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!

But whenever I start grumbling about the high costs of dental work, I have to bite my tongue because I formerly worked as a personal trainer, a profession that serves as the embodiment of an overpriced service profession.

Don’t get me wrong, I love personal training and think there is tremendous value in having experts teach people how to exercise properly. What bothers me is the extremely low barrier to entry to the personal training field (certain personal training certification can be obtained by completing a 20 hour course or even just doing a test over the Internet).

When we consider the going rate for an hour of personal training is $60+, is there another other profession that allows practitioners to charge as much with its members having so little formal training?

Quite simply, far too many people are paying way too much money for far too little expertise.

Now I don’t know about you, but if I was going to be spending ~$150 per week on a trainer, I would damn well expect some pretty concrete results. Unfortunately, far too many hard-working individuals never make much of a change in their body, despite all the hard work and money they commit to the project.

Therefore, to help you get an idea of whether you are just wasting your time and money, here’s a list of the top 10 reasons to fire your personal trainer.

#1. Your trainer spends the entire hour talking about themselves.

Seriously, this is my #1 personal trainer pet peeve. The profession is personal trainer, not personal story teller.

Earth to trainers everywhere: nobody cares about what you did the night before or what your boy/girlfriend did to piss you off. Shut up and focus on your client’s needs.

#2. You are allowed to spend the whole session talking.

As a former personal trainer, I considered it theft if I allowed a client to spend an entire hour talking. Sure a client occasionally needs to get something off their chest, but when every training hour becomes a talking hour, well that’s just highway robbery.

I know that everyone loves having a friend to talk to, but if you really need to talk how about volunteering at a senior’s home for a couple of hours a week? You’ll save yourself a whack of cash and seniors have loads more life wisdom to share with you than does your 20-year old trainer.

#3. Your trainer looks like they’ve never trained a day in their lives.

Admittedly, “personal trainer” is not synonymous for “underwear model”. However, far too many personal trainers are still either significantly over- or underweight.

Unless you consider it prudent to get investment advice from a homeless person, be wary of taking weight loss advice from a personal trainer who is 30 lbs overweight. Conversely, don’t be too quick to jump into a mass building program designed by someone who stands 6’2, 135 lbs.

#4. Your workout never changes.

I’ll be the first one to admit, a program that changes without rhyme or reason is not a good strategy for long-term progression. However, never changing anything is an even surer recipe for stagnation.

If your smoke alarm batteries change more often than do your programs; it’s time to get a new trainer.

#5. They spout truisms like “never squat below 90°” or that your knee “should never go past your toes”.

This is a tell tale sign your trainer doesn’t do any reading on their own, nor do they have any understanding of anatomy or biomechanics.

FYI – If you can get off a toilet, you can squat below 90° and your knee just went past your toes.

#6. All of their clients get the same routine.

This one is a little tougher to spot, unless you are at the gym a lot on your own.

As a trainer, having a training philosophy you believe in is important but training every client in exactly the same fashion just tells everyone you are lazy.

#7. You never fail because of muscle fatigue, only because of boredom.

Remember, you aren’t paying a trainer to be your friend, you are paying for some results and results take hard work. If you had an innate ability to push yourself hard enough, you probably wouldn’t need a trainer.

And just so you know hard work is probably going to require lifting heavy things on occasion. Ask yourself when was the last time you performed an exercise that required a spot. If the answer is never, you need a new trainer.

#8. They try to convince you of the need to purchase loads of expensive supplements.

I have nothing against supplements, I use many and counsel my clients on the same.

However, telling people to load up on supplements before they have a handle on a healthy diet is like telling someone to pick out curtains before they’ve built a house.

We need to teach people to spend their money on high quality food. Why is it that we balk at the high prices of fresh vegetables or free-range meat, but think nothing about dropping $100 on a designer pre-workout supplement?

#9. You are more than 30 lbs overweight and are doing plyometrics or any kind of jumping drill.

Plyometrics are a great way to build explosive power… for lean, already fit individuals. Bounding drills are terrible exercise selections for individuals needing to lose appreciable amounts of body fat.

Jumping is stressful enough on the joints for lean individuals. Now imagine jumping with a 50 lbs weight vest and you can just imagine the joint devastation.

