Regardless of your exercise, feeding your body nothing but colourised, flavourised, preservatised, nutrient drained processed foods will probably make you sick and fat irrespective of your calorie intake. That is why the biggest, fattest people to walk into Biologic Labs are never big calorie consumers; they are completely malnourished by ‘fast food’; and full of ‘pollution’. That is why Milton Spurlock got so fat and so sick in the movie, ‘Supersize Me’. He wouldnt have gotten that sick and that fat from the same calories of organic rice and almonds! The ‘calories’ weren’t the issue!
It is ridiculous to expect your body to look and perform the same regardless of the quality of your nutrition. Tim Tams do not compare to organic eggs for nutrient supply nor the body that results; even if the calories are the same! Neither does KFC compare with free-range chicken breast and rice!
Our bodies are designed to change in order to keep us alive despite all the dumb things we do! If you feed it a leaf of lettuce per day and tell it to run for 6 hours per day, it will adjust to become able to do that; or until it falls over dead. Your body doesn’t need to burn fat to find fuel. It can just stop using fuel that should be used to keep you healthy! So adaptations to starvation and overtraining might involve losing weight. Or they might not. Either way, the response will not be a mechanical reduction in stored fuel; it will be an adaptation to your actions and therefore probably not all what you expected!
The smart option is to use the adaptive nature of your body positively. Rather than trying to “waste away the body you hate”, work to “build the body you want”. Looking strong/‘athletic’ and healthy is a function of BEING strong/‘athletic’ and healthy! That means quality nutrition and quality strength exercise. Not starving on a treadmill!
The positive adaptations - ie those changes your body makes to itself to yield an improvement in physical ability and capacity - require a range of resources (ie nutrients) from food, to meet the needs of your training. Some resources (nutrients) are absolutely critical; others are highly significant; others are just nice to have. If you can find and feed your body ONLY the perfect balance of critical, significant and nice-to-have resources, you will watch yourself transform rapidly and positively in the direction your exercise stresses require it. And you will ultimately be able to improve your body to an extraordinary extent. Basically, your body will adapt to become a physical manifestation of its purpose and environment. If your purpose becomes pure strength and your environment is richly nourishing, your body will reflect it with low bodyfat and taut muscularity. It would be ridiculous to expect a replication of such bodily perfection with a baron diet combined with soulless, purposeless exercise (eg ‘cardio’)!
For most people, even small deviations from perfect dietary nirvana results in massive slow-downs to their adaptive changes and a pronounced ceiling to their body and training progress. Those deviations often seem so ridiculous and so insignificant that they could not possibly matter. But when they do, they just do! How you feel about it - how unfair it seems - doesnt change the reality.
For example, it is typical to see an almost complete stop to fat loss in our clients who add pre-made sauces to their meals. Even diet soft-drinks significantly stunt positive body change. Our clients who regularly eat out - even when they order plain meals - never achieve even 1/4 of the fat loss of our clients who prepare the exact same food in the exact same way, everyday. I cannot tell you why this seems to consistently occur? But the simple answer is: the price of that dietary ‘variety’ and ‘lifestyle’ is a buffer of bodyfat to make up for the nutritional inconsistencies!
The fact is, any food that your body cannot use for a positive purpose is pollution. And one of the worst things about a polluted environment is that it cannot even benefit from beneficial resources. The pollution just seems to have a way of screwing everything up!
The pollution you eat is stored (as fat) and/or uses quality resources to process and ‘clean up’ after. Either way, its a “double whammy”. You got fat AND the food that WOULD have been used for productive ends, won’t be.
So no matter how you or anybody tries to justify that tasty Pizza Hut pizza or Cold Rock ice cream, it IS garbage, its going to make you fat and its going to do nothing positive for you! And counting the calories just does not make the slightest bit of difference to that!
In closing, consider this quote from Jim Rohn: “We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment”. Thats your diet!
