Of the 1.8 New Year's Resolutions We Make Every Year, 23% Fail Within Two Weeks: A Humorous Scientific Outlook on the Fallacy of New Year's Resolutions.

Image 1: I don't know about this "smart ass" in particular, but I would assume you have had enough "smart asses" post their knowledgeable tips on their blogs to get along without another "12 useful tips for 2012" from me, right?

I guess at least those of you who have been following this "blog" (I hope that you would agree that the SuppVersity has become more than another "blog") have come to "know" me well enough not to expect me to provide you with the 1001 list of ten, or at it has become fashionable as of late, twelve super-duper congenial tips to achieve your goals in 2012. Change, and this is the one wisdom I want to give you to take along for the next year, change rarely is something that comes over night or is "triggered" by the adherence to any fixed plan. Change is the result of the accumulation of small steps, dx/dt, as we physicists would say, i.e. covering an infinitesimal distance (=dx) within an infinitesimal short timespan (=dt). If we now denote steps that take you further towards your goal as positive and steps by which you depart from your ultimate goal as negative than any year in which the integral over dx/dt would be positive, or in non-physicist terms, where the number of infinitesimal steps you have taken towards your goal was greater than the ones by which you have distanced yourself from what you want to achieve, a successful year! Consider that before you file 2011 as another "lost" year.

Enough smart ass new years advice for 2011!

But hey, didn't I say, I would not give you wise ass advice? I guess we should get back to science then... after all the "-versity" in the name of this site denotes that we are doing serious stuff here, doesn't it? So, take my hand and descend (for the last time in this year) with me into the archives of science. The first thing we hit on is an editorial from the most prestigious medical journal in the world, The Lancet, in which the contemporary editor of the journal has the following well-phrased advice for you (I did not say I would not provide you with wise ass advice from others ;-)

The opening of a new year leads all of us to take some stock of the past and to formulate a certain number of resolutions for the future, and the frame of mind which is thus indicated should be indulged in, but only with moderation. To spend too much time in thinking over what has gone by will interfere with the work that lies under our hand; to make resolutions that are too large and too numerous for our powers is to court disappointment. None the less every thoughtful man will use his past experience to guide him in the future both as to what he will do and as to how he will do it. (The Lancet. 05. January 1907)

Image 2: New Years Eve is for most of us the time, when we simply cannot ignore the necessity to make a change, any longer.

Somehow, this reminds me of some of the "best tips, tweaks, tricks" and, above all, "common pitfalls to avoid in 2012", I have been reading elsewhere around the web over the course of the last days. I mean we all know that the more good intentions we have, the more likely they are to never materialize into significant changes. Being aware of this circumstance, Judith Stoner Halpern who wrote the editorial to January issue of the not just as famous *rofl* International Journal of Trauma Nursing suggests that (Halpern. 2001) "perhaps the best New Year’s resolution that we can make would be to learn how to make a better resolution"

Interestingly, and this is probably the first thing that goes beyond "conventional new year's resolution wisdom", the first reason she invokes is the time of the year!

An easy answer is to blame January 1. For one half of the world, it falls in the middle of winter, and for the other half, the middle of summer. This is not the most opportune time to enact a dramatic change. The middle of a season often causes us to feel a lack of commitment; this may be part of the reason that ancient cultures chose spring or fall as the time to start anew. For some, January 1 may feel like an artificial time for change.

When you come to think about it, this is actually quite a reasonable argument. With the "winter blues" upon us January certainly is not the best time to "blossom". The neo-paleolithic folks many of us recently believe we are, we should better crawl up in our dugouts and set up our plan of attack in order to mimic the "ancient cultures" and start anew in spring.

Does understanding the psychology of change hold the key for success?

The question yet remains, how do we instigate a new-or restart? A possible answer may come from Freeman and Dolan's theoretical model of change that in turn is based on a previous model by DiClemente that has been extensively discussed in the scientific literature on psychotherapy. According to the model, the authors propose in their 2001 paper in Cognitive and Behavior Practice, there are 10 stages. Where the last one, maintenance marks the (temporary) achievement of preferably positive "change".

Figure 1: The psychology of change - an illustration based on the "revisited stages of change model by Freeman and Dolan (Freeman. 2001)

If you take a closer look at my graphical illustration, you will realize that you have (hopefully) already overcome the initial stages of

• noncontemplation, where, in your everyday oblivion, you do not even consider making a change
   
• anticontemplation, where you are trying to convince yourself that you are "just fine the way you are" or that it would be impossible to make a change, anyways
   
• precontemplation, where you are thinking and often dreaming about what would happen if you were able to make a change

Interestingly, for most of us the realization that another year is almost over usually makes us go through these stages (many of you may skip the 2nd one, some may get stuck there), automatically. So even if you are not one of Freeman and Dolan's persons, chances are that you are now, as they put it "directly and actively considering change" and have "reached a point of readiness to engage in the change process." 

Sitting in your neo-paleolithic dugout - or, for those who have not been infected by the paleo-virus in the course of 2011, simply in your cozy home - it is now about time to lay out your plan of attack!

Action planning is the stage of change when the therapist and patient have collaboratively developed a treatment focus and treatment plan. The therapetnic process has begun and the patient is beginning to make plans on how change will occur. The key phrase with this group is, "I plan to change."

Now, I don't know whether you have a therapist, or not (note: this is nothing to be ashamed of - I would even count the people I know that are in psychotherpeutical care among the few relatively sane human beings which populate this planet ;-), are working with a trainer, nutrionist or just a good friend who will help you on your way. In the end, it will always be about your commitment to your plan to change and eventually your success. That you have to determine the latter based on the integral over the steps in the right and steps in the wrong direction is something I have mentioned before. Freeman and Dolans model, however, provides a theoretical framework to understand this sometimes annoying, often frightening and in many cases discouraging back-and-forth even better.

Figure 2: Reported success rates at different timepoints in the new year and at 2 year follow up (data based on Norcross. 1989).

What are typical New Year's Resolutions? I must admit that I was quite disappointed about the lack of scientific data on the real-world outcome of New Year's Resolutions. Similar to the previously discussed issue of holiday weight gain which turned out to be at least less pronounced than everyone would have it (cf. "Santa is Coming to Town"), there is almost no realiable, non-specific, i.e. not related to only one goal (mostly smoking cessation), scientific data that would proof that the majority of new years resolutions fail.

