Lexington Athletic Club

Obesity in America

2011-05-18T10:18:00.000-04:00

via Medical Billing and Coding

Via: MedicalBillingAndCoding.org

Sitting is Killing You

2011-05-18T10:16:00.000-04:00

via Medical Billing and Coding

Via: Medical Billing And Coding

2011 NCAA Bracket FINAL STANDINGS

2011-04-05T11:14:00.002-04:00

1. Robert Price 216

2. Emily Duerler 208

3. Kristin Bullock 206

4. Jackie Herb 206

5. Brit Pendleton 194

6. Vicki Blevins 156

7. Amy Cornell 154

8. Lisa Price 154

9. Katie Singleton 154

10. Collin Duerler 150

Congratulations to Robert Price! Robert received a fabulous prize package including a LAC gym sack, LAC t-shirt's, stickers, key chains and more.

Group Exercise: Spring 2011 Schedule

2011-04-04T11:24:00.001-04:00

Fighting Parkinson's, Step by Step

2011-03-22T11:16:00.002-04:00

via UK News

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 22, 2011) — With every step of her first half-marathon on April 3, University of Kentucky alumna Emily Sandford will be fighting Parkinson's disease.

Sandford, 29, lost her mother, Claudette Hill, to young-onset Parkinson's on April 3, 2007. To mark the fourth anniversary of her passing, Sandford is on a mission to raise $2,500 to further Parkinson's research at theKentucky Neuroscience Institute (KNI) by participating in the Run the Bluegrass Half-Marathon.

The day will also mark two other milestones for Sandford: the loss of more than 100 pounds, and her 30th birthday on April 5.

Sandford, who works as a marketing manager, is also a prolific blogger who has chronicled her fitness journey through her blog for approximately two years. A few months ago she announced her fundraising endeavor for KNI. So far she has raised over $1,500 in donations and sponsorships for the half-marathon, primarily through her blog. She has received donations from as far away as Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, as well as many from across the United States.

On her blog, Sandford discusses her workouts with a trainer, her progress toward being able to complete the 13.1 miles of the half-marathon, her weight loss, and her feelings about her body and herself. Although she has completed two 5K races, Run the Bluegrass will mark the most distance she has ever covered at once. Blog readers have been able to share her training and fundraising journey toward the half-marathon.

"I really am exposing myself. The best thing to come out of it is the support I receive from readers," Sandford said. "My husband has also been amazing. He's a nurse, and compassionate and caring."

So, what inspired Sandford to challenge her body, while honoring the memory of her mother?

"My mom had young-onset Parkinson's, beginning in her mid-40s," Sanford said. "She passed away at the age of 50. She could not control her health; I can control obesity and my own health. Parkinson's is something you can't prevent. It slowly takes away people's motor skills and abilities. It can happen at any age and progress at any rate. By doing something active that people affected by Parkinson's can't do, we can bring light to the cause."

Sandford relates that after the death of her mother and a series of stressful life events she gained a large amount of weight.

"My mom died, I had my birthday, I graduated with my MBA, I got a job, got married, got laid off, and started another job. That whole period was the breaking point," she said.

While on travel for work, she felt herself becoming easily winded and realized "something has got to give." It was then she reached out to a personal trainer and started her blog. She rallied the resources of sponsors like the Lexington Athletic Club.

"That was difficult," she admits. "I don't like asking for help, ever."

Sandford was inspired to fundraise for KNI after participating in the 2010 Business Lexington Trivia Bowl, which also benefited Parkinson's research at KNI.

"I just want to encourage people to support the people locally who are making a change. We have this fantastic resource at KNI," Sandford said.

Emily Sandford holds a bachelor's degree in Integrated Strategic Communication, and an MBA, both from the University of Kentucky. She blogs at http://skinnyemmie.com/ and Tweets @skinnyemmie.

MEDIA CONTACT: Allison Elliott, allison.elliott@uky.edu

2011 NCAA Bracket

2011-03-14T19:47:00.002-04:00

It's FREE! You could WIN fabulous PRIZES!

Physical Therapist opens office at LAC!

2011-02-21T08:36:00.002-05:00

Active Rehab and Fitness Physical Therapy Services

Lisa and Keith Duerler are a husband and wife Physical Therapy team who are now offering their services out of LAC. The following are some of the services they offer:

*Treatment of orthopedic/neurological conditions

*Sports enhancement/rehabilitation

*Aquatic therapy

*Balance retraining

*Vestibular (dizziness) rehab

*Postsurgical rehabilitation

*Custom foot orthotics

*Lumbar/cervical traction

*Golf fitness evaluation/training

*Pain management--ultrasound, iontophoresis, electrical stimulation

*Spinal mobilization/manual therapy

Find them on Facebook HERE

The Myth of Discipline

2011-02-09T06:36:00.001-05:00

via Charles Poliquin

There is no such thing as discipline. There is only love. Love is the most powerful creative force in the universe. You are the result of what you love most. You either love finely etched muscular abs more than donuts or you love donuts more than wash board abs you could do your laundry on. It is as simple as that. Don’t beat yourself up that you have no discipline or further drown yourself in a sea of refined carbs. Admit that you like crappy food more than you love strength. Or ask yourself this, what do you really love? Self-esteem is the reflection of self-judgment. One of the best ways to raise self-esteem is to make truly loving choices that lead to increased strength of body and mind. For example, if you truly love yourself in the gym, you choose the full squat with chains over the leg extension machine. At the restaurant, if you truly love yourself, you pass on the heavenly smelling basket of bread and creamy butter, and ask for some more limes for the water. Limes alkalize your body which in turn helps your bones, muscles and your ability to deal with stress.

When you are faced with difficult choices, ask yourself, in context of course, what would a loving expert recommend? For example, when working chest, would a loving strength coach recommend the pec deck, or full range dumbbell presses. When choosing desserts, would the loving nutritionist recommend a bowl of berries or the triple decker brownie submerged under melting vanilla ice cream.

How to free yourself from the outdated concept of discipline:

Accept that all your choices are reflections of what you truly love.
Love is the greatest creative force of the Universe. Use it wisely.
Choose to love yourself more than external things.
Treating yourself well accelerates the growth of your self-esteem.
When people comment on your results and say things like “Wow you have a lot disciple” answer “No, I just make loving choices for myself". Reinforcing your own positive behavior will help you grow in strength.
What you appreciate appreciates. Whenever you make a truly loving choice, say to yourself ‘Thank you for taking care of me in a loving way”. The more you talk to yourself like a loving parent, the faster you will grow. Let’s say, for example, you just did a single on the squat with a load you didn’t feel like doing. Say: “Wow! I am impressed with your strength of mind, that’s why you are a champion”. By documenting and rewarding your successes, they will grow in magnitude and frequency. Whenever I meet a goal, I reward myself with positive things like a vacation or a new piece of equipment. When I get something better, I make the choice of giving away the old piece to someone who will appreciate it. Living a clutter free life allows for more growth.
The more you believe in yourself, the more objectively you will be able to take the advice of authority figures.
“Use your faults” was French singer Edith Piaf’s motto. I don’t like to stretch athletes. It is too time consuming and requires too much energy. Using that fault, I developed the Poliquin Instant Muscle Strengthening Technique (P.I.M.S.T.), which is a system that uses a myriad of body work techniques such as acupressure points that instantly give increases in flexibility. No wonder it’s always the fastest selling course we offer in the PICP!

There is an old Hindhu saying: “The World is as we are”. Are you tired of seeing the condition of the world around you? Start by changing yourself- be the change you want to see in the world.

How to Gain Weight and Build Muscle

2011-01-17T10:31:00.002-05:00

via Mark's Daily Apple

So you wanna put on some lean muscle mass. And you want to do it within the context of the Primal Blueprint, but aren’t sure where to start. It’s a common question and it’s about time I addressed it head on.

As I’ve made pretty clear, our ultimate goal is to achieve positivegene expression, functional strength, optimum health, and extended longevity. In other words: To make the most out of the particular gene set you inherited. These are my end goals, and I’ve modeled the PB Laws with them in mind. But that doesn’t mean packing on extra muscle can’t happen with additional input. After I retired from a life of chronic cardio and started living Primally, I added 15 pounds of muscle, while keeping low body fat levels without really trying, so it’s absolutely possible for a hardgainer to gain some. The question is how much and at what expense?

I’d be the first to tell you that lean body mass is healthier than adipose tissue. Generally, the more lean mass a person has, the longer and better they live. But to increase mass at the expense of agility, strength, or speed is, in my opinion, counterproductive. What would Grokdo – go for enormous biceps or the ability to haul a carcass back to camp? Unless you’re a bodybuilder (nothing wrong with that, mind you; it’s just not my focus), I can’t advise simply packing on size without a proportional increase in actual strength. Those bulging biceps might look good on the beach, but then again, so does the body that comes with keeping up with the younger guys, knocking out twenty pull-ups in a row, and lifting twice your bodyweight. Form is best paired with a healthy serving of function. The two are quite delicious together, and, luckily, following the PB allows us to get both without sacrificing either.

Of course, we’re all built a little differently. The basic building blocks are the same in everyone, but sexual reproduction (as opposed to asexual reproduction) has the funny habit of producing unique genetics and small variations that affect the way we respond to our environments. It’s why some people are short and some are tall, or why some of us respond better to carbohydrates than others. Even though we all pretty much operate the same way, there IS a range of possible outcomes that is proscribed by your direct ancestors. By that same token, some people just naturally have more muscle mass. They’re usually innately more muscular than the average person, and putting more on through resistance training is often an easy task. Then there are those who can’t seem to gain a pound: the hardgainers. They might be increasing strength, but it doesn’t seem to translate into visible muscle mass. Now, my initial advice for a hardgainer is this – don’t worry too much about it! As long as you’re getting stronger, you’re doing it right.