Wednesday 28 April 2010
The Great "Calorie Balance" Swindle
We’ve all heard the ‘Energy Balance Equation’ (or ‘Calorie Balance Equation’). You know the one: “energy in - energy out = weight gain or loss”. Every single piece of fat loss and muscle building advice you read comes back to this simple equation. And yet despite its simplicity and popularity, in the real World, it never works as planned or expected!
Technically, the energy balance equation is 100% accurate and true! The equation is rooted in the laws of thermodynamics: “energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only change form”. So to argue against the truth of the ‘energy balance equation’ is to argue against the nature of the Universe. However you position your argument, you are wrong! Lyle McDonald offers a great explanation of the equations perfection here on his website
Truth and accuracy, however, does not make an equation useful or relevant. Consider the algebraic equation: A+B = A+B. It is 100% true and accurate. It is also entirely redundant. You cannot use it for anything because it cannot help you calculate either ‘A’ or ‘B’. And an equation that cannot be used to calculate or predict something is, by definition, useless.
And thats the issue with the ‘energy balance equation’. The only interest any fat (or skinny), non-physicist might have with the Energy Balance Equation is to PREDICT a change in bodyweight from diet and exercise. And for this purpose, the equation is completely and utterly useless! For proof of this, have a read through the plethora of respected research articles here at PubMed. Its really no secret that you cannot use the Energy Balance equation to reliably predict future weight gain or loss!
At Biologic Labs, to help our overweight clients lose weight, we typically feed them MORE calories than they were eating before! In fact, we feed them a LOT more! And generally, the more quality nutrition that we feed them, the more weight they lose; all of it from fat! And all with only 2-3 workouts per week and zero cardio.
According to the energy balance equation, increasing calories should ALWAYS cause weight GAIN; and yet, successful trainers can consistently increase calories to cause quality fat-weight loss. The difference is in the QUALITY of what is being consumed.
The reason this occurs is quite simple: your body is an adaptive organism. Read that again:
YOUR BODY IS AN ADAPTIVE ORGANISM!
This is the most critical point to understand about your body. It is NOT a machine! It doesn’t burn a fixed number of “kilometers-per-litre” of fuel. Take less energy in, and your body adapts by expending less energy out. Perform an activity for the purpose of burning energy and your body adapts by becoming more energy efficient; it begins to use less energy for that activity. And your body is almost infinitely adaptable in both of these regards. You absolutely cannot win against it!
But more importantly, your body uses the nutrients you feed it to manifest physical changes in itself to better fit the purpose for which you use it.
Read that one again too:
Your body
uses the nutrients you feed it
to manifest physical changes in itself
to better fit the purpose for which you use it.
Did you get all that? Let me break it down into its 3 essential parts:
Your body is literally comprised of the nutrients you feed it! Your liver isn’t made of ‘calories’! Your heart isn’t made of calories! Your muscles aren’t made of calories! They are all made of complex protein and lipid structures while functioning on a constant supply of dietary elements. Regardless of how many CALORIES you eat, if you don’t supply the necessary components to proper bodily functioning and repair, then your body won’t function or repair properly!!!
Your body manifests changes in itself. Your body constantly builds-up and breaks-down physical tissue as part of its ongoing maintenance. Any net changes in your form are always the net result of BILLIONS of biochemical processes constantly taking place. Basing your actions on assumptions you make about just 1 or 2 biochemical reactions will ensure you fail!
Your body changes to better fit its purpose. Or, as the Bulgarian Olympic Lifting Coaches used to say: “the body becomes its function”. So if your bodies function is to lift ludicrously heavy weights, then it will try to become muscular. If your bodies function is to run fast for 6 hours per day, it will try to become light and lean. Your supply of the nutrients necessary for the adaptations determines whether your body will succeed. And, of course, if your purpose is to sit at a desk all day and occasionally shuffle on a treadmill for 30 minutes, your body will try to become a lump of fat; and it will probably succeed.
