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Pre and Post Workout Breakfast Recipes

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protein oatmeal breakfast

 

One of the biggest issues I like to fix right away with my in-person, and our online clients is optimizing the first meal of the day. The reason being is that people seem to always have it screwed up.

Your first meal, no matter when, is breakfast (breaking the fast).  It sets the day in motion, and can either hinder or assist your health and fitness goals.

Here are the top three issues that I see plaguing folks and their first meal.

  1. Too much refined stuff
  2. Not enough protein and healthy fats
  3. Lack of nutrient density

Read: How to Build the Perfect Breakfast

Most people seem to get tricked into thinking that their breakfast is healthy, when in reality either their body isn’t ready to magically turn it into muscle while simultaneously burning fat.

Gluten free granola with yogurt and a skim milk skinny latte will not make you lean and mean. Do people really still think that a Dunkin Donuts bagel with egg white is good because it doesn’t have cholesterol, and is “low fat.”

It doesn’t work that way. I don’t deal much on the nutrition side of things with our fitness students. That is Andrew’s gig. I do, however, instill simple solutions in people to build habits that will last a lifetime.

One of those habits is learning to dominate the first meal. I have solutions for two scenarios.

  • First meal of day (pre-training)
  • First meal of day (post-training)

Below are 3 recipes I use personally and with clients for a breakfast if they haven’t trained yet that day or if they have completed a resistance training session prior to their first big meal.

– Before Training Breakfast Options –

sure as hell did

                       sure as hell did

  • 2-5 scrambled cage free eggs + 1/2 -1 cup of cage free egg whites + handful of green vegetables of choice  + tablespoon of extra virgin olive or coconut oil + dry spices of choice (turmeric, salt, pepper, garlic powder, etc) – Small serving of organic preservative free bacon or sausage optional
  • Scoop of Whey or plant based protein powder + two table spoon scoops of plain non whole or non fat greek yogurt + unsweetened almond/coconut/hemp milk + peanut butter powder + mixed nuts + flax and chia seed sprinkled in + dash of cinnamon
  • Bowl of 3-5 scoops of plain greek yogurt + scoop of whey or plant based protein powder + half handful mixed raw nuts + cinnamon + milled flax seed

– Post Training Breakfast Options –

Nope...Nope their not

Nope…Nope their not

  • 1/2 – 1 ezekiel english muffin/2 pieces toast + 2-5 scrambled cage free eggs + 1/2 -1 cup of cage free egg whites + handful of green vegetables of choice  + tablespoon of extra virgin olive or coconut oil + dry spices of choice (turmeric, salt, pepper, garlic powder, etc) – Small serving of organic preservative free bacon or sausage optional
  • Scoop of Whey or plant based protein powder + half cup steel cut or whole rolled oats + one table spoon scoop of plain non whole or non fat greek yogurt + unsweetened almond/coconut/hemp milk + peanut butter powder + half cup mixed berries + flax and chia seed+ dash of cinnamon
  • Bowl of 1-1.5 cup whole rolled oats + scoop of whey or plant based protein powder + half handful mixed berries + cinnamon + milled flax seed/chia seed sprinkled in

I like the concept of getting good quality protein and fats with a serving of veggies to start the day if you haven’t trained yet. This seems to eliminate the cravings later in the day, and give you energy and stamina that lasts longer than a plate of pancakes.

When you’ve already trained, try the last three recipes which include more carbohydrates and protein. This will replenish what you’ve lost, and speed up the recovery process, all the while delivering immense nutrient density which your body desperately needs.

Let us know what your ideal first meal looks like, or if you’re down to try some of these delicious options out.

P.S. Andrew and I have a nutrition and training hybrid coaching program that eliminates confusion in and out of the gym. If you’re interested in joining, email us at showmestrength@gmail.com

How to Engineer the Perfect Batch of Chili to Build Muscle

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Dinner Chili

 

Engineering The Perfect Batch of Chili

There are few meals that can compete with the delicious and nutritious powerhouse of a well constructed bowl of chili. When made correctly, this food concoction provides a plethora of health benefits including, but not limited to, increased muscle retention, testosterone production in men (especially when grass fed/hormone free beef is used), and immune system protection with all the veggies and tomato variations. I’m sure most of you have either tried a variation of chili, or enjoy it on a consistent basis, however the following directions will give you a blueprint for an affordable, simple to make, and extremely healthy option everytime you go back to the fridge. This recipe will be adjusted for approximately 2 weeks of meals, considering you’ll have a bowl per day and maybe a few extra.

Grocery Store Items You’ll Need

(1. MEAT) 5 pounds of your choice of ground meat ( I prefer grass fed beef for taste and health benefits), but you may choose ground turkey, ground chicken, ground tofurkey for vegetarians, or regular ground beef. (2. VEGGIES AND BEANS) 2 whole onions, 2 whole green or red bell peppers, 1 clove of garlic, 2 cans of 14.5oz stewed or diced tomatoes, 1 can of 16 oz tomato sauce, 1 can of  15-16oz can of light red kidney beans, 1 can of 15-16oz dark red kidney beans, 1 can of 15-16oz garbanzo beans, and 1 small can of corn. (3. SPICES) 3 tablespoons of chili powder, 3 tablespoons of salt, 3 tablespoons of pepper, 1 tablespoon of turmeric. (4. COOKING OIL) One tablespoon of coconut oil or extra virgin olive oil.

 

 

Grassfed_Beef_1

 

My favorite meat choice!

 

Kitchen Utensils You’ll Need

One Large Pot, Spatula (preferably metal), strainer, can opener, storage container.

 

Steps to Chili Success

  1. Cut up onion, pepper, and garlic finely, and put into pot with the oil of choice. Turn the heat on medium/high at this point.
  2. Cut open meat, and mix in with the vegetables.
  3. Use the spatula to mix everything together nicely until the meat is browned completely though. Turn the heat on the stove to low at this point. Also, add your spices while browning the meat.

You must make sure meat is brown before adding the rest of the ingredients.

 

  1. Open the cans of beans and corn and empty into the strainer. Wash them thoroughly.
  2. Pour the beans and corn into pot and stir.
  3. Open the cans of diced tomatoes and tomato sauce using the can opener.
  4. Pour the tomatoes and sauce into pot and stir until items appear blended properly.
  5. Keep pot on low heat and cover with lid.
  6. Leave the pot on the stove for 30 min on low heat and stir every 10 minutes.

 

chili

 

Here a bowl of our final product!

Storage

Contrary to popular belief, chili does just fine in the refrigerator for long periods of time. Many people make the mistake of freezing it, ruining the quality and taste of the meat. I suggest making just enough for a week to two weeks and keeping it in a secured and closed container such as a pyrex or tupperware. I really like this as an option for those heavily into fitness. It gives you nutrient dense meals all throughout the week, and provides people on a budget with affordable ways to eat great.

Two Weeks To Shredded: My Experiment (Part 1)

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Note: Obviously I don’t think PhDs are try-hards or greedy.  I respect the hell out of them and what they do to increase our knowledge about the world.  I poked fun because I liked the introduction to my article being framed that way.  If you were offended, well, lighten up. 

I really think PhDs are try-hards. Sure, doing research in order to gain more knowledge about the world to try and save it from the assholes that is the human race is admirable, praise-worthy even.

I like research and science. It’s cool and every second that my mind is occupied with something other than training and sex, I consider a small victory for my pre-frontal cortex. You know the part of your brain responsible for all your decision-making, the “executive branch” if you will. For now, I’ll overlook the fact that most humans are an emotional wreck and their hindbrain will hijack their behavior far before the little angel on their shoulder has time to tell them to not do something stupid like request a song on the Dalilia show for your ex girlfriend as a 34 year old man (no joke, heard it the other day).

Anyways, back to my beef with PhDs. They’re greedy. They want two prestigious laboratories all to themselves.

Two? Yes, two.

I don’t have a PhD nor will I ever; yet, my CV is pages long with a litany of completed experiments. I run the most prestigious lab in the world and I didn’t even have to kiss some advisor’s ass to get into it. I can run an infinite amount of experiments and my only limiting factor is time. There are no rules, no compliance issues, and certainly no shortage of test subjects.

My body is my laboratory. As humans, we are all blessed with one and whether you are conscious of it or not, we continually run experiments testing our own physiology on a daily basis. While the frat star tries to see how many days his body can handle being black-out before it shuts down, the average American continually runs fad diet after fad diet hoping for a miracle. There are test subject(s), procedures, data sets, and even conclusions to be drawn if you’re consciously aware of what’s happening.

I’ve run a few noteworthy experiments in my day. How strong can I get and how much dysfunction can I cause by max effort squatting 21 days in a row. How many drunk 1-arm pushups can I do in the middle of a street in Boston (35 if you’re wondering). How many times can I bang my girlfriends call before she sends the SWAT team to find out my whereabouts. You get the idea.

These next two weeks are time for a new experiment. If you haven’t lost yourself and become enthralled in my exceedingly long introduction, you probably would have remembered why you clicked on the link in the first place. You saw shredded and two weeks and your brain’s dopamine receptors probably got high.

It’s an extreme goal, one that I’m certainly prepared to suffer for. You see shredded and lean are two entirely different entities. While certainly not enough, there are a lot of lean people out there. Few are shredded, which I constitute to being anything under 8% body fat. I’m lean and quite honestly there hasn’t been a day in my life that I haven’t been able to see my abs. Cue the genetics card that people are so quick to play.

I am undertaking this experiment for several reasons:

1) I’m a vain bastard sometimes and want to look damn good on a beach in the Caribbean in two weeks

2) I want to get cat-calls from other girls and make my girlfriend jealous. You know, the stuff every good boyfriend aspires for. You may think I’m kidding but…

3) I want to push the limits of physiology, see how much stress the human body can adapt to, and see how lean I can get in an extremely short amount of time

If I may say so myself, I think they are all admirable goals, in line with every other researcher trying to genetically grow meat so we have some supply come 2050. It’s a cool Ted Talk, check it out.

A Fair Warning

Extreme goals call for extreme measures. What I am going to attempt cannot be sustained nor should be attempted over the long term. Your body is smarter than you are. Like I’ve said on numerous occasions, it is a survival machine and it’s going to fight you every step of the way in giving up its body fat stores. The leaner you are, the more stout the opponent. Trying to utilize these methods over the long term is like trying to stop George Foreman before he met Ali in “The Rumble in the Jungle.” You’re going to fail miserably and not get as lean as you desire. Now that we got that out of the way, let’s examine my protocol…

Dietary Basics 101

I’m going to be implementing intermittent fasting (leangains style), meaning fasting for 16 hours with an 8 hour eating window.

