Actually check that. His 6-month weight gain period has ended and he’s packed on more than 70 lbs!

You can check out his progress (or regress I suppose) here: fit2fat2fit.com.

Now when I first heard about this, I couldn’t really believe that anyone would voluntary subject themselves to a diet replete with simple sugars and processed foods with the express purpose of packing on an excess 70 lbs of pure lard (193 –> 265 lbs)!

Of course, after flipping through his website for a bit, it becomes clear that he’s using this transformation to strengthen his coaching business, but more power to him if he pulls it off.

I can quite confidently say that I don’t have the balls to deliberately gain that much weight, even though I’m certain I can design programs to take the weight back off again.

It will be an interesting experiment for sure, even though there’s one major limitation of his transformation: he’s immediately launching his weight loss phase now that his 6-month weight gain is done.

Without spending several months being weight stable (allowing his metabolism and hormones to ‘re-set’ his norm at 260+ lbs), he’ll face a much easier time taking the weight off than would someone who’s been the same weight for years. That being said, losing 70 lbs is tough no matter what.

If you flip through Drew’s blog , it’s apparent he’s struggling with a number of aspects of steadily growing fatter. Not only has his health deteriorated significantly, but his home-life and his self-image have both suffered.

Although many fitness professionals were formerly overweight, terminally skinny or may have overcome an eating disorder, it’s rare that once we’ve turned our lives around that we’d be willing to give it all up and chronicle our descent publicly.

I for one will be following his journey as he works towards rebuilding his body. Not so much to see whether he can do it (I firmly believe he’ll drop the weight with little difficulty given his former love of healthy eating and working out), but rather because I’m interested in seeing how effectively he is able to inspire others to lose along with him.

Good luck to you Drew, may your project have greater positive repurcussions than you could have imagined!

Till next time, train hard and eat clean!

Related posts:

1. 2010 Exercise Nutrition Symposium Review
2. Dumb things smart people do
3. Your Parents Made You Fat, Do Something About It

1. Eat more…

Before leaving your house. Nothing fuels your “willpower” to avoid the hors d’oeuvre table more than a full belly. For best results, go with a high protein/high fiber combo, like my real man’s chili.

2. Pre-plan.

Fact: you cannot undo 6 weeks of clean eating with 1 bad diet day. Problem: string together 5-6 bad diet days in a row and now you just might. Solution: identify 4-5 social days throughout the month (ideally at least 5-7 days apart). Set these days as “guilt free eating days” and enjoy yourself (note: this does not mean deliberately eat so much you get sick).

And the rest of the month? You continue to stick to your clean eating schedule, but with the peace of mind knowing you have something to look forward to every few days.

3. Be a smart socialite.

Look, no one wants to be that guy or gal who shows up at a party but refuses to eat or drink anything. So if you are someone who knows you need to be holding something in your hand throughout the night, stick to the vegetable crudités and protein snacks wherever possible.

And if the libations are a calling, stick with either plain spirits or wine. Those creamy holidays beverages are tiny little energy bombs.

To review the effects of alcohol on your physique read this: Beach Body or Beer Belly

4. Time your eggnog.

I’m not sure a more energy dense beverage exists. At 250 kcal per cup, this stuff packs 2x the calories than does coke! So if you are someone who can’t picture a Christmas season without eggnog, do yourself a favour and reserve it till after your workouts.

The real reason Santa is so fat and has a red nose.

Following a tough glycogen depleting workout (hint – the elliptical machine is never tough), you’ll at least be able to but the large amouts of sugar to good use. Incidentally, this tip (consume only after workouts) applies to any holiday sweet.

5. Accept that a 2 week diet deviation = +5-7 lbs on the scale.

Despite what you want to believe, you cannot eat whatever you want and look great. Frankly ‘total diet liberty’ and ‘great physique’ are mutually exclusive terms.

More importantly, you also need to accept that no one is responsible for how you look but you. Not your personal trainer, your diet coach, nor your spouse (they might influence how you look, sure. But responsibility? That’s squarely on your shoulders).

So if you choose to forgo eating clean throughout the holidays, thats totally fine and entirely your business. Just don’t expect any sympathy come January 2nd when you no longer fit into your favourite pair of skinny jeans.

