Feel The Heat!

I've been attracting the attention of anonymous howler monkeys here on my blog as of late. It's because I'm a trouble maker and an instigator by nature, and I've picked a few fights over on Mark Sisson's blog, as well as on the Iron Addicts forum.

Mark Sisson is a low carb zealot, and the administrator of Iron Addicts is a short sighted demagogue. I tell them things they don't like to hear, and as it is with any popular forum their sycophantic readers sometimes take it upon themselves to follow me back to my blog and throw poop at me.

So it was on my post below entitled "A Little History". One of the anonymous monkeys said the following (in between grunts and screeches of course):

What is your background in human physiology? Are you an M.D. or just a guy who has an interest in being fit? It seems to me you are just a guy.

And one that isn't all that fit to boot...

I felt this deserved a posted reply all its own:

I'm just a guy. Is anything that I wrote in that post wrong? Please share with the rest of us if I'm wrong.

As for my level of fitness, of course I could be more fit. Couldn't everyone?

Telling me that I'm not "all that fit" may make you feel better about yourself but it's a meaningless statement. All that fit compared to whom? I'm more fit than I was a year ago, and my only adversary is myself. That said, what's your method of measuring fitness? VO2 Max? Big purty muscles?

Someone once said there's no greatness in being better than others, only in being better than your former self.

New shoes!

I bought another pair of shoes.. the FiveFingers Classic from Vibram and they are really wild looking!



I bought them after reading this article about how wearing traditional shoes is actually bad for your back and feet. The FiveFingers are functionally equivalent to going barefoot, with the added protection of a rubber sole to protect your feet. I'm excited to own a pair and try them out.

Tomorrow I am going to wear them to the gym for my squats/deads workout.

Check out my bad form!

My less than ideal squat form has made the front page of StrongLifts as an example of how not to squat.

I'm so proud! Well, okay maybe that's the wrong word. At any rate, I am glad to see my bad form can help others improve theirs. I am working on mine as well and will be posting new video in a week or so.

EAT MEAT!

Look it! Another reason why being a vegetarian is STUPID.

A Little History

You can't make this shit up:

On your own site, you chronicle your transformation from 189 lbs. and 19% body fat to 167 lbs. and 10% body fat in eight months. During that time you supposedly embarked on a program of weight training for the purpose of building or maintaining muscle mass, yet by your own admission you still lost three pounds of muscle. Eight months, man. That seems ineffective at best and a big waste of time at worst. Any effective weight-training program will always at the very least preserve muscle mass – provided your diet is working on your behalf. You should have been building muscle while you were shedding the fat, Barry, but your devotion to carbs partly sabotaged your hard work You even had to starve yourself some days!

That's Mark Sisson responding to me on this post after I criticized him for essentially lumping beans, an excellent source of carbohydrate and protein, not to mention other vitamins and minerals, in with other carbs like donuts.

So, in case there is any confusion let me give anyone interested a bit of history.

In June of 2007, I was hydrostatically weighed at the local university by a professor of Human Physiology. That morning, after breakfast, I weighed in at 191 pounds. The results of the under-water weigh in showed that I was carrying 18.2% of my body weight as fat.

In November of 2007, I was hydrostatically weighed again in the same location by the same man. That morning, after breakfast, I weighed 175. The results of that under-water weigh in showed that I was now carrying 11% of my body weight as fat.

I continued to lose weight, eventually getting down to 163 lbs. in February before ending my cutting phase. Therefore, I do not know what my body fat was at that time. I would guess that it was below 10%. It's highly unlikely that I suddenly began burning up muscle when nothing in my program changed. Yes, the leaner you get the more likely you are to burn muscle but I didn't get *that* lean.

Mark Sisson asserts that he "knows what 10% body fat looks like". Well, obviously he doesn't. Visually, most people at 10% body fat don't look that impressive. You don't have much vascularity, if any, and you don't have much if any muscle separation. Also, and obviously, the more muscular you are, the leaner you will appear at 10% body fat.

