Optimise your Health

Check out this superb infographic at Dan's Plan

Two more on intermittent fasting

Nothing much to this post, but I wanted to point to a couple of recent posts on Intermittent Fasting.

First off a post from Adelfo Cerame where he describes his diet approach.  

He talks about IF, refeeds and how he cycles his calories and macros.  Some really useful material.

Then there was a post today from John Briffa where he analysis a new study on eating frequency.

The study was just published and being a PLoS one it is all available for free  -

Effects of Meal Frequency on Metabolic Profiles and Substrate Partitioning in Lean Healthy Males

Conclusion
The higher rise and subsequently fall of insulin in the Low Frequency  diet did not lead to a higher fat oxidation as hypothesized. The LFr diet decreased glucose levels throughout the day (AUC) indicating glycemic improvements. RMR and appetite control increased in the LFr diet, which can be relevant for body weight control on the long term.

It is worth reading the whole study because the results are quite interesting.   Very frequent eating  - every hour - messed with blood sugar and appetite control.  There was some indication though that there might be an advantage to more frequent protein ingestion to promote muscle protein synthesis, but it was not clear.

More Creatine Research

Examine.com have refreshed their section on Creatine.  I've pointed to the site before and the depth of information that they have.  They have now done a major redesign though and it is easier to use.

Definitely worth reading through if you are interested in this supplement.

The Mayo regimen

A diet hard but effective

The Mayo diet, named after its inventor, is a very strict diet, short-term (2 weeks) and can lose up to 8 pounds the first week! With the Mayo regimen, which is kind of low calorie , sugar and starches are totally forbidden, ditto for soft drinks or flavored. The only drinks permitted are coffee and tea (without sugar!) And above the water it is advisable to drink at least 1.5 liters per day.

should not exceed 1000 calories per day, and for this should ban foods high in fat and carbohydrates, including fruit that should be consumed in small quantities.

receipts Mayo regimen consist of grapefruit, toast (no butter or jam) for breakfast, and eggs, meat and fish for lunch and dinner.

The major drawback is that the Mayo regimen causes a real strain because of reduced intake calcium and vitamins. It is for this reason that the Mayo regimen should not last more than 2 weeks.

Exercise makes you smarter

From OnlineCollegeCourses.com  

Spreading to Squat

Squats are actually a difficult move to do properly and safely.  In fact for safety's sake I'd have most people focus on wall sit initially at least.  The squat remains an important skill however and I like the Gray Cook idea of practicing the squat - learning and maintaining this useful movement pattern - while training the deadlift (although the deadlift itself is not as easy as it looks either!)

Anyway, I thought this video was good with a simple cue about how to squat.  The squat is not a hip hinge.  Rather you need to do what Colin Gordon told me to do - squat between your legs.  We think squatting is about sitting.....but it is not.

The low calorie diet

Consume fewer calories to lose weight

The low calorie diet is not the fact of calories but fail to consume less fat. Foods with high fat and high calorie content are replaced by foods rich in carbohydrates and fiber that will reduce the notion of hunger while greatly reducing energy intake.

A low calorie diet should preferably be done with a doctor (mandatory if you want to lose 5 kilos), without exaggeration and over a short period.

The main advantage is that it allows low calorie diet to lose weight gradually while maintaining a healthy and balanced diet.

The duration of the low calorie diet is the number of pounds to lose and the rigor with which the plan was followed.

After the regime was a bit harsh side menus, the resumption of normal food should be gradually and eating habits are well preserved.

This will avoid the yo-yo effect and weight regain after which characterizes the regime.

Call the POLICE when you get injured?

Again via Bret Contreras I came across this article.  We used to get told to RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation).  Well now that is Old School – now it’s POLICE - Protection, Optimal loading, Ice, Compression, Elevation.

RICE needs updating.....

Take a walk to cure the high fat meal?

I am no biochemist so will not analyse this study, but I found the impact of exercise on the body in the context of a high fat meal quite interesting.

Maybe a lot of the fuss about fatty food at one level is because we as a population in general are so inactive.

If you think high blood triglycerides as a consequence of a fatty meal are a bad thing, then just take a walk!

Combined Light Exercise after Meal Intake Suppresses Postprandial Serum Triglyceride.

The effect of exercise performed on the day of meal intake on postprandial triglyceride concentration, which is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease, is unclear. The present study investigated the effects of combined low-intensity exercise before and after a high-fat meal on serum triglyceride concentrations.

