Opinions?

[Flytch]

http://www.cracked.com/article_19130_6-fitness-tips-everyones-heard-that-dont-work-at-all.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fanpage&utm_campaign=new+article&wa_ibsrc=fanpage

Just read this and though I might repost it here, given that it addresses some topic that I've seen popping up on these forums.

[kahn265]

I don't know what to make of cracked.com anymore.

There is humour mixed in with some fact in most of their articles. I tend to avoid the site since its got a weird mix of truth and humour that makes it difficult to separate.

[Alethea]

Christina H is my favorite Cracked writer. She generally does her research, but her article barely mentions or glosses over a few things. Here are my thoughts.

1. Breakfast Isn't Necessary: True, but... There's nothing saying humans HAVE to eat 3 meals a day. It's actually pretty unnatural. Some people like grazing throught the day (the gatherer lifestyle), some people eat 1 light meal and 1 rediculously huge meal a day (the hunter lifestyle). BUT, the human body can only absorb so many nutrients at a time, and excess glucose in the bloodstream caused by eating lots of food at once (or the wrong sort of food) is stored as fat, so in theory to get optimal nutritional bang for your buck, eating smaller meals more frequently, or at least a few snacks full of nutritionally dense foods like veggies or fruits is generally best.

2. BMI is Useless. True, so true. And scales themselves are incredibly misleading (again, I cite the article of the woman who went from size 14 to size 6 while weighing the exact same).

3. Barefoot Running is Not the Be-All End All. True, but... Barefoot running is best. It works all your foot, ankle and leg muscles the way they were meant to work. If you can, do, however, if you have preexisting conditions like collapsed arches or really weak foot muscles, if you try to go hard at barefoot running you will hurt yourself. Your feet will not stop you, because you are strongminded, take-no-excuses Rebels and you will push until you hurt yourself. Speaking from experience. BUT. That doesn't mean all is lost, and barefoot running is impossible for you! There are arch supports that can basically reform your foot bones and muscles over a long period of time to give you back those sweet sweet springy arches, and physiotherapists have a whole battery of exercises to conditioning your feet and ankles to work properly. IF you flat out are missing foot muscles (?!? Is that actually whats wrong, or for most people are the arches just collapsed? I'm sure it's possible), then you don't have natural foot-springs, and barefoot running is not for you.

4. It's Not About Muscle Confusion, It's About Progressively Improving and Putting Time In: True, but... K, this is misleading. It's not about "confusing your muscles", it's about "doing a variety of things to get stronger". What are your goals? If you want to increase your strength at specific fitness benchmarks, say deadlifting or pushups, then deadlift or pushup. You don't have to do box-jumps then flip a cartwheel to keep your body from getting bored. Progressively increase your weight, and do it a LOT, and you will improve at deadlifting, increasing your overall strength in the bargan. BUT. If you are trying to increase your overall functional fitness and versatility, then doing the same 5 things over and over (and over and over and over) at progressively increasing weight will help you... to an extent. Variety is an advantage because it teaches your body to move with strength as a unit through a variety of different movements, so you can efficiently sprint a mile, climb a wall, balance on one foot, and do the aforementioned box-jump and cartwheel. So you won't be as good at deadlifting, but you'll be better allaround.

5. You Don't Have to Eat Fruits And Veggies As A Snack: True, but... She says "The end result is, I probably eat even more chips than I would have [if I didn't eat veggies, which I hate]". This is a true, documented human logical fallacy. If I eat something healthy, you think, I can totally eat this unhealthy thing which I still want because it balances out. So, if you want a twinky, and you eat an apple and almond butter (100 calories-ish), THEN you eat your twinky because you still crave it, you are hurting more than helping. If you are craving a particular food, and you can't tame that craving with the healthier option, just eat the damn thing in a reasonable portion and factor it in to your daily nutritional requirements. Fine. Problem solved. BUT. You're trying to change your habits here, not set yourself up for a life-time of denial. Do you really want to go through life as a food-zombie? ("Choooooooocolaaaaaaaaate"). When you start, your warped modern palette prefers manufactured non-food crap over nutrient-rich natural foods (did I make that sound biased enough? We could call them "imitation food-like substances" if that sounds less appealing). The sugar in fruits isn't sweet enough, the fats in nuts and avocados isn't rich enough, a small dash of sea salt isn't salty enough. The problem isn't the food, it's your tastebuds. But you are smarter and stronger than Pavlov's Dogs, and you can re-train yourself. Self discipline ("No, today I will NOT have that chocolate bar"), preservearance ("I haven't had a chocolate bar in a week, and and I will not have one next week") and creativity ("Hey, an apple, almond butter AND unsweetend craisons will hit that itch!") will rewire you. Problem solved.

