Tag Archives: nutrition

The top question

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Chris at Zone Gym 04I’ve heard many times that it’s impossible to add muscle and burn fat at the same time.  But is this correct?

While I agree this is true for any one instant of time (the body can’t do both at exactly the same micro-second), I don’t think its true over a realistic period – such as a month.  In the past month, I’ve been able to add a little muscle and lose fat through my nutritional and training strategies, heading up to my World Championship bid a couple of weeks ago.  Its a combination of nutrition and exercise, so here are my top 10  recommendations to achieve that magic combo – the key things I did in the two months leading up to the contest:

On the nutrition side:

1. Low calories than most but high protein within it (target 40% of calories from protein)
2. Minimal sugar and other fast carbs
3. Lots of green veg to go with the protein sources of meat, fish and eggs plus some whey shakes to up the protein
4. Low saturated fats
5. As much natural food as possible – avoid processed

On the exercise front:

1. Cardio every morning pre-breakfast but post-black coffee or fat-burner
2. Vary the cardio to be either low-moderate resistance on some days, high/low intensity intervals on the other
3. Spend ten minutes on abs straight after the cardio
4. Daily afternoon resistance training, ideally five days per week, on a bodypart-split basis – ensuring the same bodypart isn’t trained on consecutive days
5. Ensure there’s two days off per week from resistance training – you can do the cardio and abs on those days of course

If you want to go the extra mile, you may want to think about supplementation – I used BCAA’s, Creatine and a morning fat-burner (Ripped) from True Performance Nutrition, the company for whom I am an Ambassador.  That level of detail may not be for everyone, but this next point is – remember that consistency is important; you won’t be able to stick to all of those 10 points every day – but the more days you do, the better and more likely you are to succeed.

Does it work?  I’ve measured the results on myself measured through reducing body-fat percentage measured by my scales, and increasing weights numbers in the gym.  To me, getting results on both of these over two month counts as doing both at the same time, so yes – I’d say it can be done!

Have a great, fat-losing, muscle-building weekend!

Getting the approach right

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For this week’s blog, I thought I’d share an email I received earlier this week from a chap called Kevin and my response.  It’s about medical suitability for exercise, and some overall guidelines on nutrition and activity for someone of 50+.  It’s really about getting the approach right in this fitness-up, fatness-down personal project.

I’m blogging this as I hope my comments will be appropriate for a wider audience, perhaps including your good self…

Any questions or comments welcome, as always, on Chris@FitnessOverFifty.co.uk

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Kevin wrote:

Hi – I’m 52 and l used to smoke heavily but quit 6 years ago. After that l put weight on (4 stone) which was due to a combination of beer, junk food and not doing anything to burn off calories. My job is not physical either. I am now dieting and eating a healthier diet of meat fish veg and salad. I have lost a stone in the past month but l want to lose more and get fit. This is not a fad/new years resolution but a serious attempt to change my lifestyle. The main worry is am l eating enough and will exercising now at my age be dangerous, do l need to take medical advice?

Regards

Kevin

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My response:

Hi Kevin

Many thanks for getting in touch.

If you’ve any doubts about your suitability for exercise, you would always be wise to seek medical advice.  Any personal trainer – such as me – would ask you to sign an industry-standard medical declaration in advance, and that declaration asks you to self-assess your suitability, and asks you to seek your doctor if you’ve any doubt.  In addition, any decent personal trainer will discuss your response to this questionnaire, even if it is perfect (actually, especially it is perfect) to ensure that the trainer is happy with the responses given.  There will once again be the advice given that even though the form indicates nothing of alarm, medical clearance should be sought if there is any concern or doubt.

However, if your underlying health is good, you have no medical conditions, and your blood pressure is in the normal range, then it’s likely that you’ll be fit for exercise.  But start slowly and build up – you aren’t in your twenties any more, and the body doesn’t take as well to adaption to and reaction to stresses at your (and my age) than it does for those half our years and less.  Take any ache seriously and take a day off exercising where it hurts.  I’m a big believer in listening to your body, a skill we all have but sometimes don’t use   But, just to confirm, once again, see the doctor if you’ve any doubts.

It sounds like you have adopted a much healthier diet, which is great, and the foods you mention are indeed the right way to go.  My nutrition advice, in one sentence, is to cut the calories overall, and within that, cut the sugar, other ‘fast’ carbs and saturated fats the most, and fill in some of those calories eliminated by upping the protein.  Beyond that sentence, maybe add some extra protein in the shape of a protein shake.  Meat or fish, both with loads of green veg and/or salad is a winning combination for dinner.

