shiggles

Well I wrote a very elegant reply and it got eaten by the forum monster. Losing fat while gaining muscle is possible – it’s often called ‘body recomposition’ if you want to plug that into google. But results will be slower than the traditional bulk/cut cycles that are widely used by strength/figure athletes so you must be patient. But in the long run you can end up with the same or even better results. This is because when ‘bulking’ a lot of excess fat can be gained and when ‘cutting’ this fat off muscle is often lost at the same time. It’s actually easier for someone who has significant fat stores as the excess energy stored in the fat can help build the muscle up when at Calorie deficit food intake wise. But it does get more tricky at lower BF%. There are a number of more fancy techniques that can be used to achieve this but I won’t go into details now but the basics are the following… -Hit the weights hard. -Eat plenty of protein -Eat enough good fats -Eat at an energy deficit but not a deficit that is as large as diets focused primarily on weight loss. For example you might start at a deficit of 200 Cals and see how you go. This is something you will probably have to fiddle with. Too low Cals and your performance will suffer, but too high Cals and you won’t be losing weight. -A general theme is to eat more around when you are training and eat less around days you are not training.

Get's a bit dry don't you think?

So I’ll try not to go on another big rant here. I have finished reading the carb backloading book by John Kiefer. I’ll make a few points but I will say if you are considering purchasing it, think again. In my opinion it is really not worth anything close to the $90 that is being asked for it. Even at the occasional discounted prices of $50 and $30 I still would not recommend purchasing it. While I encourage people to give anything a go, there is enough information floating around that will get you started. And the book is crap. OK, maybe a tad harsh, but it could be so much better. To be clear I did not purchase the book. I was fortunately lent a copy by my coach which I read. I also aim to follow and read the original journal articles that are referenced or at least the important ones CBL is based on but haven’t got around to that just yet. Related to my previous rant the book really leaves out women almost entirely. Of all the health and fitness guides I have read this has got to be the worst. There is no mention made of the book being targeted at any particular gender until one of the last chapters where the author has taken a paltry one and a half pages to explain the women have to a hell of a lot different in order to get results. The sections starts like this… “I wrote this book with men as my target audience, both in the program and style of writing…†Now that statement is great, but the trouble is when it appears. The section regarding women is literally the very last section before the end of the book where the testimonials and appendices are. The very last. This little gem should appear on the blurb of the book if not on the front page. Very very poor form to wait until that late in the book to state this. The author needs to get himself a better editor. While I will admit to being quite pedantic about this sort of thing, the author makes very frequent bad use of grammar and there is the odd sentence here and there that just does not make sense in the English language. What is also bad is the incorrect use of scientific terminology at times. I think it is great that an author approaches a book from a scientific standpoint but if you are going to do it, then I believe you should do it properly. That doesn’t mean you have to use the long scientific words everywhere, but just be consistent and simple in the way that certain things are described. Kiefer also uses some scientific and common words in quite odd ways that in my opinion is more likely to confuse an ordinary reader rather than make things clearer. The referencing style is also far from scientific for a book supposedly approaching things from a science research angle. The referencing is not accurate and if done traditionally I believe would actually lend more weight to some of the arguments Kiefer makes. I also have some questions regarding Kiefer’s formal education and some odd things I haven’t found answers for. However I will not include these here at the moment as it may sound like a personal attack. At the end of the day what do you expect from a book that is titled something like ‘manual for total body fat control’ that costs as much as this does? I expect something that is details and gives me all the tools I need to implement this in my own lifestyle. For that price I also expect pretty good customer service, especially as an electronic book and something that is admittedly being updating continually via the website and forums. However despite my efforts I have yet to receive a reply from any of my queries sent to the only contact available from the CBL website. For some reason I am also unable to access their forum that they encourage using for additional information. So I can’t ask questions that weren’t covered in the book such as macronutrients profiles, especially comparing training and non-training days. For what it’s worth so far I’ve seen some good results in the week and a bit I’ve been on this. But that’s far from enough time to really say whether it’s working or not, especially when looking at strength gains. I will also add I’m not doing this as prescribed in the book with the main difference being that as I woman I simply cannot ingest as many carbs as the books suggests and not become a Michelin (wo)man.

What are your current stats? Weight, and bf etc. Where you start has a huge impact in terms of what you can do to achieve your goals.

Let's see if this works. This was after I had nommed at least half the fish and veggies. For reference that steak is 180 g. Banana and milk were blended together for a shake.

