So, as much as I love doing it, writing smarmy and sarcastic nutrition and general, *sigh*, "fitness" advice can get a little boring. My next couple posts are going to focus on my own personal training philosophy for a wide range of goals. Weightloss will be covered but I would much rather be writing about more complicated concepts like training for sports and optimizing your own personal human condition. Human condition in terms of being as strong, fast, and mobile as you possibly can just because you are alive and healthy and there is no excuse to not have those things maximized in your life. Do you think guys like Henry Thomasson and Derek Poundstone are worried about things like a few extra pounds to lose around their love handles:
Nope. They are too busy kicking ass because they have set goals, worked so hard that there was no room for failure, and are nuttier than squirell poop.
More to come soon, in the meantime... dont do this:
You've really got to ask yourself which is worse, the "exercise" that guy is doing or the jealous hint of an illiterate upbringing in the trainers voice? Either way, they have both made the world a more awful place.
Eat the biggest steak you can get your hands on today.
Sprint. Kill. Eat.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
The Glut4 and Caffeine Cheat Code
The human body does all kinds of crazy impressive scientific stuff that is very hard to explain, if it can even be explained at all. For example, in regards to exercise, there is a phenomena called DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). Pretty much everyone who has done intense or high volume physical work has experienced this. Simply put, it is getting sore up to 2-3 days after cessation of the physical task. Science offers a wide array of explanations for this strange happening but nothing 100% conclusive. Personally, I think it is a survival mechanism that we, as hunter-gatherer humans, have adapted over thousands of years of sprinting after and killing our food or sprinting away from becoming food for something else. Think about it. If you started getting sore the moment you started running after your dinner, you would slow down, fall down in excruciating pain, and then your dinner would turn around and eat you. Our evolved ability to not get sore for a couple hours to three days after strenuous physical work has kept our species alive long enough to not have to worry about survival induced DOMS as much. Also, it has kept us alive long enough to enjoy the sweet deliciousness of whatever the hell this is:
When DOMS happens in your arteries, it's called a heart attack.
So, you may ask, why do I need to care about any of this fancy science stuff? Well, you hillbilly, some book learnin' might help you drop a few pounds, get lean, and improve performance if you are an athlete.
This post is going to basically outline a cheat code to trick the crappy foods you eat actually work for you. Will this help you keep weight off during your month long McRib bender? Absolutely not. And you need professional help because those things taste terrible. Yea, I said it. What the following suggestions will help you with is those little cheat meals you slide in while already eating, mostly, like an efficient human being.
Here is a scenario:
You have been eating clean and making very good food choices all week. Saturday night, a Friend calls you up and says, "All you can eat pizza, wings, and all you can drink beer all night for $10 at (insert local establishment here)." Turning this down will make you less of a human but you do not want to feel guilty about all of the good work you have done since your last Miller High Life and stuffed crust binge. If only there were a way to control where this bountiful meal is being stored in your body and a way to use all of these calories to help you lose fat, build lean body mass, and not eat yourself into a coma/some horrible-crap-food-walrus-with-diabetes induced disease. Hmmmmm...
Part 1: Controlling where the food goes.
The only places you need to worry about where food is stored in your body is in your muscles and in your fat cells. When/how much you eat during the day combined with your daily activities determines where the extra stuff gets stored. Everything you read about exercise tells you to eat as soon as you can after your workout and to eat higher glycemic foods paired with protein. Why high glycemic? Because they digest and absorb faster than low glycemic foods. This means they get to the muscle faster, restore spent energy (glycogen) faster, and, when paired with protein, slow down the rate of muscle damage and begin the recovery process. During this time period, most of what you eat is sent directly to your muscles due a a protein inside your muscle cells called Glut4 (hey, that's in the title of this post!). Glut4, when activated, moves to the surface membrane of muscle cells and opens the flood gates for nutrients to be absorbed and stored inside.
Two things activate Glut4. In the time period, up to 4 hours, after exercise, Glut4 is activated by the muscular contractions that occurred during the workout you just completed. This is how your body knows that your muscles just incurred some damage due to physical work and that they are in need of nutrients to begin the recovery process. So, most of the food you eat in the time after contraction induced Glut4 is activated is sent to your muscles for storage rather than your fat cells. Pretty cool stuff. While I explain part 2, keep in mind that Glut4 can be activated via muscular contraction.
Part 2: Not going into a diabetic coma.
Every time you eat anything, but especially crappy food, your insulin goes up. Insulin is one of the most anabolic, building up and storage hormone, compounds in your body. The problem with insulin is that it stores the byproducts of the food you eat wherever it can, which will mostly be fat cell and maybe muscle via the pathways discussed above. Insulin activates Glut4 proteins as well. The problem is fat cells also contain Glut4 and are exclusively activated by increased insulin, since you can't "flex" fat. Eating a butt load of crappy food=giant insulin spikes=being a fatty.
This begs the question, How do you activate just your muscular Glut4 protein while keeping insulin low in order to control where the all night wing, beer, and pizza fest ends up in your body?
The answer is coffee and muscle tension.
Coffee (well, caffeine) actually LOWERS insulin sensitivity in normal, healthy people. This means eating, even some crappy foods, will keep your insulin levels lower than if you didn't have any caffeine. The only problem with this is the amount of caffeine is enough to kill a horse. 400mg to 1g seems to work. Keep in mind the half life of caffeine is 5 hours in most people. So, if you ingest a gram of caffeine at one time, don't plan on going to sleep for a while.
Now that you are all jacked up and your insulin is all jacked down, how the heck do you get those Glut4's activated in your muscles? Like a buffalo in a small kitchen with a midget, here is where things get awkward.
He might just be sitting down and not actually a midget. Either way, this would be awkward to walk in on.
Tim Ferriss (4 Hour Body guy) recommends 60-120 seconds of exercise should be enough to activate Glut4 proteins in muscle. The keys are to do big movements (squats, push ups, dips, lunges), keep tension on the muscles for the full 60-120 seconds, and for God's sake, don't let anyone see you doing this stuff. You should do these immediately before gorging yourself to near death with food and then 1.5 hours after you take your first bite. So, sneak off to the bathroom, do your exercises, come back to the table, go nuts on your all you can eat, and return to the bathroom 1.5 hours later and repeat your exercises... which should be pretty interesting after 38 of the all you can drink beers.
To recap:
-400mg to 1g of caffeine about an hour before you head out on your maximum food mission to lower your insulin sensitivity
-Immediately before eating- 60 to 120 seconds of constant tension exercises
-1.5 hours after your first bite, repeat the exercises
These little tips should help you get the most out of your "cheat" meals with the least amount of guilt and fat accumulation. No, you can't do this every time you eat and just eat crap all the time!!! Get your life together!!! These are for those occasional gigantic food and beverage outings that we all need every once in a while just to have some fun and keep our sanity intact.
Just remember you are what you eat. So, eat a bunch of crap and you'll be a bunch of crap.
Sprint. Kill. EAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When DOMS happens in your arteries, it's called a heart attack.
So, you may ask, why do I need to care about any of this fancy science stuff? Well, you hillbilly, some book learnin' might help you drop a few pounds, get lean, and improve performance if you are an athlete.
This post is going to basically outline a cheat code to trick the crappy foods you eat actually work for you. Will this help you keep weight off during your month long McRib bender? Absolutely not. And you need professional help because those things taste terrible. Yea, I said it. What the following suggestions will help you with is those little cheat meals you slide in while already eating, mostly, like an efficient human being.
Here is a scenario:
You have been eating clean and making very good food choices all week. Saturday night, a Friend calls you up and says, "All you can eat pizza, wings, and all you can drink beer all night for $10 at (insert local establishment here)." Turning this down will make you less of a human but you do not want to feel guilty about all of the good work you have done since your last Miller High Life and stuffed crust binge. If only there were a way to control where this bountiful meal is being stored in your body and a way to use all of these calories to help you lose fat, build lean body mass, and not eat yourself into a coma/some horrible-crap-food-walrus-with-diabetes induced disease. Hmmmmm...