But in fairness, some individuals find that after taking a 2 week diet break, they are just dying to get back into the gym and start eating broccoli again.

So if a mini-diet vacation makes you even more dedicated for the other 50 weeks of the year, go ahead and enjoy yourself. Just don’t contemplate suicide when you step on the scale in January.

So there you go, 5 strategies for enjoying the holidays, while preventing any lasting damage to the physique you worked so hard to build.

Till next time, train hard and eat clean!

Related posts:

1. Epically Disgusting Diets: Don’t Be Like These Guys
2. Pumpkin Cheesecake Bites
3. Low Carbohydrate Diets: Science Continues to Show Support

Dude, where’s my car?

Now you’d think that a city located in one of Canada’s snow belts would be prepared to deal with such a snowfall. But alas, London city hall seem to be blissfully unaware that yearly snow fall routinely tops 200 cm in this city and seems to have no plan for how to get rid of the snow. In fact, the mayor has even contemplated calling a state of emergency.

State of emergency?!? Seriously?

London, you should be embarassed.

While no one will refute that 100 cm is a lot of snow, there are countless Canadian cities where this amount of snowfall would barely register a blip on the old “inconvenience factor”.

A few years ago I took the liberty of contrasting the snow removal efforts of London to my hometown of Montreal, here is what I discoverd:

• Yearly snowfall: Montreal 218 cm, London 202 cm.

• Total area: Montreal 4260 sq. km, London 2665 sq. km.

• Snow fall removal budget: Montreal $130 million, London $10 million.
• Pieces of snow removal equipment: Montreal ~1000, London 63.

Now I realize that Montreal is larger than London, which accounts for some of the budget difference. However, given that the total snow fall is pretty similar, you’d assume that London city hall would show a little more foresight and spend more than 1/10th the amount of money or have more than 1/17th the number of snow clearing vehicles than Montreal does.

Sadly, common sense and city hall are apparently mutually exclusive terms.

Anyway, during periods like this when it’s almost impossible to go anywhere, sometimes the best approach is to just stay indoors and enjoy some comfort food.

Which brings me to the crux of today’s post: a killer mushroom soup recipe my girlfriend found a little while ago. This soup is creamy… without actually containing much fat or cream. So it’s totally physique friendly and makes a wonderful compliment to pretty much anything.

Ingredients

• 2 cups button mushrooms
• 1 cup cremini mushrooms
• 1 cup portabella mushrooms
• 2 tbsp coconut oil
• 2 clove garlic
• 1 1/2 cup parsnip
• 1 small onion
• 3 cup soup stock
• 1 cup almond milk
• 1 tbsp thyme
• 1 tbsp basil

Directions

In a large pot, heat oil and sauteé onions until translucent. Add garlic, thyme and basil, continue to sautée. Add mushrooms and parsnips, continue to sautée. Add stock and simmer 30 minutes, partially covered. Transfer to blender, add almond milk and purée. Adjust seasoning as desired.

Makes 6 servings.

Nutrition Info (per serving: 140 kcal, 7 g FAT, 15 g CHO (3 g fibre), 6 g PRO.

It really is one of the easier recipes you can make. Not only that but everyone who has tasted this soup has absolutely raved about it!

So if you find yourself couped up indoors over the Christmas holidays, give this recipe a try – your taste buds and your waist line will thank you.

Till next time, train hard and eat clean!

Related posts:

1. Really Simple Dieting: Eat, Repeat, Lose.
2. Novel Vegetable Recipes: Cauliflower Shepherd’s Pie
3. 400 Calorie Fixed

Anyway, I figured that story would satisfy my quota for idiotic nutrition journalism for a while.

No such luck.

Today, a couple of my lovely clients were gracious enough to point me towards an article on CNN that carried the title: Twinkie Diet Helps Nutrition Professor Lose 27 Lbs.

Just by looking at the title, I knew I’d need to take a couple of deep breaths and make sure I was seated before I read it… and I’m glad I did.

The article centered around a nutrition professor, Mark Haub, at Kansas State University who sought to prove that weight loss is primarily a product of ensuring someone is in a caloric deficit.