METHODS:Ten healthy young subjects (4 men and 6 women) consumed a relatively high-fat diet (fat energy ratio: men 37.8%; women 39.1%). In the exercise trials, subjects performed brisk walking (2.0 km) following light resistance exercise, either 60 min before or after meal intake. Blood samples were collected prior to, and 2, 4, and 6 h after meal intake.
RESULTS:Exercise resulted in a reduction in the transient elevation in serum triglyceride concentration observed 2 h following meal intake in the post-meal trial (131 ± 67 mg/dL) when compared with the sedentary trial (172 ± 71 mg/dL; 95% CI = 7.2-79.4, d = -1.00). This was also observed in the pre-meal trial, although the effect was less pronounced (148 ± 66 mg/dL; 95% CI = -9.0-59.0, d = -0.57). The triglyceride concentrations in the VLDL, LDL, and HDL fractions, but not the chylomicron fraction, were also decreased 2 h after meal intake in both exercise trials, while the integrated triglyceride values following meal intake showed a greater decrease when exercise was performed after meal intake (d = -1.23) than before (d = -0.47). The concentration of serum growth hormone was drastically increased after exercise in both trials.
CONCLUSION:Low-intensity exercise on the day of meal intake, particular after intake, can prevent the elevation of postprandial triglyceride concentration in healthy young subjects.

Priorities

I've been away from the blog for a few days - I had a week off work and my Mum was visiting so it was all about looking after her and doing things together.   We are both, and as a family, still grieving the loss of my Dad, more so her after 55 years of marriage.  Again that loss, death puts so much in perspective.

Usain Bolt vs Gravity

I saw this on Bret Contreras blog and it is fascinating

Train smart, and hard and then recover.

The title of this post is a quote from a post on James Fisher's blog where he is reporting on a recent article that he has had published:

A randomized trial to consider the effect of Romanian deadlift exercise on the development of lumbar extension strength

There are some very interesting implications to the study:

• Deadlifts are not a lower back exercise....but strengthening the lower back can improve the deadlift
• Once a week training is enough for most major muscle groups
• If you want a stronger lumbar extension....then train lumbar extension, not deadlifts

Damien Walters is back

Great Quotes from Gray Cook

Bret Contreras has posted a get set of quotes from Gray Cook.  There is lots in here to chew over:

50 Shades of Gray Cook

When someone’s back hurts they don’t want to blame their lifestyle, fitness level, or daily patterns.  Instead, they want to blame their back pain on starting the lawn mower last week, which, in reality, is probably just the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Human beings live under the philosophy of, “I have a snowball and I have to throw it at someone.”  No one wants to take responsibility.

Remember that muscles do what they are told. If they are doing something you don’t like, tell them to do it differently: communicate to the muscle through repetition of posture and movement. 

While some serious injuries are unavoidable and need surgical repair, we should do everything possible to build an injury buffer zone by training healthy movement. It is always better to bend than break—and strong agile bodies bend better than weak, stiff bodies. 

Approaching a Ripped Body?

Background

This post is more personal than most of those that go up here.  I wanted to give an account of my diet over the last 6 months or so and how I've made an attempt, with some help, to achieve what I'd always struggled to attain in the past - visible abs.  I'll talk about the diet, the training and the coaching.

I've been training with weights since I was 15 initially obsessed with bodybuilding, reading voraciously and studying all aspects of diet and exercise with the aim of getting big and ripped.  My body was never built for that though - tall and skinny no matter how hard I tried.  I was a bit disillusioned with the whole thing as my own efforts and dedication got no where while I saw people with less effort grow like weeds due to superior genes or often steroids which in the gyms of the 1980s and 90s were pretty common.

I kept training, encouraged by Stuart McRobert's Hardgainer magazine just to focus on getting stronger on basic exercises and eating lots of food.  It worked to an extent.  I hit 17 stone at one point, but I was fat.  Getting a 38" waist was not part of the plan!  Also while my training was pretty sound I picked up some injuries, particularly a dodgy lower back.

Gradually my focus changed - when I was about 30 I started to slim down.  I had started to do more hillwalking and was just not fit enough.  So I tightened my diet - basically adopting Clarence Bass diet, lots of fibre, veggies and fruit, fairly low protein and lower fat.  I was jogging too and did a few 10k races.  Via Clarence Bass I also learned about interval training and started doing lots of sprints.  It all worked too and I came down to about 13 stone.  I think I lost a bit of muscle in the process too however I think.  Then came paleo....

