"That's a Big Calorie Burn"

Our metabolic conditioning workout yesterday was simple but brutal.

Row 500m, rest 2 minutes.
Repeat four times.

The impact of this type of work is very high.  A 500m row allows an athlete to exert 80-90% of maximal force for 90-140 seconds.  This kind of effort is the definition of "sucking wind".

The point of a workout like this is simple - let an athlete test and improve their maximal output in the glycolytic energy pathway, recover, and repeat.  It fits right into CrossFit's purpose of "improved work capacity across broad time and modal domains."  In this case, the modality is a Concept 2 rower, and the time domain is ~120s with a 120s recovery.  Competence at that output level for that duration translates well to nearly any sport or task you may wish to attempt.

After the workout, one of my clients commented on the calorie burn from the workout.  I didn't know what to say - I should have said "actually, no, the calorie burn is insignificant, and we don't design workouts for calorie burn anyway."  What I thought to myself was "didn't I already cover that?"

Burning calories in a workout is a waste of valuable time.  No workout we program is designed to burn calories - they are all designed to increase your performance!  We program to increase your performance across broad time and modal domains, which is to say we program for fitness.

The idea that working out to burn calories can lead to fat loss has a simple appeal, but when tested via science the results are anything but conclusive.  In short, the body is not a simple input/output machine, and causes of fat accumulation are multifactorial.

"But Paul, you went to Aviation Officer Candidate School, and you workout out all day, and lost fat, along with all your classmates." Yes, yes we did, but we had restricted food intake; we could eat three times per day and the amount of very limited.  Nor did we get dessert!  "In the wild", when a human gets hungry, it eats.  In the wild, when a human gets hungry it often eats whatever crap is most easily obtained.  In other words, inducing caloric deficit in everyday life is as likely to stimulate increased intake of food as it is to stimulate fat loss.

"But Paul you have lost 36 pounds over the last 7 years, and you do CrossFit 3-5 times per week, are you saying those things are not related?"

No.  Those two facts are related.  But the takeaway is simple - you cannot out train a bad diet.  When you eat like we recommend, and train, you will lose fat and feel freaking great doing it.  You will not be hungry.  That's why it is sustainable over time.

In Part II, I'll describe a model for why exercise in combination with the diet that made you fat in the first place will not make the majority of you lean.

An Oldie but Goldie

The implication of this basic endocrinology is that obesity is caused not by eating too much and sedentary behavior, but by a disruption of the hormonal and enzymatic regulation of fat tissue caused by the easily digestible, refined carbohydrates and sugars that we do eat. Indeed, by this logic, calorie-restricted diets – starvation and semi-starvation diets as used in the studies Ms. Parker-Pope discusses–can be thought of as particularly counterproductive ways to reduce carbohydrate consumption and so insulin levels, starving the body, as they do, of the energy required to effectively run metabolic processes.

In the past decade, clinical trials have repeatedly demonstrated that when obese and overweight individuals consciously restrict the carbohydrates they eat, but not calories, they not only lose weight, on average, but their heart disease and diabetes risk factors improve significantly. Their insulin resistance, in effect, resolves. Those of us who have lost weight ourselves and witnessed the effect of these diets on our patients can confirm that this is exactly what happens.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/response-to-nytimes-the-fat-trap/

For more on this topic, read this:
The Scientist and the Stairmaster
http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/

Bodybuilder Goes CrossFit?

I've worked with a  lot of CrossFit athletes this year, helping several prepare fo the Canada East regionals.  I helped some with their Olympic lifting and others with their entire training.  I'll tell you this: I've trained figure competitors who go to extreme lengths in their dieting, cardio, and training, and quite a few of the CrossFit girls I'm working with have better physiques than the figure girls … and that’s without dieting.  Similarly, a former Canada national bodybuilding champion I know started training for CrossFit and she looks better - not just better, but also more muscular and stronger - than when she was bodybuilding! 

I always believed that CrossFit made girls look great and guys look small, in addition to making them lose strength.  I don’t' believe the latter anymore because some of the competitive CrossFit athletes are quite strong.  The average competitor in the CrossFit games can do a 245-pound snatch, 335-pound clean and jerk, 550-pound deadlift, and a 450-pound back squat. And several overhead squat in the 300s and front squat in the 400s.  Four of the guys I'm coaching can snatch over 225 pounds, which pretty darn strong!

http://www.t-nation.com/training/bodybuilder-goes-crossfit

This was an interesting read because I so rarely get a glimpse into the mind of the bodybuilder.  The focus on performance in CrossFit - no part of a WOD is build to make a body look better, the WOD is built to create performance - makes it a liberating way to train.

That said, most will not get the best results in body composition if they eat the same crappy foods that made them fat and sick in the first place.

So what I tell my folks is - train to develop the physical capacity you desire, and eat to be healthy (and more lean if you like that sort of thing).

Intensity Trumps Duration, R Cosgrove

What? Yeah, you heard me right. This is exactly how I felt after training for and completing in my first Ironman.

My body was soft, with no definition, and had definitely changed due to spending the majority of my training in the steady-state aerobic zone – the same "fat burning zone" many books and magazine still talk about.

I was in great shape as far as my endurance and cardiovascular system were concerned, but I had less noticeable muscle tone and didn't have the definition I was used to having in my abs and arms.

http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/the_final_nail_in_the_cardio_coffin

T Nation and its authors apparently do not understand CrossFit. It is staffed largely by those who would find CrossFit to be a faddish competitor, dishing out unsound training practices to those who are tricked by the trendiness associated with CrossFit. So, when I read even a good article there, I don't expect to find it will be all kosher.

What I like about this article is it reinforces my own experience, and that of many other experienced trainers - working out will not make you lean. Eating crappy stuff makes you accumulate fat, and you can't out train that - for long.

I also like the author's point about the deleterious effects of over-training in aerobic movments. I like to say intensity trumps duration, and it does so for nearly every desirable adaptation you might want from a workout. Strength, speed, power, or work capacity - intensity trumps duration.

What is not so useful is the writer's focus on exercise and fat loss, or exercise and calorie burning. Because if you eat like crap, you'll be hungry no matter what your workouts are, and if you are hungry, in the long term you will easily out-eat your workouts. On the other hand, you can lose fat just fine by eating good food, the food that's right for you. Workouts are not a requirement for fat loss for most folks. Eating the right food is essential, even more so for sustaining your body composition gains.

