What You Look Like Shouldn’t Matter
Feeling good in our bodies is often wrongly conflated with “looking good to other people.” Many people start working out because they want to change how they look, but there is a genetic limit to what we can change about our bodies. Finding something at the gym that makes it fun and rewarding to do the actual work of working out is much more rewarding and often leads to feeling good even if there aren’t big visual changes to the body.
Plateau?
It’s natural to see diminishing returns as you advance in fitness because the closer you get to your genetic limit, the harder and longer it takes to make progress. Most times when people complain about plateauing, what they’re really complaining about is not seeing the results they want fast enough. Properly managing expectations and accurately tracking your progress is key.
Clean Eating And IIFYM/CICO Are Actually The Same Thing
Clean Eating is a type of diet where you can eat as much as you want as long as the foods are “clean.” If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM) is a diet where the specific foods don’t matter as long as you’re meeting certain calorie and macronutrient numbers. Both of these approaches are incomplete or unsustainable over the long term. Clean eating needs to be more flexible in the types of food that people eat either because for ease or enjoyment, and IIFYM has to include a wide variety of foods to ensure proper fiber and micronutrients.
The Death of ‘Functional’ Fitness
The trend of ‘functional’ fitness aims to train exercisers with movements that are supposedly more likely to carry over to practical everyday uses. However, in doing so, many ‘functional’ recommendations contradict long-standing, well-researched and evidence-based practices in fitness, to the detriment of their followers. Unfortunately, there is something that functional fitness is uniquely good at - gathering attention on social media via highly viral, unusual movements likely to attract attention because of their novelty.
Simplicity Is King, and Muscle Confusion Is Garbage
In general, you’ll get better results from following a simpler routine more consistently, rather than constantly varying and changing your routine. Fad workout routines based around “muscle confusion” can work, but will generally provide you inferior results to simpler and more consistent routines. Serious lifting athletes rely on ideal the routines and strategies which have been developed over the years, and focus on practicing a small number of movements repeatedly, rather than constantly varying movements.