Intermittent Thoughts on Intermittent Fasting - Programing Success: Stocktaking, Goal Setting, -Tracking & -Resetting to Achieve a Healthy Weight & Shed Excess Body Fat

Image 1: You need to know exactly where you are and where you want to go. Read on to learn how your very own PPS can help you in achieving the goal you set as a homework from the last episode.

Assuming that all of you did your homework from the last installment of the Intermittent Thoughts, you should by know know the general direction into which you want to be heading. The first thing we are going to do today, is to revise these meta-goals. As I promised, I am going to try to tackle this in an as concrete, yet non-prescriptive manner as possible. So let's say you are "chubby" and want to "get lean" (please bare with me, even if that is not you, I will address gaining muscle and increasing performance in the next installments) Let me ask you a few questions, then. What is "chubby" and how would you define "lean"? I mean with your meta-goal being "going from chubby to lean", you are about as lost as with the idea of going from "New York" to a "less crowded place". Is it "New York" as in "New York City" or "New York", the state, from which you want to escape? And that "less crowded place", would that be the South-American rainforest, or rather the tidy world of the American suburbs?


PPS - The Personal Positioning System

To assess "where" chubby or whatever you are coming from is, you cannot simply whip out your shiny iPhone and use the GPS map. What you will need is a PPS system, a "Personal Positioning System" that will not only tell you were you are, but - if programmed correctly (and this is what you will learn in this and the following episodes) - also where to go next in order to achieve another step towards your destination goal. Contrary to the GPS, where the reference points are the many base stations of the system, your unique reference point is you! This fact has one very important implication: Just as the accuracy of the real GPS system is limited by its knowledge of the exact position of the base stations and satellites (EU's Galileo system will provide a whole new dimension of exactness in this regard, being about 5x more accurate than the old GPS) the goal-directedness of your everyday efforts in the kitchen and the gym will depend on an unbiased accurate assessment of your starting point.

Figure 1: So you are "chubby", yes? What kind of chubbiness are we talking about here? Is it the American Dad "Stanley Smith goes Anorexic" kind of imaginary chubiness? The Peter Griffin "Well I am a little too well-fed" kind of overweight chubiness or rather the "King Size Homer" kind of morbidly obese chubiness?

It does make a significant difference, whether you are "chubby" like in slightly overweight chubby or as in "chubby" as in morbidly obese chubby and it can become a life-and-death issue if you are "imaginary chubby", as Stan Smith in one episode of season 2 of American Dad, where he stops eating, because he believes that he was "chubby". Obviously, each of these points of origin would require different lifestyle interventions.

Image 2: Not to a pair you can identify with? Well, maybe not yet... and no matter how your goals may change (for many health and longevity become increasingly important with age), diet and exercise will always be essential parts of the life-style that will help you to achieve them.

Note: I am consciously talking about "lifestyle interventions" here and in the course of the whole serious, because the results you may get from a "dietary and/or exercise regimen" are only sustainable, if you make them a vital and appreciated part of your life - a part of a new life-style! This does not mean that you have to eat the same foods or train the same way that helped you achieve your aims for your whole life - in fact, this could well be counter-productive - but it does mean that in one form or another they will accompany you for the rest of a life. where the way you look and perform (the things usually associated with exercise and nutrition) are only two of the sides of the "health & longevity, savoir-vivre, performance and body composition" rhombus from the last installment (figure 2).

