Knight Fit

I was doing some research on Leptin tonight and came across this very well written article by celticcavegirl over at cavemanforum.com - I think it's well said and short enough for a quick read.

How to lose fat on the Paleo WOE, or Endocrinology for Dummies

« on: March 24, 2011, 03:54:20 PM »

This post is written for the benefit of stumblers and newcomers

The paleo way of eating is about optimising health, and that's what we should all ultimately be aiming for. But the fact remains a lot of people start the paleo diet because they want to lose weight, so as we have a lot of new people on the forum these past few weeks (hi guys!) I thought I would write a little endocrinology 101

When I first started paleo I read quite a short, simple article online about insulin, carbohydrates and weight. I don't remember where it was but I do remember that as a person who knew little about the subject, it really clarified it for me and made me finally understnad why it is important to cut carbs to lose weight. So to help others, I will attempt to reproduce it!

The below is all very basic common knowledge for anyone who knows much about diet and biology, but not necessarily such common knowledge for the average stumbler starting out on the paleo diet.

Part 1 - what happens in the body when you consume carbohydrates, a very simplified version
- Consumption of carbohydrates results in an increase in blood sugar. The more refined the carbohydrate, the faster and higher the rise
- Glucose is a fuel when it's in the muscles, but when it's in the blood stream in high levels it is essential a toxin. Yes, a toxin.
- The body wants reduce the amount of this toxin in the blood, so the pancreas produces a load of insulin. Again, the higher volume and refinedness of the carb ingested, the more insulin is produced.
- Muscle cells are covered in insulin receptors; insulin binds to these and prompts them to take in glucose to remove it from the bloodstream. It is stored in the muscles as glycogen, to be used as energy when necessary (e.g. anaerobic exercise)
- if the muscles are 'full', the excess is converted into triglycerides and stored in adipocytes i.e/ turned into fat. (this is why athletes, whose muscle cells have 'space', can eat a lot of carbs and not get fat. But they can still get diabetes on route to winning 5 olympic gold medals - see Redgrave, Sir Steve). -
- This is not a problem in and of itself, because the body is creating and burning fat constantly. However because of the spike in insulin, some of the glucose that was already in the blood is also converted to fat as well. So you end up with slightly more energy stored as fat than the energy from the carbs you just ate.
- Additionally, this leaves you with low blood sugar and makes you more likely to snack or overeat, as you are hungry!

Insulin sensitivity and Insulin Resistance
- if someone is described as being insulin resistant, this means that their muscle cells are not as sensitive to the effects of insulin and do not uptake glucose from the bloodstream so readily; the excess glucose is more likely to be stored as fat rather than stored in the muscle cells.
- this turns into a vicious cycle of the pancreas producing more and more insulin in response to the same carbohydrate intake. Diabetes and obesity are the eventual results.
- Someone who is insulin sensitive has muscles that are good at taking up glucose from the bloodstream. Exercise increases insulin sensitivity, as does intermittent fasting.

How to lose weight on the paleo diet
- first one must understand that to lose weight, one must minimise the production of insulin
- rule 1 - every time you eat, insulin is produced. So to lose weight, eat less frequently, and don't snack
- rule 2 - carbohydrates result in the largest insulin response, followed by protein, followed by fat. So to lose weight, the intake of carbs (especially sugar) must be minimised and the intake of fat must be maximised. This is one of the many reasons why so many people on the forum will say 'eat more fat'. Remember that protein still has an insulinogenic effect - http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2010/1/11/insulinogenic-is-not-hyperglycemic.html
- rule 3 - anaerobic exercise uses glycogen for fuel and increases insulin sensitivity = less of the energy from your carbohydrate food will end up in fat cells, because it will either be burned, or taken into the muscles. It will also liberate body fats for use as energy, which can then be burned off via LOW INTENSITY aerobic exercise. Lifting heavy things is also crucial
- rule 4 - In terms of minimising the insulin spike, **Carbs from leafy green veg > carbs from roots and bulbs > sugars in fruit**
Paleo doesn't have to be very low carb - you can eat 30/30/40 as carb/protein/fat or 5/30/65. But the *less* carbohydrates (especially sugar) you eat and the *more* fat you eat, the more easily you will loose weight.

Paleo is not a weight-loss diet, it's a way of eating

Sidenote 1 - leptin
- Leptin is a hormone that inhibits the appetite. It is (mainly) produced in the adipose (fat) tissue
- Wheat germ agglutinin is a protein found in wheat and contributes to leptin resistance
- obesity results in overproduction of leptin and thus leptin resistance
- one who is leptin resistant does not feel 'full' so readily so is more likely to overeat
- this is one of the many why it is very important to cut out gluten grains

Sidenote 2 - Fasting Induced Adipocyte Factor - simplified
(I believe the the below is still a theory rather than a fact)
- FIAF is another hormone, produced by the gut wall, liver and muscles.
- FIAF is mainly produced in times of starvation and prompts the body to burn fat by blocking the action of another hormone (lipoprotein lipase)
- active gut bacteria inhibit the production of FIAF, inactive (hungry) bacteria cannot do this
- gut bacteria live on carbohydrate and fibre. They cannot 'feed' on fat and protein, become inactive, and stop blocking the production of FIAF
- for a proper explanation see http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2007/12/fiaf-whos-fat-is-it-anyway.html

Further reading
1) Good Calories, Bad Calories, Gary Taubes
2) http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2009/8/27/how-to-lose-weight.html
3) http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2009/8/27/can-protein-turn-into-fat.html
4) http://www.marksdailyapple.com/what-happens-to-your-body-when-you-carb-binge/
5) http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html

« Last Edit: March 24, 2011, 06:33:57 PM by celticcavegirl »

I've learned a couple things that have improved my Mark Sisson Big Ass Primal Salad. First - I learned that I don't really like salad in the traditional sense. The cold, crunchy veggies just don't really do it for me. Second - I could never find a salad dressing that is Primal/Paleo and that I actually liked. You know what I do like? Beef. Third - I really don't like doing dishes. I cook for one (plus the dog) about 99% of the time and hate spending more time cleaning than I need to. Thus - here are the changes for my BIG ASS PRIMAL SALAD MARK 2!

1. 1 pound of ground beef. I like 85% lean. It has enough fat in it to brown on the skillet and have left over fat for the veggies.

2. 1 Bell Pepper, 1 Small Tomato, 1/2 Onion Cut them up and throw them in the skillet right after you flip the beef over.

3. A lot of organic baby spinach. A lot - seriously. Fiber dude.

4
4. Pour the beef and veggies over the spinach. ps. Always use baby spinach instead of lettuce - lettuce has almost nothing in it. Get those nutrients. Scrape all the fat over top for your dressing. It's delicious. I use a bit of salt and pepper over top and take my time to eat this beast.

5. Temp the dog with the scraps.

For the calorie counters out there.

1005 Calories 92g Protein, 16 Carbs, 64 Fat

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..... This is really good - I ate it right after my really hard leg workout and it was amazing. Going for a walk with the dog to let this bad boy settle.

Question: How should I eat while doing P90X or Insanity. I've been following 40% Protein / 40% Carbs / 20% Fat and 1200 calories. (I'm actually combining two emails I got today here)

Steve: That sounds like the right percentages. I kind of think the fat is low and carbs are high - but for what Insanity recommends, that's on it. I think many people who are doing P90X and Insanity are looking to lose weight (obviously) and thus under eating. Since I nearly doubled my calories from what I was doing at the end of P90X the first round, I weigh slightly less and look much better.

I use the Anabolic Diet formula for calories - it's easy and quick.

Realistic Goal Bodyweight x12 for losing fat
Realistic Goal Bodyweight x15 for maintaining
Realistic Goal Bodyweight x18 for gaining muscle

As long as your food is super clean, don't worry about gaining while working out. However, if you have a treat a day (for example, an ice cream sandwich at night if you can afford the calories) then this probably will be too high. I never ever have treats Sunday-Friday, then Saturday I carb load, which includes sometimes a treat or two. If your food is crazy clean, you can eat a lot more than you probably think you can!

When I say realistic goal bodyweight - what I mean is.... if you're currently 230 pounds and want to get to 115.... well, you'll get there - but that's not your realistic goal! Think more like 190 or so, then shoot for that, when you accomplish that, move it to 150 etc.

