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.

Adelfo Cerame - Road to Wheelchair Nationals '12: Pose Your Way to Better Workouts & a Freakier Physique! Plus: How to Take Photos that Will Do Your Physique Justice

Image 1: It goes without saying that the changes you see here go well beyond what the best Photoshop artist can do

For the unsuspecting out there, this is already the big week: After all, it is the week of the Arnold! But let's be honest, there is the most important name missing from the line-up. I mean who are Fouad Abiad, Gustavo Badell, Lionel Beyeke, Matthias Botthof, Evan Centopani, Eduardo Correa, Brandon Curry, Dexter Jackson, Michael Kefalianos, Ben Pakulski, Shawn Rhoden, Branch Warren, Ben White and Dennis Wolf if you can get Adelfo Cerame Jr. right here at the SuppVersity?

All jokes aside, less than 21 days and it's going to be "the day" for Adelfo. Personally, I believe that he has more than just a "fair chance" to take his pro-card, but you never know how the competitors will come in... I just hope they don't read the all the tips Adelfo is giving away here, week by week. I mean those are for you - and no one else ;-)

Three more to go to the big show!

If we wanted to be uber-correc, the subheading should actually read "2 ½ more to go to the big show!", but that would not rhyme and with me being 100% on track as far as my nutrition and training are concerned, it does not actually matter all too much. After all, I am not going to take any risk and try to make some radical last-minute changes to my regimen. I’ve learned from reading articles and blogs from seasoned bodybuilders such as guys like Dr. Layne Norton, and Ken “Skip” Hill, that it isn’t wise to make hasty changes during your final weeks of prep, just 'cause you feel that "doing X could make me come out even harder" - just stay the course, and stick to the foundation and staples you used throughout the prep to get you where you are. If you are not lean enough 2 ½ out, you made a mistake and there is no magic trick that would get you down into the low single digit body fat percent range by show time. No matter if you decrease or increase your water intake, carb load, play with my sodium and potassium or do whatever else any bro is telling you will get you ripped in no time - it is not going to do the trick, when you have not done your homework. And if you have done those, you won't need any of those tricks, anyway ;-)

Posing and flexing the key to a freaky physique, even for the "average gymrat"

I guess this may sound kind of weird at first, but if you think about it, you will have to concede: Whether you are a bodybuilder or not, flexing is something that all athletes do from time to time - often without even noticing it. I mean look at the guys in image 2, none of them is a competitive bodybuilder, yet still they flex their muscles as if there was no tomorrow.

Image 2: These guys aren’t bodybuilders, but they sure know how to instinctively throw a pose ;-)

To show off that you are not the same dud as the average grandpa competing in your sport and to sell your merchandise, to scare dangerous and sometimes imaginary enemies away or to celebrate a victory or to celebrate a touchdown are only three examples of occasions where hitting a pose it "totally human" - don't worry folks posing is also "100% paleo" ;-)

For bodybuilders, on the other hand, posing is an essential, or I should say, an obligatory part of the sport. Therefore I have increased the time I spent posing over the last couple of weeks from my usual "check your progress" and "get a feeling for your muscles" posing to training my actual routine for the night show. In that, hitting the right poses is yet only part of the game... bodybuilding is all about looks, so as the show approaches I am also laying out my plans as far as tanning, clothes, shoes and even haircut are concerned - I guess, you are smiling or even literally "rolling on the floor", now, but all that can make the difference between victory and defeat... Shit! I even clean and shine my wheelchair the night before!

Pose your way to better workouts and a freakier physique!

I know that most of you probably believe that anyone who is not training for a bodybuilding competition and still hits his poses in the gym is an arrogant jerk, ...and in 90% of the cases you may be right, the other 10% however may just be aware of how important and useful this practice actually is. I mean, I also felt awkward, when I started posing - and that despite the fact that I always knew that I wanted to get on stage - but when I realized how my muscles began to get harder, to lose some of the subcutaneous water and to be - I guess, the best word to describe it is "more responsive" to my commands, I suddenly realized that there is actually much more to those forceful maximal contractions than just "showing off".

Recipe of the week:  

My godchild's Pepperoni Sushi is an
innovative treat for your re-feed

Pepperoni Sushi:

Ingredients:

• Pepperoni or turkey pepperoni
• Sushi rice (eg. from Sprouts or Trader Joe’s)
• 1/3 cup of Rice vinegar
• 2-3 Tbs. of sugar
• 1-2 tsp. of sea salt

Credits: I must admit that the original idea to this recipe comes from my godson, who inspired me to make re-feed meal out of what he calls his "pepperoni sushi".

