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Eat More to Lose Weight

3/23/2020

This client sent me this text while at her photo shoot with the brilliant photographer @paulbuceta and the lovely @kristabellemarks and @kellyarcangel and @monicakalra. She looks better NOT depleted. This is difficult to understand for some non-coaches. The law is that you cannot take more from less. That is, there is no way to subtract from something which doesn't exist. You cannot borrow from a bank which contains no money. You cannot burn energy from a system which has none left.

Stylistically, this isn’t my typical post. But there is a truth bomb which people need to understand. YOU MUST BECOME RESTORED. Since the early 90’s I’ve been doing metabolic experiments. Since 2004 I’ve walked clients through a process of restoring metabolism I called metabolic engineering. Nowadays, popular influencers slap the moniker on it, “reverse dieting.” Long story short: depleting oneself through calorie cutting and endless hours of exercise doesn’t IMPROVE life. This is always frustrating for people who are overstressed, because they keep comparing themselves to people who are restored, even their former less-tired and younger selves. No matter what, you will always be confronted with the fact that you just can't keep taking from something which has already given too much. The body will push back with growth factors which tend to make you fatter and bigger, not smaller.

Just take her word for it. @dailysuperstar put it succinctly in the text. We spent YEARS emphasizing restoration, nutritional sufficiencies, stress management, and just plain ol’ becoming more athletic. YEARS. Not days. Not weeks. Not even months. From THAT, she’s BETTER all around (mentally, physically, emotionally, professionally, etc.) than when specifically she focused on aesthetics (ie - competing in body building).

Give her kudos. Check out the other contributors at the shoot. And if you or someone you know keeps futilely eating less and exercising more, look into metabolic restoration/reverse dieting. My only additional piece of advice would be to ignore the influencers who have only been at this for a couple of years, because they don't actually know that for most people this is an 18 month process, a 5-10 year process, a lifelong process. Damaged, overstressed, depleted people can't be restored with modest changes over the short term.

They must first have more, so at last they can have less.

This Body Fat Will Kill You. That One Won't.

3/21/2020

There is fat in/under the skin, which may be protective, according to a study at the University of Illinois. Then there is fat in/among organs, which probably kills you: https://today.uic.edu/why-is-visceral-fat-worse-than-subcut…

Skinfold caliper measurements have shown me that some people lose visceral fat long before they touch subcutaneous fat. I’ve performed tens of thousands of assessments. During that time, you see patterns which may not make sense at first, but then they pop up in lots of individuals. A lot of people eat up the unhealthy fat around organs while pinches of skin stay the same or “worsen.”

This can be vexing for the layperson or for the coach with little experience. Someone’s pinches go up while they’re down 15lbs AND stronger. What happened here? They lost visceral fat. Likewise, people will mistake weight gain concurrent with improved caliper measurements as lean tissue increases. Nope. Not always. Sometimes people’s visceral fat expanded and pulled the skin tighter.
For the client who really wants to get to the bottom of things, this is where multiple metrics help. DEXA, bodpod, underwater weigh in, bioelectrical impedance are all nice. But frankly, if your midsection circumference measurement plummets while strength and performance improve, your health prospects are looking great EVEN when weight is flat or up.

This gets complex. People will try to judge progress by scale. That is incredibly deceiving. Even circumference metrics can mislead you on limbs, because full glycogen (this isn’t fat) from getting a little stronger will expand the thigh slightly - and this is HEALTHY.
To be clear, if you at your near-current height once had a 26 inch waist, every millimeter beyond that is likely representing visceral fat, unless you are a hulkish muscle-bound freak. Even some of those freaks can still get the waistline down to their high school measurement.

It’s not to say pinches are irrelevant. They are just incomplete. And given the propensity for visceral fat to end you, THAT is more pertinent to health prospects than subcutaneous fat or body weight. That all said, I’ve found that even the most visceral-fat-loss-resistant people will still eradicate fat around the liver, pancreas and heart once they get the skin thin enough and keep going.
On the flip side, concerning aesthetics, loose skin in individuals who lose piles of visceral fat can also be lost in a state of fasting. That should be less the concern.

Because visceral fat will kill you. And subcutaneous may even be protective (up to a point).

