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Allenamento con i pesi – Bodybuilding – Piero Maina's Website – Never Give Up!

Piero Maina's Website – Never Give Up!

Categoria: Allenamento con i pesi – Bodybuilding

Mettersi in forma con i pesi. E’ importante l’allenamento contro resistenza per l’aumento della massa magra e per bruciare i grassi

  • Clima invernale e perdita di grasso: il freddo fa ingrassare?

    Clima invernale e perdita di grasso: il freddo fa ingrassare?

    Titolo: Clima invernale e perdita di grasso: il freddo fa ingrassare?
    Autore: Tom Venuto, CSCS, NSCA-CPT

    Traduzione: Piero Maina
    URL: www.Burnthefatinnercircle.com
    Parole: 23.966

    Clima invernale e perdita di grasso: il freddo fa ingrassare?
    Di Tom Venuto

    BurnTheFat.com – Body Transformation System

    Ciao a tutti, oggi pubblico con il suo permesso, un articolo del grande Tom Venuto che ho tradotto in Italiano, cosicchè anche chi non conosce l’inglese, possa godere di queste preziose e interessanti informazioni che proprio in questo periodo invernale e post vacanze di Natale, ci possano tornare utili per recuperare la nostra forma. Buona lettura:

    “In inverno quando è più freddo, ingrasso!” Se sentissi qualcuno dire questo, probabilmente rideresti e diresti che sono le solite scuse tipo: “Mi dispiace, ma oggi non posso allenarmi … le tute da allenamento sono da lavare”. Ma la verità è che ci sono conferme scientificamente provate per cui in inverno si tende ad aumentare di peso. Fortunatamente, ci sono anche delle soluzioni, peraltro semplici e di facile applicazione.

    Se vivi dove le stagioni cambiano, o anche peggio, dove il clima è freddo e nuvoloso per la maggior parte dell’anno, o se la neve, il ghiaccio e la pioggia gelida interrompono i tuoi programmi di allenamento all’aperto e sei preoccupato per il tuo girovita, allora questa è la domanda e la risposta di Burn The Fat della settimana ed è una lettura obbligata …

        DOMANDA: Ehi Tom, ci sono prove che durante la stagione fredda e in inverno diventa più difficile perdere grasso corporeo? A me sembra più facile perdere peso durante la stagione calda. Mi chiedevo se ci fosse una ragione per questo, forse uno desidera maggiormente diversi tipi di cibo? Si perde l’appetito nella calura estiva? O l’appetito aumenta con il freddo? Il metabolismo rallenta in inverno? Se sai darmi delle risposte al riguardo, te ne sarei grato. Grazie!

    RISPOSTA: Sì, ci sono molte ragioni per cui molte persone tendono ad ingrassare in inverno. Sono sia fisiche che mentali. Da un punto di vista psicologico, ecco una semplice spiegazione: il mutare delle stagioni può influenzare il tuo umore.Una condizione nota come Disturbo Affettivo Stagionale (DAS) è stata studiata a lungo da psicologi e psichiatri. Spesso è molto più del semplice “Winter Blues” (Depressione Invernale), il DAS si verifica durante le giornate più brevi e le lunghe notti dell’inverno e dell’autunno, quando c’è meno luce solare e le temperature sono più fredde.I sintomi includono depressione, desiderio di cibi specifici, in particolare carboidrati densi di calorie, si sperimenta perdita di energia, senso di disperazione e sonno eccessivo. Ovviamente, tutti questi effetti possono contribuire a far aumentare di peso.

    Una ricerca scientifica svizzera intitolata “Abitudini alimentari nel Disturbo Affettivo Stagionale: chi tenderà ad aumentare di peso in inverno?”  I ricercatori hanno scoperto che non solo i pazienti con DAS mangiavano più zuccheri e cibi ricchi di amido, ma erano anche più suscettibili al mangiare emotivo, ricercando i dolci, quando emotivamente si sentivano più ansiosi, affamati, stanchi o soli. Uno dei trattamenti standard per il DAS è la terapia della luce intensa. Assicurati di dormire a sufficienza, ma alzati anche alle prime luci dell’alba, perché è importante massimizzare le ore di esposizione alla luce naturale.

    Al contrario, un’ altra causa psicologica dove il clima influisce sulla quantità di cibo che  ingeriamo è l’attività fisica e la perdita di grasso è maggiore quando il clima è caldo; le persone stanno all’aperto per più tempo vestendosi meno, questo fatto crea più motivazione all’esercizio fisico. Diciamolo pure, le persone vogliono avere un bell’aspetto quando indossano il costume o hanno meno indumenti addosso. In inverno e quando il clima è più freddo, sei coperto, quindi c’è meno presa di coscienza e nessuna responsabilità poiché di solito nessuno ti vede attraverso i vestiti, diverso è quando la gente ti vede con pantaloncini e canotta. Pertanto, la maggior parte delle persone tende a seguire una dieta più diligentemente e ad allenarsi più duramente nei mesi più caldi. (Non è un caso che così tanti bodybuilder mettano su massa nel periodo invernale, viceversa perdano peso durante l’estate).

    Naturalmente, abbiamo il problema opposto nel periodo delle festività Natalizie, un periodo che tradizionalmente si sposa con i festeggiamenti, banchetti, bevande e regali (dove a volte anche i regali sono commestibili!) Molte persone si preoccupano maggiormente del loro stato di forma in questo periodo perché pensano che arriveranno ad aumentare di peso fra i 2Kg e 5Kg. La ricerca ha dimostrato che l’aumento di peso stagionale è reale, anche se di solito non è così tanto, in genere solo circa mezzo chilo, un kg al massimo, se si fa la media sui grandi numeri di popolazione. (Solo il 10% circa guadagna 3 kg o più). Il vero problema che la ricerca ha dimostrato a lungo termine è quel lento aumentare di peso anno dopo anno e che spesso passa inosservato e, in un periodo di 10, 15 o 20 anni, è sufficiente a portarci al sovrappeso cronico o all’obesità. Sono tanti gli uomini e le donne che si svegliano una mattina all’età di 40 o 50 anni, e guardandosi allo specchio si chiedono: “come ho fatto a diventare così grasso/a?” (Mezzo kg, o un kg all’anno, dopo ogni stagione invernale, si arriva a questo aumento di peso incontrollato). Lo studio più famoso su questo argomento è stato pubblicato sul prestigioso “New England Journal of Medicine”. Ecco cosa hanno riscontrato gli autori:

      In contrasto con la percezione comune che il peso aumenti durante le festività invernali, il peso della stragrande maggioranza dei soggetti in questo studio è cambiato poco durante le festività natalizie. Questi soggetti credevano di aver incrementato di quattro volte il loro effettivo aumento di peso durante le vacanze, che è invece risultato di soli 0,37 kg. Meno del 10% dei soggetti ha guadagnato 2,3 kg o più. Pertanto, nonostante il fatto che l’85% dei soggetti monitorati non facesse alcuno sforzo per controllare il proprio peso, grandi aumenti di peso durante le festività invernali non sono stati la norma.Sfortunatamente, abbiamo anche scoperto che l’aumento di peso durante il periodo autunnale pre-ferie e l’aumento durante le festività natalizie sono stati in gran parte mantenuti durante il periodo invernale post-ferie da gennaio a marzo, con un conseguente aumento medio netto di 0,48 kg. Nei soggetti che hanno completato un anno di osservazione, il peso è aumentato in media di 0,32 kg durante il periodo di vacanza e di 0,62 kg durante l’intero anno, suggerendo che il periodo che contribuisce maggiormente alla variazione di peso annuale è il periodo di sei settimane di vacanza.

     La maggior parte di noi mangia e beve di più nel periodo delle festività natalizie. Tuttavia, alcune persone hanno anche chiesto se ci siano altre motivazioni e se le giornate brevi, il clima cupo e le temperature fredde hanno qualcosa a che fare con l’aumento di grasso a livello fisiologico. La domanda è: “Il metabolismo rallenta in inverno, come se stessimo entrando in “modalità letargo?”  In realtà, è vero il Contrario. L’esposizione a temperature fredde provoca una risposta di termogenesi da tremito, il che significa che c’è un aumento del metabolismo per produrre più calore. Per creare calore è necessaria energia (calorie bruciate = calore). Infatti, nel corso degli anni, molti guru della perdita di peso hanno promosso l’idea dell’esposizione al freddo per accelerare il metabolismo, suggerendo strani “trucchi” come spegnere il riscaldamento in casa, uscire di casa poco vestiti in inverno, nuotare in laghi gelidi o fare surf tutti i giorni in acque fredde o fare docce fredde che stranamente ancora oggi risultano popolari. Sfortunatamente l’esposizione al freddo, aria fredda o acqua fredda, come tentativo per far bruciare più calorie al nostro corpo non si traduce nel tempo in risultati di perdita di grasso nel mondo reale, anche se risultati a breve termine possono mostrare un elevato consumo di calorie.

    Perché non funziona? A parte il fatto che si tratta di una piccola quantità di calorie bruciate in più, non è poi così pratico o piacevole congelarsi il sedere, quindi il tentativo probabilmente non durerebbe a lungo e sarebbe destinato al fallimento se uno ci provasse. Un altro motivo è che il nostro corpo può adattarsi e compensare le perdite di calore. Un esempio interessante dell’impatto che le temperature fredde hanno sul bilancio energetico è il caso del nuoto. Paradossalmente, è stato osservato che molte persone che hanno iniziato a nuotare hanno bruciato tantissime calorie, ma non hanno perso grasso (o hanno persino guadagnato peso). All’inizio alcune persone pensavano che il corpo stesse producendo grasso per ripararsi dal freddo. Sembra plausibile, vero? Ma dopo che alcuni scienziati attenti hanno esaminato la cosa più da vicino, hanno scoperto che il nuoto può essere un eccellente esercizio per bruciare i grassi, ma molte persone non perdono molto grasso col nuoto perché si è scoperto che il nuoto, specialmente in acque fredde, fa si bruciare più calorie, ma fa anche aumentare l’appetito.

    Pertanto, potremmo ipotizzare che lo stesso possa accadere con temperature fredde (aria). Se il tuo corpo usa un po’ di energia per tremare o produrre calore, un modo in cui può compensare quella perdita di energia è aumentare l’appetito, quindi è probabile che il bilancio energetico negativo, se presente, sia a breve termine. (Incredibile come il tuo corpo funzioni per controbilanciare le cose, non è vero?)

    Alcuni scienziati suggeriscono addirittura che mangiare di più nei freddi mesi invernali sia inserito nel nostro DNA come meccanismo di sopravvivenza. Teorizzano che gli esseri umani hanno una tendenza naturale a mangiare di più in inverno perché storicamente parlando, questo era un periodo in cui c’era carenza di cibo. Sebbene non ci sia praticamente alcuna possibilità di morire di fame nella moderna società industrializzata, potremmo inconsciamente cedere alle direttive evolutive.

    Per una serie di possibili ragioni, la maggior parte delle persone tende a mangiare di più in inverno, soprattutto durante le festività natalizie e allo stesso tempo, tende anche a muoversi meno.

    Uno studio condotto in Massachusetts e pubblicato sull’European Journal of Clinical Nutrition ha mostrato alcune scoperte interessanti sulle variazioni stagionali dell’assunzione di cibo, dell’attività fisica e del peso corporeo in una popolazione in sovrappeso. I risultati principali includevano:

        L’apporto calorico giornaliero era di 86 calorie in più nei mesi freddi rispetto alla primavera

        L’attività fisica più bassa è stata in autunno e in inverno

        Il peso corporeo ha raggiunto il picco in inverno

        Tutti i cambiamenti stagionali sono stati abbastanza piccoli, ma abbastanza significativi da essere misurabili

    Durante le vacanze, la maggior parte delle persone che aumenta di peso, dà la colpa al cibo, ma non sono solo le feste del Natale e Capodanno che incidono, è anche una minore attività fisica durante l’intero inverno che contribuisce all’aumento del girovita. Le routine di esercizi all’aperto a volte termina bruscamente e non viene fatto nulla per compensare la cosa. Di solito si usano scuse del tipo: “è colpa del meteo (“Fa troppo freddo” o “Non posso correre / camminare / andare in bicicletta sulla neve e sul ghiaccio!” O “È buio prima che torni a casa dal lavoro”).

    Il calo dell’attività fisica non è solo dovuto al minor numero di sessioni di allenamento. Anche la quantità di passi che normalmente si fanno durante il giorno subiscono un calo, soprattutto se non li si monitorano.

    La ricerca fatta con l’utilizzo del pedometro pubblicata sulla rivista “Medicine and Science and Sports And Exercise” ha rivelato quanto l’attività fisica diminuisca in inverno rispetto alle altre stagioni.

    E’ stato preso in esame un gruppo di donne di mezza età, che sono generalmente meno attive di altri gruppi, per cominciare c’è stato un importante calo dei passi compiuti durante il giorno durante il ciclo stagionale:

        7616 passi al giorno in estate

        6293 passi al giorno in autunno

        5304 passi al giorno in inverno

        5850 passi in primavera

    Questo è il motivo per cui utilizzare un contapassi tipo il Fitbit o uno smartwatch tutto l’anno è un’ottima idea. Puoi vedere i cambiamenti del numero di passi stagionali e se noti che diminuiscono all’arrivo dell’inverno, puoi apportare le modifiche necessarie più facilmente alla tua attività semplicemente perché sai quello che sta succedendo e diventi responsabile per quello che fai. Inoltre, sebbene 10.000 passi al giorno (o più) possano essere scoraggianti, non è così difficile partire con 2.500 passi al giorno in più, rispetto a quanti ne fai ora. Questo è sufficiente per compensare il calo medio di passi registrato dalla maggior parte delle persone. Migliorando la propria responsabilità dal punto di vista nutrizionale e combinando le due azioni, sinergicamente questo piccolo cambiamento da solo può risolvere il problema dell’aumento di peso invernale.

    Come si può vedere è legittimo pensare che è più facile ingrassare durante i mesi più freddi. Se non si fa nulla per impedirlo; ci sono buone probabilità che si possa ingrassare almeno mezzo chilo o forse uno durante il periodo autunnale e in inverno, quando le giornate sono più buie. Proprio perché questa quantità di aumento di peso non è significativa è particolarmente insidiosa perché o te ne accorgi e agisci immediatamente con le dovute misure o potrebbe passare completamente inosservata all’inizio, per poi trovartela “appiccicata” addosso e non “staccarla” più. In 10 anni, ti ritrovi con un aumento di peso/grasso che può andare da 4,5 Kg a 9 Kg. In 20 anni, puoi arrivare a guadagnare da 9 Kg a 18 Kg, senza quasi accorgertene e tutto grazie a un lento accumulo di peso/grasso.

    Fortunatamente, l’aumento di peso in inverno non è una condizione scontata, Questa battaglia si può vincere abbastanza facilmente. Puoi rimanere magro tutto l’anno, quello che devi fare è rimanere attivo durante l’inverno, indipendentemente dal tempo atmosferico e rimanere disciplinato con l’alimentazione la maggior parte del tempo.

    Ti suggerisco di avvicinarti all’alimentazione e all’allenamento invernale in due fasi. Novembre e dicembre sono mesi perfetti per fissare obiettivi e chiudere bene l’anno. Creare obiettivi per questo periodo, ti manterrà motivato per tutto il tardo autunno e l’inizio dell’inverno. È una strategia perdente aspettare il nuovo anno e non avere nuovi obiettivi su cui lavorare durante le vacanze, procrastinare, non paga.

    Per oltre un decennio ho promosso sfide di fitness durante le vacanze natalizie, iniziate prima del giorno del Ringraziamento e proseguite fino alla fine dell’anno. Se mai hai la possibilità di iscriverti, partecipa con tutti i mezzi. Se non riesci a trovare un concorso formale, una sfida, una gara o un qualche tipo di evento di fitness, crea la tua sfida per le vacanze natalizie, e non è mai troppo tardi. Anche se è il giorno di Natale, si possono fissare degli obiettivi per l’ultima settimana dell’anno. Ho amici che tengono viva una tradizione facendo un allenamento epico a Capodanno.

    Se possibile, invita gli amici a unirsi a te per aumentare la responsabilità verso gli obiettivi fissati. Se possibile, assumi un coach che ti aiuti a creare il tuo piano e ti renda ancora più responsabile. È incredibile quanto sarai motivato e quanto duramente lavorerai quando dovrai riferire i tuoi progressi ogni settimana a un mentore o ad una figura autorevole che rispetti. Con un obiettivo o una sfida, un allenatore o un sistema di supporto, o entrambi, credimi, le vacanze non ti saranno di ostacolo. Potresti anche arrivare alla migliore forma della tua vita.

    La seconda fase inizia a gennaio. Anche se l’esercizio e la dieta “Buoni propositi per il nuovo anno” sono una consuetudine in questo periodo dell’anno e molte persone li fanno con scarsi risultati, non sono contrario a fissare obiettivi il primo dell’anno. Credo che sia un ottimo momento per pensare a cosa vuoi per i 12 mesi a venire. Assicurati che i tuoi obiettivi non si concentrino solo sul peso corporeo o sul grasso corporeo, ma includano anche obiettivi di fitness, salute, forza e prestazioni. Questo ti manterrà molto più motivato se hai una settimana in cui la bilancia non si muoverà.

    Un fattore chiave per l’alimentazione durante tutto l’arco dell’anno, ma soprattutto nel periodo vacanziero, è la dieta flessibile. Ciò significa mantenere il tuo piano nutrizionale preciso dall’80% al 90% delle volte, riuscendo a goderti così tutti i tuoi cibi preferiti nel periodo delle vacanze con moderazione. Evita di pensare in modo dicotomico al cibo e di chiamare alcuni cibi buoni e altri cattivi. Non dimenticare mai che tendi a desiderare ciò che non ti è permesso avere. Diete rigide con elenchi di alimenti proibiti si ritorcono contro e, anche se non lo facessero, la restrizione non è un modo per godersi le festività natalizie.

    I migliori trucchi per avere successo con il tuo allenamento invernale sono gli stessi che dovresti usare tutto l’anno: fissare continuamente obiettivi di prestazione (avere obiettivi per ogni allenamento), creare un piano con un programma settimanale in cui ti impegni e rimanere responsabile (avere qualcuno nel tuo angolo in modo da poter mostrare a lui/loro i tuoi risultati e i tuoi progressi settimanali comparati con i tuoi obiettivi). Assicurati inoltre che il tuo piano includa un elenco di potenziali ostacoli e come ti comporterai se li incontrerai, comprese le contingenze per tutti i tipi di tempo. Inoltre, considera di provare un allenamento che non hai mai fatto prima. Provare esercizi, tecniche e programmi completamente nuovi può aggiungere quel briciolo di sale in più, una scintilla di motivazione e una ventata di freschezza che ti manterrà più euforico e motivato nelle giornate invernali più cupe.

    Ovviamente dipende dalla località in cui vivi e quale meteo incontri, ma è improbabile che tu non possa indossare cappotto, cappello e guanti e andare a fare una passeggiata solo perché è inverno. Tuttavia, se è tempestoso o pericolosamente freddo, o se preferisci, puoi effettuare le tue camminate e la parte cardio del tuo programma al chiuso su una cyclette, un tapis roulant, un vogatore o una macchina ellittica, o ancora, semplicemente con esercizi a corpo libero se non hai a disposizione le macchine o attrezzature cardio. Si, dipende da te, puoi farlo!

    Non è necessario nemmeno sfidare gli elementi e avere il coraggio di guidare fino a una palestra per allenarti con i pesi, puoi farlo anche a casa. Una configurazione casalinga semplice come manubri e una panca, oltre a bande elastiche di resistenza e l’allenamento a corpo libero possono farti raggiungere ottimi risultati e portarti lontano. E considera che puoi aggiungere più attrezzi se il tuo spazio e il tuo budget lo consentono.

    I mesi invernali sono anche un ottimo periodo per essere avventurosi e provare qualcosa di nuovo all’esterno, vale a dire gli sport invernali. Pensa a inserirli nel tuo piano di allenamento. Lo ammetto, non sono mai stato un fan del freddo, del ghiaccio e della neve. Anche se l’escursionismo e lo zaino in spalla sono i miei hobby preferiti dietro il sollevamento pesi, sono sempre stato un uomo di tre stagioni all’aperto.