In one of the two peer-reviewed studies I could come up with (both based on the same dataset), Norcross et al. report that their 213 study participants "made an average of 1.8 New Year’s resolutions" (Norcross. 1989). Among those, smoking cessation (30%) and weight loss (38%) together accounted for two-thirds of the resolutions. Other non-idiosyncratic New Year's Resolutions revolved around relationship improvement (5%), reduction in alcohol consumption (2%), and an increase in monetary savings (2%). A cursory glance at figure 2 does yet suffice to see that the difference between the real and the commonly assumed "success"-rates is much less pronounced than in the previously cited case of holiday weight gain. With a 23% chance of failure after no more than 2 weeks and a drop out rate of  57% after three months, chances that the average 16-75 year old citizen of northeastern Pennsylvania is able to realize his resolutions for the new year really isn't very high. A reported (do we believe those guys?) success rate of 19% after 2 years is nevertheless more than what my personal observations would suggest.

Lapses are integral parts of change - accept them work, through them, or fail

Image 3: If your New Year's resultion incorporates letting go of junk food, thinking of Mark Haub, the "Twinkie Diet Professor", probably would not be one of the "behavioral skills" to incorporate in your mental toolbox.

Let's assume you are a carbohydrate-addict and decided to cut back on carbs in the next year. Do I see you tremble in apprehension? Well, this is actually an apprehension of the prelapse phase, a phase that is "characterized by active and often overwhelming cognitions related to the reversal of the changed behavior" the carb-junkie you are, even the thought of having to put down your twinkies and dingdongs (whatever the latter may be) is getting you all psyched up. If it was already January the 1st, this would be the moment, when you are eating your eggs and bacon for breakfast, look at the cereals your brother is shuffling down his throat and think to yourself: "How can I possible endure that for the rest of my life?" Then you remember the words of the mighty paleo guru Robb Wolf to "give it a shot for thirty days" and gag down the last piece of bacon.

Psychotherapists refer to simple tricks like this as "behavioral skills", i.e. (mostly cognitive) techniques by which you can "short-circuit the prelapse before it leads to the old behaviors."

Figure 3: Successful and unsuccessful strategies to stay on track; * indicate statistically significance for success (data based on Norcross. 1989).

Which "behavioral skills" are most helpful? In the aforementioned study, Norcross and Vangarelli also analyzed which methods the participants successfully (figure 3, green) and unsuccessfully (figure 3, red) applied to achieve their aims. As you can see planning ahead (contingency management), managing "dangerous" stimuli, exercise (obviously not the way to distract yourself from the temptations if your new years resolution was to exercise more) and, above all, taking one step after the other, were the most effective strategies in the toolboxes of the 213 study participants, of whom only 18% said that "nothing hindered their resolution". Among the remaining 82%, most invoked their own lack of willpower (34%) as the fundamental obstacle. 16 subjects found that the realization of their resolution was not compatible with their lifestyle and 8 maintained that they had not been serious enough about their resolution.

(Un-?)fortunately, you are human and thusly destined to let reason go and fall back to old, oftentimes bad habits. So, there will come a day, when you will be sitting next to your meanwhile "no longer so loved ones" (after all, they are allowing themselves to eat all those jummy junk right next to you at your table ;-) and stare at the twinkies and dingdongs they are indulging. Suddenly a thought crosses your head: "Wasn't there this funky professor who lost a ton of weight on the twinkie diet?" You reach out and, probably much to the secret delight of your "formerly loved ones" who have been jealous of how fast you have been losing weight in the course of the last weeks, grab one of the twinkies that have been waiting for so long for you to take appropriate care of them... I guess I don't have to tell you the rest of the story, do I?

What is important, though, is that whenever lapses like this happen is that you always remember that no matter how many twinkies you may have eaten, how many training sessions you may have skipped, and/or how many cigarettes you have smoked, it is still your choice:

• You can either return to the anticontemplative phase by persuading yourself that you could shed off the extra points just as well on twinkies and dingdongs - and even if that would not work, why would you have to make a change, in the first place? After all, you feel "fine just the way you are"!
   
• Or you can analyze what triggered your temporary loss of memory and inability to apply one of the various behavioural skills that have prevented you from "lapsing" before.

I guess, it is not difficult to tell that option #2 would be the way to go. You have to go back to the drawing board. Not to start all over again, but to develop new skills and cognitions and to practice old to make sure that your next dt/dx's will be positive again. In that the ability to accept your own fallibility and the insight that a bunch of twinkies won't ruin the admirable success of the previous weeks, may be one of the key elements that will eventually enable you to achieve your contemporary goals, maintain your success and reach for the stars.

Along these lines, I wish all of you, my dear silent and not so silent readers, your families and loved ones, a successful, happy and, above all, healthy year 2012.

Adelfo Cerame - Road to Wheelchair Nationals '12: From Man Boobs to Striated Pecs - Looking Back at 2011

Image 1: Looks like Santa's sweet treats
just ricocheted off Adelfo ;-)

Although we are amidst the "holiday season" (you know the time of the year where the term off-season gets a whole new meaning ;-), there is one fellow who must obviously have read my blogpost about the not so amiable gifts Santa has in stock for some of us (cf. "Santa is Coming to Town")... judged by the pictures Adelfo has attached to the latest installment of his amazing "Road to Wheelchair Nationals 2012" series, Santa's sweet treats must have had a fat-burning, muscle-building effect on him. Well, at least this is what you could think, if you did not know how much hard work and dedication it cost him to get to where he is now. But, I guess I will let him tell you the whole story...

Without the "small" things the bigger one's "lose" all their meaning

It has been 12 months, now, hwen I got my medical release from the doctor... 12 months from the day I was finally able to leave the bed and go back to work... and eventually (!) go back to the gym and train! For almost all of 2010, I was confined to being bed-ridde. With the deep MRSA infected ulcer on my behind, I even had to lie on my belly - unable to sit, unable to move for almost a year.

Image 1-2: Looking back at December 2010 - All the abdominal fat and the man boobs that I accumulated after 12 months of being bed-ridden… I just hope that I will never have to go through that again.

That these memories are coming back now, is probably because New Years Eve is approaching. The last days of a year, where I have made a habit of reflecting on the little things that we usually take for granted. Looking back, none of this things, like being able to go to the grocery store, running errands or doing what I love the most, which obviously is going to the gym, was completely out of reach, back in 2010. Isn't it amazing how we always have to lose something until we appreciate its value?

Think about it, wouldn't  "Live life… cherish every moment of it… and be thankful for even the simplest things that this life has to offer!" be a much better new years resolution than the usual "I want to lose 5 pounds of fat!" or "I want to quit smoking"?

For me this (fortunately) temporary loss of mobility and, ultimately, freedom, marked another turning point in my live. I have ever since been trying my best to live life to the fullest, improve and better myself spiritually, mentally and physically. I have begun to cherish the simple things in life, constantly reminding myself that they could be taken away from me (and you!) at any moment. And for me, training, of all these little things, is the one I cherish the most: waking up in the morning, getting into the wheelchair and off the the gym to do the one thing I love the most is something I never want to lose again.