This Week’s 20 Hours of Virtual Coaching‘s Lesson

3/20/2020

✅ everyone said session was too hard
✅ at-home session can be too hard
✅ I don’t need to prove this
✅ stop trying to prove this
✅ seeing people in non-gym is better*
✅ did I mention non-gym can be too hard?

Especially among my clients who are coaches or more advanced athletes, I suspected they thought limited equipment workouts couldn’t be challenging. So I overdid it a little 🤣🤣🤣.

*In every single video appointment, I identified some incorrect, mistakenly-performed, or less-productively-performed exercises which we would’ve never corrected without me seeing the client in his or her home scenario. Emphasis on ME SEEING THEM. It’s educated me on the fact that I should’ve utilized video conference once or twice for in-person clients previously anyway; and that, although THEM SEEING ME or seeing other instructional videos is beneficial, it isn’t anywhere near as valuable as a professional assessing them.

The video (here: https://www.instagram.com/p/B97uQ1gjck_/) is some more overdoing. To put things in perspective, I weigh 260lbs.

To put the video into perspective:

The single leg RDL w/ hand assist I did last week with a 250lb dumbbell x 3, and a 150lb dumbbell for multiple sets of 12 reps. A week before that I did stagger stance RDL with 455. I’ve taken near 600 for a ride on standard deadlifts, and more on rack pull.

So, yeah, I’d say bands can get it done.

Just Do 4 Exercises

3/20/2020

Both of these photos were at the end of metabolic experiments. The one of the left was to see if I could hit 300lbs of bodyweight, which I couldn’t (I did gain about 30lbs of muscle and was stronger than most athletes). During that time I was exercising over 10 hours per week and eating over 90% of my calories from plant sources. The picture on the right was in 2013 at the end of a 6 month experiment where I never exercised more than 90 minutes PER WEEK. I ate almost 3lbs of grass fed beef per day during that experiment. Read carefully. A lot of exercise and near-vegan on left (I’m not advocating against this, by the way, but merely pointing out there are more factors at play in metabolism). Very little exercise and lots of red meat on right (also not advocating for this, necessarily, but again pointing out the ridiculousness of people who don’t conduct null hypothesis scientific experiments themselves and then ideologically preaching at all of us with a simple-minded argument).

The number of exercises I performed on the left per week was something like Arnold’s old regimen (up to 60 working sets per workout). On the right: deadlift; weighted pull-ups, weighted dips; sprints. That’s it.

That’s all you need. Three to five exercises where you become more skillful. That’s it, really. Pick at least one lower body structural lift. At some point in the week make an effort toward maximal heart rate.

That’s it. You don’t need hours. I’ve proven that in a dozen personal experiments. I have the data. I have the supporting biological science explanation. Don’t get caught up in programming which prevents execution.

Keep it simple.

Muscle Mass Is The Difference Between Survival And Death

3/19/2020

“Over a 10-day hospital stay, a healthy adult can lose five percent of their total muscle mass. Those numbers rise to 18 percent in an intensive care unit... You can lose it so fast, but rebuilding it takes months... makes it harder to fight illness. A 10 percent loss leads to impaired immunity and increased risk of infection. Twenty percent means weakness and slowed healing; 30 percent leaves a patient too weak to sit. A loss of 40 percent is often fatal.” - https://m.medicalxpress.com/…/2020-01-nutrition-expert-musc…

How much lean tissue you have is tightly correlated with life expectancy, cancer survival, all illness recovery, and, obviously, overall quality of life. People fight tooth and nail to drop BMI, but some decreases in BMI increase risks.

The battle to keep muscle is very difficult. The ordeal to build more is unimaginable for most. Let us move the conversation away from simply dropping weight. Many people lose weight only to worsen their health prospects. Muscle mass can make the difference between life and death.

500 Year Lifespan from Metabolic Alterations

3/19/2020

Research in part supported by the NIH altered two metabolic factors which researchers expected to lengthen lifespan 130%, but instead found a 400-500% increase: https://mdibl.org/…/mdi-biological-scientists-identify-pat…/

Readers may scoff when they see that these test subjects are nematodes. But the same metabolic pathways do exist within humans with the same functions. And there’s good reason to believe alteration of insulin expression would lengthen human life a lot. If you’re not wantonly growing cancer cells and fat (insulin volatility and elevation), your health risks are dramatically lowered. There is a good reason to believe altering TOR expression would also be a massive improvement in lifespan. When we grow skeletal muscle (mTOR), likewise, we reduce risk of death by dramatic leaps and bounds. And now we have lab data that shows combining the two leads to a synergistic effect far in excess of expectation.

