salads for lunch and avoid snacking in the afternoon and evening.

But come Tuesday morning, you’re brain is giving you a range of reasons to skip that gym session. Tired… don’t have time… will do it tomorrow.

And by Wednesday afternoon, you’re back to snacking in the afternoon and evening. But now the streak is broken, you decide to enjoy this week and start again Monday, so tomorrow’s salad gets thrown out and replaced with fish and chips.

It’s a familiar pattern because a) I do it myself; and b) it’s the most common challenge I work through with clients. It’s not something that we ever overcome, but we can break the pattern and reduce the frequency to manage it better.

Humans are terrible at delaying gratification. We want everything now and are happy to pay a premium for that.

There’s a reason Afterpay was sold for $40 billion and banks can get away with 20% interest rates on credit cards - we will pay more later to have things now.

But when it comes to managing energy balance, that premium isn’t financial, it’s the changes in body composition and loss of fitness that we see instead. 

The driving forces are simple - pleasure and pain. We seek out pleasure and want to avoid pain.

Sugary, fatty and salty foods fall into the category of pleasure. They taste great and make us feel good for a short period of time.

When the opportunity arises to consume them, it’s difficult to say no. 

What’s challenging about our environments is these opportunities are everywhere - you probably walk past three cafes from the car into the office, there’s always a birthday or farewell cake floating around, and then you drive past fast food on the way home.

If you’re at home, you’ve probably got 3-5 different snacks or treats across your pantry, fridge and freezer that are going to be calling your name when you get a bit peckish.

Consuming food is rarely painful. Grilled fish with lemon, asparagus and rice doesn’t hurt to consume (allergies excepted) but it’s not as pleasurable as a juicy burger with hot crispy fries. 

And while exercise shouldn’t be painful, it can be quite uncomfortable due to hard work, burning lungs and aching muscles.

Or it might be that you’re not yet comfortable in the training environment and would rather be at home.

Both are valid reasons to not want to train. 

But giving into short-term pleasure from food and avoiding the discomfort from training can lead to them coming back to get us over the long term.

The downside of too much food is body composition which can cause dissatisfaction for some people.

Likewise, the heavier we get and the less fit we become, the more likely we are to experience discomfort when it comes to completing daily activities.

Balancing pleasure and discomfort is critical when developing a body recomposition strategy. 

If it’s all doom and gloom, you’ll be looking to stop the program as soon as you can. And since you are an adult and able to do what you like, that will probably be in the first week or two.

To prevent that, here are three ways to keep the balance between results and adherence. 

Keep some pleasure in the plan

You have to keep some of the foods or drinks that you enjoy in the plan, otherwise, it’s going to be very hard to adhere to.

We eat and drink a lot more frequently than we exercise, so if we don’t get to consume things we enjoy from time to time, the whole thing will become stale quite quickly.

It is likely that you will have to manage your intake of these foods better than you have been recently, but this is a challenge you can overcome, particularly when the benefit is promoting adherence.

I don’t like to avoid any foods, however, the exception is foods that you find hyperpalatable. These are the foods that once you start eating, you rarely stop until they are gone. 

Common examples are chips, biscuits, chocolate and lollies.

If you identify these are being foods that are hard to control, then they aren’t the foods you should be treating yourself to when nutrition intake is a bit more strict (because you probably won’t control them).

Instead, find other foods that you can enjoy in moderation.

Whatever it is, keep something in the plan that you enjoy and manage the intake. For some people, this might mean a small amount daily, or for others, it might be larger amounts once per week.

Have a plan for WHEN things go off track

You will make mistakes from time to time, especially at the beginning of the plan. How you respond to these is critical.

If you eat a piece of cake for afternoon tea on Wednesday, you have three options.

One: cut the equivalent calories from your plan over the next 24 hours.

Two: ignore it and get back on the plan for the next meal.

Three: promise to start again Monday and treat yourself for the rest of the week.

Most people assume number one is my preferred option - adjust the energy balance and erase the event. But this is not the case, because you’re then trying to make your own adjustments and no longer sticking to the plan.

What I recommend is option two. Just ignore it and get back into things. We are trying to build habits and test strategies - so get back to that instead of doing something else new.

What many people do is number three - they break the streak and decide to throw it away (until Monday). The problem here is Thursday to Sunday gets too high in calories, especially when it becomes their ‘last chance before the diet starts’.

This isn’t the end of the world if it happens once, but it’s an issue when it happens four out of six weeks. 

You need to be able to check yourself to get things back on track. There’s no point beating yourself up or parking the strategy until Monday. Focus on taking the next step, be that a training session or meal, to get yourself back into the swing.

One piece of cake will have a tiny impact on energy balance across the week, but four days off the plan will be significant.

Reward training adherence with non-food treats

We tend to reward ourselves with food. This is drilled into kids - ice cream is the reward for good behaviour and you won’t be allowed a packet of chips if you don’t listen.

Food is a pretty good reward in general - it’s pleasurable, accessible and relatively affordable. 

But it’s not the best reward for sticking to a fitness or nutrition plan. Instead, you need to develop other rewards for when your adherence is good.

I can’t tell you what this will be - you need to work it out yourself based on what you enjoy, be that going to the movies, buying clothes or something else.

If it’s something larger that you can’t do too often, then track your adherence over a longer timeframe (i.e. 1-2 months) and if you hit the target, do it. 

Just keep in mind that these rewards need to be shorter than your goals.

If you have a ten-week target and buy yourself a new set of golf clubs when you get there, but you haven’t rewarded yourself along the way.

It doesn’t have to be massive, but it helps recognise your adherence and brings in some reward for your effort beyond the improvements in strength, fitness and body composition.

Bonus: keep training reasonable

In the first few months of training, it’s more important that you are doing something than what you are actually doing. Just getting into the habit of allocating time to exercise and getting the body moving is fine.

We understand that fat loss targets with short timeframes require massive changes. If this gets too large, it’s unlikely to be adhered to, although it is possible.

Building fitness and strength are not the same. You can’t compress a year's worth of training into three months. Something will likely break, but even if it doesn’t, you simply cannot fast-track the results.

The body needs time to recover and adapt from the training stimulus. 

The training stimulus is something that can be managed early on. When the focus is getting moving and allocating time to exercise, you don’t have to push yourself to failure on each set in the gym or push your heart rate to the max for the entire cycle.

Drop the intensity and the session will be more enjoyable. Once you’ve got a solid base, then you can ramp things up.

Sum it up

Your brain makes change hard, but we have to play the game if we want to get results.

Making sure there is some enjoyment retained in the body recomposition strategy is critical to facilitating adherence. The longer someone adheres, the more they see progress, which then reinforces the value of the strategy and feeds back into it.

Maintain some enjoyment, have a plan when things go off track, reward yourself (without food) and keep your training reasonable to make adherence, and results, much easier to come across. 

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Q&A

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