The Middle Ground

It seems to be a part of human nature to latch onto something you believe in, and reject anything that opposes or doesn't exactly fit with your beliefs.  I know all about it, I'm stubborn as hell. People are so dogmatic about such silly things sometimes. The result of all this stubborn dogmatism is that opinions become polarized, and the middle ground is an incredibly treacherous zone, where people from both sides are firing at will.

There was an article floating around on the internet a few weeks ago about how crossfit can kill you.  There is a medical condition called rhabdomyolysis, that is caused by an excessive breakdown of muscle tissue.  When you exercise you cause micro-damage to muscle fibers, the healing process then rebuilds the muscle, hopefully bigger and stronger than it was previously.  When the muscle is broken down some proteins are released into the blood stream.  If too much muscle damage is caused, too much of this protein (called myoglobin) gets in the blood and screws up the kidneys.  It can be deadly if it is bad enough.  So, can crossfit kill you?  Sure.  If you are insane.

The article told the story of a woman who was hospitalized with rhabdomyolysis after an intense crossfit workout, and it created a huge stir.  Not surprisingly, the two warring factions came out to either support crossfit, or wave the I-told-you-so banners.  No middle ground.

Crossfit is the only way to exercise.  Carbs make you fat.  Fat makes you fat.  Lifting weights is the only way to build muscle.  Bodyweight exercises are the best way to build muscle.  Running will kill you.  Running is the only way to lose fat.  Do a search for anything related to exercise and nutrition.  I guarantee that you will find two groups of people that have their sights trained on the other side and are just waiting to pull the trigger.

Moderation, where are you?  Crossfit is awesome, in moderation.  Carbs are healthy in moderation.  Fats are healthy in moderation.  Incorporate a little bit of each into your life and see if you don't feel better.  I routinely have days where I eat lots of rice, sweet potatoes, and a maybe even some evil-gluten-laden-bakery treats. That's right, gluten- the Antichrist of the nutrition world.  People have really latched onto the "gluten is the root of all evil" way of thinking.  Gluten is bad, if you are gluten intolerant, which very few people are.  That doesn't mean that donuts are good for you, but having a donut once in a while will not turn you into Jabba the Hut overnight.  

I love lifting weights, but I also want to be able to walk on my hands, and do some gymnastics movements, so I throw crossfit style workouts into the mix, and do bodyweight exercises alongside weight training.  Being strong and also able to move athletically sems like a sensible combination. For some reason though, this approach to exercise is considered blasphemous by many people in the exercise world.  Pick a side, and proudly wave the flag.

Critical Thinking

Human beings have brains.  We are able to rationalize, conceptualize, and come to conclusions based on evidence.  Give yourself a pat on the back, you have evolved to think critically. The alternative is to revert back to being a turd chucking chimpanzee, and throw shit-balls at anyone who does not completely agree with your point of view.

Knowing that this polarization of information exists, you have to be able to look at things critically.  Take this "crossfit will kill you" article for instance.  You are probably aware of the fact that exercise is generally considered to be a healthy endeavor.  You know that there are two opposing opinions regarding crossfit (and any type of exercise) as a good way to get healthy and fit.  Finally, you also know that people have a tendency to do things to extremes.  So, what is the actual message contained in the article?  It could be that the author hates crossfit, the woman in the story pushed herself way to hard, and you can do crossfit without ever being hospitalized.

Middle Ground

Please come join me in the middle ground where it is ok to lift weights, do crossfit, jog, do hill sprints, eat paleo, eat carbs, and even (God-forbid) eat a donut or slice of cheesecake from time to time.  Just don't do anything extreme and always think about what you are doing.  Simple concept but surprisingly difficult.  I want to be part of a community of like minded people where dogmatism is trumped by combining the best aspects of many different approaches. Welcome to the middle ground!

Read More

Experiments

I'm still not sure why, but the post I wrote about being a fat loss scientist continues to be the most popular thing on this blog. It's an idea that I really believe in. Taking control of your own health and fitness, and not relying on other people's experience for everything. It's your body after all.

Experimenting with different foods and ways of eating is fun, and also a great way to find out what makes you feel your best. My latest experiments have included bulletproof coffee, and eating paleo. I hate that name, by the way, so let's just say eating real food.  One was an epic fail, the other a huge success and a big help in reaching my goals.

Bulletproof Coffee

Bulletproof coffee was the fail. There is a good reason why though. When you read about bulletproof coffee, it's presented in a way that claims that the rules of caloric balance don't apply to grass fed butter, and coconut oil. The fact that I bought into this is slightly embarrassing, to say the least. I gained a lot of fat super fast. Something to the tune of 1kg per week.  But here's why. People are losing weight with bulletproof coffee because they are using it as a stepping stone into the world of intermittent fasting. Replacing breakfast with fatty coffee. This lets you consume fewer calories, and more than likely you would be replacing processed carbs (aka healthy breakfast foods) with good healthy fats. That's a perfect switch. In my case though, I went from completely fasting to drinking a 500 calorie cup of coffee. Not such a great trade. The rules of caloric balance apply, the nice new layer of fat on my stomach is proof.

I still think that the concept of replacing breakfast with a cup of fatty coffee is a wonderful idea for the majority of people.  The effect of most breakfast foods on your body is less than desirable, and most people aren't eating enough healthy fat.  But, you have to remember that at the end of the day things need to balance out.

Real Food

Eating real foods, and thinking about the way people ate thousands of years ago has been a great revelation.  This concept gets a big thumbs up in my books.  My take on it differs slightly from the hardcore paleo people though.  There are two major differences.  

The first is this.  Just because a food is "natural" doesn't mean it's natural to eat frequently or in large quantities.  The best example is nuts.  Almonds are healthy, and natural.  But, when in history have people been able to go out and buy large bags of pre-shelled roasted almonds?  If you had to shell them yourself, you'd eat three, give up, kill a bear, and chow down.  Killing a bear would probably be easier than cracking those damn things open. Being so easy to eat makes them incredibly easy to overeat.  I will have some now and then, but view them more as a treat.  A delicious, addictive treat.

The second difference has to do with realistically looking at my goals.  I want to look amazing, and be as strong as humanly possible.  Paleolithic people didn't care about squatting heavy weight and having low body fat. I care about these things.  So, I make exceptions.  After I lift heavy weights I eat lots of carbs.  These carbs could be from sweet potatoes, jasmine rice, or even evil-gluten-laden-bread from time to time.  These are not "paleo foods", but I don't have "paleo goals". It makes sense to me.


