Remember when we asked you to Take Your Worst Picture Ever? Well it’s time to take it out. If you haven’t taken it yet, or are new to World Fitness Network, we’ve got reminders at the end of this post…
What Do You See?
That old picture of yourself – is that what you still look like? Have you made any progress? Have you made enough progress? I’m not here to lecture you – I’m here to help you lecture yourself.
If you think you’ve made good progress, skip to the Take a New Picture section and then compare.
If you haven’t made progress, do these things right now:
- write down every excuse you can come up with; don’t hold back!
- now rank those excuses by their “power”; the stronger their power over you, the closer to the top of the list they go
- for each of your top 5 excuses (more if you have the gumption), write down at least one action you are going to take to eliminate it as an excuse moving forward
- take your top 5 excuses and share them with someone who cares about you; ask them for their advice on how they think you can eliminate those; don’t share the previous step with them – you want original ideas
- take the combined list of approximately 10 ideas to combat your 5 major excuses, and tape the list to your bathroom mirror
- every day (especially on your workout days) recite that list out loud; if you get embarrassed reading it out loud, good! you’ve got to break through some barriers if you want to eliminate those excuses
- now act!
And time to take a new picture:
Haven’t Taken Your Picture Yet? Or Need To Take A New Picture?
Did you fail your self-evaluation? Or are you just now planning to get in shape, but haven’t quite started yet?
Or even if you’ve made progress, you now need a new benchmark – a new picture.
Go into your room and take all your clothes off. That’s right, strip down to nothing but your briefs, your Spiderman Underoos, your boxers, your lingerie, whatever you are wearing underneath. (more…)
Join the forum discussion on this article, or comment below.
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Continue reading about It’s Time to Look At Your Worst Picture Ever, And Take A New One
- How much protein is too much protein?
You eat lots of protein, right?
I mean, you hear from everybody that to gain muscle, you need to eat a lot of lean protein.
Even if you aren’t trying to gain muscle, you still hear how important protein is.
And we’ve written about it a ton here, here, and here.
The basic rule I use: if you are fat, eat at least 1 gram of protein a day per lean body mass (your total weight minus your fat weight). If you are not fat, then eat about 1 gram per total bodyweight. And this assumes you are lifting at least 2x a week.
So for the average man, this is at least 180 grams a day. (more…)
Continue reading about How Much Protein Is Too Much Protein?
Today was the last day of my trip – whew! 6 airports and two destination cities, plus business conferences, was quite a challenge.
I learned a lot myself by writing all this down for you – the act of writing gave me a few insights I might have otherwise glossed over so thanks for indulging me. I hope you learned something as well.
If you have any lingering questions about what to do for fitness on the road, or how to eat right when traveling, this is the post to reply to. I’m also including links at the end to all the previous days’ posts, plus some of my earlier posts on traveling. Let me know what you think!
On to the summaries… (more…)
Ready for Day 6 of my week-long business trip? No, I’m not going to start talking about the business issues – but hopefully the past several posts are giving you ideas you can use the next time you travel. You are probably also seeing that while I’m far from perfect, I take my fitness and eating very seriously. My point being that being fit, strong, heart-healthy, low-fat, muscular, and healthy overall isn’t a part-time thing. Perfection isn’t required, but dedication is.
If you are already fit, you know this. If you aren’t, then perhaps you can see that some extra effort is sometimes required. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that being in great shape is easy. It’s not. And while your workouts are important, they aren’t as important as your eating.
And unfortunately, eating right is a lot harder than exercising. (At least for most people.)
What I’d like to hear from you on, in comments for this post, are you own ideas and experiences about how to eat right and get in good workouts while traveling. You don’t need to write a lot – just join in and share some ideas.
Day 6 – Eating
I was speaking today at a conference so I knew that eating was going to be a challenge. But, like I keep saying, all it takes is good planning ahead of time.
My breakfasts were just like yesterday in the sense of lower quantity because I’m on a lighter day, and similar to the other (more…)
There are many articles on this site dealing with food – some of our most popular deal with junk food here and here.
Others deal with protein.
And of course, we recently dealt with eating for muscle gain vs eating for fat loss.
But one question that gets asked time after time is what to eat before/after your workouts in order to maximize muscle gain without adding fat.
I’m going to jump right into my recommendations and save the explanations for the end – I’m betting some of you don’t care about the explanations as much as the action plan!
Pre and Post Workout Eating Guidelines
Important preamble: except for #4, these guidelines apply to all of you, whether you are trying to gain mass, lose fat, or just maintain. No matter who you are, you should do about the same thing with your eating in the window before/during/after your lifting workouts. The main difference between gaining and losing overall bodyweight is not different overall eating plans. The difference comes down to total weekly calories. More on that here.
1. Never train on an empty stomach. I’m talking about weight training here (there are mixed reports of doing cardio in (more…)
Continue reading about What To Eat Before And After Your Workout
Are you trying to lose fat? Or to gain muscle?
That probably seems like a big question, huh? In fact, I get questions from readers all the time asking things like “what are the best guidelines for eating when you want to lose fat?” or “I’m trying to add a lot of muscle – how should I eat?”.
It seems that people consider these two goals to require vastly different strategies.
What I might have to say about this may surprise you:
It’s that the two plans are not so different as you might think.