Squat night tonight. Finally got through my sets that I've been struggling with. Also means weight gets bumped up next time. Sheesh. One thing I've noticed on CBL with the big meals at night is that I am much less hungry during the next morning. This is to the point where I don't feel like eating. So today for example I didn't eat until 1130 or so that was actually my lunch. Due to scheduling it also means an even larger meal to get all my macros in during the evening. I am still trying to finish this and digest as I type. I took a picture of this meal for shits and giggles. I'll see if I can manage to upload it from my phone or something. After discussion we've decided to dial back the backload carbs to around 1 gram per lb of bodyweight. This seems much more reasonable to me. According to the CBL book I should have been aiming for 500g of carbs. It would have been fun but a while no that and I don't think I could fit through the gym door.

Hmmm from what I've read CarbNite was originally written for women but CBL while it may not have been a conscious decision to target it towards men, that's what happened as it's the biggest potential audience. I would actually like to go and study this topic on my own in more detail and while I can access the journals I need without too much issue (and I honestly call shenanigans on anyone who says they have read 40, 000 papers on the topic) the reality is a lot of these people have their own personal experience as an athlete as well as experienced in being both a fitness and nutrition coach for many clients. And those clients often end up being their guinea pigs. And as it stands both the career of this sort of coach and the people who approach a coach for this sort of assistance are generally male. So it's a very difficult cycle to break. Added to this while I am confident in knowing much more than the typical person about health and fitness, including diet, I doubt anyone is going to look at me and want to trust me in this field, however much I tell them to do as I say and not as I do! There is a female athlete I have noticed around Kiefer's forum and who advocates CBL, however I believe she already had the base of a competitive powerlifter/bodybuilder before starting and it's much easier to mould someone with more experience.

I have another question regarding IF. I have heard and remember seeing on the original big-ass thread that women in general do not get as good results as men when on IF. There were also some changes suggestion for women. Can anyone link me to some good reading to investigate the differences and possible tweaks I might try?

Enter the rant post. I'm cranky at health and fitness stuff right now. Maybe it's because due to work I missed my weights session and possibly the same thing will happen today. But really what the fuck. I'm sick of all the health and fitness stuff that is out there. And there is HEAPS, but for some reason the stuff I am actually interested in is all geared at men and hardly take into account women. Yeah, so you've read tens of thousands of scientific article write a book that has hundred of pages but you dedicate only one or two pages to how things change for women. Oh and yeah, those one or two pages make the last hundred pages I just went through redundant. Oh yeah, but you also have a forum where I can go and potentially ask more questions. So I'll try that. But no, your registration system is screwed up and won't let me register, despite trying several different email address and you saying my account is activated when I never received an activation email. In addition let's make the only form of contact a web form which we don't actually reply to as witnessed by my experience and many other people's outlined on your own forum. Sorry I'm just sick of this shit. People advertising that their system of suitable for everyone who is interested in performance yet class everyone who is 15% bodyfat as needing to lose weight. Really, I can wade through a bit of shit to get to any gold nugget that may be present in your work. But don't expect people to trust you for it. I mean my rant so far may seem like it's only about one person or one group, but really it's something of a reoccurring theme. Sure there are some diamonds in the rough with regards to women's health and fitness but most are aimed at men. You can read through them and simply by the language used you can see who the target audience is. And this isn't even mentioning the lack of information about how men and womens body respond to different training and other stimulii differently. I don't care if you want to write a book that is focused on men, but you should make it clear from the start that it is from men. Don't add some sort of crap off-the-side comment that this is for everyone just to get a few women to also buy it. But here's a real basic hint, if you are going to include a section in your book/website or whatever on customer testimonials at least include ONE from a women if you are going to say this material is suitable for everyone. I could go on but my coherence has probably suffered enough. I wish I could get in a room with some of these people and ask them some questions because really I think what they have done so far is rubbish.

Which edition of SS do you have Grimm?

Try to find a sports doc rather than your normal GP. A lot of the time these docs have worked with sports teams sometimes at very high levels. Yes you may have to pay more to see them, but at least you will get something out of seeing them. I should also say this isn't something that is limited to lifting. Most sports will find the same problems with GPs.

