You’ve heard the preachers, including me, talk about how important it is to eat every 2 to 3 hours. And how important breakfast is.
But are we right?
- Does fasting help or hurt fat loss and muscle building?
Two counter-approaches contradict the above recommendations:
a) Intermittent Fasting (complete fasting for at least 24 hrs once a week or so)
b) Semi-Fasted Cardio (first thing in the morning after about 12 hours of not eating)
Today we’ll cover the pros and cons of intermittent fasting. Then next week we’ll cover “semi-fasted cardio”.
Here’s today’s outline:
- Pros and Cons of Fasting
- Roots of Fasting
- Fasting for Fat Loss
- Fasting for Muscle Gain
- Making Fasting Easier – 10 Tips
Let’s start with a summary, then follow with the details:
Pros And Cons Of Fasting For Fat Loss And Muscle Gain
Pros For Fasting
- Possibly very effective for fat loss, as studies show increase fat burn compared to carb burn, during fasting (much more detail on this in the rest of the article!)
- Easier, for some people, than being in slight caloric deficit each day
- Most people get a natural “high” on those days; better attention; surprising increase of energy
- More time for life; less time cooking, eating, and doing dishes
- Increased natural growth hormone: potentially good for muscle gains (much more detail on this in the rest of the article!)
- Disrupts the body’s expectations about food, thus preventing diet plateaus (hypothetical)
- Confidence – any time you try something difficult, and then turn that into a habit, you will feel more confident in yourself; this will lead to you accomplishing more over the course of your life
- Bragging rights – most people are impressed with someone who has the discipline to fast one day a week
- Potentially clears the body of toxins and waste
- Anecdotal benefits to a whole range of health issues, from reducing arthritis and migraines to improved skin and hair
Cons For Fasting (more…)
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Continue reading about What You Need To Know About Fasting for Fat Loss, Muscle Gain
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…)
You’re trying to lose weight, right?
No, you just think you are. You are actually trying to shed fat.
You’ve been working out, just like I advise, using weight training and cardio.
But each week, the scale is only going down 1 pound. Or maybe less.
What do you do?
Simple: stop watching the scale!
Scales measure one thing: your total body weight.
Do you really care what your weight is, or do you care about your body composition and appearance?
Quick quiz – which of these people do you want to be (if you are a man):
a) a 190-lb muscular guy who gets offers to appear on the cover of Men’s Health
b) a 190-lb flabby guy who is afraid to take his shirt off at the beach
See what I mean? Your weight is only one measure of fitness (and a poor one). Why is it poor?
Well, if you are lifting heavy weights like I’m telling you to do, you are probably adding muscle. That added muscle increases your total bodyweight, right? So, you might be losing 1 lb of fat but gaining 0.5 lb of muscle. Yet the scale only tells you “you lost 0.5 lb”. So you get depressed, whine, give up, and go off to listen to Joni Mitchel records.
“Ok, Darrin, then what am I supposed to use?”
Glad you asked!
There are really only three “weight” metrics worth caring about:
1) how you look in your favorite clothes
2) how you look naked
3) what your bodyfat % is
I don’t want to get side-tracked on this, but it is possible to excel at one of the above and not the other two. For example, some people without low bodyfat actually look fine naked. And some people look great in their clothes but not so good at the beach. And of course, there are other things that matter when it comes to fitness, like what you can do and how you feel. But I’m not talking about “fitness”. I’m talking to all you scale-watchers out there.
My point is, these are the things that matter to most people who watch the scale.
So, if you are a scale watcher, do these three steps:
a) today take your picture in your underwear
I almost never talk about other people’s blogs but I’m making an exception today. This is the best analysis I’ve seen of the show The Biggest Loser. It happens to come from one of my favorite people in the fitness world, Tom Venuto. He really gets to the core of the pros and cons of the show. There’s no sale pitch or anything – just great content to really think about, especially if you like the show. I consider it required reading: http://www.burnthefatblog.com/archives/2009/09/the_biggest_loser_pros_and_con.php Learn from this! Darrin p.s. if you want to comment here, that’s fine or leave (more…)
A recent article posted on the AskMen.com site made me cringe. I’m not going to cite the official link, because I don’t really want to promote them. I’ve never read anything at this site before, as it’s a little risqué for my tastes, but one of the other sites I regularly read had a link to it. The title was “Maximum Muscle Definition in One Week”.
I thought the title was provocative. So I bit.
Before I even started reading though, let’s clarify something. There’s a difference between “maximum”, meaning “the best you can get” and “sufficient”, meaning that you actually achieve muscle definition.
Nobody can go from undefined, fat, or flabby and one week be ripped. And I had my doubts about this article, that it would promise overnight results.
Sure enough, it starts out talking about “getting ready for an unexpected beach event” or even “suddenly getting that date with a particular girl” as the impetus for the overnight cure they were (supposedly) about to unveil.
There were a few nuggets of good advice, including the need to lift heavy; intake sufficient protein; carb load on day one then reduce carbs steadily.
But the author condenses what should really be an 8+ week program into 7 days. Not only will it not work, but at only 800 words, all the details are left out. Unless you are already an intermediate to advanced weight trainer (and thus, probably already in pretty good shape), most of the advice will go over your head.
Plus, this hurts the entire weight training movement – it’s hard enough to get people to realize how important resistance training (like weight lifting) is. Now, some people will try this guy’s 7-day advice and when it doesn’t work, they’ll quit. They’ll say “weight training doesn’t work to burn fat“. It’s a shame really.
And I’ll say again, it won’t work in 7 days. [If you have a personal story of seeing significant results in 7 days, please share your story and your program – I’m ok with being proven wrong!]
Now summer is around the corner, and I can appreciate that you might want to be ready and comfortable for the beach and a more active time of year. But don’t wait until the last minute.
If you need to be “ready” in 7 days from now, you really better have started out weeks ago! Don’t get your fitness advice from a site that ranks celebrities by their “hotness” (in fact, run away from such sites).
Want trusted sources for getting in shape by Summer? Check out our own “3 Months To A New You” and especially “The Truth About 6-pack Abs” if you really want good advice.
My weight training has generally been focused on muscle gain (hypertrophy) or strength training.
But the third type – fat burning – hasn’t ever been a priority for me. I do my fat burning through diet and cardio. In fact, part of the reason I do hypertrophy training is to prevent muscle loss from my running.
I’ve been really pushing myself over the past 3 months with heavier weights. And my joints are screaming.
But I’m getting ready for the Oklahoma City Marathon on the 26th of this month. So I decided now would be a good time to try a fat-burning weight training program.
Wow – these workouts are kicking my butt. It’s so intense, but a different kind of intense compared to lifting heavy stuff. But I’m getting ahead of (more…)
A recent study by the National Center on Educational Statistics found that 1 in 5 four-year olds in America are obese.
I’ll say that again: 1 in 5 four-year olds are fat.
As a parent, I have two very strong emotions when I hear this.
Meet Sympathetic Darrin and Harsh Darrin
The first is sincere sadness and empathy for what those children are headed for – a series of “fat kid” jokes and likely health challenges for the rest of their lives. Let’s call this voice the “Sympathetic Darrin”.
The second is utter disgust that these parents have allowed this to happen. Let’s call this voice the “Harsh Darrin”.
Sympathic Darrin wants to offer all those parents free advice, clinics, counseling, etc. Given America’s overall obesity problem, it’s probably a likely conclusion that the parents (more…)
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