    Io abito in New Jersey e verso la fine di ottobre, proprio quando le prime gelate stavano arrivando e le foglie stavano cadendo, ho deciso che questo sarebbe stato l’anno in cui finalmente mi sarei rifiutato di restare rinchiuso a casa. Ho deciso di continuare a fare escursioni. Ho anche fissato alcuni obiettivi di corsa, il più possibile sui sentieri. Tutto quello che dovevo fare era investire nella giusta attrezzatura, scarpe e capi caldi e ho continuato a uscire come ho fatto per il resto dell’anno. Non ho mai dovuto utilizzare il tapis roulant. Con mia sorpresa, mi piaceva stare fuori, anche con il freddo e la neve.

    A dicembre, dopo il primo grande temporale, ho fatto una cosa che non avrei mai pensato di fare: ho comprato il mio primo paio di scarpe da neve e sono uscito per oltre 5 miglia/8Km la domenica prima di Natale. Quanto bruciavano i quadricipiti ed è stato un serio test cardio. Non ho nemmeno le scarpe da neve tradizionali – ho le scarpe da corsa (da running). Scendere a palla dalle colline innevate è stata la cosa più divertente che io abbia fatto da anni.

    Allo stesso tempo, per questi ultimi tre mesi dell’anno, ho deciso di iniziare un nuovo programma di sollevamento pesi con una routine di split incentrata sull’ipertrofia che non avevo mai provato prima. (È una “divisione ibrida 3-2” di cui scriverò in un prossimo post). Ho incluso anche l’attrezzatura da palestra che avevo usato raramente prima – una landmine (Barra da bilanciere con una estremità fissa a terra e l’altra libera) – insieme ai miei soliti esercizi con bilanciere e manubri.

    Come risultato, il fissare nuovi obiettivi, creare nuovi programmi e provare cose nuove nel tardo autunno e la prima parte dell’inverno, mi sono trovato più coinvolto, entusiasta e motivato che mai e la mia attività complessiva (passi, miglia, calorie bruciate), è stata più alta che mai a metà dicembre. Mangiavo il 90% di cibo non trasformato, ma non stavo facendo una vera e propria dieta o limitando i macro nutrienti o i gruppi di alimenti. In realtà ho dovuto mangiare di più per evitare di perdere troppo peso e troppo velocemente.

    L’aumento di peso in inverno è un problema per molte persone. Ci sono molte forze che sembrano cospirare per farti mangiare di più e muoverti di meno, ma queste insidie ​​sono evitabili e le soluzioni non sono complicate. Non possiamo cambiare le stagioni, ma possiamo cambiare noi stessi, come pensiamo e come agiamo. L’ho fatto io, molti altri l’hanno fatto, e puoi farlo anche tu se segui i consigli di questo post del blog.

    Concludendo, ricorda che le festività natalizie di fine anno sono solo la prima parte dell’inverno. Gennaio e febbraio, a volte fino a marzo, sono i mesi più freddi e nevosi per la maggior parte di noi, e se hai un buon proposito di inizio anno senza un obiettivo significativo e/o un grande piano d’azione e una forte volontà di riuscita e improbabile che lo perseguirai e lo abbandonerai presto. Cerca una sfida di trasformazione corporea, tipo quella che organizzo sul mio sito; questo è il momento per sfruttare queste opportunità. È il momento di fissare nuovi obiettivi e fare nuovi piani per arrivare in ottima forma alla fine dell’inverno e in primavera.

    Allenati duramente e aspettati il ​​successo!

    Tom Venuto

    References

    Kräuchi K, Reich S, Wirz-Justice A, Compr Psychiatry. 1997 Mar-Apr;38(2):80-7. Eating style in seasonal affective disorder: who will gain weight in winter? . Psychiatric University Clinic, Basel, Switzerland.

    Hamilton SL, et al, UK adults exhibit higher step counts in summer compared to winter months. Ann Hum Biol. 2008 Mar-Apr;35(2):154-69, Department of Human Sciences, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, UK.

    Ma Y, et al, Seasonal variation in food intake, physical activity, and body weight in a predominantly overweight population, Eur J Clin Nutr. 2006 April; 60(4): 519–528. University of Massachusetts, Division of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine

    Newman, MA, et al, Monthly variation in physical activity levels in postmenopausal women. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2009 41(2):322-7. Department of Epidemiology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.

    Ricci MR et al, Acute cold exposure decreases plasma leptin in women. Metabolism 49(4): 421-423, 2000, Rutgers University, Department of Nutritional Sciences.

    Uitenbrock DG, seasonal variation in leisure time physical activity. Med Sci Sports Exer 25(6): 755-760, 1993

    White, L., Increased caloric intake soon after exercise in cold water. Int J Sport Nutr Exer Metab, 15: 38-47, 2005

    Copyright Burn The Fat Inner Circle – Piero Maina.me

  • Muscle Recovery: Essential to Your Next Workout

    Muscle Recovery: Essential to Your Next Workout

    Originally published on HVMN by Nate Martins.

    Muscle Recovery: Essential to Your Next Workout


    The moment every athlete wants to avoid.

    POP!

    A muscle gives at the gym or on the track, leading to weeks of rehab. Sometimes it’s not even a single moment, but rather, countless hours of overuse that leads a muscle to strain or tear.

    To avoid rehab, athletes need to be thinking about pre-hab. Get ahead of an injury before it happens.

    Muscle recovery should be part of every training plan (specifically post-workout). But there are multiple strategies athletes can employ that lead to muscle health–even things like diet can impact how your muscles recover. Knowing what to do, and when to do it, can help avoid the injuries that’ll set you back weeks.

    Why is Recovery Important?


    An important goal of every training session is to break down muscle. Without recovery, a significant portion of that work might be a waste of time. So, what exactly happens during recovery? That’ll depend on the person and activity, but generally, four different things are happening while you’re resting.

    Synthesis of protein: This is what leads to muscle growth. During recovery is when most muscle is built, because muscle protein synthesis increases by 50% four hours after a workout (like resistance training).1

    Rebuilding of muscle fibers:     Microtears in muscle fibers are a normal part of exercise, happening when we put strain on our muscles. Recovery allows these fibers to heal and become stronger during that process.

    Fluid restoration: We sweat (and lose a lot of fluid through exhaled air).2 Hydrating before, during and after a workout is important, because these fluids help deliver nutrients to organs and muscle through the bloodstream.

    Removal of metabolic waste products: Acids (via that pesky little proton associated with lactate) accumulate during a workout, and recovery gives the body time to restore intramuscular pH and reestablish intramuscular blood flow for oxygen delivery (among other things).

    While you’re resting, your muscles kick into overdrive.

    Recovery can be attacked several ways–some may be surprising, because they don’t directly target the muscles themselves. By approaching recovery through a few different avenues, it can be optimized.

    Consuming Your Way to Recovery

    It may not seem obvious, but a combination of hydration, diet, and supplements can do wonders for the muscles.

    Hydration: During and After Exercise

    Drinking fluids is a mantra repeated by coaches everywhere for good reason: muscles are 75% water.

    Before and during exercise, hydration is key to maintaining fluid balance and can even improve endurance (it’s equally important to not over-consume water as well).3,4 But post-workout, consuming enough water is vital to helping digest essential nutrients and repairing damaged muscle.

    The sought after protein resynthesis requires muscles be well-hydrated. And coupled with post-workout eating, saliva–which is comprised mostly of water–is necessary to help break down food, digest, and absorb all the nutrients you’re hoping to receive. In one study, adequate hydration after a 90-minute run on a treadmill showed significantly faster heart rate recovery;5 this illustrates that hydrated bodies recover from exercise-induced stress faster.

    Don’t rely on the age-old test of urine to determine if you’re hydrated; that has been debunked.6

    A good rule of thumb is to weigh yourself before and after a workout, drinking 1.5x the amount of weight lost.

    Diet: Protein, Carbohydrates and Fat All Work Together

    Nailing the right nutrition strategy post-workout can encourage quicker recovery, reduce soreness, build muscle, improve immunity and replenish glycogen.

    Your next workout starts within the hour your last workout ended.

    Since exercise triggers the breakdown of muscle protein,7 it’s beneficial to consume an adequate amount of protein after a workout. Protein provides the body with necessary amino acids needed to repair and rebuild, while also promoting the development of new muscle tissue.8

    Good sources of protein include: whey protein, whole eggs, cheese and smoked salmon.

    Carbohydrates have a similarly important effect–they replenish glycogen stores. The type of exercise will depend on how much carbohydrate is needed. Consuming about 0.5 – 0.7 grams of carbohydrate per pound of bodyweight within 30 minutes of training can result in adequate glycogen resynthesis.7 Insulin secretion promotes glycogen synthesis, and is more stimulated when carbs and protein are consumed simultaneously.9

    Carb sources are everywhere; but look to slow-release sources such as sweet potatoes, fruit, pasta and rice.

    Fat shouldn’t be the main focus of an after workout meal, but should be part of it. Good fat sources include avocados and nuts. Milk is also a popular choice; one study found whole milk was more effective at promoting muscle growth than skim milk.10

    Supplements: Protein, BCAAs and Omega-3s Build Muscle and Reduce Inflammation

    We’ve outlined which supplements runners should take; it’s best to focus on protein, BCAAs and omega-3s–all these supplements help optimize muscle recovery.

    While most athletes think protein is best left to bodybuilders, protein can repair the muscle damage that occurs during a workout, reduce the response from the “stress hormone” cortisol, and speed up glycogen replacement. Protein also accelerates the resolution of muscle inflammation.11,12

    Whey, casein and soy are some of the most popular proteins. Whey is absorbed the fastest by the body, and is largely considered the most effective protein for muscle protein synthesis.13 Casein protein is geared more toward long-term recovery because it takes hours to absorb. Try introducing whey immediately post-workout, while using casein protein before bed; protein ingestion before sleep has been shown to stimulate muscle protein synthesis.14

    Serious athletes should be taking about one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight.

    If someone doesn’t consume enough protein, branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) can be a useful supplement.

    Amino acids are the building blocks of protein. During exercise, the body breaks down protein into amino acids; those are absorbed and transported through the body to create new proteins that encourage building muscle. BCAAs help enhance muscle protein recovery by introducing more amino acids into the body. They preserve muscle glycogen stores, which fuel the muscles and minimize protein breakdown. Studies show BCAAs as effective for muscle recovery (as well as immune system regulation).15

    Omega-3s, found in fish oils, have anti-inflammatory properties that help sore muscles.16 Kado-3, by HVMN, is a supercharged krill and fish oil stack designed to assist daily brain and body metabolism. Ingredients in Kado-3 work together; like astaxanthin oil (a powerful antioxidant) to fight against the buildup of free radicals, and Vitamins K and D to protect bone health.17,18,19

    HVMN Ketone can also help muscle recovery. Those using HVMN Ketone have seen decreases in the breakdown of intramuscular glycogen and protein during exercise when compared to carbs alone.20 It also expedited the resynthesis of glycogen by 60% and protein by 2x when added to normal carb / protein post-workout fuel.21,22

    Resting Your Way to Recovery

    Rest should be accounted for in any training program.

    Sleep: A Necessary Reset

    On its face, sleep should be the easiest way to recover. One study found that lack of sleep can lead to muscle degradation.23 But many find it difficult to get the ideal seven-to-nine hours per night.

    Sleep improves other facets of health that tangentially affect muscle recovery; the central nervous system (CNS) also recuperates during sleep, which is important for muscles, because the CNS triggers muscle contractions and reaction time. Hormones like cortisol and testosterone, which produce protein synthesis, are also working while we sleep.

    To help optimize sleep, it’s important to set a routine.

    Our screens can negatively impact sleep,24 so 60 – 90 minutes of screenless time before bed can do wonders. The blue light emitted from our devices tricks the brain into thinking it’s daytime and we need to be awake, decreasing our natural melatonin.

    It’s also important to create an optimal environment for sleep. Things like blackout curtains, a cooler temperature setting in the bedroom, or a quality mattress can all encourage better, more restful sleep.

    Rest Days: Muscles Don’t Take Breaks, But You Should

    On a much smaller scale, what’s happening during sleep is also happening on rest days. Work rest days into your training program because they give the body time to repair tissues that have been broken down.25

    Depleted muscle energy stores, micro-tears, fluid loss–all the things that happen during a workout need time to recuperate and grow stronger.

    Recovery time depends on your specific routine. Runners can have an especially difficult time doing this. For highly active runners who log miles six days per week, they should also incorporate recovery runs. About half of these runs should be at recovery pace, a slower less-strenuous pace that allows the body to recycle lactate as it’s produced. By increasing blood flow, recovery runs may actually accelerate the recovery process.

    Also try to avoid intense workouts or hard runs on back-to-back days. Complete rest days vary by person, but a good goal is one or two rest days every week or ten days. Injury-prone athletes may increase the number of complete rest days during this period.

    Techniques & Exercises for Recovery

    Let’s get into the specifics of what you can do to help the body recover faster. By using exercises targeted at certain muscles, not only will those muscles recover faster–they’ll also get stronger in the process.

    Active Recovery: Getting Stronger and Building Muscle

    This type of recovery focuses on exercise intensity at low-to-moderate levels. Studies have shown that it’s best for the performance of endurance athletes.26 Active recovery is successful mostly due to its ability to more rapidly remove blood lactate, facilitating blood flow and giving the body the ability to process excess lactate produced during periods of intense exercise.27

    Cross training is also a great way to engage in active recovery while enhancing aerobic fitness without putting the body through the same stress as your normal workouts. Try:

    • Cycling: The motion is similar to running without the joint impact. Ride at an easy pace in the low-intensity zone (around 120 – 140 heart rate)

    • Yoga: A beginner’s class should do just fine. Practicing basic yoga through online videos is sufficient, using poses such as sun salutation (to boost circulation and release tightness) and warriors one and two (to activate thigh and calf muscles while helping stretch hips)

    • Plyometrics: Even 15 – 30 minutes of bodyweight exercises can help boost circulation while stretching muscles. They’ve even been shown to increase sprint performance.28 Try exercises like planks, calf raises and lunges

    Ice Baths: Taking the Plunge


    Some athletes and coaches swear by ice baths, with trainers mandating post-practice cold water immersion (CWI). They consider ice baths essential to helping tired muscles, and feeling better for the next intense training sessions.

    The idea here is that cold therapy constricts blood vessels and decreases metabolic activity, reducing swelling and tissue breakdown, flushing metabolic debris from the muscle.

    But one study showcased that the “hypothesized physiological benefits surrounding CWI are at least partly placebo related.”29 This suggests that if you think ice baths help, then they may have a beneficial impact on recovery and subsequent training.

    If you’d like to try an ice bath, fill a tub or large container with water, enough to submerge your hips. Add enough ice so the temperature of the water drops to about 55 degrees. Then sit in the bath for about 15 minutes.

    Stretching & Foam Rolling: Increase Range of Motion

    Stretching is important both before and after a workout because exercise can shorten muscles, decreasing mobility. Stretching helps flexibility, allowing muscles and joints to work in their full range of motion.30 One study found that hamstring flexibility led to increased muscle performance.31

    Post-workout stretches are often forgotten by athletes in a rush, but it’s essential to account for these stretches in a training schedule. Generally, it’s best to hold stretches for about 30 seconds and repeat each once or twice. Target these muscles, which usually take a beating from a variety of workouts:

    • Piriformis

    • Chest and Anterior Deltoids

    • Hamstrings

    • Lats

    • Quads

    • Lower Back

    Complementary to stretching, foam rollers help sore muscles,32 and they can be used on almost every muscle in the body.

    Our muscles go through a constant state of breakdown, then repair. Fascia, the connective tissue surrounding our muscles, gets thick and short over time because the body is attempting to protect itself from more damage. Sometimes, trigger points form–sore spots, caused by fascia contraction, need release.

    Ultimately, this affects range of movement and causes soreness.

    Foam rolling (called myofascial release) can help release those muscular trigger points, and as one study found, can lead to overall improvement in athletic performance.33 The result is decreased muscle and joint pain, and increased mobility.

    Selecting a foam roller depends on your needs; a larger roller can allow you fuller sessions (meaning, if it’s large enough, you can lie on the foam roller and do some great shoulder / upper back workouts). A denser roller will also mean a more intense massage.

    Target these often overused areas: glutes, iliotibial band (IT band), lower back, shoulders and sides.

    Technology: All the Data You Need

    While technology and wearables can’t directly help with recovery, they’re able to gather important data that may inform recovery techniques. Being able to track aspects of training, sleep, heart rate and hydration can provide insight into how the best tackle specificities of recovery.

    • Hydration: Wearables like Nobo B60 and Hydra Alert help monitor hydration through different means, but mostly through sensors. Nobo is like a watch, mounted to the wrist or calf, while the Hydra Alert is placed in a urinal or toilet to monitor hydration through urine. However, many of these types of devices haven’t been independently validated for accuracy.

    • Training: It seems there are countless devices to measure training. The IMeasureU is versatile, using motion data to track training. Similar to hydration wearables though, there isn’t clinical validation for this technology.

    • Heart Rate and Breathing: The Hexoskin is like a smart t-shirt with electrocardiogram (ECG) and breathing sensors, along with an accelerometer. This measures heart rate, heart rate variability, breathing rate, steps, etc.

    • Sleep: Many training devices also can monitor sleep. These devices can illuminate what we don’t know happens during our sleep, and can also showcase our sleeping patterns to help us understand why we may be waking up so tired. The Fitbit Charge 2 is especially responsive to monitoring sleep, and has been validated through a third-party study.34

    Understanding our inputs with data provides us with a way to maximize our outputs and reach peak performance–even in recovery.

    Recovery is the First Step to Better Training

    Recovery takes time and dedication; it often gets overlooked in workout schedules because it isn’t accounted for.

    Active recovery, sleep, diet, and supplements like HVMN Ketone can be used to kickstart the recovery process and make training more effective.

    The best training starts with mindful recovery to help muscles rebuild for the next training session. This, ultimately, can improve training by putting your body in the best position to perform. The process of muscle breakdown happens during exercise; immediately after, the process of muscle restoration and strengthening begins–you could be compromising gainful training by skipping these all-important techniques to help the body rebuild.