Intermittent fasting increases catecholamine release. Catecholamines are the primary activators and increase the activity of hormone sensitive lipase, the enzyme responsible for breaking down the stored trigylcerides in your cells.

I’m going to have a near ~1000 calorie deficit on all days, training and rest. It’s a large caloric deficit, one that I am only able to undertake because of the short duration of my diet. As a general rule of thumb, the shorter the diet, the more extreme the measures can be.

Because of my caloric deficit, I’m going to increase my protein intake to 250 grams per day (about 1.25 x Lean Body Mass (LBM)) in order to avoid any catabolic muscle loss.

On days that I do nothing but cardio, my carb intake will be zero. Yes, zero. Insulin is the primary inactivator of hormone sensitive lipase. When there is an increase in insulin, you can be assured that your body is no longer utilizing your fat stores for energy. I’m going to keep insulin as low as possible by having two meals that day. One medium sized protein intake to break the fast and then a huge meal at night.

I am going to backload all my carb intake, no matter what time of day I train. I do this for a couple reasons.

1) I want to keep insulin as low as possible during the day

2) I want to ensure restful sleep. Ever have trouble sleeping on a low carb diet? Carb intake leads to serotonin production which equates to a restful night sleep. By backloading my carbs at night, I ensure adequate serotonin production and induce a shift to my parasympathetic nervous system when I want to optimize the greatest recovery tool the human organism has: sleep

Much of my fat intake is going to be saturated fat from coconut oil, grass-fed butter, and grass-fed beef. I need to optimize my cell’s physiology in order to facilitate greater levels of fat loss. Adequate saturated fat intake will ensure this as your body thrives on it. Further, medium chain triglycerides are not reesterified and are more easily transported into the mitochondria for energy usage.

I will have one refeed day. Because the duration of my diet is short I typically wouldn’t utilize a refeed but I have a wedding tomorrow and I’m not about to be cupping spinach levels in the corner at a wedding, so I’m going to chalk up whatever happens tomorrow as a refeed day. Call me uncommitted.

Training Protocol

I am going to do something almost everyday with only two days completely off in the two week span.

I am going to utilize four metabolic type workouts, written by Show Me Strength’s own Chad Rodgers. Two upper body workouts and two lower body workouts. I’m going to do something different for both, however.

In the morning of my upper body workouts, I’m going to walk for a half-hour. Because of my fast, my body will be utilizing nearly 100% fatty acids for energy, making it prime time to get some fasted aerobic work in. Typically, it wouldn’t matter if I had a long time to get shredded, but time is of the essence and every gram of fat counts. Following my upper body workout (which will be performed in the fasted state), I am going to go on a jog afterwards.

Why you may ask?

Though high intensity exercise uses glucose (from liver and muscle glycogen) as its primary substrate, there is a large pool of fatty acids released into the bloodstream shortly upon completion. That’s cool but why the jog after? Because if I just went on my merry way and headed home after the workout, the fatty acids would be reesterred and pulled back into the fat cells, equating to a missed opportunity. Because aerobic exercise utilizes fatty acid as it’s primary substrate, my jog post workout is going to burn that pool of fatty acids off.

Lower body days are going to look a bit different. In the morning, I’m going to utilize the interval training protocols found in Lyle McDonald’s Stubborn Bodyfat Solution. In the afternoon, I’m going to perform a lower body oriented metabolic workout. It’s going to be miserable and I’m going to suffer. Oh well, fight on.

On the other two days, I’m going to go on a morning jog because of the same physiological principles governing my decision to wake up and walk.

Brutal? Yes. Incredibly physiological efficient? Let’s just say I’m not going to fail because my science is wrong.

Supplementation

I’m going to keep using the basics: Amazing Grass, fish oil (going to up my dose to 10 grams), and Vitamin D, except I’m going to add one: Yohimbine HCL.

Yohimbine combined with caffeine in the fasted state is going to turn my body into a fat-burning machine. First, the basics…remember the role catecholamines play in fat loss? Well, caffeine is a thermogenic that increases the release of catecholamines. More catecholamines equals more hormone sensitive lipase equals more girls cat calling you on the beach. It’s science.

Yohimbine’s mechanism of action is a little more complex. Because I’m already lean, my target is getting rid of stubborn fat. To keep it simple, alpha receptors act as brakes for fat loss while beta receptors act as accelerators (thanks Lyle McDonald and Martin Berkhan). Problem is that stubborn fat has a lot more alpha receptors compared to beta receptors, making it a whole lot more difficult to lose. Yohimbine is an alpha receptor antagonist meaning that it blocks its effect. Utilizing yohimbine in the morning during my fasted cardio and interval training will ensure that losing stubborn body fat is an efficient process.

Wrap Up

This is going to work. The science is too bulletproof for it not to work. The question that I’m most interested in is how much fat can the human body lose in a short amount of time. This isn’t going to be one of those lose 14 lbs in 10 days of water weight gimmicks that informercials try and sell you.

I want true physiological fat loss and it’s a question that I’m eagerly looking forward to answer. Sure, I could look up study after study and try and get some educated guess as to what the possibilities are but to be quite honest that’s boring as hell. I’d rather suffer through blood, sweat, and tears in my own laboratory than spend my time twiddling my thumbs on a keyboard. In my lab, the experimental possibilities are infinite, the only limitations are my mind and will.

I earn my PhD everyday of my life.

P.S. Chad and I are mad scientists always tinkering with variables to produce the most badass body possible. Check out our coaching page for more information.

3 Reasons Your Effort Isn’t Producing Results

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You can catch updates about our training, and learn more on our philosophies on becoming awesome on the field and off at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

 

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I’ve been feeling sorry lately. I really do. I feel terribly sorry. Not sorry in the normal context, like being sorry for a mistake or something, but for my people…My beloved people of the iron…

I have been attending to a local gym the last several months to train and work, far away from the very controlled and elite athletic environments where I’ve been working out since I was in high school. I mean, I’ve been to a million public gyms, but not as a regular. I’ve found it very interesting to see the different styles and methods of exercise now that I am in a new setting. I look around and see people genuinely giving up significant time and effort up in the gym.

I see their minds engaged in a battle against itself. What should I do next? Can I go up in weight? How can I get the most out of this workout? How do I look? Am I losing weight? Am I getting stronger?

I love it, because I’m right there with them now. No longer am I training for professional baseball. I am training to feel good, look good, and because I truly love it. And I get it…not everyone loves it…that’s ok…to me it’s even more admirable to see those people consistently showing up because simply put, getting shape is hard work. So if you don’t enjoy it, but do it consistently anyways?…Well I salute the hell out of you.

What do I feel sorry about then? I feel sorry when I see people waste their time in the gym and beyond it’s walls at home. I feel sorry for the guy or girl who is truly pushing themselves, but frustratingly has the same mediocre body as they did a year ago. It’s not their fault. They have solved half the puzzle by showing up on a consistent basis with high level effort. Most people simply aren’t willing to do that in the first place.

I wanted to write this for those people who are in the same battle I am in. The ones who show up even when they don’t want to. Those of you who feel like you are putting in the hours in the gym, in the kitchen, I want to offer a few suggestions to maximize your admirable work.

…Here are 3 BIG reasons your effort isn’t pumping out progress, and several ways to start seeing results…

Screenshot-2014-02-06-12.42.13

1.) You aren’t learning how to do compound movements properly –

I am a firm believer that everything has a place. I don’t look at people anymore and hate on exercises they might be doing. I used to do that shit. Of course I have my own training philosophies, but the human body is amazing, and it can adapt and grow from all kinds of different stresses. The biggest one’s though, the mulit-joint moves like the squat, deadlift, pushes, pulls, and swings, are performed rather ineffectively as a whole, in the general population as far as I’m concerned. If I were a beginner lifter, I would learn and master optimal form on these big lifts. The book “Starting Strength” by Mark Rippetoe is a tremendous resource as it applies to barbell training. I’d highly recommend it regardless of your goals as a lifter. In summary, here are three things to learn which will go a long way…attached are links to help.

Learn how to hinge the hips

Clean up your front and back squat with the goblet squat

Get more out of your bench press 

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2.) You’re spending too much time in the gym, and as a result, you start losing muscle – 

This is a big one for the skinny-fat guys. I know because I’ve been there, done that…And it sucks because you can feel it happening. You had a something light to eat before your workout, you dabble in a little caffeine, hit the weights hard, feel like doing more, maybe get caught up helping someone else out or talking. Before you know it, you’ve spent 3 hours without eating, and you’ve burned through enough calories for everyone in the gym. It’s not ideal if you are looking to really make gains. Instead, make your workouts hard, heavy, and super efficient. Don’t fuck around. Put your head down and goto work. Here are a couple other suggestions.

– Supplement with plain BCAA’s or even a protein/carb mix during your workout.

-I recommend Biotest’s Surge for those looking to add mass, and True Athlete’s BCAA’s for those looking to maintain size, but get stronger, and definitely avoid loss of muscle. Drink a serving during your workout to help avoid throwing away gains.

– Stick to simple, but challenging programming. I am currently 6 weeks into 5,3,1 by Jim Wendler, and I love it. I’m in and out of the gym in around and hour to an hour and a half, and I leave feeling spent but strong. From a strength standpoint, I’m as strong as I’ve ever been. Lean & Lovely is also a highly recommended resource for the ladies. It was written by a very trustworthy strength coach, Neghar Fonooni. Bottom line here…The more optimally your time is spent exercising, the better your results will be.

-More warmup sets and more progressive overload – 

One of the cool things I’ve learned running 5,3,1 is how working on bar speed and form during a solid amount of warmup sets can benefit even an advanced lifter. I used to only do a couple warmup sets on my compound lifts, but now I’m always starting light, and fast, working to heavy and obviously less fast. I’ve noticed myself feeling good no matter how I begin when walking into the gym. Moving fast fires up the nervous system, opens up your mobility, and gives you more confidence with your form when you do 5 or so warmup sets before the working sets. Again, don’t fuck around. Bust through those sets, then get to work.

When it comes to overloading, always…always track your sessions. You must make sure you are constantly in a struggle against the weights to make significant progress. It’s easy to convince yourself that a working set was tough, but the more you keep track and see the raw numbers in front of you, the more your competitive self will shine though. You’ll push yourself more by seeing what kind of weight you’ve done in previous sessions. You’ll also get a better feel and waste less time guessing when warming up and loading up the weight.

