 I can’t go anywhere without overhearing a conversation about how people are attempting to lose weight. The common go-to lines I hear from women are almost always: “I’m really going to start running.” And “I’m hitting the elliptical for an hour and a half every day.” And then there’s the “bros”: “Yeah I’m really going to start doing some uphill sprints to get shredded.” Or, “High Intensity Intervals pushing the sled is the only thing that works to get chiseled, bro!” And the funny thing is it’s the people who look like they’ve never exercised a minute of their lives talking about how imperative cardiovascular activity is for dropping those dreaded 15 pounds of body fat. I’m not too sure why it is, but folks have this general notion that in order to lose body fat, you have to be running or “doing cardio.” When in actuality, if you’re following a proper weight loss protocol, it should be the last thing required to get you down to your ideal weight.  CardioVascular System Before we go any further, what exactly is cardio? Cardio is short for cardiovascular; this relates to the bodies circulatory system that’s comprised of the heart and blood vessels that carries nutrients and oxygen to the tissues of the body and removes carbon dioxide and other wastes from said tissues. Notice how nowhere in there was there any mention about burning fat? That’s because there is NO DIRECT EFFECT from doing cardio to burning fat. Let me just repeat that once more for emphasis. Cardio has NO DIRECT EFFECT on fat burning. For folks who workout, the cardio they’re referring to is exercise that enables the use of aerobic respiration. Aerobic respiration is the process of producing cellular energy through the use of oxygen. So what these people should be really saying is “I DO AEROBICS” instead of “I DO CARDIO.” Aerobics may make people think of Jane Fonda or Richard Simmons workouts. Maybe that’s why it never caught on. So Why Do People Say To Do Cardio? Here’s the nugget of info you all are probably reading this for. The ONLY WAY cardio can help someone lose weight is through the expenditure of stored energy, or as “burning calories” as many of you are familiar with. But hopping on the treadmill and burning a few hundred calories alone is not enough to shed some flub. It is only when there is an ENERGY DEFECIT that the body will used stored energy in the form of fatty acids and you will start to see the scale move. So don’t expect to rationalize a diet of Chick-Fil-A sandwiches for lunch and a morning ritual of Caramael Machiados by telling yourself you’re going to be putting in work on the treadmill later. What’s an Energy Deficit? Simply put- when you’re body uses more energy than it consumes in a given timeframe (typically 24 hours), that’s an energy deficit. Conversely, if you’re consuming more energy than you’re expending, that’s an energy surplus. And for most Americans, being in an energy surplus is a common occurrence. If you ever want to see who these people are, just go to Wal-Mart one afternoon.  When Is Cardio Appropriate? Cardio (Aerobic Activity) will only be most beneficial when, and ONLY WHEN, nutrition and training have been dialed in.  The hierarchy of fat loss is as follows:
Effective fat loss is a function of proper diet and efficient training. Reducing the amount of calories you’re consuming, preferably from carbohydrates, is the most effective way to create a natural energy deficit for your body. By monitoring the overall consumption of calories and macro nutrients you consume, you can easily manipulate your diet to create a 500 calorie/day defecit for example. To put it in perspective, this means passing on a serving of pasta at lunch and opting for a salad instead of a baked potato at dinner. If one insisted on burning 500 calories only in the form of cardio, they’d find themselves slaving away on the elliptical machine for about 3 hours. Now which scenario sounds like the better and more sustainable choice? Type of Cardio For folks who really dread doing cardio, deciding on which method to use is like having to decide to being executed by firing squad or hanging: either way it’s going to suck.  Aerobic Conditioning- Or more commonly refered to as “Low Intensity Steady State” cardio, which is the conventional method folks are familiar with. Low intensity steady state is exactly what its name implies- keeping the heart rate low and the pace steady for an extended amount of time.  Anaerobic Conditioning- I mentioned the definition of ‘aerobic’ earlier, so I’ll go ahead and do the same for anaerobic. You may have guessed since aerobic exercise involves the use of oxygen then anaerobic is the opposite of that in which oxygen is not used during the duration of the interval. Think sprints. Or cycling on a bike as hard as you can for 20 seconds. This method of cardio is known as High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT. If you're looking for some ways to change up your cardio routine, check out How to Get the Most From Your Cardio for some more helpful tips and insight about your cardio. So which one’s better?
Well just like everything I ever talk about, this topic is no different. IT DEPENDS. Depends on your current condition, physique goals, body composition, mobility, age, nutrition, weight training program, daily activity, amount of sleep you get, etc. I could go on, but I’m sure you get the point. There’s a lot of variables to consider. So I’ll leave you with this. USE WHICHEVER METHOD YOU PREFER MOST. If you’re somebody who has a good amount of body fat to lose and are still eating a decent amount of food to support your weight training and energy levels, then by all means do HIIT. You’ll have the energy for it and it won’t hinder your training and recovery. Most athletes who train will also benefit most from HIIT. This is also a preferred method for those short on time. HIIT shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes at most to complete and should only be performed 3 times a week as it takes a toll on your central nervous system and ability to adequately recover. Now if you’re somebody who has been weight training for years and is relatively lean to begin with, low intensity steady state cardio may be a better choice. This goes for someone who is dieting pretty hard as well. Steady state cardio will not be as detrimental to your recovery and energy levels like HIIT would. It may take a bit longer to perform, say roughly 45-60 minutes per session, but wear and tear you save on your body in the long run will be worth it. So before you start logging those 11 mile a day road-runs in an attempt to find your abs this summer, remember this: You can’t run your way into abs. If you’re determined to get ripped, or even just lose a few pounds of body fat, you’ll benefit so much more by employing proper nutrition and training before doing any type of cardio work. Save yourself the heartache of frustration by doing a little homework on training and nutrition first. Or hire me to map out your fat loss and physique goals and save yourself some time. As always, you and you alone have the choice to decide on how you look and how you feel. Happy lifting (and cardio-ing?), folks!
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 Being an all around “fit” and “healthy” person requires more than just hitting the gym a few times a week. People often get so concerned with improving their physical appearance and body compositions that they often neglect training the most powerful part of their bodies: their minds. So many people get caught up in trying to look better that they forget that there are some other parts of their lives that need improvement; such as in the learning, thinking, and instantiable quest for knowledge departments. The same can be said for individuals who are consumed by their jobs or academics. Take my word for it. Most of the people I associate with on a daily basis are majorly involved in Academia and feel that trying to improve their physical appearance is a moot endeavor and their time is best spent elsewhere. No one is saying that every bodybuilder needs to chase a PhD or that all engineers need to take up bodybuilding. But a good balance of physical activity mixed with some regular problem solving, critical thinking, and mind expansion will ultimately make you an all around healthy person.  Quote of the Week  Featured Article of the Week Body Recomposition :The Minimalist’s Guide To Cutting Without Losing Muscle I frequent many of the fitness forums Facebook and all over the interwebs. The one question I was seeing being asked more than anything else was ‘what is a *body recomposition* and how does one go about doing it?’ I scoured countless fitness sites and to my surprise found that very little has been written on the topic. The stuff that is out there is still pretty vague and less than informative. Well, this is no longer the case as I bring you the definitive guide to body recomposition. Everything you need to know : from what it is, why to do it and when to do it, how to set it up and how to make adjustments to keep progressing amongst a host of other braingainz on the topic. I can honestly say that this is the only guide i’ve seen on the recomp on the internet, every other article is always about ‘bulking’ or ‘cutting’. Best Articles I’ve Read This Week  Warren Buffett Says to Invest As Much as You Can in This – Chris Winfield Are Eggs Bad For You? (And other questions you should never ask again)-Mike Vaccanti Steal From the Best- Nate Green How to Develop Ruthless Focus- Mike Cernovich On Bodybuilding, Broscience, And Doing Shit Because It Works –John Roamniello 39 Ways to Not Be Like Everyone Else- Jason Ferruggia Podcasts To Listen To  Sigma Nutrition Radio: Fat Loss Myths, Gut Health, and Contest Prep Topics discussed include:
Videos To Watch Financial Literacy- Mellody Hobson Book Recommendation of the Week  Personal finance has been an interest that I’ve pursued with some gusto the past few months. A lot of people think they have a good grasp on their personal finances, but in reality they’re still living in debt and working jobs they hate to pay bills and expenses they probably shouldn’t have in the first place. Unless you have an excessively rich mentor, money and finance habits are learned directly from your parents. Saving and working hard is not the only way to earn financial security. This book explains why building and owning businesses is the most reliable way to gain wealth. It destroys the absurd notion that a salaried job represents financial security and shows you how to think like an entrepreneur. "Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited, and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division and from the antagonism between poor and rich means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts."  The weather's heatin' up as spring transitions into early summer. Sweaters and coats have long been put away and girls are rockin' their shorts while dudes are following the "sun's out, gun's out" mantra by leaving the house with no sleeves everyday. You've been religiously sticking to your nutrition and training all winter and finally made some progression both in the muscle "gainz" and fat loss department. You're looking lean. You're looking jacked. You've got it all. So what do you do? Hit the beach. It's not truly summer until you've found some water to hang around shirtless. For most people, this means having to do some traveling to high-tail it the nearest beach or body of water. But the traveling doesn't have to end there. You got some time and some cash to burn, so how about a road trip with some buddies for a few days? You might think to yourself, "I guess you can abandon your "clean eating" to make the most of the weekend. A few days off the wagon won't kill me." A few weeks later you got some weddings to attend across the country. "It's cool, some wedding cake and a few dozen beers won't do no harm." you reassure yourself. Opportunity knocks and you found yourself a few job interviews in Denver and some more in San Fransisco. "Fast food is my only option when on the road" is what you begin to believe as you've become a veteran traveler one month into the summer. When life happens and the wonderful opportunity of travel happens upon you, you may quickly think you have to put your fitness and physique goals aside for a while so you can enjoy your time on the road. Well that's not the case at all. If you've happened to read any of my other blogs an articles, fitness is ALWAYS about making it FIT into your life, not making your life fit into your fitness. From my personal experience and the experience of dozens of other people I've worked with, traveling for fitness enthusiast, especially those who have adhered to pretty strict diets and found pretty remarkable results, the story often goes something like this: Case 1: The"Screw It" Mentality This is the scenario most people find themselves in. It's vacation time and this person decides to take a week to do some traveling. They've also been someone who's found great success the last few months both gaining muscle and losing fat. Will all their success, they may be a bit reluctant to travel and "break their routine." But they take the trip and vow to somehow make the diet work. One day into the trip and they find themselves at one of the best sushi restaurants in the area. Decision time: stick to the diet and order a salad? Or say screw it, i'll have some sushi, it's only 1 meal. Unfortunately for most, they'll order the sushi...and some more sushi...and dessert. The state of mind that sets in is, "well i've ruined the diet with one bad meal, i may as well keep enjoying myself and keep eating what I want." That "screw it" mentality stays consistent throughout the trip and they've officially fallen off the wagon. They may be enjoying the deviating from their diets, but someone who's adhered to such a strict diet will no doubt feel some sort of guilt the entire time their not following their plan. (check out my article on "cheat meals" CHEAT MEALS: THE "CLEAN EATING" DISORDER So now by the end of the trip, these people find themselves with a few extra pounds, less definition around the mid-section, and a boat load of guilt they feel they'll have to work off in the gym. Definitely not ideal. Case II: The "I'm sticking to my diet come hell or high water" mentality This case plays out far less often than case 1 among the general population of fitness enthusiast, but for those who are a bit more serious about their physique goals, this scenario is quite prevalent. People who fall under this category are the one who cannot let go of their strict regiment and diets and enjoy themselves in the moment. To be honest, these people are extremely reluctant to travel and may actually prefer to stay home and pursue their fitness goals than take the opportunity to see some new sights. If they do somehow manage to force themselves to leave their gyms and kitchens, they're an anxious and nervous wreck the whole time they're on the trip. They miss their "set meals". They don't have access to their gym for their personal workouts. The food at resatuarants isn't "clean." The trip becomes less about enjoying themselves because they're focusing on doing everything in their power to make sure they can stick to their diets when at restaurants to "ensure the gains", as my meathead brother-en might say. Don't be this guy in case 1. If you have to be one, be the guy in case 1. But in reality, you don't have to be either. Here are a few strategies you can use to make the most of your travels this summer FOLLOW FLEXIBLE DIETING This is my mantra. I preach this so much that I'm almost sick of hearing myself talk about it. Ok i'm not sick of telling people about it, but it's something people need to definitely understand, comprehend, and apply to their lives. If you understand flexible dieting, eating while traveling becomes a breeze! Once you know your daily allowance of proteins, carbs, and fats, food choices are essentially limitless. This is fantastic when you're in a new place and want to try some delicious new foods. If you're unfamiliar with flexible dieting techniques, check out some of my other articles like You eat Donuts and Ice cream? But you're ripped! and VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF DIETING If you happened to follow a strict and regimented diet plan for 9 months, you may be setting yourself up for failure on your trip. I'm not saying strict diets are wrong, but they create a type of eating disorder that makes the dieter very uncomfortable with eating foods that aren't approved for their diets. Even if you're someone who enjoys a more regimented diet (I am for multiple reasons), you should still know how to transition into a flexible dieting approach and apply it whenever possible on the road. This does NOT mean eating junk and saying "it fits my macros" the whole time on the trip. If you're reading this, you're probably someone who genuinely enjoys whole nutritious foods, but you still want to have a few treats and desserts occasionally. So understand how calories and macro nutrients are measured and applied to your diet and you'll see how fun and easy it is to enjoy your diet when on traveling  Protein, Protein, Protein I may sound like a broken "bro" record here, but protein is and always will be vital, not matter who you are. Make your meals revolve around a good wholesome protein source at EVERY MEAL. The benefit of high protein is essentially exponential. High protein meals satisfy you faster AND have a high thermic effect. This means your body will use more energy to digest and absorb nutrients from the protein rich meal. Fish, chicken, beef, pork. You've probably learned to love all of these foods by now, so love them on the road! Take advantage of the different and exotic ways your chicken and fish are prepared when traveling. You'll even become inspired to start preparing your meals in a manner similar to the meals you eat while traveling.  Have a Plan One of my favorite quotes is "Failing to prepare is preparing to fail." This could not be more true. If you want to succeed, you have to have a plan. It sounds really cool to live your life on a whim and expect good things to happen just because you've affirmed yourself that things will work out. But guess what? Those good things that happen take planning and foresight. Good things do happen! But usually involve tactical planning and some sort of strategy. What does this mean when traveling? One thing to do is set a plan for what and where you may be eating for the day. If you've got a day full of walking the town and sight seeing, plan a lunch at a restaurant you'd like to try in the area. More importantly, plan a "rough draft" of the types of foods you'd like make part of your meal. If you're still follwing a diet (which i recommend you should), use your flexible dieting skills to know that you have an allowance of carbs and protein you can use at this meal. So if you're really craving some chicken and waffles, then make it happen! Just know that if you've gone through most of your fat and protein for the day, your dinner is going to look a little lighter and less "junk laden" than your lunch. And that's perfectly fine. So have a plan and save yourself some trouble. Indulge