    Scientific Citations

    1.MacDougall JD, Gibala MJ, Tarnopolsky MA, MacDonald JR, Interisano SA, Yarasheski KE. The time course for elevated muscle protein synthesis following heavy resistance exercise. Can J Appl Physiol. 1995 Dec;20(4):480-6.
    2.Mitchell, J W. Nadel, E R. Stolwijk, J. A. J. Respiratory water losses during exercise. Journal of Applied Physiology 32(4):474-6. May 1972.
    3.Montner P, Stark D M, Riedesel M L, Murata G, Robergs R, Timms M, Chick T W. Pre-Exercise Glycerol Hydration Improves Cycling Endurance Time. Int J Sports Med 1996; 17(1): 27-33.
    4.Hew-Butler T, Rosner M H, Fowkes-Godek S, et al. Statement of the Third International Exercise-Associated Hyponatremia Consensus Development Conference, Carlsbad, California, 2015. Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine: July 2015 – Volume 25 – Issue 4 – p 303–320.
    5.Moreno I L, Vanderlei L C M, Pastre C M, Vanderlei F M, Carlos de Abreu L, Ferreira C. Cardiorespiratory effects of water ingestion during and after exercise. Int Arch Med. 2013; 6: 35. Published online 2013 Sep 23.
    6.Heneghan C, Gill P, O’Neill B, Lasserson D, Thake M, Thompson M, Howick J. Mythbusting sports and exercise products. BMJ 2012;345:e4848.
    7.Kerksick C, Harvey T, Stout J, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: nutrient timing. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2008 Oct 3;5:17.
    8.Biolo G, Tipton KD, Klein S, Wolfe RR. An abundant supply of amino acids enhances the metabolic effect of exercise on muscle protein. Am J Physiol. 1997 Jul;273(1 Pt 1):E122-9.
    9.Rasmussen BB, Tipton KD, Miller SL, Wolf SE, Wolfe RR. An oral essential amino acid-carbohydrate supplement enhances muscle protein anabolism after resistance exercise. J Appl Physiol (1985). 2000 Feb;88(2):386-92.
    10.Elliot TA, Cree MG, Sanford AP, Wolfe RR, Tipton KD. Milk ingestion stimulates net muscle protein synthesis following resistance exercise. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2006 Apr;38(4):667-74.
    11.Rieu I, Balage M, Sornet C, Giraudet C, Pujos E, Grizard J, Mosoni L, Dardevet D. Leucine supplementation improves muscle protein synthesis in elderly men independently of hyperaminoacidaemia. The Journal of Physiology, 08 August 2006.
    12.Yang C, Jiao Y, Wei B, Yang Z, Wu JF, Jensen J, Jean WH,4, Huang CY, Kuo CH. Aged cells in human skeletal muscle after resistance exercise. Aging (Albany NY). 2018 Jun 27;10(6):1356-1365.
    13.Tang J E, Moore D R, Kujbida G W, Tarnopolsky M A, Phillips S M. Ingestion of whey hydrolysate, casein, or soy protein isolate: effects on mixed muscle protein synthesis at rest and following resistance exercise in young men. American Physiological Society. 01 September 2009.
    14.Res P T, Groen B, Pennings B, Beelen M, Wallis G A, Gijsen A P , Senden J M G, Van Loon L J C. Protein Ingestion before Sleep Improves Postexercise Overnight Recovery. 0195-9131/12/4408-1560/0 MEDICINE & SCIENCE IN SPORTS & EXERCISE Copyright 2012 by the American College of Sports Medicine.
    15.Negro M, Giardina S, Marzani B, Marzatico F. Branched-chain amino acid supplementation does not enhance athletic performance but affects muscle recovery and the immune system. J Sports Med Phys Fitness. 2008 Sep;48(3):347-51.
    16.Mori T A, Beilin L J. Omega-3 fatty acids and inflammation. Current Atherosclerosis Reports November 2004, Volume 6, Issue 6, pp 461–467.
    17.Barros MP, Poppe SC, Bondan EF. Neuroprotective properties of the marine carotenoid astaxanthin and omega-3 fatty acids, and perspectives for the natural combination of both in krill oil. Nutrients. 2014 Mar 24;6(3):1293-317.
    18.Pashkow FJ, Watumull DG, Campbell CL. Astaxanthin: a novel potential treatment for oxidative stress and inflammation in cardiovascular disease. Am J Cardiol. 2008 May 22;101(10A):58D-68D.
    19.Machlin L J , Bendich A. Free radical tissue damage: protective role of antioxidant nutrients. The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. Vol. 1, No. 6 December 1987.
    20.Holdsworth, D.A., Cox, P.J., Kirk, T., Stradling, H., Impey, S.G., and Clarke, K. (2017). A Ketone Ester Drink Increases Postexercise Muscle Glycogen Synthesis in Humans. Med Sci Sports Exerc.
    21.Stubbs, B.Cox, P.; Evans, R.; Santer, P.; Miller, J.; Faull, O.; Magor-Elliott, S.; Hiyama, S.; Stirling, M.; Clarke, K. (2017). On the metabolism of exogenous ketones in humans. Front. Physiol.
    22.Cahill, G.F., Jr. (1970). Starvation in man. New Engl J Med 282, 668-675.
    23.Dattilo M, Antunes H K M, Medeiros A, Mônico Neto M, Souza H S, Tufika S, de Mello M T. Sleep and muscle recovery: Endocrinological and molecular basis for a new and promising hypothesis. Medical Hypotheses Volume 77, Issue 2, August 2011, Pages 220-222.
    24.Exelmans L, Van den Bulck J .Bedtime mobile phone use and sleep in adults. Soc Sci Med. 2016 Jan;148:93-101.
    25.Parra J, Cadefau J A, Rodas G, Amigo N, Cusso R. The distribution of rest periods affects performance and adaptations of energy metabolism induced by high‐intensity training in human muscle. Acta Physiologica Scandinavica, 169: 157-165.
    26.Crowther F, Sealey R, Crowe M, Edwards A, Halson S. Influence of recovery strategies upon performance and perceptions following fatiguing exercise: a randomized controlled trial. BMC Sports Science, Medicine and RehabilitationBMC series – open, inclusive and trusted. 2017 9:25.
    27.Monedero J, Donne B. Effect of Recovery Interventions on Lactate Removal and Subsequent Performance. Int J Sports Med 2000; 21: 593–597
    28.Rimmer E, Sleivert G. Effects of a Plyometrics Intervention Program on Sprint Performance. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2000, 14(3), 295–301 q 2000.
    29.Broatch JR, Petersen A, Bishop DJ. Postexercise cold water immersion benefits are not greater than the placebo effect. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2014 Nov;46(11):2139-47.
    30.Page P. Current Concepts in Muscle Stretching for Exercise and Rehabilitation. Int J Sports Phys Ther. 2012 Feb; 7(1): 109–119.
    31.Worrell T W, Smith T L, Winegardner J. Effect of Hamstring Stretching on Hamstring Muscle Performance. Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy, 1994 Volume:20 Issue:3 Pages:154–159.
    32.Pearcey G E P, Bradbury-Squires D J, Kawamoto J E, Drinkwater E J, Behm D G, Button D C. Foam Rolling for Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness and Recovery of Dynamic Performance Measures. Journal of Athletic Training: January 2015, Vol. 50, No. 1, pp. 5-13.
    33.Peacock CA, Krein D D, Silva T A, Sander G J, Von Carlowitz K A. An Acute Bout of Self-Myofascial Release in the Form of Foam Rolling Improves Performance Testing. Int J Exerc Sci. 2014; 7(3): 202–211. Published online 2014 Jul 1.
    34.de Zambotti M, Goldstone A, Claudatos S, Colrain IM, Baker FC. A validation study of Fitbit Charge 2™ compared with polysomnography in adults.
  • How Much Weight Should You Lift To Build Muscle (And When To Lift More)

    How Much Weight Should You Lift To Build Muscle (And When To Lift More)

    Title: How Much Weight Should You Lift To Build Muscle (And When To Lift More)

    By line: By Tom Venuto, CSCS, NSCA-CPT
    URL: BurnTheFat.com – Body Transformation System
    www.Burnthefatinnercircle.com
    Word count: 3255 words

    How Much Weight Should You Lift To Build Muscle (And When To Lift More)

    When should you increase the weight you’re lifting? How much weight should you add? How do you know if the weight is too heavy? How do you know if the weight is too light? If you’re attempting 3 sets of 8 to 12, do you have to get all 3 sets of 12 before you increase the weight, or just hit 12 on one set? If you increase the weight but then you can’t get enough reps, what then?  What if your left arm doesn’t get as many reps as your right arm, with the same weight? What if you flat-out can’t increase the weight at all? What then?

    Understanding how to choose the right weight is so vital, you could be completely wasting your gym time if you don’t get this right.

    That’s why I’ve created a set of guidelines that will help you choose the right weight and show you how to increase the weight and reps over time with the best results.

    Please note; this is not a discussion about how to get stronger per se, only how to know if you’re using the right weight to build muscle, and when to increase it.

    This is  also not an exhaustive discussion of all the methods you have available for progressive overload in your workouts (as you will find here in my overload training manual).

    What you’re getting here today is a great set of guidelines for mastering the primary progression variable: Increasing the weight, also known as progressive resistance. And with that, here’s the list of my top 10 ways to choose the right weight and make more muscle gains…

    1. Work in a repetition max range rather than have a single rep target.

    Compared to using one rep target like “3 sets of 10 reps” or 5 sets of 5 reps,” using a rep range makes it easier for most people to choose the right weight and know when to increase it.

    The most vital first step is to choose the rep range most compatible with your goals. For example, if your primary goal is strength, training exclusively with weights so light that you can do 20 reps on every set is clearly the wrong way (that’s training for muscle endurance). If your primary goal is bodybuilding, training only in the 1 to 5 rep range is not the right way either (that’s powerlifting).

    Using a rep range and judging if it’s the right load by perceived exertion is simple, easy and it eliminates the need for a 1 rep max test. In the chart below, you can see the rep range associated with a particular goal or outcome:

    1-5 reps:  Neural:  Strength & power, some hypertrophy
    6-8 reps:   Neural & metabolic:  Strength & Hypertrophy
    9-12 reps:  Metabolic & Neural:  Hypertrophy & some strength
    13-20+ reps:  Metabolic:  Muscular endurance, some hypertrophy, little strength

    Typically the range most often recommended for muscle growth (hypertrophy) is 6 to 12 reps (or 8 to 12 reps, depending on who you ask).

    Beginners usually start by choosing one rep range, and they shouldn’t worry about rotating rep ranges at first, because beginners respond well to almost anything. As you advance, using periodization (varying the workout stimulus day to day or week to week  including the rep range), becomes increasingly beneficial.

    Ultimately, for building muscle, using multiple rep ranges is ideal for advanced trainees, and this is often done by using the “heavy day – lighter day” system or a heavy-medium-light system. At this stage, the majority of your training would still fall in the 8 to 12 range, but with some heavier work below 6 reps and some lighter work above 12 to 15 reps.

    Note for women: Most trainers do not like the word “tone,” because technically, there’s no such thing. However, I think it’s fine if women who are not bodybuilders or physique athletes swap out the words muscle “hypertrophy” or “growth” (size) with “toning” or “firming” and here’s why: If women believe they are going to get bigger doing sets of 6, 8, 10 or 12 reps, many may instead keep choosing tiny light weights that they could rep out all day long – but that actually gets you nowhere because it’s not enough resistance.

    Women lack the testosterone to gain muscle “mass” the way men do, but when women train in the optimal hypertrophy rep range, the effect is exactly what they say they want: “muscle shaping, firming and toning” (think “better curves”). You only achieve that by training with enough weight in the right rep ranges.

    2. Increase the weight if you can hit your the upper number in your rep range (or more) on all of your sets.

    Once you know the rep range you’re aiming for, adjusting the weight is simple: When you hit the higher end of your rep range on all your sets – in good form – that is your signal to increase the weight at your next workout.

    If you hit the upper number in your rep range target and it was super-easy, (you feel like you could have kept going for several more), you don’t even have to wait for the next workout, you could increase the weight right then and there for your second set.

    Here’s an example: If your target was 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps and you hit all three sets of 12 (the upper number in your rep range target), with good form it’s time to increase the weight for the next workout.

    If you only hit one set at the upper end of the target range, for example, if your three sets are 12, 11, 10 reps, yes, you can still increase the weight if you want to, because you did hit one set of 12, or you can stay at the same weight and keep working toward that goal of 3 full sets of 12. You can make your own judgement call on that.

    3. Decrease the weight if you can’t hit your lower rep max number on any of your sets.

    The flipside of the above also applies: An absolutely certain way to know if the weight is too heavy is when you can’t hit the low end of your rep range on any sets. If the rep range you’ve chosen is 10-15 reps and you can’t even do one set of 8 or 9 reps, it’s absolutely too heavy and you should reduce the poundage.

    4. Remember that sometimes it’s normal for reps to drop with successive sets.

    After you complete each set, fatigue and exercise metabolism waste-products accumulate, while energy reserves decline, and this may result in your reps dropping from set to set. This is especially true if you train to failure. The more reps you leave in the tank with each set, the easier it’s going to be to stay in your target rep range on all of your sets. Repetition drop-off also happens in your later sets if your rest intervals are too short (if you want time-efficiency, instead of cutting rest intervals between regular sets, consider the Burn The Fat antagonist superset system)

    If the reps drop slightly, that’s ok, in fact, because usually it means you’re working hard on the early sets. On the other hand, losing steam with each passing set and exercise as the workout goes on can also be a sign that you’re tired, sleep-deprived, under-fueled, under-nourished, under-recovered from previous workouts or not mentally focused. The end result of all the above is that you may not always hit your intended number of reps or even your intended rep range.

    If you’re doing 3 sets of 8 – 12, it might look like this: set 1: 12 reps, set 2: 10 reps, set 3: 9 reps. This is normal and okay. Just keep working to get stronger and do more reps on each set in future workouts when you feel able to do so. On the other hand, if your goal was 8 to 12 reps and you did 11 reps, 8 reps and 6 reps in each set, that’s too much dropoff and you should consider using the strategies above so you stay in your target rep range).

    5. Understand that it’s normal for one arm to be stronger than another at first.

    Since most of us have a dominant side, it’s perfectly normal for one arm to be a little stronger than another. It’s also quite possible that one arm may randomly get one more rep than the other.

    Don’t worry about it – it’s just one rep. In fact, you might want to give yourself a plus or minus (+ / -) one rep rule on every set of every exercise you do because it helps you relieve the stress of worrying about the small stuff like this.

    For example, if one day you do 12 reps with your left arm and 13 reps with your right arm, that’s fine. In this case, it is like horseshoes or hand grenades – close enough is close enough. NOTE: training with dumbbells and unilateral exercises over time can help even out your strength.

    6. Increase the weights in relative increments and expect the weight increases to slow down as you get more advanced.

    Common recommendations for progressive resistance are to increase the weight by 5 to 10 pounds or 5% to 10% at a time. Keep in mind, however, that this is not the same amount. Percentage is relative, while pounds are absolute. The actual amount you can increase can vary for many reasons, including the type of exercise and how many years you’ve been training.

    A strong guy might curl 50 pound dumbbells for reps with strict form. A 5 percent increase would only be 2.5 pounds – increasing to a 52.5 pound dumbbell, a small and manageable absolute increase.Even adding 10% and moving up to the 55 pound dumbbells is do-able.

    Compound barbell exercises like squats and deadlifts or machines like leg presses allow you to use much heavier weights, so the absolute amount of weight increase may be higher.  If a 200 pound man is squatting 400 pounds,  increasing by 5% (20 pounds – a 10 pound plate on each side) is possible, but a big jump in absolute terms. A 10% increase of 40 pounds is probably out of the question. Adding just 5 pounds on each side of the bar, jumping up to 410 lbs, a 2.5% increase is good progress.

    That brings us to another point: How small of a weight increase you use is often dictated not only by the type of exercise and your training age, but also by the equipment you have available. Special equipment can make slow progression through small weight jumps possible. This is known as micro-progression.

    Most dumbbell racks only  go up in 5 pound increments. But some well equipped gyms have a rack of dumbbells that goes up in 2.5 increments and these are fantastic for slow progression.

    A second option is the adjustable dumbbells where you put free weight plates on the side of each dumbbell handle and secure them with collars. Weight plates are available in 2.5 and even 1.25 pound increments at fitness and sporting good stores. Also, some collars have weight and whatever the collars weigh also counts.

    A third option is magnetic plates (such as PlateMates). If you are using metal dumbbells (not encased in rubber – and hopefully not those old vinyl Kmart plates), the micro-weights attach magnetically. These come in 1.25 pound increments so one on each side of a bell makes your 2.5 pound increment.

    Microprogression is valuable all the time for small body part isolation exercises, but it also comes in handy for advanced lifters. After years of experience and progression, you have already captured all your rapid “newbie” gains and your rate of progress, both in muscle growth and in strength, slows down dramatically. Personal records (PR’s) come much more infrequently. Nevertheless, it remains the goal of most lifters to continue finding ways to get stronger and hit new PRs.

    Of course, there is the powerlifter joke that “real men” are only allowed to add 45 pound plates on the bar, (Olympic bars loaded with 45’s go up: 135, 225, 315, 405, 495), but I’d take that one with a grain of salt if I were you. No matter where you are on the strength spectrum, never turn your nose up at small increases and keep in mind that you will not always be able to increase the weight.

    7. Use the double progressive system, working up in reps, then weight, then repeating.

    One reason you can’t increase the weight predictably every time is becasue almost everyone has natural up and down days. Some days you are stronger and more energetic than others. Another reason is that beginners make much faster progress than advanced trainees. The longer you’ve been training, the slower your progress typical comes.

    Whatever the reason you can’t increase the weight at the moment, you can almost always do one more rep with the same weight, and one more rep is not an intimidating goal.

    This is the “one step at a time” mentality, and while it may seem like it will take forever moving up one rep at a time, remember that you are going to be training for a lifetime and it’s vital to appreciate slow progression.

    Below you’ll see the example of double progression that was used in the Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle book:

    225 pounds X 8 reps – start at low end of rep range
    225 pounds X 9 reps – Increase by one rep
    225 pounds X 10 reps – Increase by one rep
    225 pounds X 11 reps – Increase by one rep
    225 pounds X 12 reps – Achieved rep goal — increase weight
    235 pounds X 8 reps – Drop back to low end of rep range
    235 pounds X 9 reps – Increase by one rep
    235 pounds X 10 reps – Increase by one rep
    235 pounds X 11 reps – Increase by one rep
    235 pounds X 12 reps – Achieved rep goal — increase weight.
    245 pounds X 8 reps – Drop back to low end of rep range.

    This is a simplified, linear example. More often, progress comes in spurts, and then plateaus. You might jump three steps forward and then one step sideways (or back). Sometimes you’ll make fast strength gains and increase the weight every workout. At other times, you must be patient and move up one rep at a time. That’s the main point of the double progressive system: If you add even one more rep with the same weight each workout, that’s progress! In this example, it took 10 workouts to move up by 20 pounds. Patience, combined with good record-keeping with a training journal pays off.

    8. Use other methods of progressive overload instead of using progressive resistance.

    Adding more weight to the bar is the big daddy of progression methods, but it’s not the only way to challenge yourself to improve your performance. As mentioned above, doing more reps with the same weight is a form of progressive overload.

    Adding volume is a method of progression as well. That means more sets and more exercises. Contrary to what the minimalist training gurus claim, increasing volume can often work shockingly well, as long as you do it within your recovery ability, within practical restraints such as time available, and you appropriately cycle between lower and higher volume workouts.

    Density training is yet another method of overload. That means doing the same volume of work in less time, doing more work in the same time or even doing more work in less time.

    The use of increased intensity of effort techniques or set extension techniques can also overload your muscles. Drop sets, supersets, giant sets, static holds and so on – using the same weight – all give your muscles a new challenge. You could even argue that stricter form with the same weight is also an overload of sorts.

    If you can’t, or don’t want to keep adding more weight, you are free to employ one or more of these techniques (you can learn more in my Ultimate Progressive Overload for Bodybuilding and Physique Transformation Manual)

    9. Take a deload or back off period, then start your progression over again.

    Sometimes when you hit a sticking point and the weights or reps don’t seem to move, it doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong, it means you have built up to a temporary peak in intensity, volume and so on. There is another potential peak with advancement and personal records ahead of you, but first your body needs a short rest before climbing that next mountain.

    After your training has reached an intensity peak, your body is “stressed out” and needs a break to avoid being pushed into an overtrained state. But instead of taking a total rest week, you continue to train, and simply back off the weights and intensity for a short period. This is known as de-loading, and it allows your body a short time to recover and “reap” the gains you obtained in the previous weeks. This is a phenomenon known as “super compensation,” which means that even during that de-load week, you continue to see gains, often good ones, which is a result not of the deload week by itself, but the intensity peak that preceded it.

    What often happens after a de-load is you can pick up where you left off (or take one step back to prep for 2 or 3 more steps forward), and when you do resume training full-bore, you break through to a new PR by the end of the next cycle.

    10. Change the exercise.

    Sometimes you reach a point where you have milked all the results out of a particular exercise routine and it’s simply time to change it. This sometimes involves changing the frequency, changing the volume, changing the set and rep parameters or changing the techniques used. Most often it involves changing some or even all the exercises.

    It may not be necessary or even beneficial to change all the exercises, but changing some exercises on a regular basis is important to continue producing new progress (it also helps you avoid boredom and burnout). Because some exercises are so fundamental and effective, you might stay with those exercises, but change the other variables mentioned above.