Let’s face it, though. You’ve probably heard that enough already. It’s fun being the lanky guy at the gym who can lift more than most, but you’re dead set on bulking up (who doesn’t like a bit more muscle to go along with that strength?), and you want to do it in a Primal context. Besides, continuing to increase strength will eventually require increasing size. To do so, you have to target the very same anabolic hormones that others use to get big, only with even more enthusiasm and drive. Like I said, we all have similar engines, but some require more fuel and more efficient driving (sorry for the corny analogy). Activating these hormones will work for anyone, provided they work hard and eat enough food.

The main hormones that contribute to muscle anabolism are testosterone, growth hormone (GH), and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1). A little more about each and how to utilize them:

Testosterone

Crazy bodybuilders don’t inject themselves with anabolic steroid hormones that are based on testosterone for nothing. Among other roles, testosterone is an important muscle-building growth factor that favorably affects protein synthesis in addition to working with other hormones (like GH and IGF-1) to improve their function (more on this later). If you want to increase strength and build muscle, testosterone is absolutely required (don’t worry, though: no injections necessary!).

Growth Hormone

It’s right there in the name, isn’t it? Growth hormone. It helps muscle grow and, perhaps more importantly, it burns body fat. After all, leaning out is a big part of building muscle (or else you’ll just look puffy) and GH will help you do it.

Insulin-like Growth Factor 1

IGF-1 is extremely similar in effect to GH, as it should be – GH stimulates IGF-1 production in the liver. In fact, it’s suspected that IGF-1 is actually responsible for most of the “growth-promoting effects of circulating GH.”

Anabolic hormones all work together. In fact, to maximize their muscle-building potential, you must have all three present. Testosterone increases IGF-1, but only in the presence of GH. GH promotes skeletal muscle cell fusion independent of IGF-1, but the two are most effective in concert. Luckily for you, the types of exercises that stimulate the secretion of one will generally stimulate the secretion of the others. Funny how that works out, huh?

Enter The Central Nervous System

In order for your body to start pumping out these delicious anabolic hormones, you must first give it a reason to do so. I might even say you should give your genes a reason to express themselves. The most effective way to do this is by notifying the central nervous system. Now, the CNS can be a stubborn bastard, but he’s all you got when it comes to interpreting stimuli and relaying messages to the rest of the body. He’s not easily perturbed, and he won’t bother if you aren’t serious. If you insist on doing nothing but light aerobics or tiny isolation exercises, your CNS will barely notice. If you want to get your CNS’ attention, pick up the intensity. Run some sprints or do some heavy lifting. When you do an exercise like the squat with a heavy weight, all hands are on deck. Your CNS realizes that some serious exercising is going down and notifies the hypothalamus, which in turn talks to your pituitary gland. This tiny – but vital – member of the endocrine system is the gland that dispatches luteinizing hormones to tell the testicles to secrete testosterone. It’s also the gland that synthesizes and secretes GH. IGF-1 is mostly produced by the liver, but its production is facilitated by the presence of GH, so we can see that it all comes down to CNS stimulation.Chronic cardio doesn’t affect your CNS in any meaningful way, so that’s why we tend to avoid it; vigorous sprints, hard and heavy lifting, and anaerobic output will get its attention, so do plenty of these to maximize muscle growth.

Cortisol: A Hormone to Avoid

Promoting muscle and strength growth also requires avoiding excess amounts of catabolic (muscle wasting) hormones like cortisol. Cortisol is the major stress hormone, and it exists for a very legitimate reason (dealing with “flight or fight” incidents, inadequate sleep, anxiety), but in large amounts cortisol increases serum amino acids by breaking down muscle, inhibiting protein synthesis and reducing amino acid uptake by the muscles – all awful things for muscle growth. Compounding the problem even further, the broken-down muscle is converted into blood glucose, which then raises insulin secretion and increases insulin resistance while promoting fat storage. And we all know how great those muscles look with a nice layer of adipose tissue covering them up! On a serious note, most people following the PB already minimize cortisol by getting plenty of sleep and reducing stress, but if you’re preoccupied with building muscle mass and engaging in extended workout sessions to achieve it, avoiding excess cortisol can get tricky: excessive exercise without enough recovery time actually increases cortisol. It makes sense (think of it like your body’s telling you it needs a day or two off), but the desire for more muscle mass drives many to work out to the point of counter-productivity. Just be careful, and give yourself at least a day of rest after a particularly grueling session.

Lift Really Heavy Things

If you haven’t figured it out already, you’re going to be doing some heavy lifting in order to put on lean mass. The foundation of your routine should be the big compound lifts: squats,deadlifts, presses (bench and overhead), pull-ups, rows, dips, snatches, power cleans, clean and jerks. These engage multiple muscles while triggering your hormonal response systems.Bodyweight stuff, while valuable, simply isn’t going to get you the strength and mass increases you’re looking for. Testosterone, while useful, only gets really anabolic when you start lifting. You need to get under some decent weight, enough so that your CNS and endocrine system are blasted, but not so much that you can’t maintain proper form.

A popular routine is the 5×5 method. Popularized by programs like StrongLifts and Starting Strength, doing compound lifts for five sets of five reps allows you to strike a balance between strength building and superficial muscle hypertrophy. Done this way, your hypertrophy won’t be purely sarcoplasmic, which results in fluid-filled muscles that look big but don’t see a corresponding increase in actual strength. Instead, the 5×5 method promotesmyofibrillar hypertrophy: hard, dense muscle fibers that increase strength and size (with no puffiness). That’s real muscle that would make Grok proud.

If you’re lifting heavy and lifting hard, keep your workouts spaced at least a day apart and don’t lift more than 3x/week. Three exercises per session should be perfect. That may not sound like much, but it’ll be plenty if you do it right. Remember, you’re doing big compound movements that will really shock your system, with an emphasis on intensity and power. You don’t want to overwork yourself, release a bunch of cortisol, and set yourself back a few weeks.

Squats and deadlifts are absolutely required. No excuses. They engage the most muscles and produce the biggest hormonal response. They will be the bedrock of your mass building campaign. Most programs recommend doing squats every session, and I tend to agree. You can handle it. Deadlifts are a bit more taxing and so should be relegated to every other workout. So, one week you’ll deadlift once, the next week twice. You can also sub in power cleans for the occasional deadlifts (or do them in addition) if you’re comfortable with such a complex movement. Presses are paramount, both overhead and bench. I’d alternate both types of presses every session. Pull-ups are great, but weighted pull-ups are even better. Same goes for dips. Just try to get one pulling, one pushing, and one squatting exercise in each session.

An example for beginners, with sets coming first in the sequence:

A
Squat 5×5
Pull-ups 5xFailure (add weight if “Failure” is becoming more than 12 reps)
Overhead Press 5×5

B
Squat 5×5
Deadlift 1/2/3×5 (your choice; deadlifts can be incredibly taxing, and with exhaustion comes poor form, so be careful; sometimes it’s better to do a really heavy load for a single set)
Bench Press 5×5

C
Squat 5×5
Pull-ups 5xFailure
Overhead Press 5×5

Do this sequence every week (maybe Monday, Wednesday, Friday) and steadily increase the weight each session. Once you’re making progress, feel free to add in other exercises like dips or more Olympic lifts. For more mass, more lactic “burn” (and more GH secretion), reduce your rest periods between sets or even superset them. If you feel like doing some cardio, stick to sprints once weekly, or even a Crossfit-style metcon (metabolic conditioning) workout, maybe some Tabata burpees. The key is conserving strength and giving your body time to rest and recover for the next round of squats, deadlifts, and presses.

This “program” can be tweaked and altered. Just make sure you’re doing big movements while maintaining extreme intensity and great form. Oh, and always make sure to squat and deadlift. Always. They produce the most testosterone, GH, and IGF-1.

Eat Lots (I Mean Lots) of Plants and Animals

No one would ever call the Primal Blueprint a protein-sparing plan, but you’re going to have toeat even more than before. Stuff yourself. I always say that body composition is 80% diet, and that goes for putting on mass as well as losing fat. You need to provide plenty of protein for all those hormones to synthesize, after all.

Never let your protein intake go lower than 1g/lb of body weight when you are aiming to add long-term muscle. It’s the building block of muscle, and your body is going to be starving for it.
Eat plenty of saturated and monounsaturated fat. Fat blunts insulin secretion while increasing testosterone production. Insulin may be useful for stuffing your muscles full of glycogen, but that’s not what you’re going for… right?
Dietary fat, in conjunction with all the GH you’ll be producing, also spares muscle wasting.
You may have heard of the popular GOMAD method – Gallon of Milk a Day for easy mass-building. It undoubtedly works, but a gallon of milk isn’t exactly Primal and I can’t recommend it. Instead of milk, why not a dozen eggs a day? ADEAD? If you can manage it, eating them on top of your regularly scheduled meals is a great source of affordable protein, fat, and vitamins (Vitamin A in particular may have pro-anabolic effects).
Eat often. If you’re going for pure size and strength, fasted workouts and skipped PWO meals may not be the ticket. You’ll burn more fat with the extra GH secretion and existing muscle will be spared, but you may be missing the chance at prime protein synthesis when you fast. A PWO meal of protein and fat will still blunt the insulin secretion and provide fuel for your muscles.
Increase caloric intake. You’re going to be expending so much energy on the lifts (and you’ll continue to burn through it even on rest days) while eating clean, Primal foods (and keeping insulin low as ever) that fat accumulation shouldn’t be an issue at all. Eat!
On those days when you do expend a ton of energy – maybe on your metcon or sprint day – having a Primal-friendly starch, like squash or sweet potato, is a decent way to replenish depleted glycogen stores.
Eat a big piece of fatty meat every single day. Steak, whole chicken, lamb leg, organs, whatever. Just eat a solid piece of animal flesh for a powerful protein infusion on a daily basis.
A hardgainer is often someone who doesn’t eat enough. Sure, genes play a role, but you can ultimately have a significant say in how those genes rebuild you. To a point. Eat more and lift harder to grab the reins.