The combinant outcome can be approximated with timed fasting for insulin management (https://www.sciencedirect.com/…/artic…/pii/S1550413118302535 ) and heavy resistance training followed by specific nutrition for mTOR (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5504043/).

Will it raise our average lifespan to 400-500 years old? Not likely. But the two combined will certainly alter your life expectancy and improve quality of life in a palpable way.

Let's Try THis Again: Please End The Cult of Weightloss

3/17/2020

There are 240lb people with 28 inch waistlines. I’ve been there. There are 100lb skinny-looking people with over 30% body fat composition.

Weight matters, sure. You don’t get a bigger set of lungs as an adult if you weigh 300lbs versus 150lbs. You don’t get bigger effective knee joints. You don’t get a beneficially larger pancreas or adrenal glands. You will get a bigger heart and liver (but these size increases correlate to a DECREASE in effective function). So, yeah, weight matters, insomuch as you are forcing certain structures to do more work than they can or need to. And that reduces your relative work capacity, structural integrity of organs and tissues, enjoyment, and/or lifespan.

But here’s the thing: if your composition doesn’t improve, and your physical capability doesn’t improve, WHO CARES ABOUT WEIGHT?
This is precisely what happens by the way. People who train capability on average maintain better weight and composition. People who train for weightloss on average have worse comp and ability in the long term.

Lean tissue loss and strength loss IS aging. Work capacity is life. Remind me again, where does a few pounds of stored body fat fit into this equation?

I guarantee that the average weight loss resolutionist would benefit dearly from a 10-20lb weight gain in hip extensor and overall back muscle/tendon/ligament/skeletal/fascia density.

With THAT change in comp, fall risk decreases, orthopedic pain and injury decreases, the effective burden of total bodyweight decreases, and so on. Work capacity improves. LIFE improves. Guess what: potential for weight loss improves, because they can do more.

On the flip side, EVERY SINGLE PERSON who puts strengthening on the back burner in order to “focus” on weight loss ends up accelerating deterioration. I only have a sample set of 12,000 to 20,000 people I’ve observed, assessed, or directly worked with in my 15 years of professional experience. But I don’t have ONE EXAMPLE of someone who gave up focusing on improving strength ability and is better for it on 2, 5, 10 year followup.

However, I have hundreds of examples of people who focused exclusively on ability and their composition was improved 2, 5, 10 years later.

Please end the Cult of Weightloss. Please.

Get Humble

3/17/2020

Learn. No matter how good you get, you don’t outgrow listening. Here, we’ve got the strongest man in the world and easily the most consistent injury-free fitness fanatic on planet earth both saying, “I don’t know it all; I can learn from anyone” (video here: https://www.instagram.com/p/B5m-o9ijkAt/). If the strongest man on earth and a guy who hasn’t missed a day of lifting in 43 years can say it, who the hell do you think you are?

7 days per week I spend 1-2 hours reading published scientific research in the morning. I've done this consistently since 2009. It was a little less consistent from 2004-2009. However, most days, the most insightful new ideas I learn come from clients and peers with less experience than I have. All of the time I catch a new concept or angle on an old idea from novices, laypeople, and fitness professionals with just a few years under their belts.

So I have to marvel when people avoid listening, when they discontinue seeking guidance and input, or when they actively reject any possible feedback from others, especially seasoned professionals. In fitness efforts, people trap themselves in their own echo chambers of failure, rather than listen to new perspectives. There are people who hit challenges and then go out of their way to shut out anyone who's faced a same, similar, or greater challenge. In conspiracy theories, people invent complicated storylines to avoid learning from the vast experience of experts.

Don't mishear me. I've done it too. Through repeated life experiences, I've been let down many times by experts. Leading infectious disease specialists were completely incorrect about my later-confirmed Lyme infection. Medical specialists of every persuasion were the opposite of helpful with every health problem which my family members have faced. Some of the most experienced and most educated people I've known were proven dead wrong in expectations, diagnoses, and beliefs so many times that in our family and friend network we have suffered deaths and near-deaths dozens of times. Dozens. Based on empirical truth, experiential firsthand knowledge, I'd be a fool to unthinkingly accept the directives of authoritative organizations and experts. Their one-size-fits-all paradigms and abuse of averages and normative statistical metrics aren't just blunderingly corrosive, they're acutely destructive.