Diet

Hardgainer magazine had featured a series on diet by Stephen Weadon - a diabetic who had controlled his condition through a low carb diet.  He also pointed towards Nourishing Traditions - the Weston  A Price cookbook.  The internet was just coming into its own now around 2000 and so I started searching about this new information.  Also through Clarence Bass I read of Art DeVany  and so was exposed to evolutionary fitness and paleo.  That was it then for the next 10 years or so.  Fuelled by the internet I was off and running into this paleo stuff. If you have followed this blog for long you will have noticed that it for a long time had a low carb / high fat slant.  The blog started back when there were fewer blogs and I was linked to by lots of low carb / paleo leading lights.

My diet was low carb.  I came totally off wheat - and so I remain I can't cope with it any more.  But dairy was different!  Following Peter I gorged on double cream and lots of butter.  I kept blogging  -  all this was ever meant to be was a record of things that I found interesting, a set of bookmarks if you like, but people started to like it and think I know what I was talking about.  Even Jimmy Moore asked me to do an interview but I refused, having nothing to say.

So there I remained, relatively happy but also quite evangelistic about my low carb high fat "paleo" fasting template diet.  But something was up.  (This is just thinking about diet by the way.  On the training front I also got exposed to and distracted by many crazes....kettlebells, functional training, Pavel etc).  Something was up - I was still a bit fat....and getting fatter.

Work had become stressful too as I got promoted beyond what felt comfortable and lots of days started to end with glasses of wine to relax.  Gradually I came round to the idea that carbs were not the demonic foods that I had thought.  Carbsane, Stephan and others began to point out what I should have know for a long time from my earlier gurus (McDonald and Bass) that calories count more than carbs.  one of the things that tipped me was something that I read from Don - the idea that we produce something called amylase an enzyme that is there to digest starch.  I remembered that from school.  We are built to eat starch.

Ok I understand that gluten is a problem, but I could no longer reject spuds.  Or indeed rice as I started to read material from Paul Jaminet.  Somehow the basic low carb high fat template was not making so much sense.

Then there was my gut.  I was starting to get fat.  On holiday in Spain in 2010 I saw my belly lying on the bed I decided that it was time to do something about it.  I was over 13 stone and getting fatter, despite this perfect fatty low carb diet.  Ok the wine had a role, but not a big one. So it all got tightened up.  But still it didn't get me ripped....

The Catalyst

So that took me to earlier this year.  I was eating real food to satiety basically:  breakfast of eggs, bacon and veggies.  Lunch of  baked potato and meat.  Dinner of meat and rice.

Then I read a blog post from Jeff Erno.  I'd followed Jeff for a few years.  He'd been on a similar journey - HIT/Body by Science training and a paleo diet.  He explained how he had started to seriously track his diet on Leangains principles.  Now a bit of history here.  I'd been following Martin Berkhan's writings since the beginning and had actually become a client back in 2008.....but I had not followed the diet because it was not paleo enough for me......I had not understood so much!

In a superb blog post Jeff explained how he had come to see how important calories were and how the indiscriminate eating of fat was throwing him off track.  I was inspired to try this myself and began to record my diet.  I worked out what I should be eating in terms of protein, carbs and fat - using Lyle's articles - and used MyfitnessPal to track my intake.  There was no fasting at this point, just 3 meals a day tracked on my iPhone.

And it started to work.  I was leaning out.  But I wanted more

A Coach

I started thinking about the idea of a diet coach.  I'd read a lot about the importance of a coach - it may be placebo, but if you believe in what a coach tells you then you are more likely to succeed.  Jeff had pointed to the site Ripped Body and as I read through that site I was more and more impressed with the approach of Andy Morgan, the young guy working through the site.  He offered consultancy and so I decided to take the plunge and take him on as a coach.

Here is what I commented on his site after the consultancy was over - 3 months of dieting.

“I chose to work with Andy because I decided that I wanted a coach.  At 44 I had started training at 15 and had kept studying the subjects of exercise and diet ever since.  With my frame and genetics I was never going to be Mr Olympia and my focus had been on keeping fit for my hobby of hillwalking in the Scottish mountains.  I’d also picked up a few injuries over the years via squats and deadlifts so had been limiting myself to bodyweight moves in recent years. 

