Life isn’t perfect.
I know it. You know it.
We all know it.
No matter the diet plan, no matter the workout routine, something is eventually going to stop us from doing it precisely as intended.
We might miss a day or two because our birthday celebration turns into a weekend of debauchery.
We might miss a whole week because we’re on vacation.
Don’t sweat it. I’m going to tell you what to eat when to eat it. I’ll also offer insight on what to do about those pesky missed gym visits.
So, I’m following Martin Berkhan’s Lean Gains diet plan. It is an intermittent fasting routine that calls for 16 hour fasts and 8 hour feeding windows. On rest days, I often fast for 24 hours. I love it. It’s convenient. I get to stuff my face with carbs on workout days. I don’t have to spend nearly as much time in the kitchen. I already wrote about all of this in my Lean Gains results post here.
I’m combining with a back specialization routine by John Romaniello. To the average beginner or intermediate exerciser, I would encourage a full body or split resistance training routine where you focus on doing functional lifts that mimic every day movements–using your body in the natural and coordinated way that it is intended to be used. If you’d like a free routine like this, I encourage you to try out my Hunger Games Survival Training Challenge! I utilize intermittent fasting here, as well. C’mon. It’ll be fun.
But sometimes a body part can lag behind others. If we have progressed in full body lifts like squats, dead-lifts, shoulder presses, etc. for some time–and we have a very apparent weakness–it’s okay to specialize or isolate this muscle.
Progress photos and more details after the jump.
Brief recap: sugar is a huge contributor in our country’s obesity epidemic in general, and your waist line specifically. Since added sugars make up 16% of the average American’s diet, this should come as no surprise. It should also come as no surprise that someone drinking a can of soda could drop 12-18 lbs per year by replacing sugar with water. Then we discussed the health benefits of caffeine, which often gets a bad rap because it’s usually combined with sugar; but this is unfounded, because caffeine does a lot of good stuff. It actually reduces the odds of fatness, diabetes, depression, cancer, and death.
But here’s the problem—most people don’t like their coffee black, and dump a metric crap-ton of sugar in it—practically canceling out caffeine’s benefits with sugar’s consequences. I guess you could hypothetically break-even in good and bad… but why not amplify these benefits instead of negating them? Click ahead to read about the health benefits of cinnamon—coffee’s new companion.
Obesity Campaign Poster (Photo credit: Pressbound)
The cost of being fat is monumental and infects all aspects of our lives. It affects your health, fitness, and quality of life; your employer’s ability to be profitable and successful; your partner, children, and loved ones; and society as a whole.
If you’re fat and don’t give a shit, I can’t force you to care. I wish I could. It would’ve been a lot easier than writing this 2,000 word appeal. But I can present you with evidence that your fat-storing decisions have wide-reaching, negative consequences for your health, wealth, work performance, family, longevity, and love life.
I’m also going to argue that we need to stop treating the symptom (poor diet/no exercise) and start treating the disease (obesity). We make bigger desks and clothing for kids that can’t fit in them; we make bigger seats on planes, buses, and amusement park rides; offices are buying plus-sized furniture, because the old plus-sized chairs are too small now.
Does no one else see the problem here? We’re enabling the negative behavior instead of discouraging it. Keep reading for unsettling studies and statistics regarding the cost of being fat. Can you afford it?
I have a confession.
I cheated on my diet today.
I’m not proud, but I’m not ashamed either.
It was a rollicking affair with Killian’s Irish Red, semi-sweet chocolate chips, and homemade gummy worms.
But that’s okay, because diets don’t look at relationships like people do.
If I found out a girlfriend cheated on me, I would probably:
Kick dude in the nads (with feeling);
burn his massive cd/dvd collection;
slash his tires;
tell everyone on Facebook.
I’m totally kidding. I’d probably only do the first one. But with serious feeling.
Where was I? Oh, yes. Diets don’t look at relationships like people do. We get pissed, break things, and possibly use physical violence if someone betrays us. It’s not fun. But diets don’t care. They will take you back with open arms, no matter the transgression. That doesn’t mean they’re happy about it, which they will express with digestive distress, belly bloating, and grotesque gas (hee, I love alliteration!).
But once you apologize by eating some healthy shit, it’s cool–you’ll experience the same high energy, increased fat burn, and muscle gain you had before
All too often, we let one little mistake spiral into a crisis.
