You’ve heard it before, and maybe you’ve even tried it.  Carbs and Fat should be kept apart in each meal.

Well … too bad that isn’t backed up by science.  Here’s an article by Alan Aragon going over the issue:

More proof that having fat with carbs won’t hinder fat loss

A relatively recent
trial examined the effects of 3 diets consisting of roughly 1400 kcals
each for 8 weeks, followed by 4 weeks of maintenance [3]. The diets had
the following macronutrient proportions: a) very low fat  (70% carb,
10% fat, 20% protein), b) high unsaturated fat (50% carb, 30% fat, 20%
protein), and c) very low carb (4% carb, 61% fat, 35% protein). Since
none of the groups were told to separate their fat and carb intake, the
high unsaturated fat group should have lost the least amount of fat
because of all that dreadful mixing, right? On the contrary, no
significant differences were seen in total weight loss, or loss of
bodyfat percent. And here’s the kicker: this lack of difference in
bodyfat reduction was seen despite the distinctly different effects
each diet had on fasting insulin levels.

Another recent trial compared
two 1500 calorie diets, a non-ketogenic diet and a ketogenic one [4].
Insulin sensitivity was equally improved between the groups. No
inhibition of fat loss was seen in the non-ketogenic diet despite the
fact that it was moderate in both fat (30%) and carbs (40%). In fact,
the non-keto group lost more bodyweight and bodyfat than the keto
group, although neither of these effects was statistically significant.
It appears that any threat of fat/carb combining slowing fat loss is
imagination-based.

Nails in the coffin, anyone?

The current body of research
focuses on obese, deconditioned, or untrained subjects. And still, the
moderate-carb/fat-combining fails to show a fat loss disadvantage over
carb-restricted or carb-separated conditions. Putting athletic subjects
through the same conditions would show even LESS of a difference. Since
fit folks have far better glucose and insulin metabolisms than the
unconditioned obese, nit-picky combination or separation would be a
nonfactor for fat loss.

The bottom line is that as
long as you’re aware of your macronutrient targets for the day, go
ahead and sludge that peanut butter into your oatmeal if your little
heart desires it. Leave the neurotic eating behaviors for those with a
lot of faith in fairy tales.

OK, the title of this post is a bit misleading.  But, it seems as though many people believe that “Diet vs Exercise” is a valid question with an obvious answer: Diet. 

They may not believe it consciously.  But, in their actions this is what happens.  In truth, of course, there is not an exclusive “or” separating diet and exercise – you need both.  If you want to change your body composition; if you want to increase performance; if you want to live healthier; then you have to pay attention to both.

That said, there is an ordering of the two. 

I can sum up my entire fitness-philosophy with two phrases:

1. Exercise before Diet.
2. Weightlifting before Cardio

These two phrases imply an ordering of the list {diet, weightlifting, cardio}.  My ordering is

1. Weightlifting
2. Cardio
3. Diet

What is amazing is that my ordering is precisely to opposite of the order in which most people go about getting “in shape”.  When someone first decides they want to make a change, the first thing they do is go on a diet.  After they’ve gotten that down, they add in some cardio.  And if by some miracle they haven’t given up yet, they finally throw in some half-ass weightlifting. 

I’m here to tell you to do the opposite. 

If you want to get any benefit at all related to fitness (fat loss, muscle gain, strength gain, etc) then you must begin with weightlifting.  Slowly add in cardio (but not the kind most people think).  And finally get a diet plan that makes sense.

Why? You ask.

Dieting by itself doesn’t work long term.  If you’re goal has anything to do with performance or muscle gaining, then you know this. But, people looking to lose fat seem to delude themselves into thinking that they can solve their physical problems with a “magic” diet.   I’m not even talking strictly of “fad” diets.  Even a well-designed diet is worthless in the long run without exercise.

When you go an a calorie restricted diet you put your body in a catabolic state.  This lowers many of your bodies “good” hormones, and increases many of the “bad” ones like cortisol. (OK, strictly speaking there are no good or bad hormones, but some are better for your fitness goals than others.)  The negative hormones will decrease muscle mass, lower metabolism, and make it harder for you to lose fat. (Ironic, ain’t it!)

This hormone change is a negative byproduct of dieting that you have to deal with. However you need to mitigate it.  Exercise increases the positive hormones and decreases the negative ones.  It helps preserve muscle mass, and increases both metabolism and fat loss. 

Yes, if you want to make fitness progress you have to have a diet in place. But, you can’t rely on it by itself.

OK, so exercise first, diet second. Got it. But, why not start with cardio?  There are 2 reasons.

One, even when we’re talking about interval training (like sprinting) we’re only hitting part of your body. 