Part 1: Controlling where the food goes.
The only places you need to worry about where food is stored in your body is in your muscles and in your fat cells. When/how much you eat during the day combined with your daily activities determines where the extra stuff gets stored. Everything you read about exercise tells you to eat as soon as you can after your workout and to eat higher glycemic foods paired with protein. Why high glycemic? Because they digest and absorb faster than low glycemic foods. This means they get to the muscle faster, restore spent energy (glycogen) faster, and, when paired with protein, slow down the rate of muscle damage and begin the recovery process. During this time period, most of what you eat is sent directly to your muscles due a a protein inside your muscle cells called Glut4 (hey, that's in the title of this post!). Glut4, when activated, moves to the surface membrane of muscle cells and opens the flood gates for nutrients to be absorbed and stored inside.
Two things activate Glut4. In the time period, up to 4 hours, after exercise, Glut4 is activated by the muscular contractions that occurred during the workout you just completed. This is how your body knows that your muscles just incurred some damage due to physical work and that they are in need of nutrients to begin the recovery process. So, most of the food you eat in the time after contraction induced Glut4 is activated is sent to your muscles for storage rather than your fat cells. Pretty cool stuff. While I explain part 2, keep in mind that Glut4 can be activated via muscular contraction.
Part 2: Not going into a diabetic coma.
Every time you eat anything, but especially crappy food, your insulin goes up. Insulin is one of the most anabolic, building up and storage hormone, compounds in your body. The problem with insulin is that it stores the byproducts of the food you eat wherever it can, which will mostly be fat cell and maybe muscle via the pathways discussed above. Insulin activates Glut4 proteins as well. The problem is fat cells also contain Glut4 and are exclusively activated by increased insulin, since you can't "flex" fat. Eating a butt load of crappy food=giant insulin spikes=being a fatty.
This begs the question, How do you activate just your muscular Glut4 protein while keeping insulin low in order to control where the all night wing, beer, and pizza fest ends up in your body?
The answer is coffee and muscle tension.
Coffee (well, caffeine) actually LOWERS insulin sensitivity in normal, healthy people. This means eating, even some crappy foods, will keep your insulin levels lower than if you didn't have any caffeine. The only problem with this is the amount of caffeine is enough to kill a horse. 400mg to 1g seems to work. Keep in mind the half life of caffeine is 5 hours in most people. So, if you ingest a gram of caffeine at one time, don't plan on going to sleep for a while.
Now that you are all jacked up and your insulin is all jacked down, how the heck do you get those Glut4's activated in your muscles? Like a buffalo in a small kitchen with a midget, here is where things get awkward.
He might just be sitting down and not actually a midget. Either way, this would be awkward to walk in on.
Tim Ferriss (4 Hour Body guy) recommends 60-120 seconds of exercise should be enough to activate Glut4 proteins in muscle. The keys are to do big movements (squats, push ups, dips, lunges), keep tension on the muscles for the full 60-120 seconds, and for God's sake, don't let anyone see you doing this stuff. You should do these immediately before gorging yourself to near death with food and then 1.5 hours after you take your first bite. So, sneak off to the bathroom, do your exercises, come back to the table, go nuts on your all you can eat, and return to the bathroom 1.5 hours later and repeat your exercises... which should be pretty interesting after 38 of the all you can drink beers.
To recap:
-400mg to 1g of caffeine about an hour before you head out on your maximum food mission to lower your insulin sensitivity
-Immediately before eating- 60 to 120 seconds of constant tension exercises
-1.5 hours after your first bite, repeat the exercises
These little tips should help you get the most out of your "cheat" meals with the least amount of guilt and fat accumulation. No, you can't do this every time you eat and just eat crap all the time!!! Get your life together!!! These are for those occasional gigantic food and beverage outings that we all need every once in a while just to have some fun and keep our sanity intact.
Just remember you are what you eat. So, eat a bunch of crap and you'll be a bunch of crap.
Sprint. Kill. EAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Workouts That Suck... So You Know They Work.
Want a quick workout that destroys every energy producing mechanism in your body, will leave you rolling around on the ground in agony, and will probably be impossible to finish the first time you try it? Great! I have a workout for you:
You will perform Front Squats and Powercleans for 4 minutes. The layout looks like this:
Front Squats for 20 seconds
10 seconds of rest
Power Cleans for 20 seconds
10 seconds of rest
Repeat 4 times. Including the final rest interval, this only takes 4 minutes.
Here is how you Front Squat:
Here is how you powerclean:
Here is the biggest d-bag I have ever seen:
The set up (20s on/10s off for 4mins) is called a Tabata interval. I am pretty sure Dr. Tabata was watching "SAW" one day and thought, "I can do much worse than that." You can basically insert any exercises you want (1 exercise for 8 reps, 2 exercises for 4 reps, 8 completely different exercises for the whole 4 mins) but these two exercises put together will leave you questioning why you want to get in better shape.
A couple rules to follow:
-Pick a moderate weight that you can do 6-8 reps within the 20 seconds and get at least 6-8 reps during each 20 second time period.
-Never let go of the bar. You can rest it in the Front Squat position, hold it at your waist, or hold on to it while it is on the floor, but do not take your hands off until the 4 mins is done... this is more terrible to do than you could ever imagine.
-Don't die.
Tabata intervals are excellent at stimulating oxygen debt. By the end of the 4 minutes your body will be frantically trying to figure out why there is no more air in your muscles. The elevated breathing rate required to "refill" all of your lost oxygen will last anywhere from 12-36 hours depending on how well trained you are. Why is this important? The elevated breathing causes and elevated resting metabolic rate. In other words, you use more calories and go through more metabolic processes than you normally would during the time you are not exercising. This whole process is called Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption... and its awesome.
Good luck.
Sprint. Kill. Eat.
You will perform Front Squats and Powercleans for 4 minutes. The layout looks like this:
Front Squats for 20 seconds
10 seconds of rest
Power Cleans for 20 seconds
10 seconds of rest
Repeat 4 times. Including the final rest interval, this only takes 4 minutes.
Here is how you Front Squat:
Here is how you powerclean:
Here is the biggest d-bag I have ever seen:
The set up (20s on/10s off for 4mins) is called a Tabata interval. I am pretty sure Dr. Tabata was watching "SAW" one day and thought, "I can do much worse than that." You can basically insert any exercises you want (1 exercise for 8 reps, 2 exercises for 4 reps, 8 completely different exercises for the whole 4 mins) but these two exercises put together will leave you questioning why you want to get in better shape.
A couple rules to follow:
-Pick a moderate weight that you can do 6-8 reps within the 20 seconds and get at least 6-8 reps during each 20 second time period.
-Never let go of the bar. You can rest it in the Front Squat position, hold it at your waist, or hold on to it while it is on the floor, but do not take your hands off until the 4 mins is done... this is more terrible to do than you could ever imagine.
-Don't die.
Tabata intervals are excellent at stimulating oxygen debt. By the end of the 4 minutes your body will be frantically trying to figure out why there is no more air in your muscles. The elevated breathing rate required to "refill" all of your lost oxygen will last anywhere from 12-36 hours depending on how well trained you are. Why is this important? The elevated breathing causes and elevated resting metabolic rate. In other words, you use more calories and go through more metabolic processes than you normally would during the time you are not exercising. This whole process is called Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption... and its awesome.
Good luck.
Sprint. Kill. Eat.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Six Pack Abs! How to Get Them and Why They Are Terrible For You! Part 2.1 The How to Diet Without Dieing Edition
In the final installment of this series (I guess), I want to talk about dieting. I think it was the great and wise Richard Simmons that said, "The first three letters spell die... you don't wanna die, do you?"
