Exercise Is Not a Primary Means For Weight Loss

By: Randy Goodman, B.A. Kinesiology, Onnit Foundations Certified Coach, Health Science Academy Advanced Sports & Exercise Nutritional Advisor

Disclaimer

STOP! Before you continue, here are the obligatory disclaimers that seem to accompany anything that can be looked at as diet advice:

1. This is a post about exercise, diet and how to lose weight. I understand, for many these are the most annoying posts around, so if your ego does not allow you to accept information that contradicts the way to stuff your gaping maw or you're just not into this shit then don’t read it.

2. This is an opinion piece that is based on my own personal research and experimentation. Any advice I give on what to eat or not eat is based on books and studies I have read and personally applied to my body. I’m not a doctor or a scientist and this is not medical advice.

If you’re still here, read on my sweet child.

I Workout So I Can Eat What I Want and Not Get Fat

How’s that working out for ya, there, Big Chief? Is health's common saboteur, visceral fat, increasing in volume and smothering your beloved organs more and more year after year? If so, your approach of working out to offset your poor dietary choices isn’t working and you're not alone.

You ever hear the phrases "you can't outrun a bad diet" or "abs are made in the kitchen"? Well, research is showing that there may be some truth to those statements. Well credentialed Canadian author, Timothy Caulfield (Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy; Professor, Faculty of Law and School of Public Health; and Research Director, Health Law Institute), has gathered a pile of research in his book, “The Cure For Everything,” supporting the idea that exercise is more effective for maintaining your weight as you age rather than exercise as a primary means of weight loss. Diet undoubtedly takes the role of a primary means of weight loss. There are thousands of ways that exercise contributes to health and longevity so definitely do indulge in some deep, glorious bicep curls on the regs. Just don’t use it solely for weight loss without consideration for diet. Exercise as a primary means of weight loss is simply one of the biggest health myths out there!

Think about it. How hard is it to burn 500 calories in a short amount of time? Most people need to work out vigorously for close to an hour to accomplish that feat. Now, how many calories are in a Starbucks beverage and blueberry muffin? And, how fast do you think those calorie packed treats get in your belly, knock off one third of your recommended daily caloric intake (RDI), and spike your blood sugar and consequently, insulin which initiates fat storage? One of those things is way easier and way yummier than the other. Unless you think a one hour slog on the treadmill or a half hour HIIT session is yummy then I believe the list of folks that thinks like you is longer than the list of folks that think like me. In other words, in reality most people, for many reasons, don’t or can’t stick to a regular exercise practice, never mind one that can actually offset their current diet.

Evolutionarily Programmed to Eat Like an Asshole

Yeah, if you want to get rid of any unwanted fat, you're gonna have to harden up and face your unhealthy food addictions head on. It can be a battle because you are dealing with the same opiate receptors that drugs like heroine, morphine and oxycontin play on. Only, instead of making you high, the opiates from some “food products” make you hungry. In other words, they begin to control your behavior by calling you hither towards the cookies, ice cream and doughnuts- an evolutionary survival trait that made our hunter-gatherer ancestors eat as much as they could when they came across a rare calorie rich carbohydrate source. Just seeing the words “ice cream” and “doughnuts,” you probably want to have some right now lol! I can feel it as I spill this ink. We still have the evolutionary trait that tells us when something is sweet or rich, “EAT LOTS OF IT” because, as a hunter-gatherer, we may not come across a calorie source like that for a long time. The problem is, we barely have to get off our ass to have access to rich calorie sources in our soft new world full of treats scientifically designed to play on the chemical reactions in your brain.

In my opinion, the best way to lose weight through diet is to begin eating foods that are as close to their natural state as possible and completely give up refined simple carbs in order to stop the ridiculous, uncontrollable cravings. 

A good rule of thumb for shopping is to stick to the perimeter of the grocery store. Fill your cart with fruits, vegetables, grass-fed meats, free range eggs and foods that don't come in a package. Stick it to the man and get punk-rock about your diet by staying out of the middle isles where all the fancy food-like products are! We don’t need your packaged food, maaaaan! 

Socially Unacceptable to Eat How You Want to Eat

One major problem with doing this is looking like a complete weirdo in public gatherings. People are gonna bust your stones because you don’t eat “normal.” You’re going to have to find food choices on the menu or at social events that suit the way you eat. The way you deal with this is to harden the fuck up! If you are so sensitive that you can’t take a dig or two from your buds about not eating bread or pasta, then you may need to look into talking to a mental health professional. I’m kidding of course, but it is something you encounter and need to have a plan for. 

