Nutrition Confusion!

My head has been spinning these past few days as I've been doing more research into the various approaches to building muscle.

The only thing everyone seems to agree on is that you need a caloric surplus to build muscle.

There's the dabate over macronutrient ratios. Here, there are the 'new traditional' body builders like Tom Venuto who advocate a high carb, moderate protein, low fat diet- something like 50% carbs, 30% protein, 20% fat. Then there are the original traditional body builders who advocated animals and vegetables, and not much else- guys like Vince Gironda. Beyond that, you have the CKD (cyclical ketogenic diet) guys who believe in doing low carb, moderate fat, high protein all week and having a two day carbohydrate bonanza on the weekends. Mario DiPasquale's Anabolic Diet is a good example of a CKD.

On the topic of protein you have those who insist that nobody can grow on less than 1.5 grams per pound of body weight, while others like Layne Norton insist that most folks will grow fine with 1 gram per pound of body weight.

On carbohydrates, you have people like Alan Aaragon who says that GI is an outdated, worthless tool for making food choices. Then there are other guys who live and die by the GI and would no sooner eat a potato or white rice than inject glucose intravenously. Some guys say that carbs are anabolic and that you cannot grow muscle without them. Others say that carbs just make them fat. Still others believe that eating too many carbs, even complex carbs, will result in decreased insulin sensitivity over time.

Then there are debates inside of debates. Fructose! Is it good or bad? Some will say that fructose in moderation is good. Others say that fructose with the first two meals of the day is good, presumably because liver glycogen is depleted in the morning. Still others point out that when liver glycogen stores are full fructose is stored as adipose tissue (fat!). I've been eating a lot of fruit this past month but I'm going to back off. I didn't know the finer points of fructose metabolism. Did you?

What about fats? Well, testosterone is created from cholesterol. Eating fatty foods high in cholesterol is good for building muscle. You read that you should eat eggs, milk, and steak and yet this takes you right back to the debate about macronutrient ratios. You can't very well be sucking down fatty animal products and hoping to also keep your fat intake low, assuming you subscribe to the new traditional school of thought. If you instead think all that fat intake is anabolic then what about the fact that saturated fat is more likely to be stored as adipose?

A quick search of popular body building forums will turn up debates that rage for literally months, sometimes years, over which approach to building muscle is the best one. It's enough to make your head spin right off.

I guess I just have to pick an approach and try it for a while. Since I'm pretty carb tolerant (I can eat a giant plate of spaghetti and not get tired and lethargic afterwards) I think I'm opting for the moderate to high carb approach.

Previously I was on 3,000 calories per day, with about 183 grams of protein, give or take. I kept fat under 100 grams and let carbs fill up the rest.

So, with all that said I'm changing up my bulking diet a little bit.

On non-training days:

3100 calories
240 grams of protein (31%)
250 to 300 grams of carbohydrates (32 to 39%)
104 to 127 grams of fat (30 to 37%)

Training days:

3400 calories
240 grams of protein (28%)
400 grams of carbohydrates (47%)
93 grams of fat (25%)

(Fats here come mostly from peanut butter, olive oil, fish, grass fed beef, etc.)

Feel free to post thoughts, links, advice, questions, whatever. I feel pretty schizophrenic with respect to my diet right now. I think what I've chosen here is sound but I really have no idea.

Don't Be That Guy!

Here's a great compilation of gym bloopers. Enjoy!

New Shoes

Because one of the cardinal sins of squatting and deadlifting is doing so in a running shoe, or any shoe with an elevated heel, I've eschewed my New Balance sneakers in favor of a pair of classic, high top Chuck Taylors:

Deadlift Videos

I took my Flip Ultra camcorder with me to the gym today to record myself doing deadlifts, in the hopes that I might improve my form. I recorded four videos, but I think this one is one of the better ones in terms of form. Feel free to critique what I'm doing. I might take you seriously. :) If you'd like to see the other three videos follow the video link to YouTube.

I read Eric Cressey's Mastering The Deadlift series on T-Nation earlier today before I left for the gym. I think his advice definitely helped some.

The Body Transformation Lifestyle

Someone asked in my last post about my meal planning, time spent working out, etc. So, without further ado, here's the skinny on my body transformation lifestyle:

Meal Planning/Food Prep

I do food prep on Sundays which involves cooking chicken breasts, turkey, salmon, etc. It's all from frozen, and done in the oven. I take things out to defrost on Saturday and they're ready the next day. The actual time spent prepping the food for cooking and putting it in storage afterwards is maybe thirty minutes.

Each morning, I spend about ten minutes putting together food for that day. This process is actually rather easy. I eat three times while I'm at work, so I need three protein sources. So for example I might choose cottage cheese, chicken, and salmon. Next, I'll pick my carbohydrates. Here, I might pick oats and raisins, brown rice, and a few pieces of fruit. Additionally I try to eat some good fats with each meal. I might pack a tablespoon of natural peanut butter to eat alone or with fruit, and a tablespoon of olive oil to dip the chicken in. I don't really worry about the exact calories. I've been doing this for so long that I almost always pack about the same amount of calories every day. You get to know in your head what the content of various foods are so it becomes second nature.

I weigh everything on a digital scale. I also have a bunch of little plastic containers of various sizes that I use to store the food in, as well as zip loc bags.

I store all the food in one of these. It goes into the freezer at night and is ready for a day at the office the next morning.