December 2010 to December 2011 = from man boobs to a striated chest

I don't know if you can empathize with the way I feel, when I look at the pictures from 2010, now. I mean, you know that about 8-6 weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to look "as stage ready as can be" at my 12-week mark (which actually is today) and today, after 12 weeks of intermittent fasting, eating whole "real foods", and training heavy and intense (plus minimal cardio and abdominal exercises) the result are eventually paying off:

Stats/Measurements

• Weight: 141 lb.
• Waist: 29 in
• Arms (flexed): 17 ¼” in
• Chest: 41 in
• BF%: around 8% [at least that’s what my digital calipers read ;-)]

As you can see from the images from last year… I don’t have the best genetics in the world (I’m more on the endomorphic side of the body types), and I obviously let myself go (not of my choosing, but due to illness), but my point is: No matter what genetic barriers you think or feel you may have, or how far off you’ve let your body and health go, it’s not impossible to achieve the physique of your dreams, with just a little bit of hard work, consistency and balance.

I guess, I can say I’m pretty satisfied with what I have achieved so far and I’m definitely looking far better than I was at the my last show in April @ the INBF Natural Buckeye. Fortunately for me, I have 13 more weeks to improve on my physique and push myself even harder with my training and dieting.

3 things I want to try and improve on within the next 13 weeks…

You think you could use some advice on your  training, diet and supplementation regimen from someone who knows what it takes to build muscle and lose fat? Reach out to Adelfo via Facebook.

1. Vascularity… I want people to (figuratively ;-) throw up because they’re so disgusted with how many veins are popping out through my skin. Genetics aside, pushing my body-fat level to the lower limit will be the major factor in achieving that.
    
2. Maintaining muscle mass and maybe even possibly gaining a little bit more… When you are dieting it is already difficult not to lose at least some of the fullness you have in the off-season. Putting on extra mass, on the other hand, is near impossible. Yet, although I have been dieting hard (and with visible results), I have been getting stronger throughout my prep and those strength gains are still coming... and though we all know that there is no 1:1 (or other quantifiable) relation between strength- and size-gains, I would expect to see at least increases in what people call "muscle density" or "maturity", if I can keep upping the weight on all my major lifts.
    
3. Strength… I just don’t want to look the part, but I also want to be strong also. As I already mentioned, this is the first prep I’ve had, where I have not noticed any decline in strength. I partly ascribe this to the combination of intermittent fasting, raw and whole foods eating, and some of the training methods I have used from Rob Regish’s Blueprint, which have really taken the variety of my workout routines to the next level. And I hope that the latest addition of Anadraulic State, Creapure (creatine monohydrate), D-Pol (d-Aspartic acid) and Recycle (a herbal natural test booster) to my supplement regimen will help me with lifting (increasingly) heavy(-ier) lifts throughout the rest of my contest-prep.

For the time being, I am on my pre-planned last week of the year famine/detox. Those of you who have followed the whole series will remember that I have been quite skeptical about whether the theoretically sensible (cf. Famine/Detox Episode), yet for any bodybuilder totally counter-intuitive idea from Robb Regish's blueprint would work, but the results I had back in October were so convincing that I decided to make it a staple within every macro-cycle of my training. And now, after 12 weeks of intense training and dieting, the time seems to be right.

Image 4: Example of a "detox meal"

Recipe of the week: Spartan Detox Food (example meal) - Eat this (or a similar meal) 3x a day to benefit from a simulated "famine".

• cucumbers, 
• a handful of fruits, and 
• a cup of vegetable juice from Trader Joe’s…

During my last detox, going extremely low on both calories as well as protein and fat worked quite well for me, but in general Rob's protocol allows for a  maximum of 1,200kcal (for you bigger guys out there) and <50g of protein, fill up the rest with veggies, fruit and a lot of water and you are good to go ;-)

During the 12 weeks, my body has eventually adapted to my diet and training, and is pretty much in an exhausted state, where gains in size and strength usually stall. In order for me to get my body back into a growth state, I have to shock the whole system by putting my body through a mild state of tissue breakdown with added stress (think of it as triggering the alarm). The mild tissue breakdown and added stress through training during the famine phase will accelerate the entire protein turnover cycle. So basically I want to get my body back into a phase where it feels like I just started lifting weights and training for the very first time in order to be in that growth state again, so that, even at an average calorie intake of roughly 1,400 calories per day, I can still maintain (or hopefully build on) the muscle

Final thoughts... at least for this year ;-)

Image 4:  No clue what "intermittent fasting is all about"? I suggest you start with reading the first installments of the Intermittent Thoughts, then (click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and more)

If there is one thing that I have really come to appreciate during the past weeks, it is yet neither the famine, nor the detox or the different training techniques I have learned. The one thing, I believe has made the biggest difference was intermittent fasting - all I can say is… I love it! The protocol is simple and easy to follow and I was able to tweak it to my liking by applying other methods that have worked for me in the course of the last 4 years of competing. And the results are mind-boggling. I mean, this has by far been the easiest prep I have ever had! Without being distracted with having to prepare meals, I got to focus more on training, school, and fun stuff like social events. Add to that the amazing results I have (and still am) seeing in the mirror and you know why I believe that “IF” is definitely something I can, and will do long-term.

I will leave it to that for today, and even the year 2011 and wish all of you a happy and safe New Year! And just in case you happen to be one of those people who like to make "New Year's Resolutions"… Good Luck! Let me know how that works out for ya in a week or two? Hahaha! Just kiddin'! But seriously… You shouldn’t have to wait till New Years to make resolutions and set goals ;-)

"Mini-Fast With Exercise" a la Intermittent Fasting Can Help Minimize the "Damage" During the Holiday Season

I wonder if it is coincidence that the modern Santa is an obese advertisement character invented by some marketing genius working for Coca Cola?

Those of you who have been reading the intermittent thoughts on intermittent fasting (click here and start with the links at the bottom, if you haven't) will remember that the actual number of studies on intermittent fasting, as it is interpreted by most people on the Internet is actually quite scarce. Aside from the Ramadan studies, you mostly see very long fasting periods or other oddities that decrease the significance of the studies. That said, I did hit onto an older study that has been published in Medical Hypothesis in 2009, already. A study with a daily 12-14h "mini-fast" + low intensity aerobic exercise 5x a week and a study the results of which point to the usefulness and practical value of skipping a meal - especially in a time where you give in to nutritional temptations way too easily, anyhow - the holiday season!

