Manny and Anthony got this discussion going yesterday and I think it needs further exploration…and that is how much exercise should we be doing per week?

Exercise shouldn't be a sentence to pain and suffering

There are a few ways to approach the answer to this question.

The first thing to do is identify your goal.

Is it to do the least amount of exercise possible while getting into the best looking shape possible?

Is it the above mentioned goal as well as minimizing as many risks factors of disease as possible?

Is it some performance goal (like running a certain distance in a given time, or a strength goal etc?)

Is it some combination of the above?

In any case it seems that many people have come to believe that you can do far less work than you have to in order to get into your goal shape.

I think this is a symptom of the modern industrialized sedentary society. For many of us our daily routine barely requires us to even stand up let alone walk around.

If you spend the better part of your day sitting then there is a good case to be made for you to workout or at least go for a walk every day. At least move around a bit.

I think we’ve all become a bit too accustomed to a really sedentary lifestyle. And as Manny and Anthony pointed out even as little as 7-8 hours per WEEK sounds like alot of exercise…this seems a bit ridiculous…out of 168 available hours in a week does dedicating 8 of them to exercise and improving the look and health of your body sound like too much?

If it does sound like too much that is an artifact of the general busyness and sedentary nature of our societies and nothing to do with fundamental physiological principles.

We could all easily exercise for multiple hours per day if we had enough time. I totally understand that a 2 hour workout every day might not make much sense for everyone. But at least an hour of movement per day should be a bare minimum.

And then mixed within that could be 3-4 more intense and targeted training sessions to force muscle growth and adaptation.

The reality is that Anthony and Manny pointed out how far off our perception of what a realistic amount of exercise per week should be.

I think we’ve all become far too used to doing far too little.

If we learn to prioritize a mix of both targeted vigorous exercise (weight training/running etc) and general lifestyle movement (walking) as something that must be done every day then we’d be close to what our bodies were built for in the first place and many of our lifestyle disorders, issues with eating and dealing with stress would be much less of a problem.

John

I was having a discussion with a friend of mine who has recently lost about 20 pounds and looks really good (almost a perfect venus index)

She goes to the gym 4-5 times per week, mostly running and a bit of weights. Her diet is nothing special, she is a great cook and eats whatever foods she likes, no rules about carbs, fats, protein, wheat dairy yadda yadda. She just eats whatever she feels like for the day…BUT she just doesn’t overdo it with the total amount of food.

She often gets invited out for dinner with friends and on such occasions she will throw in a low calorie day or a fast just before the night out so she can afford to ‘eat big’ on the night out without it affecting her weight loss/maintenance goals.

Now here is where it gets messed up and where most people miss the point about the lifestyle of living lean and exercising.

Her friends actually criticize her for eating pizza or burgers or whatever happens to be the food of indulgence on said night out. In their minds she is the ‘fit’ and ‘healthy’ one and therefore they think and actually accuse her of being a hypocrite for eating pizza and burgers! (they can’t comprehend someone who is in good shape that can actually eat a burger and remain in good shape)

To them being fit and healthy means having a restrictive diet and never enjoying food and not partaking in social eating events that involve things like pizza burgers, chicken wings, etc, and being obsessive about exercise.

This of course is completely backwards and missing the entire point of being in shape in the first place.

The goal isn’t to be in shape in spite of your lifestyle, the point is to find a way to be in shape and enjoy the processes as it fits into your lifestyle.

It’s also about enjoying food and social gatherings without worrying about gaining weight or negatively affecting your health. (I think her system does this perfectly)

In total she probably only spends 7-8 hours per week working out (this isn’t much, I’ll bet most people spend more than this watching tv)…she spends zero time obsessing about food and eats freely (just not too much).

If you’re revamping your entire life in order to lose weight and ‘get healthy’ and in the process you end up losing out on social events, or eating foods you enjoy, or spend more time preparing and worrying about food and good foods vs bad foods, and going to the gym than socializing with friends and family…then you’re missing the whole point of being fit and in shape in the first place.

Unfortunately as this example demonstrates many people think that you can’t have both and might just forgo even trying because of what they erroneously think must be a difficult life.

But it’s actually really simple, and they’d find that out if only they would try.

I guess it’ll be our little secret for now.

