Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
Sometimes, I find it useful set goals that are contingent upon other goals.
What I mean by that is that if I am unsure if I can develop the capacity to achieve a larger goal, I’ll set an interim one that will give me an idea of if I can develop the capacity to hit the larger one. There’s no use in having a goal of $10M in the bank, if you can’t get $10k in there.
In January, the morning of this (and before I found out about his death), I decided I wanted to do the same thing…ascend Everest, and two other difficult peaks in the world. The reality is that, other than rock climbing, I hadn’t intensely training for anything since playing hockey in high school…almost 10 years ago.
So, what I did is I set an aggressive goal, with an aggressive time frame, to ride my fixed-gear, brakeless bike a full 20 miles in an hour. I chose this because it would force me to exercise my legs in a similar way as mountaineering, and it would force me to develop my lungs - which I hadn’t taken care of with 8 years of heavy smoking (I quit last April).
Today, I hit that goal. More than three weeks ahead of schedule. (it sucked) (and I did it on 3 hours of sleep and after 3 hours of climbing/weight lifting last night…more on that later.)
The point is: If I had only focused on the larger goal, I probably wouldn’t have progressed nearly as quickly. Sometimes, making a larger goal contingent upon a smaller goal (rather than the smaller goal merely being an interim milestone) forces you to perform at a faster rate.
As a personal note, if you know anyone who has ascended Everest, K2, Kilamanjaro, or done any similar alpine mountaineering/climbing (ie: Patagonia, Africa, etc), if it would be possible to arrange some sort of meeting/communication that would be awesome. As much as informal education is a wonderful thing, there are some things that just can’t compare to the experience.
Friday, March 21st, 2008
Last week, I went over the elements of nutrition and macronutrients for a lean body composition. This week, it’s about fat loss.
Fat loss is fairly simple, but most people have incomplete or inaccurate ideas of what it takes to actually cut body fat from their body composition.
I’m going to talk about the three most effective ways for fat loss with exercise:
- Exercise to the extent that body fat, rather than food, is used as energy.
- Increasing your metabolism through cardio shortcuts.
- Increasing your metabolism through increasing muscle mass.
Exercise to the extent that body fat, rather than food, is used as energy.
The first option is pretty simple…basically, exercise long enough, and hard enough, to so that food energy is no longer sufficient to sustain performance. When food can’t be used for energy, fat is then turned into energy.
This is typically accomplished through a state called ketosis (remember, ketosis isn’t scary), where body fat is converted into energy. This is also accomplished through things like endurance cardio (bike training), strenuous sports like hockey, etc.
Increasing your metabolism through cardio shortcuts.
The second option is a shortcut with your cardio. Actually, two shortcuts.
High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT, is the first shortcut and has been shown to increase your resting metabolic rate for a much greater period of time than much longer cardio sessions. In effect, you can often get more out of 20 minutes of HIIT training, than an hour on a bike.
The structure of a HIIT regimen is that you interval between intense aerobic activity, and moderate aerobic activity. This is done instead of a consistent ride on a bike or tradmill, for example. This study here, says it all:
After a 5 week conditioning period on a recumbant cycle, The High Intensithy Interval Training (HIIT) group perform sprints while the Endurance Training (ET) group performed a more traditional aerobic protocol, throughout the remaining 15 weeks. Both groups progressed in intensity. At the conclusion of the study, the HIIT group lost over 3 times as much subcutanious fat as the ET group despite expending less than half as many calories. For every calorie expended during HIIT, there was a nine fold loss of subcutanous body fat, as compared to the ET group.
Some ways that I’ve found to work best are alternating sprints with brisk walks, alternating jumping rope with crunches, or riding a bike on hilly terrain. As well, most of the newer exercise bikes have an interval training option.
The second shortcut is to exercise first thing in the morning, before breakfast. In essence, when you wake up, your body hasn’t had food (or food energy) since the last meal which may have been 8-12 hours prior. By this time, food has mostly been digested and any sort of intense activity would require energy. This energy comes from body fat.
So, doing HIIT first thing in the morning will work wonders. A couple/few pounds of fat loss a week, with a good diet, is not unreasonable.
Increasing your metabolism through increasing muscle mass.
Finally, one of the relatively unknown facets of fat los, is that muscle mass increases your metabolism, thus burning more calories. A number that I’ve heard is that each extra pound of muscle mass that you have burns up to an additional 50 calories per day.
So, how do you increase muscle mass quickly? Resistance (weight) training, and lifting s.l.o.w.l.y.