#10. They answer phone calls/text messages during your training session.

Question: why does your personal trainer need to carry their phones during your training session anyway? Being a personal trainer is not as vital a service as it being an ER doctor.

If your trainer can’t focus on your concerns for an entire hour, you really don’t need them.

So there you have, a very short list of some of the biggest reasons why you should fire you personal trainer. Obviously this is but a short list of reasons why you need to look for a new personal trainer.

Which makes me wonder, do any of you have any other solid reasons why someone should fire their personal trainer? If you do, leave a comment below.

Extra credit for real life examples you’ve witnessed…

Till next time, train hard and eat clean!

Yesterday, I highlighted three major diet and exercise mistakes that contribute to the preponderance of skinny fat females:

1. An over-reliance on low-intensity physical activities.
2. Terrible exercise selection when they do resistance train.
3. Eating too many highly processed “diet” foods.

Unfortunately, simply acknowledging these behaviours as problematic isn’t enough. We need to dig deeper and tackle the root cause of skinny fatness: the fact that females seem to use body weight as the primary determinant of body image.

So sit down, grab a coffee and let’s begin.

Ideal Body Weight = Irrationality 101

Look, I hate to be the one to have to break it to you ladies, but most of you have a totally unrealistic concept of your ideal body weight. Not that I blame you, you’ve been fed a whole lot of half-truths your entire lives.

But the only way most females could achieve their theoretical “ideal body weight” would be to:

• diet in such a fashion so as to lose prodigious amounts of muscle mass
• perform ample amounts of cardiovascular exercise to make sure that muscle mass never returned

Now I say that a bit tongue-in-cheek, but sadly must acknowledge that these “weight loss” strategies are still the dominant ones being preached today. And it boggles my mind!

In a truly fascinating bit of gender psychology, body weight is one of those things that females obsess about constantly and most men don’t care about at all. As recent research highlights, women increasingly identify with a tiny, less curvy body shape as their ideal, whereas men continue to find thicker, curvier women, far more appealing.

In light of this disconnect, might it not be fair then to conclude that the bulk of the disordered body image issues and increased drive for “thinness at all costs” arises from how females judge each other, and not from any pressures placed on females by men?

And yes, this is a not so subtle jab at one of the excuses people use to justify the need for women’s only gyms.

So if the weak, waif look isn’t something men find particularly appealing, it makes you wonder why women have decided skinny fatness is a look they should strive for.

Of course, they don’t see it as striving for skinny fatness. Rather, they just see it trying to reach their “ideal body weight”.

Obsession: Not Just the Name of a Perfume

Being a nutritionist who specializes in fat loss, I have my fair share of female clients who have been, or are currently, in a state of skinny-fatness. Without fail, there comes a time when they’ll ask me, “How long will it be before I lose ___ lbs and get down to a body weight of ___?”

Since it seems that females are hardwired to obsess over these questions, I have now hardwired my answers.

To address the former: if you are willing to eat enough to fix your metabolism… a few months.
To address the latter: probably never.

Captain Compassionate, I am not. Well, better they hear the truth from from me than continue drinking the Chatelaine Kool-Aid!

I can’t count the number of times I’ve had a client come to me complaining that the scale isn’t moving. At times like these, I like to cheerfully volunteer that maybe they’ve set their scale atop a natural magnet… but when that doesn’t even merit a smile, I have to brace myself for “the talk”.

Ahhh the dreaded talk. There isn’t a nutritionist or personal trainer alive who enjoys having to explain to a client why they are not losing weight. But what really complicates the whole issue of weight loss is the fact that so few individuals seem to understand the significance or mechanics of body weight change in the first place.

To revisit a theme I introduced in earlier articles, the fitness industry predominantly operates in black and white. When it comes to the issue of body weight, there are two prevailing camps:

1. In one corner, we’ve got those coaches who stress that, “individuals who faithfully track their body weight are more likely to maintain weight loss over the long-term“.
2. And in the other corner, we have the practitioners who advise all their clients to “throw out the scale because it lies“.

Definitely two divergent and seemingly contradictory viewpoints, which helps explain why so many people are misguided and confused when it comes to the importance of body weight in the first place.

