Post: #26

In terms of amping metabolism, conditioning and getting a decent level of cardiovascular fitness, I gotta say it again... kettlebell swings. They also make you a sexual jackhammer .. 5-10 mins 2x a week is all you need. Totally kind to your joints too.

Post: #27

Putting on muscle mass increases your daily caloric needs. One pound of muscle will burn an extra 50 calories a day at maintenance.

That doesn't sound like much, but if you're doing a decent strength training program you can expect to gain a couple pounds a month or more depending on how advanced you are.

Additionally, if you're lifting heavy and eating enough protein on a caloric deficit, you can expect to save most of your gains, which again, helps fat loss.

Post: #28

^This.

Lifting does two things in regards to calories:

It increases total daily calorie burn simply because extra muscle = higher energy demand.

Your body expends alot of calories repairing muscle tissue for three days after a heavy lifting session.

After your heavy lifts, do a 5-15min high intensity workout using body weight, kettle bells, sprinting, etc to keep your heart strong. For example, 21-15-9 reps of Pullups, KB swings and box jumps.

Extended low intensity cardio such as running 10 miles is counter productive to those trying to build and maintain mass. This type of exercise is stressful and will cause your body to produce cortisol, which is the enemy of muscle. Cortisol shuts down immune function, muscle repair and other long term processes.

Keep your runs under three miles and stick to mostly sprinting.

Post: #29

Personally I used to have rock solid six pack abs as a sprinter in high school. Right now I have love handles which are significantly smaller than a year ago thanks to weight training. But ultimately at the end of the day to get back to High School in the gut area I will need cardio. The distinction between low speed running for 2 hours on a treadmill vs. 6-7 mph burst intervals for 30 minutes is like night and day.

Think Usain Bolt. Dude is Iron and like 7-8% BF.

Post: #30

This is an excellent article on how to build strength and mass the natural way. It won't get you huge... Think 300 fit.

How to Gain Weight and Build Mass

Post: #31

Completely agree about lifting being important to maintaining healthy weight, good to see some data on it.

(01-06-2015 02:17 AM)Switch Wrote:  The only thing that matters for weight loss is a calorie deficit. It has been proven over and over that it doesn't matter how you get a calorie deficit, only that you do.

The "only" is up for debate actually. I don't claim to validate either side, but here's the alternative theory. Full (long) article at http://www.scientificamerican.com/articl...es/?page=2

Quote:Conventional wisdom did not always favor the energy-imbalance hypothesis that prevails today. Until World War II, the leading authorities on obesity (and most medical disciplines) worked in Europe and had concluded that obesity was, like any other growth disorder, caused by a hormonal and regulatory defect. Something was amiss, they believed, with the hormones and enzymes that influence the storage of fat in fat cells.

Quote:To understand what makes the hormone hypothesis of obesity so intriguing, it helps to grasp where the energy-balance hypothesis falls short. The idea that obesity is caused by consuming more calories than we expend supposedly stems from the first law of thermodynamics, which merely states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. As applied to biology, it means that energy consumed by an organism has to be either converted to a useful form (metabolized), excreted or stored. Thus, if we take in more calories than we expend or excrete, the excess has to be stored, which means that we get fatter and heavier. So far, so obvious. But this law tells us nothing about why we take in more calories than we expend, nor does it tell us why the excess gets stored as fat. And it is these “why” questions that need to be answered.

Quote:The main dietary sources of glucose are starches, grains and sugars. (In the absence of carbohydrates, the liver will synthesize glucose from protein.) The more easily digestible the carbohydrates, the greater and quicker the rise in blood glucose. (Fiber and fat in foods slow the process.) Thus, a diet rich in refined grains and starches will prompt greater insulin secretion than a diet that is not. Sugars—such as sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup—may play a key role because they also contain significant amounts of a carbohydrate called fructose, which is metabolized mostly by liver cells. Though not definitive, research suggests that high amounts of fructose may be an important cause of “insulin resistance.” When cells are insulin-resistant, more insulin is required to control blood glucose. The result, according to the hormone hypothesis, is an ever greater proportion of the day that insulin in the blood is elevated, causing fat to accumulate in fat cells rather than being used to fuel the body. As little as 10 or 20 calories stored as excess fat each day can lead over decades to obesity.