I think that experimenting with food choices, and even dabbling with "fads" like bulletproof coffee is great fun.  I learn more and more each time I try something new.  The funny thing is, the more I figure out, arguably the hard way, the more I realize that eating meat and vegetables, and throwing in some carbs after heavy weight lifting sessions, is what makes me feel the best.  There is nothing fancy or cutting edge about this.  Don't buy into the idea of super foods, or fast fat loss diets.  Just eat real food, and be healthy.  I truly believe that it's better to think of fat loss as a by product of good health.  Eat real foods most of the time, and be conscious about what is truly a healthy food choice.  I assure you that if you eat a bag of 'healthy" almonds every day you will get fat.  In my case it's the cashews I have to watch out for.  I will eat the whole bag.

My challenge for you is to experiment.  Try something, anything really.  Take bread out of your diet and see how you feel.  Or try to eat two cups of leafy greens every day, see if you start poopin like a champ.  Just try something different, and see what it does for YOU.  Let me know what you try, and how it works.

Read More

Why Are Poor People Getting Fat?

American science writer Gary Taubes is pissing off a lot of people in the nutrition industry.  He has written a few books, but his two bestsellers Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat have made him given him a nice bit of notoriety   I'd say there are a lot of nutrition professionals that really wish he would just go away.  He has theorized that the entire approach to fat loss and health that nutrition professionals have touted for the past fifty years is completely wrong.  The thing is, he makes a damn good case.  I'm going to write a few blog posts that summarize some of the main points from his books.  I highly recommend his books, and in particular Why We Get Fat.  Good Calories, Bad Calories is a little heady on the science, but Why We Get Fat is really an approachable and enjoyable read.

Just so you know, I am not claiming this to be the new gospel of fat loss and health.  This is just a different theory that seems to me to have some valid points.  There are some things that aren't explained by the standard nutritional norms.  I want to look at these questions from all the different angles. The first point I want to cover is the idea we have that being fat is related to wealth.  Poor people should be thin right?  If there isn't much food, how could you possible get fat?

Taubes has a huge list of examples of groups of people that went from being wealthy (as in abundance of good food) to being dirt poor, and got fat in the process.  Here are some of the examples he gives.

Pima Indians

The Pima are a group of Native Americans living in Southern Arizona.  In 1846 American soldiers travelling through the area wrote about the abundance of food. They had so much food, that they were able to supply the military with provisions during the Mexican-American War.  The soldiers also remarked about the strong physiques, and vibrant health of the people.

Fast forward to the early 1900's and things were quite different.  The US claimed the land that the Pima's lived on, and confined the Pima to reservations to ease tensions between the Natives, and Euroamerican settlers.  They were no longer able to maintain their own food supply, and were forced to begin relying on government rations.  They went from food abundance to severe food scarcity within fifty years.  And guess what happened.  They got super fat.  The years of famine made them obese.  Today the Pima have the highest incidence of Type II diabetes in the world.

Sioux Indians

In the 1920's, economics researchers from the University of Chicago visited a group of Sioux Indians living on the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota.  They found that the people were "poor beyond imagination" and that they were living on bread and coffee.  The researchers observed the following about the body composition of the people on the reservation.

                                         Women                  Men               Children                  

Distinctly Fat                     40%                   25%                   10%

Extremely Thin                  20%                   25%                   25%

How can there be so many fat people, when they were obviously extremely poor?  The other weird phenomenon is having so many fat people and so many extremely thin people in a community where everyone is living on rations.

Trinidadians

In the 1960's Trinidad was suffering from widespread malnutrition.  The US sent a group of nutritionists to the country in an attempt to help out.  The nutritionists found that even though people were dying from malnutrition and deficiency related diseases, over one-third of women older than twenty five were obese.  Obviously confused by this conflicting scenario, MIT got involved and went down to quantify the diet of these obese women.  The number they got was around 2000 kcal a day, with fat making up around 20% of the diet.  Not the sort of caloric intake that should result in obesity.

Slums of Sao Paulo Brazil

Benjamin Caballero is a public health professor from John Hopkins University.  In 2005 he published an article titled "A Nutrition Paradox - Underweight and Obesity in Developing Countries", in which he describes his findings from a visit to public health clinics in the slums of Sao Paolo Brazil. What he found was that the majority of the families with one overweight family member also had one underweight family member.  They called these families "dual burden families".  From a public health perspective, some members of the family need to go on a diet, and some members of the family need to eat more.  This is definitely a paradox.  So, their question was "How can we make more food available to these undernourished children, without making their parents fatter?"

What is Going On Here?

There are many other examples of poverty and obesity coexisting.  In his book, Taubes has a list of about a dozen communities that were studied in an attempt to make sense of this strange phenomenon.  You can probably think of examples of this from your own life.  I used to work at a grocery store, and I clearly remember that the people who looked the poorest, were typically the fattest, and they would come to the checkout with piles of crap food.  The reason being that, unfortunately, junk food is cheaper than healthy nutrient rich food. In Why We Get Fat, the majority of the examples given have one thing in common, the presence of obesity and malnutrition in the same communities, and often in the same families.  It doesn't make much sense.

In Why We Get Fat, Taubes has an interesting point. "The co-existence of thin, stunted children...with mothers who are themselves overweight, doesn't pose a challenge to the public health system, it poses a challenge to our beliefs" he says. Think about this for a second.  Fat mom, skinny little undernourished kid.  Is Mom really taking food away from her own child, so that she can get fatter?  We know enough about maternal instincts to know that this is an impossibility.  So, why are there so many instances of fat parents with malnourished children?

The question I'm stuck with is this.  How is it possible for some people to get fat in the midst of famine and malnutrition?  Is it really as simple as calories in vs calories out?  How big a factor does food type and quality play?  

 Speaking from my own experience, I've found that lately I'm losing fat by eating more calories...a lot more calories.  The key for me has been removing all processed foods, and keeping carbs really low.  The most important thing is that I feel much healthier.  This is exactly the same conclusion that Taubes arrives at through the course of his research.  He does a good job explaining it too.  I am going to share more about  this soon, as well as more about my personal experimentation.  

