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Tom Venuto: Burn the Fat, Feed the MuscleDetailed info on healthy nutrition, goal-setting and motivation, the basics of weight-training, and cardio for fat loss. If you could have just one volume on getting lean, this is it.  Ian King, Lou Schuler: Men's Health The Book of Muscle Terrific guide to weight training for both sexes. High-quality photos, innovative exercises as well as standard fare, good background in laymen's language.  Lou Schuler: The New Rules of Lifting for Women: Lift Like a Man, Look Like a Goddess Tells women what they need to know about lifting weights: their workouts should be heavy and intense, just like a guy’s.  Barbara J. Rolls: The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan : Feel Full on Fewer Calories The science of satiety. This book teaches real-world portion control and how to make healthful, filling choices.  |
OK, I'm feeling good because I did 14 body-weight dips yesterday during my first heavy set, then did a whole bunch of sets of eight reps and then six reps. Next major goal is to get my pullup strength back. Last time I tried, I got two full pullups, then a slew of others with the assisted dip/pullup machine. But here, for your viewing pleasure, is a true goddess of the dip! Watch and be astonished. People are so confused about how many calories to eat in a fat-loss program. I don't blame them. Ridiculously low intakes are promoted everywhere they look—magazines, the latest "diet" books, The Biggest Loser, you name it. I have an online friend who I just discovered has been consuming 800 to 900 calories a day for fat loss. Yikes! That's near-starvation—just about guaranteed to result in a hefty loss of lean muscle and a whole slew of other negative effects. Bad advice is everywhere, and people tend to believe that if they see it on a good-looking website or in a glossy magazine or if a *doctor* says it in a diet book, it must be right. Let's take out the guesswork and instead rely on formulas developed by scientists. These formulas (Harris-Benedict and McArdle-Katch–for the latter, use the calculator at right, under the text "calculations based on percent body fat") can be found in physiology textbooks. They're based on research. Doesn't that sound more solid than relying on the advice of the hot fat-loss guru of the moment? (And if the fat-loss guru really IS hot, he/she is also relying on formulas such as those developed by Harris-Benedict and McArdle-Katch.) The question really should be not "How many calories should I eat to lose weight?" but rather "How many calories should I eat to lose fat in a healthy, sustainable way?"
The new protocol is a different kind of zig-zag, whose purpose is lean muscle gain and moderate fat loss. The plan is for me to spend three days at a caloric deficit of 15 to 20 percent (1771 to 1882 kcal per day), followed by two days at a moderate surplus (2546 to 2656 kcal per day). So–60 percent of the time I'll be in deficit, 40 percent I'll be in surplus. The other piece of the equation is very careful nutrient timing on days when I do strength training: a meal with carbs and protein not long before and another meal within 45 minutes of completing my workout. The post-workout meal will consist of about 54 grams CHO (carbohydrate) and 27 grams N (protein), and it's pretty easy to do that with a protein shake that has some added sugar or with protein plus some dried fruit on the side. So yesterday, near the end of my first day at 15 percent surplus, I realized that I still had about 600 calories to go. How odd it is to think "what can I eat to get that many more calories?"
I take the same approach to nutrition, fat loss, and training advice. I don’t fall for infomercials: show me the science. That’s just one of the reasons I’m so gung-ho on Tom Venuto and such a strong proponent of his Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle e-book. I discovered it not long after it was first published, and it helped get this former strength athlete lean and mean again. Everything Tom writes can be backed up with scientific research, and his 20-plus years’ experience as a bodybuilder means he knows how the research plays out in the gym. I subscribe to a whole lot of fitness- and strength-related e-mail lists, and honestly, I delete many more messages than I read. But yesterday I received a communication from Tom Venuto that really got my attention. As we become more fit, we get better at tuning in to our body's signals. I've been training with weights (OK, off and on) for 30 years, and I know in an instant the different between good pain (the "burn" you feel while training) and bad pain (injury). You develop that sense with training experience. Novices can't always tell the difference, but once they learn to distinguish between discomfort and injury, they gain confidence and their training can make huge leaps forward. Then there's the difference between not training because you just don't feel like it and not training because your body is worn to a nub and needs time off. Strength coach Bill Starr reminds us that the ingredients for gaining strength and size are three–workout, nutrition, and recovery–and can be visualized as an equilateral triangle. The more intense the training (the longer that side of the triangle), the greater the other two had better be. When you're just unmotivated or bored by your training, go to the gym anyway, and give it 10 