Post: #32

Calorie balancing is tricky.

I'm making these numbers up to explain what happens when you consume food:

Say you eat 100 calories:

Maybe you will absorb 90 from your intestines to your blood.

From there, perhaps you spend 20% of the calories processing them. Now you have 72.
Fat and protein calories are less efficient than carbs. If you get your calories from carbs, you will burn less calories processing them.

The calories are either used or stored as fat. If stored as fat, maybe you'll lose another 10% in the conversion process. So you store 65 calories.

As you can see, not all calories are equal and not all calories are absorbed. And the ones that are absorbed must use energy to be used. This is why calorie balancing is so complex. The efficiency at which this is done is part of your metabolism.



There's was an interesting phenomenon that occurred in Netherlands. During WW2, part of the population starved for a year or so because of famine. If a woman was pregnant during this time, her unborn baby gestated while starving. This caused the fetus to be extremely conservative with every calorie it got. It had to maximize it's use in order to survive.

If the baby survived and was born, it grew up with an altered metabolism. Once the famine passed, it still horded ever calorie it could because that's what it's body grew to do. As a result, these famine babies became diabetic, obese and died young due to their 'slow' metabolisms on a modern diet. Then they had children, who's metabolism was affected by their mothers, although to a lesser degree. Each generation was fat, but less fat than the previous. Because this famine took place in a country where famines have not occurred in recent history, it created a unique situation where the result of the famine was clearly seen in the next generation. There's your congenital (Not genetic) contribution to obesity.

Google Dutch Famine of 1944 for more information.

Post: #33

Obviously your training should not be limited to just one or two forms of training. I lift weights and I love lifting weights. I hate cardio. However, I realize that my training could use some cardio to help me make progress in the fat loss arena (though I have made noticeable gains with weights alone). I am planning on adding sprints following my weightlifting and I would like to add an hour of walking each day once the weather permits in my part of the country (it is just too fucking cold to go for an hour long stroll).

Post: #34

Just to be clear, weight training does not burn fat. Your diet is what burns fat. The point of weight training during a diet is to signal the body to hang on to the muscles you've got.

Post: #35

(03-02-2015 02:36 PM)civpro Wrote:  Just to be clear, weight training does not burn fat. Your diet is what burns fat. The point of weight training during a diet is to signal the body to hang on to the muscles you've got.

Or rather the combination of the two. To a certain degree weight training does burn fat. It triggers a glycogen deficit in many people which then tells the body to burn fat to fuel the muscle needs. Low carb + Weight training will lead to fat burn over time.

Post: #36

Eat less. If you exercise 5+ days a week, and eat two "healthy" meals a day you should lose your belly fat.

No sugar. Minimize alcohol.

Incidentally there have been studies that show that people who eat less (e.g. much less) live longer.

Post: #37

(03-02-2015 02:36 PM)civpro Wrote:  Just to be clear, weight training does not burn fat. Your diet is what burns fat. The point of weight training during a diet is to signal the body to hang on to the muscles you've got.

Not quite right. Weight training expends calories. Losing fat is a function of expending more calories during the day than your consume. This is best done by a combination of lifting weights plus proper dieting.

You CAN lose fat by ONLY raising the calories you use up by doing more sports or drastically reducing the amount of calories your consume, but these teetotaler methods are woefully inefficient to simply having a good diet and working out together.

Also people should finally stop thinking about cardio as "a thing someone does to lose weight". Cardio is just another exercise just like the squats or bicep curls: it exercises your cardiovascular system and your heart. That's about it. There's nothing magical about jogging or swimming that makes it something you do to lose weight compared to an hour of lifting weights in the gym. It's just another exercise you should be doing for optimal overall health or you'll be that guy who's a huge beefcake but can't climb a set of stairs without getting winded

Post: #38

(03-04-2015 04:59 AM)HughMyron Wrote:  

(03-02-2015 02:36 PM)civpro Wrote:  Just to be clear, weight training does not burn fat. Your diet is what burns fat. The point of weight training during a diet is to signal the body to hang on to the muscles you've got.