I just found out why it took me so long to find the original IF thread. It's been archived. Anyway after some suggestions I'm going to give this yet another try. Let's face it, I didn't give it a proper chance last time. Basically I'm having trouble getting in all my macros in the evening window, mainly because that's when I train. And I can't train on a full stomach or eat while training so I'm stuck with afterwards. But then because I leave for work early in the morning this means I need to get to sleep early in the evenings, making my eating window very small. So I'm after some tips that might help. My typical weekday schedule... 530 - wake up and go to work 1730 - Get home 1800 - Leave for training 2045 - Get home from training 2130 - Aim to be in bed at this time for my 8 hours sleep So yeah I'm a busy person. It sucks. I do most of my cooking on weekends and so live off the microwave during the week. Also between getting home from training and sleeping I have to do the usual night time things like having a shower. So any suggestions on how I can modify the IF thing would be great. As a female I know we don't tend to do so well with the longer fasts so I'm considering giving myself more leeway for meals, including maybe some carbs earlier in the afternoon. Thoughts?

<p>Like a lot of vitamins and supplements you are probably going to have to take it regularly to see any significant change. So don't expect a miracle cure.</p> <p> </p> <p>From what I've read supplementing with 10000 IU per day shouldn't be a problem.</p> <p> </p> <p>You can look into getting a SAD light or something as well during winter but certainly try the vit d supps first.</p> <p> </p> <p>By the way if you are buying your own I actually found online sources were better. While your area may be different I could only find 1000 IU capsules at B&M stores but online could easily find 5000 IU caps. Again from what I've read if you truly have a deficiency you probably want to supplement with more than 1000 IU per day. Also taking super high doses 2/week doesn't seem as good an option as taking the equivalent dose per day.</p>

It's more accurate that way as it's done before the dehydration effects of cooking. It also depends on what you log it as because many places have choices to enter both cooked and uncooked versions of lots of basic foods. For me I was weighing cooked but logging as the same weight uncooked. On my way to and work and realised I left my lunch at home. Poo.

Went to the butcher yesterday. I love that place. Purchased a whole cow buttock and 3 Kg of bacon. Should last me a while. Downside through is when portioning out the bacon I decided to check the weight of them to make sure it was still about the same ballpark as it's been a while since I checked. Seems it was significantly off to the point where I think last time I checked i was looking at cooked weight and not raw weight to the point where it is now twice as much. Possibly a different thickness of meat as well. Well that means my total Cals were significantly off for LOT of breakfasts.

Just started aog if you are interested. Not sure how to link to it using Tapatalk but it should be there.

So yeah I’ve been umming and ahhing about this for a while. Now my excuse is that I have been peer pressured into a log by a fellow member. So I figure if It doesn’t work out I can just leave it be. But to be honest I would like some feedback from those who might know something or can offer any advice. I don’t think I’ll be using this to log every signal workouts of reps and sets but more how I feel. But who knows, any of this might change. So I suppose this might be for my own records. I have started with fitday in the past but stopped as I simply didn’t have the time everyday to log workouts. So a bit about me and what I want to be and improve on … I train both in an awesome gym and in martial arts. Goals are to get better and more skilled at both. I am actively competing at both. Martial arts wise there are competitions cropping up every now and again and I get to say I compete in some at a high level. So preparation for these competitions can be quite important. I have also competed in novice powerlifting comps and while I would like to compete in these again this year my focus is on a strongman comp in a few months so my gym training has been focused on this. This is hard but works well for me as it involves more of a cardio aspect compared to powerlifting which helped out the MA side of things as well as stuff like running for the bus. So all these combined means I am training every day of the week, except maybe Sunday. And I say maybe as I would like to start cycling again and I have found that LSD training, even once a week improves my overall endurance and cardio quite a bit. I’ve also got too much fat hanging off my body. Liposuction surgery would cause me to miss too much training so I’m trying to get this off the old fashioned way. Which leaves me in a bit of a tight spot as I am trying to both eat to recover from lots of activity and gain strength while also eating to lose fat. Not easy but fortunately I have some great coaches and great people who help me with MA, powerlifting, strongman and nutrition. Speaking of nutrition I am trying out Carb Backloading from the suggestion of my coach. Very basically speaking this is a variation of intermittent fasting where carbs are only eaten the evening after intense weight training with the idea that at this time muscles are more open to glucose uptake. Now I’ll admit to being a big skeptical but I trust me coach enough to give it a go. Like a lot of nutrition programs it’s really targeting at men. So while men can go crazy with cookies and ice cream until they feel the need to vomit, I can’t go that overboard. So all that chocolate I bought when it was $2 for 3 blocks will last me a long while. So anyway some starting stats. Weight – 88.4 (just after a carb load so hoping this isn’t really that high). I’m considering getting one of bio impedance scales to look at body fat. Event though I know they aren’t accurate it might be handy as a general guide of progress in that regard. BPs Squat – 72 Kg (worst lift) Bench – 52 Kg Deadlift – 107 Kg Oh well that’s about it for now. I’ve written this while watching episodes of homeland and I can’t say it’s all that enthralling at the moment.

