5 Reasons You’re Not Seeing Gym Results (From a Burnaby Personal Trainer)

Josko: All right, welcome back to the Kraken Power podcast. We’re your hosts Josko and Brandon, and in this episode we’re gonna be talking about the five reasons why you’re probably not seeing results. And if you stick around to the end, the last one is going to surprise you.

Roll the intro. Welcome back to the Kraken Power podcast. Before we dive in we’re gonna have to just define what we mean by results, and what we mean by results is fat loss, getting shredded for the summer, things like that, because that’s the thing that most people want to do. They’re trying to research ways to just get more lean and more toned, maybe build more muscle. So that’s what we’re talking about specifically.

Like if you’re trying, we’re not talking about results for like getting better at jujitsu or something.

Brandon: That’s just like vertical by 30%.

Josko: Yeah, like that’s just takes practice.

Brandon: I think some of these will help, but today specifically we’re talking about fat loss and the results.

Josko: Exactly, so the very first one is hidden calories. And a lot of people like, they know that there’s hidden calories in things, but they just don’t know how much, but it can be an insane amount. Like for example, like people putting salad dressing on their salads or like peanut butter. Those are like the basics that everybody knows, but those can add like hundreds of calories and therefore throwing you off a fat loss phase. And you think like, oh, I’m eating less, like I’m eating a salad instead of like rice. And then you end up having like 200, 300 calories of like just some high calorie salad dressing.

Brandon: And the worst thing about that is instead of like eating just the rice where it makes you kind of feel a little bit more full, you’re eating like salad with like crazy amount of carbs on top of it with the sauce, right?

Josko: Yeah, or fat.

Brandon: Yeah, and then you don’t really feel satiated from it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and then over the day, right, it adds up. You’re doing like maybe an extra three to 500 extra calories. And I think the best example of this is when you actually go out to eat at a restaurant and say you order a steak, right, and you’re like, oh yeah, that’s a really good high source of protein. Yes, it comes with fat. And like even if you’re eating like a leaner steak, like a sirloin, you think that’s a really good choice. But that restaurant’s going to cook with a lot of oil. They’re gonna cook with a lot of butter on top of it to make it taste really good. And in return, that’s gonna add way more calories than what you actually originally thought it was gonna be if it was just the steak by itself.

Josko: Yeah, for sure, yeah. The restaurant’s totally overdue and they’re just trying to make it taste here. But that’s what people do at home too. Like they’re just trying to make their diet food taste better, but they ended up just putting unnecessary amount of calories on top, like in sauces and stuff that make you not see results at the end of the day. Yeah, I’m really guilty with that with teriyaki chicken.

Brandon: Yeah.

Josko: So good.

Brandon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then you add that all up and you see how much actual carbs are in teriyaki chicken sauce.

Josko: Yeah, for sure. And this also includes things like, for example, eating chicken thighs versus eating chicken breast, right? Like that’s an easy way to reduce the amount of calories you’re eating. And a lot of people, they don’t realize just how many calories are in foods. And this is why you always have to go back and be like, you have to track your calories. Like you have to go through a phase in your life where you are learning about how many calories are in certain foods. Because if you don’t know that, like you don’t know how much protein you’re having, like you’re always just guessing, going through your entire day, just guessing how much you’re eating. And you think that you’re trying to lose weight. You think that you’re trying to even potentially gain weight in bulk. You’re like you’re trying to hit a certain amount of protein and yet you’re not.

Brandon: Yeah, totally. I’ve been there when I was like a teenager or even a young adult. I was like, oh, I was going through a bulking phase. And I thought I was like, oh yeah, I don’t need to track. I’ll just like eat as much as I can. But until I actually tracked, I realized that consistently, I wasn’t really eating above what my maintenance amount of calories was, right? It may feel like I was like full because I would eat a lot at dinner, but I didn’t really know throughout the entire day. But just to go back to kind of like the hidden calories, there are ways to get around these hidden calories, right? So for instance, like if we do wanna make our foods taste good, we can have low calorie like flavor enhancers, right? Like we can have different kinds of spices. Like if you have different kinds of salt. One of my favorite things to do is if I’m gonna have like a sirloin steak is like use garlic salt on top of it, right? And then you can use that instead of like garlic butter, right? And so you’re reducing those amount of calories and it still tastes great and it’s exciting to eat.