Finished-Bulking

3.) You’re nutrition and recovery just aren’t matching your training or goals 

I saved this one for last because it has applied to me big time recently. I’ll put it out there bluntly and say while yes I want to be strong as hell, which I think is my asset, I also want to look like a fucking predator. I want it to be obvious that I work my ass off in the gym. I certainly have the training aspect taken care of, but it wasn’t until a discussion came up with a friend about my eating, that it became obvious I wasn’t eating for the way I wanted to look. I may have been eating healthy, but it didn’t match up to my goals. There is no true right or wrong method of eating. It’s more complicated than that, and I will save those posts for Mr. Andrew Ferreira. In the mean time follow these simple rules.

– When trying to shed only a couple of pounds of fat off an already in-shape (10%ish body-fat) physique, limit majority of carbs to post training. On days you don’t train, stick to meat and veggies. Read here for a more in depth look at what we mean.

– Get 6-8 hours of deep sleep. If it takes you awhile to fall asleep, plan for that, and get to bed earlier. Deep sleep is the most overlooked part of body-composition transformation.

– When trying to put on lean mass, read this post about re-structuring your breakfast, and load up on good food after training and at night. Stick to the highly digestible carbs with your meal like sweet potatoes, jasmine or white rice, quinoa, or regular potatoes.  Introduce muscle building smoothies after training and before bed as well.

Closing up here, it’s clear there are a ton of you, including us, who really enjoy seeing incredible results from our labor in the gym. The last thing we want is to feel lost or confused as to why we aren’t making progress. These tips aren’t the be all end all, but they are a start, and hopefully you can take one or two of my suggestions and implement them right away.

Also, Andrew & I have been working hard with our online coaching program, and have spots opening up soon. Contact us on the page below if you are interesting in learning more about how we can help change your life for the better.

>>> Show Me Strength’s Coaching Program <<<

Nutritionally Controlling the Autonomic Nervous System by Pat Davidson

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Note from Andrew:  We are privileged to have this guest post from Pat Davidson today.  Over the past couple of months, I’ve gotten to know Pat and everything he does is next level.  From training like a savage to integrating PRI concepts in the pursuit of Herculean strength, he is the real deal.  This piece takes nutrition to the next level…Enjoy. 

How to Think About Food

The main thing that I think about with food is the way it effects my autonomic nervous system.

The nervous system is the controller of the other organ systems. Electrical messages are sent along axons, which reach the terminal end of the wire, and then a chemical message is sent to a receiving structure. The chemical message, when sufficient to cause a voltage change inside the receiving cell causes the cell to open gates and to activate G protein second messaging cascades. When gates open or second messaging systems are put into action, cellular behavior changes in rate.

Cells typically alternate between exergonic and endergonic chemical reactions. If the cell is behaving in an exergonic manner it is giving energy off, and endergonic behavior involves the cell taking energy in. The electrical/chemical messages coming from nerves are a major player in determining whether cells are trending towards exergonic or endergonic function.

The nervous system can be divided into the somatic and autonomic divisions. The somatic nervous system controls the excitation of skeletal muscle. Every other organ system function in your body is under autonomic control. This means that digestion and absorption at the gut/endothelial lining, as well as circulation of foodstuff, and the movement of substrate across the cellular lining are all phenomena that fall under the domain of autonomic control.

This article, will explain two ways where we can respect the autonomic nervous system and honor the authentic functionality of each branch via proper nutrient timing and eating foods that do not promote an inflammatory/immune system activating state.

The autonomic nervous system is housed within the medulla in the brainstem. The brainstem is in the hindbrain, which is a primitive brain location from an evolutionary perspective. The forebrain is where conscious thought resides, and the hindbrain is where subconscious brain matters are located. This is fortuitous because it would be very demanding from a conscious thought perspective to have to regulate heart rate, the opening and closing of arterioles, determining the extent of liver action, kidney filtration and reabsorption, and the countless other organ actions that must take place on a constant basis to survive as an organism on this planet.

The autonomic nervous system is divided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic centers. Each branch effects the organs of our body in different ways, often times in a way where the two branches mirror one another. Finding balance between the two branches of the autonomic nervous system and being able to alternate from sympathetic to parasympathetic dominance is critical to the overall health and performance of the human organism.

Generally speaking, activation of the parasympathetic nervous system is essential to be able to digest food. The parasympathetic nervous system is also associated with the secretion of broken down food products into the blood stream, and it tends to promote the secretion of many of the anabolic hormones within the body. So to maximize the ability to absorb nutrients from food that you eat and to get those nutrients into cells where you can promote anabolic (endergonic) cellular reactions, shifting the body into a parasympathetic state is extremely desirable.

If we cannot escape from a sympathetic state, we cannot maximize digestion, absorption, and cellular uptake of nutrients. Furthermore, the sympathetic nervous system is also associated with activation of the immune system. When the immune system is activated, this tends to promote an inflammatory state within the body. Inflammation is associated with closure of blood vessels, which prevents nutrient rich blood flow from being able to reach tissues of the body.

Foods that promote an inflammatory state and an immune response prevent us from being able to shift solidly into parasympathetic dominance and being able to digest, absorb, and deliver nutrients to cells. Therefore, this is a relationship between food choices and autonomics. Since autonomics is the controller of every organ system of your body this means that to some degree the food choices you make determine everything about the function of your body and your overall health and wellness. In essence, you are what you eat.

My main focus from a dietary perspective is to respect my autonomic nervous system and to not insult the balance between the two divisions.

My sympathetic nervous system is my driver during waking hours. It excites me, fosters an exergonic state, helps promote my ability to perform mechanical work, and keeps me focused. My sympathetic nervous system is not my primary digestion, absorption, and cellular uptake driver. Based on this, I do not eat much food for breakfast and lunch on most days.

My parasympathetic nervous system is most dominant at night while I am asleep. Sleep is the greatest regeneration period for the human organism, and it is the time where we can really accomplish some good high quality digestion, absorption, and cellular uptake of nutrients. Based on this, I eat the majority of my calories at night before I go to bed.

This is of course the opposite of what most nutritional recommendations from government sources and registered dieticians say to do, but as a country we’ve been consistently getting fatter and fatter since we started following what those governing bodies had to say, so I naturally do exactly the opposite on principal alone. It’s nice that there is a very logical explanation that supports my nutrient timing beliefs that stems from authentic knowledge of anatomy and physiology as well.

The immune system responds to tissue trauma and to foreign invaders that can be found in the blood stream. When trauma or a foreign invader is detected, the immune system sets off a cascade of events that results in white blood cell proliferation, inflammation, vasoconstriction, and a host of other chemical responses. This chemical cascade is fairly stereotypical and reproducible. The immune system response is one that is initiated because a threat has been presented to the body. From an autonomics standpoint, the sympathetic nervous system is the division that is activated in response to threat. We must therefore ask the question, are there foods that create a threat to the body? The answer from an autonomics and immune system perspective is yes.

Gluten and Inflammation

The gluten protein is a casing that surrounds the sex organs of wheat based plants.

Plants do not have any desire to provide other animals with nutrition. Plants are trying to survive and pass their genes off to the next generation to keep their species alive on this planet. Plants have developed defensive strategies to be able to prevent their sex organs from being destroyed when an animal eats them. The gluten protein is one such evolutionary plant based defense strategy.

The human digestive processes are not capable of breaking down the gluten protein during digestion in the gut. This means that when we absorb foods with the gluten protein, the gluten casing is still intact when it enters the blood stream. Gluten is something that the human body perceives as being a foreign invader, and as a result, the immune system is activated, and a sympathetic state ensues. Some of the signs and symptoms of an activated immune system include leaky gut syndrome, an increased prevalence of auto-immune conditions, inflammation, swelling, gas, and bloating.

The medical community as well as many nutritionists seem to only focus on Celiac disease when it comes to gluten. This is a mistake because anything that is activating the sympathetic nervous system and the immune system can exert effects on any organ system in the body, and which organ system is most effected will be a highly individualistic experience. Gluten is probably the most insulting inflammatory and immune system activating food choice for most humans; however, it is certainly not the only food choice that can set off this cascade. Dairy, legumes, and nightshades are also high up on the list of offending agents.

What I Do

So what do I do from a food choice perspective and a nutrient timing perspective to maximize my autonomic responses on a daily basis?

First, I go with the bulletproof coffee (BPC) in the morning. Caffeine stimulates the sympathetic nervous system which gets me going. The sympathetic nervous system, with its release of epinephrine and norepinephrine is a powerful agent for causing fat burning because these adrenaline based hormones activate hormone sensitive lipase which liberates fat from fat cells.

In addition to the fat mobilization properties coming from caffeine ingestion, the medium chain triglycerides (MCTs) that go into the BPC are optimal for cellular uptake at working cells that can burn fats. MCTs do not oxidize within the blood vessel (and therefore do not promote endothelial lining inflammation), and they readily cross the plasma membrane and can be quickly broken down to Acetyl CoA to enter the Krebs Cycle via Beta Oxidation inside the cell. The protein that is added to the BPC provides an amino acid influx into cells for protein synthesis, which is nice for a strength athlete, and the ingestion of protein has a powerful satiety effect for preventing extreme food cravings during the course of the day. I also add cinnamon to my BPC due to the fact that this substance has been shown to have outstanding effects on sustaining appropriate blood glucose levels.

The second thing I do is I wait until late in the day to have a big meal, and this is the time when I deliver carbohydrates to my body.

Typically I train during the middle of the day. I don’t worry about post workout supplementation or anything like that. Yes, the research shows that there is a tremendous uptake of amino acids post workout within the anabolic window, but it also shows that there is a big drop off in amino acid uptake and protein synthesis later on.

So, in my mind it all evens out, and worrying about getting food in during the mysterious and elusive anabolic window is something that could be stressful for people to have to worry about, which could ultimately do more harm than good for some people from an autonomics perspective.

The exercise bout during the day does something really fantastic for me though, it dramatically increases my insulin sensitivity. The primary function of insulin is to promote the cellular uptake of blood glucose. Delivering glucose into cells is a very valuable action because it can promote increasing stores of glycogen, which is a powerful energy substrate for high intensity exercise bouts, and glycogen stores must remain high to prevent the release of high levels of cortisol.

If I wait until later in the day to eat my carbohydrates, particularly if I perform exercise prior to carbohydrate ingestion, I will maximize the binding of insulin to its receptor on the plasma membrane, and this will drive a powerful response of cellular uptake of sugar and protein…the two primary ingredients for promoting muscle growth, and muscular performance. In addition to these responses, it seems that glucose and insulin also promote a parasympathetic shift in the autonomic nervous system as well. If I can drive this shift later on in the day, this will be a nice way to prepare my body for sleep, which is the most important regenerative activity for the human body.

Experts?

It seems that we are inundated with dietary recommendations on a daily basis in the United States. Every expert seems to have some kind of plan for you.