Fast, walk, eat and stay lean during the holiday season and afterwards

Especially for those of you who are having some weight issues anyway, the profound body fat loss, the subjects in the Bahadori study which was based on a 7 step program comprising

* Better than monitoring total fat and GI would be to monitor your N-6 intake, emphasize mono-saturated fatty acids and eyeball the total glycemic load (the latter means potatoes are ok, but cookies are a "better stick to one" item ;-)
• a mini-fast with exercise (12–14 h) fast during every 24 h + prolonged, moderate-intensity aerobic exercise (e.g. 40-45 minutes of brisk walking) Meals are not
• no caloric restrictions, but a focus on low fat, low GI meals*
• an increased consumption in calorie-free beverages during the fast

I know that sounds stupid and 100% mainstream, but if you take a look at the data in figure 1 you will notice that it worked like a charm... well, at least for the 10 overweight men and 17 women who followed this protocol for 12 months.

Figure 1: Body weight and composition, waist and insulin levels from the beginning to the end of the 12 week non-calorically restricted 10-14 hour fast with light aerobic exercise; the asterisk (*) behind body fat (%) and insulin signifies that these values are plotted on the 2nd-ary axes (Bahadori. 2009).

Personally, I believe that one, if not the reason that this protocol worked so well were it's feasibility and flexibility, as well as being allowed to eat to satiety, when the subjects were not fasting. The 27 subjects who participated in the study were also free to chose whether they wanted to skip breakfast or dinner and switch from one to the other strategy on a daily basis to adapt their diet to their working hours and other obligations:

Coffee and teas like green, black oolong and pu-erh are your friends not just during the mini-fasts (read more).

"If participants choose to exercise in the morning, they skip breakfast and do not eat until noon. If they choose to exercise at noon, they skip lunch. If they choose to exercise in the evening, they eat an early light dinner, and then wait at least two hours to exercise (so that fasting insulin levels are restored); no food is consumed between the exercise and bedtime. (A variant of this latter strategy is to eat no dinner at all; several volunteers in the study described below adopted this approach on their own initiative.) To optimize the flexibility of this regimen, participants are allowed to switch the time of their exercise session from day to day." (Bahadori. 2009)

For your personal Christmas fast this could mean you skip breakfast tomorrow (which should not be a problem with the large Christmas dinner in your tummy), go out for a long brisk walk, have a light dinner, like a mixed salad with some cheese and chicken breast, and thus prepare yourself for the next family feast on Christmas day. If you are brunching on the day after Christmas, not a problem, you just sleep out, go for light 30min jog, shower and head over to the brunch. Eat as much as you like, and either skip dinner later or breakfast the day after.

If you are not into coffee and tea, ginger ale is another fasting friendly weight loss drink (read more).

Bottom line: To keep the damage at bay this the "mini-feast + exercise" protocol is probably feasible for anyone. It's easy, it will allow you to take part in all the Christmas festivities and won't have you sit there like an orthorexic leopard who cannot change his spots .

Whether this is a strategy worth following for longer depends on where you are at and where you want to go. If you want to look like a fitness model, it's unlikely to be sufficient to reach your goal. You will, for example, have to tweak that regimen to (a) incorporate strength training or add it in later in the day, (b) think about using a couple of supplements, such as BCAAs, caffeine and green tea during the fast and (c) eyeball the quality of the foods you eat with convenience, fast and junk-food being the exceptions to the rule of eating self-prepared whole food meals.

There are however certain downsides to protocols like this, a potential increase in adipogenesis (22% vs. 12% fat gain) and decreased lean gains (50% vs. 72%), as they were observed in a rodent study by Verbaeyes et al. (see "Eating by The Clock Could Make You Fat") with unrestricted caloric intake within the 6h feeding window, would be an example and evidence that whenever you are effectively trying to gain weight you are probably better off spreading your food intake more evenly across the day. Alternatively, you can enlarge the feeding window to 10h to maximize lean gains without the negative side effects of force-feeding yourself with 2x1,500kcal meals only twice a day or grazing continuously for 6h to meet your caloric demands.

But hey, Christmas is almost there, and there is still enough time to think about dieting and bulking after the festivities. On that note, I wish all of you a happy Christmas, a nice time with your families, friends! Regardless if you fast or not ;-)

References:

• Bahadori B, McCarty MF, Barroso-Aranda J, Gustin JC, Contreras F. A "mini-fast with exercise" protocol for fat loss. Med Hypotheses. 2009 Oct;73(4):619-22.

Santa is Coming to Town and You Better Beware of His Gifts: Fat Gain, Muscle Loss and Increased Mortality Rates.

Image 1: The "modern" image of the Coke-drinking Santa. Do you really believe he is one of the good guys?

Finally, December 24th is there! The day we have all been waiting for, to get together with friends and relatives and wait for the portly, joyous, white-bearded man in the red coat to deliver "his" gifts. Interestingly enough, the word "gift" in German designates "poison" and while those of you who have been following the SuppVersity news earlier this week may now be speculating that this could in one way or another be related to the millions of iPhones Santa is going to be dropping down the chimneys in the night to come (cf. Mobile Contraception), it seems unlikely that the electromagnetic radiation from the gadgetry could explain the statistically significant +4.65% increase in cardiac and a + 4.99% increase in non-cardiac deaths during the holiday season. After all, the data based on which David P. Phillips, Jason R. Jarvinen, Ian S. Abramson, and Rosalie R. Phillips conclude that "the Christmas/New Year’s holidays are a risk factor for cardiac and noncardiac mortality" is from the pre-iPhone era (Phillips. 2004).

Is Santa not the good guy, the Coca Cola ads made us believe?

So, if its not the radiation, what else could it be? Could it be Santa Claus himself? Is he haunting us, just as his robotic counterfeit in the distant future of the year 2999, where an evil Santa robot is after the blood of the protagonists of Matt Groening's and David X. Cohens TV series Futurama? Or is it a result of the consumption of too many of the Coca Cola bottles Santa is supposed to have in his bag?

Image 2: One really has to marvel at how the soft drink producers dissolve the enormous amount of sugar on the right in the small amount of dark brew on the left.

Did you know that the Coca Cola company alone sells 1.6billion (!) servings of Coke per day? With 27g of sugar per serving, this equals 43,000 metric tons of pure sugar. The average American, who consumes an average of 150 to 170 pounds of sugar each year, would have to live into his/her 558th year of age to eat or drink her way through this sugar mountain. And while I have no doubt that there actually are people out there who would do that withing 100 years, I am not quite sure which of the ailments of our sweet convenience society would strike him / her first and put a spoke in the sweet-o-holic's plans: diabetes, cancer, heart failure or stroke? What would you say?