Cardio day - I gotta be honest, I was going to do legs today, but finally my sore butt kicked in from the Sunday 400 Rep Challenge. It's weird, I wasn't sore at all on Monday, so I changed the plan of P90X Chest/Shoulders/Tri and did just heavy lifting CST as well. After 400 burpees, I expected my chest/arms to be super sore, but really it was my butt today. The plan was going to be 500 kettlebell swings, but as I was warming up, my glutes were screaming. After thinking about doing BodyBlitz about 2 hours later, I decided it was not a good choice to swing the KB today. I'll knock it out tomorrow or Thursday.

I'm still hovering around 3,000 calories every day and 35% Protein, 65% Fat and basically no carbs. The only carbs I eat each day is one or two bowls of baby spinach or spring mix greens from a bag with some sort of meat seasoned over top. I was talking to a friend about what to eat on the Primal/Anabolic Diet. She is so confused on what to eat. I don't know why, but I honestly have no issue eating almost the same thing every day.

You know that one moment - the one that everything becomes clear, the Ah-ha moment? As far as nutrition is concerned, I've had a few, each one getting me closer to the goal.

Ah-ha Moment 1:

When I started getting healthy, I read in a Men's Health or some other magazine that some actor - I wish I could give proper credit here, used a simple diet of eating every 3 hours to stay ripped. There were a couple things I remember still. First, he ate about 150-200 calories every 3 hours of the day, then one low fat, sensible meal. This made sense, so I did it.

I wasn't really great at it though, I had no idea what protein/fat/carbs even were, I just understood 200 calories. So I went to our grocery store and bought about 100 Michelina's Lean frozen dinners. I ate about 5 of them a day, then one normal low calorie dinner. I was a good soldier about timing my meals, and used my phone's calendar feature to note the time of every single bite of food. Basically I was eating 1200 calories a day and robbing myself of every remaining ounce of muscle I had. But I didn't care, I was losing weight!

Ah-ha Moment 2:

Starting P90X was obviously a huuuuuuuuuuuuge moment for me. Bigger than the workouts, perhaps, was the nutrition aspect. Finally, I understood that I was undereating and worse, not eating more than about 10% of my daily calories of protein. Ah-ha! I need protein! And I want to lose fat, so I shouldn't eat any right? Well.... not really.

I went on the standard 50% Protein / 30% Carbs / 20% Fat P90X Fat Shredder diet. I had lost weight, but wanted to get ripped, so I continued to up my protein and lower my fat. My fat intake was actually often less than 15g. I was eating a diet consisting of grilled/boneless/skinless chicken breast about 3 times a day; one or two bags of frozen veggies a day and that's it. No dressing, no oils, basically no red meat. No fat!

Guess what? I built some muscle, but the remaining body fat just wouldn't go away, even though I was eating under my maintenance calories, the fat remained. I honestly could not get my mind wrapped around this at all. How could I still have abdominal fat if I was eating 100% right? (Hint: I was undereating fat - more on this later)

Ah-ha Moment 3:

After quite some time of doing the low fat diet, I was struggling with two things. First and foremost, even after all this time of working out like a madman, and eating right, I still had some fat problems. But the bigger problem was a personal issue.

After many months of doing this diet and workouts, my old binging problems were making a reappearance. It started with an ice cream cone here, maybe a "treat night" of 6-12 doughnuts there, then suddenly, I couldn't string together 4+ days in a row without falling off the nutritional wagon. Things weren't working. I needed to change it up, but didn't know how.

Realizing that things weren't working was possibly my biggest ah-ha on the list.

Ah-ha Moment 4:

After reading the book "Born to Run" I started to become interested in the barefoot running, which led me to the Primal Blueprint and www.MarksDailyApple.com. This finally made sense. I have only read one book faster than I read The Primal Blueprint, which I'll discuss later.

This made everything seem like it fit together. My carb cravings (which I didn't know the term for what I was having at that time), the tired feelings I would get after big meals, all of it.

The thing is - man is an animal, and yet we eat differently than every other animal on Earth. For millions of years, we ate like other animals on the planet. Meat, fruit, veggies and nuts. Then we figured out farming and grains. After I read this, I cut out the grains and almost instantly lost some of the extra fat I had compiled. This started the ball rolling towards where I truly wanted to be.

Ah-ha Moment 4:

I read a review of the book BodyOpus by Dan Duchaine. It said that book wasn't for people who want to lose enough weight to be average. It was for people who are average and want to be extraordinary. This is finally exactly how I've been feeling. I was tired of working my as off to be average. I wanted more!

This book is hardcore. I can't even explain how hardcore it is without more detail than my little fingers can type. Let me just say, that twice a week, you're supposed to eat every 2 hours, including through the night. As in, setting my alarm every 2 hours to slam a shake or bar. Well.... no thank you. But the idea was right - I just needed a better solution.

After a ton of googling, I kept coming across the words Anabolic Diet. Finally, I found the book and diet system and devoured it. I mean it - like I read the whole thing in 2 sittings. I just kept nodding and saying yes - yes - yes - yes. It was everything I had learned, suspected, thought about and found in my personal experience. Someday I'll write up a Cliff Notes version of the book, but for now, let's just say it combines the best of both worlds. (Hell, all 4 worlds!)

Sunday-Friday - I live in a Primal world, tons of meat, eggs, poultry, fish, and veggies. Since it's been ages since I've had wheat, rice or corn, this really wasn't that much of a change. The biggest thing was to add fat to my diet. A lot of fat. A lot of oils, animal fat, fish oil etc. What's strange is, the more fat I added, the more lean I was getting. Every Saturday I get to carb up.

What's amazing is after about 48 days of doing this diet, I'm leaner than I've been in a while, and better and much more importantly - my carb cravings are almost totally gone! The Anabolic Diet predicted this, but I didn't believe it, until finally it happened. It's been a miracle - but look, I'm keeping my eyes on the goal and watching for a return. B.E.D. doesn't just disappear thanks to a new nutritional approach, but anything that will help my binging, I'll take it and not look back.

I'll keep updating this with my progress through this and deeply encourage anyone reading this to check out the books I mentioned, even if you're just interested in learning about the human body and the way our metabolism works, as well as some amazing nutrition stuff - take my advice, check it out. You'll thank me fore it!

Hey guys, it's been a while since I touched on B.E.D. and what I've been learning about it. B.E.D. is Binge Eating Disorder and while working through the excellent book "Binge No More" by Joyce D. Nash, I've been taking pages and pages of notes. I came across something tonight that might help those of you who deal with cravings (as I do.)

A craving is an intense desire of longing for a particular substance. About 70 percent of bulimics attribute their binge eating to food cravings and about 50 percent of binge eaters report cravings - usually for sugary foods.

Once we are firmly in the grips of a major food craving, it can be extremely difficult to get out of it. The key is recognizing that a major craving is coming on, and avoiding it from developing fully. Today, I want to talk about how to nip this in the bud, but first, we have to look at how a craving develops.

Advertising companies know what they are doing folks. The latest Dominos ad makes the pizza look so good you can smell the high-def scents coming through the screen. This just plants a seed. Rarely do we see the ad, and by the time it's over, we're on hold with Larry, the pizza guy. What happens more often; we see the ad, continue sitting there while that seed begins to grow.

The more we dwell on those thoughts, we start to relive the last time we had that particular food and the stronger the craving becomes. The more you relive it in your mind, the seed grows bigger and bigger. Your mouth starts to water and negative emotions begin to pile on. Eating suggest and escape, at least temporarily, from pain, boredom, anxiety, sadness and loneliness.

A craving needs to be interrupted early on, before it grows out of control. Here are some techniques that if consciously applied, can help to stop the spiral before it sucks you down with it.

Leave or Avoid The Temptation Arena

If the ad is on TV, change the channel, or get up and leave the room. The idea here is that simply doing something will help actively push your mind from the temptation to the self-discipline of doing something more constructive.

Go to the kitchen and drink a big glass or two of water or tea. Doing this will fill your stomach and give your mouth something to do while you move away from this temptation to cheat.

Remind yourself that you will be eating at the regular time. This is huge! We have talked many times about eating every 3 hours. Simply put, if it's not time to eat, you must wait. Just that in itself can be enough to help avoid a craving. You are imposing discipline on yourself, which is actually an action, which, in turn, moves you a step in the right direction, not the wrong one.

Use Thought Stopping

Thought stopping involves noticing the beginning of a craving and taking immediate action. Action doesn't always imply movement, but in this case, Mental Action. Conscious thought forced by your "right" mind that will drag your "wrong" mind along.

As soon as you start to ruminate about a certain food, tell yourself, in conscious thought, "No. Stop thinking about that. Think about __________" Fill the blank with anything you can devote 100% attention to for even a few moments. That's often how long it takes to brake this cycle.