The way I deal with it is to stay low key and not bring any attention to how I eat. Don't preach about your diet! I stay reasonable and flexible in how I approach avoiding unhealthy foods. For example, if beef on a bun and coleslaw is the meal for a work meeting, it’s beef on a giant pile of coleslaw for me. If we’re at a restaurant and the salad I order comes with breaded chicken, I just deal with it and eat it. In the grand scheme of things, a couple pieces of breaded chicken aren’t going to derail what I’m trying to accomplish. I’m not celiac; I’m just a dude trying to keep visceral belly fat from taking me out early.

The Glycemic Index

The glycemic index (GI) compares how much a food spikes blood sugar levels compared to a standard food, which is glucose (sugar) or white bread. It uses a scale of 1-100, with the standard sugar getting a GI score of 100. Stay away from foods that are high on the GI like packaged snacks, cookies, breads, pastas, candy, etc. Simply explained, the higher a food is on the GI, the more it spikes your blood sugar. Many fruits score high on the GI, but they are packed full of fibre and other vitamins and chemicals that affect their GI load. I don’t find they affect my body like refined sugars and other high GI wheat products do. You aren’t going to get fat eating fruit, you silly goose.

If you wanna pack on pounds and go down a road of bad health and disease, then continually spike your blood sugar. Foods like refined wheat (which are what most packaged snacks contain) and foods with high refined free sugar content are extremely addictive and wreak havoc on your body by causing inflammation, fat storage and aging. After a week of not eating high glycemic foods, among other health benefits, from an aesthetics standpoint you'll feel less fluffy and your skin will literally feel thinner and closer to those rippling abs you've been hiding since your twenties.

2014- When I first began to experiment with a low GI, whole food diet. This is actually what happened after cutting out wheat products and simple sugars. My exercise didn't change. Just my diet. 

Go to Battle…For a Week or So

Remember, in the first week you will battle intense cravings, headaches, irritability and other symptoms after giving up processed carbohydrates. But, I promise you that will go away and you'll begin to become addicted to disappearing fat, decreased inflammation and arthritis pain, and an overall renewal of energy and vitality. Combined with keeping a casual eye on calories in verses calories out, keeping your diet in the bottom half of the GI allows for effortless weight loss and personal control over what you shove into your face. After a week or two staying low on the GI, you will be able to say no to desert without feeling deprived.

Experiment With Your Own Body

Challenge yourself to try giving up packaged food, wheat products and high GI foods for a week. It's hard, but you need to feel what it's like and how easy it becomes to not crush three doughnuts at the office or a bag of candy from the gas station- personal battles I’m currently winning.

2014- After a few months, I went from a swollen, inflamed, puffy guy to single digit fat percentage because of how I chose to eat. I exercised the same the whole time; HIIT of course.

Remember, don't let your education about what you should and shouldn't eat come solely from governments or large food corporations. Money, lobbying and economics influence what they tell you. One of the things "big food" and anyone they're in bed with tells the public is that you can offset your food choices by exercising regularly. "Eat the snacks and as long as you exercise you won't get fat." An obvious thing to tell people when you want them eating lots of food in order to fulfill their duty to their share holders. Pull nutrition information from a variety of sources-  pay attention to who is funding the study or article- and make up your own rational opinion about how you should eat.

Stay well and, as the kids say, stay woke!

RG

Add Healthy Foods to Your Diet To Lose Weight

We know that weight management doesn't come down to simply calories in vs. calories out. But, it's a good place to start and it goes hand-in-hand with how hormones influence fat storage and ability to put on lean mass. Here, we give you a simplified approach to managing your weight. Basically we are saying, add a nutrient dense meal, like a smoothie, and you choose what foods that displaces. Here's how that works:

*TheGoodsMethod for Weight Management*

Find your basal metabolic rate (BMR- the amount of calories you naturally burn in a day) and use that as the baseline for the amount of calories you take in through your daily diet. You can accomplish this by using an online BMR calculator or a wearable fitness device.

Use a user-friendly app like Under Armor's MyFitnessPal to track diet calories (do this for at least a week). Once you know roughly how much food is suitable for you and what that looks like in real life, you can begin to tweak your diet. MyFitnessPal will also calculate your BMR and allow you to import workouts from your wearable heartrate/activity tracker.