Phillipps et al. who report in a follow-up study based on the same dataset from the holiday periods between July 1, 1973, and June 30, 2001 that there was an "excess of 42,325 deaths from natural causes above and beyond the normal winter increase" (Phillips. 2010), exclude the possibility that the increased mortality rate was simply a result of the bad weather conditions and related respiratory diseases:

Respiratory diseases. Respiratory diseases increase during winter, and patients weakened by respiratory diseases can die from cardiac diseases. The respiratory hypothesis is undermined by 2 considerations: (1) People dying from cardiac diseases with respiratory disease listed as a secondary cause of death produce a smaller holiday peak than do people dying from cardiac diseases alone: 3.51% versus 3.77%. (2) Interaction between cardiac and respiratory diseases cannot easily explain the twin mortality spikes on Christmas and New Year’s.

So, in view of the latest headlines related to "holiday weight gain" here at the SuppVersity and elsewhere on the web, the next best plausible explanation (which would in fact come back to the "Coca Cola < > Santa Connection" ;-) would be gluttony, right?

Holiday weight gain: Distinguishing fact from fiction

Before we jump to any premature conclusions, here, let's initially have a closer look at how much body weight Santa actually has in his bag for you.I mean, the perceived weight gain is enormous, right? Well, science is however not about perceptions and feelings and it should thusly not really surprise you that, according to a US study which was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (Yanowski. 2000), the "average" American (in this study represented by 195 US adults with a mean age of 39 +/-12 years) gains no more than 0.37kg, or, expressed in terms of the mean weight of the study participants, 0.5% during the holiday period from from mid-November to early or mid-January.

Figure 1: Percentage of normal weight, overweight and obese subjects with "major weight gain", as defined in absolute or relative terms (data adapted from Yanowski. 2000)

And while the average weight gain hardly is something to speak of, there are two other particularly intriguing findings of this study I do want to draw your attention to. The first one relates to the the data in figure 1. As you can see, the number of overweight subjects among those study participants with major weight gain (as defined as >3% of the initial weight) is particularly high. While only 7.9% of the normal-weight (American normal weight ;-) subjects gained more than 3% of their initial body weight 11.1% of the already overweight subjects did. Interestingly, the number of obese subjects was slightly smaller (7.5%). The latter is yet a physical necessity as there simply is a phyiscal limit to the amount of weight you can gain in a given period of time and 3% for a person with BMI>30 is obviously way more than 3% for someone who is only "overweight" (25 < BMI < 30).

The real problem is: The weight does not magically disappear

The real culprit is however that the weight people gain during last weeks of the year "is not reversed during
the spring and summer months", so that he researchers' concern that

[t]he 0.48-kg weight gain of the subjects in this study between September or October and February or March might not appear to be  clinically important and could easily go unnoticed by both the subjects and health care providers [and that] the cumulative effects of yearly weight gain during the fall and winter are likely to contribute to the substantial increase in body weight that frequently occurs during adulthood.

A 2006 by Hull may not only provide a hypothetical explanation for the non-reversibility of the (minor) weight gain (Hull. 2006), it also provides some insights into the true fallacy of "holiday weight gain": The minor increase in total body weight goes at the expense of concomittant increases in body fat and reductions in lean tissue mass.

Figure 2: Relative changes in anthroprometric measures over the holiday season; left axis - overweight / normal weight, right axis + figures - all (data adapted from Hull. 2006)

In the 82 college students from the Hull study, this fat promoting, muscle reducing "recompositioning" effect of the holiday season (Thanksgiving to New Year) was even so pronounced that the study participants actually lost -0.1kg of their total body weight. This was unfortunately a direct result of a +0.8 increase in fat mass and a -0.4kg decrease in lean mass. And what's more, the effect on fat mass was again more pronounced in those subjects, who were already obese.

Beyond candy, coke & co: Five additional reasons why Christmas is potentially deadly

In spite of the fact that these highly unfavorable changes in body composition are certainly not beneficial for anyone's overall health, it stands out of question that their effects would be cumulative and can thusly hardly explain the empirically validated increased mortality risk during the holiday season. In a 2004 comment on the aforementioned paper by Phillips et. al., Robert A. Kloner thusly proposes five additional hypotheses which could explain the potentially fatal side effects of the holiday season (Kloner. 2004):

Image 3: If you do not want to be treated by "beginners" and unexperienced hospital personnel you'd better not get sick over the holidays; and in case you do, please make sure to "postpone your death" in order not to ruin everyone's holidays ;-)

1. Inappropriate delay in seeking medical attention - best way out: don't wait until all the presents have been wrapped out, when aunt Mary chokes over her food
2. Reduced levels of healthcare staffing or fewer staff members who are familiar with individual patients during holiday on-call schedules - best way out: better avoid getting sick in the first place if you do not want to be treated by the SCRUBS staff
3. Increased emotional stress - just ignore your nephew when he starts crying because he did not get the Nintendo Wii he wrote on his wish list
4. Decreased our of daylight - make sure to get as much of the little light there is during prolonged walks with the whole family (may also help cool down any raised tempers ;-)
5. "Postponement of death" - tell your 127 year old uncle that he has been waiting so long now that it would be very inappropriate to die now and ruin everyones' Christmas celebrations

Well, I guess, now that you know about all the terrible things that could happen and the best ways to avoid them, it is about time to wish you, your family, friends and loved ones a happy (death-free) holiday season! And in case you need a break from the festivities, there is no Christmas break, here it at the SuppVersity ;-)

Beyond Warding Off Holiday Weight Gain: 250-1000mg of Freeze-Dried Ginger Reduce Visceral Fat Even When Rodents Are Fed an Obesogenic "High Fat" Diet.

Image 1: If ginger works only half as good in humans as it does in rodents, you can drink your way to a leaner and healthier you with Alisa Profumo's delicious low-carb "Healthy REAL Ginger Ale".

Zingiber officinale, or, in plain English, Ginger, is unquestionably one of the most remarkable plant rhizomes that is known to mankind. It has been used in various cultures for treating common colds or fever, to aid digestion, treat stomach upset, diarrhoea or nausea, to alleviate rheumatic disorders, gastrointestinal complications and dizziness, and, as of late, it has received quite some attention as a possible adjuvant to treatment modalities of cancer (Peirara. 2011). In a pretty recent study, the administration of 500 mg/kg zinigiber officinale to streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats (cf. related study in CLnA, the Omega-3 Variety of CLA), was able to partly restore the deteriorated glucose metabolism (Abdulrazaq. 2011), and a 2010 study was able to show that 6-Dehydrogingerdione, an active constituent of dietary ginger stopped the growth of breast cancer cells in the petri dish. "That is all very well", you may now be thinking, "but what does that all have to do with warding off the holiday weight gain?" Well, the answer lies in the results of a very recent study, which have just been published in the International Journal of Pharmacology (Malik. 2011).