Depress the Sensory Longing

Another way to make the thought or image or the tempting food item less compelling is to disrupt your own sense of taste or smell. Popping a strong mint, gargling with strong mouthwash, brushing your teeth, dab some cologne or strong smelling ointment under your nose work beautifully. This may sound a bit out of the box, but I assure you, I personally do this one often, and it helps nearly 100% of the time.

Remember that Cravings Pass

Use our timing system here. If you know that it's only been 2 hours since your last snack, you still have an hour to wait. Force yourself to wait. You can use that time to plan a healthy alternative to eat, then when you're done with it, you have to wait another 3 hours to eat again.
Urges fade with time. Drink a huge glass of water and force yourself to wait.

Have Alternative Activities at the Ready

Take a walk
Take a shower
Practice music
Call a friend
The key here is... DO SOMETHING! If you just sit on the couch, the craving will continue to grow, until finally, you have a weak moment, and it wins. Get up and move. Simply taking a shower has bailed me out more than once this week to be honest.

Indulge a Craving with Moderation

If you have delayed a craving and distracted yourself, you may permit yourself a single serving of the food that you are thinking of. Use portion control here!
You won't feel deprived and the measured portion is a vast improvement from a full-out binge. This may help in the long term of stopping the All-Or-Nothing approach that descends to binges.
Personally, this one doesn't work for me. It might with time, and more effort, but I have yet to control a single serving of a cheat food. This is why I don't do cheat meals, cheat snacks or cheat days.
If you're going to attempt this, follow 3 rules. First, you must have already delayed it until the next eating time. Second, you must have distracted yourself with 2 different techniques. And most importantly, you must only buy a single serving of the food that you are going to eat. No matter how much cheaper it is in a 10 pack... understand if you buy the big family size, more than likely, you will consume the whole box. If ice cream is your crutch, then buy a single small ice cream sandwich and leave the store.

Give Up Guilt

This is the hardest one for me to swallow. However, I believe it's the most important of all of them.
Eating a single brownie or occasional ice cream cone won't make you fat, but huge servings of guilt WILL.
Believing you failed due to one cheat can trigger finishing the entire box due to failure and self-loathing.
Eating one snack is NOT a sign of loss of control. Realize that and stop hating yourself.

Use the 5 D's

Delay at least 10 minutes (or I suggest until your next scheduled eating time slot).
Distract yourself by doing something active.
Distance yourself from the temptation. Leave the room and don't bring the crap into your house!
Determine how important it is for you to eat the food you're craving and how much you ACTUALLY want it.
Decide what amount is reasonable and appropriate. Eat and enjoy only that amount with no guilt.

Do the best you can and continue to take small steps in the right direction. Enough small steps forward add up to a marathon.

Yours,
Steve

This is so close to the diet I've been following for 6 months, except for the heavy carb day - I'm going to give it a shot and see how it follows. I've increased my calories from 2000 to 2500 until next weekend, then I'll go up to 3,000. I'll be nervous - I expect you guys to keep on me about eating 3k calories, I'm admitting right now that I'm scared to get fat again!

This is long and wordy - but worth the read if you're bored and want to see what I'm up to. I found it on www.Bodybuilder.com

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Cyclical Ketogenic Diet: The Best Ever Bodybuilding Diet?

By: Mark McManus

Article Summary: This diet plan will work to increase some anabolic hormones.
The plan will give you enough carbs for energy, but still burn more fat.
The negative side effects such as brain fog disappear quickly.

Cyclical Ketogenic Diet: The Best Ever Bodybuilding Diet?

What would you consider to be the perfect bodybuilding diet? If such a thing existed it would meet the following criteria:

Allow you to build muscle without accumulating fat when bulking. You'd stay lean all year round.
Allow you to lose fat without losing muscle when cutting.
Induce an increase in serum anabolic hormones naturally (without supplements).

What would it mean to you and your bodybuilding goals if this diet was not something that only existed in fairy-tales, but was available to you right now!

You may have heard of this strategy before, but dismissed it. I advise you to keep an open mind and test it for yourself, many others including Hugo Rivera have tried it with amazing results.

Origins And Method

This diet did not originate with me of course. However, because of the massive impact it had on my results, I feel compelled to share it with as many people as possible. I would like to credit the following people for their wisdom before I go any further:

o Dr. Mauro Di Pasquale
o Anthony Colpo
o Gary Taubes
o Dr. Michael Eades
o Dr. Robert Atkins
o Dr. Jeff Volek

So what is this diet? It's a Cyclical Ketogenic Diet, or CKD for short. CKD basically means that you cycle periods of low carb, high protein, and high fat with periods of high carb, high protein, and low fat.

The majority of time you will be consuming a low carb diet, with a period set aside each week for carbing-up. This isn't for the fun of it; there are real scientific reasons for this, reasons with exciting implications for the bodybuilder.

Increasing Anabolic Hormones

A diet that maximizes serum levels of growth promoting hormones is a dream come true. Specifically we're talking about:

1. Testosterone
2. Growth Hormone
3. IGF-1 (Insulin-like growth factor 1)

I'm sure that all sounds good to you. So how do you actually implement a Cyclical Ketogenic Diet?

For most of the time you will be consuming a high fat, high protein, low carb diet. This is interspersed with smaller periods of high carb, high protein, low fat nutrition. There are variations on the CKD but the standard (and my favorite) way is to implement it in the following way:

o 5-6 days of low carb.
o 1-2 days of high carb.

This gives a manageable and sociable weekly cycle where you carb up over the weekend and return to your low-carb diet during the week.

Please note: Depending on how intense you train, some people may find that their gym performance deteriorates towards the end of the low-carb phase. In this case, it is highly recommended that you implement a mid-week carb-spike to replenish your muscle glycogen stores by having another high-carb, high-protein, low-fat day on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

The Low-Carb Advantage

When you keep your carbs sufficiently low, you body switches to a fat metabolism; this is called the 'Metabolic Switch'. Switching from a carbohydrate to a fat metabolism has some real advantages for the bodybuilder:

o Increased Lipolysis (breakdown of fat)
o Decreased Lipogenesis (accumulation of body fat)

This metabolic switch usually takes around 3 days to take full effect. Synthesizing the correct enzymes in sufficient quantities to become a fat-burner takes a little time. This is why some new comers to low carb diets can feel foggy at the beginning.

Please do not confuse this short period for the whole diet; your energy will be back up in no time, and for some people, better than ever!

The Role Of Insulin

Some of you may have noted that I left out an important anabolic hormone in the above list - Insulin.

What Does Insulin Do?
Insulin is a hormone with extensive effects on both metabolism and several other body systems (eg, vascular compliance). Insulin causes most of the body's cells to take up glucose from the blood (including liver, muscle, and fat tissue cells), storing it as glycogen in the liver and muscle, and stops use of fat as an energy source. When insulin is absent (or low), glucose is not taken up by most body cells and the body begins to use fat as an energy source (ie, transfer of lipids from adipose tissue to the liver for mobilization as an energy source). As its level is a central metabolic control mechanism, its status is also used as a control signal to other body systems (such as amino acid uptake by body cells). It has several other anabolic effects throughout the body.

So when does our body produce insulin? Insulin is secreted by our pancreas primarily in response to the carbohydrates in our diet. Since we are keeping carbs low, our insulin levels will also be low. Does this mean we miss out? Not at all.

This is where the carb-up period comes in. Once a week you should load up on carbs and let your insulin levels spike. Insulin will shuttle amino acids into the muscle tissue, but we also refill our depleted muscle glycogen stores during this time.

Our muscles are like tanks for glycogen. They fill up and empty again when we workout. Unfortunately when we eat too many carbs these tanks become satiated. Some glycogen is then stored in the liver and any excess is converted to triglyceride and stored as fat. This is where traditional high-carb diets can let us down. So why fill them at all?

Muscle glycogen means better performance in the gym. We load up on it and fill our tanks. By the end of our low-carb period we have once again emptied the tanks and we repeat the cycle over again.

Growth Hormone & Insulin

These 2 hormones have a strange relationship. It seems that when one is in abundance, the other is nowhere to be found. We therefore do not want chronically elevated insulin levels as:

1. Our growth hormone production will be blunted
2. We may overspill our glycogen tanks and start to lay down fat (lipogenesis)

Fat & Testosterone

Testosterone and dietary fat have a positive correlation; i.e. diets higher in fat and dietary cholesterol lead to higher concentrations of circulating testosterone.1 We all know how important this hormone is to maximizing our lean muscle gains. You could be throwing away potential gains by consuming a low-fat diet, that goes for the ladies too.2

How Many Carbs Is Low-Carb?

