The monkey on the left was allowed to eat as it pleased. The monkey on the right was given a 30% reduced calorie diet.

Full article.

1. Little and Often

I do this for two reasons. One it stops me feeling any bloating after a full meal which can cause me to get sluggish and stop any form of physical activity for a good few hours. Another reason is it keeps you blood sugar levels at a steadier level throughout the day – this is a good thing.

2. Eat 10-15% Below Calorie Requirements

I first got the idea for this from a Japanese martial arts manual. In that it promoted eating less than your body requires to maintain low levels of body fat. Eating vast quantities of carbs and protein is not required to keep healthy. If you want to build muscle then yes – by all means eat more. But to have a ripped physique and efficient metabolism then eating just below your requirements is key.

3. Fruit & Vegetables

Go for these at every opportunity. Too many people neglect their fresh vegetable and fruit intake and it really has an impact on everything from cardio performance to digestion.

4. Avoid Simple Carbs

These are basic sugars found in soft drinks, chocolate and even McDonalds burger buns. Simple carbs hit your body hard and cause it to produce a vast amount of insulin to store the excess sugars. This means you store it and thats not something you want if you’re trying to lose weight and body fat.

5. Complex Carbs

The opposite of those above, complex carbs give your body somwething to ‘chew’ on over time. They fuel you for much longer and often fill you better. Complex carbs include muesli, brown rice, granary bread, etc.

6. Complete 3-4 HIIT Cardio Sessions a Week

If you haven’t realised that High Intensity Interval Training is the way forward yet then start now. You can perform a 15-20 minute workout and have a huge fat busting impact. The key is high intensity. You need to be verging on puking your lungs up by the end. Trust me thoguh – when that feeling disipates you’ll feel like a king.

Calories

This is highly dependent on your current weight, genes and health. I include a number of calculators at the bottom to get figures for your own body – please use these! These are general amounts to get an idea for someone leading a sedentary lifestyle and moderately overweight.

Women: Keep total calorie intake around 1300-1600 per day for at least 2 weeks – BUT NO LOWER!

Men: Keep total calorie intake below 1500-1800 per day for at least 2 weeks – BUT NO LOWER!

Calculate Requirements: http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/CalRequire.html (bear in mind you need a calorie defecit to lose weight so you need less than what this tells you)

Foods

Keep it simple. I go into more detail about what to eat on another post.

Interval Training

Long periods of exercise aren’t the answer to weight loss. You want to concentrate on high intensity interval training. Tabata intervals are as good a place as any to start so here we go:

Tabata Interval Idea 1:

• 20 seconds sprinting
• 10 seconds walking

….and repeat for 4 mins/8 reps.

Tabata Interval Idea 2:

• 20 seconds sprinting
• 10 seconds push ups

….and repeat for 4 mins/8 reps.

You get the general idea? You want 20 seconds of very high intensity exercise – something that’s gonna make you feel sick to your stomach. Then you follow it with 10 seconds of lower intensity exercise. I’ll be doing a seperate post on Tabata intervals later. But the major advantage of this training is it takes less time but has just as much benefit on your health and fat burning.

How Often?

At least 3 times per week but preferably more as you find yourself recovering quicker from sessions. I’d recommend only 1 day of complete rest per week although each day should be seperated by a day of light training work.

My training programme may be useful as a guide.

Its Boring

One of the most common reasons people quit their training or diet is boredom. So try to make your workouts interesting. They don’t have to be sprints on a treadmill. They could be anything! Ju jutsu, pushing your car down the road 5x, climbing trees, skipping, climbing frames, biking, etc, etc, etc.

How Long To Lose X Stone?

If you have no intention of gaining muscle and just wanted to lose fat while conditioning your CV and existing muscle then: You can realistically and healthily lose 2lbs per week. There’s 14lbs per stone so you could lose a stone in 7 weeks. It is possible to lose this weight without any exercise but I’d strongly recommend doing the exercise too – you’ll feel shedloads better.

Alcohol?

Avoid it like the plague. I’ve heard stories of Mr Universes dowing bottles of red wine per night with no hassle. However, its the exception not the rule. Alcohol is a calorie dense substance that makes you eat, decreases testosterone, releases cortisol, slows protein synthesis, hinders good sleep, causes hangovers and liver problems in high enough quantities. Just don’t bother with the stuff – full stop.

Habits Make You

I’m reluctant to say this because you can’t truly realise its potential until you’ve got new habits. The reason thin and healthy people stay that way isn’t dieting – its habit. For example tonight I ate an ‘all you can eat’ Chinese buffet (2x plates) and dessert. Why am I not fat? Because that Chinese buffet isn’t what makes you fat – its what I eat tomorrow, the day after, the week after, etc. When you get into a habit of eating at a certain level then you find it much easier to limit yourself. Its highly likely that tomorrow my intake of calories will be well below the normal level of 2000-2500.