King Size Homer: Wait loss at all costs

Let's start with "King Size Homer", a victim of the sedentary Fast-Food Society. No matter what his dreams for the future may be and how much he may suffer from the way people react to the way he looks (Lewis. 2011), Homer's first and foremost concern must unquestionably be his health... interestingly, though, the latter will automatically improve with every pound of body fat King Size Homer is able to shed off his morbidly obese body. A 2002 study by Kopp et al., for example, showed that weight loss (unfortunately induced by a debilitating crutch that is known as "gastric surgery") alone led to significant reductions in circulating IL-6 and CRP and major improvements in insulin resistance. Now, those of you who read yesterday's news on the benefits of HIIT as a supplement to the already intense training regimen of 29 judo players, may remember my remark on how "classic cardio training" such as walking on an inclined treadmill turns into high intensity interval training for people like King Size Homer, after all, they are carrying a weight "normal" people would if they were doing a farmer's walk. It is thusly not surprising that regardless of the type of exercise, and even in the presence of "the crutch" (bariatric surgery, cf. Egberts. 2011), exercise has been shown time and again to promote weight loss above what fasting, medication and even surgery (all of which can become necessary in some really extreme scenarios) alone can achieve (Chaput. 2011). Moreover, and this is probably even more important, constant revision and adaptation of his exercise and nutrition regimen are going to be the decisive factors which will keep Homer from falling back into his morbidly obese state once he has cut his body weight in half and achieved an astral body like Peter Griffin, already has it.

King-Size Homer's PPS-Cheat-Sheet:

• Goal(s): Lose weight at all cost, your health demands it!
• Tracking: In your case each pound counts - a standard scale will suffice to track your progress
• Resetting: Achieve "normal obesity", BMI ~30kg/m² before resetting your goals

Family Guy, Peter Griffin: Feed the Muscle, Cut the fat

When King Size Homer arrives at the "just" obese "Peter Griffin"-stage, things will change. He will by now have at least a minimal amount of fitness and in view of the 100+lbs of fat he has lost, simply using the stairs instead of the elevator will no longer suffice as his high intensity exercise for the day. The traditional hours on the treadmill in the "magical", yet factually non-existent fat-burning zone, on the other hand, will at best make him lose equal amounts of muscle and fat mass and thusly set him (or the now "just" obese Homer) up for the imfamous YoYo-effect. And as if this was not already enough Peter will hit a  weight loss plateau after about 1-2 months, anyways. By then, his body will have have succumbed to the chronic level of low grade stress and will no longer respond to further reductions in calorie intake and / or increases in training volume. Peter will lose faith, give up and... eat. He will end up fatter (not necessarily heavier) than before, will feel miserable and like the "biggest loser".

Figure 2: Changes in fitness, insulin levels (lower levels indicative of higher insulin sensitivity), carbohydrate and fatty acid oxidation after no more than 6 HIIT sprinting sessions on an electromagnetically braked cycle ergometer (data based on Whyte. 2010)

A better alternative for Peter, and anyone out there who can identify with him, would be to perform a 6x30s all-out-sprinting HIIT regimen (4.5 min active rest in between the bouts) three times a week. A regimen like the one that reduced the waist-lines of 10 "Peters" (BMI 31kg/m², waist circumference 101.3cm) in a recent study by -2.4 cm (highly significant, p<0.004) within no more than 2 weeks (Whyte. 2010). The six HIIT sessions also significantly improved their aerobic (VO2Max, p<0.013) and anaeropic (mean power, p<0.04) performance, reduced their elevated insulin levels and shifted their metabolism towards the oxidation of fatty acids instead of carbs (cf. figure 2). 

Image 3: You eat nutrients not calories. Weight loss comes with a nutrient dense, not a calorie deficient diet.