In order to become a 'fat-burner', you should consume around 60 grams or less of net carbohydrate per day (total carbs minus fiber). However, in order to determine just how many carbs you personally should be consuming, a little trial and error is necessary.

The general rule is this:

Eat the smallest amount of carbs it takes to allow maximum output in the gym.

This will vary from person to person. Please bear in mind that fat will become your main source of energy and large quantities of carbs are unnecessary.

If you are unsure, try beginning at 30 grams and adjust as necessary.

What About Post-Workout Carbs?

Remember, our goal is to keep insulin low and growth hormone elevated for most of the week. Post-workout carbohydrates will therefore work against you here.

Apart from blunting growth hormone levels, carbohydrates may do nothing to increase protein synthesis in the post-workout period beyond that which protein can do by itself 3. Take the following study for example:

The following study took place in the Netherlands, the subjects being healthy young men. The study split the men into 3 groups, each ingesting different combinations of protein & carbohydrates. Therefore the only variable was the level of carbohydrate.

Each group performed resistance training for 60 minutes and was given either protein or a combination of protein and carbohydrate each hour for 6 hours after training. The amount of protein for all the groups was 0.3g per kg of bodyweight. The protein and carbs varied as follows:

o Group 1 - Just protein, no carbs
o Group 2 - Protein with 0.15 g per kg of body weight of carbohydrate
o Group 3 - Protein with 0.6 g per kg of body weight of carbohydrate

Protein synthesis rates were then measured for 6 hours after training. The results?

1. The intake of protein after training increases protein synthesis.
2. The addition of carbohydrate (whether in small or large amounts) to this protein did not further increase protein synthesis at all.

This is good news for those interested in or currently living a cyclical ketogenic lifestyle.

What To Eat

Any anabolic lifestyle is only as good as it is practical to actually live.

Perhaps you think a low-carb diet is too restrictive. Maybe you've even tried something like this before and failed because you felt that there wasn't a wide enough variety of food. This is understandable.

In order to experience the awesome benefits of this diet and also make it enjoyable, I am continually searching for recipes and concocting a few of my own. To show you just how tasty and easy it is to live this lifestyle here's a typical 1-day eating plan:

Breakfast:

o Bacon
o Whole Eggs Scrambled

Mid Morning:

Low-carb wrap filled with:
+ Tuna
+ Mayo
+ Cheese

(Low-carb tortillas can be bought in some stores and online)

Lunch:

o Caesar Salad

(With full fat sauce, no croutons)

Main Meal:

o Taco Salad

Post-Workout Shake

Low or no carbs.

Late Snack:

o Protein bar

Low Carb Concerns

When the light of science shines on the concerns some people have about low carb diets, they vanish without a trace.

Sluggish Gym performance

Once your body gets fully fat-adapted (3-14 days) this isn't a problem. Also, you fill you glycogen stores once or twice per week. Once Your Body Gets Fully Adapted Sluggishness Isn't A Problem.

Saturated Fat and Cholesterol

Is a high fat/low carb diet increasing your risk of cardiovascular disease? Not on your life! This belief is based on an unproven hypothesis from the 1950's. The surprising truth is that low carb/high-fat diets consistently outperform all others in improving lipid profiles. Typically, HDL (good) cholesterol rises, LDL (bad) cholesterol drops and triglycerides plummit, producing a much reduced risk of heart disease.

Brain Fog

This does not happen to everyone though some experience it only in the initial 'metabolic switch' period. A fat metabolism requires different enzymes to function than a carbohydrate one. Synthesizing the correct enzymes in sufficient quantities to become a fat-burner takes a little time, stick it out.

Conclusion

So there's no reason to not give this a go. Prepare for some initial water weight loss at the beginning, you'll put it back on every carb-up phase.

This could be the step you've been waiting for. Take your game to the next level!

Mark McManus

References:

1. Alteration of the Lipid Composition of Rat Testicular Plasma Membranes by Dietary (n-3) Fatty Acids Changes the Responsiveness of Leydig Cells and Testosterone Synthesis1 Elena Sebokova2, Manohar L. Garg3, Antoni Wierzbicki, Alan B. R. Thomson* and M. Thomas Clandinin4 Nutrition and Metabolism Research Group, Department of Foods & Nutrition * Department of Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2C2
2. Effect of low-fat diet on female sex hormone levels. Ingram DM, Bennett FC, Willcox D, de Klerk N.University Department of Surgery, Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre, Nedlands, Western Australia.
3. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2007 Sep;293:E833-E842
4. Weight loss with a low-carbohydrate, Mediterranean, or low-fat diet. N Engl J Med 2008 Jul 17; 359:229.
5. Krauss, Ronald, et al. "Carbohydrate, Weight Loss, and Atherogenic Dyslipidemia." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2006 May;83(5):1025-31.

OK guys! Cheating is OVER!!!!

Time to step it up! I just got off the phone with a client who finally saw the light that it's entirely possible to attend a party/function/fast food joint/whatever and enjoy it completely without cheating nutritionally!

I know this better than anyone, for those of you who read my blog about my eating disorder - it's a battle everyday - some days more than others, but it's always a battle. I'm sick of it and I'm ready to win.

The past is over. Forget it. Draw a line in the sand - NO MORE!

If you have the urge to cheat - YOU CALL ME! If I'm working or don't answer, call someone else and tell them that you're feeling the urge to cheat and eat something crappy. I promise in a 5 minute conversation, you'll feel much less (maybe not at all) like cheating. If you talk to me for 5 minutes and still want a cookie, go ahead and have it - I won't say a word. Just give me a chance!

We had a new morning fit club test run today and it went really well. One on One Core Cardio Intervals along with a Kickboxing class today. It was good - I'd like a little bit more burn next time, so I'll have to just bring it more.

My streak is 6 days today - Everyone here can make at least a week of:
1. PERFECT NUTRITION.
2. Exercise (the easy part)
3. Logging in here (the easier part)

PERFECT NUTRITION guys. Don't accept anything else.

Steve
KnightFit.com
412-735-0706

Hey guys - this is going to start my series on Binge Eating Disorder. I don't know how many of you are aware that I've struggled with this for years. It wasn't until about 2 years ago that I finally sought help and began taking steps towards ending this nightmare. Recently, (for the past 6 months or so) I've noticed that I've slowly been slipping back into some of my old habits. While still hitting all my workouts, my "cheat meals" began getting out of control and bigger and bigger.

An example of a "cheat meal" from just last week. (This was all one sitting, while watching football)

Pizza Hut Big Italiano Pizza
2 - 2 Litters of Diet Pepsi
2 Quarts of Cookie Dough Ice Cream
2 King Size Reeses Peanut Butter Cups

I'm not proud to put this out there, but for those of you who also struggle with B.E.D. (Binge Eating Disorder), I want you to know, that you're not alone.

Here's an excerpt from the book "Binge No More" by Joyce D. Nash, Ph. D.

"Binge eating is not a moral failure. Contrary to popular belief, binge eating is not the result of carbohydrate craving or an addiction to sugar or food. And it does not result from yo-yo dieting (losing and the regaining weight mulitple times). Bing eating is part of a disordered eating pattern that many qualify as an eating disorder.

Most often, binge eating is associated with bulimia nervosa, an eating disorder characterized by binge eating followed by attempts to compensate for calories consumed. Binge eating is also the central feature in a recently recognized eating disorder - B.E.D. Less well-known is the fact that many people who suffer from anorexia nervosa also binge periodically.

In addition, untold numbers of people have subclinical eating disorders - any of a number of conditions that do not meet that stringent criteria necessary to ualify for a diagnosis of anorexia or bulimia - or they are so preoccupied with food and weight that their eating behaviors are not "normal". Often they also struggle with some form of binge eating. Taken together, millions of Americans are in the grip of both a binge eating problem and disordered eating.

At any given time, tens of millions of people - more than a quarter of all adult men and half of all adult women - are dieting, even if they aren't overweight. Many see themselves as binge eaters. Of those seeking treatment for obesity, an estimated 20-50% are binge eaters. The more severely overweight a person is, the more likely it is that binge eating is a problem. Younger and younger children are also dieting, which is often a precursor to binge eating. As a result, disordered eating is reaching epidemic proportions.

Mary Ann: Mary Ann spoke tearfully. "When it comes to eating, I lose it. I have a stressful job that keeps me running all day long. When I get home at night I'm exhausted. After I get everyone's dinner, I'm ready to collapse. That's when the eating really starts. It's not hat I'm hungry. I just want to stop thinking about everything I have to do, and eating helps me do that. But I dont like how I look or feel. I don't feel like having sex anymore, and that's causing trouble in my marriage."