John

I just finished doing a podcast about the definition of health and how this word doesn’t mean anything until you give it some meaning and values. You can listen here –> Your Definition of Healthy

Today we’re going to do a word association game. I’m going to write some of the more popular and relatively ambiguous terms in the health and fitness industry and I want you to answer with ONE word that comes to mind for each word in the list below.

But only ONE word each, so be honest and pick the one word that really comes to mind for you. If you write two words for any of them I’m going to delete your comment entirely.

List your answers in numerical order in the comments section. Write your words down before you look through the comments to avoid having other people’s answers influence yours.

Here’s the list:

1 – Health

2 – Fitness

3 – Fat

4 – Food

5 – Diet

6 – Sugar

7 – Obese

8 – Skinny

9 – Eating

10 – Muscle

John

As some of you know I had food poisoning a few days ago and I’m still not quite out of the woods. Head still isn’t right, and bagels and soup are the extent of what I can eat.

If you ate something toxic...you'd know!

This brings up an interesting point about detox diets and supplements.

Specifically that there is no such thing as a real ‘detox’ diet or supplement. Your liver and kidneys function to detoxify anything that is toxic to your body (alcohol is a good example)

If there is a ‘toxin’ in your body that your kidneys or liver can’t deal with you’ll know right away (as I did) because it’s going to be promptly purged from your system one way or the other.

If it’s a lethal toxin (serious poison) you might end up dead before you have a chance to puke it back out.

Fortunately we’re not foraging for berries any more so there is a very low risk of you ever eating something that is lethal. Most of us also have some access to acute medical care so if you do by accident ingest something that is truly toxic the doctors at a hospital have various tools at this disposal to help deal with the issue.

The point is there is no way to ‘detox’ with your diet or a supplement.

Most of the cleansing and detox promoters can never even name one ‘toxin’ that they are talking about or how it works, where it supposedly accumulates in your body and how you got it in the first place.

They stick to ambiguous claims like ‘toxin’ and ‘cleanse’ and allow you to fill in the gaps with your own fears and anxieties.

If you feel like you want to ‘cleanse’ or clear out for a while, just do a 24 hour fast. I guarantee that any feedback you get from a detox product is because it will likely require you to undertake some sort of fasting and not because of any supplement or juice it forces you to ingest.

John

This is going to be a short one cuz I got food poisoning last night…not sure what exact kind but it took about 5 hours from eating to hurling. Drinking a glass of water seems like a herculean task at the moment.

This could possibly be the worst feeling on earth, I was going to look up some food poisoning statistics but I just can’t focus on the computer monitor that well just yet.

To make things worse the water in my building is turned off because the city is working on a water main outside! So I’m here with food poisoning and no functioning water source (until this evening) …awesome!

Well this is the first time I’ve ever had this so I guess that is pretty good, 35 years without every getting food poisoning.

Not sure if that is good or bad, not really sure if what I’m writing is making any sense right now either.

Thanks for the comments on the book idea. Many of those items will be things that Brad Pilon and I will be covering in the next semester of our online course. I’ll be releasing more details for the May 1st start date in the weeks to come.

If you want to know more about it you can email me at john@adoniseffect(dot)com

John

So I’m going to start writing a new book about health/fitness/diet but I don’t really know where to start and what issues to tackle or what questions to answer or what problems need solving.

What do You Want to Learn?

In the past few months we’ve had some good discussions on this blog and it’s becoming apparent to me that I don’t really know what you want to learn about when it comes to health and fitness. Some topics that I thought were really important seemed to get glossed over…and then other topics that I thought were old news and obvious seemed to get the most interest and discussion.

So I need your help.I need to know what this book has to say to be the most useful diet/fitness/health book for you.

Here are the things we got covered so far:

1) Eating for weight loss – We’ve got this covered with Eat Stop Eat and all of the Eat Stop Eat family of materials that really explain how fat loss really works.

2) How Much Protein for Muscle Building – We’ve already got this covered with Brad’s book “How Much Protein”

3) Working out for your best proportioned look – We’ve got this covered with Adonis Index and soon to be available the Venus Index

My thought at this point is a book about the diet/health/fitness industry and how to tell what is truth from what is nonsense. I guess you could say it would be a diet/fitness/health myth busting manifesto…a proverbial handbook or user’s guide to the health and fitness industry.