How to prepare it: Read the directions on the back of the bag! Lol. J/p… Well not really… If my little nephew can make it, then I’m pretty sure you intelligent suppversity readers can read the instructions in the back of a bag of rice…  And the picture is pretty self-explanatory on how to prepare it ;-)

Nothing, not even the DHT-based prohormones, the bros recommend for this puprose, builds and strengthens the "mind-muscle connection" like hitting your poses - hard and regularly. You will be amazed how this practice will exponentiate the gains you are making in the gym. It will help you to finally understand what the real "pros" (not the aforementioned bros) are talking about, when they say that they try to "make a light weight as heavy as they can, to really exhaust the muscle" - the mind-muscle connection is what distinguishes lifting weight from body building (just in case you wonder, I intentionally wrote this in two words). I don’t know - and honestly don't really care - if there is any truth or science to it - I just know that it works.

Posing is commonly overlooked prerequisite to objectively evaluate your progress

Image 3: Obviously you can tell the difference from 24 weeks out to 6 weeks out, but from then on, the details and the changes are very minute. The only thing you’ll probably notice is the tanning I’ve been doing the last 2 weeks - which, by the way, is something that may not improve your physique (although the vitamin D may), but certainly your look :-)

At this point in my contest preparation, knowing where I am at, progress-wise, if of paramount importance. At the same time, however, this is getting increasingly more difficult, after all the "progress" you make should - assuming that you did your homework in the weeks before - be getting more an more subtle as the big day approaches (I outlined the reasons above)... in fact, I am now at the point, where I can hardly tell anymore if my body is making any forward progress, at all.

It's always easy to see progression, when you are still losing 2lbs of water per week, in the early days of a prep just from dropping your carb-intake. In the course of any diet, regardless of whether you are dieting for a contest, or, as Dr. Andro would probably write "just to look good naked" *lol* there will be the point, where you suddenly feel that you are stuck. And while this may actually be the case for some of you, often the scale or the measuring tape or whatever tool you have been using is just fooling you. This is why I believe in taking progress pics. They won't fool you, but you have to make sure that you take them under identical conditions, and that mean...

1. identical lighting - nothing changes the way you look like different lighting conditions, and I am not referring to taking pics in the dark here; go and take two shots of yourself, one with light right from the front and one with a light source right above your head,... you will be surprised how fast you can "improve your physique"
    
2. identical camera - this should actually be obvious but some of my clients send me a picture they took with their old iPhone and one they took with their shiny new digi cam; how can you tell what is a technical and what a physical difference between the two?
    
3. identical time - now, this is something I myself have long neglected, but especially when you are getting leaner, the time you take the photo can make a huge difference; you will have to figure out at what time of what day you look best (obviously you want to judge your progress by the "best you can look on a given day") and for me this is usually either on Monday’s, right after my Sunday re-feeds, or right after my 20min HIIT sessions, in the course of which I usually consume 12 oz of water with ~1 tbs. of sea salt in it (The image under 4 weeks out was on a Wednesday morning after experimenting with the 12 oz of water and sodium, and the image under 3 weeks out was the morning after my Sunday re-feed).
    
4. identical stomach content - contrary to your body water, where it is hard to tell if being watery is just a temporary thing or something related to your diet and/or training (which would obviously be important for your evaluation), the content of your stomach is something you should actually be well aware of and I guess, it should be evident that posing and taking pictures right after your Sunday re-feed binge is not the best idea of all ;-)

Still, even if you follow all these rules, your photos will be worthless if you do not alway hit the exact same poses and that (and this should go without saying) will not work, if you don't practice them, right?

Unfortunate but true: Just being in the shape of your live won't cut it!

Although people like Dave Palumbo always repeat that "conditioning wins a show", the latter is by no means all about being lean. It is about as important to look conditioned as to be conditioned... What? I know that may sound dumb, but if the tanning or the lighting are off, even Phil Heath will look like the average bro form your local  gym - well, sort of ;-)

Image 4: You need better definition in your abs? Just click "improve lighting" in your favorite image processing software and you are good to go; original image (left); digitally improved lighting (right)

That being said, did you ever wonder why individuals with darker complexions (assuming that they are fairly lean and muscular), seem to have better-looking physiques? The reason is the light, or rather the way it interacts with the color (or paleness ;-) of your skin - if you are tanned, it will underline your muscularity, if you are white like a ghost, it will expose your weaknesses.

Homework assignment: Shine the right light on your tanned physique

If you have ever seen (either in person or on TV) one of those celebrity photoshootings, you may have noticed the the camera assistants running up and down the scence, carrying with strange small lblack boxes in their hands. Those are light meters, they use to stage J.Lo, Brett Pitt and Co in a way that will minimize the workload for the Photoshop guys, who will later spot out the fat pads, the spider veins, the cellulite, the acne and all the other nasty blemishes on their computers. Trust me, go get a tan, find a place with a good lighting, take a photo and use the standard "improve lighting" functions of your average graphics software - you will be amazed about the progress you made within hours ;-)