The latest Adonis Index and Venus Index contest winners have just been announced and the pictures blew me away. Check them out if you haven’t already.

Adonis Index Contest Winners PIX

Clipped from: www.adonisindex.com (share this clip)

Venus Index Contest Winners PIX

Clipped from: www.venusindex.com (share this clip)

Congrats to all the winners.

This is what it’s all about. Setting a goal, and then doing what it takes to achieve that goal. The results speak for themselves.

Our next contest starts in January 2012 and the competition is just going to get better and better.

John

Believe it or not we still don’t have a complete picture of how muscles grow. Brad Pilon has recently put together some research on a new theory that might help explain how muscles grow and why we can’t continue to grow indefinitely.

In general the theory is about chronic vs acute inflammation. Namely, acute intermittent inflammation from working out is good and helps stimulate muscle growth…but chronic inflammation from stress, infection, or overeating and obesity can destroy your ability to develop muscle.

Working out with weights produces a short term acute inflammatory response in the muscle. Basically the muscle is changed/damaged and then various metabolic changes happen and cells, hormones, and other factors enter the muscle cell to repair/remodel the muscle in response to the workout.

Once the repair and remodeling has taken place the extra material and cells leave the muscle cell.

This is analogous to a normal inflammatory immune response in any other tissue of your body.

The point is that it’s a short term transient change that comes and goes with each workout.

Chronic inflammation from infection, or over stress, or overeating may actually inhibit the ability of your muscle to react and grow in response to working out.

This theory might also provide the proof that “bulking up” will not work (without steroids) because overeating causes a chronic inflammation and ruins the acute inflammatory response.

LISTEN:

Brad talks about this in a recent podcast here –> Inflammation Theory of Muscle Growth

WATCH:

He has a full presentation at this website: Inflammation Theory of Muscle Growth

John

It has become apparent to me that many of the problems people are faced with in diet and fitness are due to a lack of understanding of the definitions of some of the most basic concepts.

This is me at my ideal Adonis Index, around 180lbs. I have no idea what my bodyfat % is and I don't care.

It may be that much of the anxiety and the roadblocks people face on a day to day basis can be reduced or eliminated by having a better and clearer understanding of what they are trying to do. This starts with having clear definitions of each of the major issues in health and fitness, and today I want to talk about the definitions of ‘overweight’ vs ‘overfat’.

Overweight vs Overfat

“Overweight”

Overweight is a designation that comes from the Body Mass Index rating scale that indicates how heavy a person is compared to their body size. It’s a tool clinicians can use for recommending lifestyle changes or interventions to a patient. Researchers can also use it as a way to assess population data when determining relative risks of disease in large groups of people.

For most people who are dieting and going to the gym they don’t care about being overweight per se, it’s more accurate to say that most people want to avoid being “overfat”.

“Overfat”

Overfat refers more specifically to the amount of fat compared to lean mass a person is carrying. You can be overweight and not necessarily overfat, and you can be overfat without necessarily being overweight.

Most people are more concerned about being over fat than overweight. There are general cutoffs for each designation that are used to indicate relative risk of various diseases, but overall most people don’t care about these cutoffs, they just want to look better.

For most people, the goal or target look that they’re after can’t be defined in terms of overweight or overfat, and until now there was no words for it besides ‘being in shape’.

I think this is a lousy way to describe a health or fitness goal and instead would rather use a goal that specifies exactly what the actual shape is you’re trying to get into.

And my research has obviously lead me to an answer that ends up being the Adonis Index for men and the Venus Index for women.

Both of these designations account for weight, fat mass, muscle mass, and most importantly the overall shape (which is what everyone wants anyway).

Nobody cares if they are in the healthy bodyweight or bodyfat range if their shape isn’t what they want. There are many people I have worked with that weren’t overweight or overfat but were still entirely unsatisfied with their body SHAPE, and that is because they never knew what shape to work towards.

To start off the discussion on definitions I suggest throwing overweight and overfat out the window and replacing them with body shape goals.

Having a body shape goal provides a much more specific target that automatically accounts for weight, fat, and muscle mass. Working towards any of the other targets by themselves will never ensure that you’re also getting to the shape and look you really want.

