Year: 2008

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Meal Frequency and Energy Balance

Perhaps one of the longest standing claims is that a high meal frequency will improve fat loss, spare muscle loss or have some other beneficial effect over a lower meal frequency.    But is this claim actually true?  To examine the topic, I want to look at the following paper.

Bellisle F et. al. Meal frequency and energy balance. Br J Nutr. (1997) 77 (Suppl 1):S57-70.

My Comments

Perhaps one of the longest standing dogmas in the weight loss and bodybuilding world is the absolute necessity of eating frequently for various reasons. Specific to weight loss, how many times have you heard something along the lines of “Eating 6 times per day stokes the metabolic fire.” or “You must eat 6 times per day to lose fat effectively.” or “Skipping even one meal per day will slow your metabolic rate and you’ll hoard fat.” Probably a lot

Well, guess what. The idea is primarily based on awful observational studies and direct research (where meal frequency is varied within the context of an identical number of calories under controlled conditions) says that it’s all basically nonsense.… Keep Reading

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A Guide to Bench Press Technique

It’s safe to say that, in the US at least, the bench press is one of the favorite exercises of most trainees (especially males). Let’s face it, if someone finds out if you lift, their first question is invariably “How much do you bench?”.    The problem being that most people’s bench press technique is awful.

Mind you, this isn’t exclusive to the bench press.  Most people in most gyms do most movement wrong and the bench press is no exception.   I’ve seen staggering amounts of truly amusing things done on bench press, usually by guys who want to lift more weight to impress their buddies and/or hit the minimum macho poundage (which ranges from 225 to 315 lbs depending on what type of gym you’re in).

Never mind that the bench is realistically more or less responsible for more shoulder injuries than any other lift, the reality is that trainees will want to do it.… Keep Reading

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Insulin Levels and Fat Loss

Insulin is a complicated hormone, complicated further by the amount of utter nonsense and gibberish that is written about it when it comes to dieting, fat loss and fat gain.  And one of the many questions that comes up is this:

If insulin goes up when we eat, storing nutrients and inhibiting fat mobilization, how do we actually lose fat during a calorie deficit?  Does insulin eventually just drop so fat burning can resume?  How does the glycemic index (GI) impact this?  Will eating a lower GI food make a difference compared to a higher GI food?

I think you get the idea.  So let me try to address each of this by looking at the impact of insulin on fat loss along with those other issues.

Insulin is a bit Schizophrenic

This is because, in a lot of ways, insulin is a schizophrenic hormone.  Depending on what folks read (e.g.… Keep Reading

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Rigid vs. Flexible Eaters

With the holidays looming, and all of the food and candy that that entails, I wanted to write a quick article post about a topic that I consider very important. In fact, it’s so important to the goal of long-term body composition changes that I wrote an entire book (A Guide to Flexible Dieting) about it.

Rigid vs. Flexible Eaters

Over the years, I’ve seen a particular pattern that is pretty endemic among the body obsessed: that is what dietary behavior researchers would call rigid dieting patterns (restrained dieting might be a little more accurate here but I don’t want to get into the distinction that deeply).

Rigid dieters are the folks who are, to some degree or another, always controlling their overall food intake. They never relax, they never allow themselves to “cheat” (a term I dislike for various reasons I’ll explain below).   But sort of like the goal oriented athlete, this type of eater may very well see superior short-term results.… Keep Reading

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4 Common Muscle Gain Mistakes

As winter approaches and many athletes consider covering up and gaining weight, it seems prudent to discuss four common muscle gain mistakes that I see people making.  So let’s get to it.

#1: Not Eating Enough

Outside of poor training (which can be either too much or too little), not eating enough is the number one mistake I see most trainees making who can’t gain muscle. This is true even of individuals who swear up, down and sideways that they eat a ton but no matter what they can’t gain weight. It’s been said that “hardgainers tend to be overtrainers and undereaters and there is much truth to that.

Almost invariably, when you track these big eaters, they really aren’t eating that much. Research has routinely shown that overweight individuals tend to under-estimate food intake (e.g. they think they are eating much less than they actually are) but in my experience ‘hardgainers’ are doing the opposite: vastly overestimating how much they are actually eating in a given day, or over the span of a week.… Keep Reading