Are You Eating Fat Post-Workout?

As a general rule, I've been doing what most every other strength athlete/bodybuilder/meathead does when they're done working out: eat/drink a ton of protein and slam some carbs. Also in line with most everyone else, I've not given much thought about where I get the protein and carbs or how much fat I'm consuming along with it, because it doesn't matter... right? I mean, calories are calories and I need calories to grow!

As you might've guessed by the way I worded things, this is not entirely the case. Sure, you need a surplus of calories throughout the day to gain muscle/weight and you should be eating fast-absorbing protein and high-glycemic carbs after you workout, but you should be avoiding fat. As it turns out, fat is counterproductive to setting your body up for tissue building and recovery, post-workout. It's counterproductive because fat slows digestion, and your whole goal after a workout is to digest proteins and absorb amino acids as fast as you can. I mean, that's why you're eating the high-glycemic carbs and slamming protein shakes, right?

Homie's "bulking" all wrong!

Just in case you're curious, like I was, here is an explanation as to how fat slows digestion:

"Upon entering your stomach, fats stimulate the release of cholecystokinin, or CCK, from the cells that line your duodenum, which is the first segment of your small intestine. CCK is a hormone that suppresses your appetite, triggers the release of pancreatic enzymes, stimulates contraction of your gallbladder and, according to the February 1987 issue of "The American Journal of Physiology," delays gastric emptying. This allows the fats in your stomach to enter your intestine gradually, where they can be emulsified by bile from your gallbladder and broken down by enzymes from your pancreas."

Also:

"Their incompatibility with water makes fats resistant to the digestive process, and their arrival in your stomach triggers physiologic responses that delay gastric emptying"

So, am I vilifying fat? Definitely not! Am I saying you should eat a low-fat diet? No, that's not my point. If I'm vilifying anything, it's the McDonalds/Taco Bell/Pizza Ranch post-workout meals. If you're serious about gaining muscle/getting better at your sport, you're going to want to be conscious of how much fat you're eating in your post-workout meals.

R.I.P Post-workout Pizza

Resources:

1.) http://www.livestrong.com/article/467828-does-fat-slow-digestion/

2.) http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/berardi4.htm

Make Sure You're Using Proper Form

This truly applies to every exercise you can do. This is of utmost importance for two main reasons: training longevity and training productivity. It seems like a no-brainer, but making sure that you’re performing exercises properly to not sustain an injury pertains to more than just acute injuries, like dropping a bar on your face or getting crushed while squatting. It’s also truly important for not sustaining small, accumulating chronic injuries, as well. I think most people have experience nagging injuries in terms of having to take a break due to a sore knee or injury, but I think it’s easier to chalk it up to overuse or “training too hard”. While that may also be true (and is a whole, big topic of discussion unto itself), I think it’s a very good idea to make sure said sore knee or elbow is not sore/hurting due to improper form. This is where the correlation between training longevity and chronic injury is most obvious: As young, generally healthy lifters, we can continue to sustain unnecessary, small injuries for a long time. But what about when we have used up all the cartilage in our joints and the ability to quickly recover from these small injuries? What happens when a small injury that used to take 24 hours to heal now takes 72 hours to merely feel manageable? These points can be avoided altogether, or at the very least pushed way down the road by making sure you’re executing every exercise correctly and not sustaining unnecessary wear and tear, therefore extending your training longevity.

You don't want to be this guy...

The second point that I was trying to make with using proper form is to ensure training productivity. This was a point that probably wouldn’t even be too apparent to me if I hadn’t experienced problems with it over and over again for the last couple of years. What exactly do I mean by training productivity? Of course I mean ‘are you training productively?’, but I’m focused more on ‘is your training getting you closer to your goal?’ I’ll use squatting as an example. Are you training for athleticism? You probably want to squat high-bar. Are you training for a powerlifting meet? You probably want to squat low-bar. Depth of squat can be another aspect of form in this instance. If you’re training for athletics/Olympic lifting you’ll almost certainly want to hit unquestionably full-depth to be strong while coming out of full knee-flexion, but if you’re looking at squatting from a powerlifting aspect you may want to train to just barely hit full-depth to limit range of motion and squat more weight. To reiterate, my ultimate point is this: is the way you’re executing your lifts/exercises getting you closer to your goals and serving you productively?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this guy will never reach his full potential on the bench press.

To briefly offer personal experience and tie it all together, my bench press violated both of these points and inspired me to write this. I had been benching with absolutely terrible form for years. Not only was I wrecking my left shoulder to the point where everyday activities hurt, but I was unable to progress past the 275 lb. mark. Not only was the way I benching destructive to my body, but it was not getting me any closer to obtaining a bigger bench. So, with that being said, one last time: make sure you’re executing every lift with proper form to ensure that you can continue to train productively and injury free for many years to come.

'How to Squat Properly' by Mike Boyle

Mike Boyle is one of the biggest names in the strength and conditioning world. Dan John (as mentioned in the video) is another one. When both of these guys recommend using a goblet squat to teach squat form, I'm gonna have to follow their lead! From what I know, all of this sounds excellent and it is definitely worth 4 minutes of anyone's time.

You can find more Mike Boyle here: http://www.bodybyboyle.com/

You can find more Dan John here: http://danjohn.net/

What is Riboflavin?

