In my last post, I talked about my friend and client Josh, and his amazing success story. Josh had the worst possible “body type” (skinny, fat and weak) imaginable for achieving the goals of gaining lean muscle, increasing strength and losing body fat.
Yet, against the odds, he achieved all three simultaneously. How did he pull it off? Well, first of all, Josh refused to give up on himself. He was disciplined, motivated and passionate about overcoming the physical limitations that his DNA had so graciously “blessed” him with.
However, all the discipline and motivation in the world won’t do a single thing for you if you don’t have the right nutritional protocol and training program to back you up. That’s where I came in!
So in this post, I’d like to go a little more in depth on what I did to help Josh pull off the impossible. Let’s start with his training protocol:
Training volume- In most cases, alternating phases of high and…… …continue reading.
How many times have you heard the statement, “You can’t be too healthy”? Although I can appreciate the intention behind this assertion, I happen to disagree with it wholeheartedly. In fact, I believe that trying to be too healthy can actually be unhealthy. Sound counterintuitive? Let me explain…
For over 20 years now, I have read, discussed and experimented with just about every nutritional protocol out there. When I say “every”, I mean everything from the popular, mainstream nutritional plans to the most obscure and underground dietary theories.
While my clients often become my very brave test subjects, I always begin every experiment on yours truly. I have literally studied, dissected and applied all of the “best of the best” nutritional protocols to myself. Given my obsession with uncovering every possible way to be “healthy”, you would think that I would be superman by now.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Trying to be “too healthy” actually landed me in the emergency room recently. Even worse, my dreadful visit to…… …continue reading.
“Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.” “Don’t eat after 7:00 pm if you want to lose fat.” Blah blah blah. This well-known approach is recommended and adhered to by just about every dieter and fitness expert out there.
The fascination with this eating plan is based on the belief that eating late at night can make you fat. Why would eating late at night make a person fat, you ask? Here are some of the more popular reasons:
1) Since you’re less active at night, you’ll be less likely to burn the calories you just ate. This will lead to a greater percentage of these calories being converted to body fat.
2) Food choices usually get worse in the evening.
3) Eating at night can disturb sleep patterns, thus leading to poor recovery and regeneration.
4) Your digestive system slows down at night, so any food eaten then will not be fully absorbed.
5) And last but…… …continue reading.
Well, it appears that the Krill Oil vs. Fish Oil debate has officially begun. For those of you who don’t know, these oils contain the beloved Omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA.
It is an undisputed fact that we need to get these fatty acids through our diets. Every expert will agree on that, and for good reason.
Omega-3’s have been shown to display a host of benefits: promoting fat loss, improving insulin metabolism, decreasing inflammation in the body, decreasing triglycerides, increasing good (HDL) cholesterol, easing depression, etc. The list of benefits is impressive and well documented.
For years now, fish oil has been the gold standard for omega-3 supplementation. But now, recent research is suggesting that krill oil may be a superior alternative. Is this true?
Unfortunately, you can’t believe most of what you read on this topic. The majority of the literature is created by marketers cleverly disguising themselves as doctors, nutritionists, or fitness experts.
I assure you that I have NO affiliation…… …continue reading.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, right? It must be, because just about every nutritional expert on the planet emphatically endorses the “morning meal” philosophy. Their love affair with breakfast makes a lot of sense—at first glance. But before we blindly buy into their theory, let’s investigate why most “gurus” orgasm at the mere thought of a healthy breakfast.
Here are their claims, followed by my opinions:
1) After an eight-hour sleep, you need to ingest protein in order to raise your serum amino acid levels, thus switching you from a catabolic state to an anabolic state.
This point sure does seem valid. And because of it, there was a time when I never went a day without consuming a relatively large amount of protein upon awakening. Additionally, if one of my clients even considered skipping breakfast, I would quickly transform into the breakfast police and give them hell about it. But in recent years my opinion has changed. And…… …continue reading.
It seems that the fitness industry is constantly swimming in an endless sea of scams, misinformation, and flat out BS. I learned this unfortunate truth years ago (after witnessing the dishonesty and naively falling for some of these cons). This gave me a bad taste, which led me to remove myself from the “spotlight” of the industry and just work in my training center with my clients (a.k.a. my guinea pigs).
The misinformation that turns me off so strongly is perpetuated by two types of people:
1) The classic snake oil salesman- These guys/gals are not even fitness experts. In fact, their only area of expertise is marketing. They will promote and sell just about anything people are willing to buy, regardless of the validity of the product, program or concept. This crowd of scam artists deceitfully endorses products like The Cookie Diet, The Pizza Diet, The Shake Weight, etc. I’m not going to waste any more time on calling these guys out because they…… …continue reading.
What’s up guys? I hope you had an awesome weekend. I have some exciting news for you.
“Milk is for babies. When you grow up, you have to drink beer.”
-Arnold Schwarzenegger, Pumping Iron
Throughout North America, we are taught that milk is nature’s perfect food. Milk advocates are quick to praise their “liquid god” because milk contains copious amounts of the important nutrients protein and calcium.
Celebrities from all walks of life have united together in order to promote the consumption of milk products. If you just flick on your TV or pick up a magazine, you can find any number of celebs proudly wearing a milk mustache, partaking in the infamous “Got Milk?” commercials and ads. Who’s paying for these ads? Is the government funding this movement in an attempt to promote optimal health and decrease the incidences of osteoporosis? Nope, not even close.
These ads are ALL funded by the dairy industry itself. Can we trust them to be upfront and honest when they obviously have a vested interest in trying to maximize the world’s intake of their…… …continue reading.
This is the third and final chapter in the Dieting For Fat Loss series. In parts one and two, we discussed the nuts and bolts of how to structure your diet for maximal and sustainable fat loss. Additionally, we addressed the cold hard “fat loss facts” that are truly non-negotiable if fat burning, muscle maintenance, performance, and overall health and are your goals (which they must be if you want to guarantee your success).
Now it’s time to put the finishing touches on the fat burning foundation that has already been laid down. In this post, we will fill in the blanks and provide answers to the important questions that rarely get answered in an honest and straightforward way. I chose the following topics because they are some of the most common concerns of dieters.
The first issue I’d like to address is protein requirement. If you’ve been in the fat loss/fitness game for any period of time, I’m sure you’ve had just about every…… …continue reading.
In Dieting For Fat Loss Part 1, we covered the essential rules a fat loss diet MUST follow in order to be effective and sustainable. The breaking of any of those critical rules will automatically disqualify any fat loss diet out there from being “sound”. Take those diets and throw them in the trash, period. Nuff said about that!
Now what about the diets that don’t break the crucial rules? Does this mean that ALL diets that sneak past my “criteria doorman” are effective? No, not necessarily. Although they may be off to a good start, there are some additional factors that need to be considered.
Listing all of them would take pages and pages of information, and individual requirements would need to be known and taken into account. This is obviously impossible to do in a blog post. What I can do, however, is break down some of the most popular dieting strategies and give my opinion of them. Here are some of…… …continue reading.