Let’s be honest, however.  When most people start their programs with cardio, they are not doing hard sprints (or metabolic circuits which involve weights), they are using steady-state cardio (jogging and its ilk).  Steady-state forms of cardio just don’t confer the same metabolic effects that interval training or weight training do.  While both intervals and weight training (done with intensity) raise your metabolism for up to 36 hours after exercise (called the EPOC effect), steady-state doesn’t.

In addition, steady-state cardio will cause your body to become more efficient at fat burning.  While that may sound good, it is very bad.  A more efficient car uses less gas to go the same distance.  You want your body to be a gas-hog.  You want it to burn tons of fat with little time – not tiny amounts of fat with massive time!  Weightlifting makes you the Hummer of fat-loss.

Two, starting with cardio can increase injury rates.  Weight training is very controlled.  You only lift the amount of weight you can safely in a controlled pattern of movement.  Cardio is not as controlled – even on a treadmill or other machine.  Think about how many “repetitions” your legs do every time you go jogging, or when on on the stair stepper.  It’s in the hundreds to thousands.  That is a lot of potential damage.  Each impact is worth many multiples of your bodyweight, slamming down on your joints. 

Conclusion

When you start with weightlifting, you increase the positive hormones you body needs to reach its goals, you increase metabolism, you lose fat, you gain muscle, and you decrease injury rates.  No other one thing can do all of that.

Once you are comfortable in your weight training routine, you can add in some cardio work.  I strongly suggest some kind of intervals over steady-state (the only exceptions are distance athletes – like marathon runners, tri-athletes – and strength athletes, as odd as that sounds).

And finally, when you have a solid weightlifting routine and a cardio routine, THEN you can start worrying about your diet. 

Today’s tip is a simple one, and one I’ve mentioned before. But, it bears repeating (a lot): Throw away your scale.

That may seem harsh, but unless you are a competitor in a weight-classed sport (weightlifting, wrestling, etc) then owning a scale and getting on it regularly is a sure-fire way to screw up your progress.

Here’s the problem. Women especially, but increasingly more men, are obsessed with weight loss. Not fat loss, as they should. And when you care about weight loss, then you’ll do some stupid things that will cause you to lose more muscle and gain more fat.

Most of the advertising for fitness-related products and programs promise big weight loss. What they do is they devise a way for you to lose a bunch of water weight in a short period of time. Any moron can lose up to 20 pounds of water in under 2 weeks. But, odds are, you didn’t lose a single pound of fat, and you might have lost some muscle – a lose/lose situation!

You all know how much I love watching the Biggest Loser (read my defense of it here), but they are particularly bad about this issue. Every week, contestants get on the scale and compete to see who lost a higher percentage of bodyweight. Since the contestants are so dramatically big (some of them carrying 300 pounds of extra fat), weight loss is highly correlated with fat loss in the beginning. But, once they get nearer to their goal weight, it gets brutal.

The reason being, they are gaining muscle at the same time, and that makes weight loss hard. They can still be losing fat at the same rate they always were on the show, but because it’s based on percentage of body weight, and their overall fat levels are now lower, they can’t possibly lose 2% per week! It’s just basic middle-school math, people.

What’s wrong with all of this? Weight loss is not the same as fat loss. Period. It’s only marginally related. You can lose both water and muscle at a much faster rate than you can lose fat. And guess what, you’re body would rather you did.

Some of this state of mind in our culture is the fault of the medical establishment that still pushes the BMI, the Body Mass Index, on an unsuspecting public. The BMI only tells you if you are heavy for your height, based on some antiquated notions of what “heavy” means.

Want to know something funny? Nearly every single one of the athletes I train is considered overweight by their BMI. In fact, I’m considered clinically obese!

How can that be possible?

Because scale weight tells you nothing important. Please read that again, and again, and again … till it sinks in.

Scale weight only tells you how much you weigh. It doesn’t tell you if you have a high bodyfat percentage, a large amount of muscle mass, strong bones (which weight more than weak bones), or if your carrying a lot of water. (Some women can gain a solid 10 pounds of water during their period – they didn’t get fatter. It’s just water, and it goes away when they are off their period.)

Scale weight is a lie.

What you should care about is if you have a low bodyfat percentage (teens to low twenties for women, high single digits to low double digits for men), a good amount of muscle, and strong bones.

Since muscle weighs a lot more than fat, then you can lose a lot of fat, gain a little muscle and not change your scale weight AT ALL.

This is common. Especially among people who have not seriously worked out before. If you have never done any serious weight training, expect to gain about 10 pounds of bone-mass alone. This won’t show in the mirror. You’re bones have been hollow for a long time, and now that you have been lifting weights, they are filling in. This is a GREAT thing. But, it makes you heavier.

If you are tall, then you can gain even more weight.

