aj_rock

awsd00: ON GS seems to be the protein of choice for a lottttt of people. One of the best protein to carb/fat ratio'd products out there. Wide variety of tastes too The casein gets a little expensive though... I tend to blend my casein and whey together.

Just a couple things to add: - technically, stubborn fat DOES exist; it's just most of us, yes even the leanest of us on NF, are too fat to experience it. Seriously. Stubborn fat is an issue faced by bodybuilders and the ilk trying to diet down to stupid low levels of body fat. That last 2% is VERY stubborn, cuz if you lose it, you die. - stubborn fat is also generally used as an alternate name for the last fat to come off your body, and it is indeed genetic. Not to get deep into the physiology, but basically, blood flow is absolute shite going into some areas of the body, and they tend to accumulate fat simply because the body has a very difficult time mobilizing it from the area. No blood flow = no fats entering the blood stream = no fats being used. I guess for the original topic, this is all really neither here nor there - you CAN lose fat cells, through a process called apoptosis, or natural cell death. The whole thing is a bag full of cats though with respect to hormone levels and whatnot so that's as far as I'll go, but it is possible to accomplish through natural means. - Unless your body fat levels are life-threatening, I would NEVER consider liposuction, if only because it is usually one of the shadiest, most life-threatening in and of itself medical procedures you could possibly get. I'd consider using illegal drugs before I even entertained the possibility of lipo. Qualifier: I'm not planning on illegal drug use anytime soon

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...

You can't be right, because I'm right, and only one person can be right at a time. Therefore, since I'm always right, you're always wrong.

You can still workout, just lower your volume. Like, ALOT. Eg if you normally did 5X5, do like 2X5, just cut your workload by about 60%. This won't help you gain, but it will keep you from wasting away in your illness Then, just get back on track when you feel better

An addendum to Occam's razor: never assume malice when ignorance/idiocy is a perfectly good explanation.

The day I meet someone who gained fat from protein is the day I see pigs fly. Protein and fat just don't mix. Unless you're eating more calories than you require in a day, you can't put fat on.

Actual body fat is impossible to know exactly; everything is an approximation. For decent numbers, waist/hip circumference is a good place for quick and easy, and calipers are probably the most accurate if done correctly, without breaking the bank.

Some basic physiology for yah. Your body, when at rest, puts certain amounts of energy into different systems; heart, lungs, stomach, etc. When you work-out, your body diverts most of that energy to muscles, lungs, not stomach. Soooo your body really doesn't enjoy trying to digest food and perform complex exercise at the same time. In fact, too much food in the tummy = tummy hits the ABORT button. So not 1/2 hour before. Maybe something light, like a single piece of bread, fruit, or very small protein shake. It might help a bit. No full meals though unless you can wait for most of it to digest. Afterwards, same thing, to replace lost energy. As for the long term stuff (what you ate the night before and whatnot), if you're not supplying your body with much energy, it won't like working out. If you're trying to lose weight, discomfort while performing exercise is to be expected.

Threw me for a bit of a loop seeing you post Jan 20th workouts on the 19th before I realized you're in australia. Your handstand push-ups must be amazing what with the being upside down and all.

All the big sites went down as scheduled. My money says that most of the action we saw today in opposition of the bill was because of wikipedia and google. Why? Because those are the two sites most frequented by people who wouldn't already be aware of SOPA. I think after today, we can all see exactly how much political power these two websites have, without even throwing money into the mix...

Dairy calcium has been implicated as being a useful tool in fat loss. Just throwing that out there.

Waldo, you had the right idea with the anabolic vs catabolic thing. Your body is either putting calories into storage, or taking them out. The real question here is: how to take calories OUT of fat, and IN muscle? There are only a few situations that allow this: - extremely overweight people, when training, tend to have a ridiculous supply of free fatty acids in the bloodstream, so even when attempting to lose fat, the body is still in a net anabolic state because there's just so much excess energy swimming around - prolonged anabolic periods and prolonged catabolic periods, aka bulking and cutting. It's never gonna be perfect, because gaining energy means calories into fat and muscle, and losing takes out of both as well. By training properly and eating correctly, you can alter the fat gain to muscle gain ratio, as well as the fat loss to muscle loss ratio. - acute anabolic and catabolic periods, aka IF or any other methodology that promotes caloric intake based on time of day of day of week. Really, all these do is shorten up the cycle of bulking and cutting to achieve a little bit of progress in both direction NEAR simultaneously. Never at any given point will you lose fat while gaining muscle. For example you spend half a day fasting, thats catabolic, you lose say 1/3 lb of fat, 1/15th lb of muscle. Then you train and eat, going anabolic, and gain 1/6 lb muscle, 1/4 lb fat. You net a gain of about 1/10 lb muscle, loss of 1/10 fat. It's small, I know, but the upside is that you can maintain a period of training/eating like this for a much longer time period than you could ever bulk or cut for. Some IF'ers have been doing it for years. - supplementation of questionable drugs. Everyone on NF hates you forever. that's really what your options come down to. Neglecting anabolism or catabolism gets you extreme results geared towards certain sports, catabolic for endurance races and marathons, anabolic for power/olympic lifting.