But which view is correct?

As with most things in life, both statements have some truth to them… but they really don’t paint a complete picture.

What is Wrong with Weight?

The first statement, that people tend to maintain greater weight loss if they track it on a semi-regular basis, seems like a no-brainer. It’s really no different than retirement savings: individuals who invest monthly tend to wind up saving more than those who invest “whenever they remember to”.

Clearly consistent tracking is required on some level if we hope to produce long-term success. But my issue with the regular weight-tracking crowd isn’t over whether they are more successful, because the numbers clearly show regular tracking results in greater weight loss.

Rather, my problem stems from the issue of whether championing weight as the primary progress variable carries much value.

Before I get too far into this, let me clarify one thing: What we label body weight is actually body mass but that’s a physics argument for another day. Since everyone calls it weight, I’ll continue using that term just so no one is confused.

When you step on a scale, the number you see is total body weight. Often researchers will track a person’s health status based on a personal body mass index (BMI), which is just a relationship between your height and weight.

However, as the “throw out the scale because it lies” crowd has correctly identified, scale weight often provides incomplete information.

Take the graphic above. Both of these individuals are the same height and same weight (therefore they have identical BMIs as well). However, their bodies are clearly quite different.

The gentleman on the left has excellent bone density, ample muscle mass and minimal fat mass: in effect he is the picture of health. Conversely, the gentleman on the right is all flabby and likely soon to have a heart attack.

Is there even a question of which body type you would rather have?

Unfortunately, when you base your decisions solely on the scale, it is very difficult to determine whether you are becoming more like the buff guy or the chubby dude.

In light of this reality, we have to accept that progress on any diet and exercise program MUST involve tracking gains in fat-free mass (muscle, bone, etc.) separate from losses in fat mass.

When you do this, we call it measuring someone’s body composition because it allows us to estimate* the relative contribution of each component to the whole.

*always remember that no matter what body composition tool you are using, it is ALWAYS an estimate and subject to a varying amount of error. The only 100% accurate means of determining someone’s body fat is to kill and then dissect them… which tends to be bad for your renewal rate.

Now that you have a basic understanding of the limitations of relying on scale weight, let’s revisit the realities of conventional dieting.

Where Diets Go Wrong

I think most weight loss experts would agree that, in general, humans need to eat less and move more. That being said, the strategies preached by many popular weight loss programs are pretty pathetic.

Most calorie-restricted diets operate under a “the more weight you lose each week, the better” premise (Weight Watchers and The Biggest Loser, I am looking squarely in your direction).

In other words, no distinction is made whether you lose appreciable amounts of fat or muscle. Unfortunately, just cutting calories in the absence of resistance training tends to result in the condition where you also wind up losing a considerable amount of muscle mass. This is not good.

Not only does conventional dieting just make you a smaller version of your current self (i.e. going from 180 lbs and 25% body fat, down to 160 lbs, but remaining 25% body fat), it also leads to a condition where you end up with a significantly slowed metabolic rate.

This slowing of metabolic rate might not be such a dramatic problem if you could continue eating a low-calorie diet forever. Sadly, most humans become incredibly irritable and hungry when calorie deprived, which leads to them returning to their previous way of eating.

Only now they are eating more calories on top of having a sluggish metabolism to contend with… which leads to a delightful rebound weight gain!

And the creators of these programs grow rich with you having to sign up for another kick at the can!

If you didn’t understand this last bit, here are the Coles notes:

• Eating a little less = good.
• Eating a lot less = bad.
• Eating a lot less + no weight training = very bad.

Remember, if you haven’t optimized your diet and exercise program to protect muscle mass while simultaneously dropping fat mass, your plan will inevitably lead to failure.

You heard it here first people.

A Bit More on Body Composition

Although separating body weight into fat mass and lean mass is a big leap forward, the 2-component approach to body composition it still is a vast oversimplification.

A more accurate, and ultimately useful, approach would be to classify the human body into the following 6 components:

Six Component Model of Body Composition

• water
• fat
• protein
• bone mineral
• soft tissue mineral
• glycogen

I know by now you are muttering to yourself, “GT, I get it… weight alone doesn’t tell the whole picture…”, but there is so much more you need to appreciate than that.