Lastly, working out to lose fat and build muscle is not as compelling as working out to gain physical capacities you value.  A friend said of CrossFit, "We bring 'em in the door chasing appearance, but we keep them by getting them to chase performance."  Most folks will not give up time to pursue appearance via exercise for long, and for good reason - it does not work well for that purpose.  Exercise to build new work capacity - lift more, lift faster, work harder, do more in less time, be a more awesome version of you - is sustaining because the results keep coming.  You get stronger, you notice the positive impact in your life.  You conquer things in the gym that used to scare you - hell, you face frightening workouts every day - and you notice that also translates to positive impact in your life.  You get so used to facing fear, nothing scares you any longer.  

So, lots of exercise, and a diet, is better than nothing. But long term success in health comes from learning how to stop liking, and therefore stop eating, crappy food. Even more important, you can workout and do hours of cardio and perhaps be lean - and still be sick. Exercise does not nullify crappy food, although it may blunt the damage to an extent.

You may be reading this and think "How can a fitness professional be dissing exercise?" Well, I'm not. I'm just telling you that I think the exercise you do should be intended to give you the physical capacities you need to have a vibrant life, and to feel your best. You were made to move, made to work, and made to strive. Exercise is awesome for each of those pursuits. I don't think very many of us can max out the human experience without exercise.  Any exercise is better than no exercise, but for me, high intensity functional movements delivered via short, intense workouts beats all the other training modalities I've tried - and I've tried many.

If you want a better emotional and physical experience of life, you need to be working hard at something - something with high intensity, relatively short duration, and which demands and develops strength, power, and work capacity.

"But Paul, what about all of the studies she cited showing fat loss or weight loss from interval training?" That's great. I hope it happens that way for you. But did you notice the duration of those studies? To know anything, you'd also want to know the age of those who participated (cause as you know, when you are young you can lose weight in a flash, and as you age, it's a different story). Bottom line - you will not meet many folks who can eat sugar, wheat, polyunsaturated oils, and still be healthy and lean, no matter how much they exercise. You'll also see this in any CrossFit gym - lots of folks who are working hard, and making performance gains, and ... not getting lean. That's not the end of the world but it is a clue - if that's you, you are eating crappy “food" (and/or doing too much "cardio").

If you want vibrant health and the appearance we associate with that, you will need to stop eating that nasty stuff you have called "food" for most of your life, and focus on meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar/wheat.

PS - if you love triathlete or marathon training, please accept my genuine admiration.  Those sports are awesome, and the athletes that do those things are tougher than a bag full of hammers.  I don't disparage your pursuit in any way.  My point is - endurance training is not the best exercise for health or fitness, and the benefits for fat loss are over-rated.
Reposted to www.fireofthegodsfitness.com March 2015

Exercise and LIVE

In this study, researchers looked at tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-6 (IL-6), C-reactive protein (CRP), and leptin as chronic inflammation markers.

Leptin is known primarily for its role in appetite suppression, but it can also show inflammation, and these two roles are related.

In this study, subjects showed a 29% decrease in TNF-α, 33% decrease in CRP, and an 18% decrease in leptin after resistance training for 12 weeks.

The control group showed no similar change. Knitting and general socializing didn't alter the inflammatory proteins.

IL-6: A different story
Unlike the other inflammatory markers studied, there was no overall change in IL-6. However, IL-6 is a bit of a special case. That's because, depending on where it originates, it can be either pro-inflammatory (i.e. it increases inflammation) or an anti-inflammatory (i.e. it reduces inflammation).

IL-6 deriving from immune cells (macrophages) is pro-inflammatory, while IL-6 from muscle cells (myocytes) is anti-inflammatory. Contracting muscles (as in exercise) produce IL-6 that is anti-inflammatory, causing a huge spike in muscle-produced IL-6.

In this study, exercisers showed a 40-60% increase in IL-6 immediately after exercise, which was expected. But training for 12 weeks didn't result in an overall change.

Here's another interesting result: There was also a 20% increase in IL-10 (interleukin-10), an anti-inflammatory protein.

Quick recap.

Inflammatory markers: decrease

•TNF-α: 29% less
•CRP: 33% less
•Leptin: 18% less
Anti-inflammatory marker: increase

•IL-10: 20% more
Another cool finding:

There was an inverse relationship between strength and inflammation. The stronger the women were, the lower their CRP and leptin.

Conclusion
Understanding how chronic inflammation works and how to stop it is crucial, because chronic inflammation is at the root of most lifestyle disease, from Alzheimer's to cancer to stroke to everything in between.

http://www.precisionnutrition.com/research-review-inflammation-exercise

In other words, exercise is to have a good long and active life, exercise is to feel good.  Don't exercise to burn calories, be active and exercise to be alive while you are living.

Not Quantity But Quality

I don't have a ton of respect for the authors of this newsletter, but this truth is particularly well expressed:

"Regular physical activity promotes general good health, reduces the risk of developing many diseases, and helps you live a longer and healthier life. For many of us, “exercise” means walking, jogging, treadmill work, or other activities that get the heart pumping.

"But often overlooked is the value of strength-building exercises. Once you reach your 50s and beyond, strength (or resistance) training is critical to preserving the ability to perform the most ordinary activities of daily living — and to maintain an active and independent lifestyle.

"The average 30-year-old will lose about a quarter of his or her muscle strength by age 70 and half of it by age 90. “Just doing aerobic exercise is not adequate,” says Dr. Robert Schreiber, physician-in-chief at Hebrew SeniorLife and an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Unless you are doing strength training, you will become weaker and less functional.”"

http://view.mail.health.harvard.edu/?j=fe6617707764037d711d&m=febb15747d630d7a&ls=fde81d737062077c7d12757c&l=fe57157677630c7b7217&s=fe28167076600174771278&jb=ffcf14&ju=fe2a177571600d7e771576&r=0

Living is moving.  If you can't move, your life is diminished.  This is the potent, valid truth behind fitness - you don't need exercise to burn calories and lose fat (if you eat the right food, your body will regulate intake far better than you can), you NEED EXERCISE SO YOU CAN HAVE A GOOD LIFE!  So you can have choices, so you can keep living almost as long as you are alive, so that you can love full speed, play full speed and have the impact on those around you that will make your death a cause for grief.

