Tag Archives: nutrition

Abdominal Treatment

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Take Heed, the Iron Guru speaks:

“Do no more sets and reps than you would on any other muscle group, etc. Add weight by holding a plate behind your head. Let’s take first things first, get rid of all the fat you can before you start your abdominal program. Otherwise, you will be disappointed because abdominal exercises do not reduce fat. Only fast training where heart and lungs are involved will have any effect on your metabolic rate. Another aspect, of which no one is aware, is that abdominal work should never be done by a beginner in weight training. Any abdominal exercises involve the Solar Plexus. This area sometimes known as the “second brain”. Here can be found a great network of nerves and blood vessels that join and congregate. Abdominal work is such a shock to the nervous system that I could take any undeveloped beginner in my gym and add abdominal work and it would stop all muscular gains. Even stars like Larry Scott and Don Howorth rarely work their abdominals because of the shock to the arms which they are so proud of.

It should be understood that full sit-ups and leg raises are not abdominal exercises. These movements work the Psoas Major and Psoas Minor group. The Quadratius Lumborum are also utilized. The Psoas Muscles connect the upper femur bones of the leg to the lower lumbar region of the spine. This large muscle pulls the upper body to a sitting position, or pulls the legs up, as in the leg raise. You are also employing the Sartorius in the leg raise. The stomach muscles of Rectus Abdominus attach to the pelvic basin and the junction of these points. To illustrate, lie flat on your back, roll your shoulders and head foreword. At the same time raise your pelvis upwards and back towards your chest. This movement is basically the only function of the abdominals. To isolate the Psoas Muscles so that you don’t inadvertently pull with them, spread your knees and pull your heels towards your buttocks. Now, in this frog position place your hands behind your neck and perform 1/4 sit-ups. Cramp the rectus at the top of the movement by performing one burn.”

– Vince Gironda

Slow Not Fast

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For those of you who watch that scale day by day just aching to see the number reduce in size… here is a little reality check for you. Let me first state that this article is primarily for those people who are already at or near a healthy bodyfat level for their age and height. Fat reduction for people who are really obese is very different than the rest of us.

Fat loss is a slow, not fast process. Let me assure you that the fat on your body is resistant to burn off and subject to come back very easily at the slightest sign of weakness. In simple terms, a single pound of fat accounts for 3500 calories consumed above what your body needed for other functions. So if you see that scale jump 2 pounds in one day and you think it was all fat then that would require a calorie deficit of 7000 calories for the previous day. This means that if you ate 2000 calories the previous day then you would have had to do 9000 calories of activity to account for the deficit. Professional athletes who train all the time don’t burn this many calories. The only thing in your body that can so drastically change in weight and volume in such short periods of time is water. To illustrate what I’m talking about, weigh yourself first thing in the morning and then at various times throughout the day. You will soon notice that the scale change can easily jump around plus or minus 3-5 pounds. I’ve had mine jump as much as 8 pounds in a single day.

So remember the next time you jump on that scale that your body is made up of many different things, most of which is water, and much less of which is fat. This is the reason that body fat specific measurements are taken by professional trainers to rely on progress rather than the scale. The scale is a very crude and unreliable instrument for measuring small incremental changes in body composition. I recommend weighing yourself no more than once per week.

Think Yourself Skinny?

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OK so here is the latest technique to losing weight. Are you ready? It’s called habituation. The idea is that by visualizing yourself eating a food you really enjoy eating, you stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain enough so that when the time comes to actually eat the food you will eat less of it and be satisfied. Simple, right?

*beating head against keyboard*

The problem I have with habituation isn’t whether it works or not, but rather that weight loss seems to be the goal of this technique rather than building a strong, lean, healthy body by eating healthy, nutrient dense foods. Instead we are trying to play tricks on our heads by visualizing eating junk food so that when we actually eat junk food we don’t eat as much of it and lose weight. How many people do you know who’ve gotten fat from overeating healthy food? I certainly have never heard of such a person. The really great thing about eating healthy, nutrient rich, un-processed foods is that they usually taste just good enough to keep us interested and satisfied but not so much that we binge on them. Perfect.  Why mess with this successful formula?

