Fitness And Nutrition General

Sorry I've just always loved this picture lol.

The whole "don't eat before bed" thing was made for overweight housewives who follow Jenny Craig diets and ***with absolutely no exercise. If you train, it's highly recommended getting some form of protein before bed, ideally a dairy based protein because it takes longer to break down.

Slower metabolism while sleeping doesn't mean we shouldn't put anything in our bodies because it takes longer to burn. People tend to have this notion that anything you eat before bed is going to be stored as fat because you're "not doing anything." You still need to give your body nutrients to repair damaged muscle tissues. Eat greek yogurt or cottage cheese before bed and you're golden.

less time nitpicking eating habits, more time doing work. I work out hard so i can eat whatever i want. lol

sorry bad advice for the perfectionists?

If you start skipping breakfast (pretty easy if you're a coffee drinker) and only eating while you work plus the dinner you have, you basically have an intermittent fasting protocol with a 7 hour feeding window. Eat the protein parts of your meals before the other stuff and you'll probably find yourself more sated and less craving the other stuff.

The ghrelin research regarding meal entrainment patterns suggests that we get hungry when we're used to eating, not that we get hungry when our body needs food. This is good news for folks who want to change how their meal timing is scheduled but are afraid of being hungry all the time.

Works for me if I want to stay in double digit body fat (10-12%), but the time I was 8.5% body fat, definitely had to be strict on eating and once you're 8.5%, you look in the mirror at 10-12% and are like *** this ***.


Just went back on my diet yesterday. I'm aiming for 7% this time around

sorry getting that lean your diet becomes to bland

Yeah I kinda agree. No brown rice or grilled chicken breast will ever taste as good as something coming out of Paula Dean's kitchen!!!

Donut burger!!!! drool!!!!

At the same time with good moderation you can cheat once in a while.

I saw that image at the top of this page and I only saw and imagined this....

long week, but i read all the posts, quoting that one cause it hit home :P i was actually assuming if i atleast worked out it would fight against my bad habits. but working out is making it easier for me to say no too. Mostly want better eating habits for my kids. I actually usually dont eat breakfast, if i do its peanut butter toast, or a protein drink just to fill me up. I just started going to the gym 5 days ago. ive was doing nike+ kinect for about a month before that. my first mile at the gym took me 12:30, and 5 days later im down to 9:45 and already feeling pumped and ready to keep going at it hard. Someone said something about eatting my proteins first, a lot of times ill JUST eat protein, i find myself just scarfing down a chicken breat a lot. I'll eat chicken two times a day atleast 3 days a week. whether i make chicken and rice, or grilled parmesan chicken.

I got a random *** question and i hope i dont start a fight here but where the hell did this no carb ***come from anyways? i absolutely love pasta/bread. its about all i eat and meat, so its always irked me. Im obsessed with italian style cooking. I want to make it my expertise if i continue in the culinary occupation.

One more question, i read its not good to work out right before bed, so if i work out regularly 10pm-11pm but am up to 1am most the time is that 2 hours enough gap to let my body cool down? or should i just not really worry about that either. Im naive about most this but willing to learn and absorb knowledge.

I'd like to address the bolded part. Kids don't naturally gravitate towards "unhealthy" food (cake, candy, etc.), it's 90%+ learned behavior. Cake, candy, etc. are served at parties, and as reward, and so on, so they get fixed with good memories.

So, try to create an environment where kids associate healthy food with good things. :) Family meals, let the kids help with preparing the food and so on. Have healthy snacks around the house (carrot sticks, apples, yugurt, etc.) instead of cakes and candy. Do NOT use food as a reward. Ever. Kids are also much better than adults at knowing how much to eat. As long as they are not forced to clean their plates, they won't overeat.

But when cooking healthy food, remember that kids need much more (healthy) fats than adults do, because fats (and cholesterol) are building blocks for neural tissue (i.e. brain). :) 25-30% of daily calories from fat is the number I've heard tossed around for under 18, more if the child is under 3. I'm sure your children's doctor can give you more accurate numbers.