I'm kind of reluctant to say this, but sometimes you just gotta throw caution to the wind. I'm not saying employ the "screw it" mentality mentioned above, but dieting is hard. It's stressful. It's boring. It's not glamorous. Diets take their toll. Often times its very, very necessary to put the diet aside for a few days and enjoy yourself. ESPECIALLY WHEN TRAVELING. Honestly, there's nothing wrong with enjoying a big dessert or stack of pancakes when you've been dieting for extended periods. I would never call it a "cheat" day or "cheat meal", and I'm very hesitant to even use the term "refeed." Refeed sounds like something livestock cattle would do. Something I might say is "strategic over-feeding." That may not sound like anything better than 'refeed", but there is a difference. If you've been in a caloric deficit for an extended period of time, your body is looking for any extra energy it can get. By adding a few meals where you over-eat (with emphasis of carbs and protein), your body will gain a host of benefits from the surplus of calories and nutrients. This always seems counter intuitive to people, but it works extremely well for fat loss. So there you have it, folks. If you happen to make your way out to the beach this summer or hit the road with some buds, always remember there's a way to sustain your hard earned physique and not completely fall off the gainz train!  Juice Diets. Low-Fat Diets. High-Fat Diets. Atkins Diet. Vegan Diet. Paleo Diet. Mountain Dog Diet. All Organic Diet. Twinkie Diet. Fast Food Diet. If It Fits Your Macros Diets. Fasting Diets. Eat only grapefruit and lettuce for 9 weeks diets. I think you get the idea. There's a lot of diets out there that claim to be the "best" and "most effective" diet for weight loss. As different and strange as some of them may be, they all have something in common. And it's THEY WORK. EVERYTHING WORKS IN THE SHORT RUN. The one premise all diets work on is calorie restriction, whether you're aware of it or not. Most of the time, you aren't. People tend to think there's some magic combination of the foods they're eating, when it actually its more about the foods they're not eating. Dieters are typically your average sedentary American that consumes a surplus of calories, mostly of the fast-food and cheap meal variety. If suddenly your Average Joe, or even someone who trains and exercises jumps onto some sort of fad diet then they will absolutely see results. Clearly its because he went hardcore Paleo and the raw power of the primal lifestyle and the foods only cavemen ate trigger his instinctive senses to burn fat and build muscle! Yes, that must be it! It's science. Or sorcery. Same shit. Kidding aside, by completely changing the type of foods Joe ate, he unknowingly began to eat less. It wasn't because of the types of foods he ate, but because of the calorie restriction and energy deficit he created by alerting the types of foods he ate. Joe could have have the EXACT SAME results eating the EXACT SAME food he always ate, if he matched the macro-nutrient profiles he used in the Paleo Diet. It ultimately doesn't matter what type of diet you're on because they will all work. Sure the type of training (if any) you're doing and the physique goals you have should be large factors when deciding which diet rabbit hole to go down, but in the grand scheme of things it makes very little difference. SO IF THEY ALL WORK, THEN WHY ARE SOME BETTER THAN OTHERS? Ah, Here's where it gets a bit messy. ALL diets come down to 2 main factors, which are: SUSTAINABILITY ADHERENCE I'm sure you can think of numerous times somebody you know lost a bunch of weight doing X diet for a short period of time. Maybe they lost 10 pounds. Maybe 20 pounds. 30 pounds. But as fast as they shed that weight, it found its way back on just as quickly, if not faster. Why's that? Because after such a short (or long) period time of restricting their calories in order to lose weight (which isn't even all body fat), they immediately went back to eating they way they used to eat when they were fatter. It happens all the time and you've probably seen it. THE BEST DIETS ARE THE ONES THAT ARE SUSTAINABLE. What's the point in losing 30 pounds if you're only going to put it back on, plus another 10? TODAY'S MOST POPULAR DIETS AND WHY THEY MAY POTENTIALLY FAIL YOU Paleo Diet: I'm not sure how this diet became such a fad overnight. It's by no means a NEW diet as the type of foods it advocates have been used by althetes and bodybuilders for decades. I think the cross fit revolution had something to do with the resurgence. Why they flocked to that specific diet I have no idea because the original Paleo diet plan is not conducive to the type of training CrossFitters are all about. For those unaware, the original Paleo Diet is based on foods consumed by Paleolithic era homo sapiens. If you know anything about human sociology, you'd know food was extremely limited to these early humans and what they ate was only ANIMAL MEAT and possibly scavenged for a small vareity of assorted vegitation. Now if you're looking to get "cross fit jacked", that diet is not going to do it. They diet has been altered to include potatoes and rice, foods humans have only been eating for a few centuries, so not exactly PALEO. But whatever. So its sort of transcended from a zero carb diet to a "you can include moderate amounts of carbs" diet. The diet dictates in order to be effective, only "Paleo Approved" foods should be consumed. Why It's Effective The huge benefit of Paleo-type eating is that it's based on eating whole foods and limited amounts of carbohydrates. For the Average Joe and most overweight individuals, this is EXACTLY the type of eating they need to be doing. Sedentary people don't need a large surplus of carbohydrates. That's just asking to be fat. By eating higher amounts of protein and fat with lower carbs, your body will be leaner with no reason to store excess energy (calories). How It Might Fail You. The number one reason this diet may fail is due to ADHERENCE. Die-hard Paleo Dieters will advocate eating nothing but 'CLEAN PALEO" foods. This means totally restricting everything like bread, sugar, pastas, fast food, restaurant foods, deserts. Pretty much food that you see in the real world. With so much delicious and tempting food essentially bombarding you everytime you drive down the street, it takes a lot of will power to not give in to your cravings. This can be extremely difficult, especially for first-time dieters. So sooner or later they'll give into their urges and cravings and typically binge on junk food. Binging leads to guilt. Guilt may lead to even more restrictive and excessive dietings. Which will ultimately lead to another binge. It's a viscous cylce. And while the cycle may be manageable for a while, it's definitely not a habit you'd like to sustain an extended period of time. Low-Fat Diets This one's a bit newer and gained a lot of popularity in the late 1980's and early '90s. Suddenly saturated fat became a huge villain and the best thing to eat was carbohydrates. Everything "healthy" became synonomous with "low-fat". So frosted flakes cereal? HEALTHY. Low-fat cookies? HEALTHY. Baked Potato chips. HAVE AT IT. Not to say any of those foods are inherently unhealthy, but the labels completely mislead people into creating an image of what they should and should not be eating. By following a strict low-fat diet, once again you're restricting potential calories. This has shown to be effective, but mostly in individuals who train with weights or some type of resistance. How It Might Fail You. You may have all ready noticed this, but carbohydrate rich foods are delicious. This makes them extremely easy to over eat. If you're someone who follows a low fat diet without accounting for calories, you're probably consuming a lot more carbs than you're body needs. People on higher carb/lower fat diets tend to be more overweight than those who would follow a Paleo-type diet plan or a low carb/higher fat regiment. Adherence is another issue yet again. Chicken and rice every day is not fun and it is only a matter of time until you cave in and find yourself at the Chick-Fil-drive through waiting on your fried chicken sandwich and large order of fries. And once again, sustainability is an issue. If you do manage to lose a load of weight following a low fat diet, how long do you think you can possibly maintain never eating higher fat foods? High Fat Diets
It's hard for a lot of people to fathom eating higher amounts of dietary fat to lose body fat. It sounds counter intuitive to them. The caveat with eating a higher cab diet means eating a lower amount of carbohydrates. Sometimes even zero carb. People have been ingrained with the idea that dietary fat causes high blood cholesterol and heart disease. Both claims have been disproven by the way. By reducing the amount of carboyhdrates you consume, the body turns to its primary source of energy: triglycerides in the form of dietary fat and body fat. Over consumption of carbohydrates is the fastest way to increase your body fat. A surplus amount of energy in the form of carbs has no where to be stored other than fat cells once muscle cells and other organ tissue has been filled with carbs in the form of glycogen. By making your body more adapted to using fat as fuel. the chances of losing body fat is substantially improved. Why It May Fail You. I don't think I have to keep on repeating it, but I will anyway. Eating nothing but bacon and eggs may sound appetizing for a while, but it gets old real quick. Adherence, yet again, becomes the issue. After a few months, or even a few weeks of low carbing it can get quite tiresome. A bad day at work or some frustration can be the tipping point to an all out binge at Krispy Kreme. (There aren't many things in life as tantalizing as the Hot n Fresh neon sign at Krispy Kreme) As for sustainability; if you think you can go the rest of your life never eating some awesome birthday or wedding cake, then you're a better person than I.  The concept of lifting weights can be pretty puzzling to a lot of trainees. Their first and only inclination is to associate weight training with gaining mass and getting bigger overall. While weight training CAN lead to increased muscle mass, it won't guarantee you become a pro bodybuilder overnight. On the flipside, weight training is extremely effective means of exercise for those looking to shed some extra body fat. So let’s talk about training for fat loss, and what you should consider if you’re trying to get the most out of your efforts. Prioritize Frequency Over Volume Over many years of training, I’ve tried a lot of different approaches, both for myself, and for clients. At the end of the day, I’ve learned that just about everything works (aside from various extremes), but nothing works forever, and some things only work during times of extremely low stress and the best of environments (think of the kids in college with no bills, raging hormones, mommy and daddy’s money to spend, and very little anxiety or real-world problems to deal with). To maintain your muscles, you have to use them by applying resistance frequently enough to make sure that your body pulls body fat for fuel. In saying that, I like to put a focus on frequency with volume spread out over the week, rather than high volume sessions where you hammer away at a muscle group once every 6-7 days. Muscle protein synthesis occurs anywhere from 24-48 hours post resistance training, therefore it makes sense to train more frequently if recovery is not impeded (remember, don’t just annihilate your muscles every single session). And assuming you’re getting adequate protein intake on your weight loss diet plan, you’ll be good to maintain and maybe even build some muscle while you’re at it. It's beneficial to have you training 3-4 times per week with a frequency of hitting muscle groups 2-3 times per week. Hitting each muscle group even more frequently than this can work extremely well as long as the training volume is managed well. Sleep, Recovery, Food: All things not to be overlooked, of course. With regards to getting enough sleep, the more rest you can get on a diet, the better your recovery will typically be. The better you recovery, the better you’ll feel and perform, and the likelihood of lower stress hormones, which are catabolic. Recovery is typically gauged in various ways. Here are some questions to think about:
If you answered no to more than a few of these, your recovery might be hindered somewhat. The recovery process is one that requires an ability to manage the push and pull. Eating well enough to give yourself the nutrients you need, and also allowing for fat loss is not hard, but requires some effort. For more ideas on food, read more about how to create your fat loss diet.  Some Popular Training Methods For Fat LossAs I mentioned above, most everything works, but nothing works forever. Some programs are indeed more ideal than others when you want fat loss, but all in all, how you deal with it all psychologically is probably more important than any amount of training program mental masturbation (overthinking the optimal) you might embark on. Some prefer metabolic programs, and conditioning types of training, while others like to train like a powerlifter when dieting. Here’s what you need to know — as long as it’s intense enough, and you can recover adequately, you’ll maintain muscle, and maybe even build some. Some popular methods of training for fat loss include:
Which is best? They all work, and they’re all good methods of helping you lose fat, and maintain lean body mass. One note I will make about super low volume programs is this: They can work, and some work well, but in my experience most of us need practice with the movements. Lifting maximally once per week on a major lift (like the bench, deadlift, squat) can head south quickly. Here’s how:
Here’s what I recommend: For most of the people i work with personally, we will start off their sessions with some type of movement that has a strength-focus, but we’re not resting for long periods (anything longer than 2 minutes). We’ll use rep range of 4-8 for these movements, and aim for a few top sets. Once these are over, I love to have them work their entire body with multiple movements, typically 1-2 supersets. So if we’re starting off with a drop set of 4×4 weighted chins, I might follow it up with 3-4 sets of pushups supersetted with machine rows with very little to no rest between sets. We’ll rest for about 2 minutes after the superset, and then move onto another movement group I feel is best for them. After that’s over, we’ll rest again for another 2-3 minutes. And depending on the focus, and goal, some type of ab or arm work is thrown in to finish it off — typically for 3-4 movements for a complex at the end. Some call it a finisher. Others call it conditioning. Most everyone agrees that it sucks. The Criteria Is Simple:
Stick to the recommendations made above and your weight training program will prove to be an essential part of your over-all diet and fitness plan.
Happy lifting!  Fitness is something I rarely think about anymore. Which is pretty weird to say since a large portion of my life is writing about fitness and selling workout programs but the days of thinking about my workout and diet are gone. Don’t get me wrong. I still enjoy training and lifting heavy weights. I still watch my diet and eat well for both my health and body composition. But my days of spending 6 times per week in the gym, labeling myself as the "guy who lifts weights" and just constantly thinking about fitness are over. Here’s why I’m done with the “fitness lifestyle:” 1) Talking and reading about fitness online is exhausting and makes me feel stupid. Obviously I’m not talking all fitness content. I'm talking about the spew of mis-information about training and nutrition that people blindly regurgitate because it sounds scienec-y. I’m also talking about watching fitness Youtube videos and feeling like I’m losing 10 IQ points every time because the comment sections are filled with racist 14 year olds. I don’t need that crap in my life. These days I just read what I need and take action. 2) I don’t obsess about my looks anymore “Ugh my shoulders aren’t wide enough.” “All I need is one more inch on my biceps and my body will be perfect.” “Maybe…just maybe if I’m 8% body fat instead of 10% I’ll be happy.” Believe me, no one that’s worth knowing gives a shit if you’re 8% body fat vs. 10% body fat. And once you hit a certain muscular threshold (typically your first 20-25 pounds), the only people you’re going to impress is more dudes. Trust me, chix aren't digging the weight you add to the bar. If you ever do want to go from 10% body fat to 8% or gain an extra inch in your arms, do it for yourself, not because you think it’ll attract hotter women or more respect and power. 3) I get more time to do other, more enjoyable stuff. I never quite understand how some guys spend close to 2 hours in the gym and just “hang out.” If I wanted to hang out with friends I would do it outside the gym where everyone doesn’t smell like sweat and bodily fluids. What I’ve found is that you get so much more free time to do literally anything you want when you’re not obsessed about planning your next workout or diet and doing “meal prep.” I get more time to:
Ask yourself, what would you do if you stopped obsessing over fitness? 4) I get to enjoy eating again You know the saying, “Eat to live, don’t eat to live.” Yeah…screw that. But there’s too much damn good food in this world to simply “eat to live.” While I like to eat for my health and mental and physical performance, I also like to eat for fun. Nothing wrong with that in my book. 5) Dieting becomes effortless. I view food as simply food. Don’t get me wrong, I love eating and trying new foods but I don’t obsess over “clean” or “dirty” foods and I definitely don’t put a label on the way I eat (e.g. Oh I’m paleo, bro). I keep a rough count of calories in my head and loosely track protein, carbs, and fats. While I recommend beginners to closely track their food intake at the start with a notebook or app, you should be able to get to a point (within a few months) where you’re able to ‘eyeball’ and track your intake in your head. Knowing your numbers is essential but I don’t recommend stressing over them. For example, if I know I ate a ton of fats one day, I”ll simply go lower on fats the next day, but I won’t obsess over the exact gram amount. 6) My body hurts a heckuvalot less. Every single time I went on a 5-7 day workout split, my body would hate me. My lower back would ache, my knees make this weird snapping sound every time walked, and worst of all, I just felt really really tired. Hammering my body with heavy weights almost every day would just fry my CNS and I would never feel motivated to lift for the long run. Now, realize I’m just talking about heavy lifting here. I have no problem lifting 3-4x per week and doing some extra cardio/conditioning work or even play sports on off days. 7) I actually look forward to my workouts again. I had a 3 month period where I did a 6 day per week bodybuilder split. The first week went well since it was still a new routine. But after that everything went to hell. The exhaustion of lifting 5 days in a row is enough to make you want to kill yourself These past few months, I’ve been training 2-3 days per week using a super simple upper/lower split. This makes everything much easier to manage and with the extra rest days I’m actually excited to train hard and have enough energy to go to the gym, not to mention feel good enough to accomplish the rest of my daily tasks. If you love to daydream about your next session to the gym, then more power to ya. If you love spending your nights tweaking your carb and fat ratios, then that’s awesome. Whatever makes you happy… But personally, I've had a bit too much of the “fitness lifestyle” and the hardcore, “balls to the walls” attitude that so many guys have with fitness.  It's not too often that I read something and feel immediately compelled to share it. This was one of the better posts I've come across in a while, written by Jason Ferrugia. (see more of his awesome stuff at jasonferruggia.com) I won't comment much about it, so read them all for yourselves and try to take away as many suggestions as you can and be sure to implement them in your life accordingly. The meaning of life is that it is to be lived.”- Bruce Lee 1) Always have a quest. 2) Don’t feel the need to justify your opinion. 3) Cut your expenses in half. Then cut them again. 4) Don’t die without any scars. Like Tyler Durden advised. 5) Remember that everyone wants to feel important. 6) Don’t fall into “the busy trap.” It’s okay to not always be “on your grind,” 24/7. 7) Learn something from everyone you meet. 8) Take more risks without fear of making mistakes. 9) Sweat every day. 10) Get Facebook and email off your phone. No one ever got rich checking their email more often.” – Noah Kagan 11) Never “grow up.” 12) If you haven’t worn something in more than two months get rid of it. 13) Send more hand written notes. 14) Not everyone will like you. You need to be okay with that. 15) You don’t have to respond to every Tweet, email, call or text message. That’s a form of slavery. 16) Question authority. 17) Learn to do something artistic- paint, draw, play an instrument. 18) Keep your cell phone off the dinner table. 19) Get punched in the face at least once. Everyone needs that. (Keeping your phone on the table is a good way to facilitate that) 20) Say “please” and “thank you” more than everyone else. 21) Repeat a persons name aloud when you first meet them. 22) Never waste time arguing on the internet. 23) Carry a book with you wherever you go. A real book. 24) When you’re with friends or family members, be with them 100%. Don’t think about work or check your phone. 25) Make a difference in someone’s life. 26) Never discuss how much money you make. 27) Go for a walk every day. 28) Be the first one to try everything. 29) Slow down. Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” – Lao Tzu 30) Don’t watch the news. It’s depressing. If something important happens you’ll know. 31) Tell your friends you love them. 32) Smile before you pick up the phone and say “hello.” 33) Give advice only when it’s asked for. 34) Don’t give it a second time if the person didn’t listen the first. 35) Do things that make you uncomfortable. 36) Everyone’s looking for a leader. Stand up and lead. 37) Turn off your cell phone after 8pm. Or at least set some kind of boundaries. 38) Get out of debt. Take it from someone who was buried in it. 39) Spend more time doing only things you’re passionate about. 40) Change the way things are normally done. 41) Say less, listen more. 42) Think long and hard before you make the decision to go to college or grad school. Read The Education of Millionaires before you do. And visit this website. 43) Challenge the status quo. Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” – Mark Twain 44) Spend some time to come up with a really fucking cool bucket list and start working your way through it. 45) Make more time to spend with your friends and family. 46) Get your hands dirty. 47) Daydreaming and saying “I want” or “I wish” are the signs of an amateur. Be a pro. 48) Do things that scare the shit out of you. 49) Remove all stressful people and situations from your life. 50) Whenever you see a member of the military, thank them. 51) Pick up the check. 52) Travel more. This doesn’t always cost as much as you think. Read this book for some ideas. 53) Help others make their dreams come true. 54) Anger, jealously and bitterness ruin your life. Be happy for everyone. 55) Laugh every day. 56) Pay your credit cards off each month. Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.” – Will Rogers 57) Reinvent yourself. 58) Dream bigger. Most people don’t think they can accomplish big things so they settle for mediocrity. Don’t be like everyone else. 59) Quit your job. Life shouldn’t be spent doing shit you hate. Benefits and security aren’t worth your happiness. 60) Save more of your money. Trust me on this. 61) Read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. 62) Everyone wants to change the world. That doesn’t make you unique. Acting on that desire does. 63) Eat your steak rare. 64) Drink your coffee black. 65) Try completely unplugging one day per week. Or at least, per month. 66) Remember the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” 67) Call your mom more often. Now would be a good time. -- If you liked this article, please check out more of Jason's stuff at jasonferruggia.com.