Note: If you are not (or no longer) morbidly obese it is absolutely imperative not to go on a starvation diet, if you do not want to starve for the rest of your life. A recent study by Sumithran et al. shows pretty conclusively that even one year after a 10-week weight loss intervention on a very-low-calorie diet, "levels of the circulating mediators of appetite that encourage weight regain after diet-induced weight loss do not revert to the levels recorded before weight loss" (Sumithran. 2011)! In this context, it is also noteworthy that the subjects in the Whyte study did not reduce their habitual calorie intake, all they did is HIIT 3x a week. Other than the "King Size Homers", who will have to dramatically cut down on their caloric intakes, the "Peter Griffins", i.e. sendentary obese people, should not decrease their calorie intake, but increase their nutrient intake (more often than not the former will be a necessary consequence of the latter, because you will feel stuffed and satisfied with far "less" quality food). The first step here would be to cut out all pre-processed foods from one's diet and start preparing your meals from whole foods. And while 1-2 servings of fruit like the ones in image 3 won't harm you (high fructose corn-syrup is and absolute no-go, though), vegetables, fish, eggs, meat, and milk products (if you tolerate them) should make up the major part of your diet, which must provide you with adequate amounts of protein >1g/kg and fats (poly-, monounsaturated and saturated fats!). Instead of calories you will begin counting the number of eggs, the tablespoons of coconut oil, the cups of broccoli etc. This goes against the mainstream calories in vs. calories out paradigm, but once you see the difference it makes if you cut out 1x tablespoon of coconut oil vs. 2 x tablespoons of sugar in your diet, you will understand that foods with identical "caloric values" can have very different effects on your body composition. The use of an intermittent fasting regimen, as well as the reduction of the carbohydrate intake to <=120g/day can be facilitative, as well - but we will discuss that and possible supplemental fat-loss adjuvants in a separate issue with concrete advice on programming dietary success.

Peter will yet have to acknowledge that those benefits subside about as quickly as they came, whenever he reverts to his previous sedentary lifestyle. If you look at the data in figure 2 you will notice that the pronounced immediate metabolic benefits, i.e. the increased insulin sensitivity and the increased fatty acid oxidation begin to wear off within 72h after the last training session. Not only for the Peter Griffins out there, it is thus of utmost importance to train regularly, at least 3 times a week (ideally 3x HIIT + 2x full-body resistance training), consistently and intensely to "keep the mitochondria from clocking back up" and your muscle primed to suck up superflous glucose from your blood stream (on a side note: a recent study confirmed a relationship between exercise-intensity, not frequency or total volume, and improvements in insulin sensitvity, cf. Dubé. 2011)

Peter Griffin's PPS-Cheat-Sheet:

• Goal(s): Lose fat, keep (or build) muscle
• Tracking: A simple measuring tape to measure your waist circumference and your training log, in which you will record the weights you are using on the (optional) weight training days
• Resetting: Get your waist down into the <36" inch zone before you even remotely consider dropping the loss of body fat as your primary goal; at the same time set out to increase weights or reps on your major moves (squats, bench, deadlift, pull-up) every 2nd week

Anorexic Dad, Stanley Smith: Skinny fat no more

Image 4: Already lean?
Then forget about the scale!

Our third example, American Dad, Stanley Smith in the "Anorexia episode", is particularly near and dear to my heart, because I see way too many "almost anorexic" trainees (not only women!) whose life is dictated by the number the scale is showing them in the morning. Among the men in this group many actually went through either one or even both of the previously discussed stages, where each pound they lost on the scale did actually make a difference in how they looked - a correlation (not causation ;-) they have internalized in a way that they cannot grasp the idea that with a body fat percentage in the ~15% range (for men), the scale is probably your worst adviser when it comes to evaluating your progress and programming success.

Probably due to the unreasonable and (if you asked me) utterly unsexy ideal of the "beautiful" female model, whose major features are skinniness and a severe lack of skeletal muscle tissue, this obsession not with how much, but rather with how little you weigh, is rampant within the community of female fitness junkies. Based on the misunderstanding that weight loss (at least for females) would equal improvements in body composition, thousands of women starve themselves into what Dr. Connelly often refers to as an "reduced obese state" (also read the study on the changes after starvation diet in the red box above) - and that despite the fact, that many were "too skinny" (remember skin = fat + thin dermis) to begin with.

Image 5: When you have achieved a "normal" degree of leanness, building a beautiful body has little to do with losing weight, it's all about modulating the ratio of lean to fat mass (photo originally shared on Facebook by Erika Rice).