As a side note, for your own diet, when you feel like starving, think are you actually hungry (anything goes, a bowl of oatmeal is fine), craving something (no! It must be X! I don't want to eat Y) or thirsty. A lot of hunger pangs are actually thirst. Or tired. Food does work as a pick-me-up too.

Boredom also contributes to feeling "hungry", as we are conditioned from childhood that food = happy. If you're doing something fun, you generally won't want food till you actually are hungry, but if you're bored out of your mind, you easily start to think that I'd like to eat something...

These were just some thoughts from someone who doesn't really know as much about fitness and nutrition as most people in this thread, but has had a very complicated relationship with food over the years. :P

The big problem with using working out solely to correct bad eating habits is that as your body's caloric needs increase(from working out) so does your appetite. So if your diet isn't in check you can see yourself eating more bad foods. So kudos to wanting better eating habits, whatever the reason.

The low carb phenomena originated from Dr Atkins I believe(I may be wrong), basically you eat a low carb diet driving your body into ketosis.

I think most people rather have a quick fix where they can induldge on bacon and cheese, while staying thin so long as they avoid carbs. When in reality "moderation" isn't that hard imo.

very intresting video to watch. I do not trust medical system they only care about money natrual is the only way to go

Fallacy overload

Interesting watch - im sure years ago i heard studies on tribes in the Amazon and such remote places don't have cancer .. nothing wrong with a simpler way of life sometimes.

Also as a recent DVT patient (perhaps caused at the gym..) i feel our modern medicine hasn't really progressed much in many years ... we are far from star trek and closer to the dark ages still - so who is to argue against an orange lol.

There are so many videos like this about everything imaginable (by the same person)... Every disease is curable with natural diet, eh?

Funny fact, there's also a faction that thinks that grains are the source of all evil, because if they get eaten, it's the end for them and they create proteins that are toxic to animals to avoid being eaten. And therefore not eating grains will cure autoimmune disorders, allergies, etc. (and prevent cancer)

He does have a point tho that we are subjected to a lot more carcinogens in the modern day than, say, 100 1000 years ago.

Edit: missed a zero.

Um... no? 100 years ago is a really bad barometer because that was right at the tail-end of the Industrial Revolution (for the US and Europe, anyhow) and our air quality and water quality were abysmal. We might be exposed to fewer carcinogens than 1,000 years ago, perhaps.

On the other hand, the average human life expectancy 1,000 years ago was something like 35. Yes, I'm being deadly serious. There were people living past that age, certainly, but infant mortality was such that if a woman had 4 kids over the age of 5, she had probably been pregnant a minimum of 20 times. Can you even imagine? Even then, among the working poor and otherwise destitute, 35 was probably a rather high age to reach. The reason why cancers and other chronic diseases seem more prevalent right now is because we're not dying like we used to.

But, yeah, as Kaparu pointed out, the hippies want your money just as much as the other mega-corporations. "Organic" is basically code for "We're going to charge you 40% extra." There are few if any discernible benefits, not even trivial ones like taste.

Also, I find it interesting to see a Canadian complaining that the medical system is only interested in money. I never thought that, as an American, I'd have the opportunity to say this, but you should consider stepping outside your own country. Or maybe you need to spend some time in a hospital. I find a lot of young people with strong opinions about the greediness of doctors have not had an overnight hospital stay since they were born.

Originally the no carb craze came from the Atkins diet in the 90s thanks to ***like Oprah. It wasn't even properly understood at the time, people just believed that if our body burns macro nutrients in the order of carbs > fat > protein, if we skip the carbs we can go straight to "burning fat". Technically yes, but they had no understanding of the ONE fundamental of losing weight, calories in vs calories out. Eat all the *** bacon and cheese you want, if you're consuming 4000 calories of it a day you aren't really losing ***. It was a lazy fat housewife excuse for a diet. Today's modern keto diet on the other hand takes a more scientific approach about it and actually has its uses if you want to really lean out before a bodybuilding contest. It still requires carb refeeds once a week where you basically have a cheat day and just binge on carbs.

