I’m a fan of a hormonally adequate environment for health and fitness. By this, I mean that all hormones should be in a normal physiological range. Point of fact, if one was to believe the claims of supplement hucksters, all the cortisol in our body should be destroyed, when in reality only excessively high levels over a long period of time (chronically high vs. acutely high) should be of concern.
Growth hormone. GH. Maximize GH output and you should grow muscle and reduce bodyfat, right? Given a certain metabolic environment GH is certainly going to do its job promoting lipolysis and protein synthesis. But there is a limit to theses effects, especially with regard to direct manipulation without injection. More on that later, but first I have a question: if injecting GH to supra-physiological levels doesn’t do anything, why worry about elevating it post workout?
I was recently re-listening to the discussion between Charles Staley and Arthur De Vany. In typical cock-hole bravado, I went and found studies that refuted the notion of fasted state workouts expressing genetic adaptations favorable to hypertrophy. However, there is a line at the end of the interview that I really like. Staley quoted Art in saying:
We should recognize the limits of knowledge and get on the path that favors better outcomes.
I like this for a host of reasons.
Odds
After having read Fooled by Randomness, already knowing the stories we tell ourselves about factors we can’t possibly know (or simultaneous juggle in our grey matter accurately), the “limits of knowledge” aspect range loudly. So from a health perspective, you greatly improve your odds, or rather minimize your black swans, by eating mostly whole foods in their natural packaging (as Clarence Bass would say). And since it’s about what you’re doing most of the time, the occasional folly isn’t going to destroy what you’ve built.
Masturbation
You won’t find the perfect routine. Or the perfect diet. Or the perfect supplement regime. While it’s great to really research the ins and outs, it’s really easy to get mired in minutia. On top of cramming your brain with every increasing amounts of information that only fractionally improve your total “knowledge” on the subject, you run the risk of second guessing your routine. Routine jumping and diet jumping are very common ways to spin your wheels and I think most of it would be avoided by establishing a routine and then getting the hell away from the internet or other ways of second guessing what you’re doing! If you’re making progress, let that run the course and only look to make changes when things require change.
Obsession
After my first ever successful diet, I fell into obsessive behavior. This was not a new manifestation, as I would readily throw myself into my interests with ferocity. However, when you’re dealing with a relationship like food, it really can be too much. When I see people posting their every meal of every day on twitter, I can’t help but think of a Brad Pilon quote:
If food were a person, you would have divorced a long time ago.
In short, care about what you eat but obsession will lead to rebound behaviors or social isolation because you can’t control your food. Just. Perfectly. All. The. Time.
So what’s the point? The favorable path isn’t perfect: it’s good enough for most situations. Being good enough all of the time, the favorable path, is the way not only to health, but also to just about anything else you’re seeking to achieve in life. Avoid perfectionism, be consistently favorable.
Jack Lalanne will never die.
Just a quick blurb about an older study I found this week whilst writing a post over at the work blog:
We conclude that high-resistance weight training leads to significant gains in muscle strength, size, and functional mobility among frail residents of nursing homes up to 96 years of age.
96 years old. That’s 70(!) years away for me and I’m sure it will come in a blink. While I could take the time to note training temperance and gradual improvements because you really have a lot of time to do this, I’d like to focus on the fact that one can lift weights until the day you collapse. You really can.
- There people were at least 90 years old when starting the study; they could barely walk but they could lift weights.
- Controlled lifting through a full range of motion will preserve your joint strength, integrity, and keep your maximum range of motion. It really is a use it or lose it situation with mobility.
- Art De Vany talks about physiological headroom (or as he said in his interview with Charles Staley, the “One Horse Shay”). The largest area under the curve for quality of life. I’d like to still be doing chinups at 90+, which means you have to be fairly consistent with your lifestyle over the long term. Just as 20lbs of muscle doesn’t magically crawl up into bed with you and fix itself to your body, strength, ROM, and health doesn’t magically fall off of your body (save for pathologies/muscle wasting diseases).
So what’s the take home message? You’re going to be doing this for a long time. If you do it right, you’ll be nearly as active at 95 as you are at 35. Stay safe, try new things, and have fun.
“You want to start working out. Great. Why? Health and fitness? Good. What’s that? Low body fat and a high vertical jump? Great. Have you always thought these associate with health and fitness? No? So why now?”
It’s quite the dilemma, using precise language for an imprecise and moving target. However, I think it is (sometimes) this ambiguity that leads to the falling off of a path toward health and fitness. read more…
It burns.
After a short discussion with Brent over at Healthcare Epistemocrat, I posted this simple quote on my announcement wall at my studio:
“Culture and mythology trump everything: we live by fiction.”