I’m a firm believer in the body’s natural ability to achieve proper homeostasis, provided we supply the right environment and the right foods. For some of you, that might mean lower body mass, lower than you’d like. In my opinion, that amount of muscle is probably “right” for you and I wouldn’t recommend going above and beyond to achieve more of it… but I also wouldn’t condemn it, especially if it’s pursued in accordance with the Primal Laws. As for me, I am comfortable where I’m at and tend not to seek added mass (I’m also at a point where lifting heavy increases my risk of injury, and I HATE downtime). But if you are a hard-gainer looking to add a few, as long as it’s not just show muscle and you can actually lift some decent weight and at the very least manipulate your own body weight comfortably, eat those dozen eggs and gain that weight.

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Gio JL Flickr Photo (CC)

Closings and class changes...

2011-01-11T08:20:00.000-05:00

Click here for up-to-date info...

Fat Loss 101 – Master the Basics

2011-01-11T07:45:00.001-05:00

via Fitness Spotlight

Fat Loss 101 – Master the Basics

It seems everyone wants (or needs) to lose weight, but with all the information out there it just gets more and more confusing for the average person to know what to do? Let’s back it up a little and start from the basic understand of how fat loss happens in a simple and easy manner. Once you can master the basics, that is probably 90% of where all your results will come from!

Fat loss first and foremost is a hormonal event, the right hormones telling the body to release the stored “energy” in the fat cells to burn off. It is also important to know that there are also fat “storing” hormones that act in the opposite way, triggering the body to store “future energy” into the fat cells. The body triggers these hormones through many different stimulus like food, drink, exercise, stress and sleep. Fat cells are just the body’s emergency storage tanks afterall. If we didn’t have fat cells, we wouldn’t have survived the famines of the past. It’s a built-in survival mechanism that is getting all the wrong signals today. The body wasn’t designed around constant intake of food, especially the processed and high in sugar kind. (as that is not something that naturally grows on trees!)

So we know that fat loss is hormonal. Also fat loss occurs when oxygen is present, what is known as aerobic. (which means “with oxygen”…don’t get all happy yet all you daily joggers) The other stage is called anaerobic (which means “without oxygen”). Anaerobic training is also known more commonly as “strength training” (which you can tell by the lactic acid burn). Here’s where people get confused when it comes to exercise. Most people think that by doing aerobics you burn all the fat you want. Well if that was the case, obesity would of been taken care of in 1986 and your gym aerobic instructors wouldn’t have an average BF% over 25%. Who ever said you are guaranteed to burn fat? What about stored glycogen? Plus if you can burn fat in an aerobic state, well aren’t you in an aerobic state all day long (minus brief times of anaerobic activity) including sleeping?? So here’s the breakthrough, you have the ability to burn fat all day long! The only thing left is the hormones and whether they are saying “empty the storage tanks” or “here comes some more” to the fat cells.

Stop using your fat cells for storage and learn how to open the door and clean them out!

The Fat loss hormones were are going to focus on briefly are insulin, glucagon, and growth hormone (GH). Insulin is a fat storing hormone, while glucagon and GH are fat burning hormones. If insulin is present and elevated, the other hormones go down (this is an important relationship to realize). Another hormone called cortisol (stress hormone) is a muscle breakdown hormone….and that is not something we want in our fat loss quest. Below are just quick and easy bullet point on how to maximize the fat burning hormones and minimize the muscle breakdown/fat storing hormones (don’t think all muscle breakdown is bad, you need to break down and rebuild the cells it’s when you have excessive breakdown and minimal rebuilding that is the issue as that will lead to a loss of muscle).

Your #1 enemy, sugar and all it’s hiding places (drinks, sauces, dressings, etc). If it has a label, read it and see what sugars you are really getting, as everything you put into your mouth counts! Why is sugar bad? Because sugar will be quickly absorbed into the blood which cause a spike in your blood sugar and with that spike the body releases insulin to take care of it (shuttle excessive blood sugar into the fat cells for storage!). So like I tell my clients, every time you put sugar into your mouth just tell yourself “I don’t feel like burning fat for the next 3-4 hours” as that is exactly the hormonal signal you are giving it. Remember also when insulin is high, glucagon and GH go down (this is important to remember especially at night)

So let’s recap, for fat loss we want:

Minimal insulin levels throughout the day (no high levels/spikes except during the post workout window when the insulin sensitivity is maximum, it goes into muscle not fat)

Maximum Glucagon (which is directly inversely proportional to insulin levels)

Maximum GH (which is controlled by insulin, exercise response and sleep)

Keep Cortisol in check (you will have some, but excessive will lead to muscle loss)

For Insulin control (and max Glucagon response):

Keep levels low by not eating sugar or foods that quickly break down into the bloodstream (processed foods, breads, cereals, pasta) Just say to yourself every time you are about to put sugar in your mouth, “I don’t want to burn any fat for the next 3-4 hours”...as that is exactly what you are telling your body with your hormonal response from the ingestion of sugar! (Already said that above but I want to drive the #1 important point home!)

Have protein with every meal (as that will slow down the digestion of any sugars). Also protein intake stimulates the release of glucagon.

Improve insulin sensitivity with glycogen draining exercise (resistance training) which will in turn reduce your insulin resistance (which is one of the biggest reasons for obesity and a serious increase of risks for many other diseases including heart disease, cancers, diabetes, accelerated aging and more!)

For max GH response:

Most of your daily GH is released in the first couple hours of sleep at night (75%) . Keep your insulin levels low (which means no big meals or sugar 2-3 hours before bed) and get to bed by 10pm to get the maximum response. Soget your sleep, your body will thank you. People shorting themselves on sleep will also be hindering their fat loss efforts and may lead to more weight gain from improper hormonal responses (which can also trigger cravings!)

Exercise with Intensity (for fast twitch muscle recruitment, not slow twitch), whether it is resistance training with short rest periods or doing interval training like sprints. Short burst of anaerobic intense exercise (lactic acid burn) will in turn signal the body to release GH. Long aerobic activities (jogging, etc) will NOT. (The old argument of look at the body composition of a sprinter vs the marathon runner…the sprinter has more muscle and very low bf%, the marathon runner has little muscle and a higher bf% even if they look smaller) See the role of lactate in exercise induced GH response.

Exercise in a fasted state has also shown to increase GH levels (again make sure you have enough energy to get through the workout, a small meal may be needed 1-2 hours prior if the activity it too intense). You can also see more information about using intermittent fasting for weight loss here.

Minimize excessive Cortisol:

Keep all intense strength or cardio exercise under 45min (remember we want to increase the intensity in a short period, not the duration). Anything longer will just start wasting muscle as fuel.

Practice relaxing throughout the day, don’t stress out over things that mean very little in the long run (ask yourself will this really be important in 1 week, 1 month, 1 year). Get perspective on things in your life, and detach from things that really don’t matter. Smile more, take deep breaths throughout the day, get out in nature, find your passions in life, etc. We are too stressed out and our body was only meant to use stress in short bursts (fight or flight response) not all day long events.

So if you can master these small steps, you will see tremendous changes. Remember that fat loss is an all day event! So eat and live your life that way! Don’t worry about how many calories you burn doing something, because that is not the point. Worry about what you eat all day and how your hormones are going to react to it. Eat the foods your body was meant to eat and live the active lifestyle your body was designed for….and you will have increased health, look great, feel great and hopefully live long and stay active. So….to sum up:

Remember that 85% of fat loss is nutritional based (not how many calories you can burn doing something) and you have the ability to burn fat all day long if your hormones tell your body to do so.

Eat whole natural foods (not processed..if it wasn’t around 100 years ago, you don’t need it!), avoid all sugars (foods and drinks), have protein with every meal

Train your fast twitch muscles with resistance training 2-3x a week and do 30-60min of “active lifestyle” based movement daily (not going to call it cardio). Go have fun doing whatever! (play tennis, go walking/hiking, ride a bike, enjoy what you do!)

Stop stressing out, take some deep breaths, get outside to relax and get your 8hrs of sleep.

Taking a Walk Can Help Reduce Cravings

2011-01-04T05:15:00.003-05:00

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR via NYT

Do your New Year’s resolutions tend to fizzle like a glass of chilled Champagne?

If your goal is to break a bad habit or cut back on food and shed a few pounds, then a simple but overlooked trick could come in handy: go for a walk. As far as weight-loss strategies go, it is not the most glamorous, but studies have found that a brisk walk around the block can significantly dampen cravings, whether the urge for junk food or the desire to light up a cigarette.

In a 2008 study, researchers recruited a group of “regular chocolate eaters” — people who ate at least two chocolate bars a day — and had them abstain for three days. They then divided them into groups, put them to work on difficult cognitive tests to raise their stress levels, and tempted them with unwrapped chocolate bars.

