The Thinking Lifter

In certain fields--fitness and finance among them--people seem to focus far more on the fluff than on the things that matter. In finance, picking individual stocks is fluff, while your 401(k), your Roth IRA, and home ownership matter. Concentrate on the latter three things, and you'll get where you're going. Concentrate solely on the first, and you'll likely end up just spinning your wheels.

In fitness, almost all supplements are fluff. The results--in terms of body composition, strength, or athletic performance--of even a perfect supplementation routine are unlikely to justify the cost. Some supplements are worth it, of course. I'm thinking in particular of a multivitamin, creatine, and fish oil. For specific problems or goals, other supplements may be worth taking. For example, glucosamine and chondroitin truly are effective for chronic joint pain.

However, even the best supplements pale in effectiveness when compared to the things that really matter. Doubt me? Check out Steve Reeves, who competed before the age of creatine, steroids, vanadyl sulfate, ephedra, taraxatone, or any of the other things you'll find on the shelf at GNC:



Pretty impressive, right? Yes, Reeves had one-of-a-kind genetics, but he wasn't the only one to build a physique like this without supplements. Check out John Grimek:



Not quite as ripped as Reeves, but still a better physique than anybody you'll see at GNC.

So what matters? What did Grimek and Reeves concentrate on? Compound exercises with free weights and whole, high protein foods.

Over the next couple of entries, I'll talk about both. Like the best financial advice, it won't be sexy or cutting-edge, but it'll be the type of information that pays big dividends.

People have been asking me lately for my opinion on Barry Bonds--who I'm morally certain has used steroids--passing Babe Ruth, who retired before John Ziegler synthesized Dianabol. My opinion is a fairly unpopular one: I'm happy to see him do it.

This shouldn't be construed as indicating that I'm pro-steroid in sports. I'm not. I'm also not a Giants fan or particularly a Bonds fan. However, I believe that by failing to ban steroid use--alone among major professional sports in North America--Major League Baseball tacitly encouraged their use.

As such, I find it hard to sanction a player for doing everything permissible under the rules of the sport to be competitive. Now that baseball has finally gotten with the program and banned steroid use, I have no problem with punishing players for their use, barring them from the Hall of Fame, or putting asterisks next to any records they may attain. Rafael Palmeiro, for example, has gone from a player I would have voted for on the first ballot to a player I hope never enters the Hall without buying a ticket. If Bonds tests positive at any point and earns a suspension for it, I'll have the same opinion. However, until he tests positive, I can't see an argument for banning him from the Hall or even for booing him. Far better to boo the Commissioner, the owners, and the players' union, who jointly gave us the situation in which Bonds (and others) could juice without breaking the rules.

I talk to a lot of people. Most of them at least know that I work out and watch what I eat, and quite a few know that I'm a former bodybuilding champion and a personal trainer. Some even know about this blog. As such, the topic of conversation pretty frequently turns to fitness.

Most of the people I talk to say that getting in shape is important to them, whether getting in shape means losing fat, putting on muscle, getting stronger, or improving their conditioning for the competitive or recreational sport of their choice. But, the common thread runs, I just can't find the time.

To which I'd like to reply "bullshit," but because I'm polite (and would like to have some of these people as clients), I ask the following question instead: How much TV do you watch each week?

Almost invariably, the answer is something other than none. And to the people who watch TV but don't work out, I say that the problem isn't time, it's priorities. A simple analysis of what they do indicates that watching TV is more important to them than working out.

The way priorities work is simple: the things that are most important to you are the things you'll find a way to do, no matter what. The things that are kind of important to you take precedence over the things that are less important, but they get shoved out of the way for the most important things. The things that aren't really that important to you get shoved out of the way unless the stars align just so. To reiterate: if it's important to you, you make time. If it's not, you have to find time. Which way do you treat exercise?

Now, some people truly are crunched for time. Working out is enough of a priority for them that they make time for it, but they feel the squeeze in other areas. Those of you who have trouble finding time can probably learn a thing or two from the people who have to make time. Common strategies?

1. Have exercise equipment at home.

There are going to be days when you feel like you've got the time and energy to work out or to drive to the gym, but not both. On days like this, having some exercise equipment at home is a lifesaver. Depending on your goals, available space, and budget, this can range from a jump rope and some dumbbells to a universal machine to a setup that rivals a commercial gym. If you've got a bare-bones setup, you might not be able to duplicate what you'd do in the gym, but even the most bare-bones setup will give you a better workout than lying down on the couch.