Josko: Yeah, for sure. And I guess maybe we should just list a few options that you can use to avoid the hidden calories. So one thing that people for some, like I’m not a big fan of peanut butter. I don’t eat it very often, but there’s this brand called PB2. They do powdered peanut butter or like there’s actually tons of powdered peanut butter brands that you could use. And then now you can avoid eating hundreds of calories of peanut butter on one piece of bread and it can be reduced by like, I think about 80%, you know? And it’s higher protein and it still tastes almost the same. So yeah, I mean, it’s not gonna taste fully the same, but it’s almost there. And when you’re in trying to lose weight, it’s an easy swap to do. If you’re already having peanut butter on some toast, just swap it with some PB2. It like hits the spot, not quite there, but you know, it hits the spot enough.

And so that’s number one. Another thing that you could do for the sauces, just look at the label and just find one that doesn’t have as much fat or doesn’t have as much calories in general and just swap it. It’s probably not gonna taste the same again, but you know, it’s an easy swap. What other things are there?

Brandon: I would really lean into like spices and herbs. So say you are cooking a chicken breast, for instance, right? And people kind of like dread chicken breast because they’re like, oh, it’s like really dry and it’s kind of like flavorless. You can really enhance these things with different kinds of herbs, right? So if you throw like some thyme in there or rosemary or something like that, right? Or even like paprika. Like there’s so many out there that are like barely any calories, if not any, that are going to really enhance that meal and make you excited to eat it and like I said, not add any calories at all.

Josko: So my wife and I, we love this one restaurant. It’s a Lebanese restaurant. So good. Wild Thyme in Vancouver, in New West. Wild Thyme. Have you been there? No. Yeah. Great name. Yeah, Wild Thyme.

Brandon: Yeah, I get it.

Josko: We got to acknowledge all the dad jokes. So Wild Thyme, their Lebanese place and like their meat is so good. Like they’re just, their meals are just so good. I was trying to figure out, pinpoint the exact herb that they’re using. Cause I don’t like putting too much herbs on it, but I just want the one that I like. And I found out that it was cumin. Yeah. And I swear it makes everything so bomb. And then I also found out that it’s actually a common, I don’t know if this is actually true. Like I just found it on Google, but some Mexican seasonings have cumin inside. So what I do is I’ll just dress up my beef with cumin and then I’ll have either like a Lebanese style beef and rice, or you put in a little bit of avocado, you put in a little bit of yogurt and then a little bit of salsa. And then now it’s Mexican style rice and beef. But the cumin just adds that kind of interesting flavor. That depth. And then it basically changes your meal from day to day when you’re essentially eating the same thing. Yeah, exactly. Right. And just a tiny little change. But so I, yeah, you’re totally right. Finding different herbs, different ways to flavor it. 100% works for sure.

Then there’s also hidden calories in your meat as well. Like for example, the chicken thighs versus chicken breast or the ground beef, like medium ground beef versus extra lean ground beef. So just paying attention to that and just seeing the, like doing those swaps as well. Or like, let’s say if you’re having fish very often and like multiple times per week, you could easily switch out your salmon with some maybe lower fat fish like tilapia or cod or something like that. So there’s always options out there for you to, but the only way that you’re gonna know is if you have data and you know exactly how many calories are in things. And so you have to track your calories and that’s why it’s so important.

But number two on the list is not enough protein. So people underestimate just how much protein you need to see results. And a lot of time people are, it’s very common that people under eat protein. This is fact, like everybody at one point in their life has probably been under eating protein. I think so.

Brandon: And it’s actually, you actually need quite a bit to stimulate growth and maintain lean muscle mass if you’re in a calorie deficit. So it’s actually really important to increase your protein, especially if you’re in a fat loss phase. And a really good saying that I’ve heard is like, you don’t just like accidentally eat the amount of protein that you actually kind of need, unless you’re going to like all you can eat or barf or something like that, right? You don’t just like stumble upon it. You have to consciously do this for a certain amount of time to understand how much you actually need. So in our nutrition program at Kraken, we kind of aim for like a range between like 0.8 grams per pound body weight to one gram per pound body weight. And that’s just a really good just general guideline that you can follow, but you kind of have to find out where you are along that kind of like range.