The Workouts

I workout three times a week for an hour. It takes me about 10 minutes to get to the gym, so I spend about four hours each week getting to and from the gym and working out.

Other Thoughts

At first glance, to the average person considering a similar lifestyle, this can all seem overwhelming. Don't let any of this discourage you! The key is making change gradually. If you go from sedentary junk food eater to clean eating and weight lifting three times a week, you'll probably burn out pretty quickly.

In 2005, I started out by just doing some cardio twice a week. I waited until I actually wanted to move to three times a week. Eventually I wanted four times a week. I still was eating whatever I wanted, but I was starting to pay attention to my portions, making better choices. You know, like ordering a quarter pounder with cheese instead of the double quarter pounder! At that point, that was what I considered a good choice. Compared to how I used to eat, it was.

By the time 2007 rolled around I was down to 195 from 210, and still eating crap food. A small miracle occurred when I stumbled upon a post about John Stone on the Digg social news website. His transformation blew me away. When I saw what he did to get there I thought: there's no way in hell I'm going to do all of that. Over the following days I thought more about it and so began writing down calories of the food I ate. Then later I started keeping calories at 2,000 per day. Next, I started using FitDay to track my food. By this time I was spending copious amounts of time each day reading about body building, bulking, cutting, nutrition, etc. John Stone's website was a great resource for me. I next was introduced to a man named Tom Venuto. I acquired his e-Book "Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle", and implemented carbohydrate cycling as he describes. Within a few weeks the pounds started dropping off pretty quickly and by August of 2007 my fat loss was in full swing.

And let me tell you, once you see your body change from one you loathe into one you don't mind (I still don't quite love mine- yet!) you will NEVER EVER go back to a sedentary lifestyle where you eat crap- you know, like the vast majority of people.

Today, I count calories without thinking about it, I love eating nutritious, healthy food, and I look forward to working out. I just wish I could pile on solid muscle faster! This bulking thing is taking too long! However, patience is a virtue and I have learned patience well in this pursuit.

So in summary, look at major lifestyle change like getting into a piping hot bath. You can't just jump in or you'll leap out screaming. You have to ease yourself in a little at a time.

I could ramble on and on about other related topics like will power, desire, and other psychological aspects of this whole thing that come up at various times, but I'll save it for another time.

If anyone has other questions please ask! I'd like to help as many people as I can embrace a better way of living.

Caveman Power?

Here's an interesting website I found while reading Martin Berkhan's Lean Gains blog dedicated to his approach to IF (intermittent fasting).

I'm not sure I agree with Matt's views on diet.

He suggests people not eat potatoes. That's what I call kooky-talk. I certainly don't see any reason to conclude that cavemen would not have had access to roots like potatoes. Additionally, the vast majority of people will find that they can eat potatoes and lose fat without a problem.

Carbophobia is based on an obsession with the GI (glycemic index) of foods. The GI measures the impact of a given food on a person's blood glucose. The problem with that is that the GI values are based on fasted subjects who eat the food alone. Most people aren't fasted, and don't eat high GI foods alone. I don't know about you, but I like a chicken breast with my potatoes. Fats and proteins, not to mention being in a fed state, reduce the GI of any given food substantially.

Either way, Matt's website is interesting and his blog is thought provoking and passionately written.

Be sure to pay him a visit and check it out!

Serendipitous?

I find fortune by accident quite often. I think it's because I'm digging around randomly looking for nothing in particular. Serendipity comes easy when you're looking hard for nothing specific. So it was with a recent series of events that came my way almost entirely by accident.

I was perusing Google Reader when I happened upon a blurb that stated: "What would Michael Pollan eat?" That piqued my interests immediately. I'm always interested to hear what yet another so-called expert has to say about what we should and should not be eating. I clicked the link and read a bit, which prompted me to Google his name. That lead me to his article in the New York Times entitled "Unhappy Meals".

After reading that, I searched for him on Amazon and found his book The Omnivore's Dilemma. I ordered it, and a few days later began reading. Without giving a full blown book review, which I plan on doing on Amazon after I finish reading it in a few days, let me summarize by saying that the book blew my mind and substantially altered my mental state and my world view.

I found myself searching for grass-fed beef online. My family has groceries delivered to our house so I searched the website we order from for grass fed beef. I found some, and the next day a pound of it was in my freezer. I tried it, and enjoyed it. I noticed the label had a website on it. I went there, and found that they were located in my state of Minnesota and that I could buy direct and have them ship grass fed beef to my house. I did so, and currently have fourteen of sixteen pounds of healthy grass fed beef sitting in my freezer.

Shortly before ordering the beef my wife suggested that we take our two boys to the Twin Cities Pet Expo, which two weekends ago, we did.

Before she had asked about that, I had done more research on the company I was to order the beef from, and learned that their founder had created the farm and company after reading Michael Pollan's book, Omnivore's Dilemma. Pretty weird, right? It doesn't end there.

We take the boys to the Pet Expo, and as we're walking from booth to booth, I look up and notice a familiar font. Why, it's the Thousand Hills Farms company I ordered beef from just days earlier, but here they're selling raw dog food build around grass fed beef. I look closer and notice a man in a cowboy hat, and lo and behold it is the founder of the company whom I had read about just days earlier.

I talked to him for a while and we briefly discussed Michael Pollan's fantastic book. I bought a pound of grass fed beef formulated raw dog food for my two dogs.

The yellow lab puked shortly after eating it.

I guess serendipity doesn't bode well for all parties involved.