2. Head straight from work to the gym.

Work is already a non-negotiable priority, and it's already got you out of the house. If you throw your gym bag in your car in the morning, you've already got everything you need with you to hit the gym after work. No trip home to grab everything means no temptation to blow off the workout and hunker down in front of the TV instead. This strategy works even better if you can find a gym that's either right by work or on the way home.

3. Get up earlier.

This strategy works for plenty of people who can't head straight from work to the gym. Just set your alarm clock an hour earlier, and use that time to work out. To help facilitate things, try buying a coffee pot with a timer. That way, when you stumble out of bed an hour earlier than usual, you'll have a pot of fresh coffee waiting. Also look into protein powder or protein bars so that you won't have to expend any real effort to avoid hitting the gym on an empty stomach.

4. Condense your workout.

Most of your results come from the compound exercises you do (e.g., squats, deadlifts, cleans, rows, bench presses, military presses, etc.). You can drop the isolation exercises entirely and keep 85% of the results or more. Or you can drop the number of sets you do but work harder on the sets you keep. For cardio or fat-burning workouts, consider interval work. Sprint work alternated with very brief recovery periods will burn more fat, do more to improve conditioning, and take a LOT less time than traditional steady-state cardio.

5. Make a game of your workouts.

I don't like cardio much, but I do like sports. So I try to replace one traditional cardio workout a week with football, basketball, or soccer. I burn more calories and do more for my conditioning playing these sports, but because they're more fun than jogging or riding the exercise bike, I find it a lot easier to make the time. For strength workouts, try doing one workout a week where you lift odd objects--kegs, stones, sandbags, etc. Or try maxing out on a compound lift at the beginning of one workout a week. It's very motivational to know you're going to be attempting a personal record at a given list.

This is just a partial list of ways to find the time to exercise. If you've got other suggestions, let me know via e-mail or in the page comments.

As those of you who have read my article, The Ten Commandments of Getting Cut, already know, I'm a big believer in keeping a diet log when you're trying to change body composition. It eliminates the guesswork about the number of calories, grams of protein, fat, carbohydrates, and fiber that you've taken in, and it leads most people to eat more conscientiously because they've got to either write down what they ate or lie to themselves about it.

I've always kept my food logs in Mead composition books. That's also where I've traditionally kept my training logs (different books, though--if I lose one, I don't want to have lost both). They're cheap, they're portable, they're durable, and they look good. However, all the math in your diet log is a purely manual affair. As such, I keep running totals of calories, fat, protein, carbs, and fiber, but not vitamins and minerals, sodium, cholesterol, or several other things I probably should be tracking. I also have a hard time adjusting recipes based on my needs and calculations, since I've got to rerun numbers each time I adjust a quantity.

I've tried nutrition software for my PDA and didn't like it. I tried the free online version of FitDay and didn't like it, either. Then last week, Laree Draper mentioned having downloaded the pay version of Fitday and liking it far better than the free online version. Laree's one of the people whose opinions I give a lot of weight to, especially since she had the same complaints about the free version of FitDay that I did. I downloaded it yesterday and have spent about six hours playing with the program since then.

It runs $29, which isn't cheap for something you download yourself and get no paper documentation for, but in my opinion, it's well worth it. The program's got a fairly extensive list of foods built in, and it's easy to add foods that aren't listed. The prime food entry screen looks like a nutrition label, which means it couldn't be easier to put the right numbers in the right boxes. Foods that you use a lot can be saved as favorites, and whenever you enter a food into your log, both a table of nutrients and a pie chart showing where your calories come from are updated. Pretty cool, especially for people shooting for a specific nutrient ratio (like the Zone, or the Anabolic Diet's 5% of calories from carbs).

That's just the food tracker, though. The program also lets you track mood, body measurements, exercise, weight, and multi-day trends in eating. This is great stuff and allows you to really dial in the foods that do and don't work for you. Not everyone will take advantage of it, but if you pay close attention to mood and energy level following each meal, you're going to figure out what constitutes performance nutrition for you in a hurry.