Josko: Yeah, for sure. And then obviously the more overweight you are, the less protein you want per pound body weight. Cause let’s say if you’re a 250 pound woman, you probably shouldn’t be eating 250 grams of protein. It should probably be somewhere towards your goal weight that you’re trying to achieve. So like, let’s say if you wanted to get down to 150, you wanted to lose a hundred pounds or something like that, then it’s probably a good idea to eat around 150 grams of protein. And the rest of your calories can be carbs or fat.

You were talking about this earlier, but it’s really important to make sure that you’re eating protein because if you are in a fat loss phase and you’re not having enough protein, then the likelihood of you losing more muscle mass is higher. So that’s why it’s very important to make sure that while you’re trying to lose weight, that you’re coupling your weight training with adequate protein, maybe even increasing your protein more than you’re eating. Because of course, there is two more benefits on top of that. One, you’re going to be able to feel more satiated eating more protein. So that’s why oftentimes, like before a client goes into a fat loss phase, we’ll increase their protein intake. We’ll say like somebody is eating 140, maybe we increase it to 160, just to help them feel more full. But then there’s also the thermogenic effect of protein as well, because your body’s gonna have to break it down and increase, your body heat increases in order for it to be broken down. And if your body heat increases, that means you’re gonna be burning more calories, which is what you’re trying to accomplish. You’re trying to burn more calories to lose weight, right?

So there is many benefits of eating more protein. And that’s why we put it on the list of the top five reasons you’re probably not seeing results.

But the third reason, and we’re just gonna talk about this again, because we talk about it every single podcast, is you’re just not sleeping enough. Or you’re not sleeping enough, or you’re not sleeping properly. You’re just not getting enough sleep, like whatever, right? But it is definitely a reason why you’re not seeing results. People underestimate how much sleep they need and how much quality sleep they need as well.

Brandon: Yeah, like sleep is one of the main regulators of your hunger hormones as well. So leptin and ghrelin, they’re gonna to regulate how satiated you feel, how full you feel, and like how much you actually wanna dig into those higher calorie meals. And so by regulating your sleep, getting good duration and good quality, that’s going to help those hormones and keep them at bay from making you want to eat the fridge calorie deficit.

Josko: Like how many times, like for me, when I don’t get a good amount of sleep, I am hungry, fact. I’m more hungry the next day. So do you get the exact same thing as well? Oh yeah, 100%. Yeah, and especially the less sleep I get, the more hungry I am, like fact. I think one of the, I’m sure people who are listening to this podcast can have that exact same experience as well.

Brandon: Well, I think one of the best experiences, and it’s a bad experience to go through, is like everyone’s been out like on a night out and they’ve gotten terrible sleep. They’re probably out drinking, which affected their sleep even more. And the next day they’re always like craving for really greasy fast foods, right? Not only just because of its convenience, but because those hunger hormones are telling you like we need something calorie dense. Yeah, totally.

Josko: You’re not looking to have like a steak and vegetables. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. You’re like craving like pizza. Oftentimes people want to go out and to like go to a breakfast place and have like eggs and pancakes and things like that. So if you’re curious why you’re feeling so hungry after drinking, that’s why.

But yeah, some tips on improving your sleep just because we might as well just talk about them, but limit alcohol consumption probably just to once a week. Any stimulants for that matter. Stimulants as well. So stimulants, caffeine or any kind of stimulant, especially approaching, I would say 12 hours before bed. That’s for me. Actually, I don’t take any stimulants at all, but I would say if you are 12 hours before bed, cut them off. Some people say like, oh, by 12 p.m., but that’s not very precise, right? Like what if you’re going to bed at one versus you’re going to bed at nine or eight, right? So those are the main couple of things.