My best friend Brandy is 5’8”, and regularly weighs over 160 pounds. She’s well within the healthy range of bodyfat, and is carrying a ton of muscle. She looks great and is in great shape. But, when some women hear that she weighs over 160 pounds, they flip out!

“Oh. My. God!”

She looks so much leaner than that.

And there we hit the problem. They associate “lean” with “light”. When in fact it is usually the opposite. Athletes are the leanest and strongest people around. They are also heavy. If you are both small and light, you are either under 5’3”, have a remarkably small bone structure, or you are “skinny fat” and you need to lift more weight.

Throw away your scale. Start paying more attention to the mirror (and maybe a tape measure around your waist), and be more of an intellectual about your body composition. I promise you, you’ll be happier AND healthier.

The fact is, not everyone succeeds at sticking to a new fitness plan.  In fact, most don’t.  They might stick to it for a while, and even see some nice results.  But, at some point, the ball drops.

I think about this a lot, of course, since when a client of mine lets their fitness fall through the floor they stop coming in to see me!  I have a solid retention rate that I’m quite proud of, but no matter what I do, no matter how encouraging I try to be, I can’t keep them all.  That’s life.  You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves.

Top 7 Reasons People Fail at Fitness

• Unwillingness – I like to say often that Life is about Trade Offs.  You never get to have something without paying a price.  Sometimes the price low, in which case the choice is easy.  But, other times the price is high.   When it comes to fitness, many people see a steep price tag.  You have to watch your diet, consistently come into the gym, and work HARD when you’re in the gym.   That’s the price.  And if you aren’t willing to pay it, you will never succeed. 
• Self Esteem Issues – There are so many ways a coach can hear the words, “I can’t”.  Sometimes it’s simply a whiny sounding sigh.  Other times, it’s explicit, “I can’t do that, I mean it, there is no way that is going to happen.  Not if my LIFE depended on it.”  Truth is, when a client tells me they can’t, they usually can.  But they honestly don’t know it.  I know it, I’ve been doing this long enough to have a pretty good idea about what a person can and can’t take.  But, they don’t.  They have NO experience pushing themselves beyond their comfort zones.  As such, they are convinced they are less than they are.  This goes to more than just lifting in the gym, or doing their interval training.  It is a permeating force of “I can’t” that rules their life.  They’ll be doing something well, get right up near the end … and quit.  You ARE able to do this.  ANYONE can do this.  But, until you truly believe it:  Fake it till you make it.
• Blame-Game – This one is related to the lack of self-esteem.  If you find yourself failing, and your first response is to blame someone else, or some external object or situation, then you’re playing the blame-game.  OK, I know there are always those times in life when things honestly aren’t your fault (like getting hit by a car).  But, most of the time, at least part of the blame is squarely on you.  Take that to heart, don’t let it get you down, learn from it, and do something different the next time.  We all fail in the short term.  But, the people who succeed in the long term OWN their failures. 
• Sheepin’ It Up – This may seem ironic, given the nature of this article, but beware of advice-givers.  Obviously, you need to take advice.  But, make sure it’s good advice given by people who are in a good position to give advice.  For instance, if you are having relationship problems and you need advice, don’t ask your friend who has never been in a relationship that lasted longer than 6 months!  They don’t know what they are talking about.  (I always find it amazing when people hire out-of-shape trainers who clearly don’t practice what they preach.)  You don’t have to spend your life as a sheep.  You have a good brain – use it.  Good advice is education, bad advice is poison.
• Execute – All the good advice in the world is worthless if you don’t put it into action.  A famous coach, Dan John, once said, “Plan the work, work the plan.”  A coach can plan the work, but eventually only you can work the plan.  How many projects around your house do you “plan to get to?”  How often have you told yourself that you were going to start going to the gym.  “This year, man, this is it. This is the year I’m gonna go to the gym and eat right and take back my life!”  Well … that’s the plan, now do it!
• Closed mind – Sometimes you’ll get great advice, but you’re too closed-minded to take it (or even recognize it as good advice).  When I tell people that lifting weights will help them lose fat, I often get quizzical looks.  It goes against the grain (cardio is for fat loss, weight lifting is for muscle building … right?).  When I say that long and slow cardio won’t help them lose fat, I get rolled eyes.  The fact that they’ve been doing long slow cardio with no results for years doesn’t (oddly) occur to them as strange. 
• Over-competitive – This comes in two kinds: competition with others; and competition with yourself.  Both can be great motivators.  But, they can also be major motivation killers!  If you are constantly worried about what others are doing (and doing better than you) then you’ll end up paralyzed by irrational fears like, “I’m not as good as them, so I’ll NEVER be as good as them.”  The other is over-competition with your own self.   Setting unrealistic goals for yourself is a guaranteed way to set yourself up for failure.  Like, “I’m gonna lose 20 pounds in 10 days!” … come on.  A little competition is good, too much is childish.