The program also occasionally surprises the old hand. Laree wrote about being surprised by having taken in about 200 calories more than she would have guessed. I eat according to a Good Enough plan that should put me roughly in the Zone diet's 40/30/30 ratio, but I discovered I was getting more protein than I thought. Why? I only mentally count protein from animal sources. If I need 42 grams of protein, for example, I go with 6 ounces of cooked chicken breast. I'll then add enough brown rice or beans to get the amount of carbohydrate I want to balance those 42 grams of protein, forgetting that brown rice and beans both pack a decent amount of protein in their own right.

I've spent more than $29 on books on nutrition and cookbooks that weren't as valuable to me as this software. This one's a keeper.

My girlfriend asked me over dinner last night how I'd define a serious lifter.

"A serious lifter," I told her, "is one who spends every workout either trying to outdo the previous workout--whether in weight, sets, or reps--or strategically backing off to fuel further progress. A serious lifter is one who's there in the gym looking to improve, not just maintain or see and be seen."

She smiled. "By that definition, I'm a serious lifter."

"Of course you are. But look around your gym. Seventy percent of the people there aren't. They're using weights that are comfortable for them, and they're not pushing themselves. I bet you see a lot of people doing the same exercises with the same weights every workout. In the past year, they haven't added any weight to the bar, gained any muscle, or lost any fat."

She nodded. "When you put it that way, I'm a lot more serious than most of the guys in my gym."

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Too many people seem to be under the impression that you build muscle by going to the gym regularly and going through the motions. You don't.

The body adds muscle as an adaptive response to stress--and it's a last-resort response at that. If you're not stressing your body, you're not going to put on any muscle. The best you can hope for is maintaining what you've already got.

Every workout you should be straining forward or strategically retrenching so that you can go even farther. That's the secret to being a serious lifter.

While I firmly believe, as I posted yesterday, that the only secret is there is no secret, there are a few tips and tricks that burn fat and increase both fitness and work capacity. They're not really secrets, but not everyone's aware of them. I'll be discussing them from time to time as the mood strikes me (or as I founder for other things to write about). The first of these that I want to discuss is NEPA.

NEPA--non-exercise physical activity--is one of the factors that often separate the people who struggle with their weight from the ones who don't. NEPA is just being up and around, doing things, but the caloric expendature adds up.

In an article published last month in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, researchers found that obese individuals spent 2.5 hours more per day seated than their lean sedentary counterparts. Were those individuals to spend those 2.5 hours per day standing up and walking around, they would burn an additional 350 calories a day--enough to lose a pound every 10 days or a little over 35 pounds in a year, all without "exercising."

For those of us who do exercise, the potential benefits of NEPA are every bit as profound. Burning more calories through non-exercise activity means we can take in more calories without getting fat. Taking in more calories allows us to add muscle and strength more quickly. To put it bluntly, NEPA allows us to put the Good Enough diet to best advantage, or to moderate some of the effects of a diet that isn't good enough.

Better yet, almost everything that doesn't involve sitting or lying down contributes to NEPA. Walking? NEPA. Taking the stairs instead of the elevator? NEPA. Gardening? NEPA. Shooting hoops with the guys? NEPA. Sex? NEPA. (Try selling it as a way to burn calories without exercising. If it works out for you, let me know.)

It doesn't matter what you do; what matters is that you're not just sitting there passively. Now get out there and burn some calories.

Whether they're interested in weight loss or muscle gains, people naturally want to seek out the perfect diet. Magazines and bookstores are crammed with "perfect" diets. Low fat. Low carb. Raw foods. Cabbage soup. They've all got their adherents, but they've all got their detractors. None of them are perfect.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret here: There's no such thing as a perfect diet. As Dave Draper says, "the only secret is there is no secret." A perfect diet would have to help you lose fat, build muscle, maintain your weight, and taste good enough, be easy enough to prepare, and provide enough variety that you'd never be tempted to cheat. That diet doesn't exist. But what does exist is the good enough diet.

The good enough diet is about basic principles of healthy eating. It recognizes that we all like different foods, that we eat to fuel different activities, and that different bodies have different requirements.

Meals on the good enough diet revolve around protein. Whether you're eating to gain mass or to lose it, it's important to eat enough protein over the course of the day to promote fat loss and muscle gain. For most, that's a minimum of a gram per pound of lean mass. For me, I do best with a gram per pound of bodyweight, if not more. Spread that protein intake out over the number of times you plan on eating. For example, I like eating six times a day, and I weigh around 205. If I shoot for 35 grams of protein at each meal, I'll hit 210 grams for the day. If some meals have a little more, I'm covered, and if some have a little less, I'm not going to sweat it. After all, this is all about good enough.