    Alternately, you keep the basic movement pattern and use an exercise variation. Examples include changing from back squat to front squat, from conventional deadlift to hex bar deadlift, from barbell press to dumbbell press or from barbell row to dumbbell row. Sometimes as little as a grip change is enough, such as moving from pull up to chin up, from supinated row to pronated row, from wide grip pulldown to close grip pulldown and so on.

    ultimate-progressive-overload-200Want to learn more?

    For years, I’ve been bombarded with questions about how to choose the right weight and when to increase it, and I hope this tutorial on progressive resistance has helped clear up up this often-confusing subject.

    If you want to learn more about all the other progressive overload systems (not just progressive resistance), then be sure to download a copy of my new e-book, The Ultimate Progressive Overload Training Manual For Body Building and Body Transformation.

    It’s brand new and and you can get your copy here:

    CLICK HERE To Download Your Progressive Overload Training Manual

     

    tomvenuto-blogAbout Tom Venuto

    Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural (steroid-free) bodybuilder, fitness writer and author of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle: Fat Burning Secrets of Bodybuilders and Fitness Models and the national bestseller, The Body Fat Solution, which was an Oprah Magazine and Men’s Fitness Magazine pick. Tom has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Oprah Magazine, Muscle and Fitness Magazine, Ironman Magazine and Men’s Fitness Magazine, as well as on dozens of radio shows including Sirius Satellite Radio, ESPN-1250 and WCBS. Tom is also the founder and CEO of Burn The Fat Inner Circle – a fitness support community for inspiration and transformation

  • Meal Planning Is Not The Opposite Of Flexible Dieting

    Meal Planning Is Not The Opposite Of Flexible Dieting

     Title: Meal Planning Is Not The Opposite Of Flexible Dieting

    By line: By Tom Venuto, CSCS, NSCA-CPT
    URL: BurnTheFat.com – Body Transformation System
    www.Burnthefatinnercircle.com
    Word count: 4249 words

    Meal Planning Is Not The Opposite Of Flexible Dieting

    By Tom Venuto

    BurnTheFat.com – Body Transformation System

    Every cliché you’ve ever heard about the importance of planning is true. Failing to plan is a disaster waiting to happen. Planning is power.  Planning is confidence. Planning is success. It’s no secret that I’m an advocate of meal planning, and it’s a major part of my Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle system. I’m also a supporter of flexible dieting. If you don’t know what flexible dieting is, or if you do, but it seems like flexible dieting and meal planning don’t go together, then this will be the most important post you’ve ever read… 

    There are two major reasons I’m writing this:

    1. Many people who know about flexible dieting are practicing (and preaching) it all wrong.
    2. Many people know about flexible dieting but they think flexible dieting and meal planning are antagonistic concepts.

    Simply stated, it’s widely believed that if you follow a meal plan, you’re not being flexible. Not only is this false, it’s absurd.  Let me explain by starting with my definition of meal planning…

    Jim-Rohn-planningWhat is meal planning?

    Years ago I heard the great motivational speaker Jim Rohn say something that changed my life: He said, “Never start your day until you finish it.”

    At first that may sound like a contradiction or even a riddle (like one of those Japanese Koans), but it’s really quite simple and straightforward.

    What Rohn meant was you should never begin your day unless you’ve already planned it in advance (“finished it”), in your mind and on paper. He was referring broadly to the daily actions that lead to success in all kinds of life goals, but this applies especially well to daily meal planning. Don’t start your day until you know what you’re going to eat that day. In other words, plan your meals in advance…

    Do your calorie calculations first, then set your targets for protein, carbohydrate and fat (macronutrients, aka “macros”). Next, create a daily meal plan that fits your macros and consists of (mostly) healthy foods that you enjoy.  Use an electronic tool such as a simple Excel spreadsheet, an online tool like our Burn the Fat Meal Planner (at www.Burnthefatinnercircle.com ), or a mobile app. Then store that meal plan in your mobile device and print it on paper and stick it on your refrigerator or somewhere you’ll easily and regularly see it.

    Do this and you’re now harnessing the power of goals. You now have an eating goal for the day and you’re avoiding most of the problems that arise when you just venture out into your busy day unprepared. Without planning, you leave yourself at the mercy of impulse and circumstances. Without goals, you wander aimlessly or float wherever the current of your busy life takes you. For many people, that’s straight to the nearest fast food joint or the donut table at work.

    Worse still, eating haphazardly, even if you make healthy choices, makes it nearly impossible to establish a baseline, so you can’t track your weekly body composition progress or troubleshoot plateaus.

    I first learned about meal planning one day in 1991. With the help of a bodybuilding nutritionist, together we sat down and created my meal plans using computer software. I printed them out so I could look at my daily eating goal every day. I never stopped. I’ve taught this method to all my clients for over 25 years and I’m a believer in it to this day. At the same time, I don’t think it’s a contradiction to say I’m also a believer in flexible dieting.

    What is flexible dieting?

    The general idea of putting some kind of leeway into your diet goes back to at least the 1990s, when the recommendation of taking a once a week cheat day was popular (a less refined way of being flexible that may have potential pitfalls, but it was a start). I’ve seen studies indexed in pub med using the terms “flexible dieting” as far back as 1999.

    But generally, until about the mid 2000s, most diets were looked at as very rigid affairs, and especially in bodybuilding. You ate what your guru or coach told you to eat, you were given strict food lists to follow and there were unbreakable rules. Everything was black and white, do or don’t, good or bad.

    Flexible dieting wasn’t explained more formally until years later. The first time I saw a complete program in print under the name “flexible dieting” was in 2005 in Lyle McDonald’s book on the subject. Within 5 to 10 years after that, almost everyone was talking about flexible dieting and many books, plus countless articles had been published about it.

    Okay, so enough history, what is it? Flexible dieting is based on the idea that it’s counterproductive to deprive yourself of your favorite foods completely, to follow someone else’s food list without deviation or to restrict yourself to a short list of unprocessed health foods 100% of the time.

    It may seem a noble intention to aim for eating 100% “clean,” but research on nutrition, behavior and psychology gives us evidence that the 100% strict approach usually ends in failure (it’s also not much fun, especially when holidays, birthdays and social events roll around).

    People who are too rigid with their diets usually learn the hard way that you tend to crave what you’re not supposed to have.  The more rules and restrictions you have about what foods are “bad” and what you can “never eat”, the more likely you are to eventually break those rules. Even if you’ve got strong willpower and lots of restraint, over time, the pressure of missing your favorite foods builds up, social pressure gets added on top, “life happens,” and ultimately, you cave in to cravings or temptations.

    The irony of it all is that a single diet mistake is actually not a big deal. The bigger problem is in the all-or-nothing mentality of the dieter that makes a mountain out of a molehill. After a single slip up, like having a piece of pizza that wasn’t on their meal plan, the perfectionist (un-flexible) dieter feels as if their entire program is blown. They figure, “I already screwed up, so it doesn’t matter now,” and they proceed to polish off a whole pie, and wash it down with a liter of cola or a six pack of beer. It’s as if a switch in their head was flipped from 100% “on” to 100% “off.”

    Now they’ve really set themselves back, guilt follows the binge, they feel like an even bigger failure, and it’s “back to square one” next Monday (or they abandon their entire plan). If that slice of pizza were actually allowed as part of the weekly meal plan to begin with, eating it would not be seen as a failure, and not given a second thought – it would be enjoyed.

    Both real world experience and scientific research have shown, paradoxically, that people who have fewer food restrictions, who include favorite foods and make an allowance for cheat meals, have a better long term adherence, a higher fat loss success rate and are less likely to show symptoms of eating disorders. They don’t feel deprived, and they’re happier because they can more easily participate in social events that involve food.

    Compliance to a calorie deficit is required for fat loss. And for good health, the majority of your calories should come from nutritious, unprocessed foods. But you can allow a small portion of your calories for any of your favorite treat foods and still reach your goals. Ice cream, chocolate, pizza, pancakes, French fries, even cheesecake – anything goes. No foods should be forbidden in flexible dieting (outside of allergy, intolerance, and so on), or it defeats the purpose.

    If you enjoy “cheat foods” occasionally in a disciplined, measured fashion, as part of a structured, by-the-numbers nutrition plan, it will usually help, not hurt. It will help overweight men and women get the fat off and maintain their new healthy weight long term, and even competitive bodybuilders and fitness models these days are using carefully planned cheat meals without sacrificing condition, making what is otherwise a very strict diet much more tolerable.

    Why people believe meal planning and flexible dieting oppose each other

    I support flexible eating and I acknowledge the research that supports it, as well as the ongoing success people are having in the real world. I also believe creating meal plans in advance is one of the most powerful first steps for taking charge of your body composition and health.

    However, many people who now call themselves flexible dieters, do not think meal planning and being flexible go together. As best as I can figure, they think that if you write a meal plan in advance, or get a meal plan from a coach or nutritionist, then you are being rigid because you now have a prescription you’re forced to follow.

    They believe instead, that all you have to do is follow handful of sensible eating rules that have flexibility built in, and you don’t have to know in advance what you’ll eat each day.  For example, a flexible dieter might have rules like these:

    1. Track your calories and grams of protein, carbs and fat (“macros”).
    2. Eat mostly unrefined, nutrient-dense healthy foods (aim for 90%).
    3. Eat foods you like that you can see yourself eating for life.
    4. There are no forbidden foods.
    5. Eat anything you want with 10% of your calories.

    Each person’s rules might be a little different – some might have rules about portion sizes (deck of cards or the size of your palm) or suggest “eat until you are 80% full” instead of counting calories, and so on, but the idea is the same. With flexible dieting, there is some structure, but inside the boundaries that are set, you can take the ball and run with it anywhere you want (there’s no prescription of specific foods you “must” eat).

    Some dieters, especially those who follow the IIFYM (If It Fits Your Macros) method, tend to be more opposed to premade meal plans than others. IIFYM is a specific type of flexible dieting and with IIFYM, the rules are simple: calculate your ideal daily targets for calories, protein, carbs and fat, make sure you eat enough “healthy” food to reach your daily fiber and micronutrient needs, and after that, eat anything you want. Just use an app or electronic device to log in your food as the day goes on, because you do have to be strict about the macros and calories.

    Doing meal plans by the numbers – calories and macros – is not something I’m a stranger to. That first meal plan I created back in the early 90’s on a desktop computer – it wasn’t just a list of foods or even just a list of portion sizes, it had the calories and macros for each food listed, as well as subtotals for each meal and grand totals for the day at the bottom.

    This is one point where I agree with IIFYM.  There are other “flexible dieting” methods that work which don’t require counting calories or macros (the portion method, for example), but tracking calories and macros is worth it, in my opinion. That’s especially true for beginners who can’t accurately eyeball portion sizes or ballpark calories because they don’t have any experience or nutrition education yet. Tracking calories and macros is also important when you’re stuck at a plateau or when a lot is at stake like physique competition.

    A brief rant on the shortcomings of IIFYM

    I’ve always set up meal plans by the numbers (calories, protein, carbs and fat), and I also like flexible dieting, so IIFYM should be a good idea then, right?  Well, maybe.  It depends on how you approach it.  Something that surprised me was the first time I heard of this thing called “freestyle IIFYM.”

    Freestyle is referring to the highly flexible method of going into your day with nothing but goals for calories, macros and (hopefully) eating enough healthy food to hit your “fiber and micros.” But aside from that, there’s no meal plan. This type of IIFYMer doesn’t know specifically what he’s going to eat for the day, only how much. That’s the idea – he sees that as the ultimate in flexibility.  I get it, but I also think starting your day without a plan is a bad idea for most people, especially if you’re struggling with fat loss.

    IIFYM may be popular (at least in the younger generation, and especially online, if #hashtag volume is any indication), but the way I see it, IIFYM has become the ugly stepchild of flexible dieting. I’m not entirely sure what caused this mutation in flexible dieting’s acronymed offpring.  Some, who adopted a low calorie junk food diet because they found out they could get away with it and still get lean (look up Dr. Haub and the Twinkie Diet experiment), are flat out doing it wrong – the unhealthy way.  But I suspect that many IIFYMers simply lack the communication skills to explain it well, so it ended up a convoluted mess of the originally well-intentioned idea.

    I have to laugh when IIFYM dieters complain that people misunderstand what they’re doing and wonder why everyone thinks IIFYM means only eating pop tarts and cheesecake, when actually 80% or 90% of their calories come from traditional bodybuilding foods (aka “bro food.”) Could it be because they mostly post photos of poptarts and cheesecake in their social media feeds with #IIFYM hashtags, while bragging how they eat anything and still get ripped? (which is insufferably annoying, by the way). It’s not hard to see why IIFYM has caused a lot of confusion and silly debate.

    [The video below is worth every second of the 28 minute duration to watch. Best interview on flexible dieting on the web via Alan Aragon and Juma Iraki… includes the true origin story of IIFYM @3:30]

    Flexible dieting is a simple concept that’s easy to explain and easy to adopt into any kind of food philosophy. That’s why I prefer the term flexible dieting, and I would not shed a tear if IIFYM fell off the map. But I digress… back to the lecture at hand…

    Why following a meal plan can still be flexible

    Now, someone who agrees that flexible dieting is a good thing might say, “But Tom, if you give me a meal plan, and I have to follow exactly what’s on your meal plan, then I won’t be a flexible dieter anymore, will I?  My answer is, first of all, that’s not an accurate statement. What’s more, I don’t want to give you a meal plan, let alone ask you to follow mine. If I had my way, I would never give a daily meal plan to anyone.  I would only teach readers how to create their own meal plans using templates, and simple nutrition rules or guidelines.

    The only kind of meal plan you should want is one that’s customized for you. That means you either learn how to do it yourself or you sit down with a coach and do it together.  At the very least, your coach creates a customized plan based on foods you’ve said you enjoy eating. There’s nothing worse than generic meal plans.

    Why do nutrition books and fitness coaches give cookie cutter meal plans anyway? Because almost every client demands it.  The market demands it. If you put out a fat loss book with no meal plans in it, you get complaints from readers who say, “Where’s the meal plans?” People have been conditioned by the industry that a diet book is supposed to be more meal plans (and or recipes) than education.

    Furthermore, it’s human nature to want everything “done for you.”  The average person doesn’t want to read 225 pages about nutrition education – they want to read 25 pages of nutrition science or theory and get 200 pages of meal plans and recipes. They don’t want to do the work of crunching numbers and creating a meal plan schedule themselves. It’s work!

    Unfortunately, this is one of the reasons many people struggle. “Done for you” is not educating you.

    The difference between giving someone a fish and teaching them to fish

    If I give you a fish, you will eat for a day, but then you will need me again every day, or you’ll go out begging for someone else to give you the next fish. I would rather teach you how to fish. If you’re a good learner, and you learn how to fish, you will eat well for life. You also don’t have to depend on me or anyone else to feed you in the future. See how well the old analogy fits?

    Because of human nature and market pressures, the diet industry keeps prescribing meal plans – and yes, unfortunately it’s true, they may not be flexible. The mainstream diet industry is still based on the ideas of bad foods, forbidden foods, rigid food lists, foods to “never eat,” magic superfoods and strict diet rules. If you buy pop diets, you get pop diet (cookie-cutter) meal plans.

    I would rather let you make your own choices inside a structured but flexible framework.  If I do show you a sample meal plan (which I know most people will still want to see), I will explain that it’s only an example of how I might eat, or how other people successful at body transformation eat, not a rigid prescription for you.  I would tell you that I want you to learn how to create your own meal plans, and I’m simply showing you samples as idea starters.

    Bottom line, here is how a meal plan can be flexible: You create and customize your own!

    Creating your own meal plans also aligns with what psychology research says about autonomy and self-motivation. If you feel you had a hand in the process of creating your own program (you don’t feel like it was passed down from a diet dictator) you’ll be more self-motivated and more likely to make the changes a lasting part of your lifestyle. That’s because autonomy (your freedom of choice) is linked to intrinsic motivation. This is yet another reason why flexible dieting works, and it has not been discussed nearly enough yet.

    Here’s another reason why working off a daily meal plan can still be called flexible dieting: Who says you have to follow the same meal plan every day?  Granted, I follow the same meal plan every day, more or less, but that’s my choice. I have personal reasons I do that, and there’s also science saying it can help with fat loss.

    If you don’t want to eat the same thing every day, you don’t have to. Make two meal plans.  Make three! Make seven, if you really want to, but you don’t need many. I’ve seen diet books with 12 weeks worth of different daily meal plans. Who in the world buys a diet book and eats exactly what someone else prescribed for 84 days? However, if you simply have two or three meal plans that you created, and you rotate them, that is enough variety to make most people happy. If you have three meal plans with five meals each, that’s fifteen different meals you could rotate!

    There’s even more.   For those freestyle-loving people, you can make substitutions off one meal plan on the fly – food by food or meal by meal. With the right meal plan template, it’s paint-by-numbers easy. Suppose oatmeal, a banana and scrambled eggs is on your breakfast meal plan, but you don’t want oatmeal yet again this morning.  If you understand the body-building food category system, like the one in Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, you know that all you have to do is swap one food with a different food from the same group and your calories and macros for the day will automatically be in the ballpark.

    Lets suppose you were eating ½ cup (40g) of oatmeal. That’s 150 calories.  If you swap for 2 slices of Ezekiel bread toast that’s 160 calories. Close enough – you’re done! What could be easier than swapping starchy carb for starchy carb or protein for protein?  All you have to do is learn about those food categories so you can make exchanges. This isn’t rocket science and it isn’t new.  In fact, good dieticians have been teaching food exchange systems for as long as I can remember. This is simple stuff! It’s only hard if you make it so by accepting the wrong (rigid) rules or trying to micromanage.

    Why following a structured yet flexible meal plan is the most powerful nutrition strategy

    There are things I’ve changed my mind about over the years, but nothing will ever dissuade me from my belief that working from a daily meal plan is a great way to transform your body and health.

    You don’t have to adopt all my “body-builder nutrition” rules. If you are paleo, go ahead, follow paleo rules. If you are vegan, follow vegan rules. If you are gluten intolerant, follow gluten intolerant rules. If you are low carb, follow your brand of low carb rules.  These things don’t matter when creating meal plans.  What matters is that you do create a meal plan and follow it.

    When you create your own meal plan, it’s yours, and that makes it flexible to begin with. It’s flexible if you learn how to make changes for day to day variety. It’s flexible if you learn how to make food or meal exchanges on the fly. If you eat mostly healthy foods but leave room for your favorite foods and treats on special occasions, it’s flexible. If you reject the idea of forbidden foods and being 100% strict, it’s flexible.

    How to put these ideas into practice

    I know this was a long post. As Blaise Pascal once said, I would have made it shorter, but I didn’t have the time. I thank you and applaud you for staying with me to the end, because this is life-changing stuff. If you want to take the next step, there are tools that can help you put this into practice, and many of them are free.

    You can create a meal plan with something you probably already have installed on your computer – a spreadsheet (such as Microsoft Excel). You can download my free spreadsheets here: www.burnthefatfeedthemuscle.com/freetools.html

    You can use your favorite mobile app, provided it has robust enough daily meal plan functions. There are paid and free apps that do this. My fitness pal is popular among Burn the Fat readers. Lose it, FatSecret and My Macros have also come up in our recent discussions (if there’s another one you like, feel free to share it in the comments below, along with why you like it).

    Or you can use the ultimate meal planning tool – the Burn the Fat Meal Planning software, available to our members at www.Burnthefatinnercircle.com . I’ll be talking more about this new development in the future – it’s the best online meal planning software in the world.

    And remember something: If you create your meal plan in advance, including tallying up the calories, protein, carbs and fat, you don’t have to use an app every day or count anything else! You’ve already crunched the numbers! Now, just follow your plan!!!

    Last but not least, of course, if you want to read about a complete meal-building and daily meal plan creation system, be sure to break out your copy of the Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle book. I’m assuming most people who regularly read Burn the Fat blog already have the Burn the Fat book, so just crack it open to chapter 14: The Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle meal planning system.