One of the greatest minds of our time? Or a closet serial killer... one or the other.
The US weightloss market grossed $68.7 billion dollars in 2010. This includes weightloss drugs, diet plans, fad diet book sales, trips to the vomitorium, those vibrating belt things that I hope to God no one reading this actually bought, and, of course, p90X. The average weight lost in the first 6 months of venturing out on one of these weightloss excursions is 5%-10% of your total bodyweight. Those are pretty good results and 10% reduction in weight would greatly improve body composition (i.e. get ripped, brah) for most of the population. The problem is that 66% of people that diet gain the weight back in a year or less... and 97% gain it all back in 5 years or less.
This is a lot like every time I get a new cellphone. It works for a little while, something breaks, then I either spend money to get it fixed or have to get a new cellphone entirely. This is how diets work. They draw you in with fast results, sell you on the idea that you will keep making progress, then you are hopelessly hooked. Now they have a customer for life. Imagine how much of your own money you have contributed to that $68.7 billion dollars.
In short, most diets do not work.
The key to losing weight, gaining weight, or basically being successful on any journey to accomplish any goal you may ever have is changing your life style to maximize the possibility of achieving that goal. You know you are almost 2x more likely to be obese if you hang out with obese people? I am not saying ditch all of your fat friends but maybe stop partaking in the daily pizza roll eating challenges with them:
Did you make it through the whole video? Because I sure as hell didn't.
Ok so, the purpose of this post is to share with you some diets (like I said before, most diets don't work) that include an eating plan and also changes in life style to get you to where you want to be. The first one I have personal experience with:
Carb Cycling Diet
I partook in a powerlifting competition last year that did not have any specific weight classes. So, the winner was completely determined by amount of weight lifted compared to the lifters bodyweight. I was 15 weeks out from my competition and decided to see how much weight I could lose, while hopefully maintaining or gaining some strength, in that period of time. After discussing my goal with several of my meathead cohorts, I decided Carb Cycling was the way to go. I knew very little about this diet so I decided to hire Shelby Starnes to help me out. He can be reached at www.TroponinNutrition.com or www.elitefts.com. Hiring him was probably one of the best decisions I have ever made. From July to October, I lost 51 pounds and did not lose any strength. Which for any one who participates in strength sports can understand, this is a pretty incredible feat. I dropped from 280lbs to 229lbs and ended up finishing 5th place overall.
I would like to re-iterate, if you are serious about your goals, spend the money and hire Shelby. He knows his stuff.
Anyway, the diet itself is very simple to understand. It involves only keeping track of your macronutrients (fats, carbs, and protein) and the carbs are cycled from day to day in order to keep complete control over your blood sugar and insulin levels. Carbs are cycled in three dosages, high, medium, and low. Protein intake stays about the same everyday. Fats are increased on low carb days in order to fill the caloric gap that is created by the lack of the other macronutrient. Also, high fat diets a lot of fat... I'll explain this one in a future post.
So how does it work? Here is how it works:
High Day:
Carbs: 2-3 grams per pound of bodyweight (0.9-1 gram for women)
Protein: 1-1.25 grams per pound of bodyweight (0.75 grams for women)
Fats: No added fats
Moderate Day:
Carbs: 1.5 grams per pound of bodyweight (0.5 grams for women)
Protein: 1.25-1.5 grams per pound of bodyweight (1.0 grams for women)
Fats: .15 grams per pound of bodyweight (0.1 grams for women)
Low Day: I like to call this day "Cranky, Yell at Everyone Day." Try it, you'll see what I mean.
Carbs: 0.5 grams per pound of bodyweight (0.2 grams for women)
Protein: 1.25-1.5 grams per pound of bodyweight(1.0 grams for women)
Fats: 0.35 grams per pound of bodyweight (0.2 grams for women)
Some carb choices: Brown rice, sweet potato's, oats, gluten free bread, basically anything with low (or no) sugar or gluten.
Some protein choices: any lean meat and protein shakes
Some fat choices: all natural peanut butter, almond butter, olive oil, and walnuts
Split the numbers up and eat 5-7 meals a day. Try to eat all of the carbs in the first three meals of the day. Drink a ton of water.
The big reason I like this diet is because there are cardio recommendations that go along with it. No, not cardio like jogging. Cardio like low intensity (50-60% Max HR for 30mins) which can be done dragging sled, doing smaller workouts, or walking on an inclined treadmill 3-4 days a week. Also it is recommended to do high intensity interval cardio 2-3 days a week (an example would be getting on an exercise bike for 15 minutes with an interval of, 15 second all out sprint, 45 seconds at 50%). All cardio is done either first thing in the morning on an empty stomach to take advantage of the ideal fat burning environment you are in after fasting all night (i.e. sleeping... unless you sleep walk to the fridge and sleep eat an entire honey baked ham... yes, I have done this before).
Like a mentioned before, go hire Shelby Starnes at www.troponinnutrition.com if you are interested. At the very least check out some of the books he has written on dieting here: http://troponinnutrition.com/store.htm#book.
The Slow Carb Diet
I don't want to give too much away about this one because all of the information can be found in Tim Ferris's book "The 4-Hour Body." Everyone who even cares a little bit about their health and well-being needs to go get and read this book.
Anyway, the general outline of this diet:
6 days a week:
No carbs other than vegetables (minus starchy ones like baked potato's and corn) Except for after you workout. You want faster, crappier carbs ASAP after a workout. Protein should come from lean meats and high quality protein shakes. Fats should come from high quality oils. Eat as much as you want and shoot for as many meals a day as you can. That's about it... until...
1 day a week:
Go nuts. Eat everything in site, drink a keg of beer, fill a kiddie pool with butter and try to eat your way out of it, do whatever you want! The goal of this day is to drastically increase calories for one day and then take advantage of the rebounding effect the rest of the week. You may notice a few pounds gained the day after but it quickly drops back off and then some.
There are many tips, tricks, and supplements that Tim Ferris recommends in his book to help accelerate the weightloss processes and mechanisms but, again, I don't want to give too much away. Just go get the damn book:
I plan on trying this diet out November through March to get ready for a competition. I am already excited for my first "cheat" day.
If All Else Fails, Go On The Don Fyre Diet
Who is Don Fyre? This guy:
Whatever he was looking at is dead now.
Don "The Predator" Fyre was one of the first big American MMA fighters. He was very good and kicked a lot of ass. He was always known for being a pretty big guy, 6'1'' weighing around 230lbs when he fought, while being very lean for his size. In one interveiw when asked how he was able to have so much muscle and so little fat when he fought, he replied: "I ate 5 steaks a day and all my carbs came from beer." So, there you go. The Don Fyre diet. It seemed to work out ok for him.
I wonder if it was the beer or the steak that kept his mustache so thick. I heard he won three fights because of that thing alone.
That's it for this one. I will try to update more frequently. I have been very busy chasing animals down, beating them to death with my bare hands, and eating them on site.
Sprint. Kill. Eat like a maniac.
One of the greatest minds of our time? Or a closet serial killer... one or the other.
The US weightloss market grossed $68.7 billion dollars in 2010. This includes weightloss drugs, diet plans, fad diet book sales, trips to the vomitorium, those vibrating belt things that I hope to God no one reading this actually bought, and, of course, p90X. The average weight lost in the first 6 months of venturing out on one of these weightloss excursions is 5%-10% of your total bodyweight. Those are pretty good results and 10% reduction in weight would greatly improve body composition (i.e. get ripped, brah) for most of the population. The problem is that 66% of people that diet gain the weight back in a year or less... and 97% gain it all back in 5 years or less.