I’ve been so far into this industry for so long that it’s easy for me to forget that you probably don’t have a graduate degree in nutrition and human physiology, or a career formulating and developing sports supplements, and haven’t been a strength and conditioning coach, or done clinical trial research, or trained with a powerlifting team or any of the stuff that I’ve been doing for the past 15 years.

So I need your help. I need you to let me know what you want to know. Your answer will be what I use to formulate the basis and topics of this new book.

For now the project name is called “The Health and Fitness Survival Guide” …I think this is an ironic sounding name because the words health and fitness seem to already be synonymous with ‘survival’!

Please put your suggestions in the comments section.

John

In yesterdays discussion the common logical fallacy was brought up about the false dichotomy between “fitness” and “fatness”. This is a false dichotomy because ‘fitness’ is not the opposite of ‘fatness’…not always.

To start off we have to define the logical fallacy “false dichotomy”

A false dichotomy is an erroneous reduction of many possibilities down to only two. Essential creating an either/or situation that doesn’t exist.

In the case of fitness vs fatness the false dichotomy assumes that the opposite of fit is fat when in reality it is not.

The opposite of fit is unfit, and the opposite of fat is lean.

This doesn’t mean there can’t be some overlap between fatness and being unfit, and being lean and fit, but they are not categorically the same things.

At this point we need another definition…what is ‘fitness’?

I’d say fitness is a poorly described term at best. a quick browse of the interwebs will give various descriptions but it’s not that obvious what fitness is.

It seems to be a vague idea of being able to sustain some level of exercise without losing your breath (but not necessarily a distance runner type of endurance)…it doesn’t seem to really relate to maximum strength (as many powerlifters and strong men are massively strong but not what people would consider ‘fit’)

It seems to relate to having a lower heart rate than average, lower blood pressure than average, and good to above average blood markers of health (LDL, HDL, total cholesterol, triglycerides, total lipid profile etc)…it might also have something to do with VO2 measurements (volume of oxygen you can consume while working out)

If you want to get really text book geekish then ‘fitness’ simply refers to genetic superiority/preference as a mate for producing viable offspring. (and this is one of the deep rooted subconscious reasons we’re attracted to healthy and ‘fit’ looking bodies)…so perhaps this is the best definition of all…

It doesn’t seem that fatness is really the opposite of fitness, at least not all of the time…it seems the opposite of fit is simply unfit.

With that said I think there is a continuum of fatness that eventually becomes a good indicator of a lack of fitness.

In other words, someone who is carrying around 10-20-30 and even 40 extra pounds of fat could still have very good markers of fitness, they could easily be able to run 10 kms in a good time, be very agile, have good muscular endurance, have good blood markers of health, a strong heart, low blood pressure and all of the rest of it…they just have extra fat on them from years of overeating that they’ve not managed to burn off yet.

BUT, when it starts to become 50-60-70 pounds and beyond of extra fat it would seem reasonable that there is less and less chance this same person will have favorable blood markers of health, or be able to run any distance without pain and joint issues and lack of breath, or be able to maintain low blood pressure and a low heart rate (and all of the other measures of ‘fitness’)

So as body fat levels increase fitness seems to decrease, but there is a considerable range of bodyfat levels that most likely cannot predict fitness. I’m not sure where the cutoff is, and it doesn’t seem that there is any good data yet describing this break point.

My guess is the break point is somewhere around the 30-40 pound range of extra fat for the average man and maybe 20-30 pounds for the average woman.

It seems reasonable to assume that at some point the extra weight itself stops a person from engaging and attempting exercise that would lead to increased ‘fitness’.

At extremely high ranges of body fatness almost all measurable levels are in poor standing and can be drastically improved by simply losing weight by a calorie reduction without doing any exercise at all.

So when a very heavy person needs to get in shape…their first issue is not exercise at all, but rather weight loss by way of eating less. The simple act of eating less and losing weight would actually return any unhealthy looking markers of health and fitness back to at least ‘normal’ ranges…Once they’ve lost enough weight to resume exercising without risk, then they can actually start working on improving their ‘fitness’ level from normal to above average.