    If you don’t have it yet, you can pick up a copy at your Local Barnes and Noble, (Chapters/Indigo in Canada) or your favorite independent bookseller. Or, order the book online at Amazon here:  www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804137846/

    Conclusion

    Meal planning and flexible dieting go together beautifully, if you approach it the right way. Not everyone does. Our industry can do a better job teaching this. In fact, I propose we dispose of IIFYM and start a movement with a new name, called “Flexible Body-Building Nutrition” (#FBBN).

    bffm-small-cover

    That’s what Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is, and it’s a great way to describe the program. It’s not a diet, it’s a by-the-numbers and structured, yet flexible way of eating, designed to build you a great body. Build muscle, build strength, build fitness, build health… oh, and burn fat too!

    Train hard and expect success,

    Tom Venuto, author of
    Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle,
    The Bible of Fat Loss

    Get Burn the Fat:
    www.amazon.com/Burn-Fat-Feed-Muscle-Transform

    tomvenuto-blogAbout Tom Venuto

    Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural (steroid-free) bodybuilder, fitness writer and author of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle: Fat Burning Secrets of Bodybuilders and Fitness Models  and the national bestseller, The Body Fat Solution, which was an Oprah Magazine and Men’s Fitness Magazine pick. Tom has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Oprah Magazine, Muscle and Fitness Magazine, Ironman Magazine and Men’s Fitness Magazine, as well as on dozens of radio shows including Sirius Satellite Radio, ESPN-1250 and WCBS. Tom is also the founder and CEO of www.Burnthefatinnercircle.com – a fitness support community for inspiration and transformation

  • Rieducazione Del Ginocchio Dopo Operazione Di Ricostruzione LCA – La Mia Esperienza

    Rieducazione Del Ginocchio Dopo Operazione Di Ricostruzione LCA – La Mia Esperienza

    Titolo: Rieducazione Del Ginocchio Dopo Operazione Di Ricostruzione LCA – La Mia Esperienza

    Autore: Piero Maina

    Conteggio Parole: 2.399

    Riprendiamo con questo articolo da dove ci eravamo lasciati  e cioè dopo l’operazione di ricostruzione del legamento crociato anteriore (LCA). Argomento che è stato trattato ampiamente in questo mio precedente articolo. (Clicca qui per l’articolo)

    L’ articolo in questione racconta maggiormente come si è svolta l’operazione di ricostruzione dell’ LCA che nel mio caso ha interessato anche la regolarizzazione del menisco mediale sinistro nel corno posteriore e ho parlato anche del primo approccio rieducativo che ho effettuato presso la casa di cura Villa Stuart di Roma. Oggi siamo quasi a cinque mesi dall’intervento e le cose vanno senz’altro meglio anche se durante il periodo trascorso dalla pubblicazione del precedente articolo ad oggi ho avuto altri incidenti di percorso e infortuni che hanno reso le cose già di per se non troppo semplici, ancora più complicate. Ci eravamo lasciati in trentesima giornata circa, per differenza quindi abbiamo cento giorni di rieducazione da prendere in esame, premettendo come mio solito che ogni fisico e persona reagisce in maniera diversa, oltre allo stato di forma che uno possiede, l’età e l’impegno dedicato. Ma guardiamo la MIA esperienza.

    I primi trenta giorni nella rieducazione attiva, sono stati maggiormente spesi sugli esercizi isometrici, tesi soprattutto ad “asciugare” il ginocchio, a recuperare l’estensione che è molto più importante del piegamento. Sono senz’altro importanti tutt’e due, ma mentre il piegamento potrà essere recuperato nel tempo gradualmente, se avremo un deficit in estensione, ne risentiremo maggiormente nella nostra deambulazione.  Oltre agli esercizi isometrici da sdraiato con cavigliera da 1Kg/2 Kg, (che nel tempo diventeranno 4 Kg/5 Kg) abbiamo cominciato ad introdurre la camminata lenta su tapis roulant. Molto importante in questo caso è imparare nuovamente ad appoggiare correttamente il piede sul terreno che per forza di cose, non sarà proprio corretto. Ci sarà un atteggiamento difensivo, sia per il dolore che per la paura, oltre ad una effettiva incapacità dovuta anche ad un cambiamento nella propriocettività e ad una vera e propria fatica a distendere la gamba infortunata. Pertanto lo scopo era di imparare nuovamente ad appoggiare il tallone della gamba operata  sul terreno e farlo “rullare” fino alla punta. Questo processo che all’inizio risulterà a seconda dei casi un po’ scomodo, diverrà via, via più naturale. Di solito entro il secondo mese dall’intervento, si abbandona la rieducazione motoria in acqua/piscina, ma nel mio caso ho protratto per due volte a settimana il lavoro in acqua fino a fine Aprile e quindi a oltre tre mesi dall’operazione. Il mio ortopedico, Dr. Prof.  Attilio Rota, primario del reparto ortopedia dell’ospedale Sandro Pertini di Roma, ha voluto un protocollo più conservativo e che premiasse maggiormente il recupero nella mobilità e flessibilità, piuttosto che della massa muscolare e della forza. Lui ha sempre sostenuto che muscolarmente ero avanti con i tempi, a discapito della mobilità. Ha sempre detto, con ragione, che una volta a posto con l’articolazione, sviluppare nuovamente la massa muscolare avrebbe richiesto tempi corti e con meno rischio di compromettere sia lo stato di salute che delle “performances” del ginocchio stesso. Quindi ho passato i tre mesi, (Febbraio, Marzo e Aprile) a Villa Stuart suddividendo i cinque giorni in tre giorni di lavoro a secco in palestra e due giorni in piscina per mobilità a gravità ridotta.

    Vediamo meglio in cosa consisteva il mio protocollo a secco, che non è praticamente mai cambiato, se non per l’intensità degli esercizi e anche del carico e magari nell’ultimo mese, si è abbandonata maggiormente l’isometria per far posto al potenziamento e alla propriocettività.

    Quindi, dal secondo mese, arrivavo in palestra e cominciavo con 15/20 minuti sulla cyclette della Technogym con freno che nei primi giorni lasciavo a 1 e poi nel tempo ho portato anche a 12 su una scala che arriva a 25. Come ho già scritto qui non dobbiamo lavorare come se gli arti fossero sani e pertanto la potenza sviluppata in watt non sarà elevatissima. Nelle prime sedute sviluppavo da 30 a 70 watt e nelle ultime sedute di fine aprile ho superato i 220 watt, per brevi periodi, anche perché il fiato era corto, ma niente a che vedere con quanto sviluppavo prima dell’incidente. Dopo la prima fase di  riscaldamento sulla cyclette passavo all’ercolina,(cavi) che attaccavo  alla caviglia della gamba infortunata e con i pesi che ho aumentato nel tempo, (5Kg/7 Kg all’inizio e 16 kg negli ultimi giorni) facevo a gamba tesa le estensioni sui quattro lati. 4 serie x 20 ripetizioni. Dopo passavo alla pressa inclinata a 45° e in questo caso siamo partiti con 30kg solo sulla gamba infortunata, per arrivare nel tempo a 60 kg. 5 serie X 20 ripetizioni. Di seguito facevo dei semi squat con la Swiss Ball dietro la schiena, appoggiata ad una colonna, 3 serie x 20 ripetizioni per continuare con le tavolette propriocettive di varie forme e con vari punti di appoggio. Mi esercitavo rimanendo in equilibrio su un solo piede, (gamba operata) o per due minuti in squat/accosciato, spingendo da un piede all’altro su pedana instabile circolare; durissimo! I quadricipiti urlavano vendetta. Poi tornavo a correre sul tapis roulant, ma questo è avvenuto dal mese di marzo  (alternavo il passo alla corsa, partendo da 8 km/h e negli ultimi tempi arrivavo anche a 12 km/h. Facevo 1 minuto al passo e 2 di corsa per 15 minuti. La camminata era fra i 4 e i 6 Km/h con inclinazione a 4°/6°) e solo sul tapis roulant. Su strada ho ricominciato l’altro ieri, (10 giugno) alternando il passo alla corsa per 25 min. e poi passo fino a completare un ‘ora di esercizio, non corro ancora, ovviamente, per un’ora intera e il ginocchio sotto il menisco  mediale operato, ancora “punge” in certi momenti, ma poi passa e il ginocchio è bello asciutto.

    Tornando agli esercizi in palestra, dopo la corsa facevo l’ellittica o glidex , con freno a 12 su una scala massima di 25, per 12/15 min senza appoggiare le mani ai sostegni mobili e ritmi di 160/200 per minuto. Finivo con la leg extension, partendo da metà corsa, in modo da non sovraccaricare il neo legamento ed effettuavo vari esercizi di potenziamento del vasto mediale e vasto laterale, con contrazioni di vario tipo.  4 serie da 20 ripetizioni con 15 kg. Poi stretching e ghiaccio e per finire un bel massaggio!

    Tempi di allenamento tutto compreso, circa due ore e mezza, mentre in piscina i tempi di esercizio erano inferiori, circa un ora e mezza.

    A casa mi allenavo con il P90X nel pomeriggio per tre volte a settimana e il mio ortopedico visto come stavo progredendo mi ha detto che potevo cominciare ad allenarmi da solo e di non andare più a Villa Stuart. Quindi ho ricominciato ad uscire in Mountain Bike (MTB), ma il 15 maggio scorso, sono caduto fratturandomi il gomito sinistro, per l’esattezza il capitello radiale. Sempre a sinistra. Non contento, durante il periodo di immobilizzazione totale che è avvenuto tramite tutore Donjoy, si è formata una tromboflebite venosa superficiale (per fortuna) nella vena mediale del gomito sull’avambraccio e ora sto prendendo forti dosi di eparina (clexane 8.000 U.I. X 2 al giorno). Questi due incidenti, naturalmente hanno rallentato completamente i miei tempi di recupero, perché adesso oltre alla gamba sono infortunato anche nel braccio. Ho continuato ad allenare gli addominali e a fare quello che potevo con il braccio destro. Ad oggi ho ancora dolore, ma da due giorni ho ricominciato ad uscire in MTB e a corricchiare, con le dovute attenzioni. Fermo ancora con i pesi, intanto potenzio le gambe e sabato farò le radiografie di controllo per vedere se la frattura si è saldata correttamente. Porto poi un bracciale compressore per la circolazione sanguigna nel braccio sinistro e spero di riuscire a recuperare la vena. Anche perché nel mese di aprile di trombosi ne ho avuta un’altra, sempre nel braccio sinistro, sempre superficiale nella vena cefalica del bicipite sinistro  e avevo già preso clexane (8.000 U.I. x 2 al giorno) per trenta giorni. Questa tromboflebite si è formata in seguito a una RMN (Risonanza Magnetica Nucleare) con liquido di contrasto e visti i miei trascorsi (l’articolo qui) con le trombosi, si è pensato che abbia qualche problema di coagulazione, ho effettuato uno screening tromboflebitico ed in effetti ho una mutazione genetica dell’ MTHFR – A1298C che è mutato in eterozigosi. Ma sia il C677T che l’omocisteina sono normali e così il fattore V di Leiden e tutti gli altri marcatori. Quindi non sembra una situazione gravissima, ma sono candidato all’assunzione quotidiana di cardioaspirina e a trattamenti anticoagulanti preventivi, in caso di lunghi viaggi in aereo, operazioni chirurgiche o immobilizzazioni degli arti per lunghi periodi. Anche su questo aspetto è bene chiarire perché ogni medico per l’esattezza angiologi, dice la sua e c’è chi dice di prendere la cardioaspirina,chi dice che nel mio caso non serve a nulla, chi dice che avendo l’omocisteina normale, la mia non è una situazione di persona che sviluppa trombosi. Mettetevi d’accordo, qui non parliamo di bastoni da golf, ma della salute di persone.

    Rimaniamo in tema con la rieducazione. Il recupero in acqua invece è servito a rieducare il ginocchio senza la forza di gravità che si avverte a secco in palestra e quindi la piscina è una vera manna per chi deve recuperare da un infortunio che ci ha lasciato immobilizzati per un certo periodo. Sia esso un intervento ai legamenti, che alla spalla, anca, gomito, etc. Come ho scritto sopra, ho passato due mesi e mezzo in piscina, al contrario di altri pazienti che avevano cominciato con me, ma dopo il primo mese sono stati dirottati alla sola rieducazione a secco. Pareri discordanti e protocolli differenziati, da medico a medico. E ripeto che sono un atleta e anche in forma, nonostante l’età e ho visto quindi pazienti senza dubbio meno in forma e con muscolatura poco allenata lasciare la piscina anzi tempo. Vedremo nel tempo i risultati.

    Il mio ginocchio sta bene e ora sto ritornando piano, piano all’attività normale, farò qui di seguito il punto dopo l’estate, visto che saranno trascorsi otto mesi che per la ricostruzione dell’ LCA con tecnica S+G (Semitendinoso + Gracile) è il tempo per il pieno recupero che si estende fino a due anni per il consolidamento dell’intervento e del neo legamento. La vera prova del nove comunque, l’avrò quando rimetterò gli sci ai piedi, sia per le sensazioni nelle gambe, ma anche per l’aspetto psicologico, visto che scio da sempre e questa volta, mi sono infortunato così gravemente, non facendo allenamento in gigante/super G, ma in una discesa normalissima, in una situazione altrettanto normale e mi chiedo quindi se saprò scendere ancora con la stessa disinvoltura .

    Eccoci qui, gli sci sono stati rimessi ai piedi durante le scorse vacanze Natalizie e problemi non ne ho avuti. Non ho fatto allenamenti o altro, ma le curve le ho tirate come al solito, senza esagerare e per brevi tratti, ma come potete vedere dalla foto pubblicata qui sotto, sembra tutto normale. La mia stagione invernale per quest’anno si limiterà ad un’altra uscita durante le prossime vacanze Pasquali, neve permettendo e basta. Sono tornato a giocare a golf a tempo pieno e non ho voglia di rischiare altri infortuni ora che la stagione entra nel pieno e quindi, anche se a malincuore non ho fatto uscite con lo sci club , né settimane bianche di allenamento e per quest’anno va bene così. Ora parliamo un po’ della rieducazione vera e propria.

    Piero Crans Montana 2015
    Piero Gennaio 2015 – Clicca sull’immagine per Ingrandire

    Il ginocchio a tredici mesi di distanza dall’intervento, si presenta in buono stato, non è gonfio, né si gonfiava dopo allenamenti di running o durante gli squat con carichi medio pesanti, né durante l’attività sciistica che ho svolto senza l’ausilio di tutori e questo è buono. L’unica nota che stona è invece un rumore di click-  clack, che sembra provenire da sotto la rotula e che prima non sentivo, almeno non in maniera così marcata. La sensazione è proprio come se tibia e femore slittassero una sopra l’altro e andassero ad incastrarsi; non  c’è dolore e non avviene sempre, lo sento di più quando distendo e quindi, visto che gioco a golf, lo sento durante il passaggio impatto/finish e anche quando in campo cammino su pendii non in piano. Ho segnalato la cosa agli ortopedici, ma dicono che sia normale e la tenuta/lassità dei legamenti alle varie prove manuali è buona e come ho scritto sopra non ho problemi di sorta, ma questo click- clack prima non c’era.

    Ad oggi faccio ancora fatica ad arrivare a toccare con i talloni i glutei, o meglio con la sola gamba destra che è quella sana, arrivo senza alcun problema e vado anche oltre, mentre se provo ad inginocchiarmi e ad abbassare i glutei verso i talloni, all’inizio sento sia tirare che un leggero dolore e mano/mano che si scalda mi avvicino sempre di più, ma non tocco ancora completamente. Peggio succede da in piedi quando afferro il  piede sinistro con la mano e provo a tirarlo verso il gluteo. Devo inchinarmi in avanti per prendere il collo del piede e subito c’è resistenza per poi piano, piano cominciare a cedere e arrivare vicino al gluteo, ma anche in questo caso manca ancora un pochino. Va molto meglio rispetto a qualche tempo fa e probabilmente le cose miglioreranno ulteriormente nei mesi seguenti, ma al momento è così.

    Concludendo, sto rifacendo tutto, senza grossi problemi, alleno le gambe facendo squat,  deadlift  e leg extension, oltre a correre, andare in bici e tutte le normali attività compresi balzi e cambiamenti di direzione veloci, ma il ginocchio non è più sicuramente quello di una volta. Inoltre va considerato anche che non ho avuto solamente l’intervento al crociato anteriore e menisco mediale, ma avevo lesioni anche agli altri legamenti e al piatto tibiale, ma non avendo il ginocchio che si gonfia né altri dolori forti, la situazione non è malvagia, salvo quel click – clack che spero in futuro non si riveli come processo degenerativo delle cartilagini e di non sviluppare artrosi del ginocchio, anche perché essendo sportivo, non posso dire di lasciarlo inattivo. Quindi a chi si trova nella stessa situazione, raccomando di eseguire la fisioterapia post intervento con la massima diligenza e impegno e di protrarla il più a lungo possibile, così come il potenziamento di tutti i muscoli della gamba che aiuteranno a supportare meglio l’attività del ginocchio e tutto tornerà in molti casi come prima o molto vicino a prima. E questo ve lo dice uno che non è nemmeno più giovanissimo!

    In bocca al lupo per tutto!

    © Copyright Piero Maina – All Rights Reserved

  • It’s Not About the Body Fat

    It’s Not About the Body Fat

    Title: It’s Not About the Body Fat                                                                                                               By line: By Tom Venuto, CSCS, NSCA-CPT
    URL: www.BurnTheFat.comWord count:  860 words

     

    It’s Not About the Body Fat By Tom Venuto www.BurnTheFat.com

    How they lost 100 lbs or more is a topic that always gets a lot of attention and is very popular  in the media.  Whenever someone loses a lot of weight, there is always buzz from those who were inspired by hearing about these huge body fat losses and before/after transformations. I was inspired, too. But sometimes I think we focus too much on the almighty scale and body fat percentage and forget about something even more important…

    Your Health.

    Health is what psychologist Abraham Maslow called a deficiency need, which means that when you’ve lost it, getting it back is the only thing in the world that matters.

    Unfortunately, two corollaries to this theory of human motivation are:

    1.  Most people won’t lift a finger to improve their health until something bad happens (they have to hit “rock bottom” to change), and

    2. When you’ve got your health, you tend to take it for granted.

    That’s why we need constant reminders to keep our focus on health and keep health right on top of our list of life values.

    As you remind yourself of the importance of your health every day, it also pays to consider how you define it.

    Fitness and transformation icon Shawn Phillips, author of Strength for Life, says that if your definition of health is merely the absence of disease, then subconsciously, the mere absence of disease means you’ve achieved your “goal.”

    Therefore, you feel no motivation and no need to move above and beyond that and strive towards…

    “A life of ABUNDANT energy, vitality and strength.”

    We NEED these reminders.

    That’s why I get such a thrill when people send me success stories that are not just about the scale and body fat percentage, but ALSO about health and what that new-found health has done for a person’s life.

    A Before and After Success Story You Don’t See Every Day (But Should)

    For example, this success story comes from Burn The Fat reader Craig B:

     

    “Tom, I visited my Dr. today and he was stunned at the change in my blood results. Check out this before and after:Cholesterol/Total 232 before 121 after

    Triglycerides 185 before 87 after

    HDL (good cholesterol) 32 before 41 after

    VLDL (bad cholesterol) 40 before 17 after

    Total cholesterol/HDL ratio 5.63 before 3.0 after (I dropped from 2X average risk to less than HALF average risk!)

    TSH 4.8 before 2.1 after

    CRP 3.90 before 1.02 after (I moved from High risk to Low risk.)

    I have burned 34lbs of fat and put on 7lbs of lean muscle.

    I have moved from 40% body fat to 32.9% (My scale may be off, but I am hoping to verify those  body fat % measurements with a dunk test during my next visit to S.F. or Portland.)

    The doctor, in short, was blown away with the results.

    I have tried Atkins, Protein Power, Lindora (medical weight control), each of these over the years and probably too many others to mention. Never have I felt this empowered and well  armed with information and insight.

    When I was not getting the results the math would have me believe, I had the tools and community support to explain what Beta Blockers do to cardio and metabolism then took that insight to my doctor and he has reduced and changed those meds.

    I am now off statins all together as of today!

    I have a ways to go to reach my final goal of 10% body fat,  but I have the tools and I can accomplish it. I am, as you suggested, putting the date when I achieve it in pencil,  but the 10% BF is in ink. I will get there.