Ginger reverses diet-induced visceral obesity and restores blood lipids to normal

Z.A. Malik and P.L. Sharma, two researchers from the Department of Pharmacology at the ISF College of Pharmacy in Moga, India, investigated whether the administration of 0.25-1g/kg body weight of dietary ginger (freeze dried powder that was made from fresh ginger juice; human equivalent would be 40-160mg/kg) would have any beneficial effect on the high-fat diet induced deteriorations in body composition, energy, lipid and glucose metabolism of male Wistar rats. For eight weeks, the scientists fed the rodents a diet that consisted of 33% normal rat chow, 33% Nestlé milk powder, 7% sucrose, and 27% tap water.

Figure 1: This is probably the lowest fat "high fat diet", I've seen in some time (data adapted from Malik. 2011) - ridiculous, but hey, if the diet had really been "high fat", who knows if the rodents would have gotten obese, anyway ;-)

If you take a look a the macronutrient breakdown of the "high fat" and the "normal diet" in figure 1, it is quite obvious that the former is - if anything - higher in fat than the latter, but by no means what any sane individual would consider a "high fat diet" (I really have to check myself not to start ranting against the "high fat diet induced whatever" in rodent models, again ;-) But be that as it may, ... the data in figure 2 shows that the milk powder and the sucrose were obviously enough to really fatten the rats up, profoundly:

Figure 2: Relative increases in body weight (BW), white adipose tissue weight (WAT), visceral fat weight and brown fat in rats on the "high fat diet" (data adapted from Malik. 2011).

With a whopping +417% increase in the total white adipose tissue weight, the poor rodents became profoundly obese. Their visceral fat depots (mesenteric, epididymal  and retroperitoneal) more than doubled (on average +150%), whereas the weight of their metabolically active brown adipose tissue increased by "only" 107%.

Figure 3: Relative changes in body weight (BW), white adipose tissue weight (WAT), visceral fat weight and brown fat in rats on the "high fat diet" who were supplemented with 250, 500 or 1000mg/kg ginger (data adapted from Malik. 2011).

The addition of 250mg/kg, 500mg/kg and 1g/kg body weight of the freeze-dried ginger juice (now obviously in powdered form) to the chow dose-dependently ameliorated the weight gain and reduced the weight of both the visceral, as well as the brown fat to level that were below those of the rats on the "normal" diet (cf. figure 3). Intriguingly, the "low" dose of 250mg/kg body weight turns out to be the most effective one, when it comes to the reduction of the epididymal, retroperitoneal and mesenteric visceral fat pads.

Figure 4: Relative changes in triglycerides (TG), total cholesterol (TC), HDL and total cholesterol to HDL radio in rats on the "high fat diet" and rats who were fed the HFD with 250, 500 or 1000mg/kg ginger (data adapted from Malik. 2011).

The addition of ginger to the diet also kept the blood lipids in check (cf. figure 4) and normalized the glucose response to an oral blood glucose tolerance test in the "high-fat" fed rodents. Other than the scientists had speculated, it had no effect on energy intake and did not increase the fecal fat content. The two markers of hepatic health, AST and ALT, which were measured in the study, remained almost unchanged - in the 250mg group there was even a -17% and -13% reductions in the respective transaminases (I am thusly amazed why the study has the words "anomalies after chronic administration" in its title).

How does it work and how effective is it?

Let's finally have a brief look at a) the potential mechanism by which ginger exhibits its fat-burning magic and b) how effective ginger would be, as compared to other, better known, "tools" to ward off weight gain or induce weight loss. To check whether the mechanism of action involves increased beta-oxidation, Malik and Sharmaa mixed an additional 30mg/kg of the beta-blocker propranolol into the high fat, ginger-supplemented diets of the animals - and as you can see in figure 5, the addition of the beta-blocker led to a profound reduction in the ameliorative / fat burning effects of the freeze-dried ginger powder.

Figure 5: Relative increases (vs. control on normal diet) in body weight (BW), white adipose tissue weight (WAT), visceral fat weight and brown fat in rats on the "high fat diet" supplemented with ginger, ginger + propanolol, or sibutramine (data adapted from Malik. 2011).

And as far as its effectiveness is concerned, ginger stands the comparison to the (in-)famous weight-loss drug Sibutramine, of which you will probably have heard that Chinese manufacturers of otherwise ineffective herbal weight-loss remedies like to mix it into their products (obviously without mentioning this banned ingredient on the label).

So, if we assume that these amazing results translate to humans, the addition of a few ginger rhizomes to your holiday diet could be a very effective tweak to ward off unwanted weight gain. And if your plans for 2012 include getting rid of the nasty love-handles you have acquired in the course of the past 12 months, you better get accustomed to the spicy, yet fruity flavor of the rhizomes of this perennial reed-like plant. You could, for example start out by following Alisa Profumo's delicious low-carb "Healthy REAL Ginger Ale in Minutes"-recipe on the Super Human Radio webpage (cf. image 1). And just in case you are too lazy to juice and / or freeze-dry some fresh ginger rhizomes yourself, you may want to consider buying a bag of Carl Lanore's  standardized ginger extract, which is also available on the Super Human Radio website.

Adelfo Cerame - Road to Wheelchair Nationals '12: Getting Ripped For Christmas! Plus, Taking a Week Off Takes Some Courage, But Believe Me - It Will Pay Off!

Image 1: Adelfo at the Buckeye Classics, last year.

Actually, I wanted to start this installment of Adelfo's weekly contest-prep blog along the lines of "another Thursday, another ...", ... well, I guess that won't work out, because exactly those lines were the first words in the email with the weekly write-up Adelfo just sent me. So, I guess, I will just take the chance to sneak in a last-minute tip for a gift. Assuming that you have a friend or family member who really wants to make a change to the way he looks, feels and performs in the coming year, I think Adelfo is still taking new clients... but before he gets mad at me again, because I am pimping his services way too much for his liking, I better shut up now and let Adelfo tell you how he has been preparing for Christmas and his 12-weeks out mark on Christmas Day ;-)

Another Thursday, another blog…  

Damn! Aren’t you guys and, of course, girls ;-) getting tired of reading these Thursday write-ups? Well I hope not because there’s going to be about 13 to 14 more Thursday segments from yours truly ;-)

As you all know from the last installment of this series I am using this week as sort of a benchmark or test run for the show. With Christmas Day I will be hitting my 12-week mark and hopefully make myself an awesome present in terms of just about as lean and mean as possible before, ... well, before I will cram myself with every- and anything my little heart desires. What? You think that sounds stupid? Why would one diet down, just to ruin everything within one day? Well, I guess you have not read the previous installments of this series then. As I've already mentioned repeatedly, if you stay lean year round, keep your body accustomed to burning off extra calories by carefully planned cheat- and refeed-days and don't skimp on your workouts, the occasional holiday binge is not going to have any long-term detrimental effect on your physique. Enjoy your holidays - you have done your homework. It's the lazy rest of the world that's got to feel guilty, not you!