On the good enough diet, all the sources of complete proteins are available: eggs, milk, cheese, beef, chicken, turkey, pork, fish, protein powder, etc. If you're not craving any specific form of protein, go for something lean (white meat from poultry, lean beef, tuna, etc.) or something with good fats (fatty fish or omega-3 eggs). But if you're craving prime rib, have prime rib. It's good enough.

I'm not going to make a specific recommendation on the amount of carbs in the diet. Some people do best on very low carbs--30 grams or less per day. Others do best on much higher carbs--over 300 grams per day. The big rule on the good enough diet is to get your carbs from sources that also give you something else. As such, your carbs will be coming primarily from fruits and vegetables (which give you fiber, vitamins, and minerals), milk (vitamins and protein), and whole grains (fiber and some vitamins). You won't be eating much sugar (whether table sugar or high fructose corn syrup) or refined flour because they don't give you anything else. Again, the exception is if you're specifically craving something. You can buy and treat yourself to a single serving of it, because that's generally good enough.

This doesn't mean that it's good enough to follow every meal with dessert, but if you primarily get your carbs from fruit and vegetables and find yourself craving a Snickers bar, go ahead and buy it. Just make sure that you buy a single bar and really savor it.

For your fat consumption, the good enough diet sets only broad guidelines: between 20% and 65% of your calories should be coming from fat. I'm far more concerned with the kinds of fat your food contains. About a third of the fat you eat should be saturated, a third should be polyunsaturated, and a third should be monounsaturated. None should come from trans fatty acids unless you're specifically craving a single serving of one food that happens to contain them. How to tell if what you're about to eat contains trans fatty acids? Look for the words "partially hydrogenated" in the ingredients.

So what does the good enough diet look like in practice? Most anything.

Breakfast might be eggs, oatmeal, a piece of fruit, and coffee. Or it could be a smoothie made with protein powder, milk, and fruit. The only real constants are that it should have protein and that the fats in it should be healthy and the carbs should provide more than calories.

For me, the next meal is usually just a jolt of protein: maybe a can of tuna or a protein shake. If I want more, I'll have a piece of fruit.

Lunch can also look like almost anything. It should be healthy, simple, and portable. My staples are chili (lean meat, and beans and tomatoes are both nutritional powerhouses), stir-fries (6-8 oz of meat stir-fried with half a bag of frozen veggies and sauce from a jar makes a quick, healthy good enough meal), and grilled chicken (usually thighs or leg quarters) with a side salad. As always, look for protein, carbs that contribute something, and healthy fats.

The next meal is also usually just a jolt of protein: a can of tuna or a protein shake. If I want more, I'll have a handful of mixed nuts.

Dinner can be most anything. Most of the time I'll do grilled meat, chicken, or fish with veggies and a salad. Frequently a beer as well. Not ideal, but good enough. Never more than two beers, though. If it goes from relaxing to intoxicating, you've had too much.

The final meal is another quick jolt of protein: tuna, protein shake, or cottage cheese. I'll usually have some fish oil or ground flaxseeds with this one as well.

Basically, that's what the good enough diet looks like in practice: three healthy meals with three high-protein snacks in my case. To lose weight on it, eat less of the same foods, and your weight will drop. To gain weight, eat more of the same foods. Experiment for yourself with the amounts of fat and carbs that work best for you. I find that I do better with less carbs than some, for example, and with those carbs coming earlier in the day. My diet reflects it. Others do better with more carbs and can have them throughout the day. Their dinners might include sweet potatoes or whole grains where mine just have vegetables.

The food choices are all healthy unless you're specifically craving something, and you go right back to eating healthy at the next meal if you've cheated at the last one. It's not fancy, but it's adaptable to any goal, it will keep you healthy, it will keep you lean, and it will allow you to add muscle without getting fat.

Sounds pretty close to perfect, doesn't it?

It's time to bring the Thinking Lifter back. I wish I could tell you I'm brining it back at the behest of thousands of readers who e-mailed me to say they're heartbroken without it, but no such luck. I'm bringing it back for two reasons: first, I've got ideas I want to explore, and second, I want to discipline myself to write more frequently. Knowing that my writing (or failure to do so) is out there for everyone to read should serve as real motivation to get off the stick and write.

If you read this blog during it's brief run over a year ago, welcome back. If you're a new reader, welcome. I'll be updating later today with real content.