Despite the fact that it’s weight training, women will get toned with this kind of lifting, not bulky. Men can get noticeably bigger, depending on the intensity of the training regimen.
How it works is that by lifting weights slowly, you tear all of the various levels of muscle fibers. The way that most people lift relies on inertia and actually doesn’t stimulate the entire muscle. Lifting slowly get all of these layers and is actually much safer for you as well.
To maximize the effects here, you need 20-30 minutes of weight training, twice per week. Rest periods are crucial with this in order to give your muscles the time they need to rebuild themselves, hence only two workouts per week. In those 20-30 minutes, lift and lower weights with a count of 5-10 seconds up and 5-10 seconds down. Use a series of 6-8 compound exercises to hit the most muscle groups at a time, and do each exercise with an amount of weight that brings your muscle to failure after 6-8 reps.
The most common books for this principle are The Power of 10, and Slow Burn exercising, and strict research can be found here.
Friday, March 14th, 2008
Despite the long words in the subject line that have three syllables or more, nutrition is pretty simple.
Ultimately, eating right is fairly simple…if you understand how the things you eat are affecting your body. This is where understanding macronutrients comes into play. They are: Fats, protein, and carbohydrates. Each of them function differently within the body, breaking down and being processed in different way. Sometimes it leads to fat gain, sometimes, it doesn’t, and that’s what you’ll understand better at the end of this post.
Micronutrients, things like vitamins and minerals, are needed and used in different ways, and do not have significant calorie content on their own.
We can essentially say that a macronutrient is anything that has calorie content. A calorie is the amount of energy that is released when it is heated. There are 4 calories per gram of carbohydrates or protein in each food. There are 9 calories per gram of fat in each food. If you’ve ever wondered how calories are calculated, well, there you go.
The only other macronutrient, if it can be called that, is alcohol. It weighs in a 7 calories per gram. While alcohol itself does not affect weight gain, when not used in moderation, there are other negative effects that it can have on the body. In addition, a glass of red wine a day is believed to have positive health benefits.
After understanding the caloric distribution of fats, protein, and carbohydrates, it makes total sense why “Low Fat” dieting was so hip with the kids in the 80s and early 90s. If each gram of fat is more than twice as many calories, just cut the fat, you cut the calories and consume less! But it doesn’t quite work that way and we’ll get to that later. As well, there are significant negative side effects of a low-fat diet which we won’t get into here.
So, now that we understand the caloric value of macronutrients, the next thing to understand is how each of them is processed by your body and what effects they have.
Protein (Protein on Wikipedia)
Protein is quite simple. Protein is used as a building block for restoring muscle, bone, and tissue throughout your entire body. Protein is also digested more slowly, resulting in a longer source of energy. While the question of if protein converts into fat is uncertain, a combination of lack of evidence as well as some very specific tests indicate that a high-protein diet does not contribute to fat gain. We’ll explore this further down the article.
Carbohydrates (Carbohydrates on Wikipedia)
Carbohydrates. They’re pretty much the devil. Ok, not really, but they are processed much differently than protein, and how they are processed contributes to fat gain.
Without getting into too much detail, we’ll say that when a carbohydrate is consumed, it is converted into glycogen which we use for energy. When you get a “sugar rush,” this is what’s happening. All of these carbohydrates are being converted into energy so quickly that your body needs to expend that energy and it does so in the form of jitters, talking a lot, or running around like an 8 year old with 37 bars of chocolate in his stomach.
What also happens as a result of this is that any unused glycogen then gets converted into body fat. This process has evolved as a means to store energy when our external sources of energy are no longer available to us. Yes, it’s true, the corner grocery hasn’t always been around.
Not all carbohydrates are the same. There are both “simple” and “complex” carbohydrates. Simple carbs are processed by your body quickly and therefore must be used quickly before they turn into fat. The quintessential simple carb is: sugar. Complex carbohydrates, things like whole wheat products, are processed by your body more slowly, lengthening the amount of time that you have to use that energy. This is the essence of the Glycemic Index and it’s posture of “good” and “bad” carbs.
The final clarification we’ll talk about with regard to carbohydrates is fiber. Fiber is a carbohydrate, but is not processed by your body in the same way as either simple or complex carbohydrates. Essentially, fiber is not digestible and therefore is not processed into glycogen or fat. This is also why a diet higher in fiber results in more frequent trips to the restroom.
Fats (Fats on Wikipedia)
Fats are usually animal fat or oils. Fats are used by the body both for energy and vital bodily functions such as maintaining body temperature and healthy cell function. Despite the common understandings of fats, the right kinds are also quite good for you and assist in maintaining healthy hair, skin, etc.