The researchers found that if the subjects walked for 15 minutes on a treadmill at a pace that was brisk but not tiring, they were far less likely to suffer cravings, and even showed lower blood pressure when handling the chocolate bars.

In other studies, scientists looked at the effects of brief walks on cigarette cravings. One in 2005 found that smokers who were told to abstain for a day had rapid reductions in the urge to smoke when they took “self-paced, low-intensity” walks lasting about 15 minutes.

Another study in 2007 showed that brief walks not only beat back cravings, but also reduced withdrawal symptoms and increased the time between cigarettes smoked.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Studies show that a brisk walk can ease cravings and help break some habits.

ANAHAD O’CONNOR scitimes@nytimes.com

The best workout and nutrition program, possibly ever!

2011-01-01T09:21:00.004-05:00

via Mark's Daily Apple

So you’ve decided to join the challenge. You’ve created your own Primal Challenge Journaland have publicly stated your goals for the next month. Now what? First things first. You have to know the basics. If you’re new to the Primal Blueprint the following article will be like gold to you. Revisit it again and again until you’ve committed the concepts to memory. The graphs and charts are visual representations of the principles that are at the core of the Primal health philosophy and give you a taste of what it is in my new book, The Primal Blueprint.

You’ve defined the “what”. If your goal is to lose weight, build muscle, increase energy or just generally look and feel healthier these graphics explain the basics of the “how”.

The Primal Blueprint Carbohydrate Curve

What’ll It Be? The “Sweet Spot” or the “Danger Zone”?

Carbohydrate intake is often the decisive factor in weight loss success and prevention of widespread health problems like Metabolic Syndrome, obesity and type 2 diabetes. These average daily intake levels assume that you are also getting sufficient protein and healthy fats, and are doing some amount of Primal exercise. The ranges in each zone account for individual metabolic differences.

0-50 grams per day: Ketosis and I.F. (Intermittent Fasting) zone. Excellent catalyst for rapid fat loss through I.F. Not recommended for prolonged periods (except in medically supervised programs for obese or Type 2 diabetics) due to unnecessary deprivation of plant foods.
50-100 grams per day: Sweet Spot for Weight Loss. Steadily drop excess body fat by minimizing insulin production. Enables 1-2 pounds per week of fat loss with satisfying, minimally restrictive meals.
100-150 grams per day: Primal Maintenance zone. Once you’ve arrived at your goal or ideal body composition, you can maintain it quite easily here while enjoying abundant vegetables, fruits and other Primal foods.
150-300 grams a day: Insidious Weight Gain zone. Most health conscious eaters and unsuccessful dieters end up here, due to frequent intake of sugar and grain products (breads, pastas, cereals, rice, potatoes – even whole grains). Despite trying to “do the right thing” (minimize fat, cut calories), people can still gain an average of 1.5 pounds of fat every year for decades.
300+ grams a day: Danger Zone of average American diet. All but the most extreme exercisers will tend to produce excessive insulin and store excessive fat over the years at this intake level. Increases risk for obesity, Metabolic Syndrome and type 2 diabetes.

The Primal Blueprint Food Pyramid

For effortless weight loss, vibrant health, and maximum longevity

General Guidelines: 80% of body composition success is determined by diet. Limit processed carb intake (hence, insulin production), and obtain sufficient protein and fat to fuel and rebuild.

Protein: Average .7 – 1 gram per pound of lean body mass/day – depending on activity levels (more at times is fine).
Carbs: 50-100 grams/day (or less) = accelerated fat loss. 100-150 grams/day = effortless weight maintenance. Heavy exercisers can increase carb intake as needed to replace glycogen stores.
Fat: Enjoy freely but sensibly for balance of caloric needs and high dietary satisfaction levels.
Avoid Poisonous Things: Conventional Wisdom’s dietary guidelines promote fat storage, type 2 diabetes, inflammation and obesity!
Eliminate: Sugary foods and beverages, grains (wheat, corn, rice, pasta, breads, cereals, etc.), legumes (soy and other beans), trans and partially hydrogenated fats, high-risk conventional meat and produce, and excess PUFA’s (instead, increase omega-3 oils).
Modern Adjustments: Some modern foods that Grok didn’t eat can still be included in a healthy diet
Moderation: Certain high glycemic fruit, coffee, high-fat dairy products, starchy tuber vegetables, and wild rice.
Supplements: Multivitamin/mineral formula, probiotics, omega-3 fish oil and protein powder.
Herbs, spices and extracts: Offer many health benefits and enhance enjoyment of meals.
Sensible indulgences: Dark chocolate, moderate alcohol, high-fat treats.

The Primal Blueprint Fitness Pyramid

For functional, diverse athletic ability, and a lean, proportioned physique

Exercising according to the three Primal Blueprint laws will optimize gene expression and promote Primal Fitness.

Law #3: Move Frequently at a Slow Pace strengthens the cardiovascular and immune systems, promotes efficient fat metabolism and gives you a strong base to handle more intense workouts.
Law: #4: Lift Heavy Things stimulates lean muscle development, improves organ reserve, accelerates fat loss, and increases energy.
Law #5: Sprint Once in a While stimulates the production of HGH and testosterone, which help improve overall fitness and delay the aging process – without the burnout risk of excessive prolonged workouts.

The Conventional Wisdom approach to fitness is clearly not working! Stress is excessive, weight loss goals are compromised, and many are misguided to pursue narrow fitness goals that are unhealthy.

Avoid Chronic Cardio (frequent medium-to-high intensity sustained workouts)
Avoid Chronic Strength Training (frequent and/or prolonged sub-maximal lifting sessions ending in exhaustion)
Avoid Regimented Schedules (instead, allow for spontaneous, intuitive variation in type, difficulty and frequency of workouts)

All this and much more can be found in my new book, The Primal Blueprint. Order a copy today and start getting Primal!

Subscribe to Mark’s Daily Apple feeds

How to Lose 20+ lbs in January 2011

2011-01-01T07:18:00.002-05:00

via Julien Smith, the New York Times bestselling author

This is probably the only diet post you will ever need.

Over the past year, I have helped many friends, both in person and on the internet, quietly lose a lot of weight, probably in the realm of several hundred pounds total, sometimes even in 30 days.

It’s not something I’m known for online, but it is something I do, very effectively, and I can do it for you.

I never told anyone to exercise. I only asked them to follow very simple rules, none of which require much willpower.

You might be in the same boat. No problem.

Tomorrow, after your New Year’s binge, start on the following four pieces of advice. If you are overweight, you will probably shrink with less effort than you ever have before.

Here they are.

#1. Cut out sugar and flour.

This step will actually get you most of the way there. Most people’s primary calories come, in some way or another, in the form of sugar. Even “complex carbohydrates” are digested as basic sugar and have mostly the same effect on your blood sugar. Besides, things like bread and rice have little nutritional value.

So, tomorrow, stop eating them and make your primary calories from food (not drink) such as meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, etc. Eat foods your great-grandmother would recognize, and have more protein than you’re used to. Have bigger meals that include these foods and you’ll feel no need to snack since you’ll be very full.

My supper yesterday was a huge bowl of Tom Kha soup (without noodles). My lunch was shrimp ceviche. Both were awesome and I did not feel deprived at all. Doing this is easy.

#2. Sleep the same 8 hours every night.

Sometimes this is the biggest obstacle for people. Insulin and other hormones get weird when you sleep differently. Your body thinks it’s constantly summer when you sleep too little, which makes you want to snack on high sugar foods (expensive cereal was my personal crutch a few years back). It causes a lot of other problems too.

Sleeping on the same schedule as many days as possible will solve a lot of these problems. It will help normalize your hormones and get you into a positive routine that can include eating at home (high protein breakfast) and reducing stress, which also helps you lose weight.

Good habits are what this is all about, and sleep is a foundation of it all.

#3. Try intermittent fasting.

Intermittent fasting is the decision to abstain from all calories for a pre-determined period of time, usually 16-24 hours. Many people think this is unhealthy, but science supports that it’s fine, and our bodies have dealt with it for thousands of years. In fact, fasting has beneficial effects besides calorie reduction.

Currently, I fast 16 hours a day like Martin Berkhan and have been doing it for 3 weeks straight. I have lifted heavier weights during this time than I ever have in the past. You can do this too, even if you think you can’t. I usually ask people to combine this with modest exercise, but not everyone agrees that it’s necessary.

Most people will ignore this step. That’s fine. They think they just can’t do it, it’s too hard, etc. No problem. But, like anything, you should try it once before judging it, and it never hurts to have more tools in your arsenal. This is one of them.

Read the resources below, find a method that works for you, and try it.

#4. Educate yourself.

This step is actually optional, but encouraged, because your body should not be a religion– as in, you should understand how it works.

I’ve read more books on diet and the body than most people will read in a lifetime, so much that reading Tim Ferriss‘ new 4-Hour Body reads like a list of stuff I’ve done in the past 12 months. So I can separate the wheat from the chaff and give you the good stuff.

Here are many resources you can read, some for free, that will help you understand why these things work.

How to Get Started

Why We Get Fat, and What To Do About It

The Paleo Solution

Sleep is Awesome

Good Calories, Bad Calories (long, but epic)

Mark’s Daily Apple (amazing daily blog)

The Fast-5 Program (free fasting ebook)

Eat Stop Eat (paid ebook, free blog)

The Leangains Guide

The Food Rules (I disagree with some, but it’s good and short)

There, that’ll start you off. Any one of these options is better than none, and it will pique your curiosity enough to set you onto a road of lifelong learning.