Does this sound familiar to anyone out there? More on this tomorrow, as I continue to learn more about myself, I'll continue to pass it along to you. Friends, you're not alone if you struggle with this. It's a long journey, but I'll be here with you until the end.

Life on the road is tougher on our bodies than we give it credit for - mostly due to what we fuel up with! I'm asked frequently how to eat well on the road - here are a couple tips.

As a disclaimer - some of these might be somewhat questionable, but the idea isn't what to eat in a perfect world, it's what to eat when you are absolutely forced to eat at a fast food, hotel, bar etc. It's not about making the best choice, it's about making the best choice of your available options.

Those of you who have been following me for a long while will know many of these things - it's worth repeating for those just coming on board.

McDonald's:
Order a Grilled Chicken Patty. It's stats are 120 cal 22g Protein/2g Carbs/2g Fat - you really can't beat this. Yes, it has some ingredients that aren't ideal - but so much better than a burger. It tastes really good too with the seasoning. It's not on the menu and many skilled employee's don't know how to ring it up, but if you're patient and kind, they'll figure it out. Usually sells for $1-$2 per patty. I'll often eat 3-4 with a knife and fork.

Fruit and Walnut Parfait. It has just 160 calories and 2 grams of fat and, without granola, 130 calories and 2 grams of fat.

Kiddie Cone is 45 calories and 1 gram of fat. You have to be sure to order this as a KIDDIE cone - they don't really even have that size, so if they give you a normal sized cone - remember it's double the calories. As far as splurges go - this is a sort of painless one. (and super good!)

I ask what's on basically everything I order now. (fast food or regular restaurant) Asking doesn't hurt anything and usually you will find something that you really shouldn't have.

Another thing that is key to remember - you almost never ever HAVE to order off the menu. The menu is usually just suggestions, but no one knows that. You can just order what you want, and if they can, they'll make it. I was just at Denny's - which might be the very most unhealthy place on earth. I couldn't find a single item on the menu that I could eat, so I just asked the waitress for a plate of grilled chicken and salsa with steamed broccoli on the side. No problem! It wasn't on the menu, but it actually was cheaper than my buddie who just ordered a burger and fries.

Subway:
This one is easy! Skip the sub and get a salad with either Turkey, Chicken or even Black Forest Ham and all the veggies you can jam in a huge bowl. The meat is processed, but still, better choice than the others. Dressing? That's where it gets complicated.

Salad Dressings:
The very best ever bet is Olive Oil and Vinegar. Healthy fats and super tasty. Some people don't like it on salads, so something I came up with to keep my fat nice and low is order lemon wedges (almost every place has them) squeeze a bunch in a bowl and mix in pepper. It's a really good dressing and basically free! Lastly, this might sound strange to you, but Soy Sauce is actually a great salad dressing. It's so potent it only takes a little bit to go a long way, and it's in tier 1 of Michi's Ladder.

ps. Is it strange that I carry a little bottle of Olive Oil in my car?

This is a good rule of thumb:

A few things to avoid:

Super sizes of anything
Fried or breaded chicken or fish
Chicken nuggets
High-fat sauces and dressings
Onion rings
Extra cheese

I only hit McD's here because you can find either a McDonalds or Subway in basically every small town in the world. If you do just a bit of googling you can easily find the nutritional info of every other place, but these are pretty good rules of thumb. However - this is not the best options!

Best Options for Road Warriors!
Make your rest stop a grocery store instead of a fast food joint! When traveling in groups, everyone can find something they like at a grocery! Convince your friends they can get all the cookies and chips and crap they want there while you go over and get some fresh fruit and grilled chicken off the salad bar!

Protein Shakes! Grab a little shaker from GNC for around $7.

This is such a life saver on the road. Just grab some ice and a bottled water and you have instant nutrition. The even better option, but a bit messier is this:

I love love love this blender! For me shakes are about 8,000,000 percent better with crushed ice and this little puppy does the job for only around $15 from Wal-Mart. This little guy is GOLD!

The very best best best option for eating on the road is this:

Shakeology is my road lifesaver, I'll have 2-3 at the ready if there are no healthy options available. When I was on tour last time, it probably saved me from gaining a couple pounds just due to eating where the guys always chose.

Sometimes you can't make the best decision, because of the options available, they all suck. So do the best you can, and never be caught unprepared. A little cooler of food can last you a long time if it's filled with good stuff!

I found this post over at BodyRock.tv and it really makes sense. As someone who majorly struggles with Emotional Eating, it's a great article. Enjoy!

---------------------------

Five Ways to Deal with Stress that Don’t Involve Food

by Mike Tennant

Let’s face it, there are many things working against those of us trying to lose weight these days. Fast food restaurants clog up the streets and gym memberships get more and more expensive by the day. Tight deadlines at work mean little time for worrying about proper nutrition during the day. And on top of that, busy family schedules make fixing a wholesome meal on a regular basis all the more difficult.

There’s also one other major underlying factor in weight gain: stress. Stress can creep in at any moment, and can be caused by almost anything in your life. Work, social events, even your family can cause stress. Not only is the stress itself harmful to your mind and body, but it can also lead to other unhealthy habits. All too often, people turn to unhealthy things like food and drink rather than dealing with the stress itself. We all know all too well just how easy it is to reach for a cheeseburger when things get tough. Of course, you’ll feel better in the short term – but the long-term ramifications are just not worth it.

Following are five simple but effective ways to battle with stress. Next time you’re feeling overwhelmed, try one out instead of reaching for that pizza menu.

Organize something. Often times clutter and disorganization in our lives – either in the physical or mental sense – is a chief contributor to stress. So to combat this stress, try organizing something or some part of your life. Whether it’s your music collection, pictures or DVDs, the act of cleaning something up and organizing it can have a soothing effect on your mind and body.

Get some sleep. Do you get seven to eight hours of sleep on a nightly basis? Chances are you don’t, which can be a contributing factor to high levels of stress. Staying well rested can help keep the mind relaxed yet focused and able to take on whatever the day may hold. Even a short nap can help on a stressful day.

Write it down. Keeping a journal is another good way to deal with stress that many don’t realize. Writing down your feelings helps you to become fully aware of them. Once you’ve done this, it’s a lot easier to figure out just what is causing you stress and then let go of these feelings so you can move on with your day.

Try some yoga. Another form of exercise, yoga stresses the importance of reconnecting your mind and body – a perfect prescription for the stressed. There are all kinds of different classes and yoga sessions, and chances are your school has its own yoga class you can try. If you’re unable to make it to a class, try some simple stretches instead. Focus on your breathing while stretching and just feel your stress float away.

Play a game. Nothing reduces stress like a quick game. Not only can it take your mind off any issues, but it’ll also help you to relax by changing your focus to something fun. Chances are you have a game or two in your closet – even a deck of cards will do. Just a short bout of fun can refresh and reenergize your mind and body. Then you’ll be ready to take on anything.

Mike Tennant is a freelance writer and self-proclaimed workout warrior from Orange County, CA. who has recently lost more than 120 lbs. thanks to proper diet, exercise and stress management. Currently Mike works for Air & Water Inc., where he helps people find the right coffee makers for their homes.

I had a question regarding how to eat 5-6 times a day instead of just 3. Here's how I explained the way I learned to do this.

I would cook a normal meal, but just divide it up into halves. For example:

Breakfast: Egg White Omelet + Fruit Cup, but have the fruit up 3 hours later.
Lunch: Whole Wheat Turkey Sandwich and Salad - save the salad till later
Dinner: Fish and a Yam - Save the Yam.

Here's a typical day for me eating according to Beachbody's 40% Protein / 40% Carbs / 20% Fat guidelines.

9am: Egg White Omelet w/Veggies
11am: Protein Shake (whey protein)
2pm: Chicken Breasts
4:30pm: Salad w/Almonds and Olive Oil Dressing
7pm: Fish
9pm: Shakeology

Depending on portion sizes, that comes out to a pretty round 40/40/20 plan.

21 Days is all I'm asking of both you and myself.

In a simple and short 21 day period, you can rip up your belly fat and get unbelievably lean by cleaning up your nutrition 100% and hitting 10 workouts a week. That's 7 regular workouts and 3 ab/core routines.

August 16-September 5th

Who wants to get in amazing shape by then? By simply drawing a line in the sand for 21 days, you will lose weight, add muscle, and best of all, establish a habit of clean living that will last longer than this 3 week challenge.

My upline coach, Barbie Decker does these on Facebook from time to time and the results people have are amazing.