I’m going to keep saying this in hopes that I may actually reach at least 1 or 2 people. There are no shortcuts. Having a healthy, strong, sexy looking and sexy feeling body requires hard work, proper nutrition and adequate sleep. Weight loss is not the goal. HEALTHY BODY RECOMPOSITION is the goal. This means maximizing muscle activity and allowing fat stores to adjust to proper, healthy levels. Stop looking for shortcuts unless you want to keep failing. Educate yourself! The information is out there if you pay attention and know where to look. LEARN about your body. MOVE your body. The panacea is simple and millions of people are already engaged in it – it’s called EXERCISE! DO IT. LIVE IT. LOVE IT.

Breaking Bread

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How many times have you heard that if you buy bread, pasta, or any kind of baked goods made from wheat you should buy whole wheat or whole grain varieties? Of course you have and of course you should. But there is something else I bet you haven’t heard. With bread and other baked goods made from flower you are essentially getting the same glycemic index effect that you would get with white bread. This means it has the same effects on spiking your insulin as white bread or other sugar laden foods without much in the way of nutrients. This is because the flower, even whole wheat flower is still pulverized and turned into powder making it pass through the system much faster and hitting the blood stream.

For most people this won’t be a big deal if you have a healthy balanced fiber and nutrient rich diet but if you are insulin sensitive or insulin resistant then this could be a big deal.

There is a silver lining to this cloud. If you look around you can find bread products that aren’t made from flour. Ezekial bread is one such product. Here in the northwest there is a fantastic bread maker named “Dave’s Bread” that sells a product called “Good Seed Bread“. This bread is made from sprouted wheat. No flour. It may be hard to find products in your area, but if you look hard enough you might just be able to find something that doesn’t reduce the whole wheat kernel to flower instead sprouts the wheat retaining it’s low glycemic index properties.

Don’t bet the Ranch

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Ya know I’m getting tired of all the misinformation being circulated about food and it’s time to take a look at one such bit of information. Ranch Dressing. I love Ranch dressing. I love it on sandwiches, salads and hamburgers. I love to dip vegetables in it and use it on pizzas. I also hear all the time from so-called nutrition experts and doctors to stay away from the creamy dressings for your salads and use an olive oil/vinagrette dressing instead. So I decided to take a closer look at both of these to see what is really going on nutrition-wise:

Lets compare 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil with 1 tablespoon of regular Lighthouse Ranch dressing.

The olive oil has 120 calories and the Ranch dressing has 60 calories. Interesting. Each of them is made up from primarily fat calories with olive oil being 100% and the Ranch about 90%. The other 10% are sugar sources from dairy and maltodextrin. So lets take a closer look at the fats in these 2 products since we know that olive oil is almost all the ‘good’ fat we always hear so much about. The Ranch dressing must be mostly saturated fat right? WRONG.

1 tablespoon of Ranch has 6 grams of fat, and only 0.5 of that is saturated fat. 1 tablespoon of the olive oil has 14 grams of fat, 2 of which are saturated. That means 14% of the olive oil is saturated fat and 8% of the fat in the Ranch is saturated. Neither has any trans fat by the way.

So in the end I can put double the amount of Ranch dressing on my salad as I can olive oil and still get less saturated fat and about equal the number of calories. If I put 4 tablespoons of Ranch dressing on my salad I’m also getting 4 grams of carbs which equals 16 calories. WOW. I think my heart is going to explode with all this unhealthy stuff going through my system.

Just in case Lighthouse isn’t reflective of standard common Ranch dressings on the market I decided to check the most common brand I could determine which was Hidden Valley Ranch. The numbers are very similar but the Hidden Valley has about 17% of its fat being saturated which is only slightly higher than olive oil but still nowhere near the runaway health hazard that the media and experts would have us believe.