Read More

Bulletproof Deliciousness

So there is this phenomenon called "bulletproof living" that is incredibly popular in certain circles on the internet.  It all started with a guy named Dave Asprey, who is a self proclaimed "bio-hacker" and a very successful entrepreneur living in Silicon Valley.  What the hell is "bio-hacking", right?  Well according to him, it is finding tricks to "optimize and upgrade your biology".  He lost over 100 lbs, and apparently increased his IQ by over 20 points through hacking his own biology.

It all sounds slightly ridiculous, and I fully understand the doubt.  When I first read about it I thought he was off his rocker too.  One of his most popular bio-hacks is something called bulletproof coffee (I know it still sounds ridiculous).  Bulletproof coffee is coffee with lots of healthy fats added in.  I heard about this and thought it sounded interesting, but because I was doing my 12 Week Challenge, I was hesitant to add in all the extra fat calories.  But, those days are gone.  Bring on the fats!

Now, every morning I make a nice big cup of bulletproof coffee.  I make the coffee, then throw in a couple

tablespoons of butter, a few tablespoons of coconut oil, and fire the whole mix in the blender.  The end result is a creamy, delicious, coconutty masterpiece.  The flavor alone is reason enough for you to go and try this immediately.

But, what about all this bio-hacking business?  Well the science, in a very simplified explanation is this.

1.  Coconut oil and good quality grass-fed butter have lots of healthy fats.
2. The brain is composed mainly of fats, and needs healthy fats to function.
3. Caffeine helps the fats get into the brain.
4. The fats slow the absorption of caffeine.


You end up with lots of excellent brain fuel getting into the brain more easily, as well as the mental focus and energy of caffeine but without the huge energy spike.  When I drink a regular coffee I get a ton of energy, sometimes too much, for a couple of hours and then it's done.  With the bulletproof coffee I feel calm, focused, and energized for five or six hours, and never crash afterwards.  And it's just so damn tasty.
The other benefit of bullet proof coffee is that it is very filling. It is actually a sneaky way to do intermittent fasting. Fat doesn't affect insulin, so you can eat fat, fuel your brain, and still get the fat burning effects of intermittent fasting.

Give it a shot. Get some coffee, grass fed butter (Anchor if you live in Asia, Kerrygold in North America), coconut oil (or MCT oil if you can find it), and blend them together.  I'd love to hear if it works for you like it does for me.  Let's try to stay away from calling ourselves bio-hackers though, that's just weird.

Read More

Hey, your gut is leaking!

Leaky gut syndrome.  Sounds gross right? Well it is, but probably not in the way you are thinking. It's leaky gut syndrome, not leaky butt. No poop in this post.

Leaky gut syndrome is a medical condition where undigested bits of food, and toxins are able to pass through the lining of your stomach and intestines and get into your blood. In a healthy gut, there are lots of bacteria that allow us to digest food properly. When there aren't enough of these little guys, food and toxins are able to leak through and get into your blood.  The thing is, almost all of us have this problem to some degree.

What happens when you get the gut leaks? A lot of bad things. Research into this subject is still somewhat new, but it has been suggested that conditions ranging from food allergies and rashes, all the way to autism and ADD/ADHD may be the result of a leaky gut.

Why are our guts so messed up? It pretty much boils down to how badly our food supply has been screwed with, and our over reliance on antibiotics. The bacteria in our guts are the "biotics" that the drugs we take are "anti-ing". Antibiotics work by indiscriminately wiping out all the bacteria in your gut, and in fact it's usually the good bacteria that get killed first. So after taking antibiotics, or eating them from hormone loaded meats, your gut has no protection. Throw some pesticides and herbicides into the mix, and all of a sudden you have a sieve instead of a stomach lining, and a laundry list of toxins having a pool party in your blood.

What can we do? This can be reversed with a sensible diet that is full of good bacteria. You may want to supplement with probiotics too. I've started trying to heal my own gut, after noticing a mild allergy to eggs. Just recently I've been getting groggy after eating eggs, and from everything I've read, it's probably a sign of some gut health issues. I'm taking a probiotic now, eating more fermented foods like kimchi and sauerkraut, and staying away from anything processed. After just over a week with these probiotic foods, my egg issues are gone.

For people interested in learning more, check out Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. She runs a clinic set up to treat people with Gut and Psychology syndrome or Gut and Physiology syndrome (both are called GAPs). There are some miraculous stories of people, children in particular, recovering from diseases that would normally have them throwing back bottles of pills to manage their symptoms without treating the causes. The ones that interest me the most are the children recovering from learning disorders, and mental health problems.  The rise of autism over the past thirty years coincides so perfectly with the advice from nutritional agencies to eat low fat, high carb diets that it is hard to believe there is no relationship between the two.  This research into GAPs seems to be hinting at refined carbs as having a direct influence on the rise of mental health disorders. In any case, kids recovering from learning disorders, and mental health problems is something we all want to see more of! The best part is that it is being done with nothing but real food. No doping the kid into la-la-land and sticking him in the corner of the classroom.

This stuff is a little different from what I usually talk about, but it all boils down to eating healthy food.  We don't pay enough attention to the quality of the food we eat, and we are paying the price.  We all remember a handful of classmates who were the "ADD kids". They needed all kinds of special attention, and worst of all, piles of medicine, but never seemed to get any better. What if all they needed was a better diet?

Read More

Did I Do It All Wrong?

I'm changing things up again.  By now you must be thinking that I'm the most scatterbrained guy around. That's probably partially true, but I promise I have my reasons for switching things up.  I've come to realize that I made some mistakes with my 12 Week Challenge, and it's time to set things right.

For the past few months I've been working hard to lose fat, in the healthiest way possible. Being healthy has always been a big part of this for me. Lately I've begun to question my approach though. I have focused on restricting calories and exercising as much as my recovery would allow. Is this really the best way?

Something I read the other day made me rethink this whole concept.  If you are thrown off by all the talk of caveman diets, and paleo nutrition, I apologize, but bear with me while I explain my thought process. If one of our caveman ancestors (I like to picture Bam-Bam) was suffering from a lack of food (during the winter, or other times when food was hard to come by) would he be more active or would he be trying to preserve the energy he did have?  By exercising hard on a calorie deficit, this is exactly what we are doing.  There is no way little Bam-Bam would be out running hill sprints unless absolutely necessary.  This is the modern approach to fat loss though.  Reduce calories and exercise more.  How does our body respond to this situation?  Well, first it takes energy away from what it considers to be non-essential, like the reproductive system, and gives that energy to the brain.  No need to be making babies if you don't have enough brain power to maintain sensible thoughts...memories of Saturday night? The second thing the body does is hang on for dear life to the fat stores you do have left. There is a hormone called leptin that takes messages from our fat cells and controls fat storage accordingly.  When body fat gets low, and there isn't much food coming in, leptin freaks out and goes into fat storage mode.  By pushing yourself too hard while not eating enough, your body is going to start making all kinds of hormonal changes that you will not like.