Out of the six components I’ve listed above, some of them can change very, very rapidly whereas others can take months or years to change appreciably.

For example, water and glycogen levels can fluctuate significantly from day-to-day whereas protein and bone changes take months to meaningfully change.

Now why should you care? Because over the course of a day, depending on your diet and activity levels, your scale weight can easily swing up or down several pounds.

If you are someone who lives or dies by the scale, obsessively stepping on the scale at varying times of a day or even varying times of the menstrual cycle is a surefire way to give yourself an ulcer.

And depending on your method of assessing body composition changes, some of them (particularly bioelectrical impedance scales) are dramatically influenced by water shifts.

Remember, acute changes in water, glycogen status or even body temperature impact most methods of tracking body composition, so don’t assume that simply because you are using body composition and not weight that your methods are error-free, because that’s not at all the case.

Similarly, any “muscle” you think has cropped up only several days into starting a weight training program is not new muscle protein at all. Rather you are most likely observing increased muscle glycogen storage/water retention or potentially improved myogenic tone.

But new muscle? No. So don’t even bother trying to use that as an excuse for why you need to stop weight training… you are NOT going to get too bulky.

Sorry to burst your bubble.

Weighty Issues

So where does that leave us on the matter of tracking success on a diet and exercise program? We saw that weight was an incomplete measure, but then again, so too is the 2-component approach to body composition.

Does this mean that body weight and body composition are both worthless?

No. Both body weight and body composition are worth tracking, but we do need to accept that they are just two out of more than a dozen important variables that need to be tracked as part of any diet and exercise program.

What people fail to recognize is that you can easily change body weight but cause a number of other health variables to deteriorate, which all but guarantees failure.

Seriously – weight changes really are no more important than improvements in mood, digestive system health, complexion, VO2 max, pain, etc.

In fact, it’s only when you note concurrent improvements across all these domains that you are appreciably improving an individual’s cellular function, which is the real “secret” to fat loss, decreased risk of chronic disease, and improved well-being.

Imagine that: suggesting that we need to teach people about the importance of a multi-faceted approach to assessing their health and weight loss success.

I must be crazy!

So there you have it, an introduction to the issue of why so many females struggle to appreciably change their bodies despite following diet and exercise programs.

Obviously there is tons more that needs to be covered, but at least now you have an appreciation for some of the faulty assumptions built into so many popular approaches to weight loss.

For anyone interested in learning how to effectively change your own body or the bodies of people you work with, keep checking back in this space, as I’ll be making several announcements in the next couple of weeks about new coaching classes, online programs, and interviews that I’ll be involved with.

Till next time, train hard and eat clean!

Without any further ado, here we go!

1. The only way to lose body fat is through diet.

Before anyone argues that their 3rd cousin twice removed once lost 50 lbs strictly from walking 30 minutes a day… realize that when you are academically inclined, you tend to disregard exceptions and follow the rule.

Sure a couple of lucky individuals can get lean just by exercising, but for the vast majority of individuals, making significant dietary changes is the only way to go.

2. Squats are the best exercise for body recomposition.

Learning to squat properly is the most important training investment you can make. Really bad squatting form leads to injuries, good form leads to spectacular gains.

Squats may be hard, but the world’s best bodies are built on a foundation of squats and lots of ‘em.

3. The bench press is the most overrated exercise there is.

Don’t get me wrong, I love bench press as much as the next guy. However, the bench press just isn’t that great for body composition. If you want to build a great chest, use dumbbells.

4. If you are training 3 of fewer times per week, steady state cardio will not improve your physique.

At low volumes of training, the intensity needs to be high. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

5. Sleep is the most underrated component of body transformation.

Once you get passed the age of 25, trying to build muscle or lose fat with poor sleep habits is as counterproductive as trying to empty the Atlantic ocean with a spoon.

Sleep is free, improve your sleep habits before you blow hundreds of dollars on training or nutrition supplements.

6. The food most responsible for weight loss struggles: bread.

Who doesn’t love bread? This is the problem. Almost without fail, removing bread from someone’s diet makes them feel and look better. Just my observation… but gluten is not a friendly protein for many individuals.

I was tempted to put high fructose corn syrup here, but that deserves its own special column.