How many of these people ever really trace their recommendations all the way down to the most fundamental levels of anatomy and physiology though? Very few from what I’ve seen. Most so called experts regarding food still focus on calories in vs. calories out, which is a nice concept from a superficial perspective, but ever since our country really bought in on that concept we’ve done nothing but get fatter and more diseased.

In truth, the laws of thermodynamics are unavoidable, and calories in/calories out still is king; however, if you’re counting the calories going into your mouth as the critical ones, your perspective is all wrong. The only calories in/calories out counting that matters are the ones entering and exiting your cells. This calories in/calories out concept is an endergonic/exergonic matter, which is an electrical/chemical matter, which is a sympathetic/parasympathetic manner. Food equals autonomics and autonomics equals organ regulation. Organ regulation equals health. Health equals feeling great, looking your best, and performing at a high level. Respect the hindbrain.

Now Read: 10 Nutrition Thoughts for the MLB Off-Season

IIFYM: My Take on The Good, The Bad, and Everything In Between (Part 1)

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Calorie counting is a real bitch.

Say you order a large hand-made pan pepperoni and bacon pizza (one of my college dietary staples for those wondering). Honestly, who wants to go through the arduous process of heading over to the Dominoes website and checking to see how many calories there are right before you commit carbocide.

But let’s say you decide to do it. Your brain’s thoughts immediately transition from hot, sweet lust for that pie in front of you to WTF.

Here you are all excited to eat this pizza that’ll probably leave you feeling better than any imaginary sex you’ll be having later on and there you go and induce a momentary onset of depression because it just hit you that you’re going to consume 2,000 calories in the time it takes you to watch one Family Guy episode. 1800 of which your vegan hipster girlfriend will remind you are satanic for your heart. The purported evils of saturated fat is a story for another time.

This all transpires because you’re trying out some sweet new eating philosophy called, “If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM for short)” whose sole maxim is that you can eat whatever you want throughout the day as long as your end totals equate to what they were supposed to.

The practice works because your body (at least over the short term) will respond to whatever stimuli you provide it with and won’t fight back with insulin insensitivity and low testosterone until you’re at least three kids deep with a miserable wife and then you try and get lean.

I’ve used IIFYM to get crazy lean (report me to the internet police for the selfie below). During that time I ate my fair share of ice cream, pizza, bread, candy, etc. All foods that have been deemed not only dangerous for your health but even worse for your abs that have been hibernating all your life. It’s just not the case if your macros were given to you by someone who is equally good-looking as he is intelligent…like me.

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Before you start salivating uncontrollably over all the junk food I just described, let’s take a look at some of the ways IIFYM successfully goes about changing body composition:

1) Generates dietary flexibility

Besides now acknowledging that all diets will fail eventually (you are welcome), we are all well aware of the worst kinds of diets. They are the ones that eliminate your favorite foods FOREVER. Now with that last statement, I’m making one giant assumption that you are like every other human in that you crave foods that are both fatty and loaded with carbs. Call me crazy, but I can’t think of anyone that willingly will list a spinach salad without any croutons as their go to cheat meal.

So the resident guru from the latest Amazon best-seller says that if you eliminate chocolate for the next six months, fat loss will accelerate by 147%. Sure, for some time making that sacrifice is cake. And then a few weeks have passed and suddenly one day you think that Comcast is intentionally psychologically assaulting you because there have been ten chocolate commercials in the last three hours.

Eventually the intense urge passes until suddenly it doesn’t. You have created such a psychological vendetta against having chocolate that the craving becomes uncontrollable and next thing you know you are sitting there on the couch Dwight Goodman style exhausted because you just ate enough chocolate to feed several hundred trick or treaters. By telling yourself you cannot have said item, you make your body want it that much more.

IIFYM eliminates this problem because essentially there are no foods that are off limits. Have 200 calories left over after you just ate dinner? By all means, eat that chocolate or whatever other vice you’ve been thinking about all day being a cube monkey at work.

Flexible dieting (term created by Layne Norton?)  is essential to adherence. A diet or lifestyle modification that says you can’t do X behavior or consume your favorite food will always fail because your psychological desire for that one thing you cannot have will always overpower your will power. In this sense, IIFYM is brilliant.

2) Instills order into chaos

You’ve heard of Martin Berkhan yes? If not, he and Brad Pilon are the men responsible for bringing fasting mainstream. More importantly, have you seen the kinds of meals that Berkhan’s clients eat while simultaneously getting outrageously lean? Take a look here and here. (don’t if you are already hungry).

Old school wisdom says that there is no way people should be able to get that lean eating what they do. Fat cells should hypertrophy at a rate greater than Barry Bond’s head following his visits to Balco.

But they don’t because through the implementation of specific macronutrients, Berkhan has instilled order into the typical chaos that is a refeed day. His clients may consume four boxes of Frosted Flakes and be in a caloric surplus of 20% but there is minimal fat gain because implemented into the macro totals is a deep understanding of human physiology and metabolism.

You see, human de novo lipogenesis (the conversion of carbs to fat) just doesn’t happen. It’s incredibly inefficient and doesn’t actually start happening at a meaningful rate until you consume enough carbs to exceed your total daily energy expenditure (Hellerstein 1999).  It’s just never going to happen. I’ve had some legendary days of eating in my time but I think it’s fair to say that I’ve never come to close to that level of carb intake. The result? A refeed day of high protein, high carb, and minimal fat intake contributes insignificant amounts of added fat but instead serves to increase levels of leptin, thyroid, and testosterone and more importantly signal to your body a surplus of energy, spurning the body to burn more fat.

The typical refeed day prescription goes as follows: eat whatever you want. Not very scientific if you ask me. It’s fair to say that even if it’s unregulated, one day can only contribute so much to fat gain and it won’t set you back weeks or months in terms of losing body fat but if your goal is to get shredded, precision matters. For that reason, IIFYM instills order in a manner that free for all “cheat” days don’t.

3) Eliminates the Feel of Dieting

I’ve never been leaner than I was in those pictures above. Technically, to get to that point, if you want to put a label on what I was doing, I was “dieting,” yet I certainly didn’t feel that way.

Now, I wasn’t nor have I ever been bodybuilder stage ready lean where more than likely you feel like crap before/during/after the show. My training sessions were still high octane and I felt like I had at minimum maintained my strength levels despite the overall caloric deficit. Further, and most importantly, I felt I still had the same sex drive as my baby fawn 16 year old self, meaning my testosterone levels hadn’t taken a nose dive the moment I transitioned from lean to shredded.

These are all important considerations given what typically happens metabolically  as you progressively lose more and more body fat. Sure, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. My rest day macros (high protein, moderate fat, low carb) forced me to be strict in what I ate. There were definitely some minor hunger pangs and yes I had to make some sacrifices in what I ate meaning I couldn’t scarf down the post-game pizza like the rest of my teammates. But this was all manageable because I knew tomorrow was a training day and I could eat like a glutton if I so choose. On these days, I regularly consumed 500+ grams of carbs. There wasn’t a food choice off limits and subsequently my cut was a piece of cake.

Contrast this scenario when my former inexperienced self tried to take on the Paleo Diet in an effort to stay lean following a surgery where my training would be somewhat limited. My meals consisted of nothing but dining hall chicken breasts (cardboard tastes better), hamburgers without the bun, and salads. I became a carb nazi because I had read Robb Wolf’s “The Paleo Solution” and thought that carbs were basically the devil.

I WAS MISERABLE.

My training went through the shitter, I got sick, and I honestly don’t think I got any leaner then when I had started. My experiment with the Paleo Diet concluded with an all out binge I had at dinner one night with the dining hall bread. I swear it looked like I had never seen bread before with the ferocious manner in which I attacked it.

Of course, I could have structured my plan a bit better but I remain convinced that it would have always felt like dieting to me even if Robb Wolf himself wrote my meal plan. There is no dietary flexibility and it was far too restrictive with the elimination of carbohydrates (for the most part) from everyday living.

I’m convinced IIFYM coupled with intelligent carb cycling eliminates the feeling of dieting altogether. I have too much anecdotal evidence from myself and clients to think otherwise.

Who I’d Program It For

I think there are specific target populations that IIFYM works best for. Just like you wouldn’t program tabata front squats for a pregnant woman approaching labor, in my opinion IIFYM is best served given specific demands or when certain conditions are present.

 1) If You Want To Get Shredded

Let’s define as anything under 10% body fat. I say 10% because it’s a heck of a lot leaner than most people think it is and you’ve probably never been 10% body fat. In general, to get shredded, unless you’re a genetic freak, will require some sort of calorie and macro counting. From previous posts you know that your body has a multitude of reasons evolutionarily for fighting you while trying to get lean. Getting lean is tough but losing stubborn body fat is even tougher. It’s stubborn for a reason, as your brain is smarter than your limbic desires.

You will encounter fat loss plateaus on your journey to magazine cover lean. Fact. Pushing past such plateaus will necessitate a subtle adjustment in either your caloric intake, macronutrient make-up, or both. It’s surely a pain in the ass but it’s the only way you can be scientific about what your next step is.

But let’s examine the other situation (don’t track macros) just because I like writing obnoxiously long blog posts and having you read them…

Putting it mildly, chasing that 8th ab (which doesn’t exist) without tracking macros and calories is like asking for a unicorn for your birthday.

Given that you have some reasonable idea on what you’re doing, fat loss will happen. Assuming that your body doesn’t churn out levels of HGH like Andre the Giant, fat loss plateaus will occur and then the broscience takes over.

Say you make a seemingly reasonable educated adjustment to eliminate carbs at dinner time. Fat loss begins again and everything is all sunshine and rainbows. But what you didn’t realize is that by cutting carbs at dinner time you just eliminated 400-500 calories from your diet putting you at 1300 calories, which is too low even for my grandfather who God bless him does nothing but watch soccer and ask for more cookies all day.

Boom, another plateau happens sooner than the last one did. Cutting calories worked once so let’s do it again. Yet, the scale doesn’t budge and you start looking the exact same week to week no matter how much HIIT you start to program in. Instead of incrementally dropping calories in an intelligent manner that will allow you to “fool” your body to give up it’s fat stores, you cut calories too low too fast and your body is chucking up a big middle finger at you. It senses an extreme energy deficit and thinks your starving to a point where no reckless all weekend carb binges are going to fix your now defunct metabolism.

Be content with the 12% body fat you’re at because you ain’t getting any lower. Not this time around, at least not anytime soon.

If you’re looking to get shredded, you got to count or at least have a fairly good handle on what you’re intaking every day.

2) The Skinny Fat Guy

The easy answer would be a traditional bulk. You know… the “See-Food” diet where you eat anything and everything in the attempt to finally gain some muscle and look like you’ve lifted everyday for the past 10 years of your life.