One of the biggest mistakes I see people and trainers make in the gym is taking obese people and making them train like an all star athlete in the gym. In reality the best things these people could do is start eating less and then once they’re at a lower body weight start exercising. But the trick is how to get them to eat less? I say Eat Stop Eat (yes I know this is a biased opinion, but hey I think it’s the best way to lose weight)

John

P.S. Your contribution to the discussions here are what make this blog worth writing, so I just wanted to take this moment to say thanks and keep em’ coming.

I was reading a blog about the BMI (Body Mass Index) chart the other day and noticed that many people were saying that it’s not accurate and is an outdated measurement and needs to be replaced/revised.

Most 'athletes' can't build enough muscle to be outside of the 'normal' BMI range without steroids

So I started to think about why anyone would say this. The BMI chart was created over 100 years ago as a way of charting body ‘fatness’ or ‘thinness’. With the influence of Ancel Keys (visionary scientist way ahead of his time) BMI became a prominent tool in the 1970′s for assessing population health risks.

There is a criticism that the BMI doesn’t account for different ‘frame’ sizes of people (endomorphs and ectomorphs) or athletes who have built up their muscles to a much larger degree than the regular population. Both of these criticism’s seem to be weak as true ecotmorphic or endomorphic people are very rare…in other words, for MOST of the population the BMI works just fine, and that was the point in the first place.

The athlete argument doesn’t hold much water either, as they represent a very small percentage of the population and many of them at all levels use steroids and other drugs that artificially elevate their lean body mass. In other words, the BMI was never meant to be applied to people taking steroids and GH.

So what about ‘natural’ athletes and bodybuilders who don’t use drugs but just build lots of muscles? Surely they wouldn’t be in the ‘normal’ BMI range…right? Wrong!

A few days ago I posted pictures of myself after a 5 day fast (I weighed 176lbs in those pics…granted this was mostly a water reduction)…as of the moment I am writing this my bodyweight fluctuates between 180-183lbs. In both cases I am still within the normal BMI range. And this is where the argument about athletes being in the ‘overweight’ BMI range because of increased muscle mass falls apart for me.

In these pictures -> DO I LOOK SKINNY? I’m well within the normal BMI range…and I don’t think I look too small or lacking in muscle development. In fact I’ve spent the past 15 years trying to build as much muscle as I can…and I STILL fall within the ‘normal’ BMI range. If anyone was a candidate for being ‘overweight’ due to muscle mass I thought surely I would be it…but nope I’m still ‘normal’.

So the argument that athletes can build enough muscle to somehow push them out of the normal BMI range seems a bit wonky to me (unless of course they are using steroids or were true endormorphs to begin with…which is an exceedingly small portion of the population). Look at those pictures of me again, do I really look like I could possibly get bigger? Do I look like I NEED to be bigger? AND do I look unhealthy at the size I am?

The problem people have with the BMI is not the chart itself, but what the chart MEANS to them. The chart is meant to show ‘fatness’ and categorize it as normal or abnormal on both the high and low end. The key word here is ‘normal’.

What SHOULD be normal for a human body and what has BECOME normal in modern western societies are two different things.

The BMI chart shows what SHOULD be normal, not what is currently considered normal.

If most of the population is overweight (according to the BMI chart) the error in logic could be that the population is right and the BMI chart is wrong.

I think many people have a sharp emotional reaction to things like the BMI chart because it categorizes you in a way that feels discriminatory and prejudicial. Of course there is no emotion behind the BMI chart, it’s just a mathematical equation…but there is some thought and research into it, it’s not just a random idea, so you know there is some validity to the category you’ve been placed in according to the chart. And this is why it bothers people. If there is some good reason why you are categorized as ‘overweight’ then you’re faced with the following dilemma about your  belief in the normalcy of your current body size:

Either the chart is wrong, or YOU are wrong.

It’s much easier to dismiss the chart as being inaccurate and not useful for your specific body shape and size or whatever excuse you like, than it is to accept the fact that perhaps you’re in fact simply overweight.

The final point on this topic is the view from being in the normal category vs the overweight or obese categories.

I used to be much heavier than I am now and I used all the same excuses explaining away the BMI as antiquated and outdated and didn’t account for the mountains of muscle I had built over the years. In reality, I was just fat.

Once I went through my cut down and got rid of all the excess weight I ended up right where the BMI chart predicted me to be at the high end of the normal range…which makes perfect sense as I’ve built as much muscle as I can without drugs.