Don't aim for hours on the treadmill, aim for more strength, more mobility, more power (for example jumping, sprinting and other speed work), more tests of balance, more coordination, higher skill levels, and always working for variance.  Invest in quality of workout not quantity.

BUT, don't give up the good because you can't be perfect - at least do something!  Do whatever exercise or movement you like and will do, and work for something better over time.

BBC News - Hunter Gatherer Clue To Obesity

The idea that exercise is more important than diet in the fight against obesity has been contradicted by new research.

A study of the Hadza tribe, who still exist as hunter gatherers, suggests the amount of calories we need is a fixed human characteristic.

This suggests Westerners are growing obese through over-eating rather than having inactive lifestyles, say scientists.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18985141

In other words - another conjecture down the toilet.

The author's conclusion:
Being active is really important to your health but it won't keep you thin - we need to eat less to do that.

This is a swat in the face to many, those who have long since bought off on the idea that working out is both essential and proven to be helpful for fat loss.  However, the science that has been done is contradictory on the topic.  You can read the two sides of the "exercise for fat all" issue from this post and the two that followed it - the short version is that if you eat foods that send your body into a fat making hormonal bias, exercise is likely to make you hungry, and thus result in an increased food intake.  There are caveats to that statement - if you exercise multiple hours per day, it may be impossible or at least difficult to eat enough to replace what the exercise burns.  However, this is not a great trade for either health or quality of life.  

If exercise didn't make one more hungry, all lumberjacks would have starved to death.  

That said, exercise is very important to living a good life - if you want to live a mobile, vigorous, potent life, you must exercise for the work capacities that you desire.  You should be working for strength, endurance, stamina, speed, power, agility, coordination, accuracy, flexibility and balance.  These attributes can all be enhanced through training, and they will all play a role in living a better life.

In short, eat for health, train for desirable physical capacities, and live well.

Exercise and Weight Loss, Part 3

To summarize the last two posts, some folks say exercise is great for weight loss, and others say the science is ambiguous on the topic.  I've said I think there are too many variables, and the powers that be have not agreed which are the important variables, therefore the experiments that have been done have not been conclusive.   What's left to discuss, you might wonder - and the answer is that there is a way to think about food and diet to see how they might be complimentary for changing one's body composition towards more muscle, less fat.

First, training should be focused on desired physical outcomes - do you want to compete in endurance events?  Do you want to prepare for a fight or a sport or the needs of a profession (firefighting for example)?  Well then, you have a different priority than those many who simply want to look good naked.  Either way, burning calories doing mindless exercise that does not increase your work capacity is a dead end game.  Train for strength, speed, stamina, endurance, agility, balance, coordination, accuracy, power and skill - or any subset of the above.  Of those listed above, strength is often the most amenable to large, long term gains, but the best performance increases in the short term come from short, high power output workouts that demand and develop anaerobic fitness.  Go hard, rest, do it again, as many different ways as you can think of to go hard.  This is the CrossFit model, but you don't have to be an expert in CrossFit to either see/experience the virtue of this approach or to implement it.

Will this help you lose body fat and gain muscle?  Yes to the latter, but I can only offer a "maybe" to the former.

That's because, as has been said many times, you cannot out train a bad diet.  If you are pounding down 300g/day of "complex, whole grain carbohydrates", you better be training 2-4 hours per day or you are likely to be fat and sick.  A 30 minute drill on the elliptical trainer is not going to beat back the impact of that much sugar.

The goal of eating, if you are already fat and sick or if you feel yourself sliding down that pathway, must be to eat for glycemic control and nutrient quality.  Thus the prescription - eat meat, eggs, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, no sugar/wheat.

Eating in this protein adequate, high fat, and relatively low carb template gives your body a chance to regulate blood sugar, and redevelop the capacity to run itself on the best human fuel - fat.  Most people on this type of a diet find that their body's 1.5 million year old system of feedback loops gives them a chance to eat only what they need, to trust hunger signals as legitimate signals of need, and therefore to eat what they need for health, and not more.  When eating this way, exercise may help to speed recomposition, especially if you train for intensity in short workouts.  

Avoid the big nasties of neolithic nutrition - wheat, sugar (HFCS, table sugar) and polyunsaturated oils.

Establish a baseline of carb intake - if 100g/day of carbs lets you lose weight over time, you have yourself a solution.  For many, especially if they've been punishing their metabolic systems for years, 100g/day will be too much.

Lastly, once you stabilize on your carb intake and food quality, experiment with fasting.

Whatever you do, don't think of it as a diet.  Think of ways you can sustain the new eating patterns for a lifetime.  There's no going back - if you lose weight and then start eating like you used to, you are no different than the alcoholic who relapses or the smoker who takes up the habit again.  Save yourself the hassle!

My recommendation - don't exercise for weight loss, that's a fool's game and wasteful.  Eat the right way (carb restriction, high quality food), and exercise to optimize improvements in desired physical capacity.  As you do this you are also heading off most of the diseases of civilization - osteoporosis, obesity, high blood pressure, metabolic syndrome - and the "A List" of diseases that follow metabolic syndrome:  cancer, vascular disease (heart attack and stroke), and neurological disease (Alzheimer's and the rest).
(edited 21 July)

"Exercise For Weight Loss" Part 2

English lays out what seems to be a fairly convincing case as to why we shouldn't count weight loss among the benefits of exercise.

However, I strongly disagree. I believe his arguments do not properly reflect the majority of research that has been conducted on exercise in the past 50 years.

It's True that Exercise Is Not a Silver Bullet. As a certified personal trainer, I absolutely adore exercise, but I'll be the first to admit that, by itself, it is not an incredibly effective solution for serious weight loss. Outside of The Biggest Loser, it's very difficult for an obese individual to shed pounds through exercise alone. It's far easier to eliminate excess calories from your diet (my favorite target is soda) than it is to burn them off by running on a treadmill, plain and simple.
http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2012/06/yes-exercise-can-help-you-lose-weight.html


The author does a nice job defending the status quo - more calories burned through exercise, combined with  eating fewer calories, by the laws of physics, that must cause weight/fat loss.  He even cites several studies which support his contention that exercise and diet together are effective to cause fat loss.  I don't completely disagree, but I don't think the science tells us the answer yet, as it is too immature.  


