Monthly Archives: August 2010

Don’t Count Calories – Eat Real Food

I’ll be blunt here – anyone who tells you to count calories in order to lose weight is completely clueless about the kinds of foods a human being should be eating. Here’s a good example of such nonsense.

Think about it – no other animal on Earth purposefully limits their food intake. And the rate at which your body utilizes energy is not a static number. It fluctuates constantly.

We evolved to eat foods that were real – meats, eggs, fish, fowl, organs and some vegetable/fruit plant matter when in season. That’s about it. When you eat like this, you can eat all you like and never have to worry about weight gain, weight loss, T2 diabetes, and a host of the other self inflicted ills that plague many of us.

If you are overfat and perhaps T2 diabetic, if you follow this pyramid you will be amazed at the change in your body. And rapidly.

Human Food Pyramid

(I know it’s sort of a crude rendering, but I never said I was an artist.)

When seeking out animal matter, look for grass-fed, free range, wild caught products. Some fish farms are actually good and may keep us from depleting the oceans of fish that are endangered. But you’ll have to do your homework on this. Try to buy your plant matter locally. And contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to eat a lot of plants. Animal matter is more nutritionally dense and replete with antioxidants.

So eat healthfully and as nature intended you, a human being, to eat. Forget how many calories there are in the foods your eating and instead enjoy and savor the fat of the land.

A List of Low Carb Physicians

This is a list of physicians that understand and support a low carbohydrate dietary approach to health and wellness. It was compiled by my friend Jimmy Moore of Livin’ La Vida Low Carb fame.

Conventional nutritional wisdom will often lead you down a path of ill-health. If you’re looking to improve your overall physical well being, seek out one of these physicians first.

Please let me know your results!

Heavy Weights vs. Light Weights

A new study has emerged that is being plastered all over the internet suggesting that more reps are better than less reps for building muscle. Some of the titles the writers use are different stating that lighter weights are superior for building muscle or pump less iron. Here’s another example.

These titles are a bit misleading. It is not a matter of light weights or heavy weights or pumping less or more iron. What this study is showing is that lifting weights to the point of muscular failure with a lighter weight gets the fast twitch fibers to participate equally as well as lifting a very heavy weight to failure does. So the point is when you lift, make sure to reach a point of complete muscle fatigue. However, “failure” is a negative word so we call it “muscular success” at Serious Strength.

Participants were able to lift the heavy weights in the 80-to-90 percent range from five to 10 times before fatigue set in. At 30 percent, subjects could lift that weight at least 24 times before they felt fatigue, according to lead study researcher Nicholas Burd, a doctoral student at McMaster University.

Another point here is the time spent performing a set. Most people lift and lower weights rather rapidly. Typically trainees lift and lower a weight in 1-2 seconds each way. If we use a 2/2 count (a 4 second rep), the group that used the heavy weights spent ~20-40 seconds to fatigue. The lighter weight group reached failure in ~96 seconds. Both are within the anaerobic range and will produce results.

So its your choice – use a heavy weight and get the sets over sooner and go home earlier, or use lighter weights and stick around in the gym a little longer. I do think that staying on the lighter side is better for beginners, kids, folks with orthopedic concerns and people with high blood pressure issues. I have advanced clients that simply prefer one over the other. But whichever you choose – heavy or lighter – push yourself to reach the deepest level of muscle fatigue you can to get to those fast twitch fibers. And do so safely of course.

More than one road leads to Rome. But be sure that you are at least on a road that leads there. Your sets should last no longer than 120 seconds and should be taken to complete success.

Enjoy the results!