Another thing about educating yourself is to realize that missteps are a part of progress. In fact, some “cheating” is said to normalize leptin, a hormone which helps keep you satiated. So if you screw up, don’t worry about it. Don’t guilt yourself about it… enjoy it, then start over.

#5. Spread the message.

There is a very important reason for you to do this. The more public you make your goal, the more social support you get from it. Some people aren’t helped by pressure from their friends, but many are, so telling people you’re making a change may embarrass you into keeping it. There’s also the simple fact that almost everyone in their late 20′s and older wants to lose some weight but most just don’t know how.

Being overweight should not drag down our self esteem and make people feel hopeless. We live in a culture where we all accept that people are overweight, yet simultaneously push images of perfect models in the checkout aisle next to the candy. Everyone knows it’s a problem and that they’re more likely to die from it, yet they accept it anyway because they don’t know what to do. Why?

The answer to this is clarity. Many people need this kind of information, but most don’t know where to get it. Help them do that. Please tweet this out and subscribe to the blog below with your email address.

Thank you, and have a great year.

New Year's Holiday Hours

2010-12-31T08:30:00.001-05:00

Dec 31: 5am-5pm

Jan 1: 7am-7pm

Holiday Group Exercise Schedule

Happy New Year!

Holiday Hours and Schedule

2010-12-24T07:10:00.002-05:00

Christmas Eve: 5am-5pm

Christmas Day: Closed

Group Exercise Holiday Schedule: Click HERE.

Find us on Facebook HERE and HERE.

60 seconds before you binge tomorrow...

2010-12-24T07:04:00.002-05:00

Gone in 60 Seconds: One Minute of Activity to Avoid Storing Calories of a Meal as Body Fat.

"Why didn't I think of that!" This is exactly what I thought when reading this "hack" in Tim Ferriss's new book, The 4-Hour Body. Instead of a book review, I would rather talk about a clever strategy Tim talks about on page 105-107. This is by far my favorite part of the book, because it really makes a lot of sense. I could see how this little tweak could make a difference over time when it came to gaining muscle and losing body fat.

[What if a brief exercise of 60-90 seconds, made it less likely that this dessert would get stored as body fat? That is exactly one of the things Tim Ferriss explores in The 4-Hour Body].

Brief Muscular Contractions a Few Minutes Before You Eat?

So most of you probably know that after an intense workout, food calories are less likely to get stored as body fat. A simplistic explanation is that your muscles are depleted of glycogen and that a lot of the calories you eat at this time simply serve to refuel these depleted muscles. What I did not know was how little the stimulus needs to be in order for this to happen. Tim has found that this effect can happen in as little as 60-90 seconds. The proper activity done a few minutes before eating can encourage food calories to get shuttled into the muscle cells, before it has a chance to get stored as body fat.

Encouraging Insulin to Store Food Energy Into Muscle Cells

What exercise does is increase a substance in your body called GLUT-4 (glucose transporter type 4). Tim explains that exercise will encourage insulin to store calories in the muscle cells:

"The more muscular gates we have open before insulin triggers the same GLUT-4 on the surface of fat cells, the more we can put calories in muscle instead of fat".

In The 4-Hour Body, Tim talks about a study which compares the effect of 280 seconds of intense exercise to a 6 hour low intensity exercise session. What the study found was that 280 seconds of intense exercise increased Glut-4 in the muscle by 83%…and 6 hours of lower intensity exercise increased it by 91%. So 280 seconds of exercise had almost the same effect as 6 hours when it comes to increasing GLUT-4 levels.

From 280 Seconds…Down to 60-90 Seconds

So Tim suggests that you keep the pre meal and post meal exercise down to 60-90 seconds. The GLUT-4 levels will increase with this amount of exercise, but it will drop down to normal levels after 1-4 hours. Tim recommends doing 60 seconds of exercise right before eating and 90 minutes after eating. Why 90 minutes? He has found that blood glucose levels to be the highest 90 minutes after eating.

The "Air Squat" is Tim's Exercise of Choice

[The guys in this video do a great job of demonstrating Air Squats.]

"Killing Two Birds With One Stone"

If there was one weakness in my physique, it would be flexibility…particularly the lower back, hips, and hamstrings. As I've outlined in previous articles, actively stretching the muscles through a full range of motion is the key to flexibility. Doing traditional stretches has a much shorter lasting effect. Special Forces Trainer, Scott Sonnon explains this proper way to increase flexibility in aninterview I did with him a while back. So these Air Squats will improve flexibility over time, especially if you are performing them a few times per day. For me this is almost as big of a benefit as the "calorie shuttling" effect.

Tim Also Recommends Two Other Exercises

Wall Presses & Chest Pulls are the other two exercise that Tim recommends. These are to be done for 30-50 reps. Even if you can do 30-50 push ups you will want to stick with wall presses, because you don't want these pre and post meal exercises to interfere with your normal workouts. What Tim calls chest pulls in his book are more commonly known as "Band Pull Aparts". Here is a video demonstrating that exercise.

[The closer your hands are together on the band, the more resistance this will provide. So in order to get 30-50 reps, you may have to begin with your hands wider than a shoulder width grip. The resistance also depends upon the band being used.]

No Need to Use These Exact Exercises

The main thing it looks like Tim is accomplishing with these three exercises is working the entire body. The air squats seem like a great idea, because these can be done anywhere. Then you would just chose some sort of pushing movement and a pulling movement and you would be good to go. Just make sure and do around 30-50 reps and don't push so hard that this interferes with your normal workouts.

How I Plan on Using This Strategy

I'll bring a pair of resistance bands to my work space and do these brief exercises for at least one meal per day. Once I develop this habit, I may apply it to two meals per day. Typically I eat 3 times per day when I'm not doing an ESE style fast. At least one of my meals is eaten an hour after intense training, so no need to add additional exercise before that meal.

Note: I highly recommend The 4-Hour Body, by the way. I don't agree with everything Tim recommends, but there is easily enough helpful tweaks to make it worth your time and money. Tim's Blog —> Four Hour Work Week Blog.

Cheat Day Eating Strategy: Martin Berkhan's Approach

2010-12-24T06:56:00.003-05:00

Cheat Day Strategies For A Hedonist

Martin Berkhan

Can you avoid fat gain during cheat days and holiday feasts like Thanksgiving and Christmas? Sure, you can. But if you're a big eater that loves food, like me, it's more a question of minimizing fat storage than attempting to avoid it. And trust me, there's a few nifty strategies that can be used for damage control while still enjoying holiday hedonism, cheesecake mastery and spontaneous feasts of all sorts.

The key to damage control during ad libitum ("at one's pleasure") eating sprees lies not only in how much you eat but also with the choice of macronutrients. Food combination voodoo? No, just pure facts based on nutrient metabolism and science.

The question is also how to quickly get back on track for there is no doubt that big eaters can eat thousands of surplus calories that do lead to fat gain and post-holiday bloat. One of the "secrets" to maintaining low body fat while still being able to enjoy wild excess from time to time is therefore to make a quick turnaround in the days after.

Last weekend I ate mounds of porter beef, stuffed goose and cheesecake. Ah, how I love such days of unfettered hedonism.

Cheat days and Refeeds

In this article I'll be using "cheat day" and "feasts" interchangeably but they are both synonyms for short-term overfeeding of various durations and magnitudes. The same general principles will apply, more or less. A "refeed" is often used in the context of a structured diet approach. It tends to be more strict and planned in terms of macronutrient composition (high-carb, low-fat.)

While I will discuss refeeds in brief, this article will mainly discuss overfeeding of a mixed diet - that is, what you should take into consideration on Thanksgiving, at the Christmas dinner table, or any other occasion where you will be presented with lots of tasty foods.

My plan is not to tell you exactly what to eat or how much of it - that would be absurd. I don't encourage someone to count calories on Thanksgiving Day or similar such occasions. Instead, I'll talk about some factors that will determine how much fat you end up putting on and how you can potentially reduce the time spent making up for your splurging.

First, let's look at the general effects of overfeeding and do some myth debunking in the process.

Effects of Overfeeding

I tend to look at cheat days and feasts mostly as psychological relief and fun, but you'll often see some overly optimistic claims about cheat days being made in the fitness community; how it boosts your metabolic rate and tricks your body into "fat burning mode" for the rest of the week. There's some truth to this, but the real impact of cheat days are exaggerated if you look at the numbers you're dealing with.

Studies on overfeeding shows that metabolic rate typically increases about 6-8% for up to 24 hours after feeding. There's also large differences in between individuals, illustrated by the fact that the magnitude of the increase ranges from 3-10%. Those prone to obesity ("thrifty" phenotypes) tend to be in the lower range (3%), while the naturally lean ("spendthrifty" phenotype) tend to be in the upper range (10%). Either way, from a fat loss perspective it's not really justified to eat thousands of surplus calories to burn a few hundred calories extra.

The other argument, about tricking your body into fat-loss mode, usually alludes to the effect of overfeeding carbs on leptin. For a lean person, or for someone one a prolonged dieting stint, low leptin is an issue. This hormone, the king ofhunger regulation, controls metabolic rate, appetite, motivation and libido, among other things. Leptin drops whenever your body senses a calorie deficit and when fat mass is lost.

The reverse happens when your body senses a calorie surplus. A surplus temporarily boosts leptin, which leads to downstream effects on fat oxidation, thyroid, dopamine and testosterone. In the context of dieting, refeeds are therefore beneficial.