Take a good hard look at the above 7 problems and ask yourself if you’re suffering from any of them.  I’m sure you are.  We ALL are.  But, the good news is that admitting a behavior is a problem is the first step toward changing that behavior.

If you’re ready to take yourself to the next level, make sure to contact me to get started on a new strength and fitness program today!

Two new studies add points to the Superset corner.   For most of my non-Olympic Weightlifters, I vastly prefer supersets to straight sets. [a super set is: do one exercise, rest a bit, do the second, rest a bit, go back to the first and repeat.  A straight set is: do one set of an exercise, rest, repeat.]  These studies just confirm it for me:

Reciprocal supersets produced greater exercise kJ.min, blood lactate, and EPOC than did [traditional weight training].

EPOC stands for Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption.  This is the system that causes your body to continue to burn calories long after you’ve stopped your workout (from 12 to 48 hours depending on how hard your workout session was – imagine how intense the EPOC is for Guergui Gardev in the above pic!  That’s intensity!). 

1. Kelleher et al. The Metabolic Costs of Reciprocal Supersets vs. Traditional Resistance Exercise in Young Recreationally Active Adults. JSCR 2010 Mar 17. [Epub ahead of print]

2. Paoli et al. Effects of three distinct protocols of fitness training on body composition, strength and blood lactate. JSMPF. 2010 Mar;50(1):43-51

[hat tip: A.C.]

Here’s some proof that the mainstream media is finally getting a clue that interval training is far superior to long slow cardio.  (There are some exceptions to this, but odds are they don’t apply to you.)

Hat Tip: Mike Boyle

Jason Ferruggia has a new post about what kind of coach he is, and what kind of coach he isn’t.  He’s basically helping to define his own niche for anyone who doesn’t know what it is.

The fitness industry is just like any other industry – it’s a field of specialists who know what they are good at and what they aren’t good at, and then everybody else.  If you look for a trainer and they tell you “I do everything: bodybuilding training, fat loss, functional training, strength training, gymnastics, tennis training, yodeling, etc” … find a new trainer.

If you have a specific problem, go to the guy (or girl!) who specializes in fixing that exact problem.   Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying your coach needs to be so tightly defined that he’s only got ONE focus.  But, anything more than 3 (maybe four), and we’ve got a problem.

One of Jason’s major points about himself is that he is not a “motivator”.

Here’s a quote from Jason:

If you want to sit around and eat donuts all day why would that possibly bother me? And why would I want to motivate you? I’m not Jenny Craig or Matt Foley the motivational speaker who lives in a van down by the river. What you do is your choice. Sure I will make fun of you, laugh at you and encourage others to do the same; but it’s your life, not mine.

If you are too stupid to realize that regular exercise and a healthy diet is a necessary part of life I’m not going to waste my time telling you. Get on some prescription drugs, order a sausage pizza and watch another episode of Friends.

OK, he’s WAY more intense than I am.  As you know, I’m a ridiculously mellow dude.  I meditate, I read books about Zen, I love ABBA and Romantic comedies, have seen every episode of Sex and the City (twice), and have a habit of laughing at all of my own jokes.  But, I am also NOT a motivational speaker.

Someone asked me recently what the name of my strength training company was, and I replied, “PDX Weightlifting.”

“Oh,” they said, “I think that would turn off a lot of people.”

I replied, “Yep.  And that’s the point.”

You see, I’m not a yeller.  I’m not like Jillian Michaels from the Biggest Loser.  I’m not here to call you up on the phone, get you off the couch, convince you that it’s time to workout, force you to work hard, and then nitpick you every step of the way.  There are trainers who do that for a living.  They’re great at it.  You need to be DEAD HONEST with yourself.  If you NEED a trainer to be your external motivator, then you need to hire one of these guys (actually, they’re usually girls).

I ain’t that guy.  I’m almost the opposite.  I’m way too relaxed.  In the gym, I’ll make sure you’re doing everything correctly, I’ll watch your lifts, I’ll discuss any and all topics you want to about your goals and progress.  But, I’ll also be cracking (bad) jokes and being very silly.  I do a great job of keeping the atmosphere exciting and fun.  That’s my personality.  And I expect everyone in my programs to stay positive and have fun while they workout, regardless of how hard it is.  NO whining – period. I have no tolerance for whining.   If you start wimping out, that’s you’re own problem.  And I’ll focus my energy of the folks who are working hard with a great attitude.

I won’t force you to do something you don’t want to.  If you say, “I can’t do it”, I’ll agree with you.  If you say, “it hurts”, I’ll tell you to stop or modify till it doesn’t hurt.  This is because when a truly motivated personal tells me this, it’s probably true! And I’m not going to make you do something that will result in injury.