As it happens, Carl Lanore's significant other, Alisa Profumo, the "lovely and talented co-host" of the Casual Friday Episodes on Super Human Radio, reposted two images of a woman on her facebook page, which are so exemplary of the phenotype of the "imaginary obese" that I must repost them, although I do not even know who the lady is. What you see here, ladies and gentlemen is the exact opposite of what 99% of the women's magazines are still propagating:

Gaining, not losing weight makes you sexy!

Toning up, ladies and gentlemen, is about building muscle and losing fat. Regardless of whether you want to look like a goddess or just "look good naked", the concept of overall body "weight" has no significance in this context. It is thusly only consistent to give away your scale to the "King Size Homers" in your neighborhood (or anybody you do not like ;-) and to rely on progress pictures, like the lady in image 5, who gained 9lbs and finally overcame the "skinny fat" physique that tricks so many women (and men) into believing that they got to lose weight to achieve the physique of their dreams.

For the "skinny fat" and anybody who wants to improve his physique beyond simply being lean, progress pictures are thusly a must. In that, it is yet not necessary and probably not even advisable to take daily pictures like the ones that made John Stone (watch his transformation video) world-famous (you will just stress yourself about how "slow" your body changes and the increased cortisol certainly won't help with the progress). One picture each week, taken in underwear in the morning, standing upright (no posing) on a specific spot in a room, where you can ensure that the lighting is always the same, is enough to objectively track your progress.

Being fit and healthy, the Stanley Smiths out there will keep or reduce (depending on how lean they already are) their HIIT exercise and increase, split and periodize the resistance training component of their exercise regimen from two to (initially) three sessions per week, while keeping a constant eye on the volume - after all, you should always remember you are not in the gym to burn calories! While the other idiots may be, you are in the gym to achieve your goals and I assume none of you has set "burn 1,000,000kcal" as his long-term goal, right?

Stanley Smith's PPS-Cheat-Sheet:

• Goal(s): Lose fat, build muscle
• Tracking: Weekly training pics (optional: a body-fat caliper) and your training log, in which you will record the weights you are using on the obligatory weight training days
• Resetting: Especially for the women the next long-term goal may be "hold what you achieved", for the men it is likely that the focus will shift from losing fat to building muscle  

Image 6: Plastic models illustrating the different densities and consequent volume differences of fat and muscle tissue (img from onemorebite-weightloss.com)

Still not convinced that your scale is worthless? Then have a look at the image on the left. What you see are plastic models of 5lbs of fat (yellow) and 5lbs of muscle (red). Now, imagine how a 7.5lbs muscle strand would look like (+25% in size) - obviously still less bulky and than the 5lbs of fat. And now, think about what the scale will tell you when you exchange the ugly 5lbs of fat for the aesthetic 7.5lbs of muscle: It will tell you that you have gained 2.5lbs of ... body weight. Something you could hardly care less about, because your progress pics don't lie. You are 2.5lbs heavier look a hell lot better than before ;-)

Ah, and before you ask. As a physicist I can tell you that the body-impedance scales you can buy at every turn, which claim to give you exact numbers on your body-fat and body-water content, are about as exact as the weather forecast for the next week. They may be able to give an account of general trends, but the "exact" numbers they display are pretty random.

(Now) I am (already) lean - what do I do?

With all this thinking about goal setting, -tracking and -resetting for "healthy weight loss" and the first steps on the long way to an astral body, the time flew by so fast that I did not even have the chance to address the excellent "homeworks" Jahed, Pablo, RF and Angimal submitted in response to the last installment of the Intermittent Thoughts. I will make good for that in the next installment, when we will discuss goal setting, -tracking and -resetting for those who are already past the Stanley Smith state (anorexic or not ;-) and finally want to add some serious muscle to their now ripped, yet still undermuscled physique.

Step By Step Guide to Your Own Workout Routine - Part I: Fitting the "Right" Number Training Days, Rest Days, Strength and Conditioning Workouts Into Your Schedule

Image 1: The foundation of every training plan is a realistic schedule. Your work, your private life, your training experience, your goals, all must be taken into account, when lay this foundation.