This is a lot like every time I get a new cellphone. It works for a little while, something breaks, then I either spend money to get it fixed or have to get a new cellphone entirely. This is how diets work. They draw you in with fast results, sell you on the idea that you will keep making progress, then you are hopelessly hooked. Now they have a customer for life. Imagine how much of your own money you have contributed to that $68.7 billion dollars.
In short, most diets do not work.
The key to losing weight, gaining weight, or basically being successful on any journey to accomplish any goal you may ever have is changing your life style to maximize the possibility of achieving that goal. You know you are almost 2x more likely to be obese if you hang out with obese people? I am not saying ditch all of your fat friends but maybe stop partaking in the daily pizza roll eating challenges with them:
Did you make it through the whole video? Because I sure as hell didn't.
Ok so, the purpose of this post is to share with you some diets (like I said before, most diets don't work) that include an eating plan and also changes in life style to get you to where you want to be. The first one I have personal experience with:
Carb Cycling Diet
I partook in a powerlifting competition last year that did not have any specific weight classes. So, the winner was completely determined by amount of weight lifted compared to the lifters bodyweight. I was 15 weeks out from my competition and decided to see how much weight I could lose, while hopefully maintaining or gaining some strength, in that period of time. After discussing my goal with several of my meathead cohorts, I decided Carb Cycling was the way to go. I knew very little about this diet so I decided to hire Shelby Starnes to help me out. He can be reached at www.TroponinNutrition.com or www.elitefts.com. Hiring him was probably one of the best decisions I have ever made. From July to October, I lost 51 pounds and did not lose any strength. Which for any one who participates in strength sports can understand, this is a pretty incredible feat. I dropped from 280lbs to 229lbs and ended up finishing 5th place overall.
I would like to re-iterate, if you are serious about your goals, spend the money and hire Shelby. He knows his stuff.
Anyway, the diet itself is very simple to understand. It involves only keeping track of your macronutrients (fats, carbs, and protein) and the carbs are cycled from day to day in order to keep complete control over your blood sugar and insulin levels. Carbs are cycled in three dosages, high, medium, and low. Protein intake stays about the same everyday. Fats are increased on low carb days in order to fill the caloric gap that is created by the lack of the other macronutrient. Also, high fat diets a lot of fat... I'll explain this one in a future post.
So how does it work? Here is how it works:
High Day:
Carbs: 2-3 grams per pound of bodyweight (0.9-1 gram for women)
Protein: 1-1.25 grams per pound of bodyweight (0.75 grams for women)
Fats: No added fats
Moderate Day:
Carbs: 1.5 grams per pound of bodyweight (0.5 grams for women)
Protein: 1.25-1.5 grams per pound of bodyweight (1.0 grams for women)
Fats: .15 grams per pound of bodyweight (0.1 grams for women)
Low Day: I like to call this day "Cranky, Yell at Everyone Day." Try it, you'll see what I mean.
Carbs: 0.5 grams per pound of bodyweight (0.2 grams for women)
Protein: 1.25-1.5 grams per pound of bodyweight(1.0 grams for women)
Fats: 0.35 grams per pound of bodyweight (0.2 grams for women)
Some carb choices: Brown rice, sweet potato's, oats, gluten free bread, basically anything with low (or no) sugar or gluten.
Some protein choices: any lean meat and protein shakes
Some fat choices: all natural peanut butter, almond butter, olive oil, and walnuts
Split the numbers up and eat 5-7 meals a day. Try to eat all of the carbs in the first three meals of the day. Drink a ton of water.
The big reason I like this diet is because there are cardio recommendations that go along with it. No, not cardio like jogging. Cardio like low intensity (50-60% Max HR for 30mins) which can be done dragging sled, doing smaller workouts, or walking on an inclined treadmill 3-4 days a week. Also it is recommended to do high intensity interval cardio 2-3 days a week (an example would be getting on an exercise bike for 15 minutes with an interval of, 15 second all out sprint, 45 seconds at 50%). All cardio is done either first thing in the morning on an empty stomach to take advantage of the ideal fat burning environment you are in after fasting all night (i.e. sleeping... unless you sleep walk to the fridge and sleep eat an entire honey baked ham... yes, I have done this before).
Like a mentioned before, go hire Shelby Starnes at www.troponinnutrition.com if you are interested. At the very least check out some of the books he has written on dieting here: http://troponinnutrition.com/store.htm#book.
The Slow Carb Diet
I don't want to give too much away about this one because all of the information can be found in Tim Ferris's book "The 4-Hour Body." Everyone who even cares a little bit about their health and well-being needs to go get and read this book.
Anyway, the general outline of this diet:
6 days a week:
No carbs other than vegetables (minus starchy ones like baked potato's and corn) Except for after you workout. You want faster, crappier carbs ASAP after a workout. Protein should come from lean meats and high quality protein shakes. Fats should come from high quality oils. Eat as much as you want and shoot for as many meals a day as you can. That's about it... until...
1 day a week:
Go nuts. Eat everything in site, drink a keg of beer, fill a kiddie pool with butter and try to eat your way out of it, do whatever you want! The goal of this day is to drastically increase calories for one day and then take advantage of the rebounding effect the rest of the week. You may notice a few pounds gained the day after but it quickly drops back off and then some.
There are many tips, tricks, and supplements that Tim Ferris recommends in his book to help accelerate the weightloss processes and mechanisms but, again, I don't want to give too much away. Just go get the damn book:
I plan on trying this diet out November through March to get ready for a competition. I am already excited for my first "cheat" day.
If All Else Fails, Go On The Don Fyre Diet
Who is Don Fyre? This guy:
Whatever he was looking at is dead now.
Don "The Predator" Fyre was one of the first big American MMA fighters. He was very good and kicked a lot of ass. He was always known for being a pretty big guy, 6'1'' weighing around 230lbs when he fought, while being very lean for his size. In one interveiw when asked how he was able to have so much muscle and so little fat when he fought, he replied: "I ate 5 steaks a day and all my carbs came from beer." So, there you go. The Don Fyre diet. It seemed to work out ok for him.
I wonder if it was the beer or the steak that kept his mustache so thick. I heard he won three fights because of that thing alone.
That's it for this one. I will try to update more frequently. I have been very busy chasing animals down, beating them to death with my bare hands, and eating them on site.
Sprint. Kill. Eat like a maniac.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Hydration Recommendations That Aren't Stupid
I don't know about the rest of you out there but, I train primarily in my garage. My uninsulated, un-air conditioned, 12x12 death box that has been more like crossing the precipice in to Hell than a home gym.
A picture I took on one of the cooler days this summer. At least the humidity wasn't too bad.
Training in an environment similar to an active blast furnace really gets you thinking about hydration. Especially when you look down and see that you have sweated out a puddle on the ground that looks like more water than you have drank in a month. I remember reading a study one time that said over 85% of college athletes are in a mild state of dehydration all the time. These are some of the healthiest, strongest (supposedly) people on Earth. I am willing to bet, for the average population, that number is somewhere in the high 90's.
A couple of tips that have helped me keep death at bay this summer:
1. Drink 1oz of water for every kilogram of body weight you have. 1 kilogram equals 2.2lbs. So, for a big fella like myself, I weigh 275lbs on average, that's 125oz everyday. At first it will feel like you are choking down water but it gets much easier the more you stick with it. Eventually it will become routine. Just always have a bottle of water (or gallon in my case) and sip it all day long.
2. Don't pee. The more you pee the less water you keep in your body. So, hold your pee all day... just kidding. Don't actually do that. The reason you do pee a lot when you drink a lot of water is, the water gets sent to the filtering system of your body, which is the kidney's. There, the water collects, basically turning your kidneys into water balloons. Your kidneys are not very big so they empty often. Hence, a pee pee happens. An easy way to cut down the frequency to which you go potty and also utilize the water you are chugging into your system is to add a little salt to your water. Salt helps retain water in your tissues. You don't need to empty a shaker into your bottle of Fiji, just a pinch per every 8oz or a teaspoon for every 16oz should do the trick. A good guideline to follow is if your water tastes too salty... you probably put too much salt in it.