One explanation for why there are so many conflicting results from experimentation is that there are too many variables, and since there is no universal agreement about which ones are most important, researchers do not control for the same variables across the spectrum of their work.  If you think a calorie is a calorie, you may not control for carbohydrate content in your test subjects.  If you don't think insulin resistance is an important variable, you don't control for it.  What are the other variables that may or may not be considered important?  Type of exercise (short and intense, or long and slow?  Weights?  Swimming or non-water based?  In a hot climate or cold?).  Gender.  Age.  Inflammation.  History of obesity or lack thereof.  Somatotype - skinny and lean is not like round and puffy when it comes to weight loss issues.  Tendency to get muscle mass easily or less easily.  Vitamin D levels.  Quantity and quality of sleep.  Other micronutrient deficiencies.  Test subjects' use of drugs, prescription or otherwise.  Alcohol intake.  Type of work - sedentary of otherwise.  And that's probably not all.  


Given that each of these variables could have an impact on weight loss for any group of subjects being tested, it should not be surprising to find that the research is providing a mixed result.  And as any of you know who have seen two folks steeped in the research who decide to have a "I know science more than you do" - the case can be made citing any number of studies for either side of the exercise argument.


Tomorrow, I'll address what I believe is the most rational approach to this topic.

"Exercise For Weight Loss"

At least four clinical trials have demonstrated that exercise tends to suppress resting metabolic rate. In all four studies overweight participants who engaged in 300-600 calories worth of daily exercise experienced a significant drop in resting metabolism. According to Drs. Jeff Volek and Stephen Phinney, “Although genetically lean people as a group may respond differently, when overweight humans do more than one hour of endurance exercise daily, resting metabolism on average declines between 5% and 15%.” 

Commenting on the pair's findings, Dr. John Briffa points out that this down-regulating of the metabolism is probably the effect Taubes is describing. Much like what happens when caloric intake is severely restricted, "The idea that the body would down-regulate the metabolism in response to exercise makes ... intuitive sense," says Briffa. "It’s not too difficult to imagine that the body would have a similar response to increased calorie expenditure ...."

Critics of this argument would likely cite any number of studies which have reached the opposite conclusion. But as the American College of Sports Medicine explains, the best that can be said about the relationship between weight loss and exercise is that "it is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time, compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis are not particularly compelling.”

http://www.policymic.com/mobile/articles/10213/why-exercise-doesn-t-actually-help-you-lose-weight

But, say the Biggest Loser fans, doesn't exercise burn calories?  Yes, but if you are eating in such a way as to create a hormonal demand to sequester the food you eat as fat, exercise won't interrupt that cycle, and is likely to make you feel hungry.
Diet also plays a role. According to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, people who consume a lot of easily digestible carbohydrates (most Americans) are going to be less willing to exercise because of the metabolic effects of such a diet. Energy that ends up trapped in fat cells (just one of the awesome side effects of a high-sugar diet) isn't available to fuel the rest of the body, and one of the results is lethargy. 
So, the science isn't compelling one way or the other, but experience indicates - you have to eat better, and exercise right, to have the maximum impact on body composition.

The counterpoint to this perspective will be presented tomorrow, and I'll explain why anyone who wants to shoot strait with a client should be clear that exercise alone won't fix what ails them.

Fat Loss, Exercise, and Food

From a note I received from http://www.precisionnutrition.com/:
Outside of the 3-5 hours you exercise per week, what are you doing with a good chunk of the other 165 hours?  You’re eating. 

That’s why an exercise program is never enough to see real, honest-to-goodness body transformation - and why knowing how to change the way you eat is so vital to changing your life.

And here’s the exciting part: fitness professionals are finally figuring this out. And as a result, we’re seeing some welcome changes in the fitness industry.

In five years, knowing how to help change a clients’ eating habits will be what separates the "personal trainer" from the person who changes lives.

I was first exposed to this idea about four years ago via a discussion board post from CrossFit's founder, Greg Glassman.  Alwyn Cosgrove repeatedly says "You cannot out train a bad diet."  Many folks have a hard time believing this, because the opposite idea has so often been stated, it is believed, despite being unproved:  "Just exercise enough and you will lose weight."  That this strategy can work for some makes it all the more confusing for the many - who find they do not achieve their body composition and/or health goals via exercise alone. 

While it is not debatable that body fat accumulation reflects the First Law of Thermodynamics - energy cannot either be created or destroyed - therefore, if one accumulates a pound of fat, then one must have ingested more calories than one has expended.  What the "first law" does not account for is "why". 

Human behavior is complex and defies any simple analysis which might invoke will power, calories-in-calories-out, or "just burn a few more calories daily".  In complex systems, causality is rarely linear. 

An example goes as follows:

I propose fat accumulation is the result of a complex series of interactions between external demands on the human (do you have to work ten hours a day in the fields to grow/harvest/store/process your food?), internal hormonal signals (high carb consumption requires a series of responses to prevent damage to the organism from excess blood glucose), and information available to the human in question (do you know how to avoid hormone disregulating foods?  Do you know how to associate pain instead of pleasure to your unconscious mind's response to foods you think you should avoid?  Have you learned which foods result in satiety, and supress hunger for long periods, and which result in rapid return of hunger?). 

Restated - there are external circumstances which result in weight loss which are not related to human choice at all - for example, once you are in boot camp, you'll eat what you can and do your best to keep moving as directed.  There are internal responses which are not directly related to calorie intake which still result in fat accumulation.  And the more a human knows, the more likely they are to be able to impact the variables that result in fat accumulation.  Due to these variables and others, human fat accumulation is complex and not likely to be the same for most of those who suffer from either too much fat or too little.

This is a very, very general model, and the details could be worked out in a number of ways.  Hopefully, science will work its way through those details in my lifetime!  In the near term, we have to rely on human experience, which works much more rapidly than science, though is plagued by superstition, and about a million other truth distorting tendencies towards bias.

While short, intense exercise is therapeutic in a variety of ways and worth doing for its own sake regardless of weight loss intentions, I am not one who believes it is a requirement for fat loss - at least not for everyone.