I've gone ahead and removed the body fat estimate that was at the bottom of January photo on the left, since honestly I don't know for a fact what my body fat % was at that point, only that it was below 11%.

All of that aside, Mark's other assertions are just simply not true. When you are in a caloric deficit, you can consider yourself extremely lucky if you preserve 100% of your lean muscle. Every single body builder who has ever gone on a diet will tell you that you always lose at least a little bit of muscle. Further, the only way I know of to build muscle and lose fat "at the same time" is to cycle calories. The body does not build muscle and burn fat "at the same time" anyway so giving it a surplus one day and a deficit the next is the only way to do a body recomposition. Talk to Martin Berkhan or the other intermittent fasting advocates and you'll be told the same thing. Their programs where body recomposition (building muscle and losing fat) is the goal are all based on calorie cycling.

Mark asserts that I had to "starve myself some days". I simply have no idea what he's talking about there. To burn fat you need to be in a caloric deficit. If that constitutes "starving" then I'm guilty as charged. However, eating 1900 calories a day for three days followed by a 2700 calorie refeed hardly qualifies.

Mark also claims that my "devotion to carbs" sabotaged my efforts. What?? If Mark had taken five minutes to read this blog he would have known that I cycled carbohydrates. Many of the leanest, most muscular body builders and figure competitors in the world cycle carbohydrates to lose fat. It's probably the single most effective method of stripping unwanted fat. How that constitutes a "devotion to carbs" is beyond me. Let's say for the sake of argument that I did eat tons of carbs. Is Mark's assertion that my supposed muscle loss is the result of carbohydrate consumption? Carbohydrate is protein (muscle) sparing! That's why you cycle and do not eliminate carbs! Again I ask, what planet does this guy live on?

Mark's blog is interesting but his health and fitness advice is questionable at best.

Carbophobia!

Posts like this one seem to support my recently acquired belief that the low-carb fad has gotten completely out of hand. In that post, Mark Sisson tells his readers that beans are a less than ideal food because of their carbohydrate content.

Folks, when you stop eating beans because you think it will stop you from losing fat, you may want to consider the possibility that you've already lost your mind.

The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of people have normal insulin sensitivity and will lose fat just fine by simply eating less and moving more.

Those who don't lose fat with that approach will usually find that by removing the simple sugars and refined carbohydrates from their diet, in addition to a caloric deficit and increased activity, they will lose fat.

Only a small minority of people are so insulin resistant that they simply cannot lose fat without removing virtually all forms of carbohydrate from the diet.

Even those people who are highly insulin resistant will find that their insulin sensitivity improves with time as they lose weight and exercise more.

Mark Sisson asserts in that post that "at the end of the day, carbs are carbs." I'm sorry, but that's one of the stupidest things I have ever read in my entire life, rivaled only perhaps by Brooke Shields when she said "Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life."

Strong Links

I don't know who Mike Moore is but he commented on my last post so I took some time to read his blog. I have to say that it's quite a good read and I recommend you to go over and check it out.

He packs a lot of good info into each post, and links to some very informative articles.

Wall Squats!

So I had my 4x10 squat/deadlift workout today, and it didn't go that great. I am still struggling with my squat form. I did lower the weight today, checking my ego at the door and all of that, and it helped, but I still leaned forward a few times towards the end. All it takes is once and my lower back muscles are spasming for the rest of the workout to the point that I have thoughts of simply saying fuck it, and going home. It's that unpleasant. It would be one thing to simply have some low back pain but to have to deadlift on top of it is pure misery.

So I came home and, obsessive-compulsive that I am, sat down to search for ways to improve my squat. Once again, the StrongLifts website came in quite handy as I found a post in the forums where someone mentioned wall squats. These aren't the wall squats you're probably familiar with. In these wall squats, you are facing the wall.

Try it right now.

Go to a nearby wall, face it with your toes about an inch away, feet shoulder width apart, toes pointed slightly outward. Squat down, but do not let your knees or your face touch the wall. Your hands can drop down between your legs. Attempt to touch the floor, and come all the way back up, again without touching the wall. I have yet to do this even one time successfully.