When you first set out dieting you find it hard because your habits are always brainwashing you into eating at your comfort level. Its these habits that make you think you eat nothing when in reality you’re forgetting you ate takeaway 3x this week and forgot to workout on Monday. Habits make you – they also break you. Take control of them and remake them.

These are my general ‘diet’ rules based on what my body tells me:

• Fat – If the food is greasy its got too much fat and it’ll send me to sleep and make me sick for a few hours.
• Sugar – As nice as it tastes, refined sugar isn’t natural and it makes me feel like shit after having it.
• Portion Size – If I feel full I stop eating. Simple. I don’t need to finish a plate of food.
• Simple Foods – If it takes a long time to prepare and cook its wasting my time and often ends up complex. Complex food is hard to track.
• Small Meals – Small meals throughout the day tend to mean I don’t get dopey and tired at times during the day. No post-lunch slump due to all the blood leaving my brain to digest the food I just ate.
• Fruit – If you’re eating less refined sugar you’ll slowly realise fruit actually tastes good!! Apples are sweet and juicy once more – bet you didn’t expect that one.
• Veg – When I eat veg my… digestive system ‘proceeds’ in the fashion it was meant to.
• Boredom – Variety is immensely important. Too many people stick to a very narrow range of foods such as pasta, rice and chicken. Variety ensures you get every nutrient you need. Don’t think you can micromanage nutrients – you’re onto a loser there. Just eat varied foods. You’ll enjoy it more too.

Listen to Your Body

• Stomach full? Stop eating!
• Feel tired afterwards? Eat less.
• Greasy lips and skin? Eat less fat.
• Highs and lows? Eat less sugar.
• Constipation? Eat more fruit and veg.

Your body is giving you signs all the time. Unfortunately we’re so determined to cater to our baser instincts that we gorge ourselves on crap and fool ourselves into thinking we’re eating healthily.

Following these rough guidelines I’ve kept a weight and body fat percentage well below the average sofa-surfer.

You already have a 6 pack.

With just that little fact you should be able to workout that all those ab miracle pills and exercises are a waste of time. Don’t believe me?

Well tough – its fact. Everyone has the same set of muscles in their abdomen and doing magical exercises won’t cause them to miraculously appear. The key to getting a 6 pack is decreased body fat. We’re talking in the single figures here: 7-9% should get you a 6 pack.

There’s an old saying: A 6 pack doesn’t start in the gym – it starts in the kitchen.

So don’t bother with all these miracle ab workouts hoping to get a magical 6 pack. Stick to a good diet, regular exercise and you’ll eventually get what you want.

I’d also like to add: Getting abs like that isn’t easy and it takes time. So don’t beat yourself up over it.

“STBF Rule #1: If you eat like sh*t, you’ll look and feel like sh*t”

I’m adding this blog to my list of regular reads. That rule alone shows the guy knows the score 100%.

Here’s a summary of my daily food intake along with some variations…

Breakfast

• Muesli + skimmed milk + apple or 2 clementines
• Fruit & fibre cereal + skimmed milk + apple

Lunch

• Dairylea Lunchables (I know its a terrible, processed, manky food but its quick, cheap with reasonable nutrition stats)
• Alternatives include…
  • Lentil and Bacon soup + 1 slice of bread
  • Rice and peas
  • Egg fried rice

Dinner

Here’s where I pig-out big time and normally after a heavy workout or ju jutsu class.  Here’s a few alternatives…

• 2 chicken breasts + brown rice + peas + apple
• Chicken breast + scrambled egg + peas + green beans + apple
• Tuna + sweetcorn + toast + apple
• Beans + chicken breast + toast

I don’t like complicated foods as I don’t have the time and I want to know exactly whats in it and as you increase the number and complexity of ingredients you start to lose a handle on whats in the meal.

Snacks

I eat apples and clementines throughout the day.  They’re my two favourite fruits.  If I’ve got some nuts then I’ll have those and unfortunately I still have a weakness for chocolate which I consume at least once a week in eye-watering quantities.

Drinks

Large quantities (6-15 cups) of black tea (Yorkshire Tea) every day, with a little skimmed milk and no sugar.

Alcohol?

No – it doesn’t apeal at all.  I used to drink a lot as a student but now it just makes me feel like shit so I avoid it like the plague.  Having said that I do plan on having an Asahi Japanese beer later today but its the first drink I’ve had in 2 months (that was a small weak cocktail).