    It is amazing how empowering feeling good and controlling  your blood chemistry through nourishment (both physiological and physical) and being consistent with the hard work in  the gym and changing to a new lifestyle.

    Thanks Tom – you are helping a lot of people, clearly. I will be telling anyone about the book and the Burn the Fat website that has any questions or looking for answers.”

    Gaining muscle and losing fat is nice, but what could be better than gaining muscle, losing fat AND feeling your health, energy and vitality skyrocket!

    As Craig shows us, tracking your health improvements, not just what you weigh, gives you another source of tremendous motivation and a feeling of empowerment.

    You realize that you are in control of your body.  You are the maker and master.

    One final thought: It’s a misconception that the “bodybuilding” lifestyle is in some way not healthy or doesn’t dramatically IMPROVE your health

    Nothing could be further from the truth, as Craig’s results prove. Craig was not just doing aerobics – he was pumping iron and feeding the muscle, not starving himself.

    If you do ANY kind of resistance training, you ARE a “body-builder” and a “health-builder.”

    When you do NATURAL bodybuilding, it’s about looking great AND getting healthier. That’s how I do it – naturally – and that’s how I encourage others to do it in my Burn the Fat programs.

    Train hard and expect success!

    Tom Venuto, author of Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle
    Now Burn the Fat Body Tansformation System www.BurnTheFat.com
    Founder & CEO of Burn The Fat Inner Circle Burn the fat inner circle

    About the Author:

    Tom Venuto is the author of the #1 best   seller, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle:   Fat Burning Secrets of the World’s Best Bodybuilders and Fitness Models. Tom   is a lifetime natural bodybuilder and fat loss expert who achieved an   astonishing 3.7% body fat level without drugs or supplements. Discover how to   increase your metabolism and burn stubborn body fat, find out which foods burn   fat and which foods turn to fat, plus get a free fat loss report and mini course   by visiting Tom’s site at: www.BurnTheFat.com

  • Burn The Fat Summer Challenge 2012: How I Have Succeed And Got “Most Ripped Man Over 50” Award. My Interview

    Burn The Fat Summer Challenge 2012: How I Have Succeed And Got “Most Ripped Man Over 50” Award. My Interview

    Title: Burn The Fat SummerChallenge 2012: How I Have Succeed And Got “Most Ripped Man Over 50” Award. My Interview

    By: Piero Maina

    Word Count: 3.770

    Here below you can read my interview released to Tom Venuto at Burn The Fat Inner Circle after my body transformation during the Burn The Fat Summer Challenge 2012. You also find my whole story and what I had to overcome to suceed. I hope my story will inspire some of you in order to take action toward a better body and a better health. Have a nice reading.

    The Real Life Italian Stallion: Piero’s Journey to Become the Most Ripped Man Over 50

    By Tom Venuto
    Printer-Friendly Format

    To reach a ripped body fat level of 4.9% is a remarkable achievement for a man of any age. Piero Maina of Rome, Italy did it at age 50. Even more remarkable is what he had to overcome to achieve this…

    For years, Piero has suffered from deep vein thrombosis (Paget-Schroetter Syndrome), which at times prevented him from lifting his arm over his head.

    During all of the Burn the Fat Challenge contests he entered, Piero also had a tibia stress fracture, two broken ribs, sprained ankles, Morton’s Neuroma in both feet, and tennis elbow in both elbows and yet he never let it stop him.

    If you want to learn the attitudes and strategies it takes not only to get very lean, but to overcome obstacles and become a champion, then this is the must-read interview of the year…

    ###

     

    Tom: Piero, congratulations on your great results during the Burn the Fat challenge. We previously had categories for the most ripped and the most transformed over age 50. You were a contender for both of those awards and since the competition was so tight and we didn’t have runners up listed, we created a new award to acknowledge your achievement – the most ripped man over 50. We’re looking forward to hearing about your training and nutrition strategies, but first, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you’re from and what made you decide to do the Burn the Fat challenge.

    Piero: Tom, first let me thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my experience in the Burn The Fat Challenge with everyone. It has been a phenomenal journey this year, but it wasn’t the first time. This was my third challenge.

    Introducing myself, I am an Italian young man of nearly 51 years who lives in Rome – one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And of course, Italy is also known for the delicious food, particularly in this area. We could even say that in Italy, food is one of the main attractions. By the way, the Venuto surname sounds familiar to me, are your parents natives from Italy?

    I’ve lived here with my wife since 1985 and we have two boys of 14 and 8. I’ve been an athlete all my life, playing several sports, but got my best results as a competitor in skiing, windsurfing, running, swimming and now I’m committed to golf. Obviously, I still train with weights and do cardio nearly every day (running, biking and swimming in summer time).

    I decided to participate in the Summer Challenge for the first time three years ago, during my stay in Milan (600 km from Rome). The company where I worked for 26 years moved me there, putting huge stress on me, and then three days before the 2010 Challenge, my mom passed away. It wasn’t the best time to start, but I entered The Burn The Fat Summer Challenge anyway.

    Tom: Thank you for the background, Piero and yes, my grandfather’s parents on my dad’s side came over from Aliano in Southern Italy, so I have the surname and there’s some Italian blood in me… So we’ve seen that you entered the challenge before and despite your hardships, you had very good results. But this time you took it to an all new level. Could you tell us about your results from this last Burn the Fat challenge – your change in body fat and lean mass. And what did you do to get in your best shape ever this time – did you fine tune your approach, train harder, diet stricter or do anything different?

    Piero: It was a mix of everything you mentioned. I was also more dedicated and had a stronger desire to succeed. I purchased Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle (BFFM) in 2005, but due to physical problems and limiting beliefs, I never started. I told myself that everything I needed to know for losing fat was right there in the Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle fat loss “bible,” but I still procrastinated. At the time, I was unaware that I was only making excuses.

    Finally, in the months leading up to May 2010 (before my first challenge) I read BFFM again and made the decision to start and see where I would land. Even though I had to live in a hotel and ate only in the restaurant or even in my car, that summer I reached 8.5% bodyfat starting from 16%. Last year in the same situation, but with one year more of experience, I reached 5.4% bodyfat starting from 12%, with two broken ribs and a sprained ankle. I started leaner and ended leaner, but there was so much competition, even last year I wasn’t in the top 10.

    This year I finally made an agreement with my old company and I returned home. So performing in a better environment and mood, I hit 4.9% bodyfat during the summer challenge and I won the most ripped man over 50 special award. Returning home it has been surely a better situation, but even that wasn’t perfect, since I traveled with my family from mid July to the end of August, where we stayed in a village eating at buffets. Obviously on holiday you have more free time and your mind is more relaxed, so in theory, it should be easier to succeed, but again in my case this wasn’t exactly true. My wife asked me why I was on holiday, but not “enjoying” the vacation (the food!) Every evening for dinner you can’t imagine what kind of God’s bounties were on the table!

    This year I wanted to succeed, like last year, but this year, I was totally focused on my goal. With my starting situation, I obviously aimed to win the “Best transformation over age 50”, and I did my best to get that goal. I always ate clean food, six times per day, and it wasn’t the easiest task during my travels, to organize everything, in order to avoid to missing meals. I made it easier by carrying with me my whey protein, Quaker oats or meal replacements and almonds or other snacks, so I didn’t have to cook or find a restaurant.

    In the first month, I did cardio three to four times per week and that brought my body fat down at the right pace. Once I was on vacation in the middle of July, I started to push myself beyond the normal limits I was used to. Every morning I woke up and ran for an hour and a later in the day did a half an hour of swimming.

    In the afternoon in the hot summer, I hit the gym in the village for my daily weights workout. Keep in mind that except for the 15 days I spent in the village, I never trained in a gym. I worked out using dumbbells at home and using elastic bands when I was traveling, and I did a lot of push ups and pull ups. The pull ups (and other types of weight training) can be dangerous due to my personal health issues, so I did them when I could, but more often trained back by doing elastic band rows anchored in the door.

    My workouts were a mix of free weights, floor exercises, calisthenics and cardio. When I didn’t have a gym, I didn’t let that stop me, and I simply paid maniacal attention to my food.

    Tom: Tell us about your food strategy. How many calories, how did you split up the protein, carbs, and fats and what foods did you eat? Also, since you are from Italy, we were wondering if you ate anything different than we typically eat here in the states and whether you found the nutrition side of things harder, easier or not a factor based on where you’re from and what food was available.

    Piero: I knew that in order to succeed, things must be done as best as you can with what you have and you can’t leave things to chance. So I’m used to weighing my food nearly all the time. Obviously I don’t do that when I eat out at restaurants or at certain times of the year. But when you’re competing for you’re absolute best in a challenge competition, I was able to do it almost all the time, so I did.

    I wake up at 6:30 and usually take 30 g of whey protein with 300 ml of water and a sweet potato. Sometime I also have a raw peach or a kiwi. The second meal, which I consider my “real breakfast,” is oatmeal with a banana mixed in and 6 egg whites with one whole egg scrambled or hard boiled. I eat plenty of fish, shellfish, chicken and turkey breast, eggs, sometimes dairy, lean red lean meat, plenty of vegetables, fruit, brown rice and a lot of sweet potatoes. The meals during the rest of the day are usually the same, but I try to eat less carbs in the afternoon/evening.

    My total calories vary a lot between 1,800 to as high as 3,800, depending on whether I worked out or if it’s a refeed day (I’m not afraid to eat a lot more carbs on a reefed days). My carbs have ranged anywhere from 140 g to 550 g, my protein 160 g to 280 g, and fat from 45 g to 90 g At the beginning of the challenge in June, I weighted 80kg/176 lbs and at the end in September I was 72 kg/ 159 Lbs. So when it’s time to reduce carbs, I eat about 1 g per lb of weight and when it’s a re-feed day, all the way up to 3 g per lb.

    About food in Italy, I assume you know that here we have an ancient tradition for food and food specialties. Usually tourists come to Italy not just for the beauty, but also for food, and surely we have different habits relative to other countries. For example, until I started with BFFM, I never ate oatmeal, but I learned from you that this was one of the important foods in the bodybuilder world, so I found Quaker oats from the web and now after three years I’ve had it nearly every day. I have to admit, the very first time it was a hard task to eat (plain). But now, with a banana or other fruit mixed it, it is my best friend as a breakfast meal.

    We cook foods in different ways here, but fish is fish here, and the same goes for chicken breast and green veggies like broccoli (maybe they are different in quality). I also make sure to take the right amount of macronutrients, which means I eat the right amount of each food to reach my goals. I eat for more than just taste now, but believe me, I like and appreciate well cooked, good tasting food.

    The hardest part in my summer challenge was my family. They do not follow me or support me in any way and here sweets, chocolate, pastries, chips and other junky foods are the norm. They eat in front of me and even try to tease or tempt me, but my mind was strong, so I never touched anything that was off my plan during the Burn the Fat Challenge (except at the conclusion!)

    On Monday, September 10th, after taking my final pictures, I continued to feed myself on my usual meal plan with lean proteins, the right carbs and so on, but at lunch I decided to celebrate my son’s birthday by eating one big slice of cake and 7 small pastries. After dinner that night, I joined them again for celebrating and guess what? I ate two more slices of cake and even more pastries! I know for sure that I ate thousands of extra calories that day.

    I thought I wouldn’t sleep that night, but instead, I slept perfectly and the next day, I went early in the morning for a 30 km bike ride and was right back to the usual plan. The interesting part is that super high carb re-feed day actually seemed to be good for me, as I didn’t take on one visible ounce of fat. So I learned an important lesson – that after I am already very lean, if I want to take one extremely high carb day – even from junk food – I can do it without much (or any) damage to my results. The key, I believe, is to keep it to just every once in a while.

    Tom: At the Burn the Fat Inner Circle, we talk a lot about mental strategies, because staying motivated and sticking with your nutrition and training plan is really the key to success and achieving any major goal. What was your approach toward staying motivated and sticking with your plan?

    Piero: When I came across Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle in 2005, I read the first chapter that teaches us to lay down our goals and read them as much as we can, believing and visualizing what we wrote, and at first it made me think, “What kind of a way to act is that?” Yes, I read the part about conscious and unconscious mind and how behaviors are unconsciously influenced, but I thought that if I knew what I wanted, there wasn’t any need to write down and repeat what already I knew.

    Well, I put one of my goals on paper, not for my physique, but an achievement for golf, and I failed. I realize now I didn’t believe in it, so I think I failed to prove to myself, “See, it doesn’t work – it’s B.S.!” Years later, I not only adopted and believed in goal setting, I started studying everything about the mental side of achievement. I read a lot of books ranging from quantum physics, law of attraction, Buddhism, NLP, PSYCH-K® and landed on “A Course in Miracles.” My way of seeing things changed dramatically and forever, and by 2010, I returned to BFFM and started to apply what you taught us and everything else I had learned, with a new faith.

    I can’t say if you “just” think positive, everything you think in your mind will happen at once. What really happens is you set a goal to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, but more often than not, you’ll deviate from the original route and hit a certain quantity of obstacles that you didn’t foresee or plan for. That happened even to me.

    The difference between when I succeeded and when I failed, is that I continued to think as positively as possible, without moving my sights from my goal, regardless of what I encountered along the way that I didn’t expect. I kept the faith in my goal alive, I kept reading my goal card twice per day and I took on adversities as opportunities to get stronger and keep going until I hit my target! I believe there is no failing, only results, and every result I get, even if I didn’t intend it, can be used to build up a better strategy to succeed in the future.

    I had to do this mainly by myself, and I could because I have a tough and disciplined mind, but it’s people like you Tom, and other mentors that helped me through their books, articles and words that I re-read many times. This summer, I re-read BFFM three times, and also the holy grail e-book, and your Super Lean report. I often come into the burn the fat inner circle forum, looking for success stories that could motivate me and for people who succeeded even with tougher life situations than mine. I did this because I would say the mental side is the most important key to success.

    Tom: We understand that you had some major physical challenges to overcome and yet you still made an incredible transformation. Could you tell us more about how they affected you?

    Piero: I’ve had many beautiful things happen in my life, but I’ve also had a lot of accidents. I had 5 near-fatal accidents with my motorbike and cars, several ruptures of my head and other part of my body. In these three last summer challenges I also had in order, a tibia stress fracture, two broken ribs, sprained ankles, Morton’s Neuroma in both feet, tennis elbow in both elbows and more, but I didn’t let it stop me. In 1994, I had my first deep-vein thrombosis or Paget Schroetter Syndrome. I have to go back a bit to tell the story.

    When I was in my physical prime at age 20, I was very passionate for bodybuilding. At that time, Arnold was at his best and I followed him in bodybuilding magazines, but my favorite was Frank Zane – that body was my target! I loved his symmetry and proportion rather than huge mass. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get much information at the time and my father didn’t want me training as a bodybuilder. So I played my favorite sports instead.

    Later when I was 30, I started to train myself in the gym as a bodybuilder, still without much information, and right when I was at my best, I had a very serious accident during a training session. While doing presses, (we called it here, “lento dietro”), and due to my skeletal conformation in the shoulder area, I had a deep-vein thrombosis. I had it twice (two years in a row) in my left arm. Two veins were injured, the subclavian vein and axillary vein.

    Doctors told me to stop every kind of training that involved my arms. I took anti-coagulation pills (warfarin) for years and I remained invalid in my left arm, but now I’ve restored a peripheral flow of blood in the minor veins and I would say I am nearly back to where I was in my prime.

    The doctors still say I shouldn’t train with weights, and above all, to avoid lifting my arms overhead for shoulder, chest and back training, but during these last three years, lot of things have changed. I found problems in my teeth that I could solve surgically and oddly enough, those were the main causes of my skeletal problems. For example, I met a doctor who used innovative orthodontic techniques that not only changed my teeth, but also my posture in my neck, shoulders and upper back without any other surgical intervention.

    So, even with my veins damaged and semi-closed, I restarted training myself with weights and with my new positive mental view, results came quickly and I reached my best body shape ever thanks to Tom’s program and challenge.

    Tom: What’s your advice to give more hope and optimism to anyone else who is struggling with an illness or an orthopedic problem that has made it challenging for them to get leaner or fitter in the past?

    Piero: Whatever your situation, always do your best and have no regrets! Maybe to you, what you can do doesn’t seem like enough, but try to move one step at a time toward your goal, even if it’s a small step or less than you would like to do. Obviously, when my body says stop, I have to stop – I can’t work miracles. At one point, it was impossible to lift even a bottle of water. But I never lost my faith in what I want to be or where I want to be.

    I’ve trained with pain, but I’ve learned that at the first signal of real injury, it’s better to stop. It’s better to be under-trained 10% that over- trained 1% if that 1% extra push gets you injured. It’s better to skip a workout to play it safe than skip a month to nurse your injury. Try to feel the signals from your body, including the feelings in your heart, if you’re not sure.

    Also remember how much you can achieve when you’re super strict with nutrition. When I felt pain I couldn’t train through, I didn’t give up and say, “I should just withdraw from the summer challenge and enjoy my vacation.” On the contrary, I pushed harder in all the areas where I still could – cardio or weight training – and I made my diet even stricter, without cheating. I especially tightened up the carb manipulations until I saw the results coming.

    I have to admit, it has been difficult and frustrating to feel like you’re always working around something, but in the end, I got what you see in my pictures.

    Tom: Before we wrap up, do you have any other advice for our readers on making a great body transformation or anything else at all you want to share?

    Piero: Of course I have more, but I nearly wrote a book here, LOL, so I’ll quickly wrap up! Furthermore, I’m still learning myself every day, I continue having new experiences and discovering how my body responds. This, I think, is the difference: I don’t just say empty words or affirmations – I act exactly as I think and talk. I focus on both – thoughts and actions – so more often than not, I reach the goals I was thinking and talking about. It’s not easy for me, but now that I have this lifestyle ingrained in my unconscious mind, everything I do I feel as normal (though, from some other people’s viewpoints, I’m still often seen as an “alien!”)

    I can simply say to all the members here to study Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle (BFFM) as much as you can, learn it and ingrain it in your mind. In that book, there is only truth, no fancy words or quick fixes. In the toughest days during the Summer Challenge, I would always repeat to myself what Tom wrote about wanting your goal. There may be blood, sweat and tears, but “Train hard and expect success!”

    Thank you Tom, for helping me and so many other people to change our lives for the better.

     

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     © Copyright Piero Maina – All Rights Reserved

  • Burn The Fat Summer Challenge 2013….Ancora in gioco….

    Burn The Fat Summer Challenge 2013….Ancora in gioco….

    Titolo: Burn The Fat Summer Challenge 2013….Ancora in gioco….

    Autore: Piero Maina

    Conteggio Parole: 3.000

    Ciao a tutti,

    anche quest’anno ho deciso di prendere parte alla Burn The Fat Summer Challenge, la sfida di trasformazione corporea/dimagrimento della durata di 98 giorni/14 settimane. Per me si tratta del quarto anno consecutivo e sono riuscito a terminare con successo tutte e tre le passate edizioni. L’anno scorso non solo ho raggiunto e superato l’obiettivo che mi ero prefissato, (6% di massa grassa) ma ho anche ricevuto il premio come il più definito nella categoria oltre i 50 anni (Most Ripped Man Over 50). Non racconto nuovamente il tutto perché l’argomento è stato ampiamente trattato nell’articolo riguardante la Summer Challenge del 2012 e chi è interessato può leggere la mia esperienza cliccando qui.