Squats are without a doubt the most technically complicated movement that I have ever attempted. I need to work on my form in a big way, and for the foreseeable future that will be my primary objective on squat day.

Proper Squat Form

After purchasing my new flat soled Chuck Taylor shoes, a new problem in my squat form has emerged. With my heel no longer elevated I find that I am leaning forward in order to get the weight up. By the end of my last squat workout which was four sets of ten reps, my lower back was having a fit. To make it worse, squats are followed by deadlifts, so suffice it to say I was in pain and the workout was unpleasant and not very fun.

The phrase "Check your ego at the door" is something I need to keep in mind when I squat. I don't want to reduce the amount I am squatting (the 4 x 10 workout was 175 lbs.) but I have to. I need to push from the heels, squeeze my glutes hard, and not allow myself to lean. I'll know if I've corrected my form because my glutes and hams will be sore, instead of my quads.

This post on StrongLifts has a lot of good advice about proper squatting technique. This one addresses the problem of leaning forward. I also need to go back and re-read the chapter on squats in Starting Strength.

Stay tuned. The weight I lift will go down, at least temporarily but I will reap the benefits of proper form going forward.

The Psychology of Weight Gain

I weighed in this morning at 177.6. I haven't weighed that much since about mid-September of last year! It's quite the head-trip, because there's this little voice in my head that won't shut up and it's screaming at me that I'm going to get fat again.

After spending over eight months dieting down, making the mental shift into weight gain and convincing myself completely that it's okay to gain weight (muscle this time!) is very difficult.

The funny thing is that if I stop and think about it, I can't possibly have as much fat on my body as I did back then, for the simple fact that when I weighed in at 177.6 in September I was cycling carbohydrates. I would always weigh in after my third day on low carbohydrates, before my high carb day. That means my glycogen stores were mostly depleted, which in turn means I wasn't carrying nearly the amount of water that I am carrying today. My diet today is upwards of 400 grams of carbohydrates daily. More than enough to keep glycogen stores full and my muscles full of water (please correct me if I have any of this physiology wrong).

Oh, I almost forgot. My post-workout drink last night was 80 grams of waxy maize starch. If what I've read about waxy maize is to be believed, it engorges muscle cells with tons of water. Many people report increased vascularity and skin tightness after drinking it. This means that this morning I'm carrying even more water than I would be otherwise. Unfortunately this also means I can't tell if I've actually gained any real weight over my 176 from a few weeks ago. I'll have to wait another week to see if the numbers keep moving or hold steady.

So the bottom line, and what I have to keep reminding myself of, is that it's impossible for me to be carrying near the amount of fat at this weight as I was carrying in September at the same weight. It still messes with my head though. I know the facts and yet I can't stop that little voice from needling me with fears of getting fat again. I worked so hard to get here, I'd just die if I ever went back. Perhaps that's a bit melodramatic but it would make me miserable. I've thought of what it would be like to get injured such that I could no longer exercise. Talk about depressing!

At any rate, I need to continue to monitor my weight gain very closely, week by week, as well as taking weekly body measurements. If I'm gaining more than a pound a week I'll back off my calories a little bit.

Have a great day!

No new photos

My wife took some new photos of me night before last, but I'm not going to bother posting them.

Basically, I haven't changed much since January. Or rather, I did change substantially by the end of February, dropping down to 163 lbs., but never got around to taking photos. Since I've started eating a caloric surplus I've gained a little fat and substantial water weight and so basically I look just like I did in January.

It's a little disappointing, though I suppose not totally unexpected. I've found that I was just not eating enough for the last month so as mentioned in my last post I'm increasing my calories to 3500 on lifting days, 3100 on off days.

I'll check the scale in a week and see if my weight is moving up at all. I hope it does because eating that much food is actually work! Most of the time, I am eating even though I am not hungry. I have my second meal of the day coming up in twenty minutes so I better scoot.

Have a nice day!