And then also, of course, getting at least seven hours of sleep. So making sure that you not only set your alarm to wake up in the morning, but also an alarm to remind you that it’s time to go to sleep or else anytime. Like you could set it, for example, to let’s say you have to go to bed at 9 p.m. You set your alarm for like 8.30 and that alarm is telling you like you have 30 minutes to be in bed. That’s a really helpful way for people to actually go to bed on time.

Brandon: Yeah, I think one of the best ways to help your sleep quality is just align with your circadian rhythm and have some kind of routine, right? So wake up at the same time, go to bed at the same time. Obviously, this gets kind of messed up when people go out on the weekend and such, but if you can stay closer to your actual schedule, your sleep quality will improve immensely. You’ll see it on your Oura Ring stats, like your deep sleep will improve through the earlier night and you’ll get actually higher REM sleep earlier, I mean, later in the morning.

But another one that goes kind of unsung is like meal timing and exercise timing, right? True, so true, yeah. Yeah, because you do want your body to be able to wind down before you go to sleep. Like I know for a fact, the days where I come home from jiu-jitsu too late and I’m like, oh, I haven’t eaten anything all day, like I have to eat something. That really late meal is going to affect my sleep.

Josko: Yeah, for sure. Totally. And that’s actually why I’m gonna be skipping jiu-jitsu tonight because I haven’t been getting great sleep all throughout the week. Jiu-jitsu at 6.45, it ends up finishing at 7.45. I usually go to bed by nine and tonight’s just like, it’s not gonna happen. As much as I love jiu-jitsu, it’s probably one of the worst things to do before you go to sleep.

Brandon: Yeah, totally.

Josko: You’re like trying to fight someone. Especially the way the class is organized, like first it’s like all the easy stuff and then at the end, it’s all the hard stuff.

Brandon: Yeah, you’re fighting for your life, trying not to get choked out. Yeah. And then it’s like, okay, in an hour, I’m gonna try to settle down and go to sleep. Yeah, totally. Can you imagine going out and having like an altercation in the street?

Josko: But that’s actually a big problem with a lot of men who play sports. Like hockey is a super late night sport. And you wanna hang out with your boys and everything, but the game starts at 11. Yeah. And then you’re having beers in the parking lot.

Brandon: Yeah, exactly.

Josko: I don’t understand why I had such a bad sleep last night. Yeah, yeah. And it truly does affect your sleep a lot. Especially, you have to wake up the next morning at the same time, and then you’re tired throughout the entire day, eating like crap the entire day. And then you go to bed and then like you can’t get a good sleep because you’re feeling restless. And also because you probably ate more than you should have.

So it’s just, it’s not just one night. And that’s a lot of the thing that a lot of people don’t realize. It’s never just, when you like mess up one night, it’s never just one night. It does bleed into the rest of the week as well. So trying to minimize that as much as possible. And so that’s why if you don’t sleep properly, you’re not gonna see really great results, unfortunately.

So, unfortunately. But number four is not enough NEAT. And NEAT is non-exercise activity related thermogenesis. So this means just things that are not related to your daily activities, like not related to your walk, not related to your exercise, not related to jujitsu class or anything like that. This is you like, for example, how much you walk around in your office or how much you fidget or how much, like things like that, the things that aren’t related to directly to exercise and you purposefully moving your body.

Brandon: Yeah. I think that’s why I’ve always been kind of a lean person. I’m always like the twitchy guy at the table who’s like shaking and playing with pens and stuff. Tweak from South Park. Yeah, it adds up over the day.

Josko: Yeah.

Brandon: It’s getting my finger exercises in. Those fidget spinners comes back into the fitness industry. Yeah, yeah, totally.

Josko: So yeah, an easy way to just burn more calories is just to be more mindful of that. And the cool thing with all of our watches and all of our wearable technology is that it does remind you to move every single hour. So it is really helpful and you should listen to it because if I could choose between exercising every single day for an hour or moving all throughout the day, I 100% hands down choose moving all throughout the day. It makes me feel better. It makes me feel more sharp. You will feel worse if you just combine all of your movement into that one hour and then just go back to the couch and do nothing.