    Avevo già in programma di partecipare alla gara di quest’anno e il mio progetto era di incrementare la mia massa muscolare/massa magra durante l’inverno. Provenivo dalla fine della scorsa summer challenge a Settembre 2012 con una percentuale di massa grassa corporea pari al 4,9% e devo dire che senza troppa fatica fino alla fine di gennaio avevo mantenuto un risultato intorno al 7 % pur avendo “gozzovigliato” durante le festività Natalizie e non rinunciando anche a incursioni su qualche dolce. Non crediate che nel programma di Burn the Fat FeedThe Muscle ci siano cibi vietati, si può mangiare di tutto, naturalmente stando attenti alle quantità; nel periodo di gara invece, meno “sgarri” si fanno e maggiori saranno le probabilità di successo. Da settembre 2012 in avanti, avevo continuato gli allenamenti e fino a dicembre la mia alimentazione è sempre stata “pulita” senza sbandate e utilizzando la tecnica di manipolazione dei carboidrati con un rapporto di 1:3. Un giorno di surplus e tre di scarico, non totale, circa 2 grammi per kg di peso corporeo. Da Gennaio a Marzo ero cresciuto un poco di massa grassa, ma ero sempre “tirato” e avevo in programma di “lievitare” fino all’inizio della Burn The Fat Summer Challenge 2013. Per chi ha letto l’articolo sulla Summer Challenge 2012, è inutile spiegare che lo scopo è di perdere grasso e non peso, oppure anche peso se manterremo la nostra attuale massa muscolare. Il tentativo comunque è di non sacrificare nemmeno un etto di muscolo, ma di perdere solo grasso a differenza delle normali diete che invece si preoccupano del peso sulla bilancia. L’altra differenza nella Summer Challenge è che si verrà premiati in base alla trasformazione corporea rispetto a se stessi, più che rispetto agli altri o a un eventuale modello. Ognuno deve provare a dare il meglio di se e trasformarsi rispetto alla stato iniziale. Anche in questo caso è superfluo che racconti nuovamente come funziona lo stile di vita di Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle perché c’è l’articolo che lo spiega qui.

    Sopra ho raccontato come è proceduto il mio stato di forma, ma non ho detto che già prima dell’inizio della Summer Challenge 2012 ero affetto da una forte epicondilite al gomito destro e da un’ inizio di epitrocleite a quello sinistro. Sono golfista e questa è una patologia a cui si va soggetti, così come i tennisti. Mi ero fatto un’infiltrazione di cortisone al gomito destro nel mese di gennaio 2012 e il sinistro l’avevo risparmiato, visto che riuscivo a convivere con il dolore, ma a giugno, proprio all’inizio della Summer Challenge il dolore al gomito destro era tornato molto forte e se volevo continuare ad allenarmi dovevo effettuare un’altra infiltrazione di cortisone. Cosa che ho fatto, ma l’effetto benefico è durato un solo mese e sapevo che non potevo ripeterne un’altra, il cortisone si sa, fa più male che bene. Ho incontrato un medico che mi ha infiltrato con l’ozono e il miglioramento temporaneo c’è stato, ma non sono riuscito a dare continuità alla cura e il dolore non solo è tornato a destra, ma e venuto anche a sinistra e pure l’epitrocleite a sinistra è aumentata con forza. Sono riuscito a concludere la scorsa Summer Challenge stringendo i denti e le foto le avete viste nell’articolo riferito al 2012 qui. La mia speranza era che durante l’autunno/inverno, la malattia ai gomiti piano, piano sarebbe passata, ma invece di regredire è aumentata. Il problema non è solo il golf, ma l’allenamento con i manubri e le trazioni alla sbarra. I pesanti manubri in certe posizioni sono delle pugnalate per le guaine tendinee/inserzioni ossee e quindi all’inizio del 2013 ho dovuto accettare di ridurre gli allenamenti per le braccia, spalle e dorsali fino a quasi fermarmi completamente. Avendo effettuato una ecografia ad entrambi i gomiti, ho potuto vedere perché il cortisone non riusciva a fornire risultati duraturi: avevo le calcificazioni nelle guaine dei tendini. A quel punto le soluzioni sono due, (che io conosco)  la via chirurgica, (che sinceramente avrei evitato volentieri) o le onde d’urto (e anche qui ce ne sono di vari tipi). Naturalmente ho preferito le onde d’urto e ho fatto una prima seduta a Febbraio 2013 con una macchina elletroidraulica , molto potente a Trento, un vero martello che ogni volta che “picchiava” sulla parte dolorante provocava un dolore terribile, mi si stendevano le dita delle mani e ho dovuto stringere i denti e trovare concentrazione per resistere al dolore. Oltretutto a quei tempi ero davvero infiammato. Comunque ho fatto 1800 colpi in un’ unica seduta, seicento colpi per gomito per l’epicondilite, più altri seicento all’interno del gomito sinistro per l’epitrocleite. Il primo risultato è stato che avevo ancora più male, poi il dolore è diminuito un poco, ma sempre impossibile allenarsi. Ho effettuato una seconda seduta a Roma con una macchina elettromagnetica e mi sembrava ridicola rispetto a quella di Trento, mi sembrava che sui gomiti mi venisse passata una di quelle macchinette per accendere il gas e non ho sentito quasi dolore. Il dolore nei gomiti però è rimasto tale e quale. Ho ripetuto a metà Marzo un’altra seduta a Trento e il dolore era ancora forte, ma nei giorni seguenti l’ho sentito meno “radiale” e più circoscritto. Allenamenti ancora niente, anche perché proprio il giorno prima di scendere a Trento dall’Alto Adige, in una caduta banale sugli sci ho riportato la lesione parziale del legamento crociato anteriore sinistro (LCA) e la lesione del menisco mediale sempre sinistro, oltre a due fratture intraspongiose del piatto tibiale e alla lesione degli osteocondriti femorali. Tombola! Rispetto alle prime visite in Alto Adige, a Roma pur avendo avuto la conferma di quanto sopra, le prove manuali hanno mostrato un ginocchio stabile, forse dovute alla mia muscolatura allenata (ho sciato tutto l’inverno e ho fatto molte uscite in mountain bike) . Comunque non abbiamo operato il legamento e per il menisco stiamo ancora decidendo. Ad oggi che scrivo ho dolore alla parte mediale sinistra, non un vero e proprio dolore, è un dolore sordo e il mio ortopedico mi ha detto che potrebbe ancora operarmi al menisco, che tra l’altro ha già operato nel 2001. Pertanto oltre allo stare fermo con gli allenamenti con i manubri da metà marzo a metà aprile, ho dovuto fermarmi con tutto il resto per via del ginocchio. Poi con il consenso del mio ortopedico ho ricominciato con la MTB,(mountain bike) ma dopo 3 uscite sono caduto e mi sono rotto il pollice della mano destra. Una caporetto! Anche con il pollice rotto dopo una settimana ho ripreso gli allenamenti in MTB, difficile utilizzare il cambio, ma con un tutore e un po’ di buona volontà, sono riuscito a progredire. E i gomiti? Ho fatto una quarta seduta nel mese di aprile e questa volta pur avendo ancora male, soprattutto quando utilizzavo i flessori delle mani, le “martellate” della macchina delle onde d’urto non mi facevano più male, era come colpire una qualunque parte del corpo sana e il dolore era oramai circoscritto a piccole aree. Ed infatti ho male ancora oggi, ma sempre meno e sento che sono in via di guarigione, Considerate poi che dal 10 giugno, giorno in cui è partita la Summer Challenge, ho ripreso gli allenamenti con i manubri e le richieste di sforzo stanno aumentando quotidianamente. Avendo ancora dolore per certi esercizi, la paura era che sarebbe peggiorato tutto, invece  sta andando molto meglio e non so in quanto tempo ancora, ma dovrei guarire completamente. Almeno adesso è un dolore sopportabile e sto anche giocando a golf senza sentire dolori impossibili.

    Ecco spiegato perché il mio progetto di aumentare di massa (grassa e magra) è naufragato. Avrei dovuto mangiare molto e in un certo modo, ma avrei anche dovuto allenarmi in maniera ambiziosa e questo non è stato possibile per i fatti raccontati sopra. Fino a Marzo comunque ero ben allenato, un po’ meno nelle braccia e ora sto tornando piano, piano ai miei livelli con un grande incremento come attività cardio che effettuo 6 giorni a settimana su 7. Alterno MTB alla corsa e al nuoto, oltre all’allenamento contro resistenza che come sapete è il P90X Hybrid.

    Non posto le foto iniziali che sono state postate nel forum di gara per scaramanzia, ma le posterò a fine gara dopo il 16 Settembre 2016, sto cercando di mantenere il peso a tutti i costi, ma va da se che senza steroidi in tre mesi, non potrò fare molto e quindi dovendo arrivare al 4% di massa grassa scenderò per forza, ma è certo che con la giusta alimentazione e i giusti allenamenti, non diminuirò la quantità di muscolo che ho adesso.

    Per chi è interessato ai dati, ho iniziato la Summer Challenge il 10 giugno con un peso totale di 83 Kg. per un’altezza di 178 cm. e la massa grassa che è lievitata al 17,5%. Progetto ambizioso in 98 giorni è di arrivare al 4%. Oggi è il 7  luglio e sono già all’11%. avendo perso 7 cm. di giro vita e il peso totale è ancora a 78 Kg. in meno di un mese. Presumo che arriverò intorno ai 72 kg. di peso totale e tra i 70/72 cm di giro vita, per settembre, mentre avrei voluto essere 78 Kg. con il 4% di massa grassa nello stesso periodo. Perché questo avvenisse avrei dovuto operare in un certo modo durante l’inverno, ma va bene così. Ricordo sempre che sono principalmente un’atleta e non solo un bodybuilder (sono atleti anche loro per carità), ma voglio dire che preferisco riuscire bene in altre discipline sportive e non avere solo massa muscolare da mostrare, magari costruita con steroidi.

    Aggiornamento al 31/07/2013:

    Siamo alla settima settimana di gara e quindi siamo a metà percorso. I gomiti sembrano andare meglio e questo è un gran bene per la riuscita degli allenamenti, il ginocchio sinistro sembra essere stabile e ogni tanto si fa sentire con qualche dolorino “sordo”, ma al momento riesco sia a correre che ad andare in MTB, evito i balzi e quindi tutta la parte del “Plyometric”. Anche i piedi con il neuroma di Morton mi stanno lasciando respirare e nonostante un piede sano da sensazioni nettamente differenti da quelle che provo io, già non avere fitte costanti è per me un risultato di successo. A parte infortuni e salute, mi sto allenando duramente soprattutto come attività cardio e sono a 6 sedute settimanali con giornate in cui effettuo doppio cardio oltre all’allenamento contro resistenza che per me è il P90X-P90X2-Hybrid. La parte più importante, anche se sinergica con l’allenamento e l’aspetto mentale, la gioca sempre l’alimentazione. In questi primi 49 giorni di gara è stata maniacale e lo sarà fino al 98imo giorno di gara. Vi ricordo che sono partito da più del 17% di massa grassa ed ho fissato il mio obiettivo a 14 settimane al 4%. Obiettivo molto ambizioso già di per se e diventa ancor di più ambizioso, partendo da una soglia così alta e con un età superiore ai 50 anni. Ammetto che per quanto ho fatto e sto facendo, mi aspettavo risultati appena migliori. Certo non posso lamentarmi ed oltretutto io non ricerco perdite di grasso esagerate in breve tempo perché spesso più che grasso si perde peso/muscolo/liquidi e invece io sono per una perdita di circa 0,5 Kg. di grasso a settimana mantenendo e/o aumentando il muscolo/massa magra a tutti i costi. Comunque qui sotto i numeri al giro di boa di metà gara:

    Altezza 178 cm. Età 51 anni e 8 mesi

    Massa grassa: 9,57% – iniziale: 17,5%

    Giro vita: 77 cm – iniziale: 86 cm.

    Massa Magra: 68,45 kg. – iniziale 68,94 Kg.

    Peso totale: 77 Kg. – iniziale: 83 Kg.

    Aggiornamento al 20/08/2013:

    Sono a 4 settimane dalla fine, un tempo abbastanza lungo per il raggiungimento del mio obbiettivo, ma allo stesso tempo abbastanza poco e con poco margine di errore per non fallire. Come ogni anno è così per tutti, anche gli esperti bodybuilder o fitness model, l’ultimo grasso da bruciare è il più testardo (stubborn), il più lento ad andare via e non sempre ci si riesce se non si resta concentrati e confidenti in quello che si sta facendo, senza farsi prendere dal panico. Sto facendo molta attività cardio, maggiormente MTB e running e alterno anche nuoto e HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) . Il problema è saper individuare quando l’attività cardio è troppa oppure la quantità di macronutrienti è poca in riferimento all’attività svolta e ancor di più conoscendo e sapendo le quantità di macronutrienti in percentuale al totale delle calorie ingerite. Sembra un controsenso, ma aumentando troppo l’attività cardio e riducendo drasticamente le calorie ingerite, il rischio è di vedere rallentare ulteriormente il metabolismo e di rallentare di conseguenza anche la perdita di grasso. Eppure siamo in una situazione di deficit calorico aggressivo e matematicamente dovrei dimagrire tanto settimanalmente. Quello che sulla carta sembra scontato, non sempre trova riscontro nella realtà. Non dimentichiamoci poi che il nostro obiettivo è di perdere solo il grasso e non solo peso e quindi conservando e/o aumentando la massa magra. Questo tipo di difesa dell’organismo avviene appunto nelle fasi finali del dimagrimento e soprattutto se stiamo tagliando troppo e da troppo tempo le calorie. Il raggiungimento della soglia di “plateau” è quasi scontata. Sto facendo i conti anch’io con questa situazione e sulla base dell’esperienza e delle risposte del mio organismo sia attualmente che negli anni passati, adotto strategie diverse che vanno dall’aumentare l’intensità delle sessioni, al tempo o al numero per quanto riguarda l’attività cardio e anche per l’allenamento con i pesi si cerca di modificare l’intensità o il tempo di riposo fra una serie e l’altra o il numero di ripetizioni e ancora la quantità di peso con cui si lavora. E naturalmente agendo sulla parte più importante che è l’alimentazione attivando una dieta ancor più restrittiva e tagliando i carboidrati (come sapete non completamente) e ogni tre giorni invece ricarico i carboidrati e le calorie totali. Nei giorni in cui scarico i carboidrati, per quanto provi a lasciare invariate le quantità di proteine e grassi, se mi alleno sarò obbligato ad agire su questi due macronutrienti aumentandoli per avere un deficit calorico fra calorie utilizzate e quelle ingerite intorno al 20-30%.

    Vediamo i numeri a lunedì 19 agosto e poi ci aggiorneremo definitivamente dopo il 16 settembre che è il termine della Summer Challenge:

    Altezza 178 cm. Età 51 anni e 8 mesi

    Massa grassa: 7,56% – iniziale: 17,5%

    Giro vita: 75,5 cm – iniziale: 86 cm.

    Massa Magra: 68,59 kg. – iniziale 68,94 Kg.

    Peso totale: 74,2 Kg. – iniziale: 83 Kg.

    Aggiornamento al 22/08/2013:

    Goal! L’edizione 2013 della “Burn The Fat Summer Challenge” è terminata. Per me lunedì 16 settembre, per una durata totale di 98 giorni o 14 settimane. Gli ultimi concorrenti hanno terminato giovedì 19 settembre e anche quest’anno su circa 4.000 partecipanti solo 225 hanno portato a termine la sfida. Nuovamente, di questi 225 più della metà non hanno raggiunto significativi risultati/cambiamenti, almeno quelli visibili dalle foto. Hanno solo pubblicato regolarmente le loro statistiche settimanali e le foto finali. Questo ci fa capire che quello che sulla carta può risultare facile, non lo è poi nella realtà.

    Veniamo al mio risultato: ho replicato il risultato dello scorso anno, ma a differenza del 2012, sono partito da un coefficiente di percentuale di massa grassa superiore di oltre 2% e l’obbiettivo che avevo fissato al 4% era veramente molto/troppo ambizioso per essere raggiunto in 98 giorni, per dimagrire ad un tasso conservativo che permettesse di mantenere o anche incrementare la percentuale di massa magra. Sono arrivato al 4,98%, non è cifra tonda, ma per quanto mi riguarda l’obbiettivo è stato raggiunto. Tenete presente poi che ci sono sicuramente parti del corpo che presentano valori più alti e altri più bassi. Se guarderete la foto della schiena, potrete notare la definizione e le striature che indicano una bassissima percentuale di grasso. Inoltre sempre dalle foto, a paragone con quelle dell’anno scorso, mi sembra di avere ottenuto un miglioramento in termini di massa e simmetria e anche per certi aspetti come definizione. Ora attendiamo il giudizio dei giudici che avverrà nei prossimi 20 giorni. Pubblico finalmente qui sotto i dati e le foto finali di questa “Burn The Fat Summer Challenge 2013”:

    Dati Finali al 16 Settembre 2013 – inizio Summer Challenge 10 Giugno 2013:

    Altezza 178 cm. Età 51 anni e 9 mesi

    Massa grassa %: 4,98% – iniziale: 17,5% – Diff. – 12,34%

    Giro vita: 72,5 cm – iniziale: 86 cm. – Diff. – 13,5 cm.

    Massa Magra: 69,68 kg. – iniziale 68,94 Kg. – Diff. + 1,19 Kg.

    Massa Grassa: 3,62 Kg. – iniziale 14,31 Kg. – Diff. – 10,69 Kg.

    Peso totale: 74,2 Kg. – iniziale: 83 Kg. – Diff. – 9,5 Kg.

    Dalla tabella si vede che ho perso più di 10kg. di grasso e ho incrementato di oltre un chilo la massa magra. Questo senza l’aiuto di steroidi, altrimenti i risultati della massa magra sarebbero ben diversi. Di seguito le foto:

    Foto Frontali

    P1000853_cutresFB
    Frontale inizio
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    P1010076_cut_FB
    Frontale finale
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    Foto Laterali

    P1000857_cutresFB
    Laterale inizio
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    P1010081_cut_FB
    Laterale finale
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    Schiena

    P1000859_cutres
    Schiena inizio
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    P1010061_cut_FB
    Schiena Finale
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    Confronto Schiena 2010 – 2013 

    Summer Challenge 2010 2011 2012 2013 comparison back
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    ingrandire

    Credo che dalla foto del confronto di schiena degli ultimi quattro anni, si noti l’evoluzione in meglio della crescita muscolare, ma soprattutto della simmetria e definizione dovuta soprattutto ad una perdita maggiore di grasso. Certo la luce nelle foto può giocare un ruolo importante, ma credo sia oggettivo il cambiamento. Allenarsi e nutrirsi con disciplina e volontà alla fine ripaga sempre. E ricordate che per quanto duramente vi allenerete, se non sarete scrupolosi sul piano dell’alimentazione, vedrete naufragare tutti i vostri sforzi.

    Ecco! Questi sono i dati e le foto di questa nuova sfida portata a termine dopo 98 giorni, il mio premio è già stato vinto ed è quello di aver raggiunto l’obbiettivo che avevo fissato. Adesso è arrivato anche il riconoscimento visto che sono stato inserito nei top 10 finalisti uomini. Essere nella classifica dei Top 10 su circa 4.000 partecipanti è già un onore e una soddisfazione per cui essere grati .

    © Copyright Piero Maina – Tutti i diritti riservati

  • Everything You Need To Know About Loose Skin And Weight Loss

    Everything You Need To Know About Loose Skin And Weight Loss

    Title: Everything You Need To Know About Loose Skin And Weight Loss
    By line: By Tom Venuto, CSCS, NSCA-CPT
    URL: www.BurnTheFat.com
    Word count: 1142 words
    Description: If you’re extremely overweight or if you’ve been extremely overweight in the past, then you know that getting rid of excess weight is only one of the challenges you face. Once the fat is gone, you are often confronted with an equally frustrating cosmetic problem; Loose skin. Dont’ consider surgery until you’ve read this.

    Everything You Need To Know About Loose Skin And Weight Loss By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS www.BurnTheFat.com

    I receive a lot of e-mail from people with loose skin or from overweight people who are concerned about having loose skin after they lose the weight. In fact, this is one of the biggest concerns and most frequently asked questions I receive from men and women who have a lot of weight to lose.

    Just recently, I received this email from a reader of my syndicated “Ask Tom” fat loss column:

    “Tom, I began a fat loss program using your Burn The Fat system and it worked so well I got down to 15 1/2 stones (from 19). However, this has caused me a problem: Excess abdominal skin. I didn’t crash lose this weight, it came off at the rate of about 2 lbs. per week just like you recommended. Now I’m unsure of whether to carry on, as my abdomen has quite a lot of excess skin – I feel like I’ve turned into a bloody Shar-Pei! Does everyone go through this? Will the skin tighten up? I was overweight for more than 12 years. Am I going to end up needing surgical skin removal? Can you offer me any advice? I’m a medical student in the UK and my colleagues seem determined to proffer surgery as the only option.”