However, similar to the effects of overfeeding on metabolic rate, a leptin-boost is also rather transient and drops again once you resume your diet and your body senses the deficit. It's for this reason I prefer to use frequent but moderate overfeeding, or refeeds, as part of the Leangains approach. Usually in conjunction with weight training to take advantage of the anabolic effects.

What macronutrient causes the greatest boost in leptin calorie per calorie? The hierarchy looks like this:

1. Carbohydrate. (Glucose - not sucrose or fructose.)

2. Protein. Glucose is superior to protein, but I suspect it might be a better choice to sucrose or fructose. (I'm quite sure that protein hasn't been compared to sucrose and fructose, but I'll look into it just in case.)

3. Dietary fat.

4. Alcohol. Ethanol has not been directly compared to the other macronutrients. However, the effect is a negative one. While one study actually found a positive effect on leptin, most studies point towards an inhibitory effect. Strangely, a reverse effect has been seen in women from red wine. I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that alcohol consumption is associated with lower body weights in women but not men. I'll have to look into that.

Due to the superior effects of carbs on leptin, and leptin's downstream effects on metabolism and anabolic hormones, a high-carb, moderate-protein and low-fat refeed is traditionally recommended for dieting purposes.

Lyle Mcdonald has written a great deal on this topic, most extensively in "The Ultimate Diet 2.0." Though I am no fan of the diet itself, the book is a tremendous resource for anyone interested in the physiology of dieting and its impact on various hormonal parameters.

Lyle has also written a lengthy and detailed article series on leptin. I highly recommend it if this topic piques your interest: "Body Weight Regulation: Leptin Part 1."

However, a low-fat, high-carb refeed is obviously not so doable during Thanksgiving Day, Christmas, or any other such occasions. A few different factors should be taken into account on cheat days and feasts.

Rest assured that I have documented my recent cheesecake mastery in great detail. This time I used an ancient and dark technique that is not to be taken lightly. I'll tell you more about it in the near future.

Nutrient Metabolism: A Quick Primer

This is a quick primer on nutrient metabolism, as it will help you understand some of the concepts discussed later on.

The easiest way to think about nutrient metabolism is in terms of the Respiratory Quotient (RQ) and insulin. They are associated - when insulin is high, RQ is high, and vice versa. Here's a quote from "Intermittent Fasting and Stubborn Body Fat":

"After you eat, insulin and fatty acids are elevated. You are in the fed state and there's zero fat burning going on. Your body is relying completely on glucose oxidation during the hours following the meal."

This doesn't mean that you'll be burning more body fat if you follow a low-carb high fat diet, or that you'll never burn fat on high-carb diets. In energy balance, 24-hour RQ is reflective of the macrocomposition of the diet rather than fat gain or fat loss per se. Dietary fat has insulin-independent storage mechanisms (ASP) and "fat balance" (net storage of dietary fat) is primarily dictated by total calorie intake at the end of the day. The time course and trend in substrate metabolism will be different dependent of the carb:fat-ratio, but not the net effect.

Key point

Overfeeding elevates RQ for several hours - up to a day even - and indicates that glucose metabolism is dominant. Since glucose metabolism is high, fat burning is low or insignificant. This metabolic state allows net storage of dietary fat. Carbs, protein and alcohol all elevate RQ and affects fat burning negatively. Dietary fat does not affect RQ but has insulin-independent ways of getting into fat cells.

Knowing this is, are there some ways to limit fat gain in mixed-diet overfeeding or is it all about calories? To answer this, let's look at the energy costs for fat storage of various macronutrients.

Energy Cost of Fat Storage: The Macronutrient Hierarchy

During overfeeding, surplus calories are stored as fat with a great deal of varying efficacy.

(From most likely to be stored as fat in adipose tissue during overfeeding to least likely.)

1. Dietary fat.

The energy cost for storage of dietary fat is minimal (0-2% depending on saturation.)

2. Carbohydrate.

The conversion of carbs to fat, de novo lipogenesis (DNL), is hardly significant in humans and usually only occurs when glycogen stores are saturated (i.e. prolonged high-carb overfeeding). This does not matter much in practical terms, as there will be plenty of dietary fat in mixed-diet overfeeding. Carbs promote fat gain by reducing fat oxidation, as explained before. There's some variance between individuals here, based on genetics, metabolic state and habitual diet-patterns. Enzymes that modulate DNL are up-regulated in habitual high-carb diets and in the obese. Another factor that play a role is insulin sensitivity. There are similar individual aspects to the storage of dietary fat as well (mediated by LPL and ASP.)

In metabolically healthy humans, the energy cost for DNL is approximately 25%. In practical terms, this means that 3 out of 4 calories can be used for fat synthesis once a "carbohydrate surplus" is achieved (after saturated glycogen stores). Given that glycogen stores are never full in conditions of energy balance, people have a large "carb-sink" to use up before carbs contribute to fat gain directly. (Until then, the effect of carbs is indirect via suppression of fat metabolism. Am I being redundant yet?)

The above is in particular reference to glucose; sucrose and fructose are more lipogenic due to some differences in metabolic pathways. Fructose do not go to muscle glycogen stores, but to liver glycogen - and this glycogen depot is significantly smaller than muscle glycogen. One study comparing DNL from glucose and sucrose overfeeding in lean and obese people, showed DNL to be 10% and 20% higher respectively after the sucrose-experiment.*

* From results: "The type of carbohydrate overfeeding (sucrose or glucose) had no significant effect on de novo lipogenesis in either subject group." Which means that the difference (10-20%) was not enough to be deemed significant from a scientific standpoint. Fructose-overfeeding has not be compared to glucose in a controlled study, but judging from this study, DNL would likely be substantial (sucrose is half fructose, half glucose)

3. Protein and alcohol.

The energy cost for storage of amino acids and ethanol as fat are very hard to quantify for methodological, biochemical and (in the case of ethanol), ethical reasons. No controlled studies has been performed. However, it's safe to conclude that these two substrates serve as very poor precursors for fatty acid synthesis for a few different reasons.

First of all, the thermic effect of the separate macronutrients is 20-30% for protein, ~5% for carbohydrate, and 0–3% for fat. Total TEF is generally said to be 10% of total calorie intake, but this number is for the standard American diet, which is low in protein, relatively speaking.TEF for alcohol is harder to estimate, as values range between 10-30% in various studies. I talked about alcohol and TEF in "The Truth About Alcohol, Fat Loss and Muscle Growth":

"Alcohol is labeled as 7.1 calories per gram, but the real value is more along the lines of 5.7 calories due to the thermic effect of food (TEF) which is 20% of the ingested calories. This makes the TEF of alcohol a close second to protein (20-30% depending on amino acid composition)."

In a similar vein, the real caloric value of protein would be closer to 3 kcal/g and not 4 kcal/g as it's currently labelled. Indeed, arguments that we revamp nutritional labeling to more closely match the true metabolic impact by various macronutrients has been made. Livesey proposed that protein should be counted as 3.2 kcal/g, for example.

Further complicating the issue in regards to quantifying fat synthesis from protein is the amino acid composition of the protein consumed, as it varies depending on the protein source. Amino acids are either glucogenic, ketogenic, or both, and use different metabolic pathways for fat synthesis. For example, a glucogenic amino acid must first be converted to glucose (de novo gluconegenesis) once it can contribute to fat synthesis via de novo lipogenesis, while a ketogenic amino acid can contribute via a more direct pathway (via acetyl-CoA).

I might revisit this topic again some day, as I've discussed it with some smart biochemists, but the key point here is that protein cannot contribute to fat gain directly to any meaningful degree. Even in highly artificial scenarios, such as overfeeding thousands of calories of pure protein, would yield fat gain that is a lot less than what's estimated from traditional formulas (i.e. 700 calorie surplus of fat or carbs = +0.1 kg weight gain is not true for a protein surplus).

Similar to carbohydrate, protein and alcohol act similarly as carbs in regards to metabolism. That is, they blunt fat oxidation. However, while carbs can contribute to fat gain directly once glycogen stores are full, protein and ethanol are unlikely to do so. (Ethanol metabolism was explained in detail in "The Truth About Alcohol, Fat Loss and Muscle Growth".)

Key point

In mixed-diet overfeeding, macrocomposition matters. In comparing two diets at the same calorie intake - say 5000 calories - the one with the highest percentage of calories from protein yields the least fat gain. This is mainly explained by TEF and the poor efficacy with which protein can contribute directly to fat synthesis.

What other factors need to be considered for someone who wants to minimize fat gain during overfeeding?

Satiety: Effects of Macronutrients

This is a complicated topic to address in real life terms, as most people do not eat "protein" and "carbs" - they eat food, and food composition matters greatly. While protein is clearly superior to both fat and carbs, a whey shake likely provides less satiety on a calorie-per-calorie basis than - for example - an equicaloric amount of fibrous veggies, even though the former is lower in protein and higher in carbs. Similarly, an equicaloric amount of steak and whole eggs is more satiating in both the long- and short-term than chicken and rice.

Adding to that, there's a good measure of difference in between individuals, as evidenced with the varying amounts of success people have with high or low-carb diets respectively.

Further complicating the issue, there's the "hedonic" aspect to consider. Simply put, a tasty and/or sweet protein, carb, or fat-based meal might affect how much you end up eating.

With that in mind, here's what research shows.

1. Protein.

Protein is superior to carbs and fat intake in both short-term and long-term hunger suppression. This seems to be related to not only a stronger effect on appetite-regulating hormones (i.e. ghrelin, PYY and GLP-1), but also to its high TEF.