Here's the catch. No cheating. None. It's time to draw a line in the sand. No more. Here are the rules. If it's too intense, then continue going at the 80/20 pace you're at now. Nothing will set you on fire like a 21 day streak though.

Workouts: 7 a week, following either a program or a set schedule. There is no *walking* outside here :) This is my schedule.

Monday: P90X Chest/Back, Abs
Tuesday: FIT CLUB cardio
Wednesday: OoO Diamond Delts, OoO Just Arms
Thursday: P90X Yoga X, Yoga Abs
Friday: OoO Plyo/Legs + Back
Saturday: FIT CLUB cardio, Abs
Sunday: X Stretch
----------------------------

PART I of II:
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT:

1. You PRESS PLAY Five or Six Times a week, depending on your program. If you miss a workout, you're out of the challenge.

If you are not doing a beachbody workout, you should aim to do 3 resistance days and 2-3 cardio days.

2. You EAT CLEAN six times a week. YOU GET ONE CHEAT MEAL PER WEEK, NOT a CHEAT DAY.
3. YOU ARE ALLOWED "ONE ADDITIONAL CHEAT SNACK" in this 20 DAY PERIOD. That means, Out of the 20 days during which you are doing the challenge, you may treat yourself to ONE CHEAT SNACK (like a cookie) in addition to your cheat meal. If you have a second cheat snack, you are out of the challenge.

NO ALCOHOL DURING CHALLENGE PERIOD. YUP!

4. You MUST report daily for the preceding day to me. You may use Facebook, Email, Texts, Gtalks, Comment on my blog or any of the other 5982734523508 ways to get in contact with me. Feel free to post comments, questions, struggles, triumphs here. :) We're in this together! www.KnightFit.com

http://www.facebook.com/stevemcknighttpt

5. You have until Tuesday morning to take your measurements AND pictures. You don't have to post them, but you do have to take them. A lot of times you won't lose pounds, but your body will change. Don't miss that event!

THE PRIZE: A NEW FIT YOU!

Are you ready?

PART II of II:
EATING CLEAN DEFINED:

EATING CLEAN RULES:

RULE 1: You eat 4 to 6 small meals per day, ideally breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, and dinner. That means that you are eating every 2 to 3 hours.

Your body needs to be fueled. Eating only breakfast, lunch, and dinner is not okay.

RULE 2: You eat at least 1250 calories (unless you are less than 5 feet tall). I am putting this down because this challenge is about eating clean and being healthy, not about starving yourself.

A few people have asked me if I eat very low calories. For the record, I eat about 1800 to 2400 calories per day these days!

RULE 3: This is more like a guideline than a rule. You follow something close to a 40% carbs, 30% protein and 30% fat diet. For those of you doing carb manipulation or following a special plan for diabetics, that's fine, too. Again, I just don't want folks to think they are eating clean if they eat 4 bowls of cereal per day. Your meals have to be balanced. The Primal Lifestyle is a little different from this - you may follow it as well.

If you need a meal plan, email me or ask your coach. If you are BB Club Member, you can print one out. It's up to you to substitute foods from Michi's Ladder.

RULE 4: This is the real challenge part: YOU EAT ONLY FROM THE TOP 2 TIERS of MICHI'S LADDER 6 DAYS A WEEK. That means that you cannot have frozen yogurt for a snack. Top 2 tiers. Period.

To See Michi's Ladder, sign on to your teambeachbody account. Go to EAT SMART Tab and you'll find it there.

If you are not a FREE BeachBody community member, go to www.beachbodycoach.com/stevemcknight FREE to join so you can have access to Michi's Ladder. I will also become your free coach.

NOTE: When I first came up with this challenge, I was afraid that it would be too restrictive. But, our results speak for themselves. That said, this is the challenge and these are the rules. If you accept to enter it, then you also accept to enter the NO WHINING ZONE!

Are you ready?

Bring it!
Steve

ps. Thank you to Barbie Decker for this great idea. I borrowed heavily from her rules and edited them slightly to adjust for some Primal ideas.

**** ADDENDUM: Shakeology, Recovery drink, protein supplements, coffee, natural almond/peanut butter, and almond milk are ALLOWED. *******

As many of you know, I've been living a Primal Blueprint nutrition lifestyle for many months now, and it works for me. Thus, there are a couple things that Beachbody allows that I personally don't. I think the recovery shake is great for you - but it's just too high carbs for me. For women, and this is MY PERSONAL OPINION, who are trying to lose weight, I would stay clear of the recovery drink. After resistance workouts I have a meal replacement shake. It can be Shakeology or another kind of meal replacement.

by STEPHANIE NANO

Both diets found to be equally effective in helping people lose weight

by STEPHANIE NANO

NEW YORK — Over the long term, a low-carb diet works just as well as a low-fat diet at taking off the pounds — and it might be better for your heart, new research suggests.

Both diets improved cholesterol in a two-year study that included intensive group counseling. But those on the low-carbohydrate diet got a bigger boost in their so-called good cholesterol, nearly twice as much as those on low-fat. In previous studies, low-carb diets have done better at weight loss at six months, but longer-term results have been mixed. And there's been a suggestion of better cholesterol from low-carb eating.

The latest test is one of the longest to compare the approaches. At the end of two years, average weight loss was the same for both — about 15 pounds or 7 percent.

The key difference was in HDL, or good cholesterol: a 23 percent increase from low-carb dieting compared to a 12 percent improvement from low-fat, said Gary Foster, director of Temple University's Center for Obesity Research and Education, who led the federally funded study. He said the low-carb boost is the kind one might get from medicines that improve HDL. "For a diet, that's pretty impressive," Foster said.

The findings, published in Tuesday's Annals of Internal Medicine, are based on a study of 307 adults, two-thirds of them women. Participants were obese but didn't have cholesterol problems or diabetes.
Half followed a low-carb diet modeled after the Atkins' plan and half went on a low-calorie, low-fat diet. All attended group sessions to help them change bad eating habits, get more active and stick to their diets. The volunteers had periodic checks of their weight, blood, bone density and body composition. After two years, there was no major differences between diet groups, except in good cholesterol. Why the low-carb diet had a bigger effect on good cholesterol isn't known, the researchers said.

As low-carb plans became popular, experts feared the diet would drive up the risk of heart disease because it allows more fat. The latest results suggest those concerns are unfounded, Foster said. In the low-carb group, there was an early rise in "bad" cholesterol, the kind that builds up in arteries. But after two years, both groups ended up with similar improvements to bad cholesterol.

The study's strengths include its size, length and its multiple locations — Denver, Philadelphia and St. Louis, said Dr. William Yancy, of the Durham VA Medical Center in North Carolina. "These are results we should have a lot of confidence in," said Yancy, who has done similar diet research but was not involved in the study.

Foster, the study leader, said dieters should be less concerned about which diet to use, and focus on finding the support or technique — like writing down what they eat — that keeps them on track.
"It doesn't make a difference for weight loss how you get there," he said.
With the current obesity epidemic, more than one way is needed to attack the problem, Yancy said.
"Both of these are options. These diets work," he said.

Happy Monday folks!

It's that time again already - a week has gone by and some really exciting stuff has happened. First, I want to welcome all the new folks to the team - for those of you who have been here for a while, I wanted to mention the redesign of the website. I'm trying to make it a bit more friendly for everyone to check in, bounce ideas around and in general stay motivated!

Last week was a dreaded recovery week for me and I can't even explain how happy I am that it's over! I like the yoga and easier cardio, but I LOVE to lift hard and get my extreme cardio sweat going more! I'm sitting here at my desk enjoying some Shakeology and 12 ounces of lean steak for my 4th meal of the day (I've given up on the terms breakfast, lunch and dinner, since I typically eat 5-8 meals a day now!) and thinking about what to talk about.

This week, I've gotten more questions about nutrition than I have in a really long time, so it's time to really dive into the nuts and bolts. As a bunch of you know, I've been eating in a Primal Blueprint lifestyle for the past 3 months, but as that's still fairly new to me, I'm going to really talk about the Beachbody P90X nutrition plan.