In an ideal world it's best to train immediately in the morning, that's when your testosterone levels are at their peak and energy is at its highest. Does that mean you shouldn't train at night? Hell no, train at whatever time is convenient to you so long as you actually go out there and work. You'll be ready to crash by the time you come home and finish showering up/preparing for bed, it shouldn't be a problem unless you're popping stimulants pre-workout.

Yes, that was a typo. Meant 1000 years ago.

If average life expectancy is 35, then for every infant that died within their first year of life, there should be one person who lived to around 70, right? Child mortality really messes up these numbers.

Life expectancy at adulthood (that is, once you've reached age of 21, how long are you expected to live then) would be more informative, but I haven't seen any data like that from farther back than 19th century.

I can't recommend against this enough, skipping breakfast is awful advice as you wake already in a fasted state and all that will do is slow down your metabolism even further and leave you feeling weak and tired as a result of low blood sugar levels. Your body NEEDS energy first thing in the morning, a caffeine hit is not a replacement. Small portions often is far more effective on a consistent time pattern (stabilises blood sugar levels) than waiting long hours between food intake (causes sugar spikes) as all this serves to do is put your body into survival mode which leads to increased fat storage over time (your body will begin to store more fat as a means of an energy source throughout the extended time without food). Not to mention the psychological struggle of refraining from eating and starving yourself for long hours at a time, it's not practical and it's not effective, especially for anybody with a demanding job and/or training regime.

Your info is about 10 years old.

What's your info? Your answer hardly provided any evidence in support of your advice. I'd like to see you back up your argument with some real life applications. Starving yourself over long periods outside of sleeping goes against common sense, let alone the advice of professionals.

Fasting is not a weight loss tool. Fasting slows your metabolic rate down so your diet from before the fast is even more fattening after you fast, so unless you plan on fasting for the rest of your life or you are draining for Mr Universe how can you recommend this approach? It can even be dangerous because your immune system is weakened during fasting leaving you more vulnerable to illness.

Just read up on intermittent fasting and protein-sparing modified fasts. Most of what you said consists of myths that have been debunked and I don't feel like arguing with you since you're clearly a crusader type.

Martin Berkhan is pretty fair on his treatment of this topic and you can find many citations referenced in this post, which is just one of many:
http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-debunked.html

Lyle McDonald has also written extensively on this subject in his books (particularly RFLH, which covers all aspects of protein-sparing modified fasting) and Alan Aragorn has covered repeatedly as well.
http://www.alanaragon.com/an-objective-look-at-intermittent-fasting.html

It usually takes about 5~10 years for science to trump mass media *** and I've just decided that I don't feel like spending that time arguing with people.

That's all well and good but I challenge you or anyone else to maintain a fitness regime or even a demanding job while fasting. The practical application is not as straight forward as you make it out to be.

I've been fasting 18 hours a day with a 6 hour eating window for over a year now. In that year, I've cheated on my eating window maybe a total of 15-20 times (most of that was while I was on vacation in California, where I pretty much didn't fast at all)

and as we all know

Biking: 120-150 miles/week currently
Gym: 4 days a week
Obstacle course: 3-5x a week

I spend 8-12 hours on my bicycle, 4-6 hours in the gym (1-1.5 hours/session), and 3-5 hours at my obstacle course (takes about an hour start to finish, including warmup)/week,

and I usually eat after my workouts, so the majority of that is fasted at least 10 hours and up to the full 18

IF has been criticized in that it can promote binge eating if not carefully done. The GI tract absorbs nutrients better spaced out. So if one is stuffing 2000 calories in the last hour of their IF window to make their macros well then, yes that raises concerns.

IF is a great option for someone who can space out their meals in a 6-8hr window.

I do heavy labor for work. For leisure, I do 25 miles on my bike in about 90 minutes (yes, I can go faster, but this is just leisure). Heck, just to get to work I have to climb a series of hills over a 6 mile ride, then I do construction or similar for the rest of the day. And I've been on an intermittent fast for... 14 years now? My natural eating rhythm actually settled on one (or two) meals in the evening when I was in high school and found that eating was detrimental to all the activity I was doing.

