In this episode Meatwad is trying to ‘exercise the fat away’ by power walking. What you don’t see in this clip is the pile of gummy bears he sets out for himself as his target to walk to. Once he arrives at the pile of gummy bears he eats them as a reward for his exercise. (Once again Carl is right on the money with his criticism of meatwads strategy)

As ridiculous as this sounds, this is exactly what many people do who start working out…they reward themselves with food after they complete a workout. This totally defeats the purpose of working out in the first place. (the other day I saw a large woman with a personal trainer, and she was eating a granola bar between her sets in the gym…I can only imagine how absurd the conversation between her and the trainer must have been that allowed a granola bar to become part of the workout)

Back to reality:

The so called ‘health benefits’ of physical activity and exercise are very similar to the health benefits of caloric restriction and the subsequent weight loss that follows.

If you think you can be ‘healthy’ without losing weight you’re missing half or most of the picture. The extra fat mass and added weight itself is a risk factor for many lifestyle diseases and therefore simply being active while eating more food (such that you don’t lose any weight) still does not address the issue of losing body fat (if you have excess bodyfat to lose).

There are many ‘meatwads’ out there who would rather tell themselves the lie that they can eat as much as they want and overcome any ill effects simply by exercising more, but those people will never get the body changing results they really want and likely wont be much ‘healthier’ either.

John

He's not going to lose too much weight this way!

Fat loss is just a matter of having a caloric deficit, this isn’t news (or at least it shouldn’t be news to you). You can create the caloric deficit 3 ways.

1. Caloric restriction

2. Increasing activity/exercise (without conscious attention to calories)

3. A combination of the previous points

Regardless how you create the deficit the fat loss with be the same. It’s probably easiest to focus primarily on restricting food intake and consider any extra exercise induced fat loss as a bonus.

Cutting 500-700 calories in a day is much easier than trying to do 500-700 calories worth of exercise.

So even though theoretically you could try to create a deficit with exercise alone, it is only as effective as your ability to maintain a consistent calorie intake close to BMR.

In other words, you can easily out eat a workout session, but you can never out workout an big eating session (but I think this is what so many people in the gym are trying to do)

The actual pattern of fat loss will be the same no matter what you do to get there, so it’s just up to you to find the best solution that fits with your life. I suggest Eat Stop eat and my soon to be coming out book (shameless plug!

John

Is this just 'cheating', or is it just a quicker way to get rid of fat?

I heard a story the other day about a bodybuilder who allegedly (I cannot confirm this) gets a bit of liposuction done before a bodybuilding show just to make sure he’s as ripped as possible. The other bodybuilders consider this ‘cheating’ because it’s ‘not fair’.

Now I don’t know if this is just a story or truth, but the reaction of it being considered ‘cheating’ certainly sounds reasonable, but totally hypocritical from bodybuilders who are using testosterone, GH, insulin, T3, clenbuterol, ephedrine and diuretics to get in shape.

Does this mean that bodybuilders consider drugs fair game to get big and ripped, but machines (lipo) not fair?

I’ve also been informed that playboy models get lipo done before a photoshoot just to ‘tighten up’, and that the same model will have the procedure done multiple times before each shoot.

I cannot confirm the bodybuilding story although it sounds feasible, I’ve got a pretty good source to know that the playboy story is true.

Regardless, I would guess most people would feel like liposuction is some form of ‘cheating’.

If it’s just another means to the same end what does it matter?

What do you think?

John

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 at the gym this morning and between sets I looked over at a man who seemed to be in his 50′s about 50 pounds overweight doing one legged lateral step up’s onto a bench and then into a balanced one leg dumbbell curl (while standing on the bench)

I thought for sure I was going to be a witness to a hip fracture. This guy had no business doing a step up by itself let alone trying to add in a dumbbell curl while balancing on one leg.