The other problem I've noticed about restricting calories and focusing on macro nutrient targets is that I am becoming food-focused.  Eating should not involve math.  That's the bottom line.  We are supposed to eat healthy, natural foods until we feel satisfied, and then we stop eating.  I haven't gotten to the point of dreaming about cakes and cookies, but I think that I'm wasting a lot of mental energy on diet.  Also, a big part of hormonal health is stress control, and constantly thinking about food can result in a lot of underlying stress that I don't want or need.

You know that I'm always down to try something new and experiment on myself, so that is exactly what is going to happen.  The best part is that I already did a lot of the leg work during the 12 Week Challenge.  I have a pretty good idea about what kinds of food make me feel the best.  When I was doing the high fat/ low carb diet, I was killing it.  I had great energy levels, wasn't a moody jackass, and had the libido of a thirteen year old at the Playboy mansion. So, I'm switching back to that style of eating. No more tracking macros and weighing chicken breasts. I will still pay attention to the carbs that I eat, because they seem to have the biggest impact on fat loss (for me at least), but I am going to eat protein and healthy fats until I feel good and happy.  This may take some fine tuning, but that's part of the process.

Learning about nutrition is silly sometimes, because there are four thousand experts with ten thousand different philosophies.  It gets extra confusing because you can certainly get a great body without being healthy.  There are all kinds of nutritional experts who talk about treating body builders and other physique competitors after their shows.  In a lot of cases these people completely wreck their metabolisms, hormone balances, and develop eating disorders in an attempt to get down to super low bodyfat levels.  I'm not interested in becoming a train wreck with abs.

My thinking, and I may be completely wrong about all this, is that fat loss and muscle gain will happen naturally as a result of the work I do in the gym. I just need to change my focus to being healthy and start really listening to my body.  I will be sure to share everything I find out with you.  If it doesn't work, and I wind up a big fatty, you may not want to copy me on this one.

Read More

Wasting Your Time is Awesome!

I'm at the gym the other day waiting patiently for the one and only squat rack.  Don't judge, you North Americans, I was lucky enough to find a gym with one good squat rack.  The squat rack at my previous gym was more like something that got ripped out of an elementary school playground sometime in the eighties.  Anyways, I finished up my deadlifts, and was hoping to do some front squats before going home.  This big guy (not good big) had been busting out set after set of squats, and I realized that he was not giving up that squat rack anytime soon.  I conceded, and hopped on the leg press.  I finished my workout, did a little finisher, and was packing up to go when I asked super squats if he was getting tired yet.  He'd done squats non-stop for the forty five minutes that I'd been there, and who knows how long he'd been at it before I got there.  He was starting to look like grossly bloated marathon runner staggering over the finish line.  He replied that he was tired, but still had three hours to go.  

"Wait, what?!  Three more hours?"  I asked. 
"Yeah, I've gotta do four hours everyday.  I'm too fat, and need to lose weight." he said. I started to cry on the inside, but managed to blurt out,
"Don't you have a job?"

Where do these insane ideas come from?  The more I try to learn about fitness and nutrition, the more I'm blown away by the absolutely insane information that is so readily available. 

Have you ever heard of the 80/20 rule?  It states that in any endeavour, 80% of the effects will come from 20% of the causes. Your job is to find out what causes you can focus your attention on to maximize the effects.  For fat loss, what are the different causes you can focus your effort on?  Weight training, cardio, diet, eating so called super foods, praying to the ab gods, etc.  Which one of these will give you 80% of the results?  The answer is diet.  If your diet is spot on, you can lose fat without doing anything else.  To maximize your rate of fat loss from 80% to 90% add some cardio.  To build some muscle, or at the very least prevent muscle loss, train with heavy weights.  

Diet is the cause that will yield 80% of the results.  Once you let this sink in, you can start to take all that misplaced effort and focus it on meeting your dietary targets.  This is why fat loss is so excruciatingly painful sometimes.  We are hard-wired to want to do more, to make things happen faster.  I'm sorry, but it doesn't work like that.  The only thing that you can do more of is eating less, and being more patient.  Four hours of squatting is not going the answer.

Straighten your diet out.  Figure out where your energy is best used, and use it there. I hate spending time on something and getting very little in return, and I know you feel the same way. So, back to super squats.  I told him about my quest to learn as much as possible about fat loss and nutrition, and that I personally have lost around 20 kg in the past three years.  I asked what his diet looked like.  No fried foods he said. If I had asked about his squat program I'm sure I would have gotten a run down of a fancy template designed to increase volume exponentially week by week in order to blah blah blah.....but, for diet the answer was no fried foods.

Please don't misplace your efforts.  Focus on the causes that will give you the most results. 

Read More

Goals, Goals, Goals

The jaw on that guy is something else eh? Do you think he could get a Big Mac in with one bite?  

One of the most important things I learned during the 12 Week Challenge is the power of goal setting, and in particular, the power of publicly announcing goals. It's amazing how much more focused you can be when you have clear goals, and deadlines.  I can't recommend this enough.  Imagine yourself in one year.  Where are you?  What are you doing?  What would make you happier than anything else?  Write down every answer you can think of.  After you've written them all down, order them from the most important thing that will have to greatest impact on your life, to the things that would be nice to do, but are not as essential.  Take the top five goals and write down every possible action you can take to make these things happen.  Then take these actions and make schedules and deadlines to complete them in.  If you take fifteen minutes to sit and write this down, I promise you that it will make a big difference in your jaw...er, I mean, life.  

This will be a new tradition on this blog.  I would love to have other people post their goals on here as well.  Putting your goals out for everyone to see is a great way to guarantee success. Here are my goals to be accomplished by October 31st.