The point of all of this is that the Energy Balance Equation is almost completely irrelevant in the pursuit of a great body. Nutrient supply matching your physical purpose is the key! If your physical purpose doesnt require the body you want and/or your diet doesnt supply ONLY the nutrients necessary to look that way, then you won’t have the body you want! Its obvious, really.
Technically, the energy balance equation is 100% accurate and true! The equation is rooted in the laws of thermodynamics: “energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only change form”. So to argue against the truth of the ‘energy balance equation’ is to argue against the nature of the Universe. However you position your argument, you are wrong! Lyle McDonald offers a great explanation of the equations perfection here on his website
Truth and accuracy, however, does not make an equation useful or relevant. Consider the algebraic equation: A+B = A+B. It is 100% true and accurate. It is also entirely redundant. You cannot use it for anything because it cannot help you calculate either ‘A’ or ‘B’. And an equation that cannot be used to calculate or predict something is, by definition, useless.
And thats the issue with the ‘energy balance equation’. The only interest any fat (or skinny), non-physicist might have with the Energy Balance Equation is to PREDICT a change in bodyweight from diet and exercise. And for this purpose, the equation is completely and utterly useless! For proof of this, have a read through the plethora of respected research articles here at PubMed. Its really no secret that you cannot use the Energy Balance equation to reliably predict future weight gain or loss!
At Biologic Labs, to help our overweight clients lose weight, we typically feed them MORE calories than they were eating before! In fact, we feed them a LOT more! And generally, the more quality nutrition that we feed them, the more weight they lose; all of it from fat! And all with only 2-3 workouts per week and zero cardio.
According to the energy balance equation, increasing calories should ALWAYS cause weight GAIN; and yet, successful trainers can consistently increase calories to cause quality fat-weight loss. The difference is in the QUALITY of what is being consumed.
The reason this occurs is quite simple: your body is an adaptive organism. Read that again:
YOUR BODY IS AN ADAPTIVE ORGANISM!
This is the most critical point to understand about your body. It is NOT a machine! It doesn’t burn a fixed number of “kilometers-per-litre” of fuel. Take less energy in, and your body adapts by expending less energy out. Perform an activity for the purpose of burning energy and your body adapts by becoming more energy efficient; it begins to use less energy for that activity. And your body is almost infinitely adaptable in both of these regards. You absolutely cannot win against it!
But more importantly, your body uses the nutrients you feed it to manifest physical changes in itself to better fit the purpose for which you use it.
Read that one again too:
Your body
uses the nutrients you feed it
to manifest physical changes in itself
to better fit the purpose for which you use it.
Did you get all that? Let me break it down into its 3 essential parts:
The point of all of this is that the Energy Balance Equation is almost completely irrelevant in the pursuit of a great body. Nutrient supply matching your physical purpose is the key! If your physical purpose doesnt require the body you want and/or your diet doesnt supply ONLY the nutrients necessary to look that way, then you won’t have the body you want! Its obvious, really.
Saturday 24 April 2010
BIA Scales & Bodyfat
A lot of gyms use BIA Scales or devices for measuring bodyfat. They are considered more accurate than doing skinfold tests with a caliper because there is no skill required of the tester. But does that mean they accurately measure bodyfat?
A few years ago I was DEXA scanned, callipered and BIA tested with both a set of BIA scales and a 6-electrode BIA device; all on the same day.
The calipers and DEXA scan both measured me at 8%. The BIA scales put me at 30% before they switched to 'athlete mode' whereby I was 20% bodyfat!
That day, I was the only man on the planet with clearly defined abs at 20% bodyfat!
The tester argued that BIA devices are good; they just don't cater to people like myself with exaggerated muscular development. She then said that all that was needed was an equation based on people like me and then the BIA test would be accurate.
Translation: BIA devices are extremely accurate for measuring bodyfat so long as you already know your bodyfat to begin with.
Translation translated: BIA devices are as useful as a broken compass in a magnet factory during an electrical storm! You should never, EVER base any decisions on their readings!