I still had a desire to be leaner though, just to get my abs.  No matter what I’d done in the past I’d never quite got there.  Working with Andy gave me a very simple and straightforward template for my diet.  Becoming a client also gave me the motivation to stick to the plan and simply to put my trust in what he told me.  To be honest I knew all this stuff already, but putting into place this athlete / coach relationship meant that I did not have to worry about what I was doing, whether it was right or wrong.  It was his responsibility so I just stuck to it and didn’t mess about swapping from one approach to another.  Having a coach took the stress away – I just had to apply the guidelines. Andy’s take on this way of dieting is so flexible that it becomes easy to apply. Of course you still need to do the work, apply the discipline, but this is not too tough.  During the 3 months of the consultancy I lost my Dad and that knocked me off course in some ways, but it was easy to get back on track with the flexible approach that Andy recommends. 

Looking back I now have what I have never before possessed  - some abs.  But I also gained something more important: an understanding of the process and the tools that have got me here. I know where to go next, what to do to get leaner or to add some bulk.  All this information is out there – on the interwebs or in Lyle McDonald’s or Alan Aragon’s writing – but believe me it becomes real and simple when you commit to it and become a client. If you are considering taking that step I would certainly encourage you to do so.”

That was the key idea - accountability.  I could have worked out the diet for myself, but paying money for his advice made me stick to it.

The diet was pretty straightforward.  Intermittent Fasting - there is a lot about that on my blog if you look for it! - each day, so I basically skipped breakfast.  Then calorie and carb cycling.  Rest days were lower calorie, low carb, high protein and moderate fat.  Training days were high carb, high protein and low fat.

I ended up training once a week with weights on a Wednesday and then treating both weekend days as training days when I was out in the hills for walks.

Progress

So how did it go?  Everything was tracked  in terms of weight and measurements each week and I also got into the habit of taking photos after my gym sessions - hoping no one walked into the changing rooms as I was taking photos in the mirror!

I was on a recomposition diet and it worked.  My weight stayed the same, maybe lowing a couple of pounds, but I leaned out my waist coming down a few inches.

 OK, I am not ripped but I am leaner than I have ever been in my life and I finally think I understand something about diet and losing fat using s simple approach.  Food quality matters - I know that from my paleo years - but quantity of food matters too.  Calories count and it is far too easy to squander calories on fat rather than carbs or protein.

Also, somewhere in here my Dad died and for a few weeks nothing mattered, least of all diet.

Anyway, here are the photos.

Before:

This was in February.  I was smooth!  You might not have even known that I trained much.

This is from April just when I started to work with Andy.  I'd tightened up a bit but still had a way to go.

After

So these are the after shots.  Still some way to go, but I am getting somewhere now and will continue to  progress:

There is a vein in my oblique....

getting leaner

Starting to add some muscle?

Abs and obliques coming in

Abs ....and some loose skin too

Abs...and legs but I was never Tom Platz

So I am getting somewhere.  OK, I am not ripped to shreds yet, but I have added some muscle and stripped off a bit of fat.  It was not paleo that did it but just tracking my calories a bit.  With the IF / Leangains approach it was also pretty easy with big meals especially on training days.  There is not such thing as feeling deprived.

There is still a way to go to get to where Clarence Bass was at my age:

But it is something to aim for and I know how to get there now!

Lessons

Having a coach helps - there is much value in the coach / athlete relationship.  It removes stress if you simply put trust in a coach and make yourself accountable.  It forces you to stick to the plan which in itself is most of the battle.  Andy at Ripped Body was a good choice with a good simple approach.

Calories matter - ultimately you lose fat when you are in a calorie deficit.  That has to happen over the piece to make a difference.

Macronutrients matter - protein is satiating.  Carbs and fat give you energy.  Get lots of protein - maybe 1g per lb of bodyweight and then enough carbs and fat.  Carbs are not poison but are essential for function.  They are natural.  Wheat is a problem for me and for many but do not let that scare you away from tubers or rice.

Patience - at 44 I can still improve.  It just takes time and persistence.

Training

Just to mention training, I basically trained once a week on a full body HIT style routine - as in my book Hillfit - using mainly calisthenics / bodyweight exercises:  wall sit, pushups, chins, bridges etc.  My training style is very much John Little / Doug McGuff inspired.   I would love to deadlift and squat heavy but I've hurt myself too often.  Weekends usually featured a walk or run in the mountains and sometimes some practice of deadlift form to work on my hip hinge just for the movement skill.