If you would like to jump start your body recomposition effort, or have determined it is time to take your health into your own hands, call me today!  Like CrossFit, I will help you achieve faster results with less frustration!

901-517-0085, ask for Paul

Boyle-ing Abs

I can’t even tell you how often I hear someone at the end of the workout say something like “I need to do more abs, I want to get a six-pack." The truth is that passing on a six-pack is a better way to get a six-pack than six hundred sit-ups. The key to abdominal definition is the visibility of the abdominal musculature, not the strength of the muscles. You can do one million sit-ups, crunches or whatever exercise you want and it will have no effect on abdominal definition. When people ask me the best exercise for abs I tell them table push-aways. 
It usually takes a few minutes for them to get it. It’s not a joke, it’s the truth. If you want better abs, eat less and train more but, don’t just train your abs.

Email from Coach Mike Boyle

He continues:

The truth is there are lots of good reasons to do abdominal work or core training as we now like to call it. A strong core (strong abs) is one of the keys in the prevention of  back pain. A strong core will help you look better and improve performance in a host of sports but, sit-ups or any other abdominal exercise will not reduce bodyfat.  The fact of the matter is that crunches will lead to back pain long before they lead to visual abs.

One way to define core strength is by measuring the ability of an athlete to resist deflection of the spine under load.  In other words, if you can pull 400 pounds from the floor while sustaining the stability of your spine, that's a objective measure of your core strength.  It's also a measure of your core strength when you push or pull a heavy object, throw a ball/spear/rock, jump, execute a clean and jerk, and/or punch a heavy bag.  In each of these events, power is generated in the hips, usually by pushing against the ground through your legs, and transmitted in a wave through the torso to the arms.  If your core cannot make itself rigid, it becomes a poor force transmitter.  The interesting thing about our bodies is that we need to bend sometimes, and to be rigid sometimes.  Structurally, to be able to bend, we must be built in such a way that our ability to make ourselves rigid is compromised.  Like all design problems, the trick is to optimize these capacities to gain best function.  For example, most of us would not be well served to be as flexible as a yogi or gymnast, nor would be we be optimized if we were as strong as world class strong man competitors.  For a general level of fitness, we need strength, and we need mobility through a full range of normal joint motion, and we can have both without compromise, as that's what we're made to have.

There are some gymnastics movements that require an aggressive flexion of the trunk - think of making your body look like a parenthesis, in which your hands and feet are in front of your belly.  Situps and crunches might be useful to that end, but that's an exception to the general rule that to have core strength, you must pick up heavy things.  You can get strong limbs and metabolic conditioning from swimming, but you can't get core strength.  You can be fast and mobile from sprint training, but there's a limit to the amount of core strength you can create by sprinting.  You can develop immense aerobic capacity and leg drive from intense bicycle training, but you will be deficient in core strength (not to mention eccentric weight bearing capacity).  You can grow powerful in grip and arm strength from climbing ropes or doing pullups, but of course, this does not make your core strong. 

What to do?  Learn to squat, learn to deadlift, and use those modalities with your swim, bike, pullups, situps, rope climbs, med ball throws, sled pushes/drags, and sprints to develop a balanced, general fitness, which lends itself well to any physical challenge.  Does this sound like a "core strength and conditioning" program?  It is, in both meanings of the word.  It must make your core strong to be effective, and will serve as the core of any training one might want to attempt.  This is why successful S&C programs look similar, and utilize squats, deadlifts, sprinting, olympic lifts, jumping, dragging, pushing, etc. 

I agree with Coach Boyle in that having a six pack is about eating.  Having a strong core, including functional and very strong abdominal muscles, means you need to get busy stabilizing your spine whilst enjoying squats, deads, cleans, and presses lest you become all show and no go.

Taubes in Oz, 2

Gary Taubes appeared on the Dr. Oz show this week, and I posted a link to Gary's comments earlier.
As Gary points out, some of what is seen in the video is just part of having a popular TV show; there has to be tension, information must be communicated with haste to hold anyone's attention long enough to get them to see the commercials that pay the salaries of those that put on the show, and therefore, depth must be lacking.  To that end, Gary's obviously worked on both condensing his message and speaking much more quickly! 

I was appreciative for Mehmet Oz's attempt at balance and respect.  It's far easier to entertain when you can be attacking, condescending, and disrespectful.  Mehmet let Gary say what he had to say, and was a gracious host in most respects.  On that point, as Gary pointed out, TV time is what sells books, and I'll bet Gary makes out on this one.

Mehmet starts out on a bad foot, in my book, by saying something like "You are not a doctor, why should we listen to you?"  Part of the show reinforces the significance of the host, fine, but HOLY COW what a pretentious thing to say - nevermind the fact that if he were hosting William Davis or Mike Eades or Kurt Harris, who are doctors and who agree with Gary T, Mehmet wouldn't treat their message any differently.  Ok, Oz, we get from your repeated references to cutting folks' chests open that you are a very prestigeous man, a friggin' heart surgeon - presumably, your audience cares about that and I understand that your show is FOR your audience.  I'm more concerned with how much you know about the science of diet than with your paper qualifications.  Frankly, Gary T's book leaves Oz no excuse for not knowing the science as well as he does.

How does Mehmet Oz treat Taubes' review of the science?  On the one hand he's appreciative, to include inviting Gary T to speak to his students, but on the other, he seems not to care or know about the science.  The show then boils down to a contrast of Gary's perspective, which is that we've been sold a lot of snake oil packaged as 'proven science'; and the host's perspective which amounts to *deeply held belief*.  Mehmet comments about his largely vegetarian food choices a couple of times as "sacred and foundational to who we are as humans."  Perhaps he justifies those kinds of statements in his books and previous shows and thus doesn't repeat/defend them with Taubes present - but it comes off as if he doesn't know that whole grains turn into sugar in the bloodstream almost as fast or faster than table sugar itself.  Or that all plants, being unable to run when threatened, survive by their toxins towards would be predators, and have many toxins that hurt humans.  Or that LDL as a cause of CVD (by sticking to the artery walls like glue - IOW, a "grease clogged pipe model"), is many years out of date as even a reasonable conjecture.  Or that there is virtually NO evidence to support the conjecture that saturated fat consumption increases risk of disease.  Or that grains, whole or otherwise, are implicated in all of the autoimmune disorders, and downright lethal to the 3% of the population with celiac.  Or that getting whole grains is not so easy, primarily because truly whole grains do not keep well; most of the so called whole grains are on the order of 10% whole grains, making the "whole" expression nearly ludicrous.  Or that his dearly beloved disease fighting vegetables are equivalent to using a fire extinguisher on a burning fire, while the low carb model is equivalent to depriving the fire of fuel before it starts (which Taubes points out but Mehmet misses). 

