Year: 2009

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A Look at The Tabata Protcol

In recent years, the Internet has gotten a bit crazy for high-intensity interval training, proclaiming it’s superiority overall other forms of conditioning training.   And while HIIT can take many forms, one popular one, wholly misrepresented in the fitness industry is what is called the Tabata Protocol.

This describes a very specific approach to HIIT created, originally for speed skaters, by an author named Tabata.  Hence the name.     It’s even been studied and it is this study that I want to look at today.

Tabata I. et. al.  Effects of moderate-intensity endurance and high-intensity intermittent training on anaerobic capacity and VO2max.  Med Sci Sports Exerc. (1996) 28(10):1327-30.

HIIT and the Tabata Protocol

The concept of HIIT is fairly general, it describes a method of training where short periods of near maximum training lasting 15-90 seconds (with some variance) are alternated with periods of low intensity activity for some number of rounds.   … Keep Reading

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Pros and Cons of Three Sizes of Calorie Deficits

Ignoring those people who deny the energy balance equation or even the concept of calories, the fact is that losing fat requires a calorie deficit.   But that raises questions of how to set the deficit (i.e. exercise vs. diet vs. a combination) or even the size of the deficit. Today I’m going to focus on the latter and examine the pros and cons of different size calorie deficits.

To keep the article from getting too complicated and long I am going to assume for simplicities sake that whether or not the deficit is created via dietary restriction or exercise the end result is basically the same. Please note that this really isn’t a safe assumption.  There are differences but those have to wait for another article.

Defining Different Sizes of Calorie Deficits

For the sake of this argument, I’m going to define the deficits as follows:

  • Small: 10-15% below maintenance
  • Moderate: 20-25% below maintenance
  • Large: anything bigger than 25% below maintenance

Note, I’m not saying that these definitions are the exactly right ones, they are simply how I define the terms. … Keep Reading

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Is There a Best Diet for Premenopausal Women?

One of the longest running debates in the field of nutrition is whether specific diets, especially low-carbohydrate diets, have a “metabolic advantage”.  By this I mean that they can somehow cause more fat loss at the same calorie level as other diets.   A recent study looking at different types of diets in pre-menopausal women is currently making the rounds and people are using it to claim exactly that.  So let’s look at the following study in some detail:

Gardner CD et. al. Comparison of the Atkins, Zone, Ornish, and LEARN diets for change in weight and related risk factors among overweight premenopausal women: the A TO Z Weight Loss Study: a randomized trial. JAMA. (2007) 297(9):969-77.

Low-Carbohydrate Diets and the Metabolic Advantage

As I said above, a long-standing debate is over whether or not specific diets, especially low-carbohydrate diets have a metabolic advantage.  This is an idea that came out of very early, very poorly done research where water loss was confused with real weight and fat loss. … Keep Reading

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Lat Pulldown Technique

Following up on a previous article on Cable Row Technique and today I want to examine the “other” major back movement and look at lat pulldown technique.   As with previous technique articles, I’ll examine what muscles are trained, proper form and look at some variations on the movement.

Note: the form issues I’m going to address go for chins or pullups as well.  The only difference is that instead of pulling the bar down to your body, you pull your body up to the bar.  But the technique is otherwise identical. As well, I’m going to use the term pulldown generally throughout this article, just keep in mind that it refers to all of the different variants as well as chins/pullups.

Muscles Trained in the Lat Pulldown

As the name itself suggests, the lat pulldown has as its primary target the latissimus dorsi.  This is the large fan shaped muscle that takes up an exceedingly large portion of the back. … Keep Reading

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What Is The Ketogenic Ratio?

In my first book The Ketogenic Diet, I talked about something called the ketogenic ratio (KR) which is an equation/concept used in the planning of ketogenic diets for epilepsy patients.

The equation basically gives you the potential ketone producing potential of a given meal depending on the relative ketogenic or anti-ketogenic effect of the different macronutrients.

The question then becomes whether it matters or not for someone using a ketogenic diet for fat loss.  A follow-up question is whether or not Ketostix, used to measure urinary ketone levels have any value for the general dieter.  Let’s look at both topics.

The Ketogenic Ratio

So the KR of a given combination of nutrients can be estimated with the following equation:

 

The Ketogenic Ratio

 

Protein turns out to be partially ketogenic (46%) and partially anti-ketogenic (58%), reflecting the fact that some amino acids can be made into ketones, while other can be converted to glucose.… Keep Reading