 For this article, I'm going to do something unusual for me and cut out all the fluff and get straight to the point. I'm a man who loves his fluff, in everything such as training and nutrition articles, my pillows, and smeared between two pieces of white bread to give the peanut butter some company! (This is a peanut butter-fluff sandwich, make one after reading this.) But i'll leave it out for this one, and get right to the point because inquisitive minds are dying to know.  What is Carb Cycling? Carb cycling is a method of fat loss that works through manipulation of dietary carbohydrates. It can sometimes be a bit complex and tricky, but for the sake of time, it's as simple as this: On Days You Lift Weights EAT A REASONABLE AMOUNT OF CARBS On Days You Don't Lift Weights Keep the carbs to a minimum. There you have it. As simple as pie. Which you can have if you've trained with weights at a reasonable intensity levels.  Results like this are not uncommon with carb cycling There's definitely A LOT more behind the mechanisms of this very effective fat-loss method, and I may not be well versed enough with the scientific lingo to make a strong case for the exact reasons on how it works. Instead, take a look at some of these well-researched and well-composed article on the method. FAT BURNING MACHINE: EASY CARB CYCLING FOR A BETTER BODY CARB CYCLING FOR FAT LOSS A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO CARB CYCLING Carb Cycling: A DAILY MEAL PLAN TO GET STARTED  My success with carb cycling methods I personally implement this method from time to time with lots of success, especially during cutting phases when fat-loss progress starts to stall out.
so if you're someone looking to find a diet method that's sustainable and doesn't restrict whole food groups, give this method of cycling carbohydrates a shot. You won't be disappointed.  Ladies, don't think I'd forget about you. The following are some basic principles every woman in the gym should know if they're looking to get the most out of their workouts. By Jason Maxwell See more of Jason's work at JMAXFITNESS.com
Article by Jason Maxwell. See more at: http://www.jmaxfitness.com/blog/every-woman-know-building-muscle/#sthash.q8TMIyuX.dpuf
 Many of us get caught up in our own lives that we tend to neglect the quality of our lives. Here are a few easy to impliment techniques that will increase your health and get you back to enjoying your day. GET 7-9 HOURS OF SLEEP Most of us walk through life like we've been bitten by zombies. I'm certain lack of sleep is one of the main reasons people deal with small bouts of depression and general apathy that we feel from time to time. When we don't sleep well throughout the night, we don't fire on all cyclinders the next day, and a lot of would be memories are lost in translation. We end up dragging ourselves through the day, rather than actually enjoying it. Sleep is a restorative process for our mind and bodies. Sleep is an extremely anabolic (building) state that stimulates growth and rejuvenation of the immune system, skeletal system, and muscular system. Lack of sleep can cause irritablity, lack of cognitive function and trouble remembering things, and lower sex drive. These things alone won't kill you, but they will make your day a little less awesome. There's no glory in running on little sleep. Many people claim to feel 'okay" on five hours per night, but these tough guys are short changing themselves. I mean, you can survive on a diet of twinkies and mountain dew, but you certainly won't thrive. Limit caffeine intake to no later than 4 pm Caffeine is a stimulant that stays in your body for up to six hours after ingestion. If your sensitive to coffee, energy drinks, or crack cocaine, limit consumption and cut it off by noon. Turn off your TV and electronics 1 hour prior to bed Don't drift off to sleep watching Family Guy re-runs or lame Youtube videos. While it may seem like a relaxing activity, watching TV or playing on the computer are actually stimulatory activities. Read some fiction Reading fictional books before bed gets your mind out of reality and into the story you're reading. It regulates breathing and signals your body to shut down for the evening, which is conducive for better quality sleep. Take Control of Your Morning Be proactive, not reactive. When the alarm goes off, get up Get out of the habit of lounging around for 10 more minutes or re-setting your alarm. Just because you can get up whenever you like doesn't mean you should delay starting your day. Drink a large glass of water You're dehydrated, maybe a little hungry. Water will satisfy you and also get your metabolism running for the day. Go for a 5-10 minute walk "A leisurly stroll is a gift!" Take a walk around your neighborhood or apartment complex. Take deep breaths, get loose, and listen to all the sounds happening around you. Do your writing or work early in the day The first few hours of the day are when you tend to be most productive. If you have the luxury of working from home, don't dilly-dally for a few hours to start working. If you're a writer, you tend to be more creative, inquisitive, and motivated once you get going. Give it a try. Fix your posture Most of us spend the better part of the day hunched over a desk infront of a computer screen all day. This wreaks havoc on our spinal columns and degrades our posture. Weak posture has down stream effects that affect mood, energy levels, productivity, and immunity. Take some time to get out of your chair and do a few exercises to improve your posture, you'll be surprised how great you can feel after a few good deep breathes and stetches. Go Play
DOn't complicate this one. Just do it. Go out and play. Ride a bike, go for a walk, skateboard, surf, play with your dogs, dig a whole, throw a frisbee. Just go play. As adults, we often forget to make time to have fun. You'll be amazed how making time to just have some active fun will leave you feeling. In fact, go out and play right now.  Don't be a sucker when it comes to jumping on the "this year I'm going to lose 30 pounds FOR REAL THIS TIME" train. Here are the real changes you need to make, the ones you should have made last April. 1. You don’t actually need to wait until New Years. You can actually start right now making positive changes. You can make a commitment not to eat an entire box of holiday chocolates in a single sitting. You can simply decide to be mindful of how much you consume at a single meal rather than eating to the point of having a food baby or inflicting yourself with THE MEAT SWEATS. Or maybe you can simply decide to be more reasonable with your alcohol consumption over the holidays so you're not completely worthless the following day and you can get some training in the following day. Whatever the case, you can start to moderate your intake right now.  2. Don’t take on too much too soon. Despite what you may have heard, you don’t need to go to the gym 6 days per week and eat salad all day every day to lose body fat. This may be the single fastest way to burn yourself out and completely abandon whatever fitness goals you may have set for yourself. Start with a minimum effective dose. Though this may result in more rapid results initially, this type of plan is destined to fail because is it ultimately not sustainable. Instead of trying to do as much as you can tolerate, my suggestion would be to do as little as possible while still making progress. In terms of fat loss this might mean starting to work out 3 days per week and having a much more moderate calorie deficit. While this might provide slower results in the short term, it will be more sustainable in the long term. 3. Don’t cut out all of your carbs. Seriously, don’t do that. Carbs are also required to fuel your hard workouts and are necessary for optimal thyroid function. Calories, not carbs, are the primary driver of fat loss. I'm also not saying to load up on rice and donuts just because you're "BULKING, BRO!". This will set you back a lot in terms of reaching your dream physique. Carbs have a time and place, find out what the most effective ones are for you and when the most sutiable times to enjoy them are. Also, low carb diets are effective when used properly and you accept the obligations that come with them.  4. Don’t fall prey to cleanses. Just don’t. The results of these are short-term and not sustainable. If the program you’re thinking of doing is associated with any multi-level marketing program :cough:: Herbalife ::cough:, I would suggest you look elsewhere.  5. Be prepared to do this for the long haul.
If you want for your results to stick around, you have to go into a lifestyle change with the mindset that this is going to be forever because the second you start to go back to what you’re currently doing you’re also going to go right back to how you currently look. Great physiques are built over months and years not days and weeks. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something. As always, best of luck to everyone on their health and fitness en devours in 2015.  "Eating clean" may possibly help you look better, but it might be making you an emotional wreck and ruining your relationship with food. When I think of eating disorders I think of high school health class and watching one of those terrible “after school special” videos talking about the dangers of anorexia, bulimia, etc. I also have images in my head of extremely small, skin and bone females hunched over a toilet. The image I don’t have is one of a fit, health conscious individual, who is a regular member of the fitfam. The question is, should I? What are Cheat Meals How many times have you heard, “I am going to eat clean all week, then have a HUGE cheat meal on the weekend”? I know if you follow fitness people on social media you have heard it a lot! Every time I hear someone talk about how hard they are going to go on their weekly “cheat meal” I cringe I can almost feel the eating disorder coming on. The bottom line about cheat meals is this – there is no need to ever have a cheat meal. The people I work with and train eat WHATEVER they want as long as they hit their macronutrient (protein, carbohydrate, fat) and fiber requirements. I hardly ever hear one of my clients complaining about their diet or complaining about food cravings . It’s not very common to want a cheat meal when you get to eat foods of your choice every day. here's my definition of a cheat meal.
 Clean Eating / Binge Cycle I’m not here to bash clean eating but cheat meals are much more common with clean eaters then people who are more flexible with their nutrition. Here’s the deal, flexible dieting creates a structure that is sustainable, easy to follow, and lessens food cravings. On the other hand, following a structured clean eating meal plan is not sustainable. I do not care who you are, it is impossible to eat chicken and broccoli six times a day for the rest of your life, believe me, I've tried that. I know I am exaggerating but the point is, its only a matter of time before you must eat off of the plan and there is where the problem lies. Once you eat off from the plan things get messy.You go for your weekly cheat meal and binge on over 10,000 calories. Following that episode you feel terrible, worthless, like you are a failure. A mild depression sets in. The next day you jump back on the meal plan and go at it again for another week, making sure to eat as clean as ever this week because you know you went over board on your cheat. Then here comes the weekend cheat meal again and the same thing happens. This goes on for weeks and weeks and before you even realize it, you are at the beginning stages of an eating disorder. According to the Mayo Clinic the definition of binge eating is: “Binge-eating disorder is a serious eating disorder in which you frequently consume unusually large amounts of food. Almost everyone overeats on occasion, such as having seconds or thirds of a holiday meal. But for some people, overeating crosses the line to binge-eating disorder and it becomes a regular occurrence, usually done in secret.When you have binge-eating disorder, you may be deeply embarrassed about gorging and vow to stop. But you feel such a compulsion that you can’t resist the urges and continue binge eating.” Not everyone who follows clean eating meal plans has this problem so I don’t want to make it seem like I am putting everyone in the same group. I also realize that people can have cheat meals and be completely fine there after. I am just trying to point out this is a serious situation and it is more common than you think! Aside from the mental implications of this situation, there is also negative side effects to your physique as well. The human body has an unlimited ability to store body fat. What I mean by that is simple. There is no cut off point where your body will stop absorbing nutrients and accumulating body fat. The weight gain following an epic binge like we are talking about here is not all water, there definitely is some fat accumulation associated as well. The human body likes to store body fat, that is one reason as a society there is such a huge obesity problem.  The Solution
Stop defining food items as “good” or “bad”, “clean” or “dirty “. Lets start defining foods by their macronutrient composition. A Pop Tart is no longer a dirty food, it is now 200 calories, 5g fat, 37g carbohydrate and 2g of protein. Again, my intention is not to bash clean eating or meal plans, its just to point out, that way of thinking can create an unhealthy relationship with food. With that comes eliminating the need for cheat meals. You no longer have cheat meals you now just fit whatever foods you want into your macronutrient numbers for the day. I hope this article shed some light on a topic that I don’t see get nearly enough attention.  Ultimately, the goal of any diet is to be sustainable and to see the best impact on health and body composition. I can recall numerous experiences with people asking me why I was eating certain things while I was “dieting.” The mantra held for the longest time that if you were dieting to lose weight it automatically meant you had to eat boring and bland foods. When it comes to bodybuilding, this was seemingly taken even further and if you weren’t eating lean chicken breast, broccoli, and brown rice, you certainly wouldn’t be getting into contest shape. The goal of this article is to break down some of those misconceptions and, especially for non-competitive physique athletes, to realize that there is a whole host of food options out there for you to choose from. Diet Variety and "IIFYM" The most important variable in dieting is calorie balance (calories in vs calories out) What this means is that if you want to lose weight, you’re going to have to eat less calories than you are burning and if you want to gain weight then you are going to have to eat more calories than you are burning. Once you nail this down, you should focus on determining your macronutrient breakdown (how many grams of protein, carbs and fats you should have in your diet). When these two large variables are figured out, options are nearly endless to see anywhere from modest weight loss goals to pretty spectacular. There’s a good reason that IIFYM (If It Fits Your Macros) has gained so much popularity recently. This diet does incredibly well at nailing calorie balance and the macro breakdown. IIFYM pretty much states that once you have your macro breakdown figured out, you can literally eat whatever you want to fill in those macros, and still be able to see results. This is certainly an appeal for a lot of individuals that want variety in their diet (don’t we all?). With this variety comes sustainability. Not many individuals out there can diet on lean chicken breast, brown rice and broccoli year round. The lack of variety or options can even be stressful for some individuals and that is something that should surely be limited. This is even more truthful for the general population. It would be great to be able to go out and interact with your friends and family on a Friday or Saturday night without it interfering with your diet. This flexible dieting approach allows people to see short term results, long term results, and gives them the confidence that they can sustain a diet to reach their desired results.  Saki and Sushi on a cutting diet? Damn straight. Macronutrients Let’s take a closer look at each macronutrient and see if we can come up with a rather extensive list of choices for each. Protein We’ll start with protein as it likely has the least conflicting choices. Protein choices should for the most part start with lean protein sources. The list of lean protein sources can be made up of lean chicken breast, lean turkey, seafood, eggs, dairy, protein supplements and lean red meats. All of these options are complete sources of protein and should be the primary focus of the diet in terms of your protein selections. That’s quite the list to choose from already. It should be stated as to why we choose the leaner cuts is to reduce the amount of saturated fat. This is not to say saturated fats should be avoided, but we believe they should be consumed in moderation. Perhaps a good rule of thumb is about a one third split of your daily fats come from saturated fat sources. This abundance of options sure beats the plain ‘ol lean chicken breast choice that seems to be the stereotypical protein source for a lot of dieters out there.  