1. I have visible abs at a bodyweight of 75kg.
2. I can squat 115 kg for five with perfect form.
3. I can deadlift 140 kg for three with perfect form
4. I can bench 90 kg for three with perfect form.
5. I can overhead press 70 kg for one with perfect form.
6. My work capacity is good enough that I can lift weights four times a week and also sprint three times.
7. My arms are 14 inches around.
8. My legs are 22.5 inches around.
9. I have started to introduce more carbs back into my diet, and am focusing on gaining muscle while remaining lean.
10.  My ankle and hip mobility are much better, and I can sit in a deep squat for ten minutes comfortably.

To clarify, the weight lifting goals all refer to weights and reps within the Wendler 531 program that I'm doing, not just walking into the gym and hammering out three reps. That's it.  These are the three month goals that I set for myself at the end of July.  I reread them everyday, and make sure that each and every day I am taking steps to achieve them.  The interesting/frustrating thing about fitness goals is that they really can't be rushed.  The biggest factor in achieving these goals is having a well designed plan, and sticking to it without question.  Patience and persistence are a must when you are getting into shape.

So, what do you think?  Will I accomplish these goals?  I bet that simply by clicking publish on this post, I will be further along on my way.  Join in.  The comment section below is open for you to post your goals, and make things happen.  The more the merrier. I'm also really curious to see what sorts of goals people have.  If your goals are completely unrelated to fitness that's great too.  Post them anyway, and watch when in three months you've accomplished all of them!

Read More

What do you do in the gym anyway?

Walk into any gym anywhere in the world and there are people doing all kinds of weird things.  A lot of people must think some of the things I do in the gym are weird.  But there is a difference between weird and effective, and weird and pointless.  You need a good plan every time you enter the gym.  You should be out of there in less than an hour, feeling like you left nothing on the table. Your time in the gym should be based on intensity.  You should be working hard if you want to see results.  If you are working out for two hours, are you really pushing yourself?  

A typical workout should consist of four parts, the warm up, the heavy part, the "pump it up"part, and the finisher. Here is a brief outline of what each of these means.

Warm Up

You need to be warming up properly.  This does not mean touching your toes three times, swinging your arms from side to side and then loading three million pounds onto the bench press.  Run through a couple rounds of some bodyweight movements to get your muscles warm, and to practice some essential movement patterns.Two or three rounds of the following will do the trick.

1. Bodyweight Squats
2. Back Extensions
3. Pullups
4. Pushups or Dips
5. Hanging Leg Raises
6. Hip flexor stretches

Do as many reps as you feel is suitable for you to be thoroughly warmed up, without wearing yourself out.  This little circuit covers all the main muscle groups and should get your heart and lungs into the game too.

After getting warmed up, you need to get some mobility work in.  Hopefully you have access to foam rollers, and if you don't you can make do with a lacrosse ball (or something similar).  On lower body days roll the knots out of your glutes, lower back, IT band (the outer edge of your thigh), and the inside of your thigh.  After rolling these out, do some stretches like these to get your hips greased up.

Those stretches will mobilize your hips better than anything else. After spending some time grimacing in those positions, you should run through some of these movements to tie everything together and get your body working as a stable unit.Some good movements to do this can be seen here.

On upper body days you need to focus on your shoulders in the same way that you focused on hips for the lower body days.  Think about the postural problems you have, such as shoulders rounding forward.  What causes that?  A tight upper chest and biceps. Use this time to try to undo some of those issues, and also develop awareness of which areas need some extra attention.  This is a great general outline, but be sure to add in other stretches to address your individual problems.

Heavy Part

You're all warmed up and moving like a well oiled machine. Now you're good to start working safely.  Don't just throw your working weight on the bar and go though.  Give your nervous system a chance to get warmed up too. Start with an empty bar and incrementally add weight until you reach your working weight. The first part of your workout should be focused on strength.  Work up to an eight, five, three, or even a one rep max in one of the four main lifts.  By slowly adding weight until you reach your maximum weight, you get lots of volume done with heavy weight.  Louis Simmons of Westside Barbell has found, through years of training world champion powerlifters, that it is not necessary to do absolutely maximal weight to get stronger.  His athletes very rarely train with more than eighty percent of their one rep max, and the strongest people in the world almost always come from his gym.  An example of working up to a five rep max with 100kg would look like this,

20kg (empty bar) x 10

40 kg x 5

50kg x 5

60 kg x 5

70 kg x 5

80 kg x 5

90 kg x 5

95 kg x 5

100 kg x 5
105 kg x 5

Your goal was to get 100 kg, but you still felt strong after the 100 kg set, so you added a little bit more and went for it.  That's the beauty of this approach.  On days where you are feeling strong, push yourself.  If you are sick, or slept terribly and feel like a zombie, you may not be physically capable of giving it your all.  Listening to your body prevents injuries.

The "Pump It Up" Part

 A lot of very successful powerlifters will work up to a heavy five, three, or one rep max, do some high volume accessory work, and call it a day.  They believe that getting maximal heavy work done is the most important thing, and accessory work is done only to work on weak body parts.  For people more interested in building muscle, do your strength work first, and then work the muscles related to the main lift with lots of volume.  There are limitless ways of doing this, but the key is to do the strength work, and then move on to the bodybuilding stuff.  An example would be working up to a five rep max on the bench press, doing five sets of ten on incline dumbell bench, and then doing some tricep work.  The heavy part of your training is done to train your nervous system and muscles to work together to move heavy weight. This part of your training is done to get the muscles working and to get some blood flowing into them.  This is where you follow the bodybuilding philosophy of going for that mind-muscle connection and really feeling the muscles work with some lighter weights.  For this part choose rep ranges any where between 6-20.  For the heavy part of your workout, you are trying to break records and constantly increase the weight.  For this part your weights should be increasing over time, but you are more focused on feeling the muscles work.  Have fun here, and do drop sets, pyramids, all those things that bodybuilders love.

Finisher

After you have finished your strength and volume work, it can be fun to do a finisher to get some conditioning while you are still warmed up and ready to work. Pick a conditioning method that will take less than ten minutes, and work as hard as you can.  I wrote some ideas for conditioning in a previous post.  My personal favorites are barbell or bodyweight complexes, or a combo of the two.  This should take absolutely no more than ten minutes.  Five minutes would be an even better goal.  You've done a lot of work already, this is just thrown in to boost your metabolism a little more.

Hopefully this is a good outline to get you spending your time in the gym more efficiently.  Remember that keeping intensity up, and rest periods short is a great way to get more done in less time.  Leave the cellphone at the door.  Your Candy Crush record will never do as much for you as your squat or deadlift record.