7. If your personal trainer never has you squat, deadlift or perform chin-ups, fire them.

Excluding the olympic lifts, these three exercises give you the biggest bang for your buck. Whether you want to lose weight or gain muscle, these 3 lifts (or some variant thereof) need to be the cornerstones of your program.

8. Avoiding dietary cholesterol diet is idiotic if you are serious about training.

Our body makes many of our most anabolic hormones from cholesterol. Remove cholesterol from your diet and say goodbye to your gains.

9. Too much is made about the “speed” of absorption of various proteins in workout shakes.

Funny – millions of awesome physiques were built back in the day before designers workout shakes. I have nothing against supplementation and I am a firm believer in nutrient timing, as I feel it enhances results. However, the real focus needs to be on total nutrient quality and quantity, rather than how quickly your post-workout shake is absorbed.

Most of these studies that show markedly greater gains using fast absorbing proteins suffer from serious methodological flaws (like studying fasted individuals, using novice exercisers, etc). If you are serious about gaining muscle, your diet as a whole must provide the proper building blocks.

10. “Everything is ok in moderation” is terrible advice.

Does moderation mean once a day, once a week or once a month? Nowadays, moderation is just used to justify terrible food choices.

I wouldn’t recommend you drink a cup of cyanide even once.

11. If you insist on doing steady state cardio, opt for the step mill.

For best results, don’t hold onto the railings and decrease the resistance so you actually have to pump your legs at a good clip.

Just you against gravity. Good luck.

12. If you could only take 1 supplement, it should be vitamin D.

I’m going to call vitamin D even more important than omega 3 and protein powders. In the supplement world, this is as close to a magic pill as we’ve got.

Obviously, if you live in year-round sunshine, this advice does not apply.

13. The real magic pill: avoiding added sugars.

People are always looking for what they need to add to their diets to make them healthy. This is totally the wrong mindset. Eliminating added sugars is hands down the biggest thing you can do to improve your health.

14. Fruit and berries are health promoting.

The last statement applied to added sugars. Natural sugars IN THEIR WHOLE, UNPROCESSED FORM can be health promoting. Fruit still contains the fiber to slow absorption, as well as the complete vitamin and enzymatic complement required to properly process the sugar it contains.

Highly processed “natural” sugars like agave nectar or Demerara sugar are still junk.

15. Many vegetable oils are trash (including their by-products).

Speaking of junk, most bulk vegetable oils are more appropriate for your car than your body. A few of the oils of vegetable origin you should use are:

• Olive
• Coconut
• Walnut/hazelnut/almond/macademia
• Avocado
• Flax

16. Natural saturated fats do not cause heart disease.

The paranoia surrounding saturated fats is based on terrible science. Literally, it’s laughable. Saturated fats were an integral part of our diets for millenia, to think they somehow became deadly starting in the 1950s is crazy.

17. Milk is the ultimate double-edged sword food source.

Milk is highly anabolic. Used properly, it contributes to significant muscle gain. Used incorrectly, it just prompts the formation of body fat and a whole host of food allergies.

18. No one ever got fat eating vegetables.

It doesn’t matter how many you are currently eating, you should be eating more. Lots more.

19. Sprinting is the best activity for stripping body fat.

Ever seen a fat sprinter? Nuff said.

20. Green tea may be even better for you than water.

An essentially calorie-free beverage that increases metabolic rate and decreases your risk for various chronic disease? If you aren’t already drinking this stuff, you need to be. And trust me… the loose leaf tea tastes vastly superior to the stuff you get in tea bags. You can thank me later.

21. Red meat isn’t endangering our health, how we treat red meat sure is.

Let me get this straight, we feed cows corn, which they can’t digest. As a result, they get fat and sick and we give them antibiotics and hormones to keep them “healthy”. We then wind up ingesting unnatural amounts of fats and chemicals… and somehow it’s the cow that is the problem?

Does deep frying broccoli and smothering it with CheeseWhiz make broccoli fundamentally unhealthy?

Do yourself a favour, opt for grass fed meat or befriend a farmer who practices sustainable agriculture and livestock practices. Your health and the environment will thank you.