Bad approach.

For reasons I discussed in my previous article, this gentlemen’s insulin doesn’t listen to what he wants so it is damn near impossible for him to partition nutrients adequately. All this means is that a traditional bulk will be an utter failure. Sure, our test subject will get bigger but it’ll be like transforming a clementine into an orange. Bigger size, same shape.

A better approach is a to either get lean first or to make physiology your bitch and undergo a body recomposition where you mix signals of anabolism and catabolism to your body within a mesocycle.

Sorry, I made that sound a lot more complex than it actually is. Basically, on days you train, eat in a caloric surplus (an anabolic signal) and on days you rest, you maintain a caloric deficit (a catabolic signal hopefully targeted at your fat cells). While I maintain that getting lean first will give you better results, our skinny fat brethen is in a unique position where a macro structure like this would serve him wonders.

A macro based approach can take your skinny fat body to the next level. We can’t just tell him to follow a general carb cycling approach because he could easily create a caloric surplus when he’s giving free reign to go ham on some bacon all day. Maybe he’s a stressed out New York City executive who enjoys a bulletproof coffee or six throughout the day. Well, that added grass-fed butter and coconut oil is going to equate to about 1000 calories of fat and that’s not even counting the grass fed filet mignon (if those exist), he’s about to crush for dinner. Instilling order into chaos is necessary when what we signal to our body needs to be handled with precision.

Anthony Mychal has some great information on transforming the skinny-fat syndrome. I encourage you to check him out.  

 3) The Advanced Trainee

I’m of the opinion that we need to look past someone’e physique in making the determination on whether or not someone can be considered advanced. If you’re a bodybuilder, figure competitor, or anything of the sorts, yeah we get it, you know what you’re doing. But for everyone else…

Some people have just won the genetic lottery. You know, it’s the same old story of someone that eats like shit, never trains, and yet still has a better body than you will probably ever attain.

Take a quick peek over on Instagram and see whose considered a fitness expert these days. I’m not one to make sweeping generalizations but if you’re very attractive, have a kick ass body, and post pictures of yourself working out, chances are you got about a million times more followers than me (go follow me right now). I’m not naïve enough not to get it but does that mean these individuals should be handing out diet and supplement advice because they got a sweet body? Sure, some are qualified. But the majority? I think not.

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Exhibit A

It’s quite possible to be in excellent physical condition and yet health wise be an utter disaster. You got abs? Cool, it just sucks you got bowling ball sized LDL particles floating through your blood vessels.

Habits and in turn behaviors that stem from habits are the key to unlocking an individuals apparent readiness for IIFYM implementation. I can recall having a conversation with the brillant Pat Davidson earlier this year and he asked how my nutrition was. I told him that I typically started out my day with some Bulletproof coffee. He didn’t need to ask another question because he knows that people who are keen enough to add in coconut oil and grass fed butter first thing in the morning probably have their shit together the rest of the day.

Here’s by no means a definitive all-encompassing checklist, but it’s a start to where I would begin:

  1. Do you try and get some serving of protein, preferably animal sourced, at every meal?

  2. What’s your vegetable intake like? If you know you aren’t the best with getting an adequate amount, do you supplement with greens, either Athletic Greens or Amazing Grass (just like Bulletproof coffee, if you’re intaking something like Athletic Greens, you more than likely have your act together

  3. What’s your saturated fat intake look like?

  4. Do you earn your carbs by training or practice some form of intuitive carb cycling

  5. And most importantly, Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings… who ya got? There’s one right answer here.

If there’s some reasonable understanding and adherence to some variation of the above checklist, particularly the right answer to numero cinco, then IIFYM can do wonders for whatever specific goal you’re targeting by dialing in the precise macronutrients.

IIFYM is not rocket science. If you did well in second grade math, you can handle the calculations once you start reading the labels on everything you eat except that pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream that accomplishes nothing but making you feel bad.

Yet, if your habits suck, I don’t care that your double bicep pose is the best at your local Planet Fitness. In my book, health and vitality come before aesthetics. Generate good habits first and subsequently “healthy” behaviors and then you can worry about hitting your macros.

The Wrap Up

There are a lot of benefits to IIFYM and the flexible dieting movement in general. I like it a lot and for that reason I have personally used it myself and with a fair amount of clients.

Despite the glaring benefits, IIFYM is not a perfect system and I don’t think it’s appropriate for everyone. In my next installment, I’ll explore the subsets of the population who I think IIFYM is contraindicated for along with issues that arise with lifestyle design, transitioning to maintenance, and long term considerations.

Until next time,

 A.F.

P.S. We have the most badass shirts on the planet.  Check them out here.

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Look Better Naked This Summer: 9 Lessons in Body Composition Transformation

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You can catch updates about our training, and learn more on our philosophies on becoming awesome on the field and off at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  You can find the first three installments of “Look Better Naked This Summer,” here and here, and here (all about intermittent fasting).

Back in college, I remember having conversations with some of my meathead buddies about what our ideal body was. It usually went a little like this:

 Andy (me): “Hey guys if you could have one body, would you be Brad Pitt in Fight Club, Gerard Butler in 300, or Tom Hardy in Warrior?”

 Paul: “Well, seeing how Tyler Durden hasn’t eaten a carb since ‘Nam, I’m going to go with my man Leonidas.

Ethan: “Admirable choice, but come on Durden is the ALPHA if I’ve ever seen one. I’m buying the abs with the power. After all, you’re not you’re fucking muscles.”

 Andy: “Tom Hardy. Traps, ‘nough said.”

I’ve had this conversation probably way more often than I’m proud to admit. We’re all about a bit vain sometimes. After all, you’re the one reading an article about looking better naked you vain bastard.

Anyways, my point is that we all, whether we have consciously discussed it or not, have a picture of what our ideal body image is. Whether your subconscious aligns with the three choices above or you are more a Fat Bastard in Austin Powers type of person, the answer is irrelevant. I’m not going to give you some cliché garbage about chasing your own best body because that’s honestly not how any of us approach looking better naked. We all have an ideal we are chasing, whether or not it’s healthy psychologically.

That’s why I started to write this series. I want to help all of you look better naked and feel comfortable within your own skin. When you look better, you feel better. It’s science. Whether through intermittent fasting, meditation, or even how to drink alcohol with an ab-centric mentality, each of these tools was designed to get you closer to you goal. However, looking back, I suppose subconsciously I wrote these pieces under the assumption that you were close to reaching your desired destination. Sure, each of the tools I laid out will work regardless of your situation, but they formed better pieces to a puzzle that was almost completed.

What if you’re not close to reaching your body composition goals? Maybe, you are one hundred pieces deep into a 5,000 piece puzzle. The journey has just begun for you and instead of worrying about striations in your glutes, all you want to do is feel healthy again in the hopes of building an impressive body as an indirect result of creating a healthy lifestyle.

 Where should you start? Let’s begin

Lesson #1 Avoid Crazy Intense Crash Diets

Going on Amazon and searching for the latest diet best seller is not the answer you’re looking for. Sure, reading all the fantastic reviews and starting something new will give you that oh so addicting dopamine rush that we’re all addicted too. Initially, you will make all the crazy sacrifices that the author espouses because he or she promises you will lose 17 lbs in 6 hours.

You will lose weight. Guaranteed.

And then the novelty effect will wear off. You won’t be excited anymore to eat 500 calories a day and the realization that this protocol is absolutely miserable will set it. Adherence to the diet will slack and because the sacrifices were so extreme you will probably put the weight back and then some.

Avoid novelty seeking.

Lesson #2 Build Successful Habits Slowly

I’m not ashamed to admit that I stole this concept from Precision Nutrition because I think it’s absolutely brilliant and the key to sustainable body transformations.

Where do most diets fail?

They throw the kitchen sink on you and don’t teach you how to build any habits. When I used to get a new client, I used to give them a checklist of about 15-20 different things that they would have to implement in order to lose weight. Sure, some were successful because they could handle the information overload but so often many would fail and adherence to my coaching would be lackluster.

I failed because I never taught them how to build habits. I tried to change their body without first transforming their lifestyle.

So much of what we do everyday is habit based.

Who do you think will maintain a healthier body: the individual who wakes up in the morning, meditates, and then makes a spinach omelet or the individual who packs a heater and goes to Dunkin’ for coffee and donuts to start their day. Both are habits. Both will lead to far different health and body composition results over a long period of time.

I suggest you focus on building one habit at a time until it becomes second nature. Once it becomes second nature, add another. For some it may take a few days, others a month but you must begin any body transformation with successfully altering your habits.

Start with ones that will take the least psychological resistance for the most physiological benefit. Thanks John Berardi.

Here are some that I suggest you can begin to implement:

Habit #1 Start each morning with a tall glass of water with either Athletic Greens or Amazing Greens, healthy serving of Fish Oil, and a probiotic.

 

 

 

 

Habit #2 Eat real food 90% of the time. It’s nearly impossible to overeat on real food.
Habit #3 Intermittent Fasting is great, but start your morning with some derivative of a spinach omelet
Habit #4 Having a healthy serving of animal protein at every meal (40 grams for guys, 30 grams for girls)
Habit #5 Veggies are your new best friend. Have them at every meal
Habit #6 Earn your starchy carbs. Keep them limited to post training

These aren’t revolutionary concepts in the world of nutrition and body recomposition but if you begin implementing them one at time, you will see immediate improvements in not only your health but your physique as well.

Lesson #3 Prioritize nutrition

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” – Some wicked shamt dude (Einstein)

Bro-science will tell you that losing weight and subsequently fat is 94.3% nutrition and 5.7% training and 100% whether or not you’re ingesting the latest supplements proven to magically eradicate any fat cells forever and always. Despite the hyperbolic ads, the last statement is unfortunately false. The first notion by our broscientist, however, has some significant backing by science.

The exact numbers are neither able to be calculated nor are they relevant. What is important to note is that what you put in your body will 100% determine what you look like over the long-term. You could have a reverse pyramid training program designed from the man, the myth, the legend Martin Berkhan himself but if he forgets to attach his IF macro prescription, chances are you’re going to look exactly the same.

Dominating our nutrition is all about signaling to your body exactly what you want it to accomplish.

You see, your body is stupid. It’s an incredible survival machine that performs these outrageous unconscious homeostatic regulatory operations but it’s dumb as rocks at the same time.

It has no idea that you passed on the chocolate cake last night because you want to lose some of your spare tire. All it remembers is the pizza you housed right before you went all “Holier than Thou” on the chocolate cake and decided to abstain. What resulted was that your fat cells hypertrophied a bit while you slept like a baby from your sugar induced coma. Bastards.