Unfortunately, unmotivated people say these things as knee-jerk reactions to anything hard and as a result never push themselves hard enough to make any progress.

One of my favorite clients of all time is my client and friend Beth.  She’s been working out with me for a few years now, and in all of that time, I don’t think I have EVER heard her say the phrase “I can’t”.  This woman’s an animal.  She’s more than tripled her strength levels, gone from “skinny fat” to seriously lean, and looks and feels great.  (She regularly tells me about moving couches and other heavy shit up stairs by herself!)  All I do is show her the most efficient path toward her goals.  But, she’s the one who does all the work.  And boy, does she!

When my people tell me “it’s hard” or “what the HELL are you having me do?!”, or “I’m going to kill you for making me do this”,  they’re saying this as a badge of honor.  They do whatever I ask of them, and they work their butts off.  They may be cursing my name in the process … make no mistake!  But, they do it.

If you have no personal motivation, you have no business doing business with me because you WILL NOT get the results you want.  I’m a “lead the horse to water” coach.  You hire me when you want over a decades worth of knowledge, program design skills, solid real-world advice, a fun atmosphere, serious weight-training, and serious results.

Tony Robbins eating Peter Griffin!

If you need more motivation, buy some books by Tony Robbins.  And hey, once you’ve figured out your sh%t and decide you are ready to see the best results of your life and have a blast doing it, contact me and I’ll kick your butt with a big smile on my face.

I found this passage pretty funny from Jason’s post:

People ask me all kinds of questions when they find out what I do for a living.

“How do I lose this?” (grabbing a handful of a 48 inch waist)

“I don’t know.”

“How long should I do the stair climber for?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t give up carbs but I want to get lean. What should I do?”

“I don’t know.”

“I only have twenty minutes to train, twice a week. What should I do?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know you’re into all that heavy lifting but I can’t do that. What can I do instead?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m a girl and I don’t want to get too bulky so how should I lift?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do I get motivated to go to the gym?”

“I don’t know.”

By training, I am a competitive Olympic Weightlifting Coach.  THAT is what I do.  I train athletes and people who seriously want to train with an athletic intensity on weightlifting-based programs.  Every program I create is built through the lens of a weightlifting coach.

If you are someone who wants to be able to answer YES to that question box on your job application that says “can you lift 100 pounds?”, and then laugh that that sounds light, I’m your guy.

This can include lots of different people from lots of different backgrounds who have totally different end goals: obviously, competitive weightlifters; athletes in any “power sport” like baseball, football, golf; and fitness folks who want to be in the best shape of their lives and lose 20, 40, or more pounds of fat.  The commonality is clear.  All my people lift weights – hard.  That’s the glue.

If you come to me wanting to lose 20+ pounds of fat, I’m not going to take it easy on you just because you aren’t in a competitive power-sport.  I’m going to hammer you just like I would anyone else on heavy weightlifting exercises and make you ridiculously strong.  As you’re losing that 20 pounds of fat, you’ll keep all your muscle, you’ll in fact gain muscle, become “toned”, learn a bunch of cool exercises like the clean and snatch, front squats, deadlifts, etc.  And you’ll start being able to perform in a way you never have before in all of your life.

The great physicist Richard Feynman once said that he approached every problem with only 6 tools.  Whenever a problem came up, he looked in his tiny little tool box, and tried all 6 of those tools on it.  If that didn’t work, he switched to a new problem.

I’ve found that there are things that I can coach at a high level given the tools that I have and things I can’t.  These are the ONLY things I do – 1) Competitive weightlifting; 2) power-sport training; 3) extreme fitness training.    3 things.  That’s it.  I’m great at these things.  But, if you want to become the most kick-ass marathon runner of all time … you’ll need to find someone else.  That just isn’t what I do.

This particular quote sounds very much like my own way of approaching coaching (hey, that rhymed!):

Often times people will tell me that they want to train with me and that I if they hire me or come to my gym I really need to push them. No, I don’t. You need to push yourself. You’re hiring me for my program design skills which are based on 16 years of experience. I am not a cheerleader. Any nitwit can yell at someone like a drill sergeant. Just because a workout is hard doesn’t mean it’s effective. Just because a coach yells loudly it doesn’t mean he’s smart.

If you can’t find it within yourself and are not driven to excel, there is nothing I can do for you.

I’ll give hard working, motivated, intelligent people everything I have. But for everyone else I have no time or patience. I know this offends many people. But it’s just me being honest.

I feel very lucky.  I have a great set of people to work with.  They all come in, work hard, joke around, have fun, and get into great shape.  Not a bad job.

If you ever need motivation to lose weight, try this one:

As a Weight Watchers group gathered for a routine weigh-in, the dieters got an idea of how far they still had to go: The floor underneath them collapsed, a Swedish newspaper reports.