Not quite right. Weight training expends calories. Losing fat is a function of expending more calories during the day than your consume. This is best done by a combination of lifting weights plus proper dieting.

The calories burnt from weightlifting are quite minimal compared to what you'd burn from heavy cardio

Post: #39

Lifting heavy weights does do something to mobilize your metabolism though. I don't recall the details but Dr. Doug McGuff explained it in one of the videos posted here a while back. It was from the 21 Convention.

Post: #40

As I explained earlier, when you lift you cause micro tears to the muscles being trained, and then your body spends a couple days repairing those tears. Your body has to burn calories making those repairs. It's around the clock calorie burning ( even when you sleep) for 48 hours or so. That helps you to lose fat ( all else equal).

I'm for a balanced 3 pronged approach for fitness. Good nutrician, resistance training, and cardio.

I think nutrician is the biggest lever of the 3.

Post: #41

(03-04-2015 12:28 PM)civpro Wrote:  The calories burnt from weightlifting are quite minimal compared to what you'd burn from heavy cardio

This is bro-science... Please back your statement up with facts. For the facts in opposition of your statement see my earlier post.

Heavy cardio also = high cortisol = reduced metabolism

Post: #42

http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/C...vities.htm

Post: #43

(02-22-2015 09:27 PM)GlockTrigga Wrote:  Personally I used to have rock solid six pack abs as a sprinter in high school. Right now I have love handles which are significantly smaller than a year ago thanks to weight training. But ultimately at the end of the day to get back to High School in the gut area I will need cardio. The distinction between low speed running for 2 hours on a treadmill vs. 6-7 mph burst intervals for 30 minutes is like night and day.

Think Usain Bolt. Dude is Iron and like 7-8% BF.

I won't argue sprinting is bad. I do some myself.

But I don't believe sprinting gave Usain Bolt his current build.

He already had the genetics and perfect build to become a freak on the track.

Same way Michael Phelps has the genetics/build to become a freak in the pool. All the swimming in the world won't make you look like him.

Post: #44

The good thing about heavy weightlifting is that by building a bigger upper body, it takes the focus off of abs so you can get by with less ripped abs. I figure as long as my pecs stick out more than my belly, most women in the US won't care. Would I like to have shredded abs? Sure, but honestly no matter how hard I have tried to diet, after a few drinks at the beach my abs seem to disapear. Having a big upper body and decent abs rather than ripped abs is just so much easier to maintain and is less stressful.

Post: #45

(03-04-2015 09:41 PM)Repo Wrote:  Sure, but honestly no matter how hard I have tried to diet, after a few drinks at the beach my abs seem to disapear.

Not sure if srs or broscience.... Abs don't just disappear after a couple of drinks. Hell, if you're low bodyfat they don't even disappear when you stuff your belly full of food. They actually get pushed outwards. Looks kinda weird.

Anyway the good thing about working out and building muscle is that this muscle and your general masculine shape is still visible even at higher bodyfat percentages. When I didn't train my abs I could barely see them even at 14 bf%. Now that I've trained up my abs I bulked up to 18 bf% over the winter and I still see the individual outlines.

Post: #46

Just like most guys I hate doing cardio. It bores the hell out of me and I hate the constant red flushed face, heart pounding to the max and out of breath feeling when I'm on the treadmill. The only reason I do cardio is because I don't want to be out of breath after five minutes of banging.

That said, I think the best cardio is having sex. I've been single for a few months now (not interested in girls atm, working on a new book) and my condition is rapidly decreasing.

I never understood the fun of long runs either. I always say that if you can do a sprint and/or a 10 minute run to get the hell out of dodge, that's more than enough you need in life. Fights are short bursts of high energy and adrenaline and they don't last long enough to seriously train for. No guy fights for several minutes on the street.

If you need a long run for like a jailbreak or something, you can always prepare for that first.

Post: #47

(03-04-2015 09:19 PM)civpro Wrote:  http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/C...vities.htm

Wrestling 180 223 266
Boxing: sparring 270 335 400
Martial Arts: judo, karate, kickbox 300 372 444


Yeah fucking right lol. The LARGE majority of Karate dojos out here are not working harder and burning more calories than wrestlers or boxers sparring. That is hilarious. Wrestling and boxing sparring is so fucking grueling.