On a side note, you are basically spewing salts out of your body 24/7 during hot summer days. Salt is extremely important, not just for hydration. There is a relationship between sodium and potassium (which is also lost somewhat in sweat) that determines the efficiency of muscle contraction and also every message (action potential) sent and received by your nervous system. Take that low sodium foods.
3. Replenish after you workout. Weigh yourself before and after each workout. With every pound of sweat you lose, drink one pint of water. A pound of sweat weighs 16oz (or one pint). You've got to get that stuff back in there. This water loss is how you get dehydrated in the first place. Don't count this in your total ounces for the day because this water is just meant to return you to normal hydration, not help keep you hydrated all day.
Try to limit stuff that dehydrates you. For example, anything that makes you pee more like coffee, tea, standing inside of a human sized dehydrator, whatever else there is out there. Don't take them out of your life forever, just maybe cut them out until you rehydrate yourself or until it stops being a trillion degrees outside.
How do you treat dehydration?
He looks like he is having a good time. Just drink water...
Now that the general population is covered, on to some cool meathead stuff:
Dehydration and Muscle Contraction
Muscle contraction (like flexin' your bi's in the mirror while taking a cell phone future facebook profile picture, brah) occurs due to something called the Sliding Filament Theory. Basically all it says is, the flexing of a muscle happens because of thousands of tiny filaments (myosin and actin mainly) get pulled in towards each other, overlap, and develop tension in the rest of the muscle. In a hydrated muscle, there is plenty of space to move around (contract and slide) for these filaments. In a dehydrated muscle, the tissues basically collapse and shrink, decreasing the space the filaments have to move in. This causes three problems:
1. The amount of force a muscle can create has a lot to do with how far a muscle can contract (length tension relationship). With shriveled up, beef jerky muscles, the length the muscle can shorten (contract) is greatly reduced because of the decreased space the filaments have to slide over one another.
2. This limited space also cause these filaments to excessively rub against one another. This creates and unnatural friction force between normally easily sliding filaments. So, not only has the distance that the muscle can shorten (contract) decreased but, the time it takes the muscle to shorten to the decreased distance has increased due to friction. Basic physics (Work=force*Distance) tells us that this situation is much more stressful on the muscle (friction), increasing the amount of work that it has to do to perform tasks that would be much easier if hydrated (shortened contraction distance), thus, decreasing the amount force the muscle can exert.
3. Most importantly, when in a dehydrated state, the instance of significant trauma to the muscle GREATLY increases. In other words, if you don't stay hydrated, you are going to tear all of your muscles off all of your bones.
The above recommendations aren't the most scientific, I guess. I can tell you from personal experience that I haven't died of heat stroke yet so something must be working. Drinking a lot of water sucks. That's how you know it's good for you. So start doing it and stop complaining about the heat. It's hot for everyone.
Sprint. Kill. Eat. CHUG!!!!!!.
A picture I took on one of the cooler days this summer. At least the humidity wasn't too bad.
Training in an environment similar to an active blast furnace really gets you thinking about hydration. Especially when you look down and see that you have sweated out a puddle on the ground that looks like more water than you have drank in a month. I remember reading a study one time that said over 85% of college athletes are in a mild state of dehydration all the time. These are some of the healthiest, strongest (supposedly) people on Earth. I am willing to bet, for the average population, that number is somewhere in the high 90's.
A couple of tips that have helped me keep death at bay this summer:
1. Drink 1oz of water for every kilogram of body weight you have. 1 kilogram equals 2.2lbs. So, for a big fella like myself, I weigh 275lbs on average, that's 125oz everyday. At first it will feel like you are choking down water but it gets much easier the more you stick with it. Eventually it will become routine. Just always have a bottle of water (or gallon in my case) and sip it all day long.
2. Don't pee. The more you pee the less water you keep in your body. So, hold your pee all day... just kidding. Don't actually do that. The reason you do pee a lot when you drink a lot of water is, the water gets sent to the filtering system of your body, which is the kidney's. There, the water collects, basically turning your kidneys into water balloons. Your kidneys are not very big so they empty often. Hence, a pee pee happens. An easy way to cut down the frequency to which you go potty and also utilize the water you are chugging into your system is to add a little salt to your water. Salt helps retain water in your tissues. You don't need to empty a shaker into your bottle of Fiji, just a pinch per every 8oz or a teaspoon for every 16oz should do the trick. A good guideline to follow is if your water tastes too salty... you probably put too much salt in it.
On a side note, you are basically spewing salts out of your body 24/7 during hot summer days. Salt is extremely important, not just for hydration. There is a relationship between sodium and potassium (which is also lost somewhat in sweat) that determines the efficiency of muscle contraction and also every message (action potential) sent and received by your nervous system. Take that low sodium foods.
3. Replenish after you workout. Weigh yourself before and after each workout. With every pound of sweat you lose, drink one pint of water. A pound of sweat weighs 16oz (or one pint). You've got to get that stuff back in there. This water loss is how you get dehydrated in the first place. Don't count this in your total ounces for the day because this water is just meant to return you to normal hydration, not help keep you hydrated all day.
Try to limit stuff that dehydrates you. For example, anything that makes you pee more like coffee, tea, standing inside of a human sized dehydrator, whatever else there is out there. Don't take them out of your life forever, just maybe cut them out until you rehydrate yourself or until it stops being a trillion degrees outside.
How do you treat dehydration?
He looks like he is having a good time. Just drink water...
Now that the general population is covered, on to some cool meathead stuff:
Dehydration and Muscle Contraction
Muscle contraction (like flexin' your bi's in the mirror while taking a cell phone future facebook profile picture, brah) occurs due to something called the Sliding Filament Theory. Basically all it says is, the flexing of a muscle happens because of thousands of tiny filaments (myosin and actin mainly) get pulled in towards each other, overlap, and develop tension in the rest of the muscle. In a hydrated muscle, there is plenty of space to move around (contract and slide) for these filaments. In a dehydrated muscle, the tissues basically collapse and shrink, decreasing the space the filaments have to move in. This causes three problems:
1. The amount of force a muscle can create has a lot to do with how far a muscle can contract (length tension relationship). With shriveled up, beef jerky muscles, the length the muscle can shorten (contract) is greatly reduced because of the decreased space the filaments have to slide over one another.
2. This limited space also cause these filaments to excessively rub against one another. This creates and unnatural friction force between normally easily sliding filaments. So, not only has the distance that the muscle can shorten (contract) decreased but, the time it takes the muscle to shorten to the decreased distance has increased due to friction. Basic physics (Work=force*Distance) tells us that this situation is much more stressful on the muscle (friction), increasing the amount of work that it has to do to perform tasks that would be much easier if hydrated (shortened contraction distance), thus, decreasing the amount force the muscle can exert.
3. Most importantly, when in a dehydrated state, the instance of significant trauma to the muscle GREATLY increases. In other words, if you don't stay hydrated, you are going to tear all of your muscles off all of your bones.
The above recommendations aren't the most scientific, I guess. I can tell you from personal experience that I haven't died of heat stroke yet so something must be working. Drinking a lot of water sucks. That's how you know it's good for you. So start doing it and stop complaining about the heat. It's hot for everyone.
Sprint. Kill. Eat. CHUG!!!!!!.
Creatine for Weight Loss... Wait, What?
No. That is not a typo. This post is going to be an explanation of how to supplement with Creatine to help accelerate weight LOSS and how it could, theoretically, help with endurance oriented sports/training. There is literally no information out there about how this could possibly work but, through some common sense and a short exercise metabolism lesson I think I will make a pretty good case.