6. You Don't Need to Drink 8 cups Of Water: True, but... you need to drink enough to feel hydrated, given your level of activity and lifestyle needs. If you eat lots of salt, you'll want to drink more water, for instance. BUT. so many people are so rediculously unhydrated that they don't even realize that they're thirsty. Drinking 8 cups of water a day for say.. a month or two.. will give your body a benchmark. You may need less, you may need more, but it'll give you an idea so you can say "Hey, I'm thirsty, I should drink something!".

[Flytch]

I'm wearing boots with arch support things in right now

The physiotherapist was horrified when she saw my arches....

[Alethea]

Nice. I just started wearing some myself!

Let me add something for #4. My partner worked in the trades for several years. Being able to deadlift is great.. but how often are the conditions optimal for a pure (even compound) movement in real life? what if you have to lift something at arms length? What if you have to bend at a weird angle to reach something? The problem with doing the exact same thing without variation - squats with no sumo squatting, for example, or switching grips, etc - is that you can only do it one way. Dantes is a god at lifting, but when it came to our side-plank challenge, I was at his level. THAT is the advantage of variety.

[67alecto]

Nice. I just started wearing some myself!

Let me add something for #4. My partner worked in the trades for several years. Being able to deadlift is great.. but how often are the conditions optimal for a pure (even compound) movement in real life? what if you have to lift something at arms length? What if you have to bend at a weird angle to reach something? The problem with doing the exact same thing without variation - squats with no sumo squatting, for example, or switching grips, etc - is that you can only do it one way. Dantes is a god at lifting, but when it came to our side-plank challenge, I was at his level. THAT is the advantage of variety.

I'll preface this with the statement that I agreed 100% with everything in the cracked article. The point was that there are guides to losing weight/gaining muscle out there and all them will insist on some basic rules that MUST be followed. Eating breakfast is one, but another extremely common rule is that you MUST eat 6-8 small meals to keep your metabolism fired up. That is purely a crock. It's sounds vaguely scientific so people buy into it.

No one is going to sign up for a personal trainer who just tells you - eat less and move more. There has to be some mystique around it...do THIS exercise, eat THOSE foods, etc for some people to by into it. It's like Atkins...you mean I can eat as much bacon and pork rinds as I want and I'll lose weight?! You're right, carbs are evil! Nevermind that you just find out that protein fills you up more and for longer than carbs, and cutting out 800-1500 calories of buns, dinner rolls, mashed potatoes, etc at each meal is creating a calorie deficit.

The muscle confusion is the same thing. Muscles don't have brains, and they can't be confused. What your body does get is efficient..Lance Armstrong's resting heartrate was usually 40 or lower, for example.

The key is keeping your body from getting into a complacent zone. If you do the same 30 minutes on the treadmill at 3mph every day for a month, you'll burn a lot more calories each day the first week than you will in the 4th because your body gets very efficient at that output.

Things like crossfit, P90, etc keep you out of your comfort zone and your body doesn't get used to the same exercise at the same intensity. The exact same thing can be accomplished by simply going faster, farther, and harder at each cardio session. Weight loss plateaus are caused by a combination of calories creeping up and calorie burn leveling off.

And that leads me the point you made about Dantes, weight lifting, and planks. How you train should be directly related to your goals. Dantes wants to lift hard and heavy. As such, he may not do marathon plank sessions. Should he? That's up to him and what he wants his end results to be.

About your comment about how often do you lift things at arms length, or from a squat position. Again, that comes down to your particular life and activity of choice. I could ask the same question about how often do I need to do a kipping pullup or a burpee motion? I can't remember the last time I had to throw myself prone at work and then spring up, but I often have to squat down and pick up 3 or 4 boxes of copy paper by the plastic cord that wraps around them and carry them to another room.

Based on your criticisms of the cracked article's points, you have definitely bought into the eat breakfast, eat smaller meals more frequently, drink 8 glasses of water, etc as you say things like "eating smaller meals more frequently...is generally best" or "but... Barefoot running is best". Again, there's no actual scientific basis for these statements...just anecdotal evidence and advice that seems to make sense because it's intuitive. And that's fine, but the point of the article was that these aren't hard and fast requirements. Unconsciously or not, you're doing the same things that article warns about...the programs who say THEIR way is the ONLY way.