But we have to check ourselves. There is an embedded logical fallacy in this fact. Even a 100% fail rate track record doesn't mean that the next piece of advice contains NO value. I'd be a fool to unthinkingly accept some of the input. True. I've lost loved ones thanks to expert opinions. Also, true. That doesn't mean I should shut out all new ideas. Wrong people does not equal nothing-to-learn.

In fact, that so many experts or so wrong so much of the time merely means there's so much more to learn. We have FARTHER to go in our understanding. Backtracking and avoiding input isn't going to improve the situation. Increasingly going superficial in our approaches to systems doesn't get it done. Instead, we have to go deeper.

But that means we have to get humble. I too have heard many unhelpful pieces of advice. When it comes to fitness, I received nothing in return for abiding by the calories-in-calories-out hypothesis. I gained only orthopedic pain from that paradigm, and never got lean. Only when I focused on sufficiencies, stress management, restoration, and specific INCREASES in eating did I ever get super lean or muscular. Does that mean I never listen to ANY ideas coming from the cult-leaders who still preach the calorie religion? Absolutely not. I still listen. I'm searching for where they may have a new insight, even if their fundamental axioms are demonstrably without merit.

It's about practicality. Is there something worth hearing in the noise? Can a different point of view awaken within me creativity? Does the input of others challenge my problem solving skills to go deeper? The answer is "of course," but only when we get humble. We don't need to be served the answers any more than we must have all the answers. It isn't about the "true knowledge." No one has the "true knowledge." It's about expansion of the toolkit. When we check our egos, we find that anyone can help us expand our life toolkit.

What Does A Day of Virtual Coaching Actually Look Like?

3/16/2020

Most Sundays for me aren’t in-person. They haven’t been since December of 2012. Starting January of 2013 I increasingly moved my approach toward targeted sit-down strategy sessions, distance coaching calls, and virtual appointments via webX, FaceTime, Zoom. With international clients, I almost exclusively do Skype or FaceTime.

It could be like this any day, mind you, not just Sunday. But today was 6 virtual appointments out of 10 total. I’ve had 8 out of 12, and vice versa. It allows for the time and focus to address fundamental change, behavioral alterations, sleep/stress management tactics, nutritional efforts, clarity on programming and supplementation, goal setting, and more.

Today, some virtual sessions were solely movement specifics and workouts. Surprisingly, the dynamic for workouts was BETTER than in-person training. I could cue technique. I could demonstrate form. I can coach activation. I can prompt bracing. The clients can do incredibly challenging and effective workouts with little or no equipment with just a video feed.

And what occurred to me today was how the tunnel vision on these calls sharpens the view, sharpens my focus and theirs, hones attention to detail, and eliminates distractions on the periphery. Literally. I’ve been coaching for 16 year, doing these virtual appointment for over 7 years, and it never really resonated as much as today.

I encourage my peers in the fitness industry to embrace the changes coming from recent panic and planning around the pandemic. You may actually get some new skills and insights. It doesn’t need to be scary. You just need to challenge yourself to grow, to imagine bigger, to think differently, to create anew. I’m open to it even for local clients; and I own my own private studio where each person can have her own mat, her own station, her own dumbbells, which each get precisely and individually cleaned and disinfected before and after.

"Feel Like It" Is The Worst of Us

3/15/2020

“Most people fail in life not because they aim too high and miss, but because they aim too low and hit.”
- Les Brown

Murderers use the same excuse to explain their criminal actions as the average person uses to explain everyday behavior, especially non-compliance with healthy lifestyle behaviors. Beware using how you “feel” to direct your patterns of thought and behavior.
Crime documentaries are fascinating and disturbing, mostly because when serial offenders are asked why they committed reprehensible acts, their responses amount to little more than “I felt like it.” When you reference FBI profiles on the worst of the diabolical worst, you find they’re pretty average people, blending into their communities and neighborhoods by virtue of how unremarkable they are. They’re generally well-liked, even popular, and not imposing, and not intimidating. In fact, the statistics show their IQs are just below average and the median IQ of serial killers is so low it stands just above functional: http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/…/Serial%20Killer%20Statisti…