Carbohydrates Carbohydrates are next, and there is a bit more conflicting information on these choices. The conflict largely stems from the Glycemic Index and how these choices impact it. The glycemic index of a food is technically a measure of both how fast that food raises blood glucose levels, and how much it elevates insulin levels. Since proteins and fats have a much smaller (sometimes zero) ability to alter insulin or glucose levels, the glycemic index only applies meaningfully to carbohydrates. Ranked from 0 to 100, all carbohydrate sources appear somewhere on the glycemic index. Faster absorbing and more insulin ergic carbs appear closer to 100, and slower absorbing (and digesting) carbs appear closer to zero. Because fiber and fat slow digestion and absorption, they have a lowering effect on the glycemic index of any co-ingested carbs. Our choices here range from more stereotypical carb choices such as brown rice, oatmeal, sweet potatoes, quinoa, and most fruits on the lower end of the GI spectrum to higher GI carb sources (think more tasty ones) such as sugary cereal, Gatorade, and some other more traditional “junk” food types such as donuts and pop-tarts. When calorie balance and your macro breakdown are taken care of, the GI of a food becomes largely irrelevant for general weight loss and that’s why you see so many flexible dieters or IIFYM’ers having a great deal of success with losing weight and improving their body composition despite eating more untraditional food choices. This gives a tremendous amount of freedom to those seeking to diet, as who wouldn’t want to have the occasional (or even daily) pop tart or donut while still losing weight. Carb Timing For the purposes of this article on general weight loss, we won’t dwell on the intricacies of the timing of carbohydrates around activity. There are some subtle nuances with more advanced athletes, whereas higher GI carb sources can be timed around workouts to see some possible benefits (not huge, but enough that more advanced athletes should be looking into it). The general population can easily not worry about this and simply match their macros with their choice of high GI carb or low GI carb sources throughout the day. The best bet here is likely a mixture of the two for variety and enjoyment purposes. It should also be noted that consuming all of your carbohydrates from the higher GI or junk food category is not the best idea. Some of the more traditional, healthier variety of carbs have a better micronutrient breakdown and help people feeling fuller (more satiated) than their higher GI counterparts.  Fat Our last macronutrient group we’ll touch on for variety is fats. This was mentioned a bit in the protein talk about saturated fats vs unsaturated fats, but it is likely a good idea to consume saturated fats in moderation and get most of your fats from the healthy fat variety. Healthy fats would be your poly and monounsaturated fats, such as olive oil, canola oil, avocados, nuts and nut butters. In our opinion, it is a good idea to get most of your healthy fats from the monounsaturated variety (avocados, nuts and nut butters). Vegetable oils can account for a smaller portion of this and the rest should come from saturated fats. It should also be noted that there are some healthier saturated options here as well such as coconut oil and fats from grass fed animals. The last section of the table below is about your trans fat consumption. This is a cause for concern if you’re a true IIFYM’er and fast food or store bought baked goods are a part of your diet. It is likely a good idea to limit your consumption of trans fats to as close to zero as you can. What we end up with in terms of fat choices is a chart that looks something like this: Fat TypeRecommended IntakeExample FoodsMonounsaturated 60%Avocado, nuts and their butters, olive oilPolyunsaturated 15%Vegetable oilsHealthy Saturated 15%Coconut/macadamia nut oils, grass fed animal fatsConventional Saturated 10%Fats from conventionally farmed bacon, eggs, cheeses, buttersTrans 0%Store-bought baked goods, most fast foodSample Meal PlanLet’s take a look at what a sample meal could look like with some rough macronutrient guidelines for this meal of 25g protein, 50g carbohydrates and 15g healthy fats. This will be our sample of a more traditional meal:
With diet variety, you can eat this delicious sandwich and it’s not considered “cheating”. There ends up being anywhere from 5 to 10 choices for each category here (some macro groups, such as carbohydrates have even more). This is an extremely liberating idea when a person sits down to plan their diet. They begin to realize that dieting won’t be handicapped around social engagements or work functions. As long as they have a rough idea of their macronutrient goals for the day and meal, they can choose options that fit within the parameters of their meals and can still successfully stay on track. When choices are nearly endless, the stress and worry that accompanies these functions can be thrown out the window, so to speak, and dieting suddenly becomes that much easier. When dieting becomes easier, sustainability increases and results are typically much easier to come by. Wrap Up When we break each macronutrient group down and take a closer look, we end up with a ton of choices to choose from. No longer are we left with just chicken for protein, just brown rice for carbs, and just broccoli from vegetables. Instead, we have an abundance of healthy choices to make that can easily fit your daily macronutrient breakdown to help you reach your weight loss or body composition goals. Remember that variety is the spice of life, and when dieting the more options you can have, the more likely you are to stay on track in the short term, and most importantly in the long term. If diet success can be sustainable in the long term, a healthier lifestyle is suddenly that much easier to stick to. Contributions by: Nick Shaw is the Founder and CEO of Renaissance Periodization - See more at: http://www.jmaxfitness.com/blog/diet-variety/#sthash.9TNqWLiv.dpuf Works Cited WIKIPEDIA. WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION. WEB. 04 OCT. 2014. <HTTP://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/SATURATED_FAT_AND_CARDIOVASCULAR_DISEASE_CONTROVERSY#SYSTEMATIC_REVIEWS_IN_REPUTABLE_MEDICAL_JOURNALS>.“DIABETES CARE.” FIVE-WEEK, LOW–GLYCEMIC INDEX DIET DECREASES TOTAL FAT MASS AND IMPROVES PLASMA LIPID PROFILE IN MODERATELY OVERWEIGHT NONDIABETIC MEN. WEB. 04 OCT. 2014. <HTTP://CARE.DIABETESJOURNALS.ORG/CONTENT/25/5/822.LONG>.“JOURNAL OF NUTRITION.” THE PROTEIN DIGESTIBILITY–CORRECTED AMINO ACID SCORE. WEB. 04 OCT. 2014. <HTTP://JN.NUTRITION.ORG/CONTENT/130/7/1865S.LONG>.PARK, MADISON. “TWINKIE DIET HELPS NUTRITION PROFESSOR LOSE 27 POUNDS.” CNN. CABLE NEWS NETWORK, 08 NOV. 2010. WEB. 02 OCT. 2014. <HTTP://WWW.CNN.COM/2010/HEALTH/11/08/TWINKIE.DIET.PROFESSOR/>.“RESULT FILTERS.” NATIONAL CENTER FOR BIOTECHNOLOGY INFORMATION. U.S. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE. WEB. 04 OCT. 2014. <HTTP://WWW.NCBI.NLM.NIH.GOV/PUBMED/21410984>.“RESULT FILTERS.” NATIONAL CENTER FOR BIOTECHNOLOGY INFORMATION. U.S. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE. WEB. 04 OCT. 2014. <HTTP://WWW.NCBI.NLM.NIH.GOV/PUBMED/23846824>.“RESULT FILTERS.” NATIONAL CENTER FOR BIOTECHNOLOGY INFORMATION. U.S. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE. WEB. 04 OCT. 2014. <HTTP://WWW.NCBI.NLM.NIH.GOV/PUBMED/23531781>.“RESULT FILTERS.” NATIONAL CENTER FOR BIOTECHNOLOGY INFORMATION. U.S. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE. WEB. 04 OCT. 2014. <HTTP://WWW.NCBI.NLM.NIH.GOV/PUBMED/17636085- See more at: http://www.jmaxfitness.com/blog/diet-variety/#sthash.9TNqWLiv.dpuf  This particular article was written by Menno Henselmans. Meno is owner and operator of Baysian Bodybuilding and has a lot of other informative articles on nutrition and training so be sure to check him out! I read this article a few weeks ago and couldn't decide if it was something I really agreed with. The science behind it is rock solid, that wasn't my problem. It was more about "this is awesome info, but pretty irresponsible" haha. I've decided to share his article because I CONTINUALLY get questions from EVERYONE about drinking and how it really affects their nutrition and training. Sometimes it's almost as if I'm catering to people's worries about drugs and alcohol more than training and nutrition at times. So before you go out and get sloshed on this beautiful Sunday-Funday afternoon, let me hit you with my own personal DISCLAIMER: Binge drinking is never safe, and if you're serious about maximizing your gains you should probably limit yourself to the Devil's nectar as much as possible. BUTTTT if you do happen to partake in activities that involve copious amounts of booze, utilize this powerful info in the article and NEVER drink and drive. Here ya go. The Science of Binge Drinking: 7 Tips to Get Wasted Without Wasting your Gains By Menno Henselmans Everything in life is better on drugs. Seriously. For every possible situation, from sex to studying for your finals, there’s a drug that will improve the experience. When it comes to nightlife, alcohol is the drug of choice because it’s legal, socially acceptable and easily available. In fact, alcohol is pretty much required on a night out. Alcohol doesn’t enhance parties. It creates them. All the messed up stuff that goes on at the average party is not for the sober of mind. Ask any bouncer. I’ve yet to meet a bouncer who hasn’t lost his faith in humanity. So, if you want friends (women) and sex (men), alcohol is your love potion. 
But it’s a toxic love potion. Now, this isn’t the type of article to recommend moderation. Screw moderation. You want to get hammered without ruining your physique. I understand. Even if you think your drinking style falls under the ‘moderate drinking’ category, you’re probably wrong. In science, moderate drinking is often defined as 2 drinks per day as a man or just 1 as a woman. Anything over that, especially in a time span of only a few hours, is binge drinking. Your body has a completely different reaction to 14 drinks in one evening compared to 2 drinks every day. The good news is that you can lose fat while binge drinking and you can minimize the damage to your training. To achieve this, we need to understand alcohol’s pharmacology. By the way, did you know that the ancient Greek word ‘pharmakon’ originally meant poisonbut in Modern Greek now means drug? Let’s look at how to fit alcohol into your macros. How to lose fat while drinking: The anti-beer belly diet When you drink alcohol, it is absorbed from your stomach and intestines. It then passes through your liver on its way to the blood. When it’s in your circulation, it keeps passing through your liver and during every passing your liver breaks down some of the alcohol into acetate. Acetate is what makes alcohol toxic. When acetate enters your blood, it inhibits fat burning throughout the body, not just in your liver [1]. As a result, most of the fatty acids in your blood are stored. This is why alcohol has such a high potential to make you fat. The upshot is that acetate is very hard to convert into fat itself and your liver is too busy breaking down the toxic acetate to contribute to the creation of new fat (known in science as de novo lipogenesis). As a result, your liver stores less than 5% of alcohol as fat [1]. Plus, alcohol itself has no fats and very few carbs (alcohol is a separate macronutrient). This means we can avoid the fat storing effect of alcohol by minimizing the amount of fatty acids in circulation.
But wait, can’t the body simply convert carbs or protein to fat? No, it actually can’t do this effectively unless you are in energy surplus [2]. Protein and especially carbs only considerably increase fat storage indirectly. They mainly increase the rate at which the fat you consume is stored instead of used as fuel. But since you’re not consuming much fat, there’s nothing to store. The carbs and protein are either used as fuel or stored. If they’re burned, good. Unfortunately, the protein is unlikely to be stored as muscle. Recent research shows that alcohol directly decreases muscle protein synthesis and anabolic gene expression [3]. Previous research had only demonstrated alcohol’s anti-anabolic effect in animals and alcoholics, but it has now been confirmed in strength training men. Only wishful thinkers would not have expected this, but still, it confirms that you want to keep your drinking and your training sessions separate. 
Since many people drink at night and the best time to work out for these people is often in the evening, it’s a good idea to train earlier on drinking days. If you always go out on a certain day of the week, like Saturday, try to make that a rest day in your program. It’s probably even better to train when hung over than before drinking, because recovery is more important than absolute performance for muscle hypertrophy.
You may have heard that alcohol improves your insulin sensitivity. Sure, when you drink less than 3 drinks per day. Any more and alcohol spikes insulin, disrupts glucose homeostasis, induces insulin resistance and over time greatly increases the chance that you’ll develop metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes [4-7]. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Since carbs can’t be converted to fat efficiently without overfeeding, carbs are ok to consume with alcohol. The key point here is to avoid being in an energy surplus. There is no point in bulking on alcohol anyway, because alcohol limits muscle protein synthesis and recovery from training. If you know it will be impossible to avoid an energy surplus because you’re going to drink a gallon or you have a festive dinner beforehand, it helps if you depleted glycogen stores beforehand. You’ll deplete liver glycogen and some muscle glycogen by 3 days of low-carb dieting or 2 days of severe caloric restriction. This will increase insulin sensitivity and stimulate your body to store carbs as glycogen instead of fat. [8]
Minimal Alcohol, Maximum Drunkenness Optimal nutrient timing on alcohol depends on your goal. Let’s first assume you simply drink alcohol because you like being drunk. We’ll consider the alternative afterwards. To get drunk with the most bang for your buck, you want all of the alcohol you drink to reach your blood. That way, you need the least amount of drinks to get drunk. This saves money and calories (more on that later) and it spares your body from having to deal with an excessive amount of alcohol. Let’s look at how to get drunk like a pro. Sipping & Chucking Your liver can break down only a certain amount of alcohol per hour, regardless of the amount that’s in your blood. Absorption from the digestive tract happens much faster. If you drink alcohol faster than your liver can metabolize it, the alcohol accumulates in your blood. This is shown in the graph below for 1 to 4 drinks. 
If you drink 1 drink per hour, you get the small spike of the lowest curve every hour. That won’t make you drunk, at least not if you can hold your liquor. You want to be on the upper curve, so it’s more efficient to take a few shots than to sip on beer the entire evening. Food has the same effect as sipping on your drinks. A full stomach slows the rate at which alcohol is absorbed into the blood [9-13]. This again slows down the accumulation of alcohol in your blood and makes you need more drinks to get drunk.
I could tell you to get new friends, but I am a consultant, not your father. Besides, a strong personality takes time to develop. Silverback gorillas don’t grow silver hairs on their back until they mature and only then can they lead instead of follow. In this scenario you can’t predict how much you’re going to drink. Once alcohol has cut your social brakes and people start shoving drinks in your hand, you probably won’t even be able to keep count. So, you want to minimize the effect of each drink so that the amount of alcohol you end up drinking does minimal damage. Maximal Alcohol, Minimum Damage To minimize the damage from a night out, you want to do the opposite of what you do when you want to get drunk. You want to spread your alcohol consumption over time as much as possible.
A good meal can thus make you consume over twice the amount of alcohol otherwise needed for the same level of intoxication. A meal basically cuts the damage from alcohol in half. The best meal is something that stimulates your liver and delays gastric emptying. That means protein, fiber and a high volume of food. Casein, egg white, fiber supplements and vegetables are therefore best.
Picking your Poison Alcohol, the actual macronutrient, contains 7.1 calories per gram. Sure, it has a high thermic effect which increases the cost of its metabolism by about 20%. In obese individuals, this is a huge increase in their metabolism. However, if you’re lean and physically active, that’s just a few percent more than the thermic effect of fat and carbs and it’s lower than that of protein. So it doesn’t make much sense to use net calories for alcohol if you don’t take into account the thermic effect of food for the rest of your diet as well [14-15]. Fortunately you can save a ton of calories by drinking only dry wines and spirits, possibly mixed with diet drinks. Spirits and lite beer have about a 100 calories per drink, wine has 125 and beer has 150. They all contain similar amounts of alcohol, protein (none) and fat (none). If you drink 20 beers on a night out on top of your regular diet, you consume nearly 3000extra calories. Chucking down 8 shots or so on an empty stomach as per the tips above will get you just as drunk and saves you almost 2200 calories. Sherry is the least caloric drink with only 75 calories per glass, whereas cocktails can run up to over 500 calories per glass. The table below with data from the US National Institute of Health shows you how many calories are in 1 regular serving of your favorite drinks. 
The Alcohol Munchies The 3 regular macronutrients suppress your appetite in proportion to the amount of calories you consume of them. The more you eat of them, the more they fill you up. Alcohol doesn’t do this. In fact, alcohol can even increase your appetite. [16] Combined with reduced executive control AKA impaired judgment, it is easy to overeat when you’re drunk.
You don’t have to be a social recluse to build an awesome physique. Many of my non-competing clients regularly drink alcohol and still make great progress. Binge drinking isn’t healthy and it will somewhat compromise the development of your physique, but it makes for great experiences (if you remember them). An optimized diet isn’t just about maximum muscular hypertrophy and fat loss. It should be part of the lifestyle that makes you enjoy life to the fullest. If drinking is part of that for you, use these tips and drink up! 