An injury preventing warm up

I came across this today - a warm up routine for footballers as endorsed by FIFA - the 11+

The focus is on injury prevention through basic strength work mainly for the core.  There is nothing new here - planks, squats, leg curls - but it is good stuff.  Also interesting to see that they specifically exclude stretching:

Research has shown that static stretching exercises have a negative influence on muscle performance, and results on the preventive effect of dynamic stretching are inconclusive. Stretching exercises are not recommended as part of a warm-up programme, but can be performed at the end of the training session.

The manual is available on the website and it is worth studying.

Anyway, what actually brought this to my attention was when this abstract popped up in my scanning of the journals:  (the whole paper is available)

Background The incidence rate of soccer injuries is among the highest in sports, particularly for adult male soccer players.
Purpose To investigate the effect of the ‘The11’ injury prevention programme on injury incidence and injury severity in adult male amateur soccer players.
Study design Cluster-randomised controlled trial.
Methods Teams from two high-level amateur soccer competitions were randomly assigned to an intervention (n=11 teams, 223 players) or control group (n=12 teams, 233 players). The intervention group was instructed to perform The11 in each practice session during one soccer season. The11 focuses on core stability, eccentric training of thigh muscles, proprioceptive training, dynamic stabilisation and plyometrics with straight leg alignment. All participants of the control group continued their practice sessions as usual.
Results In total, 427 injuries were recorded, affecting 274 of 456 players (60.1%). Compliance with the intervention programme was good (team compliance=73%, player compliance=71%). Contrary to the hypothesis, injury incidences were almost equal between the two study groups: 9.6 per 1000 sports hours (8.4–11.0) for the intervention group and 9.7 (8.5–11.1) for the control group. No significant differences were found in injury severity, but a significant difference was observed in the location of the injuries: players in the intervention group sustained significantly less knee injuries.
Conclusions This study did not find significant differences in the overall injury incidence or injury severity between the intervention and control group of adult male soccer players. More research is recommended, focusing on injury aetiology and risk factors in adult male amateur soccer players.

So the 11 - a similar warm up to the 11+ - in practice didn't actually make much difference to injury rates!

Mo Farah - strength training

With the Olympics over it is interesting to look back on some of the performances and their background.  Mo Farah has become a bit of a hero - he comes across as a nice guy and such an amazing athlete.

There has been some good commentary about Farah and how Salazar as his coach got him set up to win gold.  A key thing was strength training:

Salazar said: ‘When Mo came to me 18 months ago, he was a skinny distance runner with a great engine but no upper body. At the end of races, he would tire and his head would bob around and his arms would flail.
‘He was the weakest athlete I’d ever trained — in terms of core strength and being able to do push-ups, sit-ups and single-leg squats. He was a 90lb weakling.
‘The No 1 thing that has helped Mo is not the 110 miles a week he puts in on the road, but the seven hours a fortnight in the gym.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-2187860/Mo-Farah-weakest-athlete-Ive-seen-says-coach-Alberto-Salazar.html#ixzz23Y5ShysW

As ever it is about getting stronger and what that can do for your sport - your posture, gait, endurance....

Matt Metzgar on how to lose weight

I just wanted to point you to a great new post from Matt -

How To Lose Weight

This page is designed to show a simple and sustainable way to lose weight.  I have systematically experimented with each of the variables over several months, and I believe that this plan can work for many people.

He presents some very simple tactics to reboot your body;  what I find particularly exciting is his focus on sleep.  I'd also note that all of his tools need to go together.  Eating only when really hungry and stopping when full is so much easier when you are sleeping well and eating a real food diet.

Lemon Diet

Lemon diet is best known for losing weight fast. In just two weeks you can loss weight 10 pounds. How much ideal weight you lose depends solely on your metabolism and how to follow directions the child.

I ask myself how it is possible that the effect of lemon can boost weight loss in so short a time? The answer is simple, lemon dissolves grease and anticipate the accumulation of new fat. In addition allay stomach acid and therefore reduces the feeling of hunger.

The concentration of hydrochloric acid in the stomach is higher than that of the lemon, it balance a part of the potassium that is found in lemons. Potassium is very important to change the water in the body as well as to modify the nutrients from the blood into cells. The lemons are antioxidants that rejuvenate man tissue. In addition, metabolism, and by the way wins spring fatigue. Lemon is a really special foods, useful in the fight against bad cholesterol and fats that are deposited in the vessels. In short is beneficial for our line but is very important for our health.

