Forget the "Rules" You've heard, make up your own.

The diet and fitness industry is hardly at a loss for words. Browsing the interwebs (or is it the world wide net…) will bring up thousands of pages of information, tips, and endless ‘must do’ and ‘never do’ lists.

Within 5 minutes of searching you could easily come up with dozens of ‘rules‘ of fitness and ways to live a ‘healthy’ lifestyle.

Almost all of them revolve around some sort of dietary intervention like changing the timing of a meal, or the composition of that meal.

After that you’ll get extensive lists of good and bad foods, supplements you should be taking, specific ways to workout, and specific times of day to workout etc…

At no point is the practicality of these recommendations considered, the story you hear is preached like a gospel and you may start feeling lousy about yourself if you can’t follow every recommendation you’ve heard.

The stress and guilt you might start feeling for not following these ‘rules’ could easily erase any health benefits you’re getting from doing what you can.

This is hardly a way to approach health and fitness.

Every little bit counts, and whatever you can do and whatever fits with your current lifestyle is just fine.

If you’ve heard that ‘cardio’ in the morning is best, but you can only do it in the evening, that’s just fine. Don’t let some magazine or website steal the positive emotional boost you get from exercising by telling you that you’re doing it at the wrong time of day.

If you lift weights but you don’t have the money or time for a post workout protein shake then don’t worry about it, you’re still going to build muscle and strength no matter what the web-o-sphere of self proclaimed experts say.

Protect what gets into your brain, because it's going to be hard to get it out.

The moral of today’s post is to be careful what you read and what you let get into your brain.

If you’re reading this blog you probably already do lots of healthy and positive things for your body on a daily basis, but if you read too much ‘info’ out there you might just end up forgetting what you’ve done that was good and stress about all the ‘rules’ of fitness you’re still not following.

Instead of following everyone else’s rules try making up a few things for yourself.

Try  to do one exercise ‘thing’ per day for your fitness, and one ‘nutrition/food’ thing per day.

Make it up just for you and it’s gotta fit your life.

I’d like to hear what you’re planning on doing if you don’t mind putting it in the comments section.

John

The devil is in the dose.

If you browse around the cyber-inter-web-o-sphere and look around for ‘healthy nutrition’ information you’ll likely find a big list of  “items to avoid”.

Here are some of the common ones I can think of off the top of my head:

Saturated Fat

Trans Fat

Sugar

Artificial Sweeteners

Genetically Modified Anything (which is ridiculous considering about 80% of the modern food supply has some level of modification…these people are living in a fantasy world)

High Fructose Corn Syrup

Non Local Foods (the 100 mile diet people think it’s possible to eat just from their local area…with no conception of how impossible this is from an economic standpoint)

Red Meat

Butter

Refined White Flour (or anything that is made with white flour)

I’m guessing you recognize most of the items on this list and have heard or read somewhere why each one is “bad for you”.

So whats left to eat?

Some veggies, maybe a bit of fruit…perhaps an egg white…

But even too many of one type of veggie could cause a problem if nothing more than some serious gastro intestinal discomfort.

The point is that none of these things are bad at a manageable dose.

The issue with most foods is never the food itself, it’s always the dose.

A teaspoon of sugar in your coffee just makes it a really tasty coffee.

Consuming pounds of sugar on a weekly basis in the form of sweet snacks, dressings, baked goods etc…now you’re asking for diabetes.

Just remember that the devil is always in the dose never in the food itself.

John

These pancakes were effin’ great! I ate them as soon as we were done filming! I think I might have let her have one bite!

Ok so here is the nutritional breakdown for both pancakes together:

280 calories
27g carbs
39g protein
2g fat

Recipe

3 egg whites
1/3 cup oatbran
1 tbsp low fat sour cream
1/4 cup pumpkin puree
28g vanilla protein powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp (each) nutmeg and clove

These were damn good and the nutritional profile is so much different than your standard pancake.

Thanks again to Becky for another kick ass recipe.

John

Can You Really Lose Weight Eating This Every Day?

The ketogenic diet was first tested as a treatment for epilepsy in the 1920′s. It was relatively successful and was used as a form of treatment. The diet basically consists of a very low daily carbohydrate content (15 or so grams per day) with the bulk of the remaining calories consumed coming from fat and a small amount of protein.

This diet was never meant to be used for weight loss rather it was meant as a clinical treatment for a disease state. But somehow just about any nutrition intervention (no matter what it’s for) ends up getting turned into a diet/weight loss program.

Anyway here is the quick review of what ketosis is.

Ketosis is a state when your body does not have sufficient carbohydrate intake to fuel your normal daily functioning so it starts to rely more on ketone bodies (which are made from fat) as a primary fuel source.

This happens during starvation, however you can recreate this state by eating a zero carbohydrate diet.

After a few weeks of eating in this pattern most healthy individuals seem to be able to adapt to this style of eating although it’s not necessarily fun to do for more than a couple of days (which isn’t really long enough to really get into ketosis).

In other words, you’re likely not going to want to do this for very long if you don’t have to.

The bottom line is that ketogenic diets are a rather extreme way to modify your diet. It’s not dangerous per se, but it’s also not necessary and probably unsustainable for most people. There is simply too many fun and tasty carbohydrate foods to eat (that can be incorporated into an effective weight loss program) to justify going on a restrictive ketogenic diet.