22. Even a bogus workout supplement will produce results for newbies.

The placebo effect coupled with even basic nutrient timing can be a very, very powerful thing.

23. Fish oil helps everyone.

The laundry list of positive health outcomes associated with omega-3 fats gets longer by the day. If you aren’t taking some, stop reading this article, run to the store and pick some up. I’ll wait.

24. We don’t appreciate or understand stress, and it’s killing us.

Nothing ruins physiques or your health faster than poorly regulated stress. There isn’t a trainer or nutritionist alive who can design an effective program for someone with poorly regulated stress levels.

A good rule of thumb is to learn to not sweat the small stuff… and it’s all small stuff.

25. The idea of “eating right for your type” is 100% correct.

However, the notion that it’s simply a product of your blood type or lectin content of food is not.

Correct typing involves looking at family history, hormone levels, activity levels, age, gender, medications…

26. Training the abdominals with repeated flexion (e.g. situps or crunches) makes no sense.

The primary function of the abdominals is stabilization of the torso and spine, as such abdominal training should always start and end with planks.

27. Everybody needs to stretch more.

Flexibility training isn’t glamorous, but it’s necessary. Think of it like going to work.

28. Distance running causes more injuries than all other forms of training combined.

Slight exaggeration, but it’s probably not far off the truth. This isn’t to say distance running is bad, because it’s not. It’s just that too many of us don’t have the body structure or running mechanics to run long distances. At the very least, humans weren’t designed to run on asphalt and pavement.

29. There is no one perfect diet or approach to training.

People who spend their time claiming to have invented the “perfect” approach to anything are morons. Inter-individual variability is too great for universal recommendations. Lots of dietary and exercise approaches work; the key is finding one that satisfies your moral, religious and health parameters and stick with it.

30. Success doesn’t happen by accident, planning is paramount.

The only people who experience success long term are those who are following a plan. Workouts… diet… life, you need to have an objective measure of whether you are progressing towards your goals. Otherwise, it’s too easy to find excuses for failing.

Where there you go: 30 lessons from the past 30 years and I feel like I was just getting started!

I guess I’ll have to hold some of them back until I hit my next milestone birthday. Of course, by that time my feelings on most of this list will probably have changed 180°. Such are the joys of nutrition science.

Till next time: train hard and eat clean!

Now you might be thinking, “Oh great, another obesity study that confirms what we already know; obese people eat too much and exercise too little.” However this study was different. Unlike the typical obesity study, which involve subjecting overweight individuals to a battery of tests and questionnaires in an attempt to identify common obesity traits, this particular study sought to identify what behaviours precipitate the development of obesity.

In order to do so, the researchers tracked hundreds of participants between the ages of 18-64, having a wide range of BMIs for a six-year time period. As you can imagine, this approach to research is pretty damn time consuming and expensive, which is why you rarely see studies like this. However, unlike the typical “study some people for 3 months, then make a grandiose claim about the mechanics of weight control” crowd, at the end of the day, these researchers can actually make educated statements about how long-term weight control might work in the real world.

So what did they find? Unsurprisingly, during the initial stratification, overweight individuals (BMI over 25 kg/m²) were found to exhibit 9 traits in common:

1. short sleep duration
2. high disinhibition eating behaviour
3. low dietary calcium intake
4. high susceptibility to hunger behaviour
5. nonparticipation in high-intensity physical exercise
6. high dietary restraint behaviour
7. nonconsumption of multivitamin and dietary supplements
8. high dietary lipid intake
9. high alcohol intake

These results are quite similar to other obesity studies as even a quick scan at this list reveals all our usual “fattening” culprits. However, the problem with this list is that it consists of only correlational data. In other words, it doesn’t tell us if any of those behaviours cause obesity. So the question remains, are fat people fat because they eat too much and don’t exercise enough… or do people eat too much and avoid exercise because they are fat? It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one if we hope to design actual effective interventions.

After tracking the individuals of various BMIs for six years, these researchers discovered that only 3 of those 9 traits actually predicted which formerly non-obese individuals became overweight over the course of the study. Can you guess which ones?

If you guessed nonparticipation in high-intensity physical activity, high dietary fat intake and high alcohol intake, you are 100% incorrect.

