What works for your body?

* Yeah I know, I know; it’s up a day early. Call me organised. Tomorrow is a public holiday here in the Land Down Under, so I’m getting in early! Enjoy your day off you Aussies.

One of the great things about us human beings is our uniqueness. To the extra-terrestrial observer from the distant planet Nebulon 7, perhaps our individuality is not so obvious, but scratch a little below the surface and you’ll discover that in many ways, while we all kinda look the same (except for Brangelina of course), we’re actually all quite different. Some might say, especially me. So not fair.

The one-diet-fits-all eating philosophy (good luck with that)

Two people go on the same type of ‘breakthrough’ (whatever that means) eating plan. They eat the same kinds of food, similar amounts, similar times of the day and they both totally buy into their new nutritional philosophy. One feels amazing, full of energy and loses unwanted body-fat while the other feels like crap, is constipated, doesn’t sleep well, doesn’t drop fat and suffers from regular indigestion. Eating the same food! Why? Because bodies do that, that’s why! They are unique. What will taste great to you, will be disgusting to me. What will be the perfect calorie intake for you, will make me fat. 2000 mg of sodium in your diet per day will send your blood pressure through the roof but won’t affect mine at all. Eating late at night will ruin my sleep, but make you sleep like a baby. One gram of protein per kilo of body weight will be ideal for you, but will leave my body in a state of disrepair and won’t allow me to recover properly from my intense training sessions.

The five-egg omelette

I eat two eggs per day and my cholesterol goes through the roof, you eat a five-egg omelette every morning and… nuthin! Why? Because there is no ‘universal diet’ that will produce the same positive results in every individual. For somebody who is heading towards osteoporosis a litre of milk every day might be fantastic but for the girl next door who is lactose intolerant, the same prescription might be catastrophic. Bottom line – you need to learn what works best for your body. There is no ‘best’ diet. Sure, they want you to believe there is – that’s called marketing; selling stuff. Yes, there are better and worse options and yes, there are general principles and guidelines that we should pay attention to (we need a balanced combination of micro and macro nutrients, for eg.) but the truth is, what you eat, when you eat, how you eat and how much you eat should vary from person to person because we’re not clones. Unfortunately, some experts treat us like we all fell from the same nest.

The generic approach to exercise

Let’s say you and I hit the gym to lift some weights and we do ten exercises, three sets of each. Same exercises, same sets and reps and same form. We use different weights but everything else is the same. Two days later we hit the gym again for our next session, I’ve completely recovered and feel brand new but you can hardly move. You’re so sore that you feel like somebody has attacked you with a baseball bat in your sleep.

The ceramic tile with hair on top

The following week we go to a yoga class (as if) and stretch our asses off for an hour. Because I have the flexibility of a ceramic tile, I tear both hamstrings, dislocate my head, rupture my spleen (don’t ask me why) and crawl home on my hands and knees. I am in a full body cast for two weeks. You, on the other hand, come out of the class feeling loose as a goose, relaxed, reinvigorated and happy as a pig in mud. If my hamstrings weren’t in pieces and my head wasn’t on backwards, I’d kick you in the knee. Okay, so maybe I do need to stretch but perhaps not following your program!

Different things work for different people.

Some people train much better early in the morning while others are atrocious before ten a.m. and seem to be at their physical best later in the day. For one person the barbell squat will be the answer to their leg and butt issues, but for the next person it will deliver nothing but knee pain. Sally will lose five kilos (11lbs) in the first four weeks of doing spin classes while Julie gets quads like an Olympic cyclist! ‘Research’ tells me that for my weight, with the amount of muscle I have and for the volume and type of training that I do, I need somewhere around 3,000 calories per day. Research is wrong. For me. In reality, I eat about 2,000 cals per day and that’s what works best for my body. How do I know? My body told me. If I ate 3,000 calories per day, I would be a sumo wrestler by October.

What works for you (personally)?

I could share countless stories of people that I’ve worked with who have produced amazing results doing what ‘doesn’t work’. And even more stories of people who have achieved less than desirable outcomes following the advice of some guru to the letter. I’m a scientist and let me tell you, despite what the white coat fraternity might want us to believe, when it comes to the human body, there’s a lot more that we don’t know, than we do. There are more lessons to be learned than absolutes to be shared. Some of what we accept as scientific fact now will be scoffed at in years to come. Not too long ago the medical consensus was that people with back injuries should basically lie still for a month or two, so as not to exacerbate the injury! These days we see most patients encouraged to be active as soon as possible. All immobilisation does (for many back injuries) is make the individual weaker, the injury worse and the recovery period longer.

I’m not saying any of this to confuse you but rather to enlighten you. I’m not suggesting that you don’t listen to the experts but I am saying, listen to your body as well – it’s always trying to teach you something, but if you’re like the majority then you haven’t been listening too much. As I’ve said many times, some people seem desperate not to learn.

Where to from here?

Start from right now to be more aware of how your body responds to the various stimuli. Be more methodical and logical about how you feed it, exercise it and rest it and you might just stumble across the right formula (for you).

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