References 1. De novo lipogenesis, lipid kinetics, and whole-body lipid balances in humans after acute alcohol consumption. Siler SQ, Neese RA, Hellerstein MK. Am J Clin Nutr. 1999 Nov;70(5):928-36. 2. De novo lipogenesis in humans: metabolic and regulatory aspects. Hellerstein MK. Eur J Clin Nutr. 1999 Apr;53 Suppl 1:S53-65. 3. Parr EB, Camera DM, Areta JL, Burke LM, Phillips SM, et al. (2014) Alcohol Ingestion Impairs Maximal Post-Exercise Rates of Myofibrillar Protein Synthesis following a Single Bout of Concurrent Training. PLoS ONE 9(2): e88384. 4. Garcia?Ruiz, C., & Fernandez?Checa, J. C. (2013). To binge or not to binge: Binge drinking disrupts glucose homeostasis by impairing hypothalamic but not liver insulin signaling. Hepatology, 57(6), 2535-2538. 5. Carlsson, S., Hammar, N., Grill, V., & Kaprio, J. (2003). Alcohol Consumption and the Incidence of Type 2 Diabetes A 20-year follow-up of the Finnish Twin Cohort Study. Diabetes Care, 26(10), 2785-2790. 6. Lindtner, C., Scherer, T., Zielinski, E., Filatova, N., Fasshauer, M., Tonks, N. K., … & Buettner, C. (2013). Binge drinking induces whole-body insulin resistance by impairing hypothalamic insulin action. Science translational medicine, 5(170), 170ra14-170ra14. 7. Heianza, Y., Arase, Y., Saito, K., Tsuji, H., Fujihara, K., Hsieh, S. D., … & Sone, H. (2013). Role of alcohol drinking pattern in type 2 diabetes in Japanese men: the Toranomon Hospital Health Management Center Study 11 (TOPICS 11). The American journal of clinical nutrition, 97(3), 561-568. 8. Jentjens, R., & Jeukendrup, A. E. (2003). Determinants of post-exercise glycogen synthesis during short-term recovery. Sports Medicine, 33(2), 117-144. 9. Jones AW, Jönsson KA, Kechagias S. Effect of high-fat, high-protein, and high-carbohydrate meals on the pharmacokinetics of a small dose of ethanol. Br J Clin Pharmacol. (1997) 10. Gentry RT. Effect of food on the pharmacokinetics of alcohol absorption. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. (2000) 11. Ramchandani VA, Kwo PY, Li TK. Effect of food and food composition on alcohol elimination rates in healthy men and women. J Clin Pharmacol. (2001) 12. Roine R. Interaction of prandial state and beverage concentration on alcohol absorption. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. (2000) 13. Sadler DW, Fox J. Intra-individual and inter-individual variation in breath alcohol pharmacokinetics: The effect of food on absorption. Sci Justice. (2011)14. Diet induced thermogenesis. Westerterp KR. Nutr Metab (Lond). 2004 Aug 18;1(1):5.15. de Jonge L, Bray GA. The thermic effect of food and obesity: a critical review. Obes Res. 1997;5:622–31.16. Yeomans, M. R. (2010). Alcohol, appetite and energy balance: is alcohol intake a risk factor for obesity?. Physiology & behavior, 100(1), 82-89. Like it? Share it! 9/26/2014 Day of the Shred 2: What a Screwdriver Can Teach You About Fat loss and Fitness GoalsRead Now A lot of people don't remember too much about their earliest years of life on this earth, but whatever memories they can conjure up probably have some sort of sentimental meaning to them. Some memories might be of their first bike. A memorable Christmas. Trips to Disneyland. One of my earliest, and fondest memories, is wandering into the garage and seeing something completely captivating that can put me in a trance like state to this day: My dad's toolboxes. There they were, those glistening candy apple red chests cascading across the wall. My dad would reach into this box and magically pull out the tools necessary to fix anything, and I mean anything. It was like he was reaching into some other dimension fully loaded with the coolest toys imaginable. My dad's always been a whiz with tools, and he has a collection of tools that compliment his skill. If something had to be fixed, he had the tool. For more difficult tasks it may have taken him a few tries to find the right tool for the job, but he always succeeded in using the right tool for the job and finishing the job. All nostalgia aside, flash forward recently to this year: I recently had a professor that would repeat at nausea-um, "I'm trying to get you all to use the proper tools in your tool box to get the best answer possible." For most of the guys in my engineering classes, this metaphor was a stretch for them. A lot of these guys are good with the mathematical concepts of the field but surprisingly don't know diddly about tools, so the looks on their faces when they heard him repeat this was one of all sorts of confusion. My sister knows more about tools than some of these fools. But that's besides the point. Most of what I do every day is based on problem solving; trying to find the best way to produce the most optimal outcome for mechanical and dynamic systems. Actually, it's ALL I do everyday. This can be extrapolated to EVERYTHING you do in life. You always want the most 'bang for you buck', as the saying goes. And fat loss, gaining muscle, and fitness in general is no different. One of my favorite things this professor said was, "Understand the theories and methods we're going over, these are the tools you need; I'm providing you with the tools to solve a problem. Here's an example of what I'm trying to say. You have a screw you would like to unfasten and you have a few screwdrivers for the job, a phillips head and a flat head screwdrivers. Upon inspection, you know the screw is a phillips head. The easy option would be to use the phillips head screwdriver. The proper tool requires the least amount of applied force to produce the most torque to easily unfasten the screw. The same job COULD be accomplished with the flathead screwdriver, although it would require a lot more force, more torque, and a hell of a lot more effort to get the same job done. Both tools WORK. Your job is to use the one that works best." This whole spiel of his really resonated with me because it made so much sense, and I instantly thought of my dad and how he had a knack for always choosing the optimal tools. Immediately I transposed this into a model for fat loss and told a young lady I was working with exactly this: "The task at hand you're trying to accomplish is fat loss. Compare that to the unfastening of the screw. To accomplish this task, you want your tool at hand to be the most effect and efficient tool you have. Let me list the tools available and you tell me which sounds best: Tool 1: (The "conventtional" method most overweight individuals tend to seek out") - You could reduce your calories and restrict your food choices to essentially a handful of foods while doing steady state cardio 6 times a week (jogging, treadmill, eliptical etc) OR Tool 2: Start lifting weights several times a week, track your caloric intake while making minimal adjustments without restricting certain foods. Both will get you to "lose weight". Tool 1 will take more time and will take a lot more effort. Tool 2 will require less actual workout time and less diet restriction. Upon inspection, the choice is obvious, isn't it.  This isn't to say there's no use for our poor, misunderstood flat-head screwdriver and Tool 2 in the above scenario. There will come a time when you stumble upon a job that needs a flat head screwdriver, much like there may be a certain time to impliment steady state cardio while using caloric restriction. But for the tasks at hand, that's not what we need. Which Tools Are Necessary? As long as there have been tools, there's been someone looking for that magical "one tool for every job". Sad to say, it doesn't exist, and probably never will. Same goes for fitness goals. People are always expecting some black and white, cookie cutter plan to help them lose body fat, gain muscle, lift a bunch of weight, cross fit to the moon, or whatever it is they wan to do. It doesn't exist. What does is exist, are certain methods that can help you achieve your goals if they're properly applied. Here's where we can make a major distiction in this tool analogy: The human body is a dynamic system which constantly changes and adapts to stresses and forces over time. Static parts like screws and bolts and such, don't deal with as much stress and dynamics as a human body. The tools needed to build the best body possible will always be changing. If you ask any successful fitness competitor or person in the business with a stellar physique, they'll tell you they haven't been doing the EXACT SAME THING for years. They couldn't achieve their level of success had that been the case. In order to build this project (your fitness goal) you're going to have to apply multiple tools. Maybe not a new one every day, every week, or every month for that matter, but 1 tool won't work forever.  I'll take 1 of each, please. Let's Build a ToolBox Like my dad always says, "You can never have too many tools." Walk into my room and you'll notice about a quarter of my living space is occupied by tools, so I've taken this saying to heart. But it aptly applies to fitness as well. You can approach fat loss and gaining muscle from all angles and perspectives, but it will always come down to 2 major components: Training and Nutrtion. This is where it gets tricky. When it comes to diets, some eating plans may be more sutiable for some people than others, depending on their goals. It's all about context. Without going into too much detail, here are some widely used and effective nutrtion methods used for fat loss and gaining muscle. Think of these as your NUTRITION TOOLS:
I'm not here to debate which ones work the best, because they all work on different levels through different mechanics, It all comes down to your goals and which methods you find fit your training and more importantly, your lifestyle. And after a while of using one method, you may find it beneficial, or even neccessary to switch to another method. Have you been doing Low-carb for a while and miss eating sweets? Then maybe a flexible diet method may suit you better for the time being so you can manage to treat yourself to a donut from time to time without being guilt ridden. Or maybe you've been a flexible dieter for the last 2 years and don't feel like you're as lean and dry as you could be, so maybe adapt more of a "clean" eating approach to your food choices. The point here is know what screw your trying to unfasten, and then apply the proper tool for the job. Training Tools When it comes to training options and programs, the choices are almost limitless. The best thing you can do here, as I've said in a recent article is PICK A PROGRAM AND STICK WITH IT. But let me say, before you just pick some program all willy nilly, it's important that you directly identify the goal you're trying to accomplish. Not your best friends goal. Not what you think girls will like. YOUR GOAL. What YOU want to achieve. Once that's nailed down, go after it. Once gain, without much detail, here are some training styles that are popular because they work.
The Choices here are essentially limitless. Personally, I like to switch between powerlifting style programs and bodybuilding programs when I feel i need to either increase my strength, or increase muscle size and density. They tend to compliment each other when used in appropriate phases. Hybrid powerlifting/bodybuilding programs are also effective to optimize the best of both worlds, so to speak. The point here is you can't expect one style of training to work forever. believe it or not, programs plateau, routines get stale, you get bored, and you get burnt out. It happens. So find a better tool for the job.  What Did We Learn
In case you didn't want to sift through this entire blog and you scrolled down to this portion to get the main points, here they are:
That's it. Wow, seems like a lot of typing for such a simple point. But I was trying to illustrate a point, and I hope you all can see what it is. Know what the task at hand is. Utilize every tool in your toolbox. The more tools you have, the easier the job can be. And if you're anything like me, you'll realize the beauty in tools and appreciate the usefulness and fun that comes with tools, whether they're actual wrenches or screwdrivers or metaphors for fitness; so GET TO WORK.  Rewind to a typical day about 3 years ago. They all started something like this: It's 6:30 a.m. Spread across the kitchen counter are a half dozen assorted tupperware loaded up with boiled chicken breast and brown rice; a process assembly line Henry Ford himself would be envious of. 6:45 I'm cooking up the standard "clean eaters" breakfast fare: 6 egg whites, cup of oatmeal, serving of fruit, and maybe a protein shake for good measure. 7:00 I'm out the door with enough lunch boxes and bags that the neighbors must have thought I was going on a week long wilderness excursion every morning. Ah, the typical "Bro" life. (gag) I'll tell you right now, if I knew HALF of what I know today, my life would have been so much better back then. Honestly, I wish I could have those days back. Fast Forward to Today. 6:30 a.m. Kitchen still dim as the day break makes its way through the blinds. Not a tupperware in sight. 6:45 You won't find skillets on stove, and you probably won't until MAYBE 9 or 10 o clock this evening. 7:00 Most mornings I'm still out the door, but the difference now is It's on MY terms, and I'm living my life and going about my business with no worries about "meal timing" "what I'm going to eat" and even if I'll be able to train today. This my friends is stress free living! Okay, our lives will never be stress free, but trust me, not having to worry about all those meals and training is one less MAJOR stress to deal with. Despite putting out a lot of the best information I've come across and applied over the years, quite a bit of people still ask, "Yeah, but what do YOU do exactly?" Well, I'll lay it out for you in a typical day-to-day fashion of how most of my days go. A Typical Day Most days I'm up and out of bed by 6. I find the early morning is the best time for me to get a lot of personal work done, writing for WhatAreYouCraven,checking emails and responding to inquiries and such. Time tends to get away from me when I'm doing this, so before I know it it's 8 o clock and I have to wrap it up so I can make it to my class by 8:30 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Every other morning I still try to do the same, knocking out my personal work by 8, then start working on my engineering projects and studies around 8 til about 1 or 2 pm. A little after this, I'll proceed to have my breakfast. Breakfast at 2 o clock?? Yup, that's breakfast for me. 3 years ago this would have been unheard of me to go almost half a day without any food, and i would have been an anxious wreck and probably a complete dick to anyone who tried to talk to me. Thank god that's not the case anymore. (I still might be a dick, but for different reasons lol) Depending of my schedule, If i have a chance to make it home for lunch then I'll head home for a bit to cook up a FAT meal. Otherwise, I may have something that i prepared before hand in the fridge, or If I'm feeling lazy, i'll just grab something on campus or wherever I happen to be at the moment. Mid-day skateboard break! I love to skateboard, and while I can't usually make a day of it anymore, It's still fun to get some flat-land boogie sessions in here and there. Then i continue about my work the rest of the afternoon and evening. I like to have most of my work out of the way by 7 pm, freeing up my evening to get my training in. Training's done, it's usually about 9 30, then I shuttle myself home to knock out a bit more work. Dinner falls somewhere between 11 and midnight, and I proceed to cook up another FAT meal. Pretty boring right? Being an engineer is nothing glamorous, but I happily go about my business day in and day out. Back when i was eating 7 meals a day, I could NEVER accomplish as much work as I do now, and thoughts of "losing my gainz" would occupy my mind and be a major distraction. Feeling that way straight up sucked.  My usual breakfast How/What I'm Eating You may have gotten through that last section and thought, "good lord, this guy doesn't even eat!" That's sort of half right. I have a very low meal frequency, usually 2 (3 if I have time) whole meals daily. BUT...they're pretty huge meals. I manage to consume around 1200 calories per meal, depending on my current goals and macros. As of today, I don't have any direct "bulking" or "cutting" goals i'm trying to reach. I'm essentially eating for maintenance at 164 lbs and roughly 8-9% calculated body fat. My macro nutrient breakdown are along the lines of 185 grams protein, 150 grams fat, and carbs can range from 150-350 grams per day, depending on the day and how I feel and all that good stuff. My first meal is where I aim to get atleast half of my daily protein and a little more than half of my dietary fat. Carbs are typically limited to under 50 grams at this time, but sometimes I'll be driving by Krispy Kreme Donuts and the "HOT NOW" light will be flashing. You NEVER say NO to a half dozen fresh Krispy kreme Donuts! My second meal comes a little before bed, and I'll make up the remainder of my protein and carbohydrates in this meal. The fat load isn't a particually large one, as I'm looking to replenish my glycogen stores in my body with carboyhdrates after training. And protein is protein, gotta fit that shizz in every meal. Just a heads up, thats my personal macro-nutriend profile, and I've worked a long time to find a comfortable fat/carb ragne that allows me to stay in a nutritional ketogenic state throughout the morning and utilize lipids (fat/body fat) for energy and empty/replenish glycogen after weight training. I like this model A LOT as it allows me and people who utilize it, to stay lean WHILE having energy and strength and enough of the proper material to build lean muscle while limiting body fat accumulation. I think it's called SCIENCE or something like that. Or maybe its Magic?? yeah, that's it. It's definitely magic. I hope you all are picking up the theme I'm laying down. My life has become so much easier and productive by reducing the amount of effort I've had to put into my diet ALONE. Let's continue.  Engineering. Donuts. Deadlifts.  Left: Current Composition Right: Old Composition How I'm Training I wish I could tell you my entire day consisted of lifting weights and working out. Actually, No I don't. I'm glad my days don't revolve around fitness. I'd get bored and burnt extremely fast. And it's happened before. But right now, I LOVE training, and enjoy every second of it. My current training block is a DUP (daily undulating periodization) program. This type of program allows me to hit my main lifts (deadlifts, bench presses, squats) multiple times a week with different loads and rep ranges. Most weeks i'll get 3-4 training sessions in. At my current body composition of 164 pounds, I have a tested squat max of 465. My deadlift rep loads reach up to 500 lbs for most deadlift sessions. These are my 2 main lifts i focus on throughout the week. My bench press is nothing spectacular, and I'm embarrassed to say its only 305 lb tested max. That pales in compassion to my deadlift and squat, but I'm working on bringing that up. (Thanks dad for these small body genetics!) Let me draw out a current comparrsion from "OLD BRO CRAVEN" to "CURRENT LEAN CRAVEN" My weight was typically 205-215 pounds at roughtly 20% + body fat fat. Today it's never more than 170 and above 10% body fat. My strength is actually relatively and OVERALL higher at my current state. When I have my largest I have a 510 squat, but 465 right now isn't too shabby. My deadlift is almost 100 pounds higher and my bench is only 10 pounds under from my all time max. This is all mainainance work too. Soon enough i'll train to improve my size and strength, but today, I just want to keep it lean. I've managed to accomplish this with literally less than HALF of the effort in my training and nutrition. A Few Words on Stress You've probably heard how detrimental stress can be to your overall health. I've always heard this too, and never really took it too seriously. As I've gotten older and my different stresses in life have compounded, I can see how it can really negatively impact your life. Everything from energy levels, hormone levels, and especially recovery from training and physical activity. Thankfully, I've been blesses to not have an insurmountable amount of stress in my life, like a lot of people might have. In fact, the number of stressors in my life are relatively low, but the magnitude of my stress loads can be pretty high. A lot of days I may work 16 hours straight and sleep very little with horrible sleep quality. I try to limit this as much as possible, but hey, it happens. All of you may have similiar stress, and probably more if you're raising a family, work a job you don't like, commute to work daily, or have to live paycheck to paycheck. Stress will always be there, the key here is to learn how to cope with it and manage it. I wish I knew a perfect 'one size fits all' formula for this, but I don't, and I often have a hard time coping myself. A professor of mine recently recommend a book to me called "WHY ZEBRAS DON'T GET ULCERS" and it's been a fascinating read on lving with daily stress and how to avoid/cope with it in your life. I hightly recommend this book to everyone! Well that's about it for this one, guys. I hope I didn't manage to bore you all with how I conduct my life and manage my nutrition and training.