I have been talking with Adelfo about his new training plan earlier today. In the course of our conversation I did realize that even for someone with his expertise it is not always easy to come up with a plan. In fact, his first "blueprint" reminded me of my post on the "(Over-)Motivational Roots of Overtraining" from last Sunday and your frequent requests for more practical information here at the SuppVersity. So, without forestalling Adelfo's up-coming blogpost with all the details on his new routine, I want to provide you with a more general guide on how to structure your workouts. As with the "Three Simple Rules of Sensible Supplementation", I will try to take you through a number of steps of which I believe that they are more or less universal. Ready? Well, then let's go!

1. Find / make time for your workouts

It may sound funny, but one of the commonest reasons a given training program fails actually is a real or perceived lack of time. The first step to a functional routine is thusly to take stock of how much time you actually have available, how much of this time you are actually willing to invest into your workouts and how much time you actually need to achieve your goals. 

Let's first take a look at the time you will be spending on an actual workout:

• Strength training: 20-60min
• High intensity interval training: 10-25min
• Steady state "cardio" training: 35-60min

Image 2: I know, if this is you at the age of five it may be difficult to imagine that it is not normal to watch TV at least 2.7h of TV per day (figures according to United States Department of Labors. 2010)

Depending on where you perform your workouts you will obviously have to add somewhere between 5min, for say a HIIT session in your backyard, and 30-60min, for a weight lifting session at you local gym (including driving to the gym, showering etc.). This means that the minimal time you will have to invest on a workout will be ~20min for a brief HIIT conditioning workout. In view of the fact that three "workouts" per week are an absolute must if you want to make changes to the way you look, feel and perform, this means that you do not even need to read further if you are not willing to invest at least 3x20 minutes of the valuable time many of your fellow human beings will be wasting in front of the television or on social networks into your health, your performance and your physique.

Tip #1: Don't discard working out before you go to work and don't fool yourself into believing that it would be normal to go home after work and watch TV for the rest of the evening. Setting the alarm clock and switching off the television are the best ways to make time for your workouts. On the other hand, you will have to acknowledge, that there will be days, where you will really have no time and if you have to decide between doing a 60min workout and getting 5h vs. 6h of sleep your choice should be easy: SLEEP!

2. Schedule your training and rest (!) days

Before you even think about what type of exercises you do, you will have to actually decide on the days on which you want to train and the type of training you are going to perform.

It stands to reason that you will resort to the results of (1) and don't schedule a training day on Tuesday, when you know that you have to work the 24h shift at the hospital. That being said, it is of paramount importance to try and spread your workouts evenly across the week. Now with the aforementioned "minimalist" approach of three workout days per week this could look as follows:

Image 2:If you are still not convinced that resting two days too much is way better than resting one day too little, you better read up on the "(Over-)Motivational Roots of Overtraining"!

• Workout days: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
• Rest days: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday

A 5-day workout routine for someone like Adelfo, on the other hand would look like this:

• Workout days: Mon, Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat
• Rest days: Thursday, Sunday

You probably did not notice that, but I deliberately chose the words "rest day" instead of "day off" or something like that, because the latter implies that those days would be unnecessary or even counterproductive, when the exact opposite is actually the case.

The margin "between not enough" and "already too much" is very narrow and according to my personal experience, the amount of strenuous exercise (strength training or high intensity conditioning work) that will yield "optimal" results is above all a function of your individual conditioning and training experience, with the following rule of thumb applying in a situation of at best minimal caloric restriction and adequate (we will address that in a future installment) protein and carbohydrate intake:

• 3x per week - less than one year of training experience and no previous engagement in any physically demanding athletic activities like football, basketball, track and field etc. (no, not on the Playstation)
   
• 4x per week - more than one year of regular training or previous engagement in physically demanding athletic activities
   
• 5x per week - more than three years of regular training and a lifestyle that prioritizes further progress in the gym over your other hobbies
   