For reasons I’ve discussed ad nauseam in my past blog posts (you should read them), your body doesn’t want to give up body fat. It doesn’t make evolutionary sense and quite frankly it won’t until you provide it with adequate reasoning (and appropriate stimuli) to facilitate such processes to occur.

You got to keep insulin low for long periods of time. More important than that is you have to maintain a caloric deficit. Just like your boss doesn’t care if you work 17 hours a week or 40 as long as his bottom line is green, your body doesn’t care if you ate organic, grass-fed, hormone-free, anti-biotic free, pesticide-free (is this obnoxious yet?) and you bought your beef from a hipster in Harvard Square. Surplus calories = weight gain, whether or not it’s the healthiest food ever created.

Want to build muscle?

Well, first make sure, your insulin actually cares about what you have to say before you try the latest bulking diet you get from your buddy. If you’re skinny fat, insulin cares for what you want as much as that hot girl in high school you were in love with who smiled at you because she felt bad.

Slowly warm insulin up to you. Buy her flowers. Tell her the guy she’s dating (fat) is an asshole and should break up with him immediately. You could even profess your love for insulin and tell her exactly what you want (which is to get her sensitive to you).

This is terrible dating advice by the way so forget about the girl you’re in love and simply focus on your less than ideal fat deposits for the time being.

How do you accomplish this?

Obviously get her to breakup with the asshole and start to submit to your wishes is step one. You do this by getting lean first and then trying to build the house when you already have a solid foundation. By getting lean, you give yourself the opportunity to make the same transformation Ryan Reynolds did in Just Friends. Insulin starts to recognize that you want to build muscle and boomshacalocka you take down your great white buffalo and start to build some pecs and fill out that reverse v-neck because you were able to partition nutrients into your muscles. Being able to tell insulin what to do allows you to lose fat, gain muscle, and build the body you desire. She’s gotta love you first though.

I wish I had some magic formula to jumpstart this whole process. The truth is the basics win.

Steve Jobs said, “Stay simple, stay stupid.” If that mindset could build my iPhone 17, it can certainly help you accomplish your body composition goals.

John Berardi has made a gazillion dollars teaching people how to do the basics very well. Stick to my nutrition habits above until you stop seeing progress. (Hint: you won’t ever stop). When you’re better than the 99% and want to join the elite, then complicating has it’s time and place.

Lesson #4 Kill Program ADD

I love me some dopamine.

You see, I’m still a professional pitcher working to make my dream come alive and make it to The Show. The difference between getting to the top echelon in anything and not making is so small that I look for any advantage or new tweak I can to propel me forward. Usually, this has something to do with mechanics and my ability to throw the ball where I want to better. Every time I struggle I look to find something new to help me improve. And you know what, once I convince my warped mind (you have to be mentally deranged to play baseball for a living) that it’s going to work, I’m walking on cloud 9. Why? Because my dopamine receptors just got high.

It’s a terrible approach and it’s exactly the opposite of what I should be doing with my mechanics and you with your training program. Trust me, I understand the mental challenges of sticking with one thing for an extended period of time. It’s monotonous and requires exertion of extreme mental energy to see it through.

It’s necessary, however, to see true progress.

You see, physiologically, again it all comes down to providing your body with adequate stimulus. You have to give your body time to adapt to each subsequent stimulus in order to achieve the desired result.

For example, say you were going to go on a ketogenic diet (not something I recommend with high intensity training but moving on). You’ve heard that it’s absolutely incredible for shedding fat quick and fast. Problem is, after say two weeks, you don’t see the desired result and give it up to try some other magical solution you just read about. Problem is, your body needs time to adjust to a ketogenic diet and to start utilizing ketones to fuel your body. If you transition out of this diet before your body has had a chance to adapt, you’ve actually never even given it a chance to fail.

The same goes with training program hopping. My good buddy Travis wrote a guest post about it here.

Say you start Show and Go by Eric Cressey and don’t feel like superhuman after week 6. I doubt it since I know first hand he’s a Jedi master when it comes to programming but let’s just roll with my thought experiment. Well of course, you haven’t achieved what you want to yet. Show and Go is a 16 week program and he wrote it so you could feel like Hercules after week 16, not 6. There are planned cycles of adaptation throughout the training program. Jump ship early and you will likely miss the super compensation that follows.

Find a training program that works. For a period of time, listen to one person and one person only in the industry and absorb and try everything that person has put out there. Whether that be EC, Jason Ferruggia, Chad Waterbury, Show Me Strength, etc, it doesn’t really matter. All are great options and all will work if you give them a chance to run its course. If you jump from Cressey to Bruno to Romaniello, then you’re probably shit out of luck and you’re only cheating yourself.

Un-dopamine yourself.

Lesson #5 Trust the process

I’m going to be completely honest, building successful healthy habits is not the quickest way to lose fat. Within the past year, a family member, much to my disdain, went to a local weight loss clinic run by a MD and dietician. For the moment, we’ll overlook the fact that most doctors get at most a month of nutrition education in medical school.

What was the brilliant advice she was given? Eat 500 calories a day. I’m not kidding. And you know what, it worked and truth be told she lost fat way faster than if I told said family member to focus on eating a fistful (PN’s term) of protein at each meal. But shitty science only wins in the short term. 500 calories a day is neither responsible advice nor can it be maintained over the long term. Metabolisms crash resulting in rebound weight gains far greater than what was lost initially.

There was no process. The mindset, forced presumably by the clinic’s business model, is a demand of overnight transformation. Damn you evolution for not letting people lose 27 lbs of fat in two weeks.

Overnight transformations don’t happen and if by some Dr. Oz miracle they do, they won’t be maintained.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his excellent book “Tipping Point,” often talks about moments where things suddenly explode and grow exponentially. If you look close enough, often times the boom isn’t random, rather set off by a singular or string of events. His tipping point doesn’t just apply to business and making tons of money or starting fashion trends.

There are tipping points in body transformations.

Take our individual who has struggled to lose and keep weight off for years. He finally ditches the old model of crash fad dieting and looks to a more sustainable solution. He starts to buy into the process. What results is that he starts to build successful healthy habits. Sure, at first it’s difficult to incorporate each new behavior and fat loss is slow initially. But then after a few months it all clicks.

These healthy habits suddenly become second nature.

Getting up and having a good breakfast full of healthy fats is no longer a chore. Instead of overloading his carbs throughout the day, he becomes keen on the idea of earning his starchy carbs and training hard to do so. Eventually, what started out as marginal incremental fat loss has turned into a pound a week because suddenly habits turned into behaviors prompting exponential increases in fat loss. The transition from conscious to subconscious incorporation of our healthy habits was the “tipping point” in this body transformation.

The best part in our hypothetical example? When he has finally reached his goal, it will be easily maintained because it was accomplished over a long period of time through creating lasting change in behaviors. He won’t have to consciously try and maintain his success because his success is now a product of who he is and what he does daily as an individual.

It is what happens when the process is trusted over immediate gratification.

Lesson #6 Set a big goal

Big goals require us to take big action.

 Who is going to push himself harder to run… the individual whose goal is to run a 3k or the individual whose goal is to eventually run a marathon?

 I think the answer is clear cut and obvious.

 When the novelty (there I go again with dopamine and novelty) wears off, setting a huge goal will keep you on the path through the monotonous grind that comes with it. If you stay small in your aspirations, blowing off what you have to do becomes a lot easier to justify in your mind.

 Only want to lose five pounds? Sure, “I can eat that large pizza and drink 13 Bud Heavys on a random Tuesday night, I’ll just be better next time.” Contrast that with a soon to be mother who wants to fit into the jeans she haven’t been able to since high school and it’s clear to see whose motivation will inspire long lasting action and eventually sacrifice to reach a goal.

 Start big and don’t you dare worry about being realistic. I’ve heard it said one to many times that being realistic is the quickest path to mediocrity. And to quote one of my favorite movies of all time, “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, moderation is for cowards.”

Lesson #7 Keep objective measurements to track progress

The truth is that measurements don’t lie.

Sure if you’re big goal is gigantic biceps, it’s ideal that you fill out your youth medium polo a bit better after finishing your 17th drop set of bicep curls with a 301 tempo. But actually measuring them from time to time will give you objective data from which you’ll know if your bicep specialization program is actually working. If they haven’t grown over a period of time, you know you have to change something up.

The same goes for fat loss. Which is a better means of finding out if your changed lifestyle habits are working: Hearing from your friend who is an absolute sweetheart (the kind who would tell you you looked hot after pillaging through a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts after hitting the elliptical for an hour sans shower) you look great these days, or keeping objective body caliper and girth measurements. Sure, getting and then tracking those measurements can be a pain in the ass but wouldn’t you want objective data telling you whether or not what you’re doing is working.

If, for example, the measurements haven’t changed in a few weeks, it could be time to decrease the calories slightly (if you track macros and calories) or really hone in on when you have starchy carbs.

Also, while very subjective, the mirror doesn’t lie. If you look better than you did a month ago, it’s because whatever you are doing is working so don’t change it. If you want to cheat the system, just make sure your girlfriend picks out the mirror you use so always look good with impeccable lighting. Just kidding ladies, I love you 🙂

Lesson #8 Hire a coach

There are people out there (like me) who get people to look better naked for a living. While you can learn just about anything from the internet, you’ll likely suffer from paralysis by analysis and end up having no idea what to do.

It happens to me all the time with subjects I don’t have much firsthand knowledge about. Google is the death of me.

Just the other day, I was about ten hours deep into research that started after simply googling, “How to Get a Smoking Hot Girlfriend?” My brain was awash with conflicting reports. Google told me to be nice but too nice. One guy told me to be a charming asshole. Others told me that if I stare intently, but not creepily, into a girls eyes for 89 seconds straight, she’ll be smitten. If my girlfriend is reading this, know that’s exactly how I won you over.

The point is if you want to make such long-lasting incredible transformations, get off google.

Like I said earlier, before listening to the resident bro-scientist in the gym, find a reputable source and see their training and nutritional philosophies through. What works even better is if you can hire that person to work with you individually. While there are many products out there that work great, they can’t be individually personalized to fit your unique needs. This is where a good coach comes into play.

A good coach can build you a solid nutritional foundation while accounting for the weekly business buffet meeting you have to attend each week. While a good training program can get your strong, they can’t necessarily fix your butt wink at the bottom of your squat while getting you strong simultaneously.

 Details matter. Don’t sell yourself short with a cookie cutter program and end up spinning your wheels for years on end. Save yourself time, frustration, and likely money by hiring someone who knows what they’re doing.