I'm not perfect and I don't pretend to think my ways of eating and training are perfect either, but for where I'm at in my life, they suit me just fine and have helped me maintain a physique I'm proud of while minimizing the mount of effort of stress I once placed on myself. Fitness can be a mind-fuck of a game sometimes. It's easy to go overboard and let obsession make a home in your conscious thought-process. That's the last thing you want. Just remember to find balance in your life, pursue passions, smile, lift heavy, eat well, read, listen to music, and lift some more, and I can guarantee you'll be a better, more fit person.  By Mike Samuels You can find all of Mike's work and learn about him at www.healthylivingheavylifting.com Enter Mike….. He’s health personified. A 20-year old personal trainer who preaches the benefits of clean eating. His clients know they need to avoid refined grains. Meals should revolve around protein and vegetables. If carbs are to be included in a meal, they should only come in the post-workout period, and even then, should only be from fruits, sweet potato, or possibly brown rice, couscous or quinoa. Mike doesn’t eat dairy. Or gluten. He’s not lactose intolerant or celiac, he just knows that foods containing these aren’t part of a healthy diet. As for artificial sweeteners, you’re kidding, right? When Mike goes out for a meal he doesn’t even look at the menu – he orders steak and asks to swap the side to vegetables or salad, and it’s water, not soft drinks, or – heaven forbid – alcohol that accompanies this fare. Here’s the thing though….. Mike’s fat  Okay, we’re not talking obese here, but despite his healthy ways, his food avoidance, and strict adherence to what most would refer to as “clean eating,” Mike’s no cover model. I’m Mike. Yep, that’s me. At least that was me. Now my diet’s slightly different. I still stick kind of to the diet detailed above, but now I eat cereals for breakfast. I have ice cream most days, eat out at pizza restaurants, Mexicans, Indian and Chinese restaurants and order from the menu a couple of times per week, and put Splenda in every coffee I drink. Considering my diet’s now a lot “worse” you’d expect me to be pretty fat right about now. Well…..  Yep, that’s me. Let me explain….. (For the methods used to get this kind of transformation, go here –http://www.healthylivingheavylifting.com/flexible-fat-loss/ ) It Started with Paleo Back in 2011, I was a staunch advocate of Paleo eating. If you’re unfamiliar, paleo eating is the caveman diet. You basically eat as close possible to how our ancient ancestors supposedly did 10,000 years ago. That means you eat some kind of animal protein at every meal. This is accompanied by (preferably in-season) fruits and vegetables. You can eat nuts and seeds too, plus some oils, but Paleo is mainly defined by the foods you can’t consume, which include - - Grains (That’s all grains – brown, white, wholegrain, it doesn’t matter.) - Dairy (Some versions of the Paleo diet allow butter and cream, but that’s it.) - Legumes. Yep, those harmless little kidney beans in your chilli, or the lentils you use to make your vegetable soup – they’re banned too. Apparently ancient man didn’t have access to the facilities needed to make beans, legumes and pulses safe for human consumption, plus they’re pro-inflammatory, so they’re off the menu. - There’s also the obvious ones, like microwave meals, artificial sweeteners, pastry, junk foods, alcohol, and so on.  Herein Lies the Issue
I have no issue with the concept of the Paleo diet. I mean, what’s not to like in terms of health and fat loss about basing your meals round meat, fish and eggs, eating plenty of vegetables, some fruits, and then filling up on nuts and berries. Leaving aside the needlessness of the banned foods (which we’ll touch on later) it seems pretty sound. But With the Paleo diet, there are no rules on how much you can eat. By that, I mean you’re not given a set calorie or macronutrient goal to hit each day, as the theory behind Paleo eating is that the low-carb, high-protein nature of the diet leads you to feeling naturally full, and prevents over-eating. Well, say hello to the incredible eating machine. Also known as “bottomless pit Samuels,” or “the human bin.” I don’t seem to have a full setting. When I’m not given a set amount to eat, I just eat. For me, a typical day of Paleo eating meant eggs for breakfast. “Eggs you say? I’ll take five. And we’re allowed nuts on Paleo? Well then, I’ll load up a bowl with some cashews and almonds and snack on those.” I’d carry on snacking on nuts, and maybe the odd bit of fruit until lunchtime, when it was inevitably more meat or fish with veggies. As you can see from the food pyramid, you’re supposed to eat the fat on meats, which meant I’d devour a hefty serving of full-fat beef or lamb mince, or a couple of salmon fillets, accompanied by four or five different veggies — all cooked in oil or grass-fed butter. The afternoon snacks continued coming in the form of nuts and fruit and the odd protein shake. (Most paleo diets allow you to have protein powder. Weird, I know – it’s both man-made and dairy-based, yet you’re allowed it. As this isn’t intended to be a Paleo-bashing post however, we won’t touch on yet another flaw in the structure of the diet here.) Dinner would be more or less what lunch was, and then I might snack a bit more in the evening – potentially a few boiled eggs, some fruit, or a protein pudding. 6 months into the Paleo diet, I’d gained weight. Sure, my strength in the gym had gone up too, but I’d got fat. I was at a loss – I’d followed the diet probably 95% to the letter, yet instead of looking like all these Paleo-loving Crossfit athletes, with their 6-packs and biceps veins, I was one chunky SOB. See, because of Paleo’s lack of accounting for calories, and it’s tendency to recommend low-carb, but higher-fat food sources, my calorie intake was through the roof. As I’d not been allowed some of my favourite foods like oats, rice, cottage cheese, beans and bread, I’d compensated by filling up on more of the foods I was allowed. End result = a “healthy” diet that had made me overweight. Out went the rules, in came MyFitnessPal I did some reading and research, and found where I’d been going wrong. Instead of looking at foods as good vs. bad, I should have been looking at my overall diet as a whole. This is a concept a lot of folks fail to grasp. See, a diet isn’t about good and bad foods – it’s about numbers. To lose fat, you MUST be in a calorie deficit, meaning you’re burning more calories than you consume. In theory, you can lose weight eating whatever foods you want, provided you’re in a deficit. This has been demonstrated a good deal in the media, with perhaps the most well-know, and often cited story being Jared: The Subway guy - http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/jared-subway-guy-marks-15-years-turkey-subs-article-1.1365511 More recently, there’s been examples with the University professor who based his diet around Twinkies - http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/06/health/la-he-fitness-twinkie-diet-20101206 and the man who lost 56 pounds in 6 months eating only McDonalds - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2575755/Getting-fit-fast-food-Man-lost-56lbs-eating-McDonalds-six-months-documents-experience-new-book.html It isn’t ALL about calories though. Other factors do come into play, and those factors are in the form of macronutrients – proteins, carbohydrates and fats. For more on those, check out my article on calculating your macronutrients for a fat loss diet - http://www.healthylivingheavylifting.com/how-to-calculate-macros-for-cutting/ I realised that I’d been looking too much into supposed food “quality” and not enough at food quantity. I needed to start tracking my intake, so I signed up with MyFitnessPal, a site that allows you to input all the food you eat in a day, and keeps a running total of your calories and macronutrients. Then came Layne Norton: The Man, The Myth, The Legend After doing some digging, I began tracking my macros, and had made some steady progress. But I was still, by definition a “clean eater.” I really struggled to get my carbs in, and resorted to big portions of the same foods all the time – mainly fruit, oats and rice, to bump up my intake. I was also having a hard time keeping my fat intake down, having been so used to cooking everything in oil or butter, snacking on nuts and choosing fatty meats all the time. I decided to reach out to someone for help, and went to Layne Norton – a natural pro bodybuilder, record-holding powerlifter, and, get this – a nutritional scientist with a PHD. Layne sent me through my plan after a consultation, and we got to work. The line in the plan that struck me, and stays with me until this day, was this - “It matters much less WHAT you eat than the number of protein/carbs/fats you take in. It is important to get as close to your numbers as possible.” Quantity trumps “quality” every time. I’m Mike, and I’m a recovering clean eater As things progressed, and time went by, I started to break my clean eating habits. I realised I could have a beer with friends at the pub, that if we went out for a meal, it was okay to order something “normal” and that if I wanted some chocolate, I could have it. In my restrictive Paleo days, I’d been prone to binge eating. I’d go three or four weeks sticking perfectly to my plan, then find my cravings for non-Paleo foods got so huge I’d succumb to 5 -6,000 calorie binge on cereals, cake and chips. (NB: Take a look at my post on cheat meals – Cheat Meals: The Rock(y) Road to a Crappy Physique - http://www.healthylivingheavylifting.com/cheat-meals-the-rocky-road-to-a-crappy-physique/ ) Fast Forward to 2013 And I decided that I was lean enough to justify stripping down to my skimpies and doing a photo shoot. While dieting was tough, and by the end, my carb and fat intake was relatively low (around 120g and 65g per day respectively) I had NO RESTRICTIONS on what I could and couldn’t eat. Most of my foods certainly came from nutrient-dense, minimally processed sources, and I was a meat and veggie-eating machine. But I also made frequent trips to Subway to grab lunch between clients, I ate ice cream every single re-feed day (and on some non refeed days too,) I went on holiday to Amsterdam and Barcelona, and eyeballed all my food, eating Pop Tarts, burgers, pizza, pasta and sandwiches, and drinking beer and cocktails, and ended up the leanest I’ve ever been. All through simply tracking calories and macronutrients. Get to the Point Samuels….. What’s the point of this post? It’s not an attempt to bash anyone for following any type of restrictive, or rules-based diet, like Paleo, Atkins, Primal, Dukan, or whatever, and it’s certainly not meant to encourage people to base their diets around junk foods. What it hopefully serves to do, however, is to make you realise that there’s much, much more to a diet than good vs. bad foods. You needn’t cut out any food when trying to lose fat – it’s simply about eating mostly healthy, unprocessed foods and controlling your calorie and macronutrient intake, but not freaking out if you do include high-sugar, high-fat and processed foods, provided they fit in with your plan as a whole. The main reason people screw up when dieting is a lack of consistency. This inconsistency comes through boredom, or feeling that a diet is simply too hard going. For most people, this is almost bound to happen when following a diet with lots of rules, that doesn’t permit them to eat their favourite foods. Moderation is key. Moderation lets you eat ice cream and Subway and get lean. Moderation is awesome. For more on how to set up your own flexible diet - http://www.healthylivingheavylifting.com/flexible-fat-loss/  If you want to make REAL improvements to your body composition, you need to stop "working out" and start TRAINING. A major issue I've recently noticed about people is they often manage to confuse ACTIVITY with ACCOMPLISHMENT. This is in regards to all aspects of life you can imagine. Especially in the health and fitness realm. Maybe it's due to this current social phenomena of "something for nothing", "instant gratification", and "feeling entitled for no reason whatsoever" mentalities that seem to be plaguing my current generation. Lately I've observed people thinking they're accomplishing something big, a goal or task, just by simplying DOING. This, my friends, should never be the case. DOING something is always important and a vital step in the right direction for accomplishment. After all, something is always better than nothing. But it order to accomplish, there has to be direction involved. This is where I see SO many people making huge mistakes on the quest to attain better health and better bodies. They feel "just exercising" is all that's needed to accomplish their goals. When in reality, they really need to be TRAINING if they want to improve their progress. You’re probably thinking, “Wait, what?? Isn’t exercise ‘training’??” Sure, I guess you can consider exercise to be a form of training BUT there is a major difference between an individual who “trains” vs. someone who “exercises” 1. The difference between exercising and training is having a point. Exercise is done to waste energy , burn calories , or to “blow off steam,” excess mental and physical energy, and tension. Training is done in order to improve something : strength, endurance, neuromuscular control, and all that jazz. Exercise is a singular event with an immediate goal. 2. The success of training can only be judged by changes over time in performance. Exercise doesn’t have a point beyond the immediate session. if you leave the gym a sweaty mess, it was a good exercise session or “workout.” If you show up every day and breathe hard and get tired and sweaty, you may consider yourself to be successful at exercise (cough CROSSFIT cough). By contrast, training can only be judged as a success if it works; that is, if after an appropriate amount of time you can clearly show improved capacity for physical work. You may show up every day and push and pull and grunt and sweat and even limp to your car; but be terribly unsuccessful at training. If over time you are not getting any stronger, faster, leaner, more agile, better at your chosen sport, or whatever it is you do. 
Successful training program should always incorporate the use of Squats and progression!
My Definitions for Both and My Opinions Training is simple. Create a goal. Train for the goal. Complete the goal. How you go about doing that relies with your program-design. Goals can be ANYTHING! Weight, body fat, bench press max, vertical jump, 40 yard dash, marathon, are all areas where you can set goals. So, what’s yours?? As long as you have a goal, start, and finish i would consider that training with purpose. How you go about training is where we could argue and debate BUT as long as you have goals with a finish line you are OK in my book. “Exercise” is showing up to merely sweat, grind, max, and burn. These are the fitness nuts, and they really make me wonder sometimes. They keep chiropractors in good business. Just stack lots of weight on the leg press and start pumping until it burns, then sprint the stairs, throw a weight vest on and do box jumps until they crumble. No rhythm, no reason. As long as it burns like hell they will love it. I see this EVERYWHERE I look, whether I'm in a gym or out on the street. People have the desire and motivation to make the changes needed in their life to improve their bodies, but don't have the proper direction to make it happen. They're DOING just to DO, in hopes that they'll wake up more fit tomorrow. Phsyically speaking, it doesn't happen that way. It's a lot like the whole "clean eating" thing, where people feel as if they "eat clean foods", they'll somehow lose weight and become healthier. It's never that simple, but the matter of "clean eating" is a topic for another day, but in my experience, its almost always the "exercisers" who are the "clean eaters" and vise versa. There's some correlative anecdotal evidence for ya. But this is all simply my opinion. It reflects in how I train, and how I train my clients. I am not saying my workouts are not challenging, but their purpose is not designed to make you tap out. 
The "Workout of the Day (WOD)" is a prime example of exercising. Random workouts from day to day.
Quantify Your Progress I like numbers. I work with them essentially all day, everyday. Numbers tell a story and will never lie to you. Exercising has no direct destination, so how do you know when you've ever arrived? By following a TRAINING PROGRAM (i recommend weight training), that is per-iodized and set up to help you reach milestones every certain amound of days, weeks, workouts, etc, then you can track your progress accordingly and eventually reach a set goal. Once that initial goal has been reached, all you have to do is re-cycle that program with different training loads and/or volumes or start a different program that prioritizes different movements, rep ranges, etc. Really, the possibilities are endless when it comes to programming and following PROVEN training programs. Training Programs If you don't know where to start, then you clearly haven't been using the internet long. It's as simple as looking up a few related to your desired goals, and PICKING A PROGRAM. That's it. Just start doing it. Most programs are designed in 4-6 week blocks, and if you follow them to the T, you'll make progress. Granted, there are a lot of different variables such as diet, training experience, and the loads you're working with, but most designed programs will work on the basis of consistency and progression. Some may not be as optimal as others, but that's where trial and error comes in. If for some reason you don't get the desired results from your current program, then you simply pick another one. At most, you've lost 8 weeks out of your life, which is nothing in the scope of life-long training. And realisticly, you haven't "lost" anything, as the program you completed still probably yielded decent results. At worst your strenght and body composition stayed the same! 
For those looking for a good program, I reccomend STARTING STRENGTH by Mark Rippetoe.
So stop haphazardly wandering in the gym and performing needless workouts in hopes of achieving an improved body composition.
Find yourself a program that's within your capabilities and STICK TO IT. Let me just say there's nothing wrong with "just exercising" and "working out", it's always going to be better than not being active at all, but if you're looking to make REAL gains in strength, lean muscle, fat loss, and overall body composition, then you need to be TRAINING, and not just EXERCISING. If you're looking for an actual program to get you to your desired body composition, contact me and I can set you up with both nutritional and weight training programs! I'd be more than happy to set you in the right direction, or design customized programs for whatever your goal.  Learn why you don't need to go over-board with your protein consumption to build muscle and burn fat. By Craven Okay, people. Enough is enough. Somewhere between ridiculous supplement recommendations and "brosicence" locker room talk, protein intake has gotten out of hand. Go around and ask anyone who weight trains what it takes to build muscle, and they'll immediately respond with PROTEIN. This is mostly correct, but when it comes to the consumption of protein, people seem to think MORE=BETTER. "Well clearly if you eat more protein, then you'll build more muscle!" is what you might hear these bros commonly recite. Sorry to tell you, but this couldn't be more factually inaccurate. If gaining muscle tissue was all about who could eat the most protein, we’d all be having 500 grams and walking around looking like Arnold. Increasing muscle mass isn't high on our bodies to do lists. An overly high protein intake will actually result in higher protein breakdown and potentially desensitize the body to certain amino acids. (we definitely don't want this) So much of your expensive protein, and hard earned cash, is just being wasted. Sorry, bro.  Don't throw away cash on excess protein! Muscle growth is a pretty complex adaptation that involves interactions between insulin, amino acid availability, growth hormone, androgenic hormones, androgens, exercise, metabolic metabolites, and other factors. For muscle gain to occur, muscle protein synthesis must be greater than muscle protein breakdown. At the micro biological level, this shit is extremely complicated and I don't pretend to know every exact intricate processes and pathways involved. But I will pretend to have common sense.  How much do you need? Tough question. There are so many factors at play like age and lean body mass. There are a good amount of studies suggesting that 40 grams of protein is too much and that 20 grams is all that’s needed to maximize muscle protein synthesis. I’m not saying don’t have any meals with protein more than 20 grams. This is only in regards to muscle protein synthesis. Protein has plenty of other uses in the body. It just helps to put things into perspective. I don’t believe that a perfect amount exists. So what do we know?