Read More

My Top Five Fat Loss Workouts

I recently moved, and so switched to a new gym.  But, before I left my old gym I had a really funny encounter.  I noticed a guy whom I'd chatted with from time to time, giving me an awkward up and down, so I gave him a nod.  He walked over to me, and told me that I'd gotten noticeably taller.  I told him in my haphazard Chinese that at 28 years old, it seemed unlikely that I'd had a noticeable growth spurt. I mentioned that I'd been losing fat, and he agreed that I looked thinner, but urged me to go and check my height, guaranteeing that I'd gained a few centimeters.  We agreed to disagree and the conversation turned to what I was doing to lose fat.  He was shocked to hear that I never once stepped foot on a treadmill or went jogging.  Those are the only real tried and tested ways to lose fat right?  

It seems that many people are at a loss when it comes to challenging and fun ways to burn fat. I want to share my favorite fat loss workouts with you.  These all take less than half an hour including a comprehensive warm up and cool down, and most take more like ten minutes. The principle for all of these workouts is that by exercising really intensely for a short time, you will increase your metabolic rate, and burn calories through something known as EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption) or the so called "after burn" effect. So here are five challenging and intense, but also fun workouts.

Sprints

I've mentioned sprints before, and truly believe that they are the best cardio possible.  The only problem is that they suck.  If you truly push yourself when doing sprints, you will probably finish within ten minutes, and will need to lay on the ground begging for oxygen for another ten minutes. To have a good sprint work out you have to warm up properly.  If you don't, you WILL pull a muscle, I promise.  Jog for five minutes, do some high knee raises, butt kicks, squat jumps, side shuffles, and then some stretches for your hip flexors, hamstrings, and calves.  Pick a 40 or 50 meter path, and do two or three easy sprints, slowly increasing your speed.  Once you feel ready to push yourself safely, do your first sprint.  Keep the distance limited to 40 or 50 meters.  Sprint, immediately walk back to the start, and go again.  Do ten to fifteen sprints, gasp for air, walk for a few minutes and then go home. If you are feeling ambitious do ten burpees after each sprint, this is a great test of mental toughness.

Barbell Complexes

You are going to pick up a medium weight barbell and do three to ten different exercises without putting the bar down.  The number of reps will be the same for each movement, and should be between five and ten.  You will do all the reps on the first movement, then move on to the second movement.  After completing all the movements rest thirty to sixty seconds and then go again.  Repeat four or five times. The first time you try this only do three different movements, and add more as you see fit. The first time you will also want to be very conservative with the amount of weight you use.  The first round might be easy, but by the time you've done five rounds it won't be.  If you choose a weight that is too heavy, and the last round takes five minutes to complete because you keep dropping the bar, you have missed the point of this style of workout. Here are a couple of examples.

Beginner

Deadlift x 10

Power Clean x 10

Front Squat x10

Advanced

Deadlift x6

Shrug x6

Power Clean x6

Front Squat x6

Push Press x 6

Back Squat x6

You can program these yourself with a bit of common sense.  Arrange the movements such that you are working from the floor to the roof, and if you want to really go for it, work your way back down to the floor again.

Bodyweight Conditioning

This has always been one of my favorites because it's just so easy to do.  I often run out to the park, think of what I can use to workout, and then get at it.  My favorite style of programming for park workouts is to choose four or five different movements, start at a certain number of reps, and then subtract one rep each round.  For example

Round 1

Box Jumps x 12

Chin ups x 12

Lunges x12 per leg

Dips x 12

Round 2 is eleven reps of each, Round 3 is ten reps, etc. until you are down to only one rep.  It seems like it would get easier as you go, but because each round is faster you get less time to rest before doing the same movement again. With this style, try not to rest between rounds if you can. Get out to the park, take a look at what you have to work with, and get at it.

Jump Rope

Muhammad Ali did it, I rest my case.  This has been a main conditioning tool of successful athletes for a long time. If you can't jump rope efficiently now, just be patient.  It really takes no time at all to get proficient enough to burn fat.  My advice is to keep your elbows tucked as close to your body as you can, and really try to feel the tension on the rope.  You should be able to do it with your eyes closed. When jumping rope for fat loss, intervals work really well. Jump rope for one minute, rest for thirty seconds, and go again.  Repeat for ten to fifteen rounds.  My favorite jump rope workout is one minute of rope work, followed by ten burpees, then straight back to the rope.  You can replace the burpees with dumbell swings, jump squats, dumbell cleans, whatever you can think of.  I think the jump rope with burpees may be almost as tough as hill sprints, if you can push yourself and avoid resting after the burpees.  Catching your breath while jumping rope as fast as you can is intense.

Crossfit

Crossfit posts a new workout almost every day.  Go on their website, find a workout that appeals to you, check the times that other people are completing the workouts in, and go beat those times.  It can be humbling to see how fast some people are able to bang out some of the workouts on there.  My only advice here would be to pick workouts that fit into your workout plan.  If strength training, or building muscle is your goal and tomorrow is going to be a heavy squat day don't pick something that is going to fry your legs and prevent you from giving it your all on the squats.  Remember your priorities.  

This post ended up being far longer than I intended, but hopefully some of these ideas appeal to you, and have given you something new to work with.  With this kind of training, intensity is the key.  If these workouts take you longer than fifteen minutes (excluding warm up) then you are not going hard enough. As always, don't overthink this stuff.  Go out and do something.  You never know, something here may even make you taller, just like it did for me!

Read More

What Now?

The Twelve Week Challenge is over, so have I reverted back to my old bad habits?  Actually, I've stepped it up a notch.  During those twelve weeks, I wanted to show with a sensible diet, weight training, and some sprinting you can both lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, and most importantly, without killing yourself.  I believe that my progress shows that it is possible to make a lot of good progress through moderation, in terms of both diet and exercise.

The thing is, I still have not reached all my goals.  I am not as lean as I would like to be, but at the same time I also want to build more muscle.  Quite the conundrum.  Is it possible to get to single digit body-fat (visible abs) while also gaining muscle?  I don't know either, but I'm working on it now. I've changed my approach slightly, and from what I've accomplished over the past two weeks, I now believe that it is possible.  The missing ingredient is, hard work.  If I look honestly at the premise of the Twelve Week Challenge it was basically to get as much as possible with the least amount of work.  This breaks the universal law of reaping and sowing.  If you put in moderate efforts you get moderate results, not extraordinary results.