Obviously, deviants are conducting themselves in a manner so far outside of societal norms that we uniformly condemn their actions and imprison them. However, their reasons are average. Their actions are abhorrent. But their impetus is quite normal.
The reason I bring this up is that most people’s excuses concerning exercise, diet, and lifestyle don’t rise above the excuses which the worst of humanity use for their heinous crimes. Sure. When you or I don’t “feel like” getting out of bed early and doing cardio (or fill in the blank with any activity which may or may not occur based on your transient feelings), the repercussions don’t include immediate destruction of other people’s lives. It’s not an overt moral equivalent. I’m not saying it is. But if our decisions toward action and inaction are just average “feel like it” sentiments, do we really have any moral high ground to criticize anyone? Are we living according to purpose or according to the same low-life reactivity others use when they act in ways we don’t like? Are we maybe, more often than not, aiming too low and hitting?

Pick whatever issue just burns you up. The person whose political beliefs you don’t like is just expressing what she “feels like.” The person whose bigotry you can’t stand is just doing what he “feels like.” The “soyboy feminazi” you vilify is just doing what they “feel like.” Everyone is acting by virtue of “feels like” a lot of the time. All the time we choose thought patterns and behaviors which aren’t productive and are often even contrary to what we know is good or beneficial, simply because of yielding to “feel like it.”
“Feel like it” is the lowest standard of pretext. I don’t disagree that consequences are varied. My point is simply that “feel like it” doesn’t cut the mustard for reasons to do or not to do something. “Feel like it” is vacuous, wavering, and philosophically bankrupt.
There is this opposite way to live: doing what you DON’T feel like doing. Some people call it purpose, integrity, discipline. It’s a valuable skill which we all execute for some activities, but not most. Why not most?

Why not behave based on solid reasoning for most of our behaviors? Or, once we’ve acknowledged that we are most often motivated by “feels like,” why wouldn’t we place the emphasis on how to “feel like” doing the RIGHT thing?

No one has the answer. This is just observational. In behavioral psychology, researchers have determined that a lot of that “feels like” propensity is driven by our made-up narratives about who we are. Once people choose a label for themselves, they’re more tightly shackled to specific “feels like” outcomes. That is, if I define myself as a night owl, I must behave accordingly. It’s not just that “early morning” is “hard,” it’s that it’s at odds with WHO I am. Therefore, I don’t feel like it. The readiness to label ourselves and others amplifies this worst-of-us proclivity.

So I’d challenge the reader with an experiment: reevaluate your labels and narratives. In doing so, you may discover that “feels like” doesn’t enslave you quite as much. It doesn’t force you toward behaviors you would ultimately rather not do. It doesn’t dictate that you must be in a state of inaction when you have philosophically determined action to be more prudent.

The political schisms we see every day afford us obvious examples of counterproductive labeling. The purposely pejorative terms “conservatards” and “libtards” are both misleading/counterproductive AND accurate terms. They’re incredibly misleading for all involved, because it enslaves us to reinforce positions, interpreting input in a way which will substantiate our label and the label of our stated opposition. They’re accurate terms in that people pick a “side” and, surprise surprise, they end up on the same side no matter what new information or argument is made available. It doesn’t “feel” right to evolve ones thoughts, as if it is a betrayal of WHO you are.

But what if “who you are” is unfixed? Then you don’t have to align your behavior with identity. You can “feel like” something or nothing. You are free to think and act from a place of purpose, new belief, and reason, instead of a place which seeks to reinforce some old and made-up identity. I am free on Monday to think a radical progressive thought and on Tuesday to think a highly conservative thought. I am free to criticize or defend the same famous person based on different information in different weeks. I am free to act like an early bird one day and a night owl the next week. I don’t have to align my thoughts or behaviors based on “feel like” or identities. I can be whoever whenever. I’m a slave to no label.

Think of the power you might wield if often, instead of occasionally, you followed-through ESPECIALLY when you didn’t feel like it. Think of the breakthroughs which could come as you shed “feel like” from your excuses. Think of the success to be had if you aim too high and just miss, instead of aiming too low only to hit.

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