“We suddenly heard a huge thud; we almost thought it was an earthquake and everything flew up in the air,” one of about 20 group members said to the Smalandsposten newspaper. “The floor collapsed in one corner of the room and along the walls.”

The TV show “The Biggest Loser” has been on for quite a while now.  It is extremely popular, and is touted by many to be an example of triumph over adversity.   But, there are a number of vocal opponents, especially in my industry–the fitness industry.

Among the charges against the Biggest Loser are that it sets up unrealistic expectations, uses unhealthy methods, is all hype and no substance, and is in fact perpetrating a fraud.

Of course, they are totally correct on most counts (except fraud, that’s going too far).  But, that isn’t the point.  What is?

In short, I don’t think you are so dumb that you need we trainers to monitor your television habits lest you fall into a pit of self loathing.  I think you are smart enough to tell the difference between a TV show and real life.

Entertainment is entertainment.  The Biggest Loser is first and foremost an entertainment reality TV program that does a very successful job of selling advertising.  But, it is about a subject that hits home for every American (and increasingly, the rest of the world).  I don’t believe it’s my place to call someone stupid for liking to watch (or God forbid, feeling inspired by) The Biggest Loser. I don’t think it is my place to tell the contestants that they don’t have a right to do the show, simply because it might be unhealthy.

Is the UFC good for us, or the contestants?  How about the WWE?  No matter how you look at it, getting kicked in the teeth is not healthy.  It is the choice of the contestants themselves to go onto the show in the first place.  It’s been 8 years that the show has been on.  They’ve likely watched every season before they got on themselves.  They know what they are getting into, they are adults, and who are we to tell them they can’t.

Again, we aren’t asking the guys at the WWE to quit doing what they are doing because it’s bad for their health.  We just want to watch Triple H slam a metal chair over the head of The Undertaker.  What’s wrong with that?

The detractors of the show feel like they are doing the “average overweight person who is desperately looking for a weight-loss secret” a favor.  As though, somehow, a fat person is also less intelligent than their thin counterparts, more susceptible to TV hype.

I trust people enough to be able to watch TV without falling off the deep end.  It’s just TV for God’s sake.

Instead of that kind of silliness, I’m just going to lay out what I think are the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of The Biggest Loser from the perspective of fitness coach.  You can decide for yourself whether you want to continue watching it.

And just for fun, I’m going to do it in reverse order.

The Ugly

Certainly not ugly

The ugly of The Biggest Loser is worse than the bad.  There are real health dangers involved for the contestants themselves.  During the first few months at the ranch, these very obese people go through workouts, and have workloads, that are absolutely insane.

Most athletes don’t even train for 6 to 8 hours a day.  Those that do built up to it for years in advance.  It is very dangerous to throw the contestants into a workout program like this out of the blue.

The show has already had a few disasters and hospitalizations.  There is real risk that someone is going drop dead eventually.  I know the show says that they have doctors monitoring them at all times, keeping track of what they eat, etc.  And I’m sure they do (given the risk of a law suit), but the producers need to watch out.

Diet is another issue.  Many weeks, the contestants are reported to be getting under 1000 calories a day.  Given their daily workloads, they are likely burning anywhere from 2000 to 5000 calories.  Do the math.  That is scary.

Of course, one sure fire way to lose weight is to create a calorie deficit.  And whenever you are training a severely overweight person, this is a must.  But, a deficit of 500 to 1000 calories is more than enough to accomplish that goal.

If you up someones workload to the level that they are doing on the show, then you up their need for glycogen, protein, and all sorts of micro-nutrients that are impossible to get enough of on such a low calorie diet.

When you overwork someone, and artificially keep their calories so low, you actually impede their progress, and (ironically) cause them to be  less likely to lose fat.  Instead, they’ll start to break down, lose muscle, become stressed out (via massive levels of cortisol)–all progress stalls.

Top athletes train like maniacs, but they also eat like maniacs.  Remember all the news stories on Michael Phelps diet?  He eats upwards of 12,000 calories a day so that he can train for the same number of hours as the contestants on The Biggest Loser.  See the problem?

As a coach, I almost never see genuine overtraining in anyone other than my competitive athletes.  But, these contestants are getting hammered.  They are nearly all massively overtrained by the 3rd or 4th week.  Some crawl out of it, others get booted (voted) off the show.

And then there’s the weigh in.  Competitors have been known to use any means necessary to drop every last pound for the weekly weigh in.  They’ll dehydrate, workout with heavy sweats on, not drink water for 24 hours, etc.  Not healthy.  Potentially life threatening.  But, again, it is their own choice.