• limitations (updated 25-03): ProudDaddy reminded me that I (once again, and I am sorry for that) forgot about the "older" trainees out there. It stands to reason that a young body does not need as much time to recover as an older one (although I assume that ProudDaddy has a better recovery time than many Pizza eating, Coke binging twens). If you belong to this group of "golden agers", it is important to
1. to keep intense (strength & HIIT) workouts short
2. to increase your training volume by increasing workout frequency not duration
3. to cycle metabolically demanding and recuperative workouts*
4. to have 24h+ of (active) rest after every intense workout*

Assuming that you are still really fit, an adapted 5x a week workout could look like this:


1. Upper body (<30min),
2. LISS cardio (30min), 
3. Lower body (<30min),
4. Rest
5. Full body / functional movements (30min)
6. HIIT or LISS (10min or 30min)
7. Rest

If you would conduct an interview at your local gym, I would estimate that, according to these criteria, at least 50% of the trainees are overtraining. If you add another 10% for the week-end warrior faction and consider the ~15% of people who are going "whenever they feel like training" you know why 75% of the people in the gym stagnate after the initial adaptation phase.

Tip #2: If you want to do more, go on a bike ride with friends or family. Go to the basketball court in your neighborhood. Take the stairs, go for a walk in the park and lead an active life. Trust me, nothing will promote your overall health, your performance and the improvements in your physique more than these leisure time activities.

3. Allocate specific workouts to your training days

Now that you know on which days you are going to train and how much time you have available you will eventually envoke your personal aims, of which I will exemplary discuss general health, weight loss and muscle/strength gain.

We will again start out with the most fundamental distinction, i.e. the one between strength and conditioning work, with all types of weight lifting belonging to the former and all types of "cardio" training belonging to the latter realm, this reduces the first step in this process to a simple decision on ratios:

• focus on general health - ratio of strength to conditioning work: 3/2
   
• focus on weight / fat loss - ratio of strength to conditioning work: 2/3
   
• focus on gaining muscle/strength - ratio of strength to conditioning work: 4/1  

This is obviously another rule of thumb and one of which I would believe that its implications become clear only if I give you a couple of examples:. Based on what you have learned so far, ...

Image 3: Unless you are in identical shape and condition as Adelfo you'd better not simply copy his routine.

• a trainee who starts to work out and has a focus on overall health will train three times a week and perform two strength and one conditioning workout
   
• a trainee with 2 years of training experience and a focus on losing fat will train four times a week and perform two strength and two conditioning workouts
   
• a trainee with 4 years of training experience and a focus on building muscle will train five times a week and perform four strength and one conditioning workouts

For all trainees it is possible to add some "classic cardio" training in the form of either 15 minutes walking on an incline treadmill (or similar) to the end of any strength workout that is <60min or to do a similarly paced type of regenerative exercise on "rest days". Within the bodybuilding and fitness community, the recuperative aspect of modest physical activity is unfortunately still largely overlooked, and that despite the fact that it is a staple of almost every other group of professional athletes, where the day after a match or meeting is a "rest day" in the sense that you do not train intensely, but still give your muscles a chance to clear the metabolic waste from the day before.

Tip #3: If you have a "hypertrophy and fat loss" focus (please be aware that if you are doing everything right, the scale is not going to move!), you may want to consider adding in an additional workout day, and/or performing your conditioning workouts, either in the morning or right after your workouts. While the former option is probably best for the "rookie", the latter one, i.e. cardio either in the morning or right after your strength workout is the most reasonable option for the highly advanced trainee, who will still need his two days off to recuperate.

Coming up next: Training splits, exercise selection, set and rep schemes

To decide how you pair individual muscle groups and how to place the conditioning and strength workouts within the framework you have worked out today is going to be the next step on your way to a workout that has been custom-tailored to your individual demands by the word's leading expert in your belongings - you, yourself! So, don't forget to come back tomorrow for the second part of the "Step By Step Guide to Your Own Workout Routine" series, here at the SuppVersity.