Lesson #9 Do it for yourself

At the end of the day, the only person that can usher in lasting transformative change is you.

Despite how well you want to look good for your significant other or impress at work, you should want to make lasting change for yourself first.

Cliché? Sure. Truth? Yes.

Make personal change because you want to enact a new life for yourself. That’s why I love the Scrawny to Brawny program. Sure, on the surface it’s about building muscle and getting jacked but it runs so much deeper than that. With muscle comes confidence and with confidence comes a desire to do big things in the world. Things that wouldn’t be possible if these men had remained scrawny (not in their body type but in their mindset).

Challenge yourself with how much you can improve. You are the hero of your quest. Don’t stop until you reach apotheosis.

Of all the lessons I just laid out, this is far and away the most important one. If you use all my lessons to transform yourself for someone else, when you reach the climax of your journey, you will be left empty and unsatisfied.

Do it for yourself. Be born again and the rest of your life as your own hero awaits you.

Where To Go From Here

Throughout the article, I’ve mentioned a number of great resources that you can use to catapult your on the path to success. Two in particular that I want to highlight are the Precision Nutrition program and Scrawny to Brawny. They just get it. I urge you to check them out and see what they have to offer to your own transformation.

Forgive the self-plug, but a lot of the principles here that I discuss here are what Chad and I are doing with our lifestyle coaching program. We’ve had great results so far and would love for you to join us. Check us out here.

Until next time,

A.F.

Look Better Naked This Summer: Intermittent Fasting 101

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You can catch updates about our training, and learn more on our philosophies on becoming awesome on the field and off at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  You can find the first two installments of “Look Better Naked This Summer,” here and here

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June 18th.

 As we get into the heart of summer, it’s crunch time to looking and feeling your best. Now, personally, I think everyone should make it part of their mission in life to feel and look good year round but for vanity purposes, summer time is where it really counts.

 Now if you’re the guy (or girl) who likes to take their shirt off at parties and bars well hell more power to you. Because that’s become more socially unacceptable the older I’ve gotten, I’ve resolved myself to eventually live in a climate where shirts (ideally clothes) are optional year round. My reasoning is purely based on the scientific fact that it’s more efficient for Vitamin D absorption, relegating any vanity notions as purely side notes that have never crossed my mind for more than two seconds. It’s science brah.

My life goals aside, it’s about that time where you need to look lean and you needed to look lean yesterday. So let’s figure out how to do that in installment #3 of Look Better Naked This Summer.

 Tip #1 Use Intermittent Fasting to Get Photo-Shoot Ripped

 Ever since The 8 Hour Diet came out early last year, the internet has been a buzzing with a fasting craze.

 “Eat whatever you want, but restrict it to a certain time period, and there’s like a 1483% chance you’ll have abs by next week” – Resident Bro Scientist

Wrong. Erroneous on all accounts. If Newton ever tried to get shredded back in the day, he’d be surely rolling over in his grave based on that bastard attempt at good science.

The truth is that macronutrient intake (how you make up that macronutrient intake is a post for another time) is the most important aspect to losing body fat (aside from the obvious caloric restriction). If your macro calculation resembles anything like my senior year calculus homework, then frankly you are shit out of luck. No amount of fasting, sans starving yourself, is going to make a appreciable difference.

If however, your nutritional knowledge is seasoned enough to know the difference between protein, fat, and carbs and how those three pieces fit into a nice puzzle equating to fat loss, then intermittent fasting could certainly take you to the next level.

 Let’s discuss the science for a second. Don’t worry you don’t have to have graduated from Harvard to understand the basics (I dropped out, we’re solid).

When you eat, your body uses that energy for food. Well duh, thanks Andrew. As your fast prolongs, your body shifts from pure glucose oxidation to begin utilizing your bodies’ fat stores for energy. We know this because there’s some fancy measurement tool known as the Respiratory Quotient (RQ) that quantifies what your body is utilizing for energy.  While RQ is between .95 and 1 (pure glucose for energy) two hours after a meal, after 16 hours of fasting, your body’s respiratory quotient is .72. Pure fat oxidation is denoted by a measurement of .7. (Source: Martin Berkhan)

 What all that really means is that the longer you restrict food (fast), the greater amount of time your body has to use body fat for energy. Contrast this with someone who eats six times a day and whose blood sugar is constantly elevated and you can see why intermittent fasting is a preferable means to lose body fat in the shortest amount of time.

 Here are a couple examples of clients of mine (and me) who have used IF fasting to get humbly “woah that guy is shredded” lean.

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As you can see, it works. So how would I go about implementing it? To clarify before we jump in, I recommend 16 hours of fasting for males and 14 hours of fasting for females.

1) Honestly Assess Where You’re At

If you’re a male above 15% body fat or a female above say 22.69% (yes, that’s the cut off), then intermittent fasting isn’t a necessity. Of course, you’re still more than welcome to adopt it but eating real food and getting your macros in decent shape are more important in the fat loss hierarchy.

 If you’re at a place where getting as lean as the pictures above is within reach, then I recommend IF 100%.

 2) Understand the Hunger Pains Go Away

 Over the first couple days of fasting, you’re going to get hungry and at times it’s going to suck. For the majority of people, we fall into habitual patterns of eating. Whether that schedules includes three-four moderately portioned meals a day or you’re more the 1 meal large pizza and a few too many 12 oz curls type of eater, your body comes to expect foods at certain times throughout the day.

 You can thank gherlin for that. It’s a hormone released by your body when it is hungry or expects to be fed. He doesn’t care how devoted you are to fasting for 16 hours, gherlin wants energy and he’s going to make himself known in your stomach until he’s satisfied.

Tame gherlin for a few days and the hunger pains will go away. I promise.

 3) Adopt carb cycling

 There are a couple fat loss principles that are essential to implement.

 Understand that carb manipulation is the key to rapid fat loss

 Understand that pizza and cake are not only allowed but encouraged to get sexy

 Sure, you can go low-carb for 17 weeks straight and get lean but that sounds about as fun as getting as root canal. And in truth, because of a bunch of fancy hormonal interactions, my 12th piece of pizza on Saturday night is going to get me leaner than your 4th serving of chicken breasts and broccoli.

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I’ll go into the specifics of carb cycling in my next installment but understand that if you’re not manipulating carbs the right way, I’d bet my house that I don’t have that you’re not going to be as lean as you want come the July 4th Block Party.

 4) IIFYM

 If you’re not familiar with the nerd speak in the fasting community, IIFYM stands for “If It Fits Your Macros.”

Basically, if you have someone who knows what they’re doing (like this guy) then you can eat whatever kind of food you want as long as at the end of the day you eat precisely 17 grams of fat like you were told to.

 Word of caution: if your diet guru ever prescribes you 17 grams of fat as a daily intake, you’re getting bamboozled.

 You heard that right. Pizza, cake, brownies, beer. If somehow you can Huddinhi your way into fitting all those foods into your macros, then you will A) lose fat and should B) write a book detailing how you managed that.

 I’ve done a pint of ice cream, six bagels, and a bag of goldfish but never have I managed to squeeze the above combo into my IIFYM.

 Personally, I don’t love the concept of IIFYM over the long term for health reasons but assuming you have better insulin sensitivity than an obese chimpanzee, then I see no problem in imploring such a protocol for the summer.

 5) Don’t Expect Magic

 If done correctly, IF works. The results I have seen with both myself and clients is a testament to the efficacy of adopting an intermittent fasting framework.

And yet, IF is not going to take you from Dwight Goodman at the end of Dodgeball to Arnold in a matter of weeks. In case you forgot, after Peter LaFleur went all Matrix on him, Dwight put on a pound or two.

dodgeball

 Understand this upon its adoption. There is still no magic pill out there that allows you to defy the laws of thermodynamics and evolutionary biology. At the heart of our deconstruction, we’re still just hunter-gatherers living in a foreign environment where having abs unfortunately didn’t let you get laid any easier 50,000 years ago.

 Where to Go From Here

 There are many fantastic resources on the web regarding the nuts and bolts of intermittent fasting. I’ll warn you that The 8 Hour Diet isn’t one of them, but I do wholeheartedly recommend Jason Ferruggia’s Renegade Diet.

RenegadeDietBook3DA

 I also heard through the grapevine that there are two handsome gentlemen offering online coaching to do exactly what I extolled throughout this piece… to look better naked. Check it out here.

 P.S. Chad and I are close to announcing a body transformation contest in the coming weeks where we’ll actually pay you to look damn sexy by the end of it. Be on the look out 🙂

How to Look Better Naked This Summer: Part 2

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You can catch updates about our training, and learn more on our philosophies on becoming awesome on the field and off at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

With the conclusion of Memorial Day weekend, it means one thing. Well besides, it meaning the end of lacrosse season (thank god), summer is upon us. And as baseball season gets into full swing, there is something else all of us pumping with testosterone through our veins can look forward too…

 White pants are in again.

 Now you won’t catch these thunderous quads dead in a pair of white pants, but every guy out there over the age of 4 knows that white pants are one of the best parts of summer. I won’t name names but one of my best friends weaknesses is curly hair and white pants. He’s handsome too for all our female readers out there.

 But I digress. Before I say something not PG for all our toddler readers, here’s part two of getting you to look fanasstic as summer gets into full swing.

 Tip #1 Hip Thrust Your Way to a Better Booty

You really didn’t think I was going to spend the entirety of my introduction drooling over white pants and not tell you how to fill them out better. You and I both know I’m better than that.

Everyone with an X chromosome loves a good butt. Yes, that would be the entirety of the world population. Unfortunately, finding a good butt is about as difficult as finding a good Nicholas Cage movie. Whether it’s the overindulgence of thousand calorie lattes at Starbucks or the questionable dogmatic belief that running somehow sculpts your ass, you just don’t find a good backside with high frequency anymore.

That's not ideal

That’s not ideal

Let’s change that and do so we’re going to have to use some unconventional methods. Anyone that’s been around the fitness industry in the past few years is no stranger to the fact that Bret Contreras has changed how we think about training the gluteals. He’s uprooted and destroyed the common belief that squats and lunges are the best exercises for your booty. Great exercises that everyone should do more of but the best exercise for not being able to fit into jeans? Nope, try again.

That designation belongs to the classification of exercises that in my best biomechanics verbiage most closely resembles you humping the air with a barbell on your hips. Literally. (Side note: delving into the biomechanical proof behind the superiority of the hip thrust is beyond the scope of this article. If you’re interested, check out Bret’s site.)

Without further ado, world meet the hip thrust. Hip thrust in all your infinite glory meet the Show Me Strength community. If you’ve never done one, I implore you to start. Like yesterday. Not only will you fill out your pants better, your back will start to feel better (we sit our butts all day, most of our glutes are asleep leading to all sorts of dysfunction).