They chose to go on the show and they chose to dehydrate to make themselves more competitive.  High school wrestlers do it all the time to make weight.  I don’t condone it unless you are under the supervision of someone who knows what they are doing, but it is hardly anything new.

Of course, all this craziness makes for great TV. The farther down the hole these people go, the more emotional they become, and then we get the crying sessions, the yelling, the storming out of the gym, etc.  But, it is dangerous.  Make no bones about it.

The Bad

Yoga is never enough

The Bad isn’t as bad as the Ugly.  These objections aren’t life threatening, but they aren’t good.  The primary problem in this category is the idea that The Biggest Loser gives people at home, who hope to lose a lot of weight themselves, an unrealistic picture of how to do it.

It is certainly unrealistic.  Who has time to do 6 or 8 hours a day of working out?  Who’s got the self control to do all that exercise, and then only eat 800 calories?!  I’d be at Crispy Cream every day (those of you who know me, know how true that is).

Losing more than 1 pound of fat per week is unrealistic for most.  Some people can do it.  And when you are 200 pounds overweight, then it is in fact likely that you will lose more than a pound of fat per week.  But, it is never easy.  It is brutally hard.

A great friend of mine, who is only 30 or 40 pounds overweight, recently sat down to talk to me about losing weight.  I suggested that to start she simply start by doing 20 minutes a day, every day, of something physical.  Nothing too complicated.  Get up in the morning, do a few sets of wall push ups, and some jumping jacks, for example.  If you can do just 20 minutes of light exercise every day for a month, you can build in the habit, and we can build on that.

Funny thing was, even that seemed like too much. The prospect of doing something everyday was daunting, and it didn’t matter that it wasn’t even supposed to be hard.  She’s a hard worker in every area of her life.  But, she’s not yet built the habit of daily exercise, and that is a tough habit to build.

The people on The Biggest Loser are going well beyond 20 minutes a day, or even 1 or 2 hours a day.  There is nothing easy about their diets and exercise routines.  They can lose 100 pounds or more in a season because they are dedicating every waking hour to that pursuit.  And they have a large staff cooking their meals for them, trainers pushing them in the gym, and no access to cheat foods.

At home, you don’t have any of that.  Instead, it is all on your shoulders.  Sure, you can hire someone like me to write you routines and push you in the gym.  You can hire a nutritionist to make you a diet plan.  But, I am not going to go to your house at 5am to wake you up and drag you into the gym (sorry, you can’t pay me enough).

Unless you’re rich, you aren’t going to be able to hire someone to cook all your meals.  And there is no way you can avoid the temptations of the modern world with a Star Bucks on every corner, fast food coming out our ears, and supermarkets where the junk is cheaper than the good stuff.

At home, it is all up to you.  That is hard.  Much harder than what the contestants on The Biggest Loser have to face.

A second problem is that extreme weight loss almost never works long term in the real world.  People who lose fat fast tend to gain it all back at a rate that is higher than those who lose the same amount of weight, but did it slower.  I’m convinced this is because when you do it slower, you build in something that is more important that the numbers on the scale–consistency.  Losing weight fast robs you of the time it takes to build habits.  If you are going to keep the fat off, you HAVE TO change your habits forever.

Changing your habits is not a matter of will power.  If it was, we’d all be able to do it all the time.  Changing your habits is about time.  The longer you plug away at something, the more ingrained the process becomes in your neural pathways.  Baseball pitchers can do what they do only because they have done it for so long.  When you first started learning to ride a bike, you fell off–a lot.  But, after plugging away at it, you made it a habit.  Now it ain’t nothing.

On the show, they don’t have time to build in a habit of exercise and healthy eating that will last a lifetime.  They take people out of their real lives and put them into fantasy land for a few months of high-action television.  And when these people get home, they have no way to integrate what they were doing in fantasy land into their real lives.

If you want to lose weight and keep it off forever, you have to start out by building in the routines, and make both exercise and diet a major part of your day to day life.  You know, your real life.  The one with kids, a job, bills, and no time.  Once you do that, you’re on the road to seeing a level of progress that is even more impressive than what happens on The Biggest Loser.

The last problem is the in-your-face advertising.  This season’s sugar-free gum ads are just wacky.  Every time Bob Harper pushes some gum on one of his trainees, I burst into laughter.  It’s become a farce.  But, in today’s world, how shocking is that, really?

The Good

Looking Good Now

Alright, no more bashing the show.  Now I’m going to tell you what I think is good about it.

There are two things that The Biggest Loser makes abundantly clear, that so many clients I’ve had didn’t believe (in their heart of hearts) until they saw the show.  The first is that losing extreme amounts of fat (over 200 pounds) is actually possible.  The second is that it is not going to be easy.

For nearly 2 decades Americans have been blaming obesity on genetics.  Sure, we knew fast food was bad for you, and that we should workout more, but in the end, our parents were fat, and that is why we were fat.  We were a country in denial.