Kickboxing you can burn a ton of calories if it is legit kickboxing or Muay Thai. But those fitness kickboxing classes are sure as hell not burning more calories than wrestlers or boxers.

Post: #48

Damn, this thread is full of broscience.

(03-04-2015 09:19 PM)civpro Wrote:  http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/C...vities.htm

Yeah, that is fine and dandy, but the amount of calories burnt during the 30 minutes of activity is nothing but a small part of the equation. And looking at the rest, your argument collapses.

How does the activity impact subsequent calorie intake? Your post-workout appetite is dependent on your workout, mediated by the released hormones. Endurance running and weightlifting affect this differently.

How many calories are burnt after the workout? Weightlifting burns most calories afterwards, when your tissues are being repaired, when your increased muscle tissue require more energy for mere maintenance.

(03-02-2015 02:36 PM)civpro Wrote:  Just to be clear, weight training does not burn fat. Your diet is what burns fat. The point of weight training during a diet is to signal the body to hang on to the muscles you've got.

Nothing clear or correct about your statement. Neither weightlifting, cardio nor diet burns fat. Burning fat means that lipids in your fat cells are metabolized resulting in a reduction of lipids. This is effected by hormones via signaling pathways. These hormones are obviously controlled as a result of nutrition and stressors like weightlifting and cardio.

Neither food in your stomach or dumbbells in your hands can magically communicate with fat cells, ordering a release of stored fat. 'A lack of calories' can't prompt changes in cells, because it's not an actual thing, just a higher-level concept we use. The only things that can communicate are molecules, e.g. hormones, their receptors, transcription factors.

A calorie isn't a calorie. If you eat zero calories but block catabolic signaling pathways and thereby lipolysis, you won't reduce fat mass.

Different nutrients affect hormones differently. Glucose levels are not the same after ingestion of 1000 kcal in butter versus 1000 kcal of table sugar.

Different physical activities also affect hormones differently. Levels of cortisol or testosterone will be different after doing squats versus after endurance running. Catabolic and anabolic hormones, you know?

When you eat is a factor, even when it's the same amount of energy, e.g. breakfast at 7 AM impacts your hGH differently then when you fast until 1 PM.

Laws of thermodynamics should be used when you think about combustion engines, they are less useful when you talk about the human body.

Post: #49

(03-05-2015 05:20 AM)HughMyron Wrote:  

(03-04-2015 09:41 PM)Repo Wrote:  Sure, but honestly no matter how hard I have tried to diet, after a few drinks at the beach my abs seem to disapear.

Not sure if srs or broscience.... Abs don't just disappear after a couple of drinks. Hell, if you're low bodyfat they don't even disappear when you stuff your belly full of food. They actually get pushed outwards. Looks kinda weird.

Anyway the good thing about working out and building muscle is that this muscle and your general masculine shape is still visible even at higher bodyfat percentages. When I didn't train my abs I could barely see them even at 14 bf%. Now that I've trained up my abs I bulked up to 18 bf% over the winter and I still see the individual outlines.

It's not, if you don't work out often and regularly you lose the swole look. Abs are the most ungrateful muscle in the body. Hardest to get and maintain, first to disappear. I look great immediately after a workout. However if I go on a week long trip, I can guarantee my muscles are going to look a bit shabby. I almost have to plan trips with the expectation there is a gym nearby I can get the routine in.

Looking good naked is a 24/7 gig.

Post: #50

(03-05-2015 10:34 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  I look great immediately after a workout. However if I go on a week long trip, I can guarantee my muscles are going to look a bit shabby. I almost have to plan trips with the expectation there is a gym nearby I can get the routine in.

Looking good naked is a 24/7 gig.

I know what you are talking about...I believe this is just the bane of the intermediate stage lifter with some extra body fat. That's why all these hollywood actors always do a bunch of high rep upper body "pump" work before filming a scene. And at that stage you will also pump up depending on diet (low carb will deplete glycogen and shrink things down) and or creatine.

Gotta eventually work up to advanced level and at a lower body fat. That way instead of going from "a bit shabby" to "great" after a workout, you go from "great" to "fricken' hyooge..."

http://www.strstd.com