In case you are not using diet, you should make in your diet every day put four lemons to speed up your immune system, strengthening the body and will affect the way your line. When this child is typically combined with lemon proteins thus come to lose weight that is fat, not muscle mass.

This diet was invented primarily to detoxify the body and is based on maple syrup and lemon extract with palm trees. Sirum consumed in the stages of starvation, which will give the body the necessary vitamins, proteins and minerals. It is because this is a diet for people who are completely healthy, and before should consult a physician.

Interestingly, the lemon has more sugar than strawberries. Full of vitamin C and citric acid. Also rich in essential oils such as limousine, which upheaval cholesterol synthesis. The bark contains a sugar called policosanol which helps to burn fat. Lemon stimulates circulation, which has a positive effect on cellulite and improves skin complexion and appearance. The basis of the second part of this child is normal diet with less fat and less quantity. Just depends on how much you will be based on a starvation diet by eating this syrup, Such principle you need to keep only 5 days, the weekend or just one day, so repeat each week. In the second part you will use all the protein foods group so that you will not to feel hungry.

The best effect will be achieved in many diet hold for the time change of seasons. Do you know why? Because the organism is then at the stage of awakening and activation and will be grateful for the cleansing of toxins and will cooperate with you.

Where I was yesterday

I've said it before, but all this fitness stuff is only worth it if it allows you to get out and do things, to experience this world.  This is where I was yesterday:

BBC discovers intermittent fasting....

Well they've done stuff on HIIT training and an expose of why fancy shoes and sports supplements are generally a waste of money....now they discover intermittent fasting!   I think the producers must be scanning the blogs to find out what the cool kids are into.

The power of intermittent fasting

Scientists are uncovering evidence that short periods of fasting, if properly controlled, could achieve a number of health benefits, as well as potentially helping the overweight, as Michael Mosley discovered.

Inspiring?

yeah maybe.....



I was the fat kid at school.  I remember doing the 1500m in a school sports day and coming dead last by a long way, each of those laps taking forever.

Lets be realistic though.  It is diet that will get rid of this kid's fat gut.  Activity is great and he should be out there moving....but diet is a lot more efficient.

Also Nike will have nothing to do with his greatness.  If he loses weight and gets fit then that will be fantastic.  But shoes or kit will not do it.  His diet and activity will.

I will quote Mike from Facebook

Weight loss is 85%+ nutrition, exercise does have a complimentary role. Time and time again exercise (esp just cardio) promoted as a solution to weight loss yields little long term results. 

Same can be said for fad diet, as people stop at some point. 

IMO kids need to learn (and actually enjoy) eating more real foods as a sustainable solution (as they will tend to eat less overall calories as well). Perhaps it needs to start at home with more cooked meals, or involving kids in cooking. 

Kids should also be told what my mom told me as a kid when I got home from school "Just go outside and play". Being active doing something can also take away from just mindless eating tendencies.  

However promoting cardio (higher HR) based exercise as the solution without attention to diet is temporary results at best...weight gain/yo-yo for years to come most likely...and chronic stress issues to hormones at worst. 

Kids should be "active"...not in "running" as cardio, but just going out to play. We can all just go be active with activities that are "fun"...or "go play". 

This comes from a person who on occasion does like to go for a trail run/hike or mountain bike ride (but it's more just to enjoy being in nature than worrying about calories burned). No HR monitors and I just go a pace I enjoy.  

Nike could have easily just encouraged kids to go be active in a playground or kicking a ball around...not push them towards endurance running as a solution...and for that reason, I disagree (that's the nice way of putting it).

Yes, I used to be the fat kid.  But it was not jogging that got me where I am today:

That hunter/gatherer diet / activity study...not what it seemed

There was a lot of reporting in the last week about a study which many interpreted as saying that because it looked like a certain hunter gatherer population had activity levels similar to those of modern people then the modern obesity epidemic must be all about diet....

Dr Briffa certainly interpreted it that way - this evidence points away from differences in activity and energy expenditure as being a major explanation for why hunter-gatherer populations tend to be much lighter than those living a more Westernised existence - as did the Daily Mail.