Now I know this hypothesis is not some major weight loss revelation… but professor Haub decided to test his hypothesis by eating a diet of mostly junk food.

Eat Crap, Lose Weight?

You heard correctly. Professor Haub’s brilliant idea was to see if he could lose weight following a “junk food diet” of 1800 kcal/day (his true energy requirements were closer to ~2600 kcal), while supplementing with a multivitamin, a serving of protein powder, and a couple servings of vegetables.

After having read this far into the article, I reached the important conclusion: I need to apply for a professor position at Kansas State. Apparently, this institution of higher learning has no problem paying top dollar to professors who study such burning questions as: What makes people fatter – eating apples or apple pie? What’s a superior source of calcium – greek yogourt or cheetos? Or how do they get the caramel inside a Caramilk bar?

Anyway… after ten weeks of caloric restriction, here is what happened to our dear old professor:

• he lost 27 lbs
• his BMI went from 28.8 –> 24.9
• his LDL cholesterol dropped 20%
• his HDL cholesterol increased 20%
• his triglycerides dropped by 39%
• body fat % went from 33.4% –> 24.9%

Judging by these numbers, it appears that that as long you create a sufficient calorie deficit in someone, even if they consume mostly junk food, they will lose weight and their overall health will improve.

And the America Sugar Alliance rejoiced!

However, these results may not be so quite so impressive upon deeper inspection.

According to the article Haub himself seemed surprised by his results… even though had he spent even 5 minutes reading the weight loss literature, he would have known exactly what to expect.

In reality, all professor Haub demonstrated was that for acute weight loss, the primary variable is caloric restriction. Every popular diet on the market today operates under the same principle, whether it’s the cabbage soup diet, Master Cleanse or Weight Watchers.

In fact, his finding that you can produce weight loss in humans (for short periods of time) when you rigidly enforce a caloric restriction has been documented for years in the diet literature. Unfortunately, in the real-world, most people don’t portion control junk food very well (not to mention that junk food does little to satisfy hunger).

Therefore, when free-living humans have full access to junk, they tend not to limit their intake to remain in a daily energy deficit of 800 kcal/day. Which is why that although most calorie-restricted diets do produce weight loss in the short term, giving people weight loss advice solely based around the calorie count of foods has a failure record of over 95%.

So while it’s admirable (sort of) to demonstrate that when you artificially limit a man’s intake to 1800 kcal you can produce weight loss, in the real world the chances of a predominantly junk-food based diet leading to weight loss are slim-to-none.

But there was another major aspect of this experiment that contributed to professor Haub’s positive results. He started the study at 33.4% body fat!!!

For those unaware, 33% body fat is an extremely high level of body fat (not in the context of the average American… but in the context of ‘being healthy’). In fact, having a body fat percentage in excess of 30% as a male places professor Haub squarely in the ranks of the obese (as defined by the American Council of Exercise).

Clearly, if his normal diet was one that kept him at a body fat percentage of 30+, his diet sucked (for lack of a better term). I don’t care whether he was eating foods he “thought” were healthy… there is nothing healthy about walking around at a body fat percentage of 33% as a male of 40 years of age.

The fact that twinkies may be less harmful to your health than is carting around a 60 lbs spare tire is not as much a statement of support for the twinkies, but rather an indication of how detrimental excess body fat truly is.

So while his junk food diet might have helped professor Haub get from 33% body fat down to 25% (which is still obese by ACSM standards)… it’s quite unlikely that continuing to eat in such a fashion would allow him to drop his body fat percentage below 18%, which is the level I’d argue is more appropriate for a man of his age.

Moreover, if he were to relax his rigid plan of consuming only 1800 kcal, he’d find his weight start to creep back up.

Therefore, all we can conclude from this little experiment is the following: by rigidly adhering to a calorie-restricted diet of junk food for a period of several months will help you go from being quite obese… to a little less obese.

Brilliant.

Unfortunately, far too many people reading this article will get the impression that eating junk is ok… as long they “control calories”. Sure this approach works great… if you are hell-bent on failing.