Let the shape be your soul focus and the other metrics will fall into place along the way.

John

As of this week my blog will be taking on a new format. I will be writing about weight loss and diet at my new blog www.anythinggoesdiet.com/blog

I will link each article from that blog here so if you’re used to coming here to read then you’ll still be able to find everything here.

I’ll also be posting each Adonis Index and Venus Index post here as well. This site will be a hub or ‘portal’ to each of my other sites, and I”ll also do an occasional post that is unique to this blog as well.

From AdonisIndex.com: Understanding the Peer Review Process

Today I interview my friend Dr. Geoff Dover. He explains the peer review process and why the info you get in a book or magazine about diet or fitness is very different from the info you get in a scientific paper.

——————————————————————————————

From VenusIndex.com: VI Transformation Week 2 and Consistency

The Venus Index transformation is in the second week and now is the time to be getting into a rhythm and finding a groove for the rest of the contest.

———————————————————————————————

I’ll be posting more updates this week. Check back soon.

John

It’s becoming apparent that the people who get results with their diet and training programs usually have the least to say about it.

I had to go through it too

I’ve noticed a pattern with our contest winners and all of the guys (and girls) who make the decision to finally change their bodies once and for all…and the pattern is this:

The beginning of the transformation = Out of Shape Skeptic

Before they do anything they start out very skeptical, they spend an inordinate amount of time reading about diet and fitness thinking they are ‘educating’ themselves when in reality they’re just becoming more confused and paralyzed with information overload.

This is not surprising considering most of the ‘information’ they’re reading is actually just marketing that is not rooted in science or fact.  In reality what they’re reading is a collection of anecdotes, logical fallacies and nonsensical analogies to twist half truths into reasonable sounding arguments, and in many cases totally ridiculous sounding arguments (insert blood type diet, macrobiotics, bulking cutting, metabolic typing and on and on)…sigh, it never ceases to amaze me what some people will believe.

At this stage these people are quite opinionated and aren’t afraid to tell others what to do (even though they are out of shape and in no position to be a role model for anyone)

At this point they’re argumentative and seem to have the contrarion opinion to everything. As far as they’re concerned, they’re right and everyone else is wrong (I suppose somewhere in the back of their mind they’re doing this to justify why they’re still out of shape)

BUT of course there is also a place in their mind that is entirely unsatisfied with their body and really wants to make a change.

At some point they start to learn that talk is cheap and it’s time to either put up or shut up.

This is the turning point when words become action, and a single minded desire to succeed becomes the marching orders for each day.

The never ending list of excuses as to why they’re still out of shape despite their vast ‘knowledge’ from all the marketing…err…information they have read fades away and is replaced by solutions and positive action towards real results.

Simply Amazing!

The urgency to make something happen NOW sets in and becomes a driving force…and the harsh reality that “tomorrow” never comes sets in.

They finally understand that you cannot start a transformation “tomorrow”…there is no such thing as “tomorrow”…it has to start TODAY.

Now the real transformation has begun.

Mind and body are moving in a singular direction, and make no mistake, a transformation is always both mind and body.

The final and most interesting thing that happens is the newly transformed person has much less to say, is less argumentative and spends less time ‘preaching’ to others.

This is ironic considering it is at this point that they finally truly know what it takes to transform and get into great shape (if there ever was a time for them to be argumentative and ‘preachy’ it is now!)

However they’ve also learned one other critical lesson along the way…and that is it’s impossible to teach another person how to transform if that person is not ready to be a student.

Ali never argued, but she sure did transform!

Ohh the irony!

Instead a degree of quite confidence becomes part of their new mind as they now know what it takes to have the body they’ve always wanted. They end up with a secret to share that almost nobody is willing to hear!

This general pattern describes almost everyone I have ever coached through a transformation.

And with that said, it’s time for the next group of willing students to step up and become the new group of exceptional people to make the decision to transform.

The fourth Adonis Transformation Contest starts Jan 19th and the first Venus Index Transformation Contest also starts on the 19th.

For all those exceptional Adonis Index men who’ve already achieved an exceptional shape we will be accepting entries for the first ever Adonis Index Open Contest on the final day of the transformation contest on April 13th.

It’s officially PUT UP OR SHUT UP TIME!

John