Honestly, I was stunned - even Slate magazine knows saturated fats are not the boogeyman, why doesn't this self proclaimed heart disease expert and Oprah confidante know as much as a pop magazine?  The clinical trials have been done, the facts are in, low carb/high fat does not result in a high risk fasting lipid profile.  The government tried for years and with billions of dollars to show that low fat diets reduce cholesterol and therefore risk of disease, and none of those tests showed the hoped for result.

At one point in the show, trying to make his point that low carb diets are hard to stay on, Oz puts one strawberry on Gary T's plate and says "If you eat just one strawberry" you'll trigger the insulin response and your diet is ruined.  I know what he was trying to go for - that carb restriction is too hard for folks to sustain for a lifetime - but that was a silly way to make the point.  If he made one real point the whole time, it was that in studies of large groups of people, folks don't stay on a low carb diet.  As to why that may be true, I think it is a combination of factors.  For one, eating is a highly social behavior, and it is hard to stay low carb when the people you love and live with do not (note to the paleo hopefuls - get with a community, either at a CrossFit gym, or online, or use Jedi mind tricks to get your family/significant other to do it with you).  For another, if you think that low fat, high carb diets are great for weight loss, but you hear the message all the time that low carb/high fat will give you:
--cancer from too much meat
--heart disease from too much fat
--micro-nutrient deficiency because you don't eat 3,000 servings a day of fruit and vegetables
--constipation because the only way in the world to avoid constipation is to shovel grain into your pie hole like there's no tomorrow ...
--and your doctor, who doesn't know that the standard way to check cholesterol, via the Fridewald method, gives an inaccurately (false high reading) of LDL, and doesn't know that LDL isn't predictive of disease risk unless it is small, dense LDL (which your doctor won't typically measure), will tell you to go on a statin due to the fact that your LDL will be higher (via Friedewald measures) than he/she would like AND, you have a pulse and an insurance company that will pay the ~$3/day
Then you are probably going to relapse after weight loss.  In this way, low carb diets are just as ineffective for health improvement as would be cessation of smoking for four months. 

In other words - in a world of diet and health insanity and mis-information, supplied by those as uninformed or as swayed by deeply held belief as is Oz, I suspect it is much harder to sustain a low carb lifestyle than it will be once the reality of carb restriction is more widely accepted (which sometimes seems right around the bend).  Either way, low carb controls appetite, improves health, and manages body composition while allowing one to eat to satiety and sustain athletic pursuits and a high muscle mass.  If you do it, it works and works without hunger. 

It did seem like Gary made his point well as regards the necessity of treating the obese differently than those that can remain lean on a diet such as the one Oz recommends.

Lastly, I thought Oz's test of the low carb diet was interesting, primarily for the fact that it seems to confirm he's been eating so much carbohydrate that he cannot function normally without it.  He reported at the end of his low carb day that he felt grumpy and low energy - and that is exactly what would be expected for someone who is fueled all the time with carbohydrate laden foods.  Such a person does not have enough fat burning capacity to generate sufficient glucose or ketones, nor to burn stored fat at the cellular level.  They are in effect an exogenous sugar junkie, as addicted to carbs as any heavy coffee drinker is to caffeine.  If Oz was trying to show that low carb diets are uncomfortable, it may have fooled some, but it also confirmed his metabolic inflexibility.  Oz would be well served by developing the capacity to go without carbs for a day, which, once developed, he could sustain with a weekly carb fast.  He could then sustain his preferred approach to eating but have the flexibility to skip meals when not hungry or when busy, without fear of crashing blood sugar, irritability from low blood sugar, or of loss of mental acuity due to a blood sugar drop. 

You and I, my carb restricting friends, gain the benefit of that metabolic flexibility as a natural result of the way we prefer to eat.

In terms of execution, Oz also ate too much food (made a point of showing he ate every bite).  One of the consistent results shown by interventions with carbohydrate restriction is spontaneous reduction of intake.  No diet is going to make you feel good when it requires that you eat more food than you feel hunger for.  A better test would have specified that he only eat what he was hungry for.

The whole show was likely a win win - Oz pulled off looking clever and significant for the commercial watching throngs that support his lifestyle, and Gary T probably punched up his Amazon numbers.  Those who have eyes to see and have ears to hear will benefit from their exposure to Gary's work, hopefully as much as I have. (Edited @ 12.49 CDT)

Review of "Why We Get Fat"

This is a decent review of Gary Taubes' latest book, highlighting two of the central theses.  First is that getting fat is probably more about what you eat than how much, because the first drives the second.  The second idea is one I've blogged about several times:
Describing what he calls “the 20-calorie paradox,’’ he points out that for a lean 25- year-old to gain 50 pounds by the time he is 50, all that is needed is to consume exactly 20 calories more that he burns per day, every day. This is “less than a single bite of a . . . hamburger or croissant. Less than 2 ounces of [soft drink] or the typical beer. Less than three potato chips.’’ If calories in-calories out was all there was to it, “you [would] need only to rein yourself in by this amount — undereat by 20 calories a day — to undo it.’’
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2011/01/10/weighing_in_on_why_we_get_fat/

In other words, we can't make any headway if we view the body as a static vessel passively receiving and consuming "energy".  The body is a highly dynamic system, with inputs affecting outputs and vice versa.  If your work output didn't affect your energy inputs (aka "hunger"), all lumberjacks would have starved to death.  Likewise, when folks undertake to restrict calories over time, their energy expenditure (movement, body heat) decreases.  Obviously, I own a CrossFit affiliate and I view fitness as an essential element to a high quality of life, but for fat management, exercise is over-rated.  The key to health and body composition management is to eat the right food.

