What’s your goal? Is the question asked before you start any diet or exercise programming. The question should be; do you truly understand what your goal is. Sure, you can likely identify what you want but that isn’t a true goal.
Nutrition and exercise are the means through which you get to your goals. But, are you aware of the fact that every set of goals also comes with a list of sacrifices. How does your goal of fat lose affect your performance in the gym? What does hitting a new PR mean for long-term health?
You must truly understand what your goals are…and more importantly, what they are NOT!
Understand what you want
All goals can be categorized into one of three pursuits – Performance, Aesthetic or Longevity based goals. To help someone understand where their goal sits within these categories I used something called The Triangle of Awareness.
This concept was introduced to me by Jason Phillips of the Nutritional Coaching Institute. Each tip of the triangle represents the absolute pursuit of that goal – for example a professional athlete for performance, a bodybuilder for aesthetics and trying to “live forever” for longevity. Everyone’s goal fits somewhere in the middle of those 3 extremes.
What’s important to note about the triangle is that the closer you get to any tip of the triangle, the further away you get from the other two. Meaning the more dedicated and focused you are on one of them, the more you will sacrifice in the other two.
A professional athlete doesn’t win at their sport because they have “the best abs”.
A bodybuilder doesn’t win 1st prize for being able to lift the most amount of weight.
The person who lives to be 110 years old, likely isn’t stressing their body with intense exercise daily.
These extreme examples sound obvious yet – we’ve all said something to the effect of, “I want to lose fat and get stronger” when setting a goal. However, these are separate goals that conflict with one another.
In order to lose fat you must be in a calorie deficit – this is unavoidable. And to add the lean muscle tissue that leads to strength gains, you must be eating at minimum maintenance calories if not in a slight calorie surplus – which will inevitably come with some fat gain as well.
To better understand where you’re goals fit inside the triangle, let’s breakdown the “absolute pursuit” of each goal individually.
Performance-Based Protocols
Performance is traditionally seen through the scope of professional athletes or athletic-type endeavors – professional sports, CrossFit, Olympic/powerlifting competitions and track or marathon racing. Performance goals are objective in nature, meaning they are easily measured. All of the metrics that define who is “better” at these endeavors can be clearly defined – i.e. lifting more weight, running faster, scoring more points than your opponent.
And while these metrics will determining success or failure in a performance-based setting; it’s equally important to remember what does not determine success for athletes in these protocols.
Success in performance goals doesn’t mean having visible abs or the healthiest blood markers possible. And while athletes who compete in high level sports likely have some level of caring about how they look and their long term health, it was not their primary goal. Meaning their dietary protocol can not be written around those secondary goals.
Dietarily speaking, a successful performance protocol will be focused around adequate intake relative to 1) fueling the type of activity being performed and 2) recovering from the performance of that activity. Both of which mean eating at minimum maintenance calories but more likely in a calorie surplus.
Aesthetic-Based Protocols
Aesthetics is basically the concern with how you look and your appearance. This is where most goals are based and why most people will start seeking out a diet plan. Because they are based solely in looks, aesthetic goals are very subjective in nature. But we can confidently say they all involve some amount of fat lose and some amount of muscle gain.
An extreme example of aesthetic goals are bodybuilding competitions. And while extremely subjective in nature, the winner of these competitions does so because they have gotten to low levels of body fat while building/maintaining a substantial amount of muscle – and while there are other factors being judged, these are the most basic two.
Although a competitive bodybuilder and the average person just trying to “look better” don’t share much in common, their dietary protocols share one very important thing; the dieting approach that will yield their best looking body will NOT in any way yield the best performance or most longevity.
Absolute aesthetics typically have a fat lose and a muscle building component to them. On their most basic levels, the fat lose component will require a calorie deficit and the muscle building component will require a calorie surplus. Which is impossible to create a deficit and a surplus simultaneously. Therefore the approach will require periodization – i.e. phasing in and out fat lose and muscle gain throughout the year. This is were the cut/bulk terminology is founded.
Longevity-Based Protocols
These are fairly new to the world of nutrition and increasing in popularity. To be clear, simply losing weight or performing a little better will improve your long-term health. And it is very rare to have someone’s only goal be simply “live longer”. Desire for improved health(i.e. feeling better, healthier blood work, etc) is usually a secondary goal to looking better or performing better.
For this reason, we’ll breakdown longevity two different ways:
1) Absolute Longevity
2) Longevity in relation to other goals
Absolute Longevity
Meaning the goal is to simply live longer…that’s it. In this case, the research shows controlling inflammation and stress are the key factors. Some studies are being done on telomere length as a predictor of longevity. However, shortened telomere length ultimately comes back to excess inflammation. Note: telomeres are the caps on the end of chromosomes that minimize DNA lose when cells multiple.
This means, those looking to “live forever” should be looking to limit and control inflammation. This comes from low intensity exercise and a small calorie deficit, neither of which will yield significant muscle gain or fat lose. Getting adequate sleep and a very low stress lifestyle are also critical to this type of prescription – which are uncommon and unrealistic for most people.
Longevity with other goals
If it isn’t clear by now, optimizing performance isn’t optimal for health and achieving the “perfect physique” will sacrifice some life expectancy. But few people are looking to achieve extreme levels of either. Even fewer will achieve absolute longevity by removing all life’s stressors, walking on a beach for exercise and eating a perfect, nutrient dense diet.
Most people’s goals of looking/performing better come with an underlying goal of longevity – that is “feel better”, “have more energy”, “improve their blood work”, etc.
To ensure these secondary goals are accounted for in a nutrition prescription, two very important things must happen. First is a focus on eating mostly high quality, nutrient dense foods and limiting highly-processed foods.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, the plan must be broken into phases of actively pursing goals and recovery from goal pursuit. The active pursuit of goals, performance or aesthetic, is a stress on the body – we now know, large amounts of stress are the enemy of longevity. Therefore, an equal dose of recovery is needed to counteract the stress the body went through.
-For Performance: after finishing the season, race or competition they were training for, the athlete must go though a period of physical and physiological recovery.
-For Aesthetics: every period of weight loss or “diet season” must be followed by a return to caloric maintenance and even some fat gain.
These are non negotiable if you want long term success – period.
Making Goals
Now, I’m not telling you what your goals should be, that would be ridiculous. I do however want to make you aware of the fact – every goal comes with a list of sacrifices that are often overlooked or not communicated properly.
Revisiting the example goal from the beginning: “I want to lose fat and get stronger”
The trouble comes when making the goal fat loss(an aesthetic-based goal) and strength gain(a performance-based goal), we treat it 1 goal instead of 2 separate goals. Treating them as the same goal assumes they are going to happen at the same time with the same protocol, which is biologically impossible.
That’s not to say you can’t purse more than one goal. You can purse them all – just not at the same time. This means the mentality of goal pursuit needs to change.
If your goal is to be able squat more weight, then you have to be ok with the fact you might not have abs while you do it.
If your goal is having six-pack abs, then you have to ok with being under-fed for an extended period of time and you won’t be as badass in the gym.
Disclaimer: All information presented is for general information purposes only. Coach Owen Stenabaugh is not a registered dietitian, licensed nutritionist or medical professional.
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