I get people telling me that what I'm doing is impossible or insane. Funny that they're all substantially weaker than me in every appreciable way. /shrug

its all about dedication (even slight obsession!) its simple - what you put in is what you get out no more no less - when i see really cut guys and girls now i think ...

i know exactly the REAL EFFORT you put in EVERY DAY to look like that



ps: if it was easy everyone would look like gods on earth.

tiger aint you worried about burning muscle with all your cardio?

No, cardio is like anything else. Cardio doesn't kill gains

Over training kills gains. Marathon runners etc. who run 10-15 miles a day, that's over training. Biking on school days and obstacle course on non school days is a bit of cardio, but not enough to be detrimental to gains.

lol guilty of being bad at this one. I'll usually just eat everything in one sitting for the day. I'm doing 1,700-2,000 calories at the moment. It's hard to space that out, considering is such a little amount of food @.@


That's actually pretty good in general; as mph doesn't convert to distance traveled when considering stop lights, stop signs, times you have to slow down due to *** drivers, etc. You generally keep the same-ish pace I do (12 miles to school in 34-40 mins depending on traffic) for a longer period of time. Though, admittedly, I do have a 20-25 lb backpack on during my trips to/from school

I almost wish I would burn the muscle instead of other sources. I'm probably the world's only person to be annoyed by being a mesomorph.

And, yeah, my general cruising speed is 16 MPH. I've gotten as high as 35 on a downhill sprint (not a serious downhill, it's only like a 5% grade at best), which confuses the hell out of my friends. I ride a hybrid with a fair bit of gear bolted on. My friends, who are all on racing bikes and weigh much less than I do, cannot fathom why I keep up. Go figure, when you have about 30 extra pounds of muscle, mostly in your legs, you can go a lot faster than the skinny little ectomorphs. I do enjoy giving my friend who is a professional racer a run for his money, though. There's nothing quite like being an unabashed nerd who can still kick athlete butt.

To give the fasting thing a real proof of concept, I did a double-century over two days this past spring. Because my body is used to working with an empty stomach, I didn't eat breakfast (I never eat breakfast) and on the food stops, I mostly just grabbed some Gatorade and a handful of peanut M&Ms. I didn't eat an actual meal until around 7 PM, fully 12 hours after I departed. Ditto for day two. I'm too lazy to check the math right now, but I think I burned something like 20,000 calories over the weekend while eating... maybe half that?

Intermittent fasting is really just an acclimatization thing. Our bodies rely on ghrelin to regulate appetite and ghrelin can be trained by simple Pavlovian methods. If you do one of those stupid diets where you have a "meal" (200ish calories) every 60-90 minutes, you're basically training your hormones to make you feel hungry every hour. The INSTANT you lose willpower, you've now got a system that almost never feels full in spite of cramming hundreds of calories down your gob. By contrast, although I'm sure I could shove 4,000 calories down in one meal if I tried (a really large pizza, maybe?), I'd also want to die. The whole "you might gorge if you're fasting" thing is really a bit of a dodge because it's easy to gorge on any feeding schedule.

Oh, and my friends also think I'm insane for having done over 200 miles on a hybrid. I'll grant that my butt and hands were sore, but I was fine by the day after. Stop thinking so much about how many calories or which exercise or whatever. I hate to use a corporate slogan, but "Just do it" is probably the best advice. All the anal-retentive stuff is only relevant if you're a Greco-Roman wrestler, a boxer, or a bodybuilder: that is, people who need to control their weight and body fat to exacting degrees. Even professional models don't have to stress hugely. The body has remarkable balancing mechanisms built in.

Today is cheat day, but I only want to cheat on what I eat, rather than my caloric intake.

Double cheese burger from 5 guys: 840 calories
Cheese burger: 550 calories


I was trying to find out the calories of a single patty; because I'm going to get 4 patties, but two added to the double burger rather than getting more bread.

Subtracting single from double gives me 290;

So to make sure I'm not overlooking anything, adding 2 patties would add 580 calories
840+580 = 1420 calories?

Then could get a 300 calorie whole wheat bagel for some good carbs and hitting my 1700 calories for the day


Anything sound wrong with that? I always fudge up my cheat days lol


Also, Path, awesome on the biking. I wish there were some serious road cyclists around here so I could push myself more instead of flying by everyone with ease