First off, for the love of God, Creatine is NOT A BANNED SUBSTANCE by any governing sport body. This includes the NCAA, the Olympics, and any sport associated with WADA (the world anti-doping agency). These organizations basically ban only three types of substances: anabolic steroids, stimulants, and illegal street drugs. So, as long as you aren't taking your Creatine with rhinoceros testosterone and a crack rock, you don't have to worry about failing any drug tests.
Creatine is a combination of three amino acids (arginie, glycine, and methionine). Amino acids are just broken down proteins and they are used to make pretty much every tissue and cell in your body. The average person eats at least 1g of Creatine a day. What foods contain Creatine? Beef, pork, and fish have the highest amounts with up to 10g of Creatine per kg of meat in some cases. Surprisingly, there are trace amounts in milk, vegetables, and other carbohydrates as well. As you can see, this is what makes it impossible for Creatine to be a banned substance. In order for it to actually happen, the foods that contain Creatine would have to be either banned or restricted. If, for some reason, these governing bodies actually made meat illegal in sports, I think I would have to sit in front of The White House with 100lbs of steak, bacon, and ground beef and eat myself to death in protest...
In a meatless world, the 100lb Cheeseburger is King! Mmmmm... sweet, delicious protest.
What does Creatine actually do?
There seems to be a lot of confusion about what Creatine actually does in your body. In order to clear it up, I will give you a simple diagram:
There, that should clear everything up.
Just kidding but, by the end of this post, you will have a pretty good understanding of what is going on up there. Here comes that short metabolism lesson I was talking about earlier:
Your body uses a substance called ATP for energy. The problem with ATP is that it breaks down quickly during exercise. If ATP was not replenished in your body via metabolic pathways, we would burn it all up in less than 10 seconds of sprinting and less than 3 minutes of low intensity aerobic activity. Want to know what happens when you run out of ATP? Finishing your workout will be difficult because you will be dead. It is the break down of the high energy third Phosphate bond (ATP actually stands for Adenosine TRI-Phosphate, meaning 3 phosphates) that makes this substance so important for all human movement and activity. Once the Phosphate is removed, you are left with ADP (Adenosine DI-Phosphate, or 2 Phosphates). ADP can't do much in terms of cellular energy but its accumulation in your body signals other metabolic processes to become more active and help replenish ATP via different substrate/product pathways. Let's just consider short duration, intense activity for now.
So, ATP is being broken down into ADP during your highly anaerobic (no oxygen present due to high intensity/short duration of whatever physical task you are performing) exercise making it so your aerobic systems (oxygen present) are not working as much to replenish ATP during exercise. Your anaerobic energy systems do replenish ATP quickly but only in short bursts and only a very limited number with each cycle. Aerobic energy systems work much slower but supply much larger amounts of ATP over longer periods of time. This means some other mechanism needs to be replenishing your energy stores. Here is where Creatine comes in like Mighty Mouse to save the day.
He doesn't really seem to be doing a good job, actually.
ADP kinda sucks at getting phosphate on it's own (which would create a high energy third phosphate bond, making an ATP molecule). Creatine, on the other hand, binds very easily and rapidly to phosphate (creating phosphocreatine). An enzyme that hangs around ADP, kinda like it's wingman, is Creatine Kinase. This enzyme breaks apart the Creatine from the phosphate, pushes the creatine away, and shoots the phosphate towards nearby ADP. So, you don't take creatine to get "Jacked Up!" before workouts. You take it in order to make sure you have enough of it floating around to help ADP and phosphate to bind in order to, hopefully, keep a positive supply of ATP for energy.
Phew. Hopefully I haven't completely lost too many people, on to the cool part:
Creatine for Weight LOSS
Now, all recovery from all exercise happens aerobically. It doesn't matter if you just finished a Tri-Athalon or if you just did a 5 second maximal sprint. Think about it, what is the first thing you do after you do very intense strenuous work (like sprinting, heavy lifting, bare-handed lion hunting, speed eating, etc.)? You take a huge deep breath. Almost like you are fighting your lungs to pull air into your body... which you basically are. When you do intense exercise, the air is squeezed out of your muscles, creating a hypoxic (no oxygen) environment. Once you finish your intense efforts, your body goes into breathe or die mode until that oxygen is replenished. Sometimes, if the exercise is intense enough, this can take up to 36 hours. During this time, your breathing is elevated, the processes and mechanisms that work to replenish oxygen are in overtime, and you burn a significantly larger amount of calories while at rest.
Here is the question though: When doing high intensity anaerobic work, what activates your aerobic systems to kick start your recovery? One very big answer is a mechanism called the Creatine Shuttle. This mechanism takes that leftover Creatine from the breakdown of phosphocreatine and shot-guns it into your cellular mitochondria (part of your cells where aerobic metabolism initiates). This is basically a switch between anaerobic metabolism and aerobic metabolism. But, the thing is, they both start going nuts trying to replenish as much ATP as possible. When you go out jogging, energy primarily comes from aerobic pathways (unless you are running 3 minute miles or something ridiculous).
The common sense portion of this post: More Creatine in your system means more Creatine available for the Creatine Shuttle mechanism. This may or may not cause a 1)faster and more often activation of this mechanism at rest and once exercise has ceased, 2) a kick start to the excess postexercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) phenomena (responsible for the increased in calories burned up to 36 hours after intense exercise has ceased), and/or 3) a more intense and/or longer lasting EPOC effect.
Do I have any proof of any of this? Nope. Do I care? Nope. It's my blog, I can say what I want. Poop. See?
I can however tell from personal experience that there is a lot of misinformation on Creatine out there. "Don't take that, it's steroids" or "It's bad for your *insert organ here*" or "You're going to gain a lot of weight when you take it."
It's not steroids. Hopefully that has been cleared up now. There no research that suggests any negative side-effects from taking suggested doses in the short term. As far as weight gain, I lost 51 pounds from July 15th to October 23rd last year while taking Creatine. I increased the amount I was taking leading up to a Powerlifting competition. My weight loss had stagnated for 2 weeks before the increase and then fat was literally melting off again after.
So, there you go. Keep in mind, just like any other supplement or drug, Creatine is not the magic bullet and not everyone responds to it. I guess the point of this whole post is to always be thinking and always be critical to the information you get from media sources or stupid people (basically the same thing) in regards to what is best for YOUR own health and well-being.
Sprint. Kill. Eat several Kilograms of Meat a day.
First off, for the love of God, Creatine is NOT A BANNED SUBSTANCE by any governing sport body. This includes the NCAA, the Olympics, and any sport associated with WADA (the world anti-doping agency). These organizations basically ban only three types of substances: anabolic steroids, stimulants, and illegal street drugs. So, as long as you aren't taking your Creatine with rhinoceros testosterone and a crack rock, you don't have to worry about failing any drug tests.
Creatine is a combination of three amino acids (arginie, glycine, and methionine). Amino acids are just broken down proteins and they are used to make pretty much every tissue and cell in your body. The average person eats at least 1g of Creatine a day. What foods contain Creatine? Beef, pork, and fish have the highest amounts with up to 10g of Creatine per kg of meat in some cases. Surprisingly, there are trace amounts in milk, vegetables, and other carbohydrates as well. As you can see, this is what makes it impossible for Creatine to be a banned substance. In order for it to actually happen, the foods that contain Creatine would have to be either banned or restricted. If, for some reason, these governing bodies actually made meat illegal in sports, I think I would have to sit in front of The White House with 100lbs of steak, bacon, and ground beef and eat myself to death in protest...
In a meatless world, the 100lb Cheeseburger is King! Mmmmm... sweet, delicious protest.
What does Creatine actually do?
There seems to be a lot of confusion about what Creatine actually does in your body. In order to clear it up, I will give you a simple diagram:
There, that should clear everything up.