Like I said, I'm stepping it up a notch.  Everyone these days talks about how if you exercise too much, or have too much volume in your training program you will become "over-trained".  Tell this to an Olympic lifter who is doing two squat training sessions every day of the week. Or to Ironman participants, who spend upwards of twelve hours training everyday in preparation for that event.  The bottom line is that you get out only what you put in.  

As a side note  I spoke with my father the other day about my new training plan.  When he was younger he was a big strong dude.  He got there by doing pullups, pushups, and situps everyday.  No fear of over-training  no scientific programming. He just did those three exercises everyday, and put full effort into it each day.  This is not to say that there aren't more efficient ways to train, but it illustrates the point that the attitude with which you train is more important than the actual program.  People who push themselves will succeed.

After two weeks of really working hard.  I'm happy
 with the results so far

I have gone back to a powerlifting based program, called Beyond 531.  It is an awesome program for increasing strength in the four main lifts: squat, deadlift, bench press, and overhead press.  This is the foundation of what I'm doing now.  Everyday I follow this program for one main lift.  After that I choose an exercise that is related to the main lift, and work up to a heavy set of three to five reps.  Then I immediately work my way back down in a huge drop set to get a lot of volume, and also get the "pump".  This is basically a combination of powerlifting and bodybuilding approaches. This style of training is really fun, but also super challenging.  After lifting really heavy weight, the last thing you want to do is push yourself to absolute fatigue with lighter weights.

For my condition work, after upper body workouts I do a high intensity "finisher" to burn fat and get my metabolism firing. This could be as simple as doing 100 burpees as fast as possible, or it could be a series of barbell exercises done back to back without ever putting the bar down.  Finishers are a great way to work on conditioning, burn fat, and develop some mental toughness.  They are challenging, but are also fun way to end a workout. On squat and deadlift days, I do a sprint workout 8 hours later in the evening.  On rest days, I do another high intensity finisher, and go for a long walk.  I'm really pushing myself hard now.  I'm choosing to work incredibly hard in order to get incredible results.  I'm choosing not to buy into the fear of "over-training".  It's just another experiment, and you will find all the results here and on facebook.

Read More

Five Easy Steps to Awesomeness

I have five things that I try to make a part of my daily life. These things keep me on track nutritionally, keep me healthy, keep me fit, and keep me sane. Try to incorporate these five things into your life for unadulterated awesomeness.

Macros- hit em 

Set macro nutrient goals for yourself (help can be found here) and hit those goals. This allows you to figure out what adjustments to make to your diet if you aren't getting the results you want. You've gotta be honest with yourself though. Record what you actually ate, not what you should have eaten.  If you don't have reliable data, you can't make informed decisions when adjusting your diet. Besides, lying to yourself about what you are is worse than cheating at solitaire.

Move - more if you can

Exercising a few times a week is awesome. Props to you if you are already following a sensible weight training program. But, weight training aside, try to move more. I know that a thousand people have already told you to take stairs, and walk to work, and so on, so I won't repeat it. We are a lazy generation that wants to get everything by doing as little as possible. Get out of this mindset. You know you need to be more active. Don't over-think it, just move more.

Mobility- becausing having hips like your grandmother is not cool

I think that in terms of overall health benefits this might be number one. Get a foam roller, buy this book, and learn how to live in that body of yours. We do a world of damage to ourselves by sitting for hours on end in front of computers. Spending thirty minutes doing self-care is not too much to ask. It feels so good to reclaim proper range of motion in your spine, hips, and shoulders. The actual act of doing mobility work is downright horrid sometimes, but the benefit are immediate and carry over into every part of your life.

Meditate- that's right

I thought this was a little too new age and flaky at first too. I was dead wrong. We spend all this time on our bodies, fixated on the outward stuff when inside is a constant torrent of mayhem. Get that mind of yours under control, and I guarantee the benefits will carry over to every aspect of your life. Take five minutes before you sleep to focus on all the high tension areas in your body, and consciously relax them. This will improve your sleep, help you focus, make you happier, allow your body to heal better after intense workouts...the benefits of meditating are endless, so give it a shot.

Sprint - it's probably as close to feeling like a real athlete as you'll ever get

Sprinting will kick your ass. That's pretty much all there is to it. There are a million ways to include sprinting into your life. Don't over-complicate this! Twice a week go outside, warm up properly, and then move fast. You can run shuttle sprints, suicides, hill sprints, 100m, 200m, 400m sprints, sled sprints, even bike sprints on those rainy days. I can't stress enough the need to not over-think this. Playing ultimate frisbee could be your sprinting. Just move fast, rest until you can breathe semi-normally, and then move fast again.

I think that these five things can make an enormous difference to your life.  They will all teach you to take charge of yourself, and will make you stronger in every way possible. What am I missing here?  Let me know in the comments below or on facebook.

Read More

Feeling Full on a Diet

When calories are restricted, you want to make damn sure that anything you eat is going to be filling and also have some nutritional value.  If you are trying to get the majority of your calories from processed foods (including processed "health foods") you are going to be hungry all the time, not to mention severely lacking in micro nutrients and minerals.  This is why making proper food choices is so important.  Feeling hungry on a diet is normal, feeling like you might lose your mind if you don't fire a bag of Doritos down hatch is not.  By eating real, whole foods it is infinitely easier to create a sustainable plan. So, what are some easy foods to add into your diet to feel fuller, and give you the will power to walk past McDonalds on your way home from work.

Broccoli - This should be a staple.  Stir fry it, steam it, eat it raw in salads, whatever you choose, it is super filling and is loaded with fiber and nutrients.  

Leafy Greens - The calories from leafy greens are almost negligible, but they can still be quite filling.  Try throwing a big pile of greens onto your stir fry for the last thirty seconds.  They will wilt into the mix and add a lot of volume to a meal without adding much in the way of calories. Another good option is a mixed green salad with some tomatoes, onions, and apple cider vinegar, or balsamic vinegar as the sauce.

Fruit - Fruit is a great choice when dieting because it's a delicious way to load up on vitamins.  A few generations back, people knew that eating several servings of fruit everyday is a must. I know a lot if people that might not get two servings of fruit in a week. When focusing on losing fat be careful though.  The carbs found in fruit are different from those found in vegetables, and starchy sources.  Our body can only process a certain amount, and going over that amount will result in fat storage.  So limit yourself to two or three servings of fruit to avoid messing up your fat loss plan.