2. Carbs and fat.

Up until a few years ago, carbs were generally regarded as superior to fat in terms of satiety on a calorie-per-calorie basis. The problem with the studies this belief was based on was the short duration used for measuring appetite-regulating hormones and subjective measures of satiety and fullness. In recent years, better methodological approaches show a more nuanced picture. In summary, it can be said that carbs suppress appetite better in the short-term, while fat wins out in the long-term.

The carbohydrate hierarchy in terms of best appetite-suppression from source: Glucose --> sucrose --> fructose.

With regards to satiety from different fatty acids, there's no significant difference between saturated, monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fat. (Another study showed similar results.)

3. Alcohol.

From "The Truth About Alcohol, Fat Loss and Muscle Growth":

"Is higher TEF a reasonable explanation for lower body fat percentage in regular drinkers? We need to consider that alcohol does not affect satiety like other nutrients. The disinhibition of impulse control that follows intoxication may also encourage overeating. Ever come home from a party in the middle of the night and downed a box of cereals? That's what I mean."

Adding to that, note what I wrote about leptin earlier:

"Ethanol has not been directly compared to the other macronutrients. However, the effect is a negative one. While one study actually found a positive effect on leptin, most studies point towards an inhibitory effect.

Alcohol clearly provides nothing in regards to satiety and may even encourage overeating by affecting impulse control and/or leptin. For occasions where large quantities of alcohol is consumed, you may find the strategy outlined in my article about alcohol useful ("How to lose fat or prevent fat gain when drinking.")

Key point

Food composition, individual differences and hedonic aspects aside, protein is superior to carbs and fat in terms of satiety and appetite-suppression.

I've now covered what you need to know about macronutrients in order to make an informed decision about food choices on cheat days or holiday eating sprees. Let's look at how this information can be put to use in practice.

Cheat Day Strategies

Here are some strategies you might find useful. They are how I approach cheat days and holiday feasts, and what I encourage my clients to do. First, however let me address what you should not be doing.

1. Don't stress it.

Some people "pre-compensate" holidays by training themselves into the ground and/or reduce calories significantly in the days leading up to the feast. I highly recommend you do not do this, since I can almost guarantee that you will end up eating a lot more than you would normally if you approach holidays or feasts in a "deprived" mindset.

I touched on this issue in "Intermittent Fasting, Set-Point and Leptin." On the folly of "planning" a big meal or refeed at the end of the diet instead of taking it nice and easy, I said:

"...I would sit and plan my big refeed meal at the end of the diet. I would count every day like an inmate counting the days to his release from prison. And once I reached my goal, I would go bonkers, eat a bunch of crap, take several steps back and then go back to dieting in a feeble attempt to make up for my screwed up 'refeed' (aka binge in my case)."

Take it nice and slow - don't do anything stupid in the days before. No need to train your butt off and deplete glycogen, no need to up your cardio to two hours a day. You'll just end up eating more junk if you do. This is due to a combination of psychology and physiology (i.e. plummeting leptin.)

The topic of calorie-compensation is a well-known phenomenon; it's part of why exercise doesn't produce the predicted weight loss in some people. This is based on studies on Average Joes and Janes, and do not apply in most circumstances to the people reading this article. However, with specific reference to holiday eating and cheat days, I definitely notice a tendency in myself to eat more than I normally would if I train or reduce calories in the day leading up to the occasion.

Surely some people get away with it and don't compensate but in my experience those who think they are exempt from the rule are the ones to which the rule applies.

2. Create a calorie buffer.

On the day of the feast, you'll want to make sure you have a buffer saved up for the occasion. You'll either want to reduce your meal frequency as much as you can or reduce your calorie intake in the meals leading up to the feast.

If possible, fast up until the big meal. This is easy and a bit of a no-brainer for those used to intermittent fasting. If you are used to 16-hour fasts per my usual recommendations, it should not be an issue to prolong it further, i.e. doing a 20-24 hour fast ("Eat Stop Eat"-style).

Make sure you eat a high-protein meal on the day before, as usual - preferably with fiber to slow down absorption. That's also a good practice for regular Leangains-fasts but it's even more so important for >16-hour fasts to avoid hunger pangs in my experience. Should hunger become unbearable, which I've never experienced even during prolonged fasting, drink some coffee and/or eat a plate of fibrous vegetables.

The second best strategy if you're not used to intermittent fasting is to use a "high-protein low-everything-else"-diet leading up to the feast. This will maximize satiety for the lowest amount of calories. Here's an example assuming you have your big feast planned for dinner or around evening, 5-8 PM or so:

10-12 PM: 40-50 g protein, trace carbs and fat (~200-250 kcal)

2-3 PM: Same as above.

5-8 PM: The grand feast. Be it Thanksgiving Dinner, cheesecake mastery or whatever else you have planned that involves eating yourself silly.

For a regular guy, the above plan allows about 2000 calories of goodness during the big meal until any significant fat gain occurs. Still, if you're like me you can eat a whole lot more than that in one sitting. Next we'll have a look at what you can do for damage control during the meal itself.

By the way, here's a pro tip: If you don't know how to make a "high-protein, low-everything-else"-diet bearable, you need to try protein fluff. I've yet to encounter a more satiating and tasty high-protein treat.

Protein fluff; I mistakenly wrote that you'd need casein or milk-protein isolate for this, but people report getting respectable fluffs with some whey protein brands as well. Give it a go - you'll love it.

3. Protein priority.

In the short-term, splurging on high-carb, high-protein and low-fat foods would lead to insignificant fat gain, as glycogen stores would soak up most of the carbs (which would severely limit DNL.) However, such an approach is not very appealing, or realistic, if you want to experience the splendor of Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don't know about you, but I never think of the gifts on Christmas - I think of all the food I get to eat :D

Here's how I suggest you approach the eating spree that is about to ensue:

* Vary fat and carb intake to personal preference but make protein a high priority. "Protein first - carbs and fat for taste". If you think of your meals like this, it'll automatically raise the percentage of protein during the meal, increasing TEF and satiety.

* In regards to the order which you eat your foods, I suggest mainly focusing on protein, fat and volume (i.e. veggies) first and then add carbs in later. In my personal experience, this tends to maximize both short-term and long-term satiety and reduce calorie intake later on. Fat has a latent effect on appetite-suppression, so eating more fat earlier on makes sense.

* Do not neglect food volume - if possible, try to fill up on veggies in your early meals and save the more calorie-dense stuff for later on.

* Sucrose, fructose and liquid calories, i.e. treats, cakes and alcohol, should preferably be added in last, when you're full from the main meal(s).

4. Limit choices, not amounts.

Studies show that when people are presented with multiple food-choices, they eat more. In fact, calorie intake during a buffet scales almost linearly with the amount of different foods to choose from. If I offered you unlimited amounts of turkey and cheesecake, you'd likely only eat so much of it before you felt "full" and satisfied.

However, if I threw a third food into the mix, like potatoes or chocolate pudding, you'd end up eating a lot more - even if you weren't a fan of potatoes or chocolate pudding in normal circumstances. Humans are wired a bit funny and some behaviors are maladaptive in our environment of excesses. Having a taste of everything was a good strategy during our evolution, since it protected again micronutrient-deficiencies.

By "mentally limiting" the food choices you allow yourself, i.e. only eating that which you absolutely love and crave, can be a very effective strategy in regulating calorie intake without feeling deprived. Remember, you don't need to taste of every damn food or treat that is offered. Stick to that which you truly enjoy eating and skip the rest.

Snow and Ice Hours, Friday 12.17.10

2010-12-17T05:24:00.003-05:00

LAC: 5am-9pm (regular hours)

Group Exercise: Classes are "officially" canceled. (However, instructors that can make it in have been given the green light to teach their classes at their regularly scheduled times.)

Snowpocalypse Update: 12/13/10

2010-12-13T06:22:00.003-05:00

LAC is open! Morning classes are officially canceled; Evening classes should be good to go.

Lexington Athletic Club: Put on Muscle in 2011

2010-12-12T08:03:00.002-05:00

How to Gain Weight and Build Muscle

via Mark's Daily Apple

The main hormones that contribute to muscle anabolism are testosterone, growth hormone (GH), and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1). A little more about each and how to utilize them:

Testosterone

Growth Hormone

Insulin-like Growth Factor 1

Enter The Central Nervous System

Cortisol: A Hormone to Avoid

Lift Really Heavy Things

An example for beginners, with sets coming first in the sequence:

A
Squat 5×5
Pull-ups 5xFailure (add weight if “Failure” is becoming more than 12 reps)
Overhead Press 5×5

C
Squat 5×5
Pull-ups 5xFailure
Overhead Press 5×5

Eat Lots (I Mean Lots) of Plants and Animals

Never let your protein intake go lower than 1g/lb of body weight when you are aiming to add long-term muscle. It’s the building block of muscle, and your body is going to be starving for it.
Eat plenty of saturated and monounsaturated fat. Fat blunts insulin secretion while increasing testosterone production. Insulin may be useful for stuffing your muscles full of glycogen, but that’s not what you’re going for… right?
Dietary fat, in conjunction with all the GH you’ll be producing, also spares muscle wasting.
You may have heard of the popular GOMAD method – Gallon of Milk a Day for easy mass-building. It undoubtedly works, but a gallon of milk isn’t exactly Primal and I can’t recommend it. Instead of milk, why not a dozen eggs a day? ADEAD? If you can manage it, eating them on top of your regularly scheduled meals is a great source of affordable protein, fat, and vitamins (Vitamin A in particular may have pro-anabolic effects).
Eat often. If you’re going for pure size and strength, fasted workouts and skipped PWO meals may not be the ticket. You’ll burn more fat with the extra GH secretion and existing muscle will be spared, but you may be missing the chance at prime protein synthesis when you fast. A PWO meal of protein and fat will still blunt the insulin secretion and provide fuel for your muscles.
Increase caloric intake. You’re going to be expending so much energy on the lifts (and you’ll continue to burn through it even on rest days) while eating clean, Primal foods (and keeping insulin low as ever) that fat accumulation shouldn’t be an issue at all. Eat!
On those days when you do expend a ton of energy – maybe on your metcon or sprint day – having a Primal-friendly starch, like squash or sweet potato, is a decent way to replenish depleted glycogen stores.
Eat a big piece of fatty meat every single day. Steak, whole chicken, lamb leg, organs, whatever. Just eat a solid piece of animal flesh for a powerful protein infusion on a daily basis.
A hardgainer is often someone who doesn’t eat enough. Sure, genes play a role, but you can ultimately have a significant say in how those genes rebuild you. To a point. Eat more and lift harder to grab the reins.