LOL for all intents and purpose, yes.

For most people, it is a fad though. Your average dieting consumer will read some random book by a guy making a quick buck, try it for a month, screw it up, and move on to the next thing. It's just the diet cycle guys. You guys can continue doing what you think is best. Paleo will not fix the fatty nation though.

Unfortunately not true BBC had a documentary on this woman who was all 'But I eat so healthy! I have a fruit bowl every day!' ... turns out the fruit bowl was the same size as a salad bowl. Too many calories, no matter where they come from, will put weight on you. Whether it's fat or muscle depends on your training. I think your problem lies in what you said in your third post: going from a typical athletic diet that's very high in carbs to a paleolithic low-carb deal, you'll have major carb cravings, which can easily be mistaken for hunger. A couple potential solutions: A) reduce carb intake more gradually, so your body doesn't just go BUUUUUH!? when you severely restrict carbs Do the IF thing. It does a lot for your mentality to just say 'I can't graze, I can't eat anything for four hours!'. For some people, it's easier to just NOT eat for a set amount of time rather than try to tame grazing habits. C) Don't do paleo. The athletic diet, for someone performing at an athletic standard, is totally suitable for someone working out an average of 2 hours a day at the gym. Unless you have other considerations you haven't stated yet (celiac disease, leaky gut syndrome), paleo might not be necessary for your goals.

My initial thoughts are that you're pushing too hard on the biking frontier. 120 miles, depending on your pace, can burn between 2500 and 5000 calories over the course of your week. Training the legs that much on a bike is also going to negatively effect your squats and deadlift. The muscle fiber types necessary for cycling (type I) are the complete opposite of what you're trying to develop with heavy lifting (type IIb). In general, cyclists aren't very muscular. You'll probably have to pick one or the other.

Atta boy m00se! Keep it up!

This this this this this. The capacity that some people have to make excuses for why things just don't work for them is amazing. The only population I will actually allow a slow metabolism to are people with thyroid problems. Everyone else should really make the effort to do the math. There's even a skinny guy right on NF that did that. Couldn't figure out why he couldn't gain weight, even though he 'over-ate'. Turns out he hikes for a good 2-3 hours on average a day, wiping out any gains he could possibly get.

The article didn't talk about freezing cells to lose fat. Which actually has other applications for people who don't carry lots of fat, but used to, and now have excess amounts of depleted fat cells sitting around and doing nothing. In that population it makes sense to 'delete' the cells in a sense, as now they are just metabolic baggage, not doing any useful work. The problems I see with injecting hormones into people to cause white fat to turn into brown fat is exactly what they said; it's metabolically active. If it's active, but not doing any work, thermodynamics says that it must generate heat. Thus I see a great likelyhood of excess brown fat in adult humans causing overheating, profuse sweating, dehydration, heat stroke, and possibly actual stroke just for the hell of it. There's a reason we lose our brown fat. I don't think it's a good idea to go messing with it.

Start now and your child will never ever be bullied.

Unfortunately though, diet and fitness GOALS differ vastly between genders. I see far more female marathon runners than male, which requires a different set of training parameters entirely. Other endurance heavy sports, like long track, cycling, etc. all would benefit negatively from heavy lifting. But diet especially does change drastically between males and females, as hormonal patterns cause different metabolic adaptations, meaning that women usually have a harder fight to lose fat on their hands. The way I would look at it is, what is the current hormonal pattern? If a person, through native hormone production + hormone supplementation is currently more or less test/estro heavy, then you can depend on them reacting to their training in line with the gender their hormones are emulating. My only reaction thusly would be to take care of any fitness goals while in an androgynous state. If going MTF, get fit, then do your trans. If FTM, work at it after. Just because guys do have an inherent advantage.

BCAA's are ideal as a supplement for fasted training, as it prevents catabolic effects that are inherently present when exercising on an empty stomach. If you aren't fasted though, like captiancat said you should get enough protein from other food sources that you don't need BCAA supplementation. As for Erik's de-rail, I agree with cat on that as well. Strength train at least once or twice a week maintaining intensity but cutting volume. That should prevent overt amounts of muscle loss while losing fat.

Lack of soreness also results from the nerves just getting beaten into submission. Go watch Kick-ass for a good example of this. Point being, it's not necessarily a good thing. Damage is still occurring to your body, but you don't have any signal to your brain that it's being done. That's probably a good reason to always always always have a coach when practicing any MMA. They know how much your body can take. You don't, really.