Mushrooms - I have fallen in love with mushrooms, and in particular shiitake mushrooms.  These are high volume foods that take on the flavor of what ever they are cooked with, and they have an incredibly low calorie content considering how filling they are.  I throw them into every stir fry I make.

Salsa- I think I could eat industrial sized jugs of salsa and never get sick of it. The beauty of salsa is that it's packed with flavor, but has very few calories. If I don't have time to cook anything special, I'm more than happy to dump salsa on some chicken and chow down.

What am I missing on this list?  What would be your top 5 add-ins when trying to lose fat?  Leave a comment below and let us in on your advice!

Read More

The End of the Beginning

Twelve weeks flew by like nothing.  I actually can't believe that this 12 Week Challenge is done.  I remember when I first started this I had big plans for what my celebration meal. I was going to have a big dirty Pizza Hut feast with some ice cream, and maybe have another foray into cheesecake town.  So, what ended up happening this weekend?  I went to the gym, went out to one of my favorite Taiwanese style stir fry restaurants, and then went out for drinks.  No wild celebration dinner, no gorging, and no cheesecake.

I've had several conversations about whether or not I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish with this 12 Week Challenge.  I think that what I have accomplished is hard to quantify.  I feel like a new man, and it's an unbelievable feeling.  I have developed a new relationship with food, and with my health in general.  Last night I could have gorged on some of my favorite "cheat foods", but really had no desire to.  I ate reasonable amounts of food that I enjoy, and woke up this morning feeling right on track.

On Friday night after I did my weekly weigh in, I was talking to my good friend about the progress I have made over the past two years.  I can remember going to the doctor two years ago for my health check up, and seeing 92 kg come up on the hospital scale.  That's right, 92 kg.  In two years I have lost almost 20 kg!  I hope that you find that hard to believe, because I sure do.  I've talked a lot about finding sustainable ways to be healthy and to get into the shape you want, and I really feel like finding what works for me is my biggest accomplishment.  Over the last twelve weeks I lost 13 lbs, but more importantly, I learned how to manipulate my diet to lose weight, feel better, and not live a completely food-centric life.

What happens now?  I would still like to get a little bit leaner before I begin focusing on building muscle again. Building muscle is easier when your bodyfat is low, and since I am already on the fat burning train, I think I should keep going.  Another month, or two at the most, and I should be ready to start "reverse dieting", which means slowly bringing calories back up after an extended weight loss period.  I am going to continue to track my progress and make regular updates both on here and on facebook.  I really want to thank you for all the support that you've given.  You have no idea how much motivation I have gotten from you clicking "like" on my facebook updates, or leaving comments on the blog.  It has made a world of difference, and I want to thank you once again.  Keep an eye out for more updates, and be sure to let me know if there is anything you have questions about, or would like to learn more about.  I'm not an expert, but I am doing my best to learn as much as I can along the way.  As I said, this is only the end of the beginning!

Read More

What Is This All About?

The other night I went to a party, and got to see a lot of people that I haven't seen for a while (I moved). It was awesome to see everyone again, and I was blown away by how many people have actually been reading this blog, and following my 12 Week Challenge progress. A lot of people had words of encouragement, as well as some really good questions and comments. The question that came up the most was about my goals, and why exactly I am doing this.

Ten weeks ago, the goal was to lose as much fat as possible in twelve weeks. Plain and simple. However, this has evolved into something much more than that. It has turned into a mission to become a healthy, happy person. I've always been the kind of person to dive into something new, and do it furiously for a while. In some cases a long while, in others, not so long.

This challenge, and the knowledge I'm gaining from it, have led me to realize that doing things in spurts is a terrible way to accomplish anything. True success is the result of sustained effort over a long time. Let's say I lose a huge amount of fat over the course of this challenge, but do it by seriously restricting my diet, avoiding social gatherings, and generally being a diet obsessed hermit. What have I accomplished? I would much rather find a way to reach my goals while still living a normal life, and enjoying time with the people I care about.

My goal now is to develop habits to this effect. Simple strategies that make losing weight, and being healthy an integral part of my life, as opposed to something exclusive that is done 12 weeks at a time. Fat loss may be slower, but who cares? This 12 Week Challenge is a "Rest of my Life Challenge" to become, in the words of Elliot Hulse, the strongest version of myself. 

Read More

How to Get Fat Fast

Last week was my birthday, and to celebrate, I feasted. I have eaten only healthy food since I started this 12 Week Challenge, and I was craving something greasy. I wound up sitting behind a table that was loaded with the likes of cheeseburgers, poutine, and nachos. It was glorious, and if there had been any long supressed cravings lurking about, they were taken care of.  Oh, I also polished off a small cheesecake for dessert.

I fasted the entire day leading up to this meal, and decided not to worry about calories, or macros, or choosing healthy food. Just an all out stuff your guts feast.

So, what effect did this have on my fat loss progress? It killed it. The next morning I looked puffy, was 2kg heavier, and felt pretty gross. I realise that the majority of this is just water retention following such a face stuffing, but even after five days of returning to my healthy ways, the residual effects are still there. My waist measurement went up this week, as did my weight.

This is a perfect example of why making healthy food choices is so important. I eat a big filling meal every night. The difference is that it is a big meal of vegetables, meat,.and some rice, not fried cheese, and gravy. I'd say that my birthday dinner was in the range of 3000-3500 calories. There is no way I could eat 3000 calories of healthy food in one sitting. People always talk about how five days of hard work can be undone on the weekend. The truth is it can be undone in one meal.

Lesson learned though. Another important point is that I didn't freak out and cut calories or try to play catch up by running hill sprints every morning this week. I got carried away, but I will catch up by returning to my regular diet and carrying on. When I emphasize sustainability this is what I'm talking about. Sure, I took a step back, but taking three more steps forward is as easy as continuing on as before, and being patient. So that's what I'm doing.  If I do get another craving for some "cheat food", I will be smarter.  The IIFYM approach to dieting can be useful, and in hindsight, that would have been the way to go.

Keep an eye on my progress here and on facebook. If you have anything to share about fat loss, healthy cooking, or exercise be sure to leave a comment. If you feel like showing some support be sure to click like, or share!

Read More