“The photos are quite telling, and at first, I was wondering what trickery you played with them. I didn’t realize how drastic my own results were as I see myself in the mirror every day and forgot where I started.”
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This comment from Phil put a huge smile on my face.
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It was also an invaluable insight.
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We can get so wrapped up in the day-to-day that it’s easy to forget how far we’ve come.
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So though usually I only send clients comparison photos of themselves at the end of a cut/bulk phase, I’ll now be sure to do it more often.
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I asked Phil, “What do you feel was the most valuable part or lesson learned?”
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Phil: “I have worked with trainers before as part of contest prep, both in bulking and cutting phases.
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“Much of their info was consistent with what I had known and believed for years in that you need to eat numerous times throughout the day. — Preserving mass is best done with pre bedtime meals, and you always want to get post-workout nutrition into your system within 45 minutes to maximize progress.
“So, when you put me on 3 meals a day, I was expecting to starve (and admittedly it took some time to adjust) and expected to quickly plateau in the gym and have a harder and harder time recovering since we were not using a post-workout shake or doing pre-bed meals to avoid catabolism.
“To my surprise, I made consistent gains in the gym, and measurements in the naturally lean areas that I already had moved very little during the 14 weeks, telling me that we preserved muscle mass pretty well.
“So the biggest lesson I learned was I don’t need 7 meals a day to meet my goals. It simplified my life a great deal.”