The Instagrammatization of Fitness

I’ve watched the online fitness industry develop for nearly 25 years now.  And in recent years, it’s gotten funny in a lot of ways.  Among these is the Instagrammatization where people only seem capable of communicating or reading pretty Infographics.  Said Infographics placing a primacy on being short.  Which means that they cannot convey nuance.  Rather, people tend to make singular (and often trite) absolutist statements because that’s all there is space for.

Add to this the trend where something becomes “true” by repetition. … Keep Reading

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Following that I started to examine a paper by Escalante and colleague(s?) that also looked at the topic.  They started by looking at the acute studies which I don’t find terribly relevant.  Then they moved onto the chronic studies which are few and far between.

One was the Ramadan study that was poorly controlled and from which I don’t think you can draw many conclusions.  They next looked at meta-analysis of 5 papers pointing out that only 2 of them had BF% as an end goal.  Then they began looking at some detail at a single paper, the one that seems to be driving the idea that fasted cardio is useless.… Keep Reading

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Here it is, probably the closest to an Infographic I’ll ever make.

Click it to make it bigger for saving. There’s a full size version at the end of the article.

Now let me examine the real reasons you’re not losing weight.

Reasons You’re Not Losing Weight: Myths

First let me look at some of the common myths to explain why you’re not losing weight. This can’t even begin to be comprehensive so I’ve just chosen some of the more representative ones.

Insulin

The idea that insulin was the cause of obesity or could prevent weight loss can be traced to Gary Taubes.… Keep Reading

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In the most general sense, he’s one of the deniers of energy balance and Calories In Calories Out (CICO) as it pertains to body weight and body composition.  It’s the typical bs although his newest insanity is how calories not an actual thing that exists and, by some sort of extension I guess, that the calorie model of changes in body weight is incorrect for that reason.  That is, since calories doesn’t exist, they can’t explain the changes that occur in terms of bodyweight or body fat.… Keep Reading

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For the body obsessed or even normal dieters, the holiday period from around October through to January can be a true minefield. Between the specific holidays of Halloween (mercifully passed), Thanksgiving and Christmas, along with endless goody baskets and parties, folks run into problems maintaining the habits they try to follow the rest of the year.

A lot of strategies exist to deal with this time, especially among the body obsessed, although I’d consider few of them particularly healthy from a mental or psychological standpoint. … Keep Reading

The post 10 Tips to Avoid Holiday Weight Gain appeared first on Bodyrecomposition.

Because while a lot of people tend to jump back and forth from one to the other (often, I think, spinning their wheels a bit), taking a more long-term approach, a nutritional periodization of sorts, can be beneficial in terms of working with rather than against the body’s inherent physiology.

Gaining to Dieting: The Pre-Diet Phase

Way back in the early days of bodybuilding you would hear physique athletes talk about a “hardening phase” which was meant as a transition from their off-season bulking to their contest diet.  Now, in hindsight, it probably had as much to do with switching out their drugs from heavy androgens to more anabolic compounds to reduce water retention but it basically entailed “cleaning up the diet” to prepare for the actual contest prep.… Keep Reading

The post The Transition Phase Between Dieting and Gaining appeared first on Bodyrecomposition.

To be honest, and I’ve been saying this for a lot of years, I don’t think that the issue with dieting failure has much to do with diet (or exercise) per se.  That is, we know and have known for a long-time HOW to get people to lose weight/fat (I’m going to use these interchangeably for writing style reasons just understand that body composition is more important than changes in body weight per se and let’s move on). … Keep Reading

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Behaviorism

An older idea of human behavior (called behaviorism) suggests that we do things either to obtain reward (things feel good) or avoid punishment (things feel bad). While there is obviously more to it than that in humans, there is no doubt that these types of pathways play a role in human behavior.

Humans tend to do things that feel good/reward them (like eating) and avoid things that feel bad/punish them. … Keep Reading

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The Revive Stronger Podcast

Back in 2004, I wrote a little book called A Guide to Flexible Dieting, basically arguing that being less extreme with a diet would work better.  Of course, nobody was ready to listen then although, in the last few years you can’t swing a dead cat without seeing a post or ebook about flexible dieting.  Sometimes folks even cite my work (in one case it was blatantly plagiarized but that’s a different story). … Keep Reading

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My specific comment was this:

I do mean that this is unusual in that most drugs lose, or at least appear to lose, their effect over time (it’s a little more complicated than this but I’ll save my explanation of this statement for next week or something).

Ephedrine Doesn’t Stop Working

I also presented data showing that this is actually absolutely not the case, that EC clearly not only continues working in the long-term but, for some reason, becomes more effective over time.  And this goes against what is most commonly believed about not only EC (with claims that it stops working, usually based on the fact that the side effects are no longer felt) but with almost all dieting drugs (including the big pharmaceutical ones).… Keep Reading

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