Haha. I have my bets in on what is going to be suggested nutrition wise.

You may just convince me to have a log. I'll think about it. Photos are of me in my knickers and I don't want to blind anyone. I'm in Australia. Feel free to visit if you like I guess I need to get around to updating my profile and stuff sometime as it was all wiped after the forum upgrade. Sometime maybe.

So I'm trying a few things out to improve performance and one of these is trying some fast acting carbs at certain times. The trouble is, most sources of fast acting carbs are pretty much junk dessert foods. These are things such as cake, ice cream, cookies and pop tarts. However I don't tend to do well with wheat products so that leaves a lot of things out. So I'm after some ideas of paeo/primal options for fast carb. Now I will say here that high sugar content is not a problem here, in fact it's something I'm aiming for. So adding refined sugar to anything is a concession I can make. Fructose (fruit, most sodas) is not an option either. So of course it's not goign to be 100%, but I'd like to do the best I can.

Hi everyone, I've recently found a great local source of nut butter so I bought quite a large jar. However I have hardly had any nut butters since my progression towards paleo so I'm not really sure what to do with it. Previously I would really only have it on a sandwich or with some crackers so I'm a bit at a loss now. And I'm not sure I really want to go down the celery or playing card route.

No problems, although without the challenge and thinking about them my goals are understandable quite general. Goals - Lose weight and gain muscle. Short term over the next couple of weeks is more weight loss as I need to make weight for a competition (this shouldn't be a problem from where I am at the moment). Longer term would be the whole body recomp gig. Fitness - Longer term goal is to gain strength and be competitive at a strongman comp in April. Also aiming to compete more in powerlifting later in the year but have no comps lined up yet. Starting at ~30% bodyfat (so too much) after about 4 months proper strength training. Training is strongman/powerlifting program 3 days per week + 3-5 days per week of martial arts (more cardioish). Backloading will be done after strength training only. Also I'm female in case that isn't listed somewhere. Both strength training program and backloading is being planned and supervised by my strength coach (wow, I get to say I have one of them now). I test my 1RM every couple of months or so at the end of each program, so strength wise that's probably the most reliable measure. I'm also taking photos but no you can't see them I should also say there are a few others at the gym who are trying a similar thing. We are starting at different stages with some different goals e.g. some for bulking, some more focused on weight loss. I'll try to keep an ear out on how they are doing as well.

I don't really do the challenges any more or really log anything on here. I can try to make a point of letting you know how I am going or you are welcome to bug me about it too. I only finish my first 10 days today so I can't say much other than 3kg of weight loss over a that time. But a lot of that will be due to holiday glycogen and associated water loss due to the lower carb especially after knowing what I did eat over the holiday. I'm not sure I have ever looked forward to an workout so much as I do tonight.

I will be following this with interest as I am trying out carb back loading. Guess I'll see how I go. My ten days are up tomorrow.

If you are just doing deadlifts to the sake of deadlifts and strength, then there is no problem with starting them lower as a result of the smaller plates. This is generally called a deficit deadlift (normally you would raise your feet by standing on a low box or something but the principles are the same). The only way you would run into trouble with this is it you have problems with flexibility but most people should be fine. Just remember to keep your back supported and to bend at your knees and hips a little more to get lower rather than bend your back. That being said deficit deadlifts are more difficult then lifting from a 'normal' height so as a beginner you can look into ways to raise the bar. If you have access to a squat cage or something similar it is easy to set the safety bars as a height to make the bar start at mid-shin. Setting up some boxes or even stack some spare plates up to raise the bar will also work. While you can just not touch the bar to the ground between reps I would not recommend this as especially when you are lifting heavier it can increase the risk of injury as you fight momentum to bring it back up. Plus if you are concentrating on form it is better to reset and take a full breath between reps. This only take a fraction of a second but if you are ending your last rep with poor form it is very hard to get into good form if you are still holding the weight.