Just kidding but, by the end of this post, you will have a pretty good understanding of what is going on up there. Here comes that short metabolism lesson I was talking about earlier:
Your body uses a substance called ATP for energy. The problem with ATP is that it breaks down quickly during exercise. If ATP was not replenished in your body via metabolic pathways, we would burn it all up in less than 10 seconds of sprinting and less than 3 minutes of low intensity aerobic activity. Want to know what happens when you run out of ATP? Finishing your workout will be difficult because you will be dead. It is the break down of the high energy third Phosphate bond (ATP actually stands for Adenosine TRI-Phosphate, meaning 3 phosphates) that makes this substance so important for all human movement and activity. Once the Phosphate is removed, you are left with ADP (Adenosine DI-Phosphate, or 2 Phosphates). ADP can't do much in terms of cellular energy but its accumulation in your body signals other metabolic processes to become more active and help replenish ATP via different substrate/product pathways. Let's just consider short duration, intense activity for now.
So, ATP is being broken down into ADP during your highly anaerobic (no oxygen present due to high intensity/short duration of whatever physical task you are performing) exercise making it so your aerobic systems (oxygen present) are not working as much to replenish ATP during exercise. Your anaerobic energy systems do replenish ATP quickly but only in short bursts and only a very limited number with each cycle. Aerobic energy systems work much slower but supply much larger amounts of ATP over longer periods of time. This means some other mechanism needs to be replenishing your energy stores. Here is where Creatine comes in like Mighty Mouse to save the day.
He doesn't really seem to be doing a good job, actually.
ADP kinda sucks at getting phosphate on it's own (which would create a high energy third phosphate bond, making an ATP molecule). Creatine, on the other hand, binds very easily and rapidly to phosphate (creating phosphocreatine). An enzyme that hangs around ADP, kinda like it's wingman, is Creatine Kinase. This enzyme breaks apart the Creatine from the phosphate, pushes the creatine away, and shoots the phosphate towards nearby ADP. So, you don't take creatine to get "Jacked Up!" before workouts. You take it in order to make sure you have enough of it floating around to help ADP and phosphate to bind in order to, hopefully, keep a positive supply of ATP for energy.
Phew. Hopefully I haven't completely lost too many people, on to the cool part:
Creatine for Weight LOSS
Now, all recovery from all exercise happens aerobically. It doesn't matter if you just finished a Tri-Athalon or if you just did a 5 second maximal sprint. Think about it, what is the first thing you do after you do very intense strenuous work (like sprinting, heavy lifting, bare-handed lion hunting, speed eating, etc.)? You take a huge deep breath. Almost like you are fighting your lungs to pull air into your body... which you basically are. When you do intense exercise, the air is squeezed out of your muscles, creating a hypoxic (no oxygen) environment. Once you finish your intense efforts, your body goes into breathe or die mode until that oxygen is replenished. Sometimes, if the exercise is intense enough, this can take up to 36 hours. During this time, your breathing is elevated, the processes and mechanisms that work to replenish oxygen are in overtime, and you burn a significantly larger amount of calories while at rest.
Here is the question though: When doing high intensity anaerobic work, what activates your aerobic systems to kick start your recovery? One very big answer is a mechanism called the Creatine Shuttle. This mechanism takes that leftover Creatine from the breakdown of phosphocreatine and shot-guns it into your cellular mitochondria (part of your cells where aerobic metabolism initiates). This is basically a switch between anaerobic metabolism and aerobic metabolism. But, the thing is, they both start going nuts trying to replenish as much ATP as possible. When you go out jogging, energy primarily comes from aerobic pathways (unless you are running 3 minute miles or something ridiculous).
The common sense portion of this post: More Creatine in your system means more Creatine available for the Creatine Shuttle mechanism. This may or may not cause a 1)faster and more often activation of this mechanism at rest and once exercise has ceased, 2) a kick start to the excess postexercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) phenomena (responsible for the increased in calories burned up to 36 hours after intense exercise has ceased), and/or 3) a more intense and/or longer lasting EPOC effect.
Do I have any proof of any of this? Nope. Do I care? Nope. It's my blog, I can say what I want. Poop. See?
I can however tell from personal experience that there is a lot of misinformation on Creatine out there. "Don't take that, it's steroids" or "It's bad for your *insert organ here*" or "You're going to gain a lot of weight when you take it."
It's not steroids. Hopefully that has been cleared up now. There no research that suggests any negative side-effects from taking suggested doses in the short term. As far as weight gain, I lost 51 pounds from July 15th to October 23rd last year while taking Creatine. I increased the amount I was taking leading up to a Powerlifting competition. My weight loss had stagnated for 2 weeks before the increase and then fat was literally melting off again after.
So, there you go. Keep in mind, just like any other supplement or drug, Creatine is not the magic bullet and not everyone responds to it. I guess the point of this whole post is to always be thinking and always be critical to the information you get from media sources or stupid people (basically the same thing) in regards to what is best for YOUR own health and well-being.
Sprint. Kill. Eat several Kilograms of Meat a day.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Fitness Myth's Exposed: Why The Glycemic Index and "Calories" Are Stupid
Fitness loves to lie to you. The lies Fitness sells you allows Fitness to sleep in a solid gold-shake weight-plated mansion and drive a monster truck fitted with wheels that were fashioned out of your hopes, dreams, and used P90X infomercial fake sweat spray bottles.
If Fitness did drive around in a monster truck, this would be my whip.
So, you want to lose weight, gain weight, get healthy(er), look good naked, become a male escort, or learn how to use a bowstaff, no one will argue that diet is a very important, if not the most important, factor. Ask any fitness enthusiast or search any website and the first two concepts they will throw at you are:
1. You need to watch your calories and
2. You need to eat low glycemic index foods.
The concept of "calories" and glycemic index are misguided to say the least. To say the most, they are worthless and stupid.
Calories
How did the Wendy's Classic Triple Baconator not make it on there? It must be low cal.
Without going into ridiculously complicated scientific jargon (that pretty much means nothing) I am only going to talk about "food" calories. Not kcals, thermochemical calories, or the other billion stupid little concepts that Fitness people over complicate for the sole purpose of confusing people in need of help into buying something terrible for them.
A calorie, in the context I am talking about, is defined as the amount of heat needed to heat 1 kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius. So, how are the calories in food determined? Some guy in a lab coat puts the Thermunator in a big oven, waits till it is reduced to ashes, takes that ending temperature, puts in a very big equation, and then that resulting number, probably around 6,000 in my example, is the resulting caloric load of the food in question.
If eating a Thurmanator Burger (Thurmans Cafe, Columbus, OH) is on your bucket list, make sure it is near the bottom. And yes, I have eaten one of these.
This whole process has birthed the term "burning calories." We all hear this term a million times a day on a million different TV ads or in any number of Fitness related conversations. Given the process I described above it makes sense, right? We eat calories, we burn calories, right? We burn more calories and eat less calories, we get ripped, right? Absolutely not.
The mechanisms by which we digest foods has to do with using millions of chemicals and enzymes to break food down into substrates to be used in metabolic activities later on (or it can be pooped out). We do not have a giant bonfire inside our bodies that the food we slop down falls in to. If the whole calorie thing were as easy as eat less and burn more to lose weight, that would assume all calories are created equal which is absolutely insane.
I am not a big research study person for the most part. I can't stand some guy or lady in a lab coat who has never eaten well or lifted a weight before in his/her life telling me what is best for all 285 meat fueled pounds of myself. But, this one is very, VERY interesting in regards to calories. Dr. Alan Kekwick did a study years ago to try to figure out which macro nutrient (carbs, fats, or proteins), when eaten in high amounts (90% of total calories) during a calorie restricted diet (1,000 calories a day) would help obese subjects lose the most weight. So, three groups were formed, a 90% carb, a 90% fat, and a 90% protein group, and each group only ate a 1,000 calories a day for... I have no idea, a couple of weeks or something.