And just above that quote, I added a quote from Shinzen Young that tied in serendipitously:
” To teach is to inevitably mislead people to a certain degree…to fail to teach is to mislead people even worse.”
What do they mean by that and how can it be put to use in our daily lives? read more…
Apologies for the lack of posting; I’ve been moving and busy with school, an e-book, and other projects. I have 6 posts coming down the pipe in the next six weeks at a minimum covering a wide range of topics. Stay tuned for that.
I’ve linked to Doug a few times now and he just sent me a tour of his facility. While this might be a few too many machines for a few of my readers, I feel confident in saying that anyone who loves iron would be right at home training in between these walls:
I’ve posted about Doug twice now, but he’s since added another vid of a 60 second chinup performance with additional weight.
Give that a try next time you’re in the gym!
I’ll be back to regular posting next week; moving into a new house is quite an ordeal!
It’s a simple message but it needs repeating: worrying about the small things when the large things are fucked up will only leave you spinning your wheels on the road to health. I like a big smokey burnout as much as the next guy, but not in this instance!
Don't drink the brew first.
Picture this: it’s Friday night and earlier in the day I set a new PR in the squat. I always overfeed and allow for some irregular (for my diet) food consumption on my training days. The girlfriend had kicked me out because it was girls night, so I was going to have a couple beers, burger, and chips over at a buddy’s house. The conventional wisdom is to eat first before drinking to “slow the absorbsion” of the alcohol. Is that advice actually true?
Over at Free The Animal, a similar situation occurred where Richard went to see the moody blues, ate a bunch of irregular food and felt like shit. After giving some suggestions that I follow since I regularly do such things, I got the most tactful “fuck you” I could have ever desired. This got me thinking: not only will I wait until I am asked to administer advice, but also about the nature of ethanol absorption. I wrote a large piece about ways to mitigate a hangover: first, don’t drink so much, but if you do here are things you can use to help you recover from being an idiot. One of the articles I linked to was called “Chemically Correct: Alcohol” and this is where I began my search.
In that article, there was a reference to a study titled, “Interaction of prandial and beverage concentration on alcohol consumption.” According to Par, the study states:
“For instance, after a meal, a less concentrated drink (such as a beer) will be absorbed more quickly than a more concentrated one (such as a shot) — and, in rats, this led to an 80% higher peak blood alcohol level and 95% higher overall absorption.”
I was unable to find the full text for this study, so I went looking for other studies that state the same thing. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any other studies comparing beer to liquor post-meal but I did find many studies comparing food composition and the effect on alcohol.
In “Effect of food and food composition on alcohol elimination rates in healthy men and women” researchers used a direct alcohol IV and measured the rate of elimination after a fast or after a 550 calorie meal from either hight fat, high carb, or high protein sources. The average rate of elimination was 25% faster in one trial and 45% faster in the second for the fed group. They did not note a difference between the meal composition concerning the rate of elimination.
There is a study that does look at that and it’s quite curious. In “Effect of high-fat, high-protein, and high-carbohydrate meals on the pharmacokinetics of a small dose of ethanol” researchers were looking to see which composition allowed for the greatest systemic ethanol concentration, compared to fasting state and direct IV ethanol dosing. The data is surprising:
The peak blood-alcohol concentrations (BAC) were 16.6 +/- 4.0, 17.7 +/- 7.1, and 13.3 +/- 4.0 mg dl-1 (mean +/- s.d.) after fat, CHO, and protein-rich meals and 30.8 +/- 4.3 and 54.3 +/- 6.4 mg dl-1 after fasting and i.v. infusion, respectively.
The corresponding areas under the concentration-time profiles (AUC) were 1767 +/ -549, 1619 +/- 760 1270 +/- 406 mg dl-1 min after fat, CHO, and protein-rich meals compared with 3210 +/- 527 and 4786 +/- 446 mg dl-1 min after fasting and i.v. infusion, respectively.
What stands out here is that a protein rich meal blunts peak blood alcohol the most while also having the smallest variance according to the standard deviation. And, perhaps while I felt so shitty on so little booze, the high carb meal had the highest level of peak alcohol and, surprisingly, the highest variance. Even higher than IV administration and fasted state ingestion.
So what’s the take home?
- I’m a damn lightweight. This is a good thing.
- Eat a high protein mean before you imbibe. And please, be responsible!
A few weeks ago, I received an email from our good friend JC over at JCDfitness, with a link and a simple message: “I can’t believe this is free.” What he linked me was to an ebook being offered by Matthew Perryman, titled (appropriately) “Maximum Muscle.” Interest piqued and espresso pulled, I dove in for a read. “A read” turned into “I accidentally the whole thing” (internet joke, don’t worry). Onward to the review! read more…