In fact, whether you are trying to shed fat or gain muscle, your eating plan would be nearly identical!
The Similarities
In both cases you want to:
- eat frequent meals (every 2 to 3 hours or 5 to 8 meals a day)
- eat natural foods – plants or animals that are in a form close to how they occur naturally; a box of Fruit Loops obviously is as unnatural as Mark McGuire’s homerun record
- each day you want 30% to 40% of your calories to come from proteins, 30% to 60% to come from carbs, and 15% to 30% to come from fats; more carbs on workout days, less carbs on non-workout days
- eat protein with every meal
- eat a veggie or fruit with every meal
- eat breakfast!
- eat more carbs around your workouts, less other times of day
- eat protein around your workouts
- don’t eat high fats and high simple sugars in the same meal
Continue reading about Eating To Gain Muscle Or Lose Fat – It’s Almost The Same
I know I just sent you Tom’s incredible article critiquing the TV show The Biggest Loser. Well, I happened to just see this week’s episode.
Overall, I enjoyed it. I won’t repeat Tom’s list of all the positives here. But I do have one specific that astonished me…
One of the trainers mentioned to a contestant – a woman over 300 pounds – that she needed to be eating 1200 calories that day.
Wait a minute – 1200 calories? Only 1200????!!!???
That is a HUGE calorie deficit. At 300+ pounds, that’s about a 3000 calorie deficit! (See p. 106 to 108 in tom’s book for calculations.)
The show didn’t explain if that was this woman’s target every day or just for that day. It could be that they are doing some sophisticated calorie cycling where you have some very low days followed by more moderate low calorie days. But (more…)
“Daddy, what’s that?” asked my daughter as I added a teaspoon of powder to my glass of milk.
“It’s called creatine,” I said, adding another half scoop.
“Why are you taking it?” she asked, really only half-interested. What she really wanted to know was “when will you be done so we can play?” but she’s getting more patient as she gets older.
“Well, there are several reasons. One is that it helps me feel less sore after my workouts. Plus it is supposed to help your muscles store more water and give you a little extra power when you lift weights.”
“Oh.”
I could tell she wasn’t really interested. I stirred my creatine-and-milk, and drank about half. I noticed some of the creatine had settled so I started to stir again.
“Is that like steroids?” she added, a wrinkled eyebrow and concerned expression on her face.
Wow, I didn’t even know she had heard of steroids.
“No way, honey. Steroids work on a completely different system. And steroids are illegal. For good reason too – they have severe side effects that can be really damaging.
“Creatine is a natural substance,” I assured her, “that you can find in red meat. It’s been tested by scientists for decades on thousands and thousands of people with negligible side effects. Some people feel a little boated from it, but that’s rare.
“So daddy’s not using anything illegal.”
She thought about this for a moment. Then added, “But you don’t really need it do you? Does everyone who lift weights take it?”
I could tell she was getting more interested in this conversation. And I was also getting worried that I wasn’t going to have all the answers she needed!
“No, not everyone takes it, because it certainly isn’t needed. In fact, for some people – called ‘non-responders’ – creatine has no impact whatsoever. But for me, I do find that it helps me recover better on the days I don’t lift. That way I’m less sore when I lift the next time and that comfort makes it more likely that I’ll lift heavier weight.
“Now, some people talk about creatine giving them a ‘pump’ – that’s when their muscles feel really powerful during a workout because of the blood pumping to the muscles. However, scientific studies have failed to confirm this as a statistically valid effect. It’s true that creatine does allow the muscles to store more water and that can give the appearance of larger muscle mass. But that’s water, not blood flow. So you might like the way you look better in a t-shirt.
“If you wanted a better pump before your workout, you’d be better off with a small amount of caffeine,” I added.
She looked at me with disgust. “Why would I ever want to have a better pump before my workout?”
I laughed. Of course, at her pre-teen age she’s not interested in big muscles.
I finished the rest of my creatine-and-milk and started to clean up. She wasn’t done…
“Sometimes you mix it with that other powder – the protein powder,” she noted. “Why?”
“Purely convenience honey – if I’m making a mix, I might was well do both at the same time. But they have nothing to do with each other. Protein powder is a nutritional supplement, like a vitamin or food substitute. Creatine works in a different mechanism and isn’t really related to nutrition.” She seemed to understand.
“You said before that there are different kinds of protein. Are there different kinds of creatine?”
I wanted to keep this simple for her, so I said “Creatine comes in different forms, but all anybody needs is creatine monohydrate. It’s the most tested, and the cheapest. The other forms haven’t been proven to be any better and they cost a lot more, so I don’t know why anybody uses them.”
“Does it matter what time of day you take the creatine,” she asked. “I think I’ve seen you mix it at night sometimes and in the morning sometimes.”
“Timing really doesn’t matter,” I informed her. “The key thing is to keep a constant supply of creatine because the body can’t store it for very long. You just need to take about 5 to 10 g a day. I go for around 7 g because most studies show that going up to 10 doesn’t have any benefits. 7 g is like a teaspoon and a half. But some guys think they need to take it just before a workout – it’s related to that myth about the ‘pump’. It’s just not true and people believe that because they don’t understand the biochemistry involved. It is pretty complicated, but the short answer is that the exact timing doesn’t matter.”
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