There’s at least 6 different methods used to determine how effective a certain protein source is for the body and each has its drawbacks.  So I decided to bring together all of them to get educated and understand the whole mess better.  First some interesting points that affect all of these.  Accurately measuring protein utlisation by the body is almost impossible due to the huge array of ‘other’ factors such as:

• Additional foods which may interact positively or negatively (anti-nutritional effects)
• Metabolic rate.
• Levels of protein intake (see: Bilogical Values drawbacks)
• Organism recycling of amino acids.
• Not basing the science on humans (PER was done on rats)

Biological Value

This value is based on the fact that protein is the body’s main source of nitrogen.  For the sake of science it assumes it’s the only source and so it measures the ratio of absorbed nitrogen to excreted which gives you the protein usability.  This is the most common source of values quoted by the protein supplement industry due to its favourable figures on whey protein and ease of understanding.  Egg is often used as a standard and placed at 100.

Drawbacks: Althoguh one of the most oft quoted this measure of protein usefullness is full of holes – worthy of a post in its own right.  But I’ll summarise…

• The measurement is taken when sub-maintenance levels of protein are taken.  The BV drops as protein intake increases.  For example milk has a BV of 100 but drops to 70 when you double the intake.
• When protein is digested very quickly – as is the case with whey protein isolate – it is sent to the liver for gluconeogenesis.  In other words it gets burned as fuel instead of protein synthesis.

Net Protein Utilisation (NPU)

This uses a similar method to the Biological Value by measuring amino acid intake against nitrogen excretion.  I won’t bore you with the formula but a value of “1.0″ indicates 100% usage of the supplied protein.  It has all the usual drawbacks though and its now been superseded by the PDCAAS (below).
I also couldn’t find a table of comparison values for this so its useless.  If you know of one then let me know.

Protein Efficiency Ratio

Uses an unusual and less than scientific method.  Invented in 1919 by measuring the body weight increase of a test subject divided by the intake of a particular food protein over a period of time.  The drawbacks to this method are obvious but its legacy still lasts as the RDA of protein is determined using this method in the US.

Nitrogen Balance

This uses similar ideas to the NPU and BV values.  Its the value of nitrogen in – nitrogen out.  Its tested by measuring the nitrogen balance of urine and has three main levels:

• Positive – You’ve got more going in than coming out.
• Negative – You’ve got more going out than in.  Sign of illness or malnutrition.
• Equilibrium – The bare minimum your body should be.

There are no values about the NB level of foods as its more of a body-state indicator that is used by other measuring methods to find the protein usefulness of foods.
Interesting article about it here: Nitrogen Balance

Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS)

This is the biggy that everyone uses – World Health Organisation, US FDA, FAO, etc.  But just because everyone and his uncle uses it doesn’t make it the best.  It measures the quality of proteins based on human amino acid requirements and adjusted for the relative digestibility of these proteins.  Its upper limit is 1.0 and lower limit 0.0 with a value of 1.0 meaning 100% of the essential amino acids are provided for.
Drawbacks:

• It doesn’t take into account where the protein was digested.  Some can be digested by bacteria for example.
• Also it suffers from the same effects as the others as it doesn’t take into account anti-nutritional factors of mixing foods.
• Having a varied diet means the PDCAAS value of the individual components becomes meaningless as a food lacking in essential amino acids can be covered by one of abundance.  You’d need to ascertain the PDCAAS value of an entire meal in that instance and a good meal will most likely have a value of 1.0.
• All proteins have a max-cieling of 1.0 which poorly reflects true values.  For example egg has an actual score of 1.19.

Conclusion

So just which is the best?  Well according to the numbers above you’re better off with Whey (PDC, BV, PDCAAS) or eggs (PDCAAS, PER).  I think it all ultimately boils down to what your mother tells you: “A good varied diet will make you healthy and strong”.
I’ll be covering protein requirements in another post.  If you’re interested then subscribe to the RSS feed or bookmark below.

Every now and then I need to ‘reset’ my body-mind link and start counting calories just to relearn how much is too much again.  This normally only takes a couple of weeks but lasts as long as you don’t start shovelling rubbish into your gob as soon as you stop.  Eating high sugar foods tends to knock your sweetness tasting ability.  Fruit doesn’t taste as good and veg tastes like cardboard.  Thats why I tend to avoid the chocolate whenever I can.  Its not just the calories – its the mess it makes of your taste.

Sames goes for fat.  If I eat something high in fat I sure as hell know about it.  I feel sluggish, queasy and tired for hours after wards.  However, if I’ve been eating fatty foods for a few days my body adapts and it no longer causes any problems – that’s bad!!  You need that sickly feeling after eating to much fat or processed sugar.  It keeps you eating decent food.  It keeps you natural.

Thiamine

After reading a book called Staying Sane by Raj Persaud I’ve decided to start taking multivitamins.  It seems that even a mild lack of one of the key B vitamins can cause a whole heap of trouble for your moods and nervous system health.

Thiamine and Riboflavin are key to the health of your centra nervous system and your body can’t store much of it.  Whats more is that a lot of people – even in the West – are deficient in it.

I’ll do a post on B vitamins and their uses later…