The three main kinds of fats consumed are saturated fats, unsaturated fats, and trans fats.
Trans fats are essentially terrible for you in every way possible. If you want to understand more about how they’re chemically produced and the negative heart effects they have, read the trans fat Wikipedia entry.
Saturated fats are most commonly found produced in animals. While this is commonly cited as the cause for heart problems, it’s actually arachidonic acid that leads to the production of “bad” eicosanoids and thus heart disease.
Unsaturated fats fall into two categories, monounsaturated fat and polyunsaturated fat.
Monounsaturated fats, commonly found in oils like olive oil and oils extracted from avocados and nuts, have been found to actually reduce the risk of heart disease by lowering LDL cholesterol (bad) levels and possibly raising HDL cholesterol (good) levels.
Polyunsaturated fats are also considered good fats and are commonly found in fish, peanuts, whole grains, and butters.
Making Sense of it All
Knowing this, how do you then design a healthy diet? Actually, it’s quite easy.
Consume as much protein and good fats as you feel you need. Compliment this with up to 55 grams of good carbohydrates. Why 55 grams of carbohydrates? It’s generally been found to be the best amount, based on various studies, that lead to a diet that’s easy to adapt.
For more in depth details and research, check out the research and studies in Protein Power.
For a startling comparison of two calorically equal diets, but one increases nearly all beneficial health measurements and the other leads to…well…the gnawing off of your fingers and starvation, check out this article titled The Science of Fat Loss: Why a Calorie Isn’t Always a Calorie.
For an experiment that I did, where I ate about 2,000 calories of chicken, beef, protein shakes, tuna, cheese, olive oil (shots of it…an acquired taste), and a half a carrot every day, (essentially no carbs) and lost almost 20 pounds in 5 weeks, check out The Cyclical Ketogenic Diet.
With regard to all-protein diets, Esimoes generally only eat meat, and an experiment was done where Karsten Anderson and Vilhjalmur Stefansson ate meat for several weeks on end with no negative physical side effects, and only positive effects.
Now, this isn’t to say that carbohydrates are completely useless. In fact, I’ll outline situations where not only complex carbs (”good” carbs) are good for you, but also times when simple carbohydrates (sugars or “bad carbs”) can have positive benefits as well.
Saturday, March 1st, 2008
I decided that the first new post on the site should be something completely outside of the realm of business, but that still reflects how I look at, and go about, things I look to explore. For those expecting only marketing/business stuff, I’ll still be writing a lot about marketing and business, so don’t worry. Consider this a primer on a new, perhaps nuttier, way of doing things.
This report is slightly revised from one I wrote for myself three weeks ago after finishing five weeks on a Cyclical Ketogenic Diet. You probably haven’t heard about it. It’s not in Wikipedia. Only a certain segment of the population would be willing to even try something like this. It turns out, I’m one of them.
The people that know me, know I’m a fairly average sized guy. Well, this average guy gained 20 pounds on a three month road trip last fall and didn’t really like that average weight gain. In the middle of the trip, having decided to start training intensely for rock climbing, I began researching various nutrition information, plans, etc. I studied everything I could get my hands on, and finally came across this plan…used by body builders leading into their season to quickly cut fat while maintaining muscle mass. Perfect.
Since you may be bored to tears by this background, I’ll kick this off by saying that I lost 12.5 pounds in 5 weeks. This included two weeks that I was set back which I’ll explain later. Weeks that I managed to lose a lot, I lost 5-6 pounds per week. I’m 100% confident that if I didn’t have a setback in week 3, I would have lost 20+ pounds of fat in total.
In addition, for six days a week, this is exactly what I ate, every day:
- 3 portions of protein. A portion is one of the following: steak, chicken breast, can of tuna, or two protein shakes.
- 1/2, or less, of a carrot.
- 1/3 pound of cheddar cheese.
- 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil.
Here’s how it works.
The Principles of the Ketosis and Muscle Mass
Any low-carbohydrate diet is generally considered a “ketogenic” diet. A ketogenic diet is one in which your body’s metabolism goes into a state called ketosis.
Ketosis is when your body begins converting fat into fatty acids and ketones for energy rather than the usual metabolic process of converting carbohydrates into glycogen for energy. If you’re a relatively normal person, you have fat on your body. Going into a state of ketosis will use this body fat for energy. Thus, more rapid fat loss.