What?!?! A lack of exercise and overconsuming fatty foods and alcohol aren’t prime predictors of long-term weight gain? Nope, at least not according to these data.

Had you asked me this same question several years ago I, like you, would have identified those 3 areas as the most important predictors of becoming fat. I mean, that’s the message that had been drilled into my head over the course of countless hours of undergraduate kinesiology and nutrition courses. However, it turns out that consuming fatty foods, drinking too much and not exercising are among the weakest predictors of future weight gain!

Damn that $15,000 dollars I spent on undergraduate education learning that weight control is a simple matter of “calories in = calories out”… McGill, I’d like my money back.

It turns out that three traits that predicted weight gain were (ranked in order of importance):

1. short sleep duration (< 6 hours/day)
2. high disinhibition eating behaviour
3. low dietary calcium intake (< 600 mg/day)

And the first two were by far and away the strongest predictors.

If we stop and think about this for a second, a couple of conclusions come to mind. Firstly, none of our predictors for future weight gain have a direct caloric value. This is both surprising and troubling, since it runs counter to everything we like to preach about weight control.

Secondly, our strongest predictor, a lack of sleep, has nothing to do with our energy balance equation at all… at least not directly! Although sleep isn’t a huge calorie expending activity, we know that a lack of sleep has catastrophic effects on hormonal control (insulin, leptin, growth hormone, cortisol… etc).

How significant you ask? Well sleep is so critical to the maintenance of proper hormonal regulation that even a few nights of compromised sleep can result in blood sugar dysregulation comparable to what we’d see in a pre-diabetetic!² Clearly, missing out on sleep can cripple even the best designed diet and exercise program.

The ultimate in body composition control

Keep in mind that manipulating hormone levels is the surest way to manipulate body composition. Hormonal changes are why teenage boys can gain substantial muscle in the absence of physical training, why post-menopausal females accumulate belly fat “all-of-a-sudden” and why professional bodybuilders will take insulin, testosterone and growth hormone in the pursuit of imposing musculature and minimal body fat. Proper hormone regulation can make or break body transformation.

But excess fat gain is not strictly about hormonal dysregulation. Predictive traits number two and three are more reflective of a negative relationship with high-quality food. Obviously “high disinhibition eating behaviour” is indicative of a binge-eating pattern, which we can all agree is a recipe for failure.

Although we tend to think of all high-calorie foods as “bingeable”, I’ve yet to encounter any individual who gets an insatiable craving for olive oil or steel-cut oats. Clearly, binge eating is only possible in the presence of synthetic high-sugar, high fat foods that are both high in calories and low in nutrition.

And predictor #3, a low calcium intake, again suggests a lack of quality food. Although everyone knows that milk, like all dairy products, is an excellent source of calcium (300 mg in an 8 oz. glass), calcium is also found in abundance in foods like broccoli (150 mg in 2 cups), sardines (370 mg in a 3 1/2 oz. can) and almonds (100 mg in 1/4 cup). Possible food allergies aside, all of these foods can go a long way to not only helping you meet your calcium needs, but also to provide you with a host of other key body building nutrients.

Although this was just one study, I found it interesting that none of the commonly assumed major risk factors ie. eating fatty foods, drinking too much or a lack of exercise, showed much predictive power for future weight gain. Only time will tell whether this was simply an isolated finding, however, for the moment it makes us question if we’ve been demonizing the wrong causes.

Before I sign off, I don’t want you to interpret this article as giving you carte blanche to go drink your face off and never exercise again. Although they may not have been the strongest predictors of your chances of becoming obese, practicing caloric restraint and making exercise a part of your daily routine are still the key tools in your efforts to build a killer physique.

Rather, this article was written to underscore the need to expand our definition of the causal factors of obesity and highlight the need for updated approaches to dealing with excess body fat. Only once we stop pretending the solution is simple, will the answers to what needs to be done become apparent.

Till next time, train hard and eat clean.

1. Chaput et al. (2009. Risk Factors for Adult Overweight and Obesity in the Quebec Family Study: Have We Been Barking Up the Wrong Tree? Obesity, 17, 1964–1970.
2. Spiegel et al. (1999). Impact of sleep debt on metabolic and endocrine function, Lancet, 354, 1435-1439.