 If you’ve never bridged before, here is how I would progress you to full out hip thrusts which is probably the most difficult variation.

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 Step 1: Add bridges to your warm-ups.

Double leg then progress to single leg. Two sets of 10 will get you feel them firing. Because for most of us our hamstrings are our dominant hip extensors, you may feel some cramping in them as you bridge up. Pre-contract your glutes before starting each rep to counteract this.

 Step 2: Start to implement bodyweight glute bridges to your training program.

Start with 3-4 sets of 10-20 reps and progress your volume each week.

 Step 3: Add the barbell to the mix.

Once you’ve comfortable performing 80-100 bodyweight bridges during your program without your hamstrings cramping like you just ran 20 miles, then you’re ready for the barbell. I like programming it in your B) or C) exercises group with 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps.

 Step 4: Once you feel comfortable with the barbell glute bridge, add in the hip thrust and start having a hell of a time building that booty.

 You’ll get funny looks at the gym. It’s all good because you won’t be the ones getting funny looks at night or at the beach.

 Tip #2 Keep your carbs limited to the post-workout window

 The truth is that carbs aren’t the devil nor do they make you fat but you have to manage them appropriately if you’re going to lose fat in an efficient manner.

 The Y2K American has carbs for every meal. Buttered bagel for breakfast (I know many a college freshman that has gained 20 lbs from this combo alone), Subway sandwich for lunch, and god knows what carb concoction for dinner.

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 Clearly not a recipe for beach body success. Why?

 Because when insulin is elevated, fat oxidation (burning) is non-existent. If you think about it, it just doesn’t make evolutionary sense for your body to burn fat when it’s in the fed state. That would be counterproductive to survival during famine times.

 The physiology behind fat loss is a bit more complicated but the basic premise is that our bodies only utilize fat stores for energy when insulin levels are low. Thus, in order to maximize results in the shortest amount of time as summertime rolls around the corner, it’s imperative we manage our carb timing for optimal fat loss.

 If you train with high intensity (lift weights, sprint, crossfit, etc), you need carbs. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Go paleo while training with high intensity and you’ll be all but guaranteed to lose muscle and feel like crap in the process.

 By keeping carbs to the post-training window, we are taking advantage of our bodies anabolic window delivering the nutrients when and where our body needs to recover while ensuring insulin levels will be kept low in the hours following training.

 Note: Research has shown that there is no magic anabolic window where you have to get X number of carbs and protein in a certain amount of time post workout or you’ll shrivel up and die. That’s fine, we need not worry about such things. Refeeding post training will ensue glycogen restoration and initiate protein synthesis.

 I suggest a shake consisting of sweetened almond milk, rolled oats, protein powder, full fat greek yogurt, and frozen berries. Follow this up with some sort of starchy carb at the following meal (rice, sweet potato, potato) and you’ll be well on your way.

 Tip #3 Find a means to de-stress every single day

 Stress is the silent killer and it’ll make fat loss next to impossible. Remember, everything in biology only makes sense in terms of our evolutionary history. Getting lean, like “woah that guy is ripped lean”, is an inherent stressor to the body. Your body doesn’t want to give up that much fat. It’ll fight you every step of the way and if you’re chronically stressed, I can guarantee you’ll be fighting an uphill battle every step of the way.

Thyroid levels drop (the regulator of your metabolism). Cortisol and consequently blood sugar levels rise. Testosterone and growth hormone levels plummet.

 All that happens because you and your girlfriend constantly fight about you forgetting to put the toilet seat back down. Just kidding, an acute stressor like that won’t give you a spare tire around your gut but chronically stressing over relationships, jobs, and anything similar will be sure to give you love handles that will take a little more than some treadmill sprints to lose.

 It’s all about hormonal balance and managing your stress on a daily basis. We’re all going to have shitty days when our friend just looks at us the wrong way and we’re ready to jump them. It happens but if we’re going to win the fat loss war, managing these stressors is imperative.

My suggestion? Have something to do that de-stresses you everyday.

Check it out, it may just save your life

Check it out, it may just save your life

Have sex, meditate, play an instrument, get your girlfriend to give you a massage, give her one back on occasion, nap, etc.

The list is endless. I certainly have my favorites from above and it’s all about finding a daily routine you can incorporate to keep you stress-free or as close to it as possible.

Start to incorporate each of these into your training, nutrition, and lifestyle and I’ll be back next step with three more tips to help you dominate this summer.

If you’re looking for new recipes to spice up your “healthy” eating, Chad and I highly recommend Metabolic Cooking, a fantastic resource packed with over 250+ delicious recipes.

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Want our help? Click here to learn how we can coach you into a seriously awesome human being and get you into badass shape this summer > Show Me Strength’s exclusive online training and lifestyle design programs.

How to Look Better Naked This Summer: Part 1

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You can catch updates about our training, and learn more on our philosophies on becoming awesome on the field and off at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil tourism destinations

We unfortunately live in a society where clothes are mandatory. That comes with a caveat of course. Peering at the average waistlines of America these days makes one feel grateful that beach season only comes around a few months a year accompanying the depressing fact that Joe American is more likely to be found with a six pack of Bud than abs that could cut granite.

But I digress. Summer is right around the corner and I want all of you to look damn good naked. After all, what’s the point of having the body of your dreams if you are sitting at home cupping spinach leaves in your mom’s basement on a Friday night? Here at Show Me Strength, we want you to work hard to get what you want and then damn well you better show it off.

You may have a sharp laconic wit but let’s be serious, whose catching the hot blonde’s attention at the beach first?

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Joe+Manganiello+Joe+Manganiello+Beach+jJuco5oOexvl

‘Nough said. Here’s part 1 of our series where I’ll give you training, nutrition, and lifestyle tips to help fuel your pursuit of looking fanfuckingtastic when the lights stay on.

Tip #1 Avoid fatty food while drinking

No, this isn’t the most important tip to getting some abs or sweet curves but let’s be honest here it’s a party foul that almost everyone commits. It’s the summer and unless you’re the guy I described above (you goddamn better not be) then you’re not going to be drinking water at the beach or when you’re out and about.

Our inhibition falters when we drink so while you may adhere to the strictest diet in the world you’re still going to be craving a pizza while you’re drinking that zero calorie vodka tonic. And even if you’re like the “most normal non-anal oh my god I gained 3 oz last night” person, chances are greater than good that you’re going to have that pizza, maybe two.

Sure, one time isn’t going to kill you nor will the 3rd or 4th occurrence but over time this nasty habit that everyone’s guilty of will start to make itself known in your efforts to drop fat.

Here’s a brief primer on why:

Fat storage is an ongoing process as fatty acids are constantly entering and exiting fat cells throughout the day. As you eat protein and carbs, insulin rises and fat oxidation stops as you use the protein and carbs for fuel. Once insulin levels drop back down again, fat oxidation ramps back up as your body’s preferred source of energy. How much fat ends up being stored is regulated by caloric balance.

Alcohol changes the game. While protein and carbs do not directly contribute to fat loss in any meaningful way (yes, carbs don’t make you fat), the combination of alcohol and dietary fat will do some damage. Because alcohol is converted into acetate (poison to your body), it takes first priority in the metabolic hierarchy, meaning protein, carb, and fat oxidation cease until all the alcohol is burned up by your body.

Glass of wine here and there with some grass fed beef at night. Sure, no problem as the wine will metabolize quickly giving your body ample time to take care of bodily repair during sleep preventing any major fat gain.

Pizza, french fries, along with 12 beers is going to be a problem over time as all the dietary fat you eat you’re going to store that night.

My recommendation which I stole from Martin Berkhan: Enjoy yourself and when you choose to booze, keep your fat intake low that day.

Tip #2 Lift to maintain strength, diet to lose weight

We are slaves to our evolutionary roots and biology dictates the rules of survival. Understanding that context will make this maxim much easier to understand.

Don't hold the purse

Don’t hold the purse

Most people take the opposite approach: work out like crazy and hope it makes up for their crappy diet. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work as performing more cardio actually just makes your body more efficient at handling the extra workload (reduces your metabolic rate so you actually have to do even more work to burn the same amount of calories).

During hunter-gatherer times, we only burned significant amount of calories during times of extreme stress (escaping danger from a predator or food scarcity). Thus, it would be counter-productive to survival to induce greater rates of fat loss during times of extreme stress making the former approach to fat loss the wrong one.

A more appropriate way to achieving extreme levels of leanness is to train with emphasis on strength and muscle maintenance while gradually reducing calories to effect greater levels of fat loss over time.

For example, a training day that we utilize with clients in our coaching program would look like:

A) Barbell Bench Press 5×5

B1) DB Bench Press x5

B2) 1-Arm DB Bent Over Row x5

C1) Feet-Elevated Pushups x10

C2) Inverted Row x5

B1-B2 and C1-C2 are density based circuits where you rotate between the exercises for ten minutes as many times as possible

Tip #3 Compete with someone better than you are

The leanest I’ve ever been in my life came the summer when I challenged my college roommate that I would come back in better shape than he was.

Side note, if you’re interested in just how lean I was, check my tinder. Just kidding, well. I wonder if my girlfriend reads what I write. Matters.

Only problem was that my roommate was a college wrestler and probably the most ripped bro I’ve seen in person.

If I wasn’t dedicated to the cause, I would have no chance and that’s exactly why I succeeded as well as I did. He was better than I was which forced me to raise my level of preparation and dedication to the craft of losing body fat.

Though I regularly consumed over 500+ grams of carbs three times a week (does that count as dieting?), the fact that I had to eat absurdly well wasn’t a challenge.

Pizza on a low carb day? No chance, every day, every meal matters.

Body’s not feeling so hot so I should probably take it off huh? That’s what my wrestler buddy is saying when he’s three hours into a four hour workout. I’m sure he’s going to stop. Not. So I had to fight on.

There was no monetary value predicated on who came back in better shape. In truth, I signed a professional contract midway through the summer so I never got to find out if I would have come back in better shape. Winning a prize or inflating my oversized ego wasn’t what drove me.

I set a meta goal of achieving something that would be difficult and require unforeseen dedication to my diet that I had never put in before. I knew just how good I had to be so it was so easy not to cheat or give in to my temptations when they arose.

It’s summer time. We all have friends trying to get into beach season shape. Find someone that’s starting out in a better place you are and make it a point to beat him to the finish line. Whether that finish line is getting chiseled or finally feeling comfortable in your own skin is something you got to decide on your own.

“Being realistic is the quickest path to mediocrity”. – Will Smith

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Embrace. Fight. Prevail.