My guess is this is some ridiculous routine he learned from one of the gyms dim witted personal trainers (or he could have read it in an equally dim witted exercise magazine)…and I’ll bet he couldn’t care less about being a good step-up and curl guy, I’ll bet he just wanted to lose some weight.

Regardless of where he learned to do this, it’s not a good idea. For starters he could barely get up without some serious balance issues. Half of his reps he had to restart half way through as he lost his balance or couldn’t generate enough force to get up without ‘hopping’ into it.

This is a big problem I see with people trying to use their workouts to do ‘functional training’ and burn calories in the gym with multi-joint multi-planar movements.

It’s simply not necessary, it’s not going to accomplish much of anything and in reality it’ll probably give this guy joint problems because his form was a disaster and the exercise itself made zero sense from an exercise physiology and biomechanics standpoint.

There seems to be a trend to make workouts look more and more complex using elaborate looking combination movements that end up doing little for any of the muscle groups involved.

The more complex the movement the steeper the learning curve and the more base strength and coordination you need just to attempt them.

For most people there is never any need to do these complicated movements unless you’re well accomplished in the gym and just bored with what you’re doing.

And even then most of these weird looking exercises are pretty pointless.

The point is that there is a limited number of ways you can move your body, and there is even less ways to move your body that make any sense for building muscle and getting ‘in shape’.

There are two ways to keep a working interesting and effective:

1. Finding creative ways to move and build sets and reps

2. Finding an intelligent way to create those new sets and reps and movements that still accomplish the goal.

Unfortunately most trainers get the first part right and completely ignore the second.

John

Tomorrow morning (tues) Brad Pilon and I are heading to Vancouver to attend the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology (CSEP for short) annual conference.

Brad is actually going to be speaking at this conference (thats pretty cool)

We’ll be spending the 3 days learning the latest information from the world of exercise science. Anything and everything that is going on in exercise physiology will be here.

Conferences like this are a good way to stay ahead of the curve on new scientific information because much of what we’ll see here is not published yet.

You may or may not be aware of this, but it takes anywhere from 12-18 months to get a piece of scientific research published.

So if you and I conducted an experiment today. It’s highly likely that it wouldn’t be published until sometime in 2011!

BUT we could present our findings at a conference like csep this week far ahead of it becoming published.

This peek into what is coming is why conferences like this can be a goldmine of new info that nobody else really knows about!

If I find anything cool, I’ll post about it here in the coming days and weeks.

John

P.S. If you subscribe to any other fitness/nutrition blogs or newsletters, just ask yourself the last time those so called “experts’ attended a conference like this and reported back to you with anything useful…kinda makes you wonder where they are getting their info from.

As you can see from my last post I just finished a 24 hour fast.

Fasting might sound like a contradiction especially considering I am writing about “Balance” today. But it’s quite the opposite.

From all the research I’ve looked at over the years and coming back from the SENS conference on anti aging I’ve come to realize that most of us in the industrialized countries are far out of balance on the ‘too much’ side of things.

Too much food, too much drink, too much alcohol, too much leisure, too much fitness and nutrition information, too much tv etc.

At first glance a 24 hour fast sounds drastic, but when you look at it from the perspective that we all struggle with eating too much, and too often, and are exposed to food marketing and food choices far too much and too often…well then a 24 hour fast doesn’t even sound long enough!

Fasting is just as much a mental as it is physical step towards balancing your body. It provides a sense of control and accomplishment that you can control food instead of food controlling you. That is the mental benefit. The physical benefits are too numerous to list here, but suffice to say it will cause you to burn fat, allow your system a chance to clear out, reduces inflammation, and reduce water retention (to name a few).

So from the standpoint of ‘Balance’. Fasting is something that most people in modern industrialize countries could benefit from.

Even if you’re not interested in weight loss it can provide a new perspective on your relationship with food and how you respond and control your feelings of hunger/appetite and need/desire for food.

If you’ve never tried, it I suggest picking up Brad Pilon’s book Eat Stop Eat and learn how to incorporate short breaks from food into your life.

John