A few years ago I was DEXA scanned, callipered and BIA tested with both a set of BIA scales and a 6-electrode BIA device; all on the same day.
The calipers and DEXA scan both measured me at 8%. The BIA scales put me at 30% before they switched to 'athlete mode' whereby I was 20% bodyfat!
That day, I was the only man on the planet with clearly defined abs at 20% bodyfat!
The tester argued that BIA devices are good; they just don't cater to people like myself with exaggerated muscular development. She then said that all that was needed was an equation based on people like me and then the BIA test would be accurate.
Translation: BIA devices are extremely accurate for measuring bodyfat so long as you already know your bodyfat to begin with.
Translation translated: BIA devices are as useful as a broken compass in a magnet factory during an electrical storm! You should never, EVER base any decisions on their readings!
Thursday 22 April 2010
The Meaning of 'Fitness'
“What is Fitness”?
Greg Glassman asks this excellent question in a recent CrossFit journal. He highlights triathlete Mark Allen as one of the many endurance athletes bestowed with the title ‘fittest man on earth’; despite the fact that Mark would be “crushed” by countless athletes on any measure of strength.
So is strength not an attribute of ‘fitness’. Is a strength athlete less ‘fit’ than a weak endurance athlete? I believe the answer is simpler than that.
‘Fit’ is a synonym for ‘suitable’. If your car is “fit to drive” it means that it should be able to get you to your destination. It should be ‘suitable’ for achieving its basest utility.
And that is what ‘fit’ means in the human context. It means your body should be capable of fulfilling its basest utility, without breaking down.
‘General fitness’ is the human equivalent of a 30 year old car with 200,000km on the clock. It might look like garbage, it might sound like garbage, it might move like garbage, but it should be able to get the job done, so long as ‘the job’ isn’t too strenuous. Its certainly nothing to be proud of and its definitely not something to aspire to!
And that is why ‘Fitness Trainers’ prescribe rehabilitation exercises to able-bodied people. Treadmills, swiss balls, therabands, sit-ups, step-ups, calisthenics etc help people maintain 'the minimum physical capacity to avoid injury'. ie Fitness!
So, just as a pair of jeans that 'fit' don't necessarily make you look very good, ‘Fitness’ training won’t give you a good body. It won’t make you ‘lean’ or ‘muscular’. It won’t even make you any sort of athlete.
‘Fitness’ is training to be the least you can be!
Greg Glassman asks this excellent question in a recent CrossFit journal. He highlights triathlete Mark Allen as one of the many endurance athletes bestowed with the title ‘fittest man on earth’; despite the fact that Mark would be “crushed” by countless athletes on any measure of strength.
So is strength not an attribute of ‘fitness’. Is a strength athlete less ‘fit’ than a weak endurance athlete? I believe the answer is simpler than that.
‘Fit’ is a synonym for ‘suitable’. If your car is “fit to drive” it means that it should be able to get you to your destination. It should be ‘suitable’ for achieving its basest utility.
And that is what ‘fit’ means in the human context. It means your body should be capable of fulfilling its basest utility, without breaking down.
‘General fitness’ is the human equivalent of a 30 year old car with 200,000km on the clock. It might look like garbage, it might sound like garbage, it might move like garbage, but it should be able to get the job done, so long as ‘the job’ isn’t too strenuous. Its certainly nothing to be proud of and its definitely not something to aspire to!
And that is why ‘Fitness Trainers’ prescribe rehabilitation exercises to able-bodied people. Treadmills, swiss balls, therabands, sit-ups, step-ups, calisthenics etc help people maintain 'the minimum physical capacity to avoid injury'. ie Fitness!
So, just as a pair of jeans that 'fit' don't necessarily make you look very good, ‘Fitness’ training won’t give you a good body. It won’t make you ‘lean’ or ‘muscular’. It won’t even make you any sort of athlete.
‘Fitness’ is training to be the least you can be!
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