John

P.S. A simpler way to lose weight without restricting food choices is Eat Stop Eat, if you haven’t already read it I suggest you check it out.

Forget about 'what if' and starting focusing on 'what is'

If you do any recreational reading of nutrition info and nutrition marketing you’ve likely read a lot of ‘what if’ stories.

‘What if’ stories are things like:

What happens if I eat all my daily calories from carbs

or

What happens if I don’t eat enough protein today

or

What happens if I don’t eat a balanced macronutrient diet and control  my insulin levels

or

What happens to my metabolism if I don’t eat enough meals per day

This is typical of nutrition/diet marketing. But none of it deals with what IS happening right now. If you took an inventory of your current state including what you’re eating and how it is currently affecting your insulin levels, your metabolism, your energy and muscle building you’d likely find that whatever you’re currently doing is already enough and doesn’t need to be changed.

Without establishing a baseline of where you currently are you’ll never know if you need to change anything and in what direction you need to make that change.

Worrying about ‘what if’ scenarios without knowing ‘what is’ happening will just cause you stress and worry that you don’t need.

John

Are you Really Going to Measure Your Ratios Every Meal?

Most weight loss diets will usually give some sort of recommendation of the preferred or optimal protein carb and fat ratio based on the effect is supposedly has on your hormone balance and the way your body digests the food, how it will make you feel yadda yadda.

But what gets left out of the recommendation is the principle of less total calories is what is causing weight loss.

We can debate the merits of a 30/40/30 calorie ratio on appetite and the way it makes you feel all day long, but it’s a rather pointless argument.

If you’ve ever tried to actually eat at a specific ratio you’ll find out that it’s almost impossible. You’d have to measure the protein fat and carb content of each meal and of each individual food. For example you may assume that pasta is a ‘carb’ in this case, but pasta also has a fair bit of protein (and different pasta’s have different protein contents).

Same goes for things like bread, and most dairy products (they all have a mix of protein and carbs, and some of them have all three nutrients)

Balancing the nutrient ratio of a meal makes sense in theory but it’s highly impractical in practice, and as a final note it was never meant to be done on a meal by meal basis but rather on a more long term (weekly basis)

If you happen to eat a bit more carbs and bit less protein today it’s not a big deal, you’ll most likely have another day when you’ll eat more protein later in the week.

The point is that most of these dietary recommendations are meant to be done on a much longer scale than a day or a single meal. Worrying about the macronutrient content of each meal will cause you far more stress than any potential health benefit.

John

The buffet’s are treating me well here in vegas even though I’m downright abusing them. (it’s not a fair trade at all)

I can't stop eating prime rib in vegas!

Eating at buffets has reminded me of the inherent contradiction to the healthy eating mantra of eating a ‘variety’ of foods.

It’s pretty common to hear health/fitness marketers advise eating a diet with as much food variety as possible…the proverbial ‘everything in moderation is ok’ or ‘eat lots of colors’ etc.

But there is a catch 22 with this story…the more foods you have available the more chance you have to overeat. You could almost say that you get ‘full’ on one type of food or flavor/taste, but you still have room for other types of foods and flavors. (the ‘eat variety’ story should be qualified with ‘eat a variety of fruits and veggies’ specifically)

The reality is we need far less food variety then we might think. Most of our nutrients can be found in a few foods, and most of us (when we’re not lighting up a buffet in vegas) eat a routine selection of the same dozen or so foods. And this works perfectly fine for the bulk of the modern world.

You can easily make the argument that the option for eating a wide selection of foods has only become available since the modern industrial revolution anyway. So we’re not evolved to need the type of selection your grocery store offers (how the hell would someone in canada get access to a banana in the winter before the industrial revolution).

In other words, you can get by just fine with far less food variety than you think, and you most likely eat less food variety than any healthy eating mantra ever speaks of anyway. (try to think of all the different foods you’ve eaten in the past 7 days, I’ll bet it’s not as varied as you might like to think)

And that might not be such a bad thing. The more available and affordable different food choices are the more chance you will eat more of all of them.

Thanks for the suggestions on eating venues, I’ll try to check them out, but I gotta say that I’m having a hard time going anywhere besides the various buffets simply to eat prime rib and whatever else happens to be available!

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’ve been back to the gym two days in a row now, and will be in again this evening. Lifting about 70% of what I’m normally used to, feeling a bit lackluster after eating soup and bagels for a week and not sleeping particularly well.

no protein for me this past week

The interesting to note here is that I’m probably only consuming 20 grams of protein per day at the most…some days this past week I’ve consumed less than 10 grams of protein.

My measurements are still the same, I haven’t lost any size on my chest, back, shoulders arms or legs.

My waist is down a bit and I’ve lost a couple pounds and look leaner.

So really nothing much has happened besides feeling sick, losing some sleep and losing some fat.

The point is not to get too caught up on daily intake of protein/carbs/fat, vitamins minerals yadda yadda. Daily recommendations are meant as an average over time, not a hard and fast rule. Nothing bad is going to happen to you if you don’t get your daily requirement of nutrient X or vitamin Y today.

Odds are you’ll end up getting enough of it tomorrow or the next day to make up for a day or two of being below the recommended requirement.

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