The Biggest Loser has brought obesity to center stage and made it the most popular subject on television.  It shows some of the heaviest people in the country doing what we as a nation previously thought wasn’t possible.   They lost the weight.  They really did it.  8 seasons in a row, this program has taken mega-fat people and brought them down to size.  You can disagree with their methods, hate the hype, and I’m sure you could certainly do without the over-the-top advertising.  But, there is no denying that these people lost a LOT of weight.

Secondly, the show does a great job showing the contestants in a lot of pain. That may sound bad, but as a trainer, I think that it’s a good thing.  If you want results, the results you are dreaming of right now (I know you have dreams about changing your body–because we all do), then you have to work your ass off.  Period.

Now, obviously, I would want you to work into it slowly, get up to speed for a few months, and meet some benchmarks that I’ve set into place before we get too crazy.  But, hard work has to be on the horizon if you are going to get anywhere.

The contestants on The Biggest Loser are suffering.  They’re crying.  They’re whining.  And, in the end, they are succeeding.  This is a good message.  Sometimes things that are worth doing are very hard, but if you fight through it, you can come out on top, and you’ll be a better person for it.

Conclusion

So, there you have it.  Coach Nick’s version of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of The Biggest Loser.  Sure, the show has it’s problems, but the contestants are doing it of their own accord, and we have no right to stop them.  The show is hyped up like crazy, and it portrays an unrealistic way of losing weight for the average person at home.  But, in the end, it is only an entertainment TV show, one that shows real people in struggling situations, losing an amount of fat that too many people fear is impossible to lose.

On the balance, I’m for it.  Besides, it’s just fun to watch.

Ice Cream Sushi!

Great news for Athletes trying to pack on muscle mass.  A new study has shown that eating saturated fat can increase your appetite and trick you into thinking you need more food.

Since THE major factor holding back athletes who are looking to add large amounts of muscle (or even to maintain what they have–marathon runners, I’m looking at you!) is their inability to eat enough, this fact may come in handy.

My suggestion? Eat ice cream.  It’s high calorie and loaded with saturated fat which will apparently make you hungrier.  You get two for the price of one!

Of course, the article I found this tid-bit on was most worried about the implications of saturated fat on our overall health profiles.  But, that isn’t your problem.  You’re too skinny, and you need to muscle up.  That takes more calories than you can eat comfortably.   Science (and Ice Cream) to the rescue!

Below is the abstract to the  actual study (I hate that most articles don’t do this, especially when they are on the web).

Insulin signaling can be modulated by several isoforms of PKC in peripheral tissues. Here, we assessed whether one specific isoform, PKC-θ, was expressed in critical CNS regions that regulate energy balance and whether it mediated the deleterious effects of diets high in fat, specifically palmitic acid, on hypothalamic insulin activity in rats and mice. Using a combination of in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry, we found that PKC-θ was expressed in discrete neuronal populations of the arcuate nucleus, specifically the neuropeptide Y/agouti-related protein neurons and the dorsal medial nucleus in the hypothalamus. CNS exposure to palmitic acid via direct infusion or by oral gavage increased the localization of PKC-θ to cell membranes in the hypothalamus, which was associated with impaired hypothalamic insulin and leptin signaling. This finding was specific for palmitic acid, as the monounsaturated fatty acid, oleic acid, neither increased membrane localization of PKC-θ nor induced insulin resistance. Finally, arcuate-specific knockdown of PKC-θ attenuated diet-induced obesity and improved insulin signaling. These results suggest that many of the deleterious effects of high-fat diets, specifically those enriched with palmitic acid, are CNS mediated via PKC-θ activation, resulting in reduced insulin activity.

Normally your bodies cells are told to stop demanding food by a couple of hormones, leptin and insulin. This study suggests that certain saturated fats, particularly palmitic acid tell your brain to send signals to your bodies cells instructing them to ignore leptin and insulin.  And therefore, you can be “objectively” full, but not feel like you are.  So, you keep eating.

Clearly, if you want to lose weight, this is bad news.  Keep your saturated fats down, and stick to unsaturated fats if you can like fish oils and olive oil.

But, if you are trying to gain size, this is GREAT.  More ice cream, fried chicken, bacon, and even more ice cream!

(The image above is from SushiGallery.net.  Very cool.)

References

Benoit, Stephen C, Christopher J Kemp, Carol F Elias, William Abplanalp, James P Herman, Stephanie Migrenne, Anne-Laure Lefevre, et al. 2009. Palmitic acid mediates hypothalamic insulin resistance by altering PKC-theta subcellular localization in rodents. The Journal of Clinical Investigation 119, no. 9 (September): 2577-2589. doi:10.1172/JCI36714.