I've never been a huge fan of the nutrition book. I know many of my clients who totally love it, and it works for them. I think all the food in there is great, but the reality is of my life, I live alone and cook some really basic stuff. I don't mind an ingredient list that is often only 2 items long. A very typical day for me on the P90X plan would be something like this.... (I'm copying this from my account from a random day in MyFitnessPal.com)

9am: Egg White Omelet with 1 slice of cheese + fruit cup

11am: Protein Bar

2pm: McDonald's Grilled Chicken Patty (3)

5pm: 2 Grilled Chicken Breast, Broccoli and 2 Slices of Cheese (BBQ sauce)

8pm: Protein Shake

10pm: Apple (2), Chicken Soup

My total calories were 1954, 247g Protein / 144g Carbs / 32g Fat

Honestly, I eat so much better now - that was about a year ago, just for an example. I have all my clients use MyFitnessPal.com to log in every bite of food they put in their bodies. If not forever, at least for a while to get used to it. It is crucial to know what food “costs” before you eat it.

It seems the emphasis today is almost all on calories in vs. calories out. I've read a hundred times, that if the calories in are less than the calories out, you will lose weight. Well. Sort of. Losing weight just isn't enough for most of us. We want to fundamentally change our body composition. That is the key - and that's why P90X and Beachbody work, where every other DVD workout system fails. The nutritional support behind this comes from calories yes, but even more from the actual macro-nutrient break down of your food.

Let me explain. The macro-nutrients are Protein, Carbs, and Fat. These are the things that we hear about so often, but many people don't really know what is what. Here's a simple break down.

Protein:
Beef, Egg Whites, Chicken, Turkey, Whey Protein Shakes, Cheese

Carbs:
Veggies, Fruit, Bread, Pasta, Processed Crap

Fat:
Oils, Nuts, Sweets, Processed Crap

The P90X guide (which works for all the programs - but it's the one I use with my clients) calls for a 3 phase nutrition plan, to go along with the 3 phase workout calendar.

Phase One:
50% Protein / 30% Carbs / 20% Fat

Phase Two:
40% Protein / 40% Carbs / 20% Fat

Phase Three
20% Protein / 60% Carbs / 20% Fat

Personally, I did Phase 1 for a month, then was so happy with my results, I moved to phase two and just stayed there for about a year. The reality is, in western culture we don't eat enough protein. If you haven't tried it yet, getting 50% of your diet from protein is very difficult at first, it takes serious practice!

No one ever has issues getting enough carbs and fat, as they are so easy to add to any meal, but the protein.... well, here's a list of stuff I eat.

Pork Chops
Steak
Egg Whites (often with 1 or 2 whole eggs)
Turkey Breast
Chicken Breast (by the dozen. Seriously)
Lunch Meat (just watch sodium)
Whey Protein Shakes - this is key at first, while you learn real food to eat!
Fish
Turkey Sausage/Bacon - both lower in fat than beef
Cottage Cheese
Tofu
Tuna
Shakeology (even protein to carb ratio)

Should be enough to keep you busy for a while. In MyFitnessPal.com you can easily change the settings to your desired macro-nutrient levels. My Home → Goals → Change Goals → Custom → 40% Protein 40% Carbs 20% Fat for example.

For help on your desired number of calories, the easiest thing is to just email me with your stats:

Age/Sex/Height/Weight/Activity Level - not including exercise

I'll plug those numbers in to Team Beachbody and get right back to you. For Club Team Beachbody members, you can do this yourself in the Nutrition tab and it will give you meal selections for 5 meals a day (including 2 snacks) and recipes for all of them. Also, you can set up all your meals for the week, then simply click the new Grocery List tab and it will generate all the groceries you'll need for the week's meals.

Remember, the paid Team Beachbody Members get a 10% discount on all Beachbody products as well.

This is going to be day one of my fitness article review and comments. I read so many different articles on the net about differing views on health/fitness/nutrition/lifestyle etc. Again - my qualifications to comment on this are my personal training certification, my experiences as a Beachbody coach, but more than anything, my experiences as a former fat guy, turned fit machine. I'm not a doctor.

This article can be found at http://www.allfitnews.com/diet-tips/avoid-these-five-common-weight-loss-mistakes/?utm_source=FitnessTips&utm_medium=twitter

Avoid these five common weight loss mistakes

Mistake #1: Not changing your calorie plan as you lose weight. The fallacy of the “1200 calorie diet” plans and the like.

Most people fix their calorie intake to a given number and expect to lose weight at the same constant rate over a period of weeks. hence, dieters look for 1000 calorie or 1800 calorie diet plans on the internet. The fixed calorie diet plans don’t work. if you burn 3000 calories a day at the start of a diet, after a week or two of losing some weight, you are no longer burning 3000 calories. Now you might be burning 2800 calories. if you fix your calorie intake in the face of a decreasing calorie expenditure, your weight loss will slow down more and more as you lose weight. If you want to lose weight at a constant rate, you must repeatedly:
decrease your calorie intake to accommodate the calorie expenditure dropincrease your calorie output by exercising more do both.

I would like to note that you must set realistic slow weight loss goals. if you go for fast weight loss you would not be able to sustain it for a long period unless you go extreme in the calorie reduction and exercise a lot. For people who have to lose more than 20 pounds (10kgs), the goal should be a loss of no more than 2 pounds or 1 kg per week. People who need to lose just a bit of weight should go for weight loss of 1 pound or half a kilogram per week.

Why does my calorie expenditure drop as I lose weight? The most important factors are:you weight less. A smaller body burns less calories both at rest and while activeYou may involuntarily burn fewer calories. Dieters often lack energy and move lessCalorie restriction suppresses the metabolic rateYou have less body fat, which may further suppress your metabolic rate

These major factors contribute to an ever-decreasing energy expenditure as one loses weight. The more a dieter cuts calories, the bigger the calorie expenditure drop. The leaner the dieter, the greater the calorie expenditure drop.

Now you must understand that if you want to succeed in losing weight, you have to make changes in your nutrition plan. I recommend burning more calories, because being more active facilitates smaller calorie restriction and milder calorie expenditure drop.

It is very difficult to estimate the rate of the metabolic drop. Here is the general rule: the bigger you are, the smaller the rate of the metabolic drop. The more weight you lose, the more you have to cut calories or increase exercise. if you are overweight you might need to cut just 10 more calories for every lost pound, while if you are lean you might have to cut 60 calories for every pound lost. I picked these numbers just as an example.

While this is certainly sound and good advice, it could easily be taken to a terrible extreme. Far too many "dieters" (love that term) don't count anything but calories. It sedems that the vast majority of diets are extremely carb heavy and result in dropping muscle as well as fat.

If you're working out, lifting weights, not just chronic cardio, then you will be adding muscle, which consumes more energy daily than fat does, thus the numbers can skew a bit off to one side. While of course, maintaing the same flat calories doesn't work while shedding 100 pounds of excess fat, the ratio changes.

Log your food people!

Mistake #2: Overreporting the “extra” calorie expenditure of exercise
Most people count the calories they spend exercising as “extra” calories. There is a difference between calories burned while exercising and “extra” calories burned exercising. Here is an example: you burn 300 calories on the treadmill instead of your usual activity (watching TV at home); in reality, you have to subtract the calories you would have spent watching TV from these 300 calories to calculate how many additional calories you burned. Let’s say that watching TV, you would have burned 80 calories. In this specific case, you have expended 300 calories while exercising, and 220 “extra” calories.
Calorie counters mindlessly add the calories burned exercising as “extra” and in some cases, this practice can significantly influence the calorie calculations. hence, calorie software counts the part of your usual activities that overlaps with the extra activities twice.

Love this part! I am always telling my clients, coaches, customers and friends about this one. Most calorie counters are so far off it's ridicules. They add in the calories that you would be burning sitting on the couch and people thus over eat to compensate. GRRRRR!!!! If you're in a weight loss mode - always err on the side of underestimating your calories burned. Never trust the numbers on an elliptical machine - it has no idea what kind of cardiovascular shape you're in, what your perceived level of exertion is, and honestly, they rarely have a good idea of what your heart rate is.

How to estimate the “extra” calories burned exercising?
In order to make the calculations more accurate, I shall first introduce the concept of MET values. MET values are a convenient way to calculate the calorie cost of activities. MET values are multiples of the resting energy expenditure per time. In plain English, a MET = 3 means burning 3 times more calories than resting. A MET = 1 signifies how many calories you burn at rest (your Resting Metabolic Rate or Basal Metabolic Rate). whatever you do, you burn calories at a rate of at least MET = 1 with the only exception being sleeping which has MET = 0.9. During the day, most activities include sitting and walking which have MET values between 1.2 and 3. Your total daily energy expenditure is calculated by multiplying your Resting Metabolic Rate by the average MET of all your activities. is your head spinning?

This is complicated but hang in there...