Riboflavin is a B vitamin (B2) and plays a role in energy metabolism (metabolizes fats, ketone bodies, carbohydrates and protein). As a B vitamin, it promotes healthy skin, hair, eye and liver health, along with helping the nervous system function properly. Additional functions of riboflavin include helping the body convert vitamin B6 and folate into forms it can use and playing an important role in body growth and red blood cell production. "Symptoms of riboflavin deficiency include fatigue, slowed growth [and] digestive problems" (1).

Good sources of riboflavin include:

• Milk
• Beef
• Fish
• Bananas
• Green beans
• Asparagus
• Spinach
• Legumes
• Almonds

Sources:

1. http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/vitamin-b2-riboflavin

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riboflavin

3. http://www.healthaliciousness.com/articles/foods-high-in-riboflavin-vitamin-B2.php

Is Tilapia a Good Source of High-quality Protein?

I knew that tilapia was a protein-rich and popular source of food-stuff protein with bodybuilders/strength atheletes, but I was unsure of whether it was a good source of high-quality protein. As it turns out:

Yes, it is!

Not only does tilapia have 7 grams of protein per ounce, but it contains all 9 essential amino acids, making it a complete protein. Nutritiondata.self.com gives it an amino acid score of 124/100.

Sources:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/finfish-and-shellfish-products/9244/2

Fish oil: What does EPA and DHA stand for?

EPA = Eicosapentaenic Acid
DHA = Docosahexaenoic Acid

They are both long-chain omega-3 fatty acids (polyunsaturated). They're essential fatty acids, meaning they can't be produced/synthesized by the body and must be obtained through diet. Most commonly found in marine oils.

ALA (Alpha Linolenic Acid) is a short-chain omega-3 fatty acid, most commonly found in plant oils. It can be used in the body to form EPA, and then DHA from there, but with great inefficiency in both conversions.

Sources:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid

2. http://www.cooperaerobics.com/Health-Tips/Vitamin-Aisle/EPA,-DHA,-ALA-What-Does-It-All-Mean.aspx

3. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/993.html

My Ketogenic Diet in Hindsight

Essentially, I'm writing this post to air my qualms with this diet or, to be fair, the way I did this diet. In terms of chasing aesthetics/bodybuilding, I'm sure this diet really can work very well for some people, but in hindsight, I don't believe that this diet is actually ideal for those that are focused on performance and/or health.

Dave Palumbo is a big proponent of ketogenic dieting and was a top ranking bodybuilder. He was/is also chemically assisted though and that will make losing fat while retaining muscle much easier.

So, I did lose quite a bit of weight and I did gain strength while following a cyclical ketogenic diet. While doing the diet, I was quite the fan and was very happy with how quickly I was losing weight and how lean I was getting in such a short amount of time. I believe that my lowest weight on the diet was 178 lbs., which is considerably less weight than my starting weight, and I was gaining strength throughout the ordeal. I thought this was all well and good until I started thinking it through a bit harder and learned a bit more. Also, multiple people had commented on how "small" I had gotten, and that'll get any meathead thinking!

The diet went from the beginning of May to the beginning of August, which is roughly 3 months. In that time I lost 18 lbs., so that averages out to 6 lbs. per month. Now, if I had actually lost 6 lbs. a month (1.5 lbs/wk) consistently, that would've been a pretty good rate of weight loss. Unfortunately, that is not how it went.

If I remember correctly, I lost about 10 lbs. in the first month, 5 in the second and 3 in the third. In that first month I was working a construction job in the morning and serving at a restaurant at night, which is considerably more physically demanding than an average job and therefore I was burning a massive amount of calories while consuming very low amount of calories throughout the day, creating a caloric deficit that was far too large, resulting in a loss of quite a bit of muscle. In the second month, I cut back on the construction job, but was still working the serving job and sticking to the 2,400-2,800 kcal/day. In the second month, my rate of weight loss was actually pretty good and my third month was even better, as I was no longer working construction and upped my caloric intake.

I personally lost a considerable amount of muscle. I'm weight about 180 lbs. in this picture. The red shirt was previously quite tight on me and is very loose in this picture.

You can see that I did made a strong correlation to the amount of calories I was burning in the day and the number of calories I was consuming (caloric deficit); When I was working a lot (burning a lot of calories) I was losing weight far too quickly/losing muscle and when I cut back on the work and upped my caloric intake a bit (reduced the caloric deficit), I was losing weight at a good rate of speed. This is why I think that it is fair to say that I personally made a mistake in the way I carried out the diet and that I believe that it can still have a place in the world of aesthetics/bodybuilding. If I had kept a more appropriate and consistent caloric deficit throughout the 3 month period, I would have still lost fat and retained far more muscle.

I also claimed that I was gaining strength while losing a lot of weight, which is true; I did get stronger than I was when I started the diet. I originally accredited that the to ketogenic diet, thinking that I was able to lose weight and get stronger at the same time because of this diet. In all actuality, the strength gain was due to the fact that I was really just regaining strength that I had before I got injured and I had just started focusing on strength. My body was simply adapting to the new stimulus that I was subjecting it to, while regaining the efficiency of my neuromuscular system. Your body certainly does need carbohydrate to perform optimally in sports/activities that require the anaerobic pathway and you can't do that while running on little more than fat, protein and ketone bodies.

I'm quite certain that Brandon Lilly (one of my personal favorites) consumes carbs to power his training!

My final thoughts on the the cyclical ketogenic diet:

• It can be effective for aesthetic/bodybuilding needs
• You can lose fat rapidly on the diet
• It is easy to create a caloric deficit that is far too large, resulting in muscle loss
• It is difficult to get in the required micronutrients for optimal health
• The diet is not ideal for those concerned with athletic performance