Like even one of my clients came in today and he said that he was sore from his last workout. And he came a little bit early because he had to drop his kids off school and he said he was sitting in the car for half an hour. And as soon as he got out of the car, he said he was limping because he couldn’t move his legs. And then as soon as he walked up the stairs, started moving a little bit, then he started to feel better. So yeah, you need that movement throughout the day. As soon as you just sit there and just do nothing, then that’s when things are going downhill.

Brandon: As cheesy as it is, sometimes I’ll tell my clients, motion is lotion.

Josko: Yeah, yeah.

Brandon: But if you’re like a sedentary desk worker, like one really good tool that’s pretty cheap now is those walking pads. You see those? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they’re pretty cheap now. You can get them from Best Buy for like 80 bucks. And it’s like a little treadmill that doesn’t even go that fast and it just allows you to just kind of — Totally, that’s the standing desks. Yeah.

Josko: Super easy, yeah, totally. It makes a big difference. And standing desks are pretty cheap now too. They’re like 300 to 400 bucks. Much more affordable now. Yeah, so everybody should have a standing desk. I have one and I never use it. In a standing form or? Yeah, maybe I should use it on those days when I work from home the entire day. Yeah, I’m just thinking about it now. I do have it. It’s just that the button’s over here and like, oh, it’s too far. Eight reps, reach out to the button.

Yeah. And so you guys have stuck for the very end. And the very last one that’s going to make the biggest difference to you seeing results or not is adherence. Wah, wah. Yeah. So basically, if you’re not adhering to your plan, you’re not going to see results. Who’s the guy who says compliance is a science? Who says that?

Brandon: Compliance is a science? Compliance is a science. Hey, I can’t remember. Is it Dr. Mike? Someone else like that? Is your title? Compliance is a science.

Josko: Yeah, I have heard similar things to that as well. But yeah, totally, 100%. I’m just out here with all the rhyming.

Brandon: Motion is lotion, compliance is the science, guys. If you ever take anything away from this podcast. But with a lot of our clients here at Kraken, accountability is one of the biggest parts of getting a personal trainer, right? And working with someone, right? And people think that’s like a bad thing, but I think it’s actually a good thing to have a personal trainer because they teach you to be accountable when things get tough, right? And if you can learn how to continue on with your routines when life gets tough, when life gets easy, it’s easy to stay on track, right?

And also on top of that, your trainer can give you an outside view or a third person view of just the data of what’s going on. So this will happen a lot of the time with our nutrition clients, where they’ll be like, oh, my weight has just stalled completely. And then you’ll take a weight average of their entire week and like, no, you actually went down 0.8 pounds this week. You’re still losing weight. And typically what happens to people is if they’re tracking their weight every single day and they’re like, oh, I’m still at 144.4, next day, I’m still at 144.4, right? That’s where a lot of people will actually fall off, right? Especially if they’ve been seeing like really good results for a month, let’s say, when realistically you’re just around the corner from hitting another drop off in weight.

Josko: Yeah, for sure. And it’s just having that person that’s taking a more objective look at the data and just saying, hey, you’re still doing fine. Don’t worry about it. Like oftentimes what I say to my clients is we see these charts all the time. You’re doing great, don’t worry. And that’s enough to just let somebody know like, hey, I am doing okay.

Brandon: Yeah, even for myself, when I’m tracking my own data, it’s so easy to get inside your own head and be like, oh, I should try something different or this isn’t working at all. When realistically, if you just like stick with it, you’re gonna get the best long-term results. And that’s what we’re always chasing in these like fat loss programs is like long-term results. No one wants to just lose 10 pounds one month and just put it back on the next, right? It’s just staying on the path, whether how fast you’re going in that direction, as long as you’re kind of trudging in that direction, that’s what we’re always looking for.

Josko: Yeah, for sure. And so the very last one adherence, make sure that whatever plan that you have, that you’re actually sticking to it and you will see results. And it might like, depending on the type of plan that you have, it might be a couple of months, it might be a couple of years, but you will see results with adherence. If you don’t adhere to it, then you’re never going to see results. But that’s pretty much it for this podcast. So thanks for tuning in guys, and we’ll see you in the next one.