Tell me How Much I Need All Ready! I wish I could tell you PRECISELY, but once again, IT DEPENDS. What I can do is give you a general recommendation that will suit almost everyone's individual weight loss/ muscle gain programs, male or female. From seeing how I respond to protein, people I've worked with, and reading lots of anecdotal and research articles, I say it's safe to recommend ONE gram of protein for every pound of body weight. Sometimes, in most cases actually, less is needed, especially if you're someone who maintains body mass (muscle and body fat) relatively easily. Higher recommendations are made for thinner, "hard gainers."  Wrapping It Up If gaining muscle is your goal, please understand that this is a long-term process. You can’t rush it. Your body will gain tissue at its own pace. Going overboard with protein won’t increase your muscle mass. Time, proper lifting, and adequate, well-rounded nutrition will. So don’t be afraid to spread your meals out. Make sure that you’re getting leucine and don’t be an idiot with three times your body weight in protein. As my dear mentor Mike Samuels says,"HAPPY LIVING. HEAVY LIFTING, EVERYONE!"  References
 Learn how you can maximize your training and increase your gains by eating "junk" in the evening after training. Yes, you read that correctly. Junk before bed. Blasphemy to all you "fit-fammers", and everyone else who's ever heard Dr. Oz and all of the other un-informed 'professionals' making ill-advised health recommendations. Before I explain why eating "junk" before bed is actually very beneficial, It comes with a few "caveats, provisos, and quid pro quos" as Genie from Aladdin would say. This information only applies to HEAVY LIFTING, HARD TRAINING individuals who are looking to increase muscle mass and not focusing on fat loss. For both men and women. This doesn't mean you have to be a professional powerlifter, but as long as you lift weights routinely with decent volume and fair amounts of intensity, then this information is for you and will work. Keep in mind that men have a lot higher tolerance for carbohydrates and the ability to store and use glycogen in their bodies then women, so women may not benefit from a whole gallon of ice cream. Sorry, Ladies, that's just biology working against you. If you haven't ready my articles on the benefits of eating carbs late at night and the roles of insulin in your body, i highly advise you do so as to understand the mechanisms in use by your body to make eating "junk" appropriate for anyone weight training. If you have any doubts in this information, then just look at me. I'll happily tell you that I've been eating up to 400 grams of "junk" carbs most nights for the past year and am in the leanest shape of my life. Use this information wisely, and remember moderation is always imperative. This is no way a free pass to be a complete fat kid, but rather a tool that can be utilized to maximize your training and also enjoy yourself in the process. Now, for what you've been wating for. If you want to look like Arnold. Eat Cherry Pies. If you want to look like Dr. Oz, eat your vegetables. 
Here’s why you should pound “junk” carbs at night after you train: 1. You need to rebuild your glycogen stores to fuel performance. Skeletal muscle will recover from even the hardest workouts within 48 hours. Your nervous system, however, can take up to ten days to return to normal, because when you train, it works far harder than your muscles do relative to its capacity. Having sufficient glycogen in reserve will allow your motor neurons to fire at a higher level during training, enabling your muscles to fire with maximum force. 2. You need glucose for maximal contraction as sets approach failure. When you approach the anaerobic point during training, your muscles need glucose to continue contracting during the glycolytic (glucose-burning) cycle. Making sure your glycogen stores are full will allow your muscles to use fatty acids during training until the need for glucose arises—at which point glycogen is broken down and used. 3. Your glycogen levels may help muscular growth. The debate here makes a case for both sides of this issue, but research has shown that full glycogen reserves help limit the protein breakdown caused by training sessions. This also increases glycogen usage during your training session(s) the following day. The idea of replenishing your glycogen levels, then, is not to recover from today’s workout, but to prepare for tomorrow’s.  Cookie Monster's got it right 4. High-glycemic carbs won’t kill your nighttime growth hormone release. Eating carbs before bedtime will disrupt nighttime release of growth hormone—an incredibly powerful fat burner and lean tissue builder. Your body won’t release growth hormone during sleep until about two hours after your blood sugar and insulin levels return to normal. Low-glycemic carbs keep your insulin and blood sugar levels elevated for hours. In contrast, high-glycemic carbs create a spike that ends within an hour or so of eating. In other words, eating junk replenishes your glycogen stores without interfering with your nocturnal hGH cycle. When you try to Carb Back-Load with brown rice and whole-grain toast, you’ll get subpar results, to say the least. This is why. 5. If you train in the early morning, you can get a bigger boost from your post-training nutrition. There’s an “insulin memory” to your night-time carb feedings that extends to your next morning meal. Creating a larger insulin spike before bed causes a greater insulin response to food the next morning. So, using the CBL manual to tweak your diet for such an event, you can get a larger anabolic burst after you’re A.M. training. 6. Insulin is an anti-inflammatory. Big insulin spikes can help speed muscle repair and growth. Oh sure, you need free-radical production during the training session to trigger growth, but too much ultimately slows progress. The effect is called hormesis: a little is good, a lot is bad. Using junk to cause large insulin releases can potentially decrease muscle protein breakdown and increase muscle protein synthesis in even more ways than simple nutrient delivery. 7. Who doesn’t want to end the day with a box of cherry turnovers? This is some powerful information, and many of you may be hesitant to accept it, which is fine. On the other hand, there may be some of you who take this to the extreme and will find out it is easy to overdue.
As always, I recommend you track your calories and macronutrients and fit these "junk" carbs into your carbohydrate allowances for the day. This will ensure you don't over-indulge and you can increase your gains one cookie at a time! Healthy living, heavy lifting, everyone!  A lot of you have been asking for recommendations for an easy to follow nutrition program. I'm currently working on publishing my own protocol right now, but this is a very effective program that uses the foundation of just about all of my previous posts. If you're interested in gaining muscle and cutting some body fat, I highly recommend giving this program a shot. This particular program is called Fasting for Muscle Gains, written by Jason Maxwell. I'm particularly fond of Jason Maxwell's work because he is an engineer like myself, who has a passion for training and nutrition. You can check out his work and other articles at JMAXFITNESS here. To make the most of this program, I recommend using a flexibile dieting approach and tracking your macro-nutrients and calories, this will take all of the guess work out of your diet and you can easily monitor your progress. You also won't be limited to certain foods you can eat! It's simple. Effective. Don't overcomplicate it. Best wishes!  By Jason Maxwell It’s all a lie. I hear it in the gym, on television, and even on the streets. It doesn’t make any sense to me. “If you want to pack on muscle, you need to eat every 2–3 hours.” Lies. The crazy thing is that I don’t have any idea where this myth came from. Back in the golden era of bodybuilding, legends such as Serge Nubret were eating only 1–2 meals per day. His logic was that tigers are lean and ripped and only eat 1–2 huge meals per day, so he did the same. Challenge accepted. Last year, I gained 30 lbs in eight months by only eating 1–2 meals per day. What I’m about to show you works. And it works really well. This article is all about conquering the quest to gain lean muscle without the added fat. In order to accomplish this goal, we need to master two things—carb cycling with intermittent fasting and the optimization of your weekly caloric intake. Carb Cycling with Intermittent Fasting Carb cycling is easy. On days when you work out, eat more carbs. To take this one step further, we’ll strategically skip eating in order to produce more growth hormone, detoxify the body, and aid digestion. For building lean mass, my recommendation is to have three different types of days—low carb high fat (LCHF), moderate carb moderate fat (MCMF), and a full-day fast (FDF). With this plan, assume that you will skip eating throughout every morning. LCHF day: Save this eating style for non-workout days. Get all your calories from protein, fat, and non-starchy vegetables. Keep protein high with at least 1.2 grams per pound of lean body mass. Get all your calories via 1–2 huge meals in the afternoon and evening. MCMF day: In contrast, this is your eating plan for non-workout days. Use an appropriate peri-workout nutrition protocol containing quick digesting carbs post-workout. All meals are to consist of protein, fat, and non-starchy vegetables with the exception of back loading carbs to an evening meal, which will consist of protein, starchy carbs, and non-starchy vegetables. Keep total protein high with at least 1.2 grams per pound of lean body mass. Again, all your calories should be eaten in 1–2 huge meals in the afternoon and evening and in your peri-workout nutrition. FDF: Once per week, you will fast throughout the day until two hours before you go to bed. At this time, eat a small meal consisting of 30–50 grams of protein, some fat, and a ton of non-starchy vegetables. Use a weekly FDF to detoxify the body, aid digestion, and increase growth hormone. Remember, better digestion means more muscle and less fat. The purpose of this carb cycling approach is to strategically burn fat and build muscle at different times throughout the day and week. At periods when you’re fasting or not eating carbs, your insulin levels are kept low and your body is mobilizing fat for energy. We will spike insulin via peri-workout nutrition post-workout to build and repair muscle. But Jason, why are the carbs so low? In order to build lean mass, you don’t necessarily need a huge amount of carbs. All you need is enough carbs post-workout to prevent catabolism as well as some in the evening to replenish glycogen in the muscles. As long as you’re eating in a caloric surplus and training hard, you will build muscle—with or without the extra carbohydrates. Weekly Caloric Intake Calories in versus calories out, right bro? Yes. Most people reading this article already have a decent understanding of good food choices. You already know that real food is better than processed food and that if you’re hitting your macros from 80–90 percent real food, you’ll look pretty awesome. With that basic knowledge, it ends up coming down to calories in versus calories out. You want to pack on slabs of lean, athletic muscle, right? Then you need to eat more than you burn. End of story. Here’s where things may shock you. You don’t need to eat nearly as much as you think in order to pack on muscle. It seems like the majority of information out there is for beginners or ‘hard gainers’ who want to gain muscle. I have no idea why, but everyone thinks that he’s a ‘hard gainer.’ Here’s the easy way to know. If you aren’t a skinny weakling and have managed to put on at least 20 lbs of muscle in your first two years of lifting and you look pretty decent, you aren’t a hard gainer. This isn’t saying much, but it’s good progress for a hard gainer. If this is the case, you aren’t even a beginner anymore. This means that you don’t need to eat nearly as much food as you think in order to gain muscle but stay lean. To start off, you will need to figure out what your daily maintenance caloric intake is. An easy way to calculate this is to multiply your lean body mass by 16 kcal if you’re under 15 percent body fat. Otherwise, multiply your lean body mass by 14 kcal. As an example, let’s use a 185-lb male with 13.5 percent body fat. This means he would need to eat approximately 2500 kcal per day in order to maintain his physique. Let’s take a closer look. In order to gain lean mass, I recommend an extra 200 kcal above maintenance per day (on average). This would mean that this 185-lb male needs to average 2700 kcal per day. Multiplying this by seven gives 18,900 kcal per week. This is your weekly caloric intake. Because you aren’t eating the same amount of calories per day (thanks to the FDF), your weekly caloric intake has priority over your daily caloric intake. Let’s assume you eat a small meal on your FDF consisting of three eggs, four pieces of bacon, and a side salad (sans dressing). This equals approximately 500 kcal. Subtracting that from your weekly caloric intake leaves you with 18,400 kcal to spare. Dividing that by the remaining six days in the week will give you approximately 3100 kcal per day. Knowing your target for the day, you can eat all your food in 1–2 meals. If you have trouble eating large amounts of food, try eating a quarter cup of sauerkraut before you dig in. It’ll massively aid your digestion. Serge Nubret was known to eat 0.75 kg of horse meat in one sitting. I don’t know about you, but this sounds amazing to me. Fasting for Muscle Gain Weekly Schedule Using our 185-lb male, I’ve constructed a sample weekly schedule. Obviously, this eating program is meant to be used in conjunction with a muscle building weight training program. Any program on this website is more than sufficient. In the following schedule, I will use a four-day per week lifting schedule as an example. As you can see, you will only be ingesting carbs if you have weight trained that day. You will be overeating six days per week. Likewise, you will undereat once a week.  Eat Like a Tiger There you have it, my friends. I’ve given you a few simple methods to use intermittent fasting in order to build lean mass:
 Jason Maxwell, CPT, is an aerospace engineer turned fitness professional from Toronto, Canada. He went from a skinny, fat kid to a ripped adult, and it’s his passion to help others do the same. Check out his blog atwww.jmaxfitness.com.
 Avoid adding body fat to your frame this fall and find out how you can stay shredded year round while still increasing your gains! By Craven Ah, the end of summer. Every bro's favorite time of the year as they can stop doing their endless amounts of sit-ups, pretending to care about what they're eating, and can finally start their oh so longed for "winter bulk" phase. Most people (guys and girls) do a pretty decent job when it comes down to looking their best for the summer months. Who wouldn't want to look their best when you're going to be spending a lot of time by the pool or at the beach? But as the summer gives way to early fall and the pools parties are no longer raging, most people who 'diet' and workout feel this is a time where they can be more careless with what they're eating and maybe bulk up during the winter months. Time to load up on the pancakes and Chick-fl-A, right!? Not so fast there, slim. The whole bulking phase thing is something I have mixed feelings about. And i'll explain why. Its understandable to add a bit of body mass to your frame if you've been walking about absolutely shredded at 7% body fat for the last few months and you want to increase some main lifts and tack on a pound or two of REAL lean muscle, But most trainees don't understand that you don't need to throw on an extra 15 pounds of winter fluff in order to improve your physique. In fact, adding that much weight in a short period of time is just asking for trouble. You're going to gain almost pure fat. Maybe a pound and a half of real lean muscle, but that's it. Sorry, but it's true. So let's take a look at what can be done to prevent your bulking phases from flying off the handle and you losing your coveted beach body overnight and transforming into Fudgey The Whale.  It's funny 'cuz he's fat! I've never been a fan of the bulk and cut approach. An approach often taken to the extreme by some of my peers, with the net result being that they only look decent during the summer months. Simply not my style. Perhaps it's because I'm more impressed by feats of great relative strength, for which leanness is critical. I'm not sure. It is what it is, like the saying goes. Most people in the gym who lift for pure strength and ego will never admit to saying it's important to stay as lean as possible, but deep down inside we all want a set of shredded washboard abs. But these are the dudes who spend most of their time flopping around the bench press with limited range of motion, don't deadlift, and probably squat less than the girls you see putting in work at the squat racks. If you've somehow managed to drop a a significant amount of body fat and have a decent set of abs, it's imperative to maintain your leanness as much as possible, even if your goal is to improve your overall strength and bring up lagging body parts. When looking to increase muscle mass, the best approach to take is the slow and steady one. I know, I know, you want to go to to bed tonight and wake up jacked tomorrow. But that's not going to happen. For the sake of time, I'm just going to lay it out straight if you want to increase your body composition but still maintain a lean body fat of around 10 percent.
I just want to touch on a few reasons why going all out with bulking is a bad idea.
 Save your abs and your time: Don't perma-bulk! How to Look Awesome Every Day Here's the fun part. It's almost motivating and encouraging to see real progress in the gym, especially when you're body weight is barely moving. If you can increase your compound movement strength without adding much body weight, you're going in the right direction. Measure Progress: Your progress can quantified in relative strength. This is hands down the easiest way to know if you're going along the right path to improving your body composition. An extra 10 pounds added to your bench isn't impressive if you've also gained 10 pounds of body weight. That's a 1:1 ratio of weight to strength, which is strongly indicative of fat gain. However, assume you added 10 pounds to your bench but only 3 pounds of body weight. That's a 1:3:3 ratio of weight to strength, which is quite good. Odds are most of the 3 pounds came from real lean muscle, not fat! If you're an intermediate or advanced lifter, strive to reach these weight to strength ratios: Bench Press and Weighted pull ups* - 1:3 Squat - 1:4 Deadlift - 1:5 That's about all there is to it, guys. Don't be tempted to fall off the lean gains wagon and trade down for the all-out bulk-n-binge route you see so many bros take. It may seem like you're adding quality mass at first as both the scale and your lifts go up, but your lifts will stall before the scale and you'll be left with nothing but a cookie dough physique to compliment your diet. Happy lifting, happy eating, and happy living!   Success. How do you define it? A lot of people tend to associate success with making a lot of money. While it never hurts to make a ton of money doing something that you love, money isn't everything. It's A LOT of things, but not everything. Remember this. Think of a handful of people you know or may have heard of that have become successful, whatever that means to you. What do you think all of those people have in common? I can promise you they just didn't wake up one day to a stack of cash, master of a skill or trade, or having one of the best physiques known to man. You may say they all had to work hard to achieve their level of success, and this is true, but beyond working hard they all did this: They set goals. This seems simple enough, right? But it's more than just saying you want something. While you've probably always been told to "shoot for the stars" and "set the bar high", this isn't always the best plan of action when you're looking to become successful. The power of setting goals is not in the long term, but rather in the short term. It's easy to set a goal like saying "I want to one day make a lot of money" or "someday I'd like to do such and such...", but in reality, most people never accomplish these far sighted dreams, and the ones who do, know how to set short term goals.  Short Term Goals If you're looking to be successful, setting short term goals frequently is something you need to be doing. Not only is it a boost of positive reinforcement to achieve these smaller goals, but it keeps you on track and paves a path for where you ultimately want to end up. You can't just decide to do something all whilly-nilly one day with no real plan of action. If you don't believe me, try it and see how it works out for you. When it comes to fitness and health, most people fail terribly when it comes to achieving their goals. Why is this? Because they set high, unrealistic goals for themselves and become discouraged along the way when progress stalls or when the going gets tough? And when the going gets tough, the short-term goal setters get going! A realistic example here is weight loss. Most people will say "I want to lose 10 pounds", then jump head first into a diet that becomes painfully unsustainable and marathon like workouts which aren't suited to their specific goals. They end up getting burned out quickly and discouraged from continuing all together. I know, I've been there. The remedy to this common problem comes in the form of: yup, that's right, setting short term goals. Instead of waking up one day and starting that "fresh new fad diet" that requires you to cut out a lot of food you enjoy and workouts you dread, start by making small adjustments to your daily routine. If you don't excersise regularly, start taking brisk walks in the morning a few days out of the week. Then tell yourself you're not going to stop and McDonald's on the way home tonight. Getting the ball rolling is all it takes. The longer you continue down a path hitting milestones and small accomplishments along the way, the easier time you'll have getting to your big, long term end goal. The classic Newtonian physics cliche to say here is "a body in motion tends to stay in motion". Once you see yourself making progress and hitting your goals on a day to day basis, you'll continue to stay motivated. 