It is not as straight forward as that of course....it never is.  Health Uncut point out three flaws in the paper, "sealing its place in the realm of fiction"

1)    The study was a population of only 30 people, and of these 17 were women, who had NO statistically significant increase in physical activity levels versus Western women. That’s right in a study comparing the effects of high versus low activity levels of two populations; there was no actual difference in the levels for over half the group. Makes it interesting to wonder how they could expect to find a difference.
2)    The average BMI of the Western population was just over 25, so not an obese population, and depending on fat distribution, not an ‘overweight population’ either. Basically, we are comparing apple brands, and asking which makes the tastiest orange juice.
3)    Lastly, the study does not describe the calorie intake of the Hunter Gatherers. What we do see is a small population bordering on underweight status. So most likely they have low caloric intake. And, what does low caloric intake i.e. dieting do, it lowers total energy expenditure (hence the flaw in dieting). So are we surprised with these inconsequential findings?

As we describe in The Health Delusion, such is the age of sloth we live in, that in order to match our 1950s counterparts when it comes to physical activity, the average person would need to run a marathon each week.
In a world where there are already too few hours in the day, the last thing we want to hear is that we need to set aside more time to being more active, when we could actually free up time by just skipping a meal. And, so the market is open to all the diet gurus’ to pander to what interests us, instead of what is in our interest. But nature is a strict mother of principal, and does not cave in to our whimsies, whinging and tantrums to get what we want on our own terms. When you sooner or later join the 99% of people who find out dieting is ineffective for weight loss ask yourself this; if you don’t have time to be physically active now, how will you make the time for all that disease and illness in later life? 

The NHS Choices website also has a good analysis of the study:

Independent of its role in weight management, physical activity is also important to keep the heart healthy and to promote mental wellbeing. 

It should be noted that the study had some limitations:

• its assessment of energy expenditure and other factors was based on only 30 Hadza adults

• its assessment was also short term, carried out over an 11-day period

• the data it used for comparison of the Hadza with Western and other populations was taken from several different sources, including some small studies of individuals (one such study included just 68 adults)

As the authors point out, this study only measured energy expenditure between different populations. This study does not examine the effects of changing levels of physical activity on obesity and did not report the long-term dietary patterns or calorie intakes of the people studied. It therefore cannot answer the question of which is more important, a calorie-dense diet or lack of physical activity as a cause of obesity. 

It does not address the important public health question of how best to combat rising overweight and obesity levels 

It is well recognised that weight loss may be difficult to achieve and even more difficult to maintain. Research on the most effective way to address this issue is urgently needed

Another interval study

Just for completeness, I thought I'd point to this one:

Two Minutes of Sprint-Interval Exercise Elicits 24-hr Oxygen Consumption Similar to That of 30 min of Continuous Endurance Exercise

Eight male students did either 30 minutes of endurance exercise or two-minutes of sprint intervals (it is not clear from the abstract what this was), three times a week for six weeks. 

Their oxygen consumption (VO₂) during and after 24 hours of exercise was measured and while it was 150 percent higher during endurance exercise than during the sprinting intervals, after 24 hours the overall amount of oxygen consumed between athletes was nearly identical.

There is a lot of debate about EPOC and what it means for calorie burn.  Here is another one to through in the mix

Eat fat for endurance

Here is an intriguing one:

Significant effect of a pre-exercise high-fat meal after a 3-day high-carbohydrate diet on endurance performance

These results suggest that ingestion of a HFM (high fat meal) prior to exercise is more favorable for endurance performance than HCM (high carb meal). 

So maybe bacon and eggs would be better than that pasta party before the marathon.....

Exciting - exercise makes your muscles produce substances that fight cancer....

This is exciting.  A mechanism of how exercise really is good for you in fighting cancer

A novel myokine, secreted protein acidic and rich in cysteine (SPARC), suppresses colon tumorigenesis via regular exercise

Conclusions These findings suggest that exercise stimulates SPARC secretion from muscle tissues and that SPARC inhibits colon tumorigenesis by increasing apoptosis

Don't stress over your post workout nutrition

I thought this was interesting.  After a workout it seems to be calories that are more important to recovery than stressing about the carbohydrate / protein ratios of your post workout meal:

Recovery from cycling exercise: effects of carbohydrate and protein beverages

Beverages containing similar caloric content but different proportions of carbohydrate/protein provided similar effects on muscle recovery and subsequent exercise performance in well-trained cyclists.

Who invented these sports?

Given the current  Olympic excitement, I thought this was interesting


Source: sportsbettingspot.com