minutes. Grant yourself permission to quit and go home if you don't get into it within 10 minutes. If your problem isn't physical, the odds are pretty good that you'll get into the spirit of the workout and want to continue. Some of my very best workouts have taken place on days when I didn't particularly want to go to the gym. But when your body is depleted–you're shaky from low blood sugar, you're wasted from lack of sleep, you're spent from too many workouts, you have a bad cold–you cannot make progress in the gym. Training is a stress, and when your body is already pushed past its limit, you can't recover from your workout. Learn to read the signals, and don't feel guilty about skipping a workout when you have nothing to give in the weight room. Get some rest, carb up, and see how you feel the next day or the day after that. Do something light in the meantime: walk, ride your bike, rake the leaves. Then go back to the gym and tear the roof off. Thursday was the final day of my 50-day challenge to improve my fitness and leanness during the Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year's holidays. As I've written before, an ankle injury during the middle of the challenge may have slowed me down a little bit, but the positive effect was that I began hitting upper body very heavily in the gym. I've definitely benefited from that. So my results overall for the past 50 days: Scale weight has gone from 144 (lean body mass of 108 pounds) to 137.2 (lean body mass of 109.8 pounds). That means I've lost 8.6 pounds of fat and gained nearly two pounds of muscle. Not too shabby for seven weeks. I want to thank my motivators on dailyburn.com, especially Lila, the queen of all motivators. Can't believe the 50-day holiday challenge is about over. I've had a great time. The bike accident, ankle re-injury, and subsequent time without biking, rowing, walking, or cardio machines slowed my fat loss a bit, but it had the positive effect of making me more gung-ho about my strength training. For a couple of weeks, that's about all I could do. I'm now cycling again and able to use the elliptical trainer without pain. A long walk is still not possible. That's OK. I've dropped a few more pounds of fat and am maintaining my lead body mass—have even added a small bit of muscle since the challenge began around Thanksgiving. I'm planning to ride my bike this afternoon, then get back to work. You know, I'm not sure I was counting the days in my 50-day challenge correctly before. But I don't have the patience to go back and change the titles of the previous posts . . . Thursday of last week was interesting. I wiped out on my bicycle (managed to drive my front tire into a nice tire-grabbing hole in the asphalt) and gave my bad ankle a nasty twist. I was wearing a protective brace, so things probably could have been much worse. Lying on the path, I collected my thoughts for a minute, realized nothing was broken, and got up thanking God that I wasn't too badly damaged. Statistics: my scale weight is down two pounds and my bodyfat percentage is down 1.5 points. Translation: I have burned 2.6 pounds of fat and gained 10 ounces of muscle since I began this 50-day holiday fitness challenge. Not bad, although I would like to have torched a little more fat. But the muscle is a delightful benefit. A major success: I have gotten some form of intense exercise daily, whether it's a workout in the gym or a long ride on my bike. Unfortunately, the rowing season is about over, so I won't get to enjoy many more rows until spring. Today's exercise: upper-body workout in the gym. Postscript: Today I met one of my short-term goals—bench pressing six reps at 85 pounds. That's a far cry from where I was 20 years ago, but there's been a lot of sedentary life since then. I know I can get at least as strong as I used to be and indeed stronger. Next short-term bench goal is six reps at 95. That'll take a little while. The best I ever did on the bench was a maximum single at 125, which at the time was my body weight. Not too shabby. But as an older person, I actually have more confidence. If I got to 125, why not 135? Why not 145? Give me a couple of years, and we'll see. Time flies when you're having fun, yes? I'm 10 days into my holiday fitness challenge. Went cycling again today with my husband. The weather was beautiful, although the wind was pretty stiff. My legs were still tired from my leg workout at the gym two days ago and my ride yesterday. So tomorrow they'll get a break. Tomorrow will be devoted to bench press, pullups, and other assorted upper-body movements in the gym. These days I am loving the assisted pullup and dip machine because without assistance, I wouldn't be able to perform those movements. In my heyday I could do quite a few pullups and dips without assistance, but it took a looooong time to build the strength to do it. Back in the ’80s my friend Jim McKairnes used to hold my knees and help me complete my pullups—until the proud day when I was able to do them on my own. I'll get there again. Oh—update on the chocolate-chip cookies. I baked three dozen of them this morning before going to Mass. Didn't eat a single one! |
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I've begun a new nutrition protocol that I'm really excited about. As some of you know, I have gotten excellent results in the past with a zig-zag involving three days at a caloric deficit, followed by one day at maintenance level.