If your body needs 2000 cals to operate on an average day, then take in roughly 2000 cals through your diet. From there, begin introducing nutrient dense, low glycemic index (GI) foods that make you feel good. Low GI foods don't cause insulin spikes that promote fat storage and lead to type 2 diabetes. Make sure your new foods taste good or else you won't keep consuming them. Because you only have a given amount of food calories you can take in daily, you will begin forcing not-so-healthy things out of your diet.

Once you are consuming more real whole foods- a variety of plants, healthy fats and proteins- and less processed foods your body will down regulate fat storage, you will find the intense simple carb (sugar) cravings dissipate, and you will begin to experience the benefits of a nutrient dense diet. 

Remember, we're playing the long game here, folks. Small positive changes stacked up over your lifetime add up!

Cheers!

RG

5 Tips For Establishing a Health & Fitness Resolution For the New Year

New year, new you!...hopefully. Right? "I'm gonna get myself in shape this year!" This is one of the most, if not the most popular New Years Resolutions, and undoubtedly one of most failed resolutions year after year. Here, I give you five tips to consider when setting up your health and fitness resolution so you don't end up high in January and low when it comes to that beach wedding in Mexico in June. 

1. DON'T TAKE THE ALL-IN OR ALL-OUT APPROACH

Before you start your new health and fitness regimen step back and look at how your life is structured, who you are as a person, how your current schedule can be altered, what your finances are, and what your relationships with family and friends look like. Then put your new plans to improve your health into the mix and look at how it will affect your life. If there are too many negatives that are attached to your good intent, then it is not going to be sustainable. Neglected family will let you know in a hurry and eventually your squeezed schedule will start causing you to miss workouts. Those of us who have been successful at adding a health and fitness practice to our lives do it with a realistic approach that is flexible. We may miss a few workouts in January, but we are still at it in April!

How many times have we seen the scenario where someone comes flying out of the gate in January, eating nothing but bodybuilder chicken and broccoli, showing everyone their pile of supplements that sits in the corner on their counter, going to the gym for two hours a day 4-5 days per week and posting #fitspo selfies on their social media pages? Then you see them in March or April and they have already quit and have excuses till Tuesday about why they aren't working out any more.

They are gone by March because their approach was completely unsustainable and out of character. Of course they weren't able to keep it up! Eating food you don't like is going to make you miserable. Going to the gym for ridiculous lengths of time is stupid and doesn't fit into the schedule of most adults. Buying copious amounts of supplements is expensive and unnecessary, and posting selfies showing everybody that you are in the gym is some sort of superficial effort to legitimize physical self worth that has nothing to do with long term health, function or longevity. What do you think we have in common here? All this shit is one big setup for failure! You are sacrificing so many other aspects of your life in order to do your gym thang that it ends up not being sustainable; family, finances, enjoyment to name a few. All for what? For a month or two where your friends are impressed because you have put on a front that this is how you live your life now? Not that it matters, but show your family and friends that you've sustained your new lifestyle for all of 2017, not just January/February, and they will be impressed.

2. MAKE YOUR RESOLUTION MEASURABLE AND FLEXIBLE

"I'm going to get in shape this year." "I want to lose my beer gut." Those are all well and good but, in my opinion, they are byproducts of achieving a measurable goal rather than the goal itself. They are subjective and narrow in focus and there is nothing in those statements that says how you are going to accomplish them. "I am going to do a 300-500 calorie workout, 15 days a month" is a better goal (or resolution) to make. When you make the measurable action the resolution, you can easily quantify whether or not you are attaining it. You either did the workouts or you didn't. That being said, if you miss a workout or even a week of workouts due to unforeseen circumstances it absolutely does not mean you have failed your new goal. You have made your resolution flexible by using a large enough measurement window, a month, so you can get right back on the horse and make up for missed workouts. Remember you're playing the long game here, folks. We're trying to win more weeks than we lose over the course of our entire lives. Accept small setbacks because they don't mean shit in the long run!

The cool thing about making real actionable items the resolution is that you don't have to worry about results. "Getting in shape" will take care of itself because it is a byproduct of you accomplishing your resolution. If you add 3 hours of physical activity a week to your life and keep everything else the same, your body will be forced to adapt to that input and you, for sure, won't look or feel the same 365 days later. Hell, if you add in three 7-minute workouts per week your body will change.