    There are 14 things you should know about loose skin after very large weight losses:

    1. Skin is incredibly elastic. Your skin can stretch and expand or tighten and retract to a great degree. Look at what women go through during pregnancy. Some women do experience stretch marks after pregnancy, but obviously skin is remarkably elastic.            

    2. Elasticity of skin depends on both genetics and environment/lifestyle. Wrinkling and loss of elasticity is partly the consequence of aging (genetic factors) and also a result of environmental factors such as oxidative stress, excessive sun exposure, and nutritional deficiency. The environmental parts you can fix, the genetics and age part, you cannot. Advice: Get moving and change the things you have control over… Be realistic and don’t worry about those things you don’t have control over.

    3. How much your skin returns to its former tautness depends partly on age. The older you get, the more an extremely large weight loss can leave loose skin that will not return to normal.

    4. How long you carry extra weight may influence how much the skin will become taut after the weight loss: For example, compare a 9 month pregnancy with 9 years carrying 100 excess pounds.

    5. How much weight was carried has a lot to do with how much the skin will resume a tight appearance. Your skin can only be stretched so much and be expected to “snap back” one hundred percent. With extreme obesity, the probability of there still being loose skin after weight loss is higher.

    6. How fast the weight was gained also has a lot to do with how much the skin will resume a tight appearance. Your skin can only be stretched so quickly and be expected to “snap back.”

    7. How fast weight is lost also has a lot to do with how much the skin will tighten up. Rapid weight loss doesn’t allow the skin time to slowly resume to normal. (This is yet another reason to lose fat slowly; 1-2 pounds per week, 3 pounds at the most if you have a lot of weight to lose, and even then, only if you are measuring body fat and you’re certain it’s fat you’re losing, not lean tissue).

    8. There are exceptions to all of the above; For example, people who gained and then lost incredible amounts of weight quickly at age 50 or 60, and their skin returned 100% to normal.

    9. Creams probably don’t work. There are many creams advertised as having the ability to restore the tightness of your skin. the late bodybuilding guru Dan duchaine used to recommend topical creams made with pycnogenol, which contain the antioxidant bioflavanoids called proanthocyanidins. But to the best of my knowledge, none of the topical creams are scientifically validated. I haven’t even heard much anecdotal evidence that they work — at least not permanently and measurably — and especially if you have a lot of loose skin. There are definitely some topicals that will pull water from under your skin, but remeber, that is temporary. Buyer should beware with topical products. (as an aside, Ive also heard anectodal reports that skin brushing was helpful, but again, I am not aware of any scientific evidence proving this is effective).

    10. Nutrition has a lot to do with the health of your skin. Essential fatty acids in particular are very valuable for many reasons, and one of them is for the health of your skin. It would be worth taking an EFA supplement such as fish oil, flax oil or an oil blend like Udo’s choice. Antioxidants are also very important, so be sure to consume copious amounts of a variety of vegetables and fruits. Also pay very close attention to hydration. Drink approximately a gallon of water a day or a minimum of half your body weight in ounces. (By the way, whey protein is high in a powerful antioxidant called glutathione).

    11. Exercise has a lot to do with how your skin appears after you lose body fat. If you use very low calorie diets, you are likely to lose lean body mass, and this is going to exacerbate the loose, hanging skin appearance. On the other hand, if you are exercising regularly and increasing lean body mass with weight training, you will be more likely to minimize the appearance of loose skin.

    12. Get second opinions if you are considering surgery.If you’re considering surgical skin removal, consult a physician for advice because this is not a minor operation, but keep in mind that your plastic surgeon may be making his BMW payments with your abdominoplasty money. (Surgery might be recommended in situations where it’s not 100% necessary). Surgery should be left as the absolute final option in extreme cases.

    13. Give your skin time. Your skin will definitely get tighter as your body fat gets lower. I’ve seen and heard of many cases where the skin gradually tightened up, at least partially, after a one or two year period where the weight loss was maintained and exercise continued.

    14. Know your body fat percentage before even thinking about surgery. Loose skin is one thing, but still having a lot of body fat is another. Be honest with yourself and do that by taking your body fat measurement. This can be done with skinfold calipers or a variety of other devices (calipers might not be the best method if you have large folds of loose skin. Look into impedance analysis, underwater weighing, DEXA or Bod Pod).

    Suppose for example, a man drops from 35% body fat all the way down to 20%. He should be congratulated, but I would tell him, “Don’t complain about loose skin yet, your body fat is still high. Press onward and keep getting leaner and be sure to focus on strength training to increase lean body mass as well.”

    Average body fat for men is in the mid teens (16% or so). Average body fat for women is in the 20-25% range. Good body fat for men is 10-12%, and single digits is extremely lean. Men shouldn’t expect to look “ripped” with 100% tight skin on the abs unless they have single digit body fat. Women shouldn’t expect to have tight abdominal skin unless they are in the low to mid teens in body fat.

    Except in extreme cases, you are actually unlikely to see someone with loose skin who has very low body fat and especially someone who has not just “lost weight” but has altered body composition by adding lean muscle as well. It’s quite remarkable how much your skin can tighten up once your body fat goes from “average” to “excellent” and even more so when lean body mass increase. Someone with legitimate single digit body fat and a ton of loose skin is a rare sight.

    So the key to getting tighter skin is to improve your body composition (muscle to fat ratio), and lose more body fat, slowly and sensibly, up to the point where your body composition rating is BETTER than average (in the “good” to “great” category, not just “okay”). Only AFTER you reach your long term body fat percentage goal should you give thought to “excess skin removal.” At that point, admittedly, there are bound to be a few isolated cases where surgery is necessary if you can’t live with the amount of loose skin remaining.

    However, unless you are really, really lean, it’s difficult to get a clear picture of what is loose skin, what is just remaining body fat and how much further the skin will tighten up when the rest of the fat is lost.

    Need help getting rid of that last bit of body body fat? Click here to find out how to do it the natural way: www.BurnTheFat.com            

    About the Author:

    Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal trainer (CPT), certified Tom Venuto 8

    strength & conditioning specialist (CSCS), and author of the #1 best-

    selling e-book, “Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle.” Tom has written

    more than 200 articles and has been featured in print magazines

    such as IRONMAN, Australian IRONMAN, Natural Bodybuilding,

    Muscular Development, Exercise for Men and Men’s Exercise, as

    well as on hundreds of websites worldwide. For information on

    Tom’s Fat Loss program, visit: www.BurnTheFat.com            

  • Protein Supplements Vs. Protein Foods

    Protein Supplements Vs. Protein Foods

    Title:Protein Supplements Vs. Protein Foods
    By line: By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
    URL: www.BurnTheFat.com
    Word count: 2455 words

    Protein Supplements Vs. Protein Foods? By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS www.BurnTheFat.com

    Are protein supplements really better than protein foods? Before attempting to answer this question, I should first preface it by mentioning that I do not sell supplements, nor am I associated with any supplement company, so you’re getting an honest and unbiased opinion. Don’t get me wrong; I am not anti-supplement by any means. It would simply be more accurate to say that I am “pro-food.” There are a lot of good supplements on the market, and I’ve used many of them, including a multi vitamin, creatine and essential fatty acid (EFA) supplements such as Flaxseed oil. Protein powders and meal replacements can also be indispensable if you don’t have time to eat every three hours. However, protein supplements are not the master key to your success, real food is!

    Did you ever notice how articles about protein in certain bodybuilding magazines are seldom objective? Instead, they all seem to be slanted towards hyping some “revolutionary” new product. Did you ever wonder why? In my opinion, most articles on protein supplements are nothing more than thinly disguised advertisements (some very thinly). Sometimes they give you a very persuasive-sounding argument, replete with dozens of references from scientific studies (mostly done on rodents, of course). They even give you an 800 number at the end of the article to order. (How convenient!)

    When protein manufacturers throw around fancy words like cross flow microfiltration, oligopeptides, ion-exchange, protein efficiency ratio, biological value, nitrogen retention and glycomacropeptides, it sure sounds convincing, especially when scores of scientific references are cited. But don’t forget that the supplement industry is big business and most magazines are the supplement industry. Lyle McDonald, author of “The Ketogenic Diet,” hit the nail on the head when he wrote “Unfortunately, the obsession that bodybuilders have with protein has made them susceptible to all kinds of marketing hype. Like most aspects of bodybuilding (and the supplement industry in general), the issue of protein is driven more by marketing hype than physiological reality and marketing types know how to push a bodybuilder’s button when it comes to protein “

    Many nutrition “experts” (read: people who sell supplements), state that there are distinct advantages of protein supplements (powders and amino acid tablets) over whole foods. For example, they argue that whey, a by-product of the cheese-making process, is a higher quality protein than most whole food sources. There are many different methods of determining protein quality, including biological value (BV), protein efficiency ratio (PER), Net Protein Utilization (NPU), chemical score, and protein digestibility corrected amino acid score (PDCAAS). If you have ever seen advertisements for protein powders and supplements, you have undoubtedly heard of one or more of these measures of protein quality.

    BV is one of the most commonly used and is arguably, the best measure of a protein’s quality. BV is based on how much of the protein consumed is actually absorbed and utilized by the body. The higher the amount of protein (nitrogen) that is actually retained, the greater the BV. If a protein has a BV of 100, it means that all of the protein absorbed has been utilized with none lost. Whole eggs score the highest of all foods with a BV of 100, while beans have a BV of only 49.

    Protein quality is certainly an important issue, but it is one that has been enormously overstated and even distorted for marketing purposes. Whey protein is truly an excellent protein with a biological value at or near 100. Many advertisements list whey as having a BV between 104 and 157, but if you look in any nutrition textbook it will tell you that it is impossible to have a BV over 100. In “Advanced Nutrition and Human Metabolism,” BV is defined as “a measure of nitrogen retained for growth and/or maintenance that is expressed as a percentage of nitrogen absorbed.”

    When a protein supplement is listed as having a BV over 100, the company has intentionally manipulated the number for marketing purposes or unintentionally confused BV with another method of rating protein quality. Certain whey proponents claim that whey is “superior to whole egg” so the percentage sign on BV had to be dropped and the scale extended beyond 100. It was noted by bodybuilding writer Jerry Branium in IRONMAN magazine that in a study where the BV of whey was reported to be 157, the author confused BV with chemical score. Chemical score is a comparison of the amino acid pattern in an ideal reference protein to a test protein and therefore the number can exceed 100. 157 was actually the chemical score and not the BV.

    Most bodybuilders and strength athletes already consume more than enough protein (an understatement if there ever was one), so the importance of BV to these athletes who are already consuming copious amounts of protein has been overplayed. Even though whey has a higher BV than chicken breast, fish or milk protein, if the total quantity of protein you consume is sufficient, then it is not likely that substituting whey for food proteins will result in any additional muscle growth.

    Whether you choose a whole protein food or a protein supplement isn’t as important as some would like you to believe. For the purposes of developing muscle, the only guidelines for protein that you must follow are: (1) consume a source of complete protein with every meal, (2) eat at frequent intervals approximately three hours apart (about six times per day) and (3) consume a minimum of .8 grams to 1 gram per pound of body weight. There are times when it would be beneficial to consume more than one gram per pound of body weight, but that will have to be the subject of another article.

    Because whey protein does have a high BV, it probably offers the most benefits when you are dieting on very low calories. When your energy intake and correspondingly, your protein intake, are reduced, whey protein could help you get greater utilzation of the smaller amount of protein that you are taking in. In other words, choosing proteins of the highest quality is more of an issue when you are dieting than when you are focusing on mass gains when total calories and protein are being consumed in abundant amounts. Whey protein also provides a way to get high quality protein without the fat, which is also important when dieting.

    It has been suggested that whey may have other advantages besides high protein quality, although they are frequently overstated. These benefits include enhanced immunity, increased antioxidant activity and quick absorption. Several studies in “Clinical and Investigative Science” by Dr. Gerard Bounous of Montreal have shown that whey protein provides anti carcinogenic properties, protection from infections, and other enhanced immune responses. Whey protein was also been shown to raise levels of Glutathione, an important antioxidant that can offer protection from free radical oxidative damage. While such findings are very promising, all these studies, which are frequently quoted in whey protein advertisements, were performed on mice, so it is unclear how well the results extrapolate to humans.

    Another acknowledged benefit of whey protein is its fast absorption rate. Although there isn’t any evidence that protein supplements digest more efficiently than whole foods (as is often claimed), they are definitely digested faster. This is most important after a training session when the rates of protein synthesis and glycogen re-synthesis are increased. This is the reason it is often recommended that a liquid meal containing protein and a high glycemic carbohydrate be consumed immediately post-workout and that whey is the ideal protein for this purpose. Even in considering post-workout nutrition, there is still little proof that a liquid protein-carb complex will actually produce better muscular growth than whole foods, as long as complete whole food protein foods and complex carbohydrates are consumed immediately after the training session and every three waking hours for a period of 24 hours thereafter.

    Speaking of protein absorption rates, the discussion of fast acting versus slow acting proteins seems to be the latest hot topic these days in bodybuilding circles. The interest was sparked by studies in 1997 and 1998 that examined the differences between the absorption rates of whey versus casein. The researchers concluded that whey was a fast acting protein and was considered to be more “anabolic” while casein was slower acting and was considered to be more “anti-catabolic. ” It was further hypothesized that consuming a combination of these two types of proteins could lead to greater muscle growth. These findings have prompted the supplement companies to market an entirely new category of protein supplements; casein and whey mixes. The problem with drawing such conclusions so quickly is that these studies looked at the speed of whey and casein absorption in subjects who had fasted for 10 hours before being fed the protein. Any suppositions drawn from this information are probably irrelevant if you are eating mixed whole food meals every three hours. Obviously, more research is needed.

    This recent fascination with various rates of protein absorption could be compared to the interest in the glycemic index. The glycemic index is a scale that measures the rate at which the body converts various carbohydrate foods into blood glucose. The higher the glycemic index, the faster the food is converted to glucose and the larger the insulin response. Therefore it is said that high glycemic foods should be avoided in favor of low glycemic index foods. The error in relying solely on the glycemic index as your only criteria for choosing carbohydrates is that the index is based on consuming a carbohydrate food by itself in a fasted state.

    When carbohydrates are consumed in mixed meals that contain protein and a little fat, the glycemic index loses some of its significance because the protein and fat slow the absorption of the carbohydrate. That’s why the glycemic index is really much ado about nothing and the same could probably be said for the casein and whey argument. It’s just the latest in a long string of new angles that supplement companies use to promote their protein: free-form vs peptides, concentrate vs isolate, ion exchange vs microfiltration, soy vs whey, casein and whey mix vs pure whey and so on. Every year, you can count on some new twist on the protein story to appear. Certainly there are going to be advances in nutrition science, but all too often these “new discoveries” amount to nothing more than marketing hype.

    What about amino acid pills? Amino acids pills are simply predigested protein. Proponents of amino acid supplementation claim that because the amino’s are predigested, the body will absorb them better, leading to greater improvements in strength and muscle mass. It sounds logical, but this is a gross underestimation of the body’s capacities and actually the reverse is true: The human digestive system was designed to efficiently process whole foods; it was not designed to digest pills and powders all day long. Amino’s are absorbed more rapidly in the intestine when they are in the more complex di and tri-peptide molecules.

    Your body gets better use of the aminos as protein foods are broken down and the amino’s are absorbed at just the right rate for your body’s needs. In “Exercise Physiology; Energy Nutrition and Human Performance,” authors Katch and McArdle state that “Amino acid supplementation in any form has not been shown by adequate experimental design and methodology to increase muscle mass or significantly improve muscular strength, power, or endurance.”

    Furthermore, consuming predigested protein when you are seeking fat loss is not necessarily advantageous because it shortchanges you of the thermic effects of real food. Whole foods have a major advantage over protein supplements; they stimulate the metabolism more. This is known as the “thermic effect of food.” Protein has the highest thermic effect of any food. Including a whole protein food with every meal can speed up your metabolic rate as much as 30% because of the energy necessary to digest, process, and absorb it. This means that out of 100 calories of a protein food such as chicken breast, the net amount of calories left over after processing it is 70. In this respect, the fact that protein foods digest slower than amino acid tablets is actually an advantage.

    A final argument against amino acid supplements is the cost. Amino’s are simply not cost effective. If you don’t believe it, pick up a bottle and do the math yourself. One popular brand of “free form and peptide bonded amino acids” contains 150 1000mg. tablets per bottle and costs $19.95. 1000 mg. of amino acids equals 1 gram of protein, so the entire bottle contains 150 grams of protein. $19.95 divided by 150 grams is 13.3 cents per gram. Let’s compare that to chicken breast. I can buy chicken breast from my local supermarket for $2.99 a pound. According to Corinne Netzer’s “Complete Book of Food Counts,” there are 8.8 grams of protein in each ounce of chicken, so one pound of chicken (16 oz) has about 140 grams of protein. $2.99 divided by 140 grams equals 2.1 cents per gram. The amino acids cost more than six times what the chicken breast does! I don’t know about you, but I’ll stick with the chicken breast.

    The biggest advantage of protein supplements is not that they can build more muscle than chicken or egg whites or any other whole food protein, the biggest advantage is convenience. It is easier to drink a protein shake than it is to buy, prepare, cook and eat poultry, fish or egg whites. Consuming small, frequent meals is the optimal way to eat, regardless of whether your goal is fat loss or muscle gain. To keep your body constantly in positive nitrogen balance, you must consume a complete protein every three hours. For many people, eating this often is nearly impossible. That’s when a high quality protein supplement is the most helpful.

    Aside from convenience, the truth about protein supplements is that they offer few advantages over protein foods. There is no scientific evidence that you can’t meet all of your protein needs for muscle growth through food. As long as you eat every three hours and you eat a complete protein such as eggs, lean meat or lowfat dairy products with every meal, it is not necessary to consume any protein supplements to get outstanding results. Whey protein does have some interesting and useful properties and supplementing with a couple scoops each day is not a bad idea, especially if you are on a low calorie diet for fat loss or when you’re using a post workout shake instead of a meal. Aside from that, focus on real food and don’t believe the hype.

    References

    1) Groff, James, et al, Advanced Nutrition and Human Metabolism, West Publishing company, 1995.

    2) Fruhbeck, Gema. Slow and fast dietary proteins. Nature, 391: 843-844

    3) Boirie, Y. et al. Slow and fast dietary proteins differently modulate postprandial protein accretion. Proc National Acad Sci, 94: 14930-14935, 1997

    4) Lemon, Peter, Protein and Exercise: update, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, Vol 19, No. 5, S179 – S190, 1987

    5) Carraro, F., et at, Effect of exercise and recovery on muscle protein synthesis in human subjects. Amer Journal of physiology, 259: E470, 1990

    6) Lemon, Peter, Is increased dietary protein necessary or beneficial for individuals with a physically active lifestyle? Nutrition reviews, 54:S 169-175, 1996

    7)Bounous, G., et al, The immunoenhancing property of dietary whey protein concentrate. Clinical and Investigational Medicine, 11: 271-278. 1988.

    8) Sadler, R., The benefits of dietary whey protein concentrate on the immune response and health. S Afr. J Dairy Sci, 24: No 24, 1992

    9) Bounous, G., Dietary whey protein inhibits the development of dimethylhydrazine-induced malignancy. Clinical and Investigational Medicine, 12: 213-217, 1988

    10) Bounous, G., et al, The biological activity of undenatured dietary whey protein; role of glutathione. Clinical and Investigational Medicine, 14: 4, 296-309, 1991

    11) Netzer, Corinne. The Complete Book of Food Counts. Dell Publishing, 1997

    12) Katch, Katch & McArdle, Exercise Physiology; Energy, Nutrition and Human Performance, Wiliams and Wilkins, 1996.

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    Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder and author of the #1 best selling e-book, “Burn theTom Venuto 8

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