Image 2: No reason to feel guilty! I guarantee, "My 5 Simple Tricks For Guilt Free Thanksgiving Celebrations" will work for every holiday ;-)

How to minimize damage or even progress over the Christmas days? If you have not read them already, I strongly suggest you go back to"My 5 Simple Tricks For Guilt Free Thanksgiving Celebrations", where I describe in some detail how intermittent fasting and keeping your diet in check in the days before and after the holidays will help you to not only compromise your progress, but how you can even make use of a holiday binge as a strategic way of refueling your body and soul ;-) That being said, a related resource you may enjoy are the first issues (esp. Part 2 and Part 3) of the Intermittent Thoughts series, in which Dr.Andro digs into the physiology of intermittent fasting, which - as you all know - has helped me tremendously during this first half of my prep.

With only two more days to go, I am very pleased with how things are working out for me. It looks like I will be hitting my mark… As for the water retention issue, I have been seeing improvements in my physique this week, as in vascularity and separation within my shoulders, forearms, triceps and upper abs. I’ve been pounding at least 2 gallons of water a day to try and flush out as much water as I can. We will see what the end-result on Sunday will look like. I know that I will not be hitting my full potential in conditioning - if I did, the chances that I will be both as muscular, as well as as ripped as possible, on the day of the show, in 14 weeks would decrease, anyways.

Nevertheless, I do feel that I look now about as ripped as when I did the Buckeye Classic last April (cf. image 1). With another 13-14 weeks to improve, I am pretty damn sure that time (and obviously consistency as far as diet and training goes) will take care of the water retention and stubborn body fat I am still carrying. But enough about my 12-week mark! I’ve been bumpin’ my gums about it for the past two weeks, and I’m pretty sure you’re tired of it too. Note: I’ll have pictures up next Thursday on how my physique turns out this Sunday - promise ;-)

Rest, Rest, Rest... and? Well, I guess REST!

Rest, or what some people simply think of as "doing nothing", is in fact one of the most valuable training tools you have. More often than not, it is however taken for granted even by professional athletes and even I commit guilty of taking it for granted in the past, because I had that “gung-ho”,  “rest is for the weak”, or “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” type of mentality. Don’t get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with having a “gung-ho” mentality, but you should be aware of when your body is already "dead" and you begin to take steps back- not forward with every heavy lifting session... train hard, but train smart! Rest, when it’s time to rest, and learn how to listen to what your body wants.

Image 3: A brief update on my initial experience with Slinshot, Recycle and D-Pol by Purus Labs

Quick PurusLabs supplement update (Recycle, D-Pol and SlinShot): For my liking it is still too early to draw any conclusions, but as I promised to keep you up-to-date as far as my newest supplements are concerned, I thought I'd mention that I’ve been getting some pretty decent pumps in the gym, lately. While much of this could obviously be just in my head, I want to remind everyone that this is my deload week, so I’m basically just doing sissy workouts and lifting real light - still, the pump is really noticeable. And when I am practicing my poses, I feel like there was a major improvement in what people like to call the "mind and muscle connection", which is the ability to contract and flex individual muscles intentionally. As with every N=1 experiment, it is however difficult to judge how much of that can be ascribed to Recycle and D-Pol and what may be due to other parameters. With regard to the tarragon based insulin-sensitizer SlinShot, of which I told you that I'd save it for my refeeds, I will probably be able to tell you next week, whether or not it is working. I mean, the plan is to EAT BIG on Christmas, so we’ll see how much "damage" I can do, and whether or not SlinShot can help in repartitioning some of the "damage" into muscle glycogen ;-)

For me the incorporation of carefully planned rest days before it was too late, was the key to what I think is the most profound growth-spurt I have undergone in the past couple of month. Before, I did not only train 6 days a week, I also totally overlooked - or I should say - ignored the value of rest or deload weeks. Not hitting the gym for more than one day? Taking it easy, when you are not hurt? Impossible... no wonder I always felt burned out and sometimes even utterly unmotivated.

Taking more than a day off and the irrational fears of muscle loss, fat gain & co

At first I feared taking too many rest days, especially during contest prep, would hamper my progress. That being said, rationally, I was not even sure what the exact reasons for this gut feelings were. Maybe the fear of...

• losing muscle, when the latter was not constantly challenged during my diet
• not being able to get the most out of my body, or
• not having enough training days to help burn body fat, since I rarely did cardio. 

And, yes, I was one of those guys who used to lift weights constantly thinking about how that would help him burn off body fat, how many calories he would have "left at the gym" and what foods he was now "allowed" to eat after burning X amounts of calories in the course of his last workout. Thus, rather than focusing on increasing my strength and trying to build some lean muscle or at least maintain it, all my efforts in the gym were aimed at simply burning calories - a futile concept, as I have eventually come to realize.

The thought of not having done enough, alway hampered my progress

I know this may sound somewhat ridiculous, especially for the lazy guys out there, but it actually took me a whole lot of courage to finally incorporate more rest days into my training regimen, to take a week off or tick to a pre-planned deload week every 6-8 weeks. The results, however, were well worth it. Adequate rest alone, helped me to ...

• continously increase my strength on all major lifts
• make greater and more consistent muscle gains
• be able to hit the gym motivated and refreshed
• lift really heavy and not just heavy as my exhausted body would allow
• keep injury free

The latter, i.e. the ability to avoid major (and minor) injuries, may in fact be one of the most fundamental benefits you will get if you allow your body to fully recuperate. After all, what could be worse than not being able to hit the gym at all (look at Branch Warren with his torn quads!) For someone like me, who always seems to attract nagging aches, pains and tweaks during long hauls in his training, it was like a revelation, when I noticed that by just taking the necessary week off , I could totally avoid those tedious injuries.

Recipe of the week: In the good spirit of the Christmas Holidays & the birthday of Jesus Christ… I have put together a classic holiday recipe for you: Eggnog, but with an anabolic twist. Cheers!

Image 4: Eggnog - a classic recipe with an anabolic twist!

