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

How to Build Strength That Lasts

Weight Training: Endurance

By: Randy Goodman, BA Kinesiology

In continuing on with my “weightlifting protocols explained” series, I’m going to cover endurance next. This type of training, like hypertrophy training, is implemented early on in the off-season of an athlete helping them establish an endurance base and high level of recoverability. I personally use this type of training more than any other type year round simply because I feel it is so applicable to my active lifestyle.

When we talk about weight training for endurance, what we’re really talking about is strength-endurance or muscular endurance. Strength-endurance refers to maintaining high force outputs (strength) over long periods of time (endurance) and increased subsequent recovery ability. You may have heard or seen people in the training community use the term METCON, which refers to metabolic conditioning. METCON can be used in reference to conditioning of aerobic (with oxygen) and anaerobic (glycolytic, or without oxygen) metabolic systems. Strength-Endurance weight training protocols are very much associated with anaerobic METCON. CrossFit® athletes are very well known for strength-endurance. Their sport calls for the need to be able to do heavy lifts for long periods of time, recover quickly and move onto the next station or event. Strength-endurance training sessions that last over 30 minutes will also yield aerobic benefits.

Crossfit athletes digging deep.

Strength-Endurance is what is going to let a distance runner keep a fast pace while climbing a hill, allow a college wrestler to throw or pin an opponent near the end of a grueling round, or allow a hockey player to effectively kill a penalty and permit the athlete to recover quickly in order to continue on with the race or match without being “gassed.”

The Strength Endurance Equation = Heavy Weights + Short Rest + High Training Volume

A refresher on what the weight training variables are:

Load- Amount of weight lifted in lbs or kgs

Load Volume- Total Amount of weight lifted in a training session

Rep- Lift weight one time up and down

Set- A given number of reps done at once without a break

Duration- Estimate of set duration in seconds

Speed per rep- Tempo of one lift. Time up, time at top, time down, time at bottom of lift

Rest- Between sets and between workouts

Let’s refer to the chart and break down the variables:

How much weight should be used?

When we look at this particular chart, it calls for 40-60% or your one rep-max (RM). These numbers vary depending on which literature you read or expert you talk to, but I’ll break it down for you. Basically, what 40-60% RM is telling you is you don’t want to lift a weight that is so heavy you can only move it for a few reps, which doesn’t correlate with endurance, or a weight that is so light that the strength part of the equation goes out the window. The amount of weight you choose to lift for strength-endurance is very much determined by the length of time or number of reps you want your set to last. For example, a hockey player wants their set to last around 40-60 seconds. If we are using a squat as a hockey player’s strength-endurance exercise, they would lift an amount of weight that has them “failing” within the 40-60 second range.

Henrik Lundqvist relies heavily on strength-endurance.

How many times should the weight be lifted?

The chart says 25-60 reps per set. Again, these numbers will vary according to what you read or who you talk to. If we look at strength-endurance on a spectrum where at one end is strength (closer to 15 reps) and the other end is endurance (closer to 60 reps), we can decide according to our desired goal which part of the spectrum we want to be on. Remember, once you are reaching rep ranges of 60 or more, you begin to lose the strength component of the equation. Personally, because I’m not an athlete that needs to train for any particular sport or movement, I train all over this rep range. Some days I’m closer to the strength part of the spectrum and others I’m at the endurance part of the spectrum. The idea behind this approach is that life can throw a variety of situations at you and it’s nice to stay ready for anything.

How many sets should be done per exercise?

The chart says 2-4 sets per exercise. The key with choosing the number of sets is that you want to keep the load volume (weight x reps) for the workout in check. Do more sets if you are lifting heavier and the sets are shorter, consisting of a low number of reps. Do less sets if you are lifting lighter and the sets are longer, consisting of a high number of reps. The load volume should be similar whether you have chosen a workout that is at the strength end of the spectrum or the endurance end of the spectrum.

How long should the rest be between sets?

In a word, short! This chart says 1-2 minutes. I would say often the rest period for muscular endurance weight training will be less than 30 seconds. The short rest period is purposeful. As I mentioned earlier, we are training the anaerobic energy system. We trying to increase our ability to maintain high levels of force for significant periods of time, recover quickly, and do it again, repeatedly. You won’t always be allotted the luxury of a two + minute rest period during your game or race. Bottom line; keep your rest periods short and get to the next set before you have fully recovered. Focus on large, deep belly breaths, activating your diaphragm, during and in between sets and keep moving around during recovery periods. The goal is to get your HR to drop as much as possible and get the muscles to stop burning during your short rest period.