Let’s use a real world example. Consider a female person with a Resting Metabolic Rate of 1200 calories a day. one day has 1440 minutes. our example lady is burning 1200/1440 = 0.84 calories per minute at rest, which signifies a MET = 1. Let’s say our example woman just returned from an aerobics class, where she exercised for 30 minutes. General aerobic class training has a MET = 6. our example lady has just burned 30 (minutes) x 6 (MET) * 0.84 (calories per minute) = 151 calories while exercising. Suppose our lady would have chatted on the internet instead of exercising (MET = 1.5). In this example, the woman substituted chatting on the internet with aerobic exercising. Remember, that every time you do something you substitute one activity for another. In order to get the extra calories, we have to subtract 1.5 (chatting) from 6 (exercising). Now let’s calculate the extra calories: 30 (minutes) * (6 – 1.5) (MET value) * 0.84 = 113 calories.

Let’s consider what a standard calorie counter would have done. First, it will assume an average calorie burn rate of 1 calorie per minute. then the counter will find that exercising for 30 minutes will yield 30 (minutes) * 6 (MET) * 1 (calories per minute) = 180 calories. The calorie counter will add these 180 calories to your daily expenditure without considering that a part of these 180 calories is already accounted by your usual activities.
Do you now see the difference between 113 calories and 180 calories? if that woman spends 5 hours a week in that aerobics class, the standard calorie counters will overreport her calorie output by: (180-113) * 10 = 670 calories a week. The woman will be fooled that her metabolic rate has dropped while she just overestimated her calorie expenditure. Enter weight loss plateau, wasted time and efforts. do you have the time for trial and error calorie estimations?

Remember these two rules:
Report only extra activities to your calorie counter. if your walk to your office every day, do not log “walking to office for 30 minutes” as an extra activity. Consider only unusual activities that contribute to extra expended calories! Always subtract the calories you would have burned instead of exercising. A general rule is to subtract from 1.2 to 1.5 from the MET values. In some cases, you need to subtract a greater MET. if you substitute 30 minutes of bodybuilding (MET = 6) for 30 minutes of slow jump rope (MET = then the additional MET would be 8 – 6 = 2.
How to find the MET values of activities based on standard tables?
In order to make the above calculations, you need to know the MET values of activities. Standard tables give: name of activity, duration and calories. Standard tables assume an average calorie expenditure of one calorie per minute. To find the MET you just need to divide the calories by the duration.
Example: “Bicycling, stationary, general”, “20 minutes”, “140 calories”MET of “Bicycling, stationary, general” = 140 / 20 = 7
I know these calculations are somewhat tedious and in many cases the standard calorie calculations are close to correct. However, in some cases they can significantly over or under-calculate the calorie expenditure of activities and compromise your weight loss plan with daily miscalculations.

SHHEEEEEEEEEEESH!!! I know! I know! That's a mouthful. But seriously - so many people over estimate exercise calories burned it's amazing. My simple rule of thumb for exercising is 2/3 of the number that a machine tells me I burned. It's not super accurate, but I would always rather underestimate than over. If I'm working really hard, I think about 100 calories per 10 minutes of work. We're not talking jogging here, we're talking HIIT Intervals or Insanity workouts.

Mistake #3: Training with light weights and lots of reps
I have seen countless number of ladies come to the gym, get the lightest possible dumbbells, crank out some hundreds of reps and go home. Most often, these women do not get the results they want. The problem with this type of training is that it does not burn many “extra” calories unless you spend a considerable amount of time in the gym. Hefting Ken and Barbie weights in the gym has a MET value of 3, which means that it burns 3 times more calories than resting in bed. Almost anything you do during the day has a MET value of 1.2 to 2. Browsing the internet on your computer has a MET value of 1.5. Realize that almost anything you do during the day (average MET = 1.5) has about 50% overlap in calorie expenditure with training with very light weights (MET = 3). if you pump super light dumbbells in the gym, only about half of the calories burned are “additional”.

WOW! YES! (I'm starting to really love this guy!) Women lift too light. Yes, ladies, not all women, I know - but after working with many female clients, I see over and over them pick up an 8 pound dumbbell for bicep curls and do 30-40 reps, then stop basically when bored, not because they're wasted.

Ladies! Listen! It takes a long long long long long time of perfect diet and lifting heavy to "bulk up!" Put down the 8 pound dumbbell and pick something heavier up. It won't kill you - you won't turn in to Arnold - you won't start bench press your weakling husband.

While I was just typing this, a tweet came up with a link to "bulking up your penis, gentlemen...." sigh...

Tony Horton says, "Too many people stop long before they should." All of my clients have done this. My proof?

Each time I have a client do max reps push-ups - I tell them, "I want you to go to failure, go until you can not get back up." More often than not, the client will drop and do a set of 8-10 push-ups then get up, saying that's all the can do. EVERY SINGLE TIME, I have them get back down and do 5 more.

You know what? EVERY SINGLE TIME, they can. Pick up the heavy weights, do a few more reps, don't stop until you can't go any more! (for real)

Of course, you can burn a considerable amount of extra calories training with light weights but you have to really extend the duration of this type of training. Curling 5 pound dumbbells for 4 sets of 20 reps and chit-chatting for 20 minutes in the gym is not going to burn many extra calories.
Remember the rule: the less intensive the activity (smaller MET), the greater the calorie expenditure overlap with casual activities; the less intensive the activity, the more time you have to spend doing it to expend a good deal of extra calories. Always subtract a MET of 1 to 1.5 to arrive at the additional expended calories.

Mistake #4: using “average person” calorie estimations
You can find all kinds of tables showing the calorie cost of different physical activities on the internet. These tables don’t show your calorie expenditure. they actually tell you the calorie expenditure of an “average person”. These tables assume you are an average person that burns one calorie per minute at rest. Yes, we covered this in the first part of the article and it needs repeating. Most men burn more than one calorie per minute and most smaller women burn less than one calorie per minute at rest. In reality, these standard tables overestimate the calorie expenditure of smaller people and underestimate the calorie expenditure of bigger than average people. Combine this with the common mistake of counting all burned calories as “additional calories” and you have a wide range of possible miscalculations.

Very short here... UNDERESTIMATE - don't overestimate peeps. You'll be a lot happier.

Mistake #5: Going on very low calorie diets (VLCD)
Research has shown little to no difference in the weight loss rate of 1200 calorie diets and 800 calorie diets. The 1200 calorie threshold is the point where further calorie restriction does not yield faster results. Diets in the range of 800 to 1200 calories a day suppress the resting metabolic rate from the very first day and after some weeks on these diets, the metabolic rate has dropped by up to 20%. this metabolic drop is just a consequence of the calorie restriction factor; other factors such as the level of leanness may further depress the calorie expenditure.
A big percentage of the quick initial weight loss on a VLCD is water. VLCDs create an illusion of fast fat loss, while in reality most of the weight loss is water. it is hard to continue a very low calorie diet for a prolonged time because the harsh calorie restriction makes you hungrier than ever. People on VLCDs often lack energy and move very little. When you stop the diet, you are prone to instant overeating. Eating a very low calorie diet is the ticket to yo-yo dieting.
Instead of using very low calorie diets, I recommend diets with a mild calorie restriction and an emphasis on exercise. Overweight people who know what they are doing can employ VLCDs for a limited time. it is important to get enough vitamins and minerals from supplements, because such low calorie diets are woefully inadequate in nutrients. Water intake should be high.
Bodybuilders, powerlifters and athletes must stay away from very low calorie diets because the large calorie restriction causes a greater proportion of the weight loss to be muscle loss.

Without getting deeply into it, this is what the folks at Beachbody call starvation mode. There is a lot out there, and so many people (women in particular) seem to eat under 1k calories far too often as a short cut to losing weight. It doesn't work, it hurts you in the long run. Yo-Yo dieting is built on this idea. Eat your food - keep it clean and track your nutrition. This article talks so much about just calories without getting into the more important macro-nutrients, however, big picture, I love it.

The biggest problem I see in overweight people is the last mistake, too low calories. It leads to binges and muscle loss - which in turn leads to lower metabolism so when you binge, the weight comes on even faster. I'm a notorious binger and will post a lot more about that in the future.

If you want to automate these complicated calorie calculations, try our training and nutrition software Fitness Assistant FREE for 30 days. Get your trial copy at Fitness Assistant – nutrition and weight loss software
Hristo Hristov is the owner of X3MSoftware, a company specializing in developing training and nutrition software. Hristo has a degree in Computer Science and passion for powerlifting. In his spare time, Hristo gives training and nutrition consultations.

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Tuesday, April 26, 2011

I was doing some research on Leptin tonight and came across this very well written article by celticcavegirl over at cavemanforum.com - I think it's well said and short enough for a quick read.

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