3. REVISIT YOUR GOALS MONTHLY, NOT YEARLY

If you are just getting started, ease into the change you are making in your life. Maybe your goal is 11 workouts in January, 12 in February, 13 in March and so on. At the end of each month you assess the pros and cons of the amount of time you allotted to your health and fitness progress and take them into account when setting your goal for the next month. If you allotted too much time to fitness and personal relationships are suffering because you aren't spending enough time with a spouse or your children, you have an opportunity to address that and make scheduling adjustments accordingly. Either move the timing of your workouts or scale back the amount of time so your life remains well rounded and nothing suffers.

Take that initial progress picture so you always have a reference of where you started and take one monthly along with a set of notes that allow you to compare where you're at currently in relation to where you started. The notes allow you to document setbacks and things that worked well for you in that month. Program a reminder in your electronic calendar and set some time aside to take your progress picture and document some notes. During this time you also set your new micro-goals for the upcoming month. Some examples of monthly goals may be to increase hip mobility, improve shoulder posture, or even to start growing a big ol' booty.

The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday. It is very motivating to see you look and feel completely different than the person you were six months ago and a before and after is a clear way to accomplish that. It's also a great reminder that temporary setbacks don't put you back to square one. You can still see that you are miles ahead of where you were initially when you have your initial starting picture and documentation to reference.

4. FIND ACCOUNTABILITY

Whether it's a workout partner, a trainer, a spouse or a friend, find someone who is going to support you and hold you accountable for what you say you are going to do. You are waaaaaay more likely to stick to your health and fitness practice if you have support! Even the professionals use others to hold them accountable. My whole life I have had various lifting partners that I'd give permission to call me a dick if I didn't make it to a session. Now, my wife and I workout together in order to provide accountability to one another. Professional fitness models have built in accountability in that they won't get any more magazine covers if they start missing workouts. Runners won't win any more races if they don't get their roadwork in. Athletes get kicked off the team if they show up out of shape.

You may not be trying to win races or land magazine covers, but the idea is essentially the same. Your workout partner will probably find another partner if you stop showing up for them. If you're someone with pride, the shame you feel from letting somebody other than yourself down makes it that much more real and gives it some color that goes beyond the self-shame you're able to privately hide the back of your mind.

Surround yourself with like-minded folks, sign up for future competitions that you need to prepare for, join classes or groups where you see familiar faces weekly or use a personal trainer. The more ways you can find accountability the better.

5. TAKE A HUMAN HEALTH, FUNCTION, AND LONGEVITY APPROACH

This is the foundation of The Goods Method, where we practice things that are correlated with a body and mind that work well in all situations, stay disease and injury free, and last forever. The vanity stuff is a beneficial byproduct. There is nothing wrong with liking the way you look. That being said, do not enter the New Year with a goal that is oriented at building a figure that you perceive to be appealing to others. That is an unhealthy mindset and fuck what they think! Build a body that can bring you where you want to go and do what you want to do. Functional bodies and minds are sexy as fuck IMO! When you aim for function, your physiology takes care of itself. After all, it's harder to get shit done when you are hauling around 40 lbs of excess weight.

Another part of the health, function, and longevity equation I want to touch on is to be smart about how you train. I've been in the game a long time and seen it all. Guys folded and crushed by squat bars, shoulders blown out by doing Olympic lifts while fatigued, people flying off the back of treadmills, backs blown out by one too many 500 lb dead lifts. It's one thing to injure your self playing a sport or doing a challenging hiking expedition, but there is no reason to injure yourself in the gym, especially if you are just a regular guy or gal looking to improve your health.

Modern human beings and have evolved over 200,000 years (and ancestral origins over 6 million years) to move certain ways. We walk, we run, we jump, we throw, we pick shit up. You get the point, move like a damn human being! You are not a kangaroo that only hops without contra-lateral reciprocation (walking or running), you are not hoist that just lifts heavy things, you are not a monkey that just swings from things.  Each of these essentially does one thing. We, as human beings, do a variety of things. I'm not saying don't do any of those movements, but know that overuse injuries will arise if you get caught up in doing one movement pattern too much. Unless you want to end up with a blown out back or bone spurs in your elbow, you need to follow a few rules when you are trying to achieve optimal human health, function and longevity.

