Vegan Bodybuilding: Flooding your changes

Wednesday 6 January 2016

Flooding your changes

By Pete Ryan

Changes can be hard. New year is especially problematic. You start that ‘ultimate diet’, you go on a juice detox programme, you decide to start exercising, revamp the diet and start decorating the house as well! The trouble is that for many people making dozens of changes at once overwhelms them. New diets, new foods, new exercise programmes. The body is hit on all sides with changes and many bodies do not like too many changes at once.

When changing for the better many hinder your progress

A famous powerlifter for many years ate a terrible diet of fast food and other junk. He rarely saw a vegetable and never ate what most people would consider healthy options. Eventually this came back to haunt him as a medical revealed that he had cholesterol and other blood markers so bad that the doctor was surprised that he was still alive, “I have seen better blood work on a corpse!” was what the doctor said to him and warned that if he did not change his diet then he would probably die in the very near future. So, this powerlifter decided to change his diet for the better. He dumped the junk food, included vegetables and moved to eating wholefoods. He got very ill? He went back to his fast food diet and the symptoms disappeared? He tried again with the same result. He became totally confused? Was he allergic to healthy food? Were wholefoods bad for him? In the end he found a nutritionist and over the next 6 months began a slow transition to eating a more healthy diet.

So, what was this? Was it that 'detox crisis' many gurus talk about? You can get sick if you lose a lot of fat very quickly as toxins are stored in fat, this is to help keep you safe from poisoning, but this wasn’t the case. In this example the individual had the wrong enzymes being produced to break down healthy food and had the wrong bacteria in his gut to survive on wholefoods. This can be fixed, but it takes time for the body to adapt. The ‘human digestive system’ (the symbiotic relationship between our body and the bacteria that live within us) is an amazing system. You can eat virtually anything and survive, you can eat things far away from what are considered healthy and still grow, even train hard and look good. Usually the issues that develop are invisible, with increases in cancer, cardiovascular issues and probably an earlier death than you would have had otherwise.

Just as the body can take time to adapt to changes, so the mind also needs time to incorporate changes into your lifestyle. If you attempt to include 20 new changes into your life you will most likely fail to get them all done. Each one will add to the stress of the day and you will finally get overwhelmed by the mass of changes and crumble. A better plan is to slowly bring in changes.

Over new year just think if you said I am going to go to the gym twice a week (or if you prefer, exercise at home). Just that, nothing more! Focus on that for a full month just make sure that every Tuesday and Friday you hit the gym with a full body programme. After a month that training has started to become a habit, next add in the idea of a healthy breakfast, stick at that for a full month, while the training still continues, the month after that add in the idea of a healthier lunch...and so on. Add one small change and things will improve, you will not be overwhelmed and by the end of a year you will begin to reap real changes.

One point I would like to make...THIS IS IMPORTANT... if you are aiming at losing significant fat, start weight training, start body brushing and apply coconut oil. These things will help the skin adjust to the new shape. You may not be able to eliminate lose skin, but you could possibly lessen the effects. Those are a few changes at once, but you could start with a month of weights & bodybrushing, then the next month begin the fat loss and coconut oil. If you aim to add mass I would start with resistance training (lifting weights) and pick one meal to increase the calories per day (breakfast is the easiest if you can eat in the mornings), go from there.

Simply increase by one or 2 things every month as you adapt and things will go better. If you try to add too many things you will be flooded by changes and soon revert to your old ways. Make 2016 the year you succeeded with your body goals!