How fast should I lift the weight?

To me, tempo in strength-endurance is not as important as when you are training for size, where you lift the weight slow, or power, where you lift the weight fast. In training for muscular endurance, it is common to use a tempo that matches the cadence of the sport or activity you are training for. For example, a skier may need use a lift tempo to match the cadence of navigating moguls, but also do static squats, where they hold the weight in a static position, to match the long turns of a Super G.

Long static holds during Super G turns.

Mix it up by ending a set with a static hold or varying the speed of the lifts from workout to workout. To get a deep, meaningful burn I’ll often do 45 seconds to a minute of a given lift at a steady or mixed tempo and, if it is safe, end the set with a static hold until I’m shaking profusely and ultimately failing. Obviously, you don’t do this if failure means your spine or sternum is going to be crushed.

How long is each workout and how many workouts per week?

The short answer on this one is that it will vary depending on how your muscular endurance program is designed. That’s not a very helpful answer, is it? So, I’ll give you some general guidelines to get you started. Load volume is your friend for building up muscular endurance. Train each muscle group at least twice a week. If you are going to isolate one muscle group per workout, your workout length will be shorter (20-30 minutes). If you are combining muscle groups into a single workout, the workout should be longer (45-90 minutes). I’m a big proponent of doing at least one isolation workout and one full body workout per week. It’s nice to focus in on, say, legs and get really deep into the fibers of a localized group of muscles, but our bodies need to be able to move efficiently as a complete unit so I do muscular endurance workouts that have multi-joint, functional, full-body movements as well. As you become more efficient moving like a human in the way that our ancestors evolved, you inherently use less energy which contributes to how long you are able to sustain high levels of force output.

Progression in Overload

As you move through your strength-endurance program, you want to begin to manipulate the training variables I’ve outlined above. For example, in week three of your program, you want to lift more weight or do more reps in the same amount of time as week one or complete the same amount of total reps in less time. Essentially, you want to increase the training load volume from week to week so you force your body to continue to adapt to the new stressors. There are many ways to progress your overload, just make sure you're making your workouts harder and pushing to beat what you did in weeks previous.

HIIT Weight Training for Strength-Endurance

HIIT it to Win it!

Anyone that knows me knows that my love affair with HIIT (high intensity interval training) echoes that of the love affair ‘Mercans have with the Kardashians. I’m a little obsessed. When I get down with the iron, I’m most likely on a timer. The timer is my god and I must obey it. No stopping until I hear the beep. Some days it’s TABATA- 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, some days it’s two minutes on 30 seconds off. I’m past my days of being a big muscle donkey and I’m very strapped for time, so the majority of my training is now whole body functional movement, muscular endurance interval training. I feel this type of training is the most applicable to my everyday life. If I need to lift something that weighs 300 lbs, I’ll use a machine. On the other hand, I’d be able to carry an injured toddler off a mountain to safety like a champ if needed. There are several interval timer apps you can use to set up custom interval programs for yourself. An interval app and a couple sets of dumbbells- one light, one heavy- is the simplest, cheapest way to get started in muscular endurance training.

Summary

Remember the strength-endurance equation! Heavy weight + short rest + high training volume. You lift enough weight to preserve the strength component, but not so much you don’t dip into the endurance component. Take short rest periods so your body becomes efficient at recovering quickly from sustained high force output and keep your training volume high to inherit the endurance benefits of this style of weight training.

Keep in mind what you’re training for; what sport you play or activity you want to excel at. Strive for variety in the way you manipulate the weight training variables as well as the movements themselves. Use a combination of basic isolated movements and complex whole body human movements. Human movement efficiency is just as important for acquiring muscular endurance as training the energy systems.

The mental rewards are very real.

Embrace the burn, kids! Once it begins to burn, that’s when the real work begins. Dig on the pain because it lets you know you’re alive. Eventually, the endorphin high you get from grinding out a strength-endurance workout will have you addicted. Seriously, just like you can get addicted to sitting on your ass, eating chips and drinking beer, while watching others expend energy and move their bodies, you can get addicted to moving your own body. The anticipation leading up to the training session will make you giddy and amped up. The strength-endurance training session, itself, will teach you things about yourself that you won’t learn any other way. The back end of the session, when there is a puddle of sweat on the floor, will be more rewarding for your brain than anything you can stuff into your face! Trust me. If you have a physical event coming up, if you’re an athlete that is tired of gassing, or if you want to give up the meathead bodybuilder thing for a bit, give strength-endurance weight training a go.

See you under the iron!

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