On the exercise front, combining your new diet with moderate cardio exercise is good for losing fat.  And the ideal time to do cardio is first thing in the morning, pre-breakfast, therefore continuing the body’s overnight fat-burning period.  If you do this, some black coffee or a fat burner (I can recommend one) would be ideal to take beforehand, but don’t have anything with calories (such as milk or sugar) prior to the cardio, and of course keep hydrated. Come back to a good breakfast with protein as well as carbs after.

Make sure you are doing some resistance training too (weights or weight-simulating machines) to add back some of the muscle that you will probably lose with the diet and as part of the cardio.  This is best later on in the day, and try to do this at least two or three days per week. If you only do this once or twice per week, do exercises that cover the main muscle groups only across the whole body (chest, back, quads, hamstrings), ideally with compound (multi-joint movement) exercises.  If you can do three or more sessions a week, then something more complex on a body-split basis is appropriate, and you can probably add in dedicated biceps, triceps, shoulders and calf work as well as abs training to those bigger muscle groups, and add some isolation training to the compound moves.

There’s a lot more on all these aspects on my web site – which I encourage you to look at.

Finally, if you’d like something more personally tailored to your needs, I offer a one-to-one Skype consultancy session that may help, or we could meet in Central London for an hour, or longer if you want have a Personal Training or in-gym Fitness Consultancy session.

I hope this is of help to you, please let me know how you get on or if I can help further.

Chris

Fat v Sugar on TV

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There was an interesting programme on TV last night. One of the Horizon documentaries, the one-hour BBC2 programme contrasted the ‘fat is evil ‘ and the ‘sugar is evil’ schools of body-fat loss. It did this by taking two identical twins – same genetic makeup – and putting one on a zero sugar diet, and the other on a zero fat diet, both for a month. The two brothers were mildly overweight at the start, so they both had some body fat they wanted to lose.

At the end of the month, both guys had lost weight, but they had become substantially less healthy in doing so. Levels of triglycerides, LDL cholesterol and pancreas and liver function were causes for concern, as was the news that one had blood sugar levels that made him pre-diabetic (and that was actually the fat-eating guy).

I have a couple of concerns on the programme:

Firstly, they didn’t address protein at all. Without doubt the fat-eating guy would have consumed substantially more protein than the sugar-eating guy. So the effect of this protein difference on their systems wasn’t considered – the sugar guy didn’t just miss out on his fats, he also missed out on the protein with his diet. As protein is, of course, one of the three macronutrients – alongside fat and carbs (ie: sugar) – this was a huge factor to ignore.

Secondly, the two brothers didn’t do any resistance or weight training in the entire month – and yet they were surprised at the end that they both had lost muscle mass from their bodies. In fact, the only exercise shown was a single cycle ride, and even though this included hills, this was not a significant muscle-building activity.

Moving away from these concerns, I was happier with their conclusions. These were that body-fat reduction isn’t as simple as cutting out one of these nutrients from the diet – there’s a whole lot more going on. Key recommendations they made are (1) eat less of everything – basically, consume fewer calories overall; within this, (2) make especially big reductions in BOTH sugar and saturated fats – but not to zero; (3) eat natural produce – nothing processed; and (4) exercise more.

These four recommendations have been some of the principles of my approach which helped me lose six stone of fat, healthily, over the course of a few years since turning 50. I would add two more to give my own full recipe for success – the things they missed out on the programme – (5) within the reduced overall calories, ensure that the protein levels are kept up – replace some (not all) of the calories that have been displaced from sat fat and sugar reduction by more protein, and (6) the phrase ‘more exercise’ isn’t enough on its own – there needs to be a properly structured plan of both cardiovascular work and progressive resistance training.

Put those six principles together, and I believe you have the key to success. To put it brutally, I have the body to show that this approach worked for me. They got four out of six of those principles on the programme, which is better than most TV programmes manage!

As a post-script, on programmes such as this you will usually see leading anti-sugar researcher from California, Dr Robert Lustig and he was indeed there on this one. I have a good measure of support for his views, but I feel that if he has the right answers, how come he is so, err, portly? He’s always seen in overly-large suits (clever optical trick, and one I used to use) which I suspect conceals a trouser size of maybe 38 inches – or 36 on a good day. If he knows all the right answers, how come he isn’t as lean as a rake then?