What makes this diet “cyclical,” and therefore different from a typical low-carbohydrate diet, is that you actually force your body into and out of this metabolic state each week, rather than simply staying in ketosis permanently.
The reason for this is that your body needs glycogen, supplied by carbohydrates, for rebuilding muscle tissue. For someone (such as myself) who is looking to either build or maintain their current muscle mass, a simple ketogenic diet does not supply the muscle glycogen necessary to prevent muscle loss. A solution is needed that allows the body to both build and maintain muscle mass, but also cut body fat at a rapid rate.
The Cyclical Ketogenic Diet: Nutrition 6 Days a Week
Knowing the effects of two various metabolic states, the Cyclical Ketogenic Diet was created with the following guidelines: Eat absolutely minimal carbohydrates through the week, increasing your protein and healthy fat intake. One day a week, consume massive amounts of carbohydrates while maintaining protein consumption and reducing fat consumption since you want to kick yourself out of ketosis…and not consume *too many* calories.
- Set a healthy target daily calorie consumption level that is in between fat loss levels and weight gain levels. For me, that’s about 1900 calories.
- Start with a daily consumption of about 1g of protein for every pound of body mass. Multiply this number by four to calculate the number of calories this equates to. (So, I’ll eat about 170g of protein, which is 680 calories of protein consumption)
- Start with a target carbohydrate consumption of 20g, or 80 calories.
- Take your target number of daily calories, and subtract your protein and carbohydrate calories. (1900 – 760 = 1140 calories left to consume).
- This result (1140 calories) becomes your target fat calories for consumption. Now, one gram of carbohydrates or one gram of protein is each equal to four calories. But, one gram of fat is equal to nine calories. So, divide the target fat calories by nine to get the grams of healthy fat consumption. ( 1140 divided by 9 = 126.6 grams of healthy fat)
This is what resulted in my consuming a half a carrot a day, three servings of lean protein, 1/3 of a pound of cheese, and 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil, six days a week, for five weeks.
The Cyclical Ketogenic Diet: Nutrition 1 Day a Week, 12 Hours
The above defines the meal plan that kicks you into ketosis in order to quickly burn fat. Remember, this is also when you don’t have the proper muscle glycogen necessary to maintain or build muscle mass. So, for 12 hours, once a week, you eat an almost-insane amount of carbohydrates to rebuild those glycogen stores.
For this, the calculation is to consume 10-12 grams of carbohydrates per kilogram of lean mass. Since my initial diet plan was based on a lean mass of 136 pounds (a guesstimate), I consumed between 620 and 740 grams of carbohydrates on Saturdays.
In addition, my protein consumption held steady at 170g.
For fat consumption, you consume one gram per kilogram of lean mass. For me, this equated to 62g of fat.
In all, this meant that in 12 hours, I would consume over 4,000 calories. Going from eating less than 20g of carbohydrates a day to 700g, makes your body do…different…things.
Vitamins and Supplements
As a note, I consumed each of the following vitamins 90% of the days: Multivitamin, vitamin c, echinacea, glucosamine/chondroitin, and cod liver oil. For 2-3 days, I consumed a zinc supplement during a period I felt the possibility of sickness coming on.
Exercise
Weeks 1, 2, 4 and 5, I cycled at least three times a week. Weeks 1, 2, and 3, I lifted weights for at least one hour, three times a week. Weeks 4 and 5, this was two times a week.
For maximum benefits, your last workout of the week should be late on the day before the carbohydrate-loading period. This will allow for maximum muscle rebuilding that following day when muscle glycogen stores are replenished.
Data Measured
First thing in the morning and immediately before bed, I recorded my body weight. I also recorded my ketone output through urinalysis strips during the same times each day.
Psychological and Physiological Effects During the Diet
A pattern that I’ve noticed with most diets, especially the more aggressive ones, is that the first two weeks are generally an uncomfortable transition period. This diet was no different.
For the first two weeks, I felt significantly reduced energy levels which I compensated for by drinking a couple cups of green tea each day. By the third week, this was unnecessary.
My moods weren’t generally down or up during this diet, but rather very steady. Due to my day-to-day lifestyle changing from unhealthy eating, frequent drinking, and living out of a van, to completely cutting out alcohol, exercising five days a week for at least an hour, and simplifying some other things in my life, this may not be directly related to the diet alone. It should be noted, however, that there were no notable negative emotional effects during the diet.