One, proper biomechanics and technique always come before increasing load. Two, remember your gains come during proper recovery, so seek out information on recovery protocol. Three, listen to what your body is telling you. If it hurts in a bad way, stop doing what caused the pain. Four, being under large overhead loads when you are blacking out does not correlate with long-term health. Olympic lifts, to be done in the 1-5 rep range when fully recovered, are for nervous system development, not cardiovascular conditioning. If you're training for competition purposes and need to push your limits, do it in a safe manner where slight faults in your form don't end in catastrophic results. Five, your human body works in a variety of ways, so have variety in your training. You will achieve balance in your body and avoid monotony and physical injuries by incorporating a variety of movement patterns on a variety and combination of planes. The fastest way to derail a health and fitness plan is to injure yourself, so be smart about how you train and seek professional tutelage if you don't know what you are doing.

Whether you are just getting started for the first time or looking to aim for some new goals in 2017, I hope this helps! Good luck to everyone in the New Year!

Note: This article was written and edited with input from my wonderful wife, Coach Evelyn.

...Just Like Riding a Bike

If you remember back to when you first started riding a bike, you got on the bike and you began feeling it out until you were up and riding. Someone, maybe a parent or a friend provided some guidance, but for the most part you learned how to do it on your own. You weren't bombarded with conflicting, confusing, often intimidating information on how to do it. Nobody sat next to you saying that your form was all wrong or that you needed to ride longer to get real results.

We have been living in our current anatomical structure for  about 200,000 years. We should be very familiar with movement, but to so many movement and exertion has become a foreign concept. There is a large portion of the population that are very hesitant to begin a fitness program.  Much of the information we are fed through media and magazines leaves us thinking that beginning a program requires the guidance of an expert, special equipment in a fancy gym, or large amounts of free time. Many will go all in on something that isn't sustainable. People will often sign up for a program that is very time consuming. Get your gym stuff together, drive to the gym, hit the change room, lift like a beast for and hour and a half, hit the showers, hit up a Jugo Juice, drive home. All good if you have the time, but many try to make that work only to give into the fact that it just takes too much time, negatively affecting other aspects of your life such as family or social relationships.

Well guess what, your body is a bike! Get on and ride! You didn't need the big fancy gym membership and the stack of creepy supplements go ride bikes as a youngster and you don't need that stuff to start a fitness program as an adult.

The foundation of TheGoodsMethod is consistent, short duration, body weight workouts that include a variety of movement patterns. All you need is a small space, I use a timer app on my phone, and some creativity. Set the timer for 20 seconds on 10 seconds off (TABATA protocol) for a total of 15 mins and do a "choose-your-own-adventure" (I used to dig on those books) workout using your body. Pick whatever movements you want in any order you want. Maybe you choose one that makes you breath harder, the next movement you want a nice stretch, maybe the next movement you want a little pump. You get what I mean when I say choose your own adventure? Jump like a frog for 20 secs, take a break for 10 secs, do push-ups for 20 secs, take a break for 10 and so on. No equipment needed, no expert telling you that you're doing it wrong, nobody judging you because you can do it in the privacy of your own home. Your body WILL respond if you begin doing this 3 days a week. Your body composition will change, you're posture will change, you'll feel less achy, more energized, and your mental game will change for the better.

Take a short period of time out of your day and move your body in ways that you don't normally move it. If you step back and take a look at what a modern adult does as far as movement on a daily basis, you find the movements are very linear, often static and very repetitive. Our daily jobs and responsibilities keep us holding babies with the same arm, sitting at desks for hours at a time, walking in straight lines, looking down at cell phones. Our 200,000 year-old anatomy is not responding well to these new stresses and it's showing up as a huge burden on our medical systems.

I recently spoke with a health and safety rep of a large corporation and they told me that, per capita, there are more away from work cases among the office workers than there are among the field workers in the company. That says a lot to me. You'd think the employees that are working around dangerous equipment would be the ones getting hurt, but it's the employees that are in a more sedentary environment that are making up the majority of away from work cases.

So, getting back to my bike analogy. Get on it and ride it, maintain it, and enjoy it on a regular basis! If you just leave your bike sitting there it is gonna get stiff and rusty and when you do try ride it the chain is gonna snap or the brakes aren't going to work and you're not gonna have a good time! If you are "just digging your bike out of the shed," be gentle for the first little while. Take it easy and make sure the movements your are doing feel good. If it hurts in a bad way, don't do it. Before long, you'll have a large vocabulary of movements your body is capable of doing and your body will be ready to take on all challenges. When your buds call you up to do a scenic hike, you'll be the first one up the mountain!

And remember, if you want some guidance or a group to move with, give The Goods a shout. We've got your back!

Have a healthy week, kids!
Randy