Good With the Bad, 2

This is what I'm talking about:

The truth is that exercise doesn't have to take 60-90 minutes. The experts agree that short, intense bouts of exercise can actually deliver better results than traditional low intense exercise.

A study was recently conducted at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Medicine that tested whether multiple short bouts of exercise would deliver better results than one long bout of exercise. They found that participants who performed short bouts of exercise stuck with the program longer and experienced greater weight loss than the participants that performed long bouts of exercise.

Short bursts of intense exercise will give you the results you want, all you have to do is make the time for it. Somewhere deep down inside you know that it's now or never.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/expathealth/8230094/Lose-weight-and-feel-great-with-a-daily-12-minute-workout.html

I'll guarantee you that your paleolithic ancestors didn't work out to lose weight, never worked out for 20 minutes of cardio, and were more fit than you are.

Go short, go hard; intensity trumps duration!

Take the Good With the Bad

I am, according to Jonathan Goodair, arguably the most revolutionary fitness trainer working in Britain today, a classic example of where most people go wrong. 'All you have been doing is exercising the same muscles again and again in the same way. In running you overwork your quads and underwork your gluts [that's thighs and bottom to you and me]. The body is a very clever machine. It adapts specifically to what you do to it, so it will find the easiest possible way to find fuel for that - in other words the most calorie sparing.'
Which is why at the heart of the Goodair Total Body Plan - a five- or six-week programme of between four and six 90-minute sessions a week - is what he calls treadmill aerobics. 'I want to work someone in the most challenging way possible, and put in as much variety as possible. I don't just make someone run, I make them skip or walk sideways or backwards, and then put in other movements that challenge their balance, and stimulate lots of muscles, not just the quadriceps.'
http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/article/TMG8217206/A-fitness-revolutionary-meet-Jonathan-Goodair.html

What's good about this?  The understanding that we're all - Americans, Brits, any neolithic society - frontal plane dominant, and inadequately developed in the glutes, hams and in the spinal erectors.

Imagine walking fast on a treadmill, then imagine lifting your knees high, like a little girl skipping down the street, then imagine doing that backwards, and sideways, and adding in lunges and squats and crossover steps, and sudden direction changes. This is what Goodair means by treadmill aerobics, and it's exhausting stuff.
What's the bad about this?  Well, first off, you don't need to work for 90 minutes!  If the athlete works hard enough, 10 minutes will buy more adaptation than will 90.  Intensity trumps duration!

Second, reading the above description, the athlete is not required to develop the two foundational attributes - powerful hip extension in combination with the capacity to sustain spinal integrity under load.    In short, this treadmill training is great for working "not very hard for a long time" but will not help the athlete generate force or power through hip extension, or transmit that power through a rigid spine.

Goodair says this engagement of the brain is key. 'Fitness isn't just about having a healthy heart and strong lungs and muscles,' he tells me in his soft Sheffield brogue. 'It is about co-ordination, about neural pathways, about the fact that your brain is connected to your muscles so you know where your feet are going, where your hands are going. If you do this kind of work you end up feeling much more coordinated, your body is much more connected even when you walk down the street.'


This is all fine - but coordination to what end?  Coordination so that you can walk the streets?  Can you lift your children?  Can you lift a suitcase when you are 60 or 80?

This approach continues in the resistance work, in which weights are largely eschewed in favour of stretchy bands attached to the ceiling, a giant pilates machine-cum-torture instrument otherwise known as the Garuda, and a series of free movements - arm swoops and leg swoops in every direction imaginable - that are incomprehensibly exhausting.
The author is overly impressed with exhaustion.  It's fine, it's far better than nothing, but more important is - what physical capacities are you cultivating?  If you can do that in 10 minutes, why waste 90?

Again, Goodair's chief concern is to avoid his client putting on muscle bulk; to encourage instead the development of the long, lean muscle we all covet these days.
This is nearly comic!  Look, guys can hardly put on all the muscle they want to, much less women - you can count on one hand all the women who will have to worry about gaining too much bulk in muscles!!  If you eat right and gain the benefit of an optimized metabolism, you will enjoy every strong muscle you can get, male or female.

However, here's some additional good:  'It is sugars that transport fat into fat cells, that disturb your body's metabolism, stopping it from burning fat,' says Goodair. 'Sugars make your body a less efficient fat-burning machine.' There is no calorie-counting on the programme, but all high-carbohydrate foodstuffs, be it bread or potatoes or pasta, are verboten.
Right as rain.

'If you are training consistently, yes, the ageing process will take effect, but the difference you can make is enormous. The less we do, the less we can do. The body adapts very specifically to what you do to it. You can stay supple and fluid.
There's aging, and there's quitting entirely.  The latter results in a rapid diminution of life, the former a very, very slight diminution of life.  You finish the race in casket either way, but the life lived can be remarkably different.

'You need to do 40 minutes of cardio three times a week minimum, ideally four, plus follow my resistance programme for 50 minutes four times a week [ see the video here ]. 
That's ridiculous - far too much time spent for way too little benefit gained.  Go short, go hard!  Intensity trumps duration.

Early to Bed, Early to Rise ... Part 1

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20837645

This is a great example of how complicated it is to do good science on humans, including how assumptions can confound an otherwise interesting study.


The abstract starts off with this interesting assumption:  "A fat-rich energy-dense diet is an important cause of insulin resistance."  I don't have the subscription to the publication journal, but I would really love to see how they justify this statement.  What's their definition of "fat rich"?  What exactly are the parameters of "energy dense"?  What's interesting about these terms is the implications in a real person's diet.  For example, try to eat a fat rich, low carb diet, and you find you don't eat a great deal of total "energy".  Why?   Hunger is very well controlled on a fat rich, carb restricted (50g/day or less) diet.  If you eat a small amount of an "energy dense" food like coconut oil, that WILL NOT make you insulin resistant.  Ever eat a large quantity of butter without any sugar?  Probably not, with the possible exception of macadamia nuts!  (In fact, if you overeat fat by too large a margin, you'll have enough diarrhea to discourage this practice).  I'd venture a guess that, assuming you could eat "too much" coconut oil/butter/cheese/full fat dairy, it still would not make you insulin resistant (by the way, I'm betting my life on this answer because that's how I eat).   What makes a person insulin resistant is eating a bunch of grain products, whole or otherwise, and/or food laden in sugars (and fructose is specifically implicated in the genesis of insulin resistance - beautiful explanation of why is available at this link: Lustig on Fructose).  The fact is that we often eat a lot of fat when we're eating a lot of grains/sugars, but that's a different case entirely than when one eats low carb (50g/day or less), adequate protein (minimum 60g/day), and good fats to satiety.