The carb group GAINED an average of .2lbs a day
The protein group lost and average of .6lbs a day
Here is the crazy part... The fat group lost almost ONE EFFING POUND A DAY.
If all calories were equal and we "burned" them equally then the results of all three groups would have been exactly the same... or at least in the same ballpark.
Whatever your goals are, I firmly believe it is not how much you eat, it is what you eat. Someone who eats 2,000 calories in fruit loops a day is definitely not going to look as good, be as strong, or have as much human dignity as someone eating 2,000 calories in lean meats, vegetables, and nuts a day.
Finally, a food pyramid I can relate too.
Glycemic Index
Unless you live under a rock or you have absolutely no concern about your physical well being (then how the hell did you get to my blog?) then you have heard of the Glycemic Index (GI). The GI is a list of high carbohydrate containing foods and it describes the foods effects on your blood sugar levels. Maintaining constant healthy blood sugar levels (no sharp peaks or drops) throughout your day is key to whatever your physical goals may be. Blood sugar levels trigger numerous chemical and hormonal responses in your body. These responses determine what substrates get sent to your muscles, what get stored as fat, and a bunch of psychological and mental factors. The lower a foods glycemic index, the less impact the food has on your blood sugar levels, the less likely hood of the foods you eat being stored as fat (during most times during the day anyway). Here is a list of a couple foods and their GI:
Sounds pretty cut and dry, right? As long as you stay low GI you should be good to go in regards to not turning yourself into a 900lb "Discovery Channel Special" human land monster, right? Absolutely wrong again.
The GI is 100% accurate on measuring a carbohydrates effect on blood sugar. The problem is, there is more than just carbohydrates in 99% of the foods on Earth and those other compounds also elicit a blood sugar response.
Let's take milk. The chart above gives whole milk a GI of 27. Milk has actually been shown to be anywhere from 15-30. This would be considered a very low GI and is a major source of calories in many diets that follow the GI. There is an index developed that examines a foods direct response on insulin levels (shoot up when blood sugar spikes) called the Insulinemic Index (II). Due to the fermented properties of milk and also the large amount of lactic acid (lactic acid actually lowers the GI of carbohydrates but has a huge inulinemic response) the II of whole milk is 90-98. Which is about the same insulin response as eating a loaf of white bread.
Anyway, the moral of the story. Don't just take the advice people give you about your own well being. Ask questions, do your own research, and become as knowledgeable as you can in regards to efficient systems to reach your goals. These are just two bright and shiny examples of ways Fitness enthusiasts, infomercials, and Fitness magazines mislead people. There are literally thousands more out there.
Sprint. Kill. Count Calories?
If Fitness did drive around in a monster truck, this would be my whip.
So, you want to lose weight, gain weight, get healthy(er), look good naked, become a male escort, or learn how to use a bowstaff, no one will argue that diet is a very important, if not the most important, factor. Ask any fitness enthusiast or search any website and the first two concepts they will throw at you are:
1. You need to watch your calories and
2. You need to eat low glycemic index foods.
The concept of "calories" and glycemic index are misguided to say the least. To say the most, they are worthless and stupid.
Calories
How did the Wendy's Classic Triple Baconator not make it on there? It must be low cal.
Without going into ridiculously complicated scientific jargon (that pretty much means nothing) I am only going to talk about "food" calories. Not kcals, thermochemical calories, or the other billion stupid little concepts that Fitness people over complicate for the sole purpose of confusing people in need of help into buying something terrible for them.
A calorie, in the context I am talking about, is defined as the amount of heat needed to heat 1 kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius. So, how are the calories in food determined? Some guy in a lab coat puts the Thermunator in a big oven, waits till it is reduced to ashes, takes that ending temperature, puts in a very big equation, and then that resulting number, probably around 6,000 in my example, is the resulting caloric load of the food in question.
If eating a Thurmanator Burger (Thurmans Cafe, Columbus, OH) is on your bucket list, make sure it is near the bottom. And yes, I have eaten one of these.
This whole process has birthed the term "burning calories." We all hear this term a million times a day on a million different TV ads or in any number of Fitness related conversations. Given the process I described above it makes sense, right? We eat calories, we burn calories, right? We burn more calories and eat less calories, we get ripped, right? Absolutely not.
The mechanisms by which we digest foods has to do with using millions of chemicals and enzymes to break food down into substrates to be used in metabolic activities later on (or it can be pooped out). We do not have a giant bonfire inside our bodies that the food we slop down falls in to. If the whole calorie thing were as easy as eat less and burn more to lose weight, that would assume all calories are created equal which is absolutely insane.
I am not a big research study person for the most part. I can't stand some guy or lady in a lab coat who has never eaten well or lifted a weight before in his/her life telling me what is best for all 285 meat fueled pounds of myself. But, this one is very, VERY interesting in regards to calories. Dr. Alan Kekwick did a study years ago to try to figure out which macro nutrient (carbs, fats, or proteins), when eaten in high amounts (90% of total calories) during a calorie restricted diet (1,000 calories a day) would help obese subjects lose the most weight. So, three groups were formed, a 90% carb, a 90% fat, and a 90% protein group, and each group only ate a 1,000 calories a day for... I have no idea, a couple of weeks or something.
The carb group GAINED an average of .2lbs a day
The protein group lost and average of .6lbs a day
Here is the crazy part... The fat group lost almost ONE EFFING POUND A DAY.
If all calories were equal and we "burned" them equally then the results of all three groups would have been exactly the same... or at least in the same ballpark.
Whatever your goals are, I firmly believe it is not how much you eat, it is what you eat. Someone who eats 2,000 calories in fruit loops a day is definitely not going to look as good, be as strong, or have as much human dignity as someone eating 2,000 calories in lean meats, vegetables, and nuts a day.
Finally, a food pyramid I can relate too.
Glycemic Index
Unless you live under a rock or you have absolutely no concern about your physical well being (then how the hell did you get to my blog?) then you have heard of the Glycemic Index (GI). The GI is a list of high carbohydrate containing foods and it describes the foods effects on your blood sugar levels. Maintaining constant healthy blood sugar levels (no sharp peaks or drops) throughout your day is key to whatever your physical goals may be. Blood sugar levels trigger numerous chemical and hormonal responses in your body. These responses determine what substrates get sent to your muscles, what get stored as fat, and a bunch of psychological and mental factors. The lower a foods glycemic index, the less impact the food has on your blood sugar levels, the less likely hood of the foods you eat being stored as fat (during most times during the day anyway). Here is a list of a couple foods and their GI:
Sounds pretty cut and dry, right? As long as you stay low GI you should be good to go in regards to not turning yourself into a 900lb "Discovery Channel Special" human land monster, right? Absolutely wrong again.
The GI is 100% accurate on measuring a carbohydrates effect on blood sugar. The problem is, there is more than just carbohydrates in 99% of the foods on Earth and those other compounds also elicit a blood sugar response.
Let's take milk. The chart above gives whole milk a GI of 27. Milk has actually been shown to be anywhere from 15-30. This would be considered a very low GI and is a major source of calories in many diets that follow the GI. There is an index developed that examines a foods direct response on insulin levels (shoot up when blood sugar spikes) called the Insulinemic Index (II). Due to the fermented properties of milk and also the large amount of lactic acid (lactic acid actually lowers the GI of carbohydrates but has a huge inulinemic response) the II of whole milk is 90-98. Which is about the same insulin response as eating a loaf of white bread.
Anyway, the moral of the story. Don't just take the advice people give you about your own well being. Ask questions, do your own research, and become as knowledgeable as you can in regards to efficient systems to reach your goals. These are just two bright and shiny examples of ways Fitness enthusiasts, infomercials, and Fitness magazines mislead people. There are literally thousands more out there.
Sprint. Kill. Count Calories?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)