It's like me and Paleo. To me, it makes sense that that has to be healthier...eat the stuff that the cavemen could eat...it's natural, it's unprocessed, doesn't have the chemicals, etc. Like barefoot running, the intuitive side of your mind says hey, you're right...the cavemen didn't wear Nikes or eat McDonalds, and they were strong and fast.

But the logical side of me thinks, sure they might have been able to strangle a saber-tooth tiger, but once they lost their teeth, they were screwed and dead by 30.

Didn't mean for this to come across as an attack, but I realize it does in places.

As someone who struggled for years to lose weight, the one way that gets me riled up is to assign any sort of mandatory rules to weight loss beyond burn more than you eat.

To me, they just add more hurdles that can be used as excuses when you fail.

Everyone who asks me how I lost 160lbs in a year and have kept it off for the last 9 months wants to know my secret. The minute I say I ate less and moved more, they no longer care.

They want to hear about the surgery, the pills, the shots, the exercise programs, the ultra-restrictive diets, 8 meals a day, carrying a gallon jug of water around that I fill twice a day, and hours spent in the gym. Because the diet and fitness industries have convinced everyone that you need to:

• eat plain chicken breasts, cottage cheese, and brown rice while spending 4 hours on the treadmill
• you need to do 30 minutes of cardio on an empty stomach first thing in the morning, eat a small meal every 2-3 hours, and drink a protein shake after every workout
• you must cut out all carbs, eat a giant breakfast of bacon and eggs, and buy their energy bars for snacks
• you have to eat a high protein diet and buy their 6-DVD set
• you have eat 500 calories a day and get a shot every 4 weeks

In losing this weight, I read many blogs, articles and forums of people who were trying to lose a lot of weight. So often, I would see people who were exactly where I was in past years...searching for that magic bullet. People with 200lbs to lose who are asking about what recovery shake/smoothie they need to having after going to the gym. Or life-long sedentary people who buy the p90 program based on the late-night infomercials. Or the ones who joined jenny craig/weight watchers/nutrisystem for the 5th time in 10 years. They are looking for the trick that will make the pounds melt off, and each of them has been convinced that there is more to it that burning more than you consume.

When he interviewed me, Steve asked me what my secret was...why I was successful this time as opposed to all of the other attempts I made.

My response was:

"Setting aside all of the bull****. One of my favorite scenes from both the graphic novel and movie “Wanted” is with The Repairman. When asked by Wesley what he repairs, he simply states “A lifetime of bad habits” and then he proceeds to punch him over and over. That’s it right there.

At some point, we all need someone to tie us to a chair and beat the crap out of us (metaphorically speaking) until we realize we have to be accountable for our actions and stop making excuses."

Losing this weight has made me very cynical to excuses, simply because every one I hear is one I used on myself.

[Flytch]

I'll preface this with the statement that I agreed 100% with everything in the cracked article. The point was that there are guides to losing weight/gaining muscle out there and all them will insist on some basic rules that MUST be followed. Eating breakfast is one, but another extremely common rule is that you MUST eat 6-8 small meals to keep your metabolism fired up. That is purely a crock. It's sounds vaguely scientific so people buy into it.

No one is going to sign up for a personal trainer who just tells you - eat less and move more. There has to be some mystique around it...do THIS exercise, eat THOSE foods, etc for some people to by into it. It's like Atkins...you mean I can eat as much bacon and pork rinds as I want and I'll lose weight?! You're right, carbs are evil! Nevermind that you just find out that protein fills you up more and for longer than carbs, and cutting out 800-1500 calories of buns, dinner rolls, mashed potatoes, etc at each meal is creating a calorie deficit.

The muscle confusion is the same thing. Muscles don't have brains, and they can't be confused. What your body does get is efficient..Lance Armstrong's resting heartrate was usually 40 or lower, for example.

The key is keeping your body from getting into a complacent zone. If you do the same 30 minutes on the treadmill at 3mph every day for a month, you'll burn a lot more calories each day the first week than you will in the 4th because your body gets very efficient at that output.

Things like crossfit, P90, etc keep you out of your comfort zone and your body doesn't get used to the same exercise at the same intensity. The exact same thing can be accomplished by simply going faster, farther, and harder at each cardio session. Weight loss plateaus are caused by a combination of calories creeping up and calorie burn leveling off.