Have a healthy, fit, fun and low-sugar, low-sat fat weekend!

Supplement time

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I recently received an email from Kay, one of the readers of my regular articles in ultra-FIT magazine.

Kay asked me: I need answers to question about the role of Testosterone and Growth Hormone supplements efficacy in older people, what is your view? I am a doctor and the Internet publications on the subject are inconclusive. Would adequate protein intake and weight training be sufficient in stopping the muscle wasting of old age?

My response to Kay was:

Firstly on supplements: I’ll say up-front that that I’m not a fan of too many supplements, I believe that most people should concentrate on getting their diet right first. Supplements are only a valid supplement to a good diet. I wouldn’t touch Testosterone or Growth Hormone, ones you mention. Having said that, I do take three supplements on a regular basis. I choose the ones from True Performance Nutrition, as I am an Ambassador for the brand – I’ve found their products to be the highest quality and generate results, and I am a 100% believer in the people involved in the brand and development of their products.

I take BCAA 4:1:1 capsules which I take before and after training to supply specific proteins to help build and repair muscle. The three BCAA’s are the most fundamental amino acids used by the body for muscle repair and growth, and the numbers 4:1:1 refer to these tablets delivering a four-fold amount of Leucine compared to the amounts of the other two BCAA’s, Isoleucine and Valine. This is the ratio that I believe has found to be the best to promote delivery to muscle cells.

My second supplement is Tri-Creatine Malate which helps the body to deliver energy to the muscles, further assists muscle growth, and also helps control muscular fatigue and pain. The name here refers to the structure of three Creatine molecules linked to one molecule of Malic Acid – a combination determined by the company to be the optimum for delivering results.

Finally on supplements, I like and use the RIPPED product, and use it pretty much daily to help keep body-fat levels under control. I’ve used RIPPED since pre-launch, as I was in the trial group as the over 50′s representative back in September 2012. I now use it most days of the week as my only consumed item before morning cardio – so that’s usually 4 or 5 days per week. In the two-month run-up to my World Championship contest in April 2013, I used it every single day – and am convinced I would not have achieved my lowest ever levels of body-fat that I had at that time without my pre-cardio RIPPED. And even though I’m not heading for another contest at present, I still take it on morning cardio days – and as always come home to a great high-protein, high-carb breakfast afterwards.

I also use Whey Protein Shakes from True Performance Nutrition as part of my regular diet, including that breakfast I mentioned. I don’t really call whey protein a supplement, as such, to me it is basic nutrition, as without protein shakes I couldn’t make the levels of protein that I want to consume daily (delivering 40% of my calories). My favourite flavour is Chocolate Mint, and two scoops stirred into my 60g of breakfast oats, nuts and fruits gives me the protein I need to add to the carbs from the oats and fruits to get my preferred macronutrient split for breakfast. An extra benefit is that it turns the oats into a delicious chocolatey flavour! Another favourite of shakes is Banoffee, which is my preferred post-workout flavour and I take a couple of scoops at that time with an apple and the BCAA’s I mentioned before.

Secondly, on exercise: I’m a massive fan of stopping muscle wastage/atrophy in old age through 40 minutes of cardio and 5 minutes on an Abs:100 set pre-breakfast, then an afternoon or evening resistance training bodypart split workout – cycling around days for Arms, Back, Chest, Delts and Elevators (that’s legs!). For each of those body-parts, on the appropriate day, I do 3 sets of 6 exercises, plus a final set of a seventh exercise on more of an endurance basis. So, for example, that’s 19 sets (spread across 7 exercises) for back in workout B, the same for chest on workout C, and covering all body-parts cycling through A-E, then back to A on day six. All done on an incremental progressive overload basis, where every time I do an exercise I make it that tiniest bit harder than the previous time. Much more on all this on my website.

Thirdly, nutrition: You don’t ask about this subject, Kay, but – in one sentence, keep the protein, healthy fats, natural products and fibre up – and keep the calories down, especially those from processed food, sat fats and sugar.

In summary, I’m a massive fan of stopping muscle wastage/atrophy in old age through good nutrition, daily cardio and challenging resistance training – adding (if you like) reasonable amounts of quality supplements. This forms my recipe for keeping fit into one’s old age.

Thanks to Kay for her question, and everyone please keep those questions coming to Chris@FitnessOverFifty.co.uk – including if anything in the above needs a bit more detail. Have a fit and healthy weekend!