Subscribe to Mark’s Daily Apple feeds

LAC: Fat Loss 101

2010-12-12T07:46:00.004-05:00

via Fitnessspotlight.com

Fat Loss 101 – Master the Basics

Stop using your fat cells for storage and learn how to open the door and clean them out!

So let’s recap, for fat loss we want:

Minimal insulin levels throughout the day (no high levels/spikes except during the post workout window when the insulin sensitivity is maximum, it goes into muscle not fat)

Maximum Glucagon (which is directly inversely proportional to insulin levels)

Maximum GH (which is controlled by insulin, exercise response and sleep)

Keep Cortisol in check (you will have some, but excessive will lead to muscle loss)

For Insulin control (and max Glucagon response):

Keep levels low by not eating sugar or foods that quickly break down into the bloodstream (processed foods, breads, cereals, pasta) Just say to yourself every time you are about to put sugar in your mouth, “I don’t want to burn any fat for the next 3-4 hours”...as that is exactly what you are telling your body with your hormonal response from the ingestion of sugar! (Already said that above but I want to drive the #1 important point home!)

Have protein with every meal (as that will slow down the digestion of any sugars). Also protein intake stimulates the release of glucagon.

Improve insulin sensitivity with glycogen draining exercise (resistance training) which will in turn reduce your insulin resistance (which is one of the biggest reasons for obesity and a serious increase of risks for many other diseases including heart disease, cancers, diabetes, accelerated aging and more!)

For max GH response:

Most of your daily GH is released in the first couple hours of sleep at night (75%) . Keep your insulin levels low (which means no big meals or sugar 2-3 hours before bed) and get to bed by 10pm to get the maximum response. Soget your sleep, your body will thank you. People shorting themselves on sleep will also be hindering their fat loss efforts and may lead to more weight gain from improper hormonal responses (which can also trigger cravings!)

Exercise with Intensity (for fast twitch muscle recruitment, not slow twitch), whether it is resistance training with short rest periods or doing interval training like sprints. Short burst of anaerobic intense exercise (lactic acid burn) will in turn signal the body to release GH. Long aerobic activities (jogging, etc) will NOT. (The old argument of look at the body composition of a sprinter vs the marathon runner…the sprinter has more muscle and very low bf%, the marathon runner has little muscle and a higher bf% even if they look smaller) See the role of lactate in exercise induced GH response.

Exercise in a fasted state has also shown to increase GH levels (again make sure you have enough energy to get through the workout, a small meal may be needed 1-2 hours prior if the activity it too intense). You can also see more information about using intermittent fasting for weight loss here.

Minimize excessive Cortisol:

Keep all intense strength or cardio exercise under 45min (remember we want to increase the intensity in a short period, not the duration). Anything longer will just start wasting muscle as fuel.

Practice relaxing throughout the day, don’t stress out over things that mean very little in the long run (ask yourself will this really be important in 1 week, 1 month, 1 year). Get perspective on things in your life, and detach from things that really don’t matter. Smile more, take deep breaths throughout the day, get out in nature, find your passions in life, etc. We are too stressed out and our body was only meant to use stress in short bursts (fight or flight response) not all day long events.

Remember that 85% of fat loss is nutritional based (not how many calories you can burn doing something) and you have the ability to burn fat all day long if your hormones tell your body to do so.

Eat whole natural foods (not processed..if it wasn’t around 100 years ago, you don’t need it!), avoid all sugars (foods and drinks), have protein with every meal

Train your fast twitch muscles with resistance training 2-3x a week and do 30-60min of “active lifestyle” based movement daily (not going to call it cardio). Go have fun doing whatever! (play tennis, go walking/hiking, ride a bike, enjoy what you do!)

Stop stressing out, take some deep breaths, get outside to relax and get your 8hrs of sleep.

Lexington Athletic Club, fat loss, fitness, weight loss

Lexington Athletic Club - LAC

2010-12-08T14:49:00.000-05:00

Ultimate fitness book movie trailer?

2010-12-01T07:06:00.001-05:00

The 4-Hour Body - Official Video Trailer

The Four Hour Body?

2010-12-01T07:01:00.003-05:00

Tim Ferriss Wants to Hack Your Body

By Gary Wolf via Wired Magazine

Photo: Lucas Foglia

Tim Ferriss is a self-made lab rat. The author and entrepreneur has been subjecting himself to audacious experiments in physical training and nutrition since high school. In perhaps the most extreme undertaking, he packed on 34 pounds of muscle while dropping 3 pounds of fat in 28 days. He recounts his adventures in a new book, The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman, a title he reverse-engineered from data he collected from the clickstream and Twitterverse.

The book is a sequel of sorts to his first book, The 4-Hour Workweek. Aimed at young men curious about wealth, leisure, and foreign travel, Workweek was rejected by some 26 publishers before Crown took a chance on it. Its viral mix of anything-is-possible enthusiasm and practical productivity tips turned out to be the formula for a publishing phenomenon—it’s still riding best-seller lists more than three years after it hit bookstores.

Now, in The 4-Hour Body, Ferriss, 33, turns to an entirely different set of keywords: weight loss, muscle gain, sperm count, and female orgasm. Wired asked contributing editor Gary Wolf—cofounder of theQuantified Self, a blog about self-tracking and self-experimentation—to interrogate Ferriss about his history as an n-of-1 guinea pig, his experience with performance-enhancing drugs, and his faith in heretical recipes for radical self-improvement.

Wired: When did you start experimenting on yourself?

Tim Ferriss: When I was a competitive wrestler in high school, I was prone to overheating. So I had to find ways to dissipate heat. Manipulating hydration was really my starting point.

Wired: Did you diet a lot?

Ferriss: In my senior year, I cut from between 175 and 178 to 152 twice a week. I did it by pure dehydration. You have to be careful with that, because you can have organs fail if you go about it the wrong way. I don’t recommend it.

Wired: How did you learn about these dark arts? I mean, you’re a teenage wrestler. Did your coach clue you in?

Ferriss: No, my only help came from other wrestlers who themselves had tested the methods of previous wrestlers. When you have good data, such as pound-per-hour loss rates, you can learn quickly through trial and error. I also read a lot about electrolyte balance. I wanted to find out what was just below the threshold of life-threatening.

Wired: How far did you take it?

Ferriss: By the time I was 21, I had refined the approach, and I was using diuretics as well. I cut about 20 pounds to compete in the kickboxing nationals; then, after weighing in, I hyper-hydrated. I weighed in at 165, and the next day I stepped onto the platform at 193. It was pretty funny. My first opponent stepped onto the mat and started looking around because he thought he was on the wrong platform. He was like, this can’t be right! I won a gold medal.

Wired: Diuretics aren’t banned?

Ferriss: Yes, in many cases they are. Not only because of their weight-loss effects but also because they can mask other drugs. In any event, at the higher levels of athletics this sort of thing is the rule rather than the exception. In any sport where power, speed, or endurance is a determining factor, everyone is using drugs.

Wired: You got your start with this stuff in the ’90s, just as the shadow world of performance-enhancing drugs seemed to be hitting the mainstream. It looks like you were able to stand on the border of those two worlds.

Ferriss: There are a lot of things that can be learned from the darker corners of athletics. You have doctors who view bodybuilders as cavalier amateurs of science. And then you have the bodybuilders who view the doctors as too conservative to do anything interesting. So I’ve tried to become the middleman for putting some of those pieces together.

Wired: Aside from the diuretics, what were you into in those days?

Ferriss: The cocktail that I began experimenting with was ephedrine plus caffeine plus aspirin. Basically, you’re hitting the accelerator.

Wired: These are all over-the-counter drugs.

Ferriss: Ephedrine was for a long time. But people were using it to manufacture methamphetamine, so they started blending it with other drugs to make that harder to do. But I don’t recommend it anyway. There’s an entire generation of male strength and endurance athletes, even recreational lifters, who have never gotten off the ephedrine-caffeine-aspirin stack. The process of getting off stimulants is really horrible. I’m more cautious now. Hey, um [pulling a bottle of pills and a plastic pouch of fine powder from a paper bag], I brought you some goodies. I don’t know what the law is governing these, so let’s say I’m giving them to you for visual reference only.

Wired: OK, right.

Ferriss: God knows I don’t want to be accused of “intent to distribute.”

Read the rest HERE