Switching back to the study, I'm skeptical when anyone starts off with terms like "energy dense" or "fat laden" because this is the language of those who have led the science of diet into demonstrably poor science for the last 30+ years, the same flavor of science that has, incredibly, accepted the conjecture that high fat diets cause heart disease, and that weight gain can be simplified to a restatement of the First Law of Thermodynamics (which is not relevant for determining causality in human weight gain).  


The study took three groups, all of which were fed a "Healthy male volunteers (18-25 y) received a hyper-caloric (∼+30% kcal day(-1)) fat-rich (50% of kcal) diet for 6 weeks."  In other words, they tried to over-feed the subjects by 30%, using a diet of 50% fat (which they think is a high level of fat).


In short, one group didn't exercise and gained six pounds.  Another group exercised in a fasted state and gained almost no weight.  The third group ingested carbs prior to exercise (IOW, exercised but not in a fasted state) and wound up about in the middle of the three groups.  The three groups had similarly different outcomes in terms of other measures of health (insulin sensitivity, et al).


Interesting result - two groups had equal intake, and equal exercise but different outcomes for weight gain and health markers.  Why?  How could the "calorie is a calorie" model be true if this study proves repeatable (and therefore valid)?  


In other words, what use can we make of the implications of this study?  That's a tough question, because as is so often the case, there are many "complexifiers."  For example - what would have happened had they used only protein/fat in the pre-workout "fast break"?  What would have happened if they used 100g/day or less of carbohydrate?  What if the long endurance training sessions had been either shorter, or shorter but more intense (anaerobic), or had incorporated resistance training?  The mental experiments we could imagine would fill up a large chart with possible options to be tested.  Unless you think it's a great idea to burn up four hours a week doing pointless and possibly injurious cardiovascular training, knowing that you can "overeat" by 30% if you train in the fasted state is not a useful data point.


In part 2, I'll superimpose this study result with the Paleolithic Model, to see if the two can be reconciled.  

Don't Worry About Calorie Burning. But If You Do ...

" ... the total energy cost of the ET program was substantially greater than the HIIT program. The researchers calculated that the ET group burned more than twice as many calories while exercising than the HIIT program. But (surprise, surprise) skinfold measurements showed that the HIIT group lost more subcutaneous fat. "Moreover," reported the researchers, "when the difference in the total energy cost of the program was taken into account..., the subcutaneous fat loss was ninefold greater in the HIIT program than in the ET program." In short, the HIIT group got 9 times more fat-loss benefit for every calorie burned exercising.
How can that be?
Dr. Tremblay's group took muscle biopsies and measured muscle enzyme activity to determine why high-intensity exercise produced so much more fat loss. I'll spare you the details (they are technical and hard to decipher), but this is their bottom line: "[Metabolic adaptations resulting from HIIT] may lead to a better lipid utilization in the postexercise state and thus contribute to a greater energy and lipid deficit." In other words, compared to moderate-intensity endurance exercise, high- intensity intermittent exercise causes more calories and fat to be burned following the workout. Citing animal studies, they also said it may be that appetite is suppressed more following intense intervals. (Neither group was placed on a diet.)"
http://www.cbass.com/FATBURN.HTM

As I've posted before, it makes no sense to overeat and then work out to burn the excess calories.  Eat good food, and exercise for desirable physical adaptations like strength, speed, power, endurance, and the ability to apply those adaptations to life, sport and combat.  But if you still just have to get out there for calorie burning, the evidence is pretty clear - anaerobics wins the day.

Congrats JK!

I have an athlete who is restricted in his dietary changes somewhat by his desire to accomodate his spouse - and who could blame him.  But as a result, his weight loss has lagged what I would have hoped.  Still, I got this note today:

"I made weight this morning, no taping!  My PRT run is at 0700 tomorrow." 

In other words, his body weight was low enough that he did not require a tape measurement to determine whether or not he was within body composition standards.  That a big deal for any professional. 

That said, I hope his bride is willing to work with him on a slightly different approach to nutrition, because we could easily drop another 20 pounds off of JK, with a big boost to other quality of life benefits.  Bottom line, you cannot out train a bad diet.

Reinterpreting the First Law of Thermodynamics

http://www.nature.com/nrendo/journal/v2/n8/full/ncpendmet0220.html
"Childhood obesity has become epidemic over the past 30 years. The First Law of Thermodynamics is routinely interpreted to imply that weight gain is secondary to increased caloric intake and/or decreased energy expenditure, two behaviors that have been documented during this interval; nonetheless, lifestyle interventions are notoriously ineffective at promoting weight loss. Obesity is characterized by hyperinsulinemia. Although hyperinsulinemia is usually thought to be secondary to obesity, it can instead be primary, due to autonomic dysfunction. Obesity is also a state of leptin resistance, in which defective leptin signal transduction promotes excess energy intake, to maintain normal energy expenditure. Insulin and leptin share a common central signaling pathway, and it seems that insulin functions as an endogenous leptin antagonist. Suppressing insulin ameliorates leptin resistance, with ensuing reduction of caloric intake, increased spontaneous activity, and improved quality of life. Hyperinsulinemia also interferes with dopamine clearance in the ventral tegmental area and nucleus accumbens, promoting increased food reward. "
____________________________________________________________________________
"Accordingly, the First Law of Thermodynamics can be reinterpreted, such that the behaviors of increased caloric intake and decreased energy expenditure are secondary to obligate weight gain. This weight gain is driven by the hyperinsulinemic state, through three mechanisms: energy partitioning into adipose tissue; interference with leptin signal transduction; and interference with extinction of the hedonic response to food."
____________________________________________________________________________


In other words, eating low quality food results in partitioning of that food into fat.  As a result, you will be hungry and feel lethargic.  This lesson was most completely articulated by Gary Taubes in "Good Calories, Bad Calories."