Anabolic Eggnog - ingredients:

• 4 whole organic eggs (blend in blender till frothy) 
• 1 c. non-fat milk 
• 40g of vanilla whey protein 
• 2 tsp. organic vanilla extract 
• 1 tsp. stevia 
• powdered or ground cinnamon (sprinkle to liking) 
• nutmeg (sprinkle to liking)
• Sailor Jerry’s spiced rum is optional ;-)
  
  Macros: 71g protein / 12g carbs / 20g fat

After blending the eggs till frothy, add all the other ingredients and blend till frothy, and you can add a couple more sprinkles of cinnamon on top to make your drink look fancy. ;-)

And just to make sure, you are getting the message: The type of Rest, we are talking about, here is not the time it takes to take a nip from your water bottle in-between sets (even if it has BCAAs in it ;-) It also does not mean hitting on the beautiful girl on the stairmaster instead of finishing you HIIT session. Rest, is the time you are spending out of the gym. A day, you spent with friends or family, where you treat your run down body with good nutrition and extra sleep. A day, where you get yourself a massage, take the dog for an extended walk and take your girlfriend out to a fancy restaurant that also carries bodybuilding friendly foods. And of course a day, where you have lot's of time to go and check out mine and Dr.Andro's posts, here at the SuppVersity, to learn new things about exercise and nutrition and to join the discussion... so, what are you waiting for, then? Go for it and rest... Merry Christmas, everyone!

Warding Off Holiday Weight Gain 2.0: The Anti-Diabesity Effect of Coffee Goes Beyond its Caffeine Content.

Image 1: If they are not laden with pesticides and anti-fungals, the small brown beans from the coffee pant can easily compete with green, black oolong and pu-erh teas, when it comes to countering the unwanted side-effects of the "holiday diet"

Back in the days, both, tea and coffee were luxury goods and people felt privileged if they could have any of them. Today, they have become another of the endless commodities of our convenience society, where coffee, the former drink of the kings (and popes), has gotten a bad rep lately as being the underlying cause of the "adrenal burnout" that has befallen 90% of the visitors of pertinent Internet bulletin boards. I was thusly not surprised that SuppVersity student Fat Free commented yesterday's blogpost on the anti-obesity effects of tea rather sheepishly. As if his wish for "a coffee" on the list of the anti-holiday-weight-gain items was some atrocious act in the sense that "a coffee" could never be as healthy as a hip green tea. I mean wasn't it bad enough that the "holy" green tea was outperformed by its primitive black brother?

Well, guess what, dear green tea connoisseurs, it may well be that (organic) coffee beans are in no way inferior to the unquestionably healthy, yet recently slightly over-hyped unoxidized camellia sinensis leaves. At least this is what a soon to be published study by Yuji Matsuda and his colleagues from the Nagoja University in Japan would suggest (Matsuda. 2011).

Tea or coffee during the holiday season - only a matter taste?

Matsuda et al. put a group of 8-week old mice on a pro-diabetic high-fat diet (this is the type of "high fat diet" that is high both in fat and in carbs and thusly is a perfect image of what 75% of the people are "eating" in the holiday season ;-). In the course of the 17-week study period the mice received either regular drinking water, or 2.5x diluted coffee, or water that was laced with 200mg of caffeine per liter (with a water intake of 13-14g/100g BW this would translate to a daily dose of 2.8mg/100mg and a human equivalent of 2.3mg/kg, or 182mg of caffeine per day for an 80kg human being). The intention was to investigate whether the results of epidemiological studies by van Dam (2002; 2005), Huxley (2009) and Goto (2011), which suggest that regular coffee consumption is associated with a profoundly reduced risk of developing metabolic syndrome or type II diabetes, could be replicated in a laboratory setting.

Figure 1: Body weight at the beginning and end of the study period in the control group and the mice receiving 2.5x dilluted coffee or 200mg/L caffeine in their drinking water; food intake in g per 100g of  body weight (data adapted from Matsuda. 2011).

If you look at the weight changes of the animals in figure 1, it becomes evident that despite a (non significantly) greater food intake esp. in the "real coffee" group, the mice on the coffee or caffeine supplemented high-fat diets gained approx. 8% less body weight than their water guzzling peers.

Figure 2: Fat weight in mice after 17 weeks on high fat diet with either water, 2.5x diluted coffee or water + 200mg caffeine per L (data adapted from Matsuda. 2011).

Now while the intrinsically flawed concept of a "body mass index" that is still propagated by mainstream media would suggest that there is something like an "ideal body weight", the numbers on your scale, alone, have no predictive value in terms of future health risk. The reductions in visceral (epididymal fat) and subcatenous fat accumulation in the mice of the coffee and caffeine arm is thusly a considerably more important finding of this study than the slightly reduced weight gain. After all, the amount of visceral (=inter-organ) fat you are carrying around is one of the few relatively reliable indicators of whether you are going to see your grand-children graduate, or not.

Time and again: Whole foods, or drinks, outperform extracts

If you take a closer look you will notice that despite a general tendency towards lower body fat levels in the coffee and caffeine group, the "whole food", or I should say, "whole beverage" has a much more pronounced effect on the "bad" visceral (epididymal) fat depots. So, just in case you still like your pills, caps and powders: This is only the latest in a long line of foods (this is the stuff that is not sold in caps or powder form) with verified health benefits, where one isolated compound, of which we believe that it is the "active ingredient" turns less potent than the whole food - so, could it possibly be that Nature knows best?

Figure 3: Reductions in inflammatory cytokine (MCP-1, TNF-alpha, IL-6) and adipokine expression in the epididymal fat pads of mice receiving 2.5x diluted coffee or water laced with 200mg/L caffeine in addition to their high fat diet (data calculated based on Matsuda. 2011).

The "whole foods" vs. "extract" difference is also evident in the differential effects coffee and caffeine had the expression of the inflammatory cytokines MCP-1, TNF-Alpha and IL-6 and the adipokines adiponectin and leptin. With a more pronounced expression of the latter (leptin) and an almost identical expression of the former (adiponectin) indicating an improved visceral fat metabolism in the epididymal fat pads of the "coffee-drinking" mice.

Figure 4: Insulin response (area under the curve in mg * min / dl) during glucose tolerance at different time-points during the 17-week study period (data calculated based on Matsuda. 2011).

As the areas under the insulin response curve in the glucose tolerance test go to show. Coffee (=whole food!) consumption does also reduce the transient caffeine induced decrease in insulin sensitivity that has been touted as one of the reasons why coffee would be "bad" for you. As the data from the study goes to show, this effect is only temporary, even for plain caffeine and should not be an issue for the habitual coffee drinker. Moreover, the long term benefits totally outweigh any short term increases in fasting blood glucose (approx. +8% in the first weeks of the study) - or, getting back to the initial research hypothesis: Coffee consumption is a possible way to reduce the risk of developing type II diabetes (at least  for mice ;-)

Coffee or tea? The choice is up to thee!

Since a direct comparison of the data from yesterday's tea study on teas would not be valid, anyways, and because I do not want to disturb the pre-Chrismas harmony and provoke a war between coffee and tea drinkers in the comment area of this blogpost, I would just advice everyone to just decline the soda your relatives may be offering you over the holidays and stick to either tea or coffee... whatever you like better - and by the way, dehydration is neither an issue for the habitual tea nor the habitual coffee drinker (Grandjean. 2000)!