For anyone else who is actually interested making meaningful changes to their bodies and their health for the long-term, stick to what we know works:

• limit processed foods
• train hard and train often
• eat vegetables and more fresh foods in general
• stay hydrated
• sleep

You can’t eat crap and expect to lose weight forever. The social experiment we’ve been practicing in North America for the past 50 years has demonstrated that quite clearly.

Till next time, train hard and eat clean!

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1. Plateau Busting: Keys to Restarting Weight Loss
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Although the title of his piece alludes to the fact that while statin use does lower cholesterol, it also increases your risk for diabetes by 9%, the crux of his post dealt with the overall foolishness of trying to treat chronic/lifestyle diseases with medications. Here’s a telling quote (the bold type is my addition),

The fundamental focus of lifestyle or functional approaches (which includes nutrition, exercise, and stress management) is the restoration of normal function and balance in each individual. When you do this, risk factors and symptoms go away automatically. Conventional interventions, on the other hand, are primarily focused on blocking, interfering with, or excising a biochemical or physical manifestation of disease. This is the reason biology shifts towards normal when using lifestyle medicine, instead of medication, and the only side effects are good ones: weight loss, more energy, better sleep, increased well being, a reduction of most disease, and increased longevity.

While it is still a matter of public debate, there is ample evidence that lifestyle therapies equal or exceed the benefits of conventional therapies such as medication and surgery. Nutrition, exercise, and stress management can no longer be considered alternative medicine. They are essential medicine, and often the most effective and cost-effective therapies to deal with the chronic disease epidemic that afflicts millions of Americans and is now the primary cause of death worldwide.

He also goes on to highlight the work of another doctor, Dr. David Ludwig, who suggests that our current dietary recommendations have been a key player in this increase in chronic disease.

A sentiment I echo 100%.

Dr. Ludwig points out that our singular focus on nutrients in isolation (i.e. carbs vs. fats. vs protein vs. vitamin C vs. fibre, etc) has led us to being a nation who “knows” more about our food than ever before, yet who understand absolutely nothing.

Let’s face it, the human body is pretty intelligent and remarkably adaptable. The adaptability is why we have civilizations that can exist on diets where over 80% over their energy comes from carbohydrates and others where less than 5% of total energy comes from carbohydrates or how it’s possible to have civilizations where daily alcohol consumption is integral to a healthy lifestyles and others where the best health is achieved by teetotalers.

And yet “nutrition experts” will argue till they are blue in the face about the superiority of one diet over another (high carb vs. low carb, vegan vs. meat centric, etc). “Experts” who suggest that by adding a particular “super food” to your diet, your health will dramatically improve. Or that the best dietary solution for everyone is contained by some generalist food guide.

Right.

As a result of the bastardization of our understanding of health over the past 50-100 years, we now have millions of people looking for the magic pill we can take that will “cure obesity”, “stop cancer” or “eliminate heart disease”. Which is sad… so sad.

Health Care in the Year 2010

Optimal health isn’t about putting more synthetically-derived compounds into your body, it’s actually about doing the opposite. If you want the “secret” to better health, here it is:

Stop

• Eating crap. Seriously, your diet sucks.
• Relying on prescription medication to treat chronic disease.
• Stressing about everything. Most things just aren’t that important.
• Expecting your health to improve without any effort on your behalf.

Start

• Moving more. Exercise isn’t a punishment, it’s a celebration of what makes us human.
• Building and sustaining meaningful relationships. Facebook is fun, but will it help you move a sofa?
• Appreciating that results take hard work. Although building a house out of bricks takes longer than one built out of straw, it also won’t crumble the first time the wind picks up.
• Eating whole foods. Don’t worry about calories, macros or % daily value. Your grandparents never knew how many calories were in the stew they ate, but they knew that eating stew was better for them than eating ice cream… and not one of them got diabetes at the age of 35.
• Making sleep a priority. It’s the cheapest and most dramatic body composition tool we have.

So there you have it, 9 “secret” strategies to implement today to dramatically overhaul your life. I realize that nothing on this list is either shocking or new, but that’s beside the point. The point is we need to start doing these things, otherwise our collective health will continue to spiral downwards.

Till next time, train hard and eat clean!

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1. Multivitamins: Does a Body Good?
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