Long Term Goals With your short term goals and accomplishments being met regularly, it's almost a sure thing you'll achieve that oh so distant long term goal, right? Maybe. Maybe not. In my personal experience and from what I've gathered from successful people I admire, reaching your ultimate goal comes down to this: PASSION. Anyone who has gotten to where they've wanted to be all had passion in what they were doing. Most people I meet and work with seem to drift listlessly through their lives, with no real spark or imagination towards anything going on in their lives. This truly is the saddest thing someone can become, and I never want to know the feeling of not having a purpose. It's understandable that some people take longer than others to find out what they really love, but maybe these people haven't really spent enough time thinking about what they want out of life, or have found something that peaks their interests enough to pursue it. Even I sometimes question if what I'm passion it about really are my true passions, as they test my emotions and resiliency more than anything else on this earth (even girls). But this is how I know it's real. Passion is something hard to describe. It's a bunch of intangibles that come together that manifests itself as ambition and motivation towards accomplishing something that you really desire. ...Okay, maybe not that hard to describe. But still, I feel that little explanation does not do it justice. I like to compare passion to falling in love: You may not have complete control over it, but when it hits you, you're captivated. And the only way to know if it's real and meant to be is to pursue it. What do you have to lose? 
Setting an accomplshing goals is never going to be easy. But if it were easy, then everyone would be doing it. It just comes down to a matter of how bad you want it, how hard you're willing to work for it, and how passionate you are towards reaching your destination. This all may be redundant and old news to most of you who keep up with my posts, but it's always good to get a swift kick in the pants some days by life to get you back on track. I've struggled with my own personal issues lately regarding my ambitions and goals, and even had a few setbacks. But no matter how many times you get bucked off that horse, fall of your skateboard, miss the kick, or whatever cliche you want to use for trying again, you NEVER give up. All you do is take a deep breathe Re-assess your goals. Then do everything in your power to be successful. 
 Ladies, think you're making the right choices in the gym and in the kitchen? Be sure to avoid these common training and diet mistakes! Mistakes. We all make them. In fact, I probably do a lot more things wrong than I do correctly; that's why pencils have erasers, right? There's nothing horrible about being wrong from time to time, just as long as you can learn from your mistakes and make a conscious effort to correct the problem and do things right the next time around. Every mistake you make is just another opportunity to try again and do it right. "Okay, enough of the preachy life lesson talk, Craven, get to the goods!" You got it. The last post I wrote about training and nutrition for women did a lot better than I had ever expected and I got a lot of great feedback from everyone, especially the girls. I received plenty of follow up questions regarding nutrition, and especially training. When I'd ask these girls what their programs were like, I'd see how they were doing things right, but more importantly, a lot that they were doing wrong. "Wrong" sounds like such an absolute statement to make. I think that word really only applies to mathematics, if your work doesn't yield the right answer, then clearly it's wrong. As far as diet, training, lifestyle choices, etc go, none of that is ever wrong. Some things are just LESS OPTIMAL. And me, well, I'm all about OPTIMIZATION. Being the sucker that I am for a pretty face and a squat body, I figured I'd address some of the biggest mistakes that I see women consistently make with their diets and training. Guys, take notes as well, because I witness a lot of you 'bros' making the same mistakes. Some of these ladies are even out lifting you! (I don't see many guys hit deadlifts, but girls are always more than willing to pull some big weight! Take a lesson from the babes, bro.)  Mistakes in the Gym 1. Not lifting heavy enough. Lifting heavy weights does not make women huge. I can repeat this until I'm blue in the face, but I feel it falls on those delicate deaf ears. Women think they understand this, but it still hasn't sunk in. It's time to evolve beyond using those pink rubber 5 pounders. I know they may personify your princess-like aura, but their not going to give you those goddess-like curves. Your muscles won't take shape and you won't lose fat if your'e curling and pressing weight roughly the weight of your iphone! Don't get complacent, either. Strive to increase your weights and/or reps as often as possible! 2. Unnecessary Ab work. It never fails. Every gym I walk into, just as the bros are cluttering up the dumbell rack so they can catch a glimpse of themselves in the mirror doing bicep curls, there's a whole flock of chicks relentlessly doing crunches and weird ab work in hopes of shedding that layer of flub and achieving that flat stomach. Working the ab muscles is important, but this is done indirectly if you squat, deadlift, and press with HEAVY weights. Revealing the six pack comes down to body fat- the less you have, the leaner and more tone your midsection (and everywhere else) will be! So reduce the direct ab work, fix your diet, and say hello to ms. washboard abs! 3. BOSU Balls and weird gym toys. The gym is no place to play with balls! Especially of the BOSU variety. Unless your training for Circ de Solei, you have no business even looking at these. Don't attempt to stand on one holding any sort of weight in hopes of "strengthening those stabilizer muscles". Your muscles will "stabilize" just fine under heavy squats and presses. If you're doing any kind of work on a bosu ball, you're just asking for trouble. But I guess chiropractors and physical therapist need clients, too? 4. TOO MUCH CARDIO. I hate cardio. Everything about it. And you should too. Not because it's a drag and painful to do, but because it's ineffective as a method of burning fat. I'm not saying a few minutes on the treadmill is going to wreck you, but you cannot make it the priority of your program. 2 hour sessions of moderate cardio will not make you lean. You'll end up flat, still chubby, and worse for the wear. Taking a brisk walk in the morning is actually a phenomenal way to increase fat burning throughout the day. It's easy, relaxing, and really helps you focus on the day ahead of you. Also HIIT (High intensity interval training) on a stationary bike, jump rope, or sprints is highly effective at burning fat. With HIIT, you're in and out in under 20 minutes You can't lose. 5. Post Training Meals: I'm going to drop a bit of dangerous knowledge, so be careful how you use this. Ready? It is virtually impossible-no matter WHAT you eat- to gain any body fat after lifting weights! Let that sink in for a moment. Does this mean you can hit up the Cheesecake factory for the 5 course special after a few sets of curls with those pretty pink dumbells and sessin of yoga? Absolutely not! This is only true when the workout has good intesnity with a higher volume of weights. So if you're squatting, deadlifting, and pressing heavy pretty frequently, feel free to enjoy some sushi with the girls or ice cream with your favorite movie tonight. You're earning it.  Nutrition Mistakes 1. Adopting a Diet Program Advertised on TV. "Lose five pounds the first week!" You know these gimmicks sound tempting. These fad TV diets 'work' by reducing your total caloric intake, so you will in fact lose weight. The problem comes when the program is over. Rebound effect sets in and your gaining all of the weight you lost and probably adding an additional few pounds on top of that. And since these diets are aimed mostly at women who don't train with weights, they're definitely setting themselves up for major rebound weight. You ladies will have greater long term success if you learn how to properly track your macro-nutrient and calorie intake. Cooking and preparing your own meals will serve exceptionally beneficial as well!  2. Eating Fake Health Food. You've all seen it. Special K Cereal Bars (seriously, what could ever be healthy about cereal? And when has anything good and nutritious ever come in bar form??) are garbage. They're a pure marketing gimmick and will get you to unknowingly put down 30 grams of sugar with little actual health benefit. All of these pre-packaged snack foods aren't doing you any favors by throwing these in between meals. All of the fat free, sugar free, high fiber, organic, and gluten free packaged products can still make you fat. Because these products appear to be healthy, they're easier to rationalize eating in excess. (Much like fruit, i'll get to this in a minute). Ensure drinks, Boosts, Slim Fast, Kashi cereals: These are the most insidious forms of junkfood because they masquerade as healthy and nutritous foods. As always, aim to consume the least process, most wholesome foods possible. 3. Not eating enough. You girls have to eat. Seriously. Especially if you're lifting weights. Eating is necessary, and I promise you it won't make you overweight. Drastically reducing calories makes you feel horrible, and on top of that, your body will adapt to it's new caloric equilibrium and because less efficient at using calories, especially if you're doing hours of cardio on top of this. Always remember to eat. 4. Going to Extremem with Carbs OR Fats. There's never any reason to be extreme with any method. I see a lot of women adopt a high carb-low fat way of eating that is not sustainable and won't help them if measures are extreme. On the other hand, some women will use the high fat-low carb and take this to an extreme. While this model does resemble a ketogenic diet (which i do endorse and impliment when necessary) it can be overdone and may not always be practical and useful when trying to reach your goals. The best bet, like with everything in life, is somewhere in the middle between the two. This is why it's important to track your macronutrient and calories. I can't stress this enough. 5. Being Mislead by SMOOTHIES. Have you ever wanted to consume 140 grams of sugar in a single sitting? Well you can accomplish that feat by ordering up your favorite large smoothie from Jamba Juice! But smoothies are supposed to be healthy, right? Yes, that's the claim made by saying they're made with nothing but wholesome fruits, but let's take a step back and examine exactly what's going on with that "oh so amazing mid meal smoothie". First off, if you drink an entire large smoothie, it's actually a lot more fruit than you could ever eat if it were in it's natural, whole form. If you eat a banana, chances are you're not going to follow that up with 2 apples and 3 cups of berries. And even then, that's a horrible idea. "But its only fruit,it's healthy, right?" Sure, but in small quantities. The fructose content (sugar) in a smoothie easily exceeds 100 grams, enough to spike your insulin levels higher than cheech and chong and put a brake on fat burning a good while. Even the fiber content of the fruit is greatly diminished from all fine processing from the blender. I always suggest to never use smoothies as a snack or meal replacement. You're better off eating a wholesome meal with protein and fat and a small amount of slow acting carbs. From here on out, you should only include smoothies into your nutrtion plan as a "once in a while treat" and add it to the junk food budget.  That's about it for this one, ladies! I hope many of you don't make these mistakes on a regular basis, but If you have in the past just don't sweat it and work on correcting those mistakes in the future. Health and fitness is not a sprint, your best results will come from being consistent with training and nutrtion. Sure, you'll make mistakes along the way. We all do. The best you can do is acknowledge those mistakes, learn from them, and correct them by making more optimal choices in the future. As always, keep the weights high, the squats low, and you'll change your body and your life for the best.  You should never have to choose between your fitness and having a good time. Find out how you can attain that 6 pack while enjoying a 6 pack! By Craven Ah, booze. What's not to love about it? It makes unattractive people slightly less unattractive, annoying people a little more tolerable, and the ubiquitous beverage of choice for every 20 something year old looking to make some questionable decisions. To quote the great Homer Simpson, "Alcohol: The CAUSE, AND SOLUTION to all of life's problems!" Alcohol is an interesting topic that comes with a lot of controversial issues, and in this instance, I'm going to address the single most important question people who workout like to ask: "HOW WILL DRINKING AFFECT MY GAINZ, BRO!?" I get asked this question all the time, and with the all the summer activities to partake in that involve frosty brews and good company, it's easy to fall off the wagon, get hammered drunk, and imagine you're in an angel band singing lead vocals for Lynyrd Skynyrd! So let's not dilly-dally on the subject, here. Sober minds are begging to know. I'm going drop some knowledge bombs (Jager bombs?) that will come in handy the next time your buddies rope you into hitting up a pub crawl and you're worried about your fat loss and/or muscle gain en devours.  ALCOHOL MAKES YOU FAT FALSE. I've said this before in previous posts, but there is nothing you can consume that will automatically 'make you fat'. Being fat makes you fat. And to get fat, all you have to do is consume a surplus amount of calories. You can quote me when I say alcohol has no direct affect on either slowing down/stopping fat loss or causing loss of muscle mass. This bit of info may conflict with your previous thoughts of alcohol perpetuated by the "clean eaters" that put alcohol in the "unclean" category and are quick to label it as 'fattening'. In case you haven't noticed, I'm on something of a crusade (led by Dr. Layne Norton and a host of other intelligent fellas) trying to change the fitness game and help people understand that you CAN lose fat and gain muscle while still enjoying all the food and activities you love. The 'clean eaters' may ask, "bro, do you even lift?" To which I reply with "Bro, do you even science?" Then proceed to pull a 545 lb deadlift and scarf down a half dozen Krispy Kreme donuts and wake up with better abs than I had yesterday. Enjoy your brocolii and tilapia, #fitfam. (Do I seem bitter? Maybe all this ice cream I eat daily will make me sweet.) Anyway, back to the booze. Alcohol will only lead to fat gain when consumed in a diet that supplies excess calories. Here's a relate able example: Getting trashed on Thirsty Thursdays then crusing over to your favorite Whataburger joint and puttin' down a double patty melt. Sound familiar to anyone? The thing about alcohol, just like with almost everything in life, comes down to moderation. As the old saying goes, "The devil is in the dosage." From a nutritional standpoint, alcohol is very similar to sugar. Pure sugar (glucose) is void of nutrients and fine in your diet when dosage is minimal. The same goes for alcohol.  Who's down for Whatburger after the next 4 games? WHAT IF I DRINK TOO MUCH? For those of you who have ever been to college, you know the experience. When alcohol is consumed in large quantities (binge drinking), there are plenty of negative side effects that come along with that dirty little hangover the next morning. An indirect effect of getting smashed is eating more, brought on by a lack of inhibition from da' booze. An excess consumption of calories loaded on top of 8 beers and a handful of shots will undoubtedly be bad news for those 6 pack abs that were slightly starting to show in the right lighting. The direct effect of binge drinking comes in the form of suppressed fat burning. When alcohol is in your system, it takes first priority by your body to be used as fuel; thus putting the brakes on fat oxidation AND suppresses carb and protein oxidation. Basically, your metabolism (momentarily) comes to a standstill to process the alcohol. In case you didn't get the point, here it is: MODERATION IS KEY.  Probably not the best way to facilitate those gains! HOW DO I INCORPORATE ALCOHOL INTO MY DIET? I'm glad I asked! Alcohol is technically a fourth macro-nutrient (5th actually if you count fiber), and contains about 7 calories per gram. If you follow a flexible dieting routine and track your macros (I can't emphasize how imperative and EASY this is to do if you're serious about fat loss and muscle gain!) then you can do some quick number crunching to find out how much alcohol you can pour down your throat and still maintain your gains! So what do you need to do? Just divide the total calorie content of the drink by 4 if you want to count is as carbs or divide by 9 if you want to count it as fat. Example: Shot of Jack Daniels (my go-to beverage) 1 shot=78 calories. 78/4=19.5 78/9= 8.7 So this one drink could either be computed as 20 grams of carbs in your daily allowance, or 9 grams of Fat in your daily allowance. Up to you. How about a beer? A pint of Guinness has 210 calories. 210 ÷ 4 = 52.5 210÷ 9 = 23.3 So we get 53 grams of carbs or 23 grams of fat. Simple, right? If you haven't started a flexible dieting program, check out my article on Flexible dieting or contact me for a PERSONALIZED macro-nutrient breakdown and meal options. What now?
That's about all there is to it, guys! Always remember to enjoy yourself as often as possible! Take my advice, don't EVER turn down a night out with good company to stay home and "meal prep" or something you think may benefit your gym progress. The key to progress (as with anything in life) is consistency. If you're consistent with your training and nutrtion, the progress will come. If you do everything right, there's no harm in having a good time and puttin' down a few cold ones. Because when it comes down to it, it's nice having great abs and rockin biceps, but what's nicer is kickin' it with a few good friends on a Thursday evening. If you're doing it right, both your abs and buds will still be around for you in the morning. Cheers! For Personalized macro-nutrient plans, meal plans, and remote coaching, contact me at s[email protected]  |