There’s also something to be said for sticking to something so rigid and consistent like this. Psychologically, it’s a big win for me to know that I can do something this rigid and intense. I can honestly say that I’ve only heard of a couple of diets that seem to be more rigid than this (raw food diets and liquid diets). Given that I don’t want to ever give up meat, this could very well be the most intense diet I ever go through. Should anything ever happen to me in the future that I’ll need to meticulously watch what I eat, having gone through this, I know what to expect and that it will be easier than having not done this.
Common side effects of ketosis include certain changes in the smell of your breath, body odor, and perspiration. Frequent showering and oral hygiene seemed to take care of this.
It should also be noted that weight fluctuations on this diet can be enormous. In 12 hours one Saturday, I gained a full 10 pounds. 36 hours later 8 of those pounds were gone. Granted, most of that is likely water weight gained and lost, it’s still certainly significant. As well, weight loss during the week of 2+ pounds per day was not uncommon late in the week when ketone outputs were high.
Cholesterol Concerns
Everyone in the health industry that I’ve talked to had concerns with cholesterol levels…the consumption of high levels of fat and animal protein seem as though they would increase cholesterol to unhealthy levels.
However, “People who followed a low-carbohydrate diet for six months raised their good cholesterol and lowered their triglycerides, changes that can help lower the risk of heart disease, Duke University Medical Center researchers found.” Source: http://www.dukemednews.org/news/article.php?id=9412
Unfortunately, this is not something that I frequently measured, so I can’t speak from experience.
Notable Exceptions and Outlying Data
Weeks 1, 2, 4 and 5, I rode a bicycle at least three times a week. Halfway through week 2, I had bike problems that I did not fix until late in week 3. Thus, all of week 3, I did not perform cardiovascular exercise. It should absolutely be noted that I also did not go significantly into ketosis and my weight loss plateaued.
The carbohydrate-loading period immediately prior to week 3 was not closely monitored. I’m certain I met my carbohydrate and protein requirements. However, I’m also concerned that I consumed more than I should have in the area of fat consumption. As in a normal metabolic state that stores unused glycogen as fat, overconsumption of fat in this instance likely resulted in those fat calories being stored as fat.
This lack of monitoring combined with a lack of fat-burning cardiovascular exercise set me back two full weeks in progress. I’m 100% confident that without this setback, I would have lost 20-25 pounds of fat in 4-5 weeks.
Notes for Posterity (That means You, too)
If I am ever to do this again, or if anyone who reads this wishes to go through the same diet plan, there are a few crucial concepts to adhere to:
- Every single calorie and nutrition value must be accounted for. If I had not had the slip-up I had before the third week, I may very well have already hit my long-term body fat percentage goals.
- Do Not over-eat fats on your carbohydrate-loading phase.
- Your daily carbohydrate consumption is absolutely critical and should be monitored more closely than anything else. I “generally” experimented with varying carbohydrate intake during the week and found that I could go into ketosis much more intensely (and burn fat faster) by continuing to cut my carbohydrate intake even further. If I ever do this again, I will consume 10-14g of carbohydrates rather than 20g per day. I don’t recommend that for everyon; you will need to find your own levels that work for you.
- Cardiovascular exercise is absolutely essential. And the more you put in, the more exponentially you’ll see returns from it. I don’t know why I didn’t think about this, or read about it, beforehand…maybe I did and just didn’t notice. But when I wasn’t on my bike in week 3, my weight pretty much held steady. Compared to losing 5 pounds a week the two previous weeks, this was both frustrating and enlightening. Honestly, for me, cardiovascular exercise wasn’t part of this plan, and is actually part of something else I’m working toward, but I’m so glad I incorporated it.
- I found that when I ate all of my carbohydrates before 5pm, and finished eating before 9pm, that my weight fluctuations were much more stable and weight loss occurred much more rapidly. This is a practice that I look forward to implementing.
- Eat carbohydrates low on the glycemic index. Another long-term practice I’ll be adopting.
Next Steps for Me
Since finishing that diet, I have adjusted my diet to include 40% carbohydrates, 40% protein, and 20% healthy fats. I’m working out twice a day; morning interval cardio every day (alternating jump rope and crunches), weight lifting (another heavily-researched area for me, that has led to creating a great regimen for my climbing needs) 4x a week, and long-distance cardio 3x a week in the form of hockey, cycling, or hiking with Lorelai. I’m wrapping up my third of five weeks on this, then I will likely switch a high-protein diet less restrictive than the Cyclical Ketogenic Diet.
If you’re interested in the science side of metabolism, fat loss, etc, I definitely recommend reading this article on Tim Ferriss’s blog. If nothing else, it should jolt your understanding of nutrition and physiology.
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