If I’m currently in the normal category, and I’ve spent my whole life trying to build muscle, and all of my measurable health markers are in very good shape, and I’m happy with the look and shape of my body, and I have a golden Adonis Index ratio…then how is it possible for me or anyone with roughly my frame (which is average) to actually be in the overweight category without simply having more fat mass on their body and subsequently looking worse than I do right now?

In other words, if some people suggest the BMI cutoff for ‘overweight’ is too low, then what does that make me in these pictures? Underweight?

Or is it that people who don’t like the category the chart puts them in immediately react by dismissing the chart as being wrong instead of heeding the guidance it provides to lose some weight. This of course is cognitive dissonance at its finest.

For anyone who is in the ‘normal’ range the BMI chart seems to make perfect sense, or at least it does to me.

John

A friend of mine just had her annual check up and everything came back A-ok. She is actually about 1 inch away from having a perfect Venus Index score as well! In other words, girl is in great shape with a great body.

With that said she wants to lose about 3-4 pounds for her ideal Venus Index shape. She can run 10 kms in less than 50 minutes, she’s got great muscle development and is stronger than almost any girl I’ve ever seen in the gym.

Her check up numbers were great across the board and her cardiovascular fitness is at the elite athlete level.

So far this isn’t much of a story, now here is where it gets interesting. She told the nurse that she was interested in losing a bit more weight…at which point the nurse proceeded to tell her: you don’t look like you need to lose any more weight”…and “you’re in a healthy weight range for your height”…and then pointed out that “exercise can be addictive” and handed her body image pamphlets assuming she had some sort of psychological problem.

Of course all of this information is coming from a middle aged female nurse with about 40-50 extra pounds of fat to lose.

My friend just responded with a polite smile with no intention of heeding any of the nurses advice and warnings.

This is good example of how the established medical profession misses the point on issues of exercise and fitness.

First of all its difficult to take weight loss advice from someone who is overweight.

Second, doctors and nurses understand the relative range of what is generally considered a healthy body weight. But this is just a range and estimate for the mass population. Each individual will have a specific body weight that he or she will look their best at, and no doctors chart will necessarily show this. (incidentally that is what the Adonis Index and Venus Index are for…an indication of what we think is your best look for your height)

It’s unfortunate that even a nurse and doctor would discourage someone from trying to lose a couple pounds in an effort to look better and be happier with their body.

It’s as if the nurse had been trained to tell everyone to be happy looking painfully average and that it’s somehow pathological to want to look better than average.

Interestingly, the overweight nurse was much more worried about my friends intention to lose a bit more weight…whereas the physician who was in good shape himself thought nothing of it.

Perhaps a little personal envy and bias even crept into the nurses cautions and warnings to her.

Regardless of the source of the warning, this is still a good example of how mainstream medical professions are not a place to go looking for advice on achieving your best looking shape. It’s just not what they’re trained in.

Don’t let other people talk you out of shooting for your best look, because your best look is going to be a healthy look.

John

If you’re an Eat Stop Eater you’ve probably run into your fair share of people who think the way you are eating is ‘unhealthy’ or ‘not good for you’.

Get Your Annual Check Up Done

Dealing with persecution from people you interact with on a daily basis is difficult, especially when those people are you family and friends. Getting into arguments with them isn’t going to help, and trying to convert them to your lifestyle if they don’t want to isn’t going to help either. So what do you do?

Well for starters get an annual check up/physical. Get your doctor to test every measurable health marker possible including:

Total Cholesterol

HDL/LDL ratio

Triglycerides

Fasting Insulin

Blood Glucose

Blood Pressure

Heart Rate

Liver Enzymes

Etc…

Whatever you and your doc can think of.

With these numbers in hand you can show whoever you’re arguing with that you are in perfect health according whatever your doctor can measure. Beyond that as long as you feel good about yourself what else is there to say?!

If you feel good about yourself, and you’re happy with your lifestyle, and your measurable health markers from your check up/physical come back in good shape, then what else is there to say? You are as healthy as we can possibly measure.

If you’re being persecuted for your lifestyle being ‘unhealthy’ the only way to silence your critics might be to show them how healthy you really are and get them to do the same for themselves.

John