And that leads me the point you made about Dantes, weight lifting, and planks. How you train should be directly related to your goals. Dantes wants to lift hard and heavy. As such, he may not do marathon plank sessions. Should he? That's up to him and what he wants his end results to be.

About your comment about how often do you lift things at arms length, or from a squat position. Again, that comes down to your particular life and activity of choice. I could ask the same question about how often do I need to do a kipping pullup or a burpee motion? I can't remember the last time I had to throw myself prone at work and then spring up, but I often have to squat down and pick up 3 or 4 boxes of copy paper by the plastic cord that wraps around them and carry them to another room.

Based on your criticisms of the cracked article's points, you have definitely bought into the eat breakfast, eat smaller meals more frequently, drink 8 glasses of water, etc as you say things like "eating smaller meals more frequently...is generally best" or "but... Barefoot running is best". Again, there's no actual scientific basis for these statements...just anecdotal evidence and advice that seems to make sense because it's intuitive. And that's fine, but the point of the article was that these aren't hard and fast requirements. Unconsciously or not, you're doing the same things that article warns about...the programs who say THEIR way is the ONLY way.

It's like me and Paleo. To me, it makes sense that that has to be healthier...eat the stuff that the cavemen could eat...it's natural, it's unprocessed, doesn't have the chemicals, etc. Like barefoot running, the intuitive side of your mind says hey, you're right...the cavemen didn't wear Nikes or eat McDonalds, and they were strong and fast.

But the logical side of me thinks, sure they might have been able to strangle a saber-tooth tiger, but once they lost their teeth, they were screwed and dead by 30.

Didn't mean for this to come across as an attack, but I realize it does in places.

As someone who struggled for years to lose weight, the one way that gets me riled up is to assign any sort of mandatory rules to weight loss beyond burn more than you eat.

To me, they just add more hurdles that can be used as excuses when you fail.

Everyone who asks me how I lost 160lbs in a year and have kept it off for the last 9 months wants to know my secret. The minute I say I ate less and moved more, they no longer care.

They want to hear about the surgery, the pills, the shots, the exercise programs, the ultra-restrictive diets, 8 meals a day, carrying a gallon jug of water around that I fill twice a day, and hours spent in the gym. Because the diet and fitness industries have convinced everyone that you need to:

• eat plain chicken breasts, cottage cheese, and brown rice while spending 4 hours on the treadmill
• you need to do 30 minutes of cardio on an empty stomach first thing in the morning, eat a small meal every 2-3 hours, and drink a protein shake after every workout
• you must cut out all carbs, eat a giant breakfast of bacon and eggs, and buy their energy bars for snacks
• you have to eat a high protein diet and buy their 6-DVD set
• you have eat 500 calories a day and get a shot every 4 weeks

In losing this weight, I read many blogs, articles and forums of people who were trying to lose a lot of weight. So often, I would see people who were exactly where I was in past years...searching for that magic bullet. People with 200lbs to lose who are asking about what recovery shake/smoothie they need to having after going to the gym. Or life-long sedentary people who buy the p90 program based on the late-night infomercials. Or the ones who joined jenny craig/weight watchers/nutrisystem for the 5th time in 10 years. They are looking for the trick that will make the pounds melt off, and each of them has been convinced that there is more to it that burning more than you consume.

When he interviewed me, Steve asked me what my secret was...why I was successful this time as opposed to all of the other attempts I made.

My response was:

"Setting aside all of the bull****. One of my favorite scenes from both the graphic novel and movie “Wanted” is with The Repairman. When asked by Wesley what he repairs, he simply states “A lifetime of bad habits” and then he proceeds to punch him over and over. That’s it right there.

At some point, we all need someone to tie us to a chair and beat the crap out of us (metaphorically speaking) until we realize we have to be accountable for our actions and stop making excuses."

Losing this weight has made me very cynical to excuses, simply because every one I hear is one I used on myself.

Well said.

[Brometheus]

@67aleco...yes, the repairman Though I'm always sad that the movie couldn't replicate in any decent fashion what the graphic novel was...

I really think that cracked.com is about amusement. I assume that there is no research, fact, or anything besides entertainment about making fun of our american lives. Occasionally they are partially true, but are usually sensationalized to make themselves popular...

Oh, and I have an arch in my foot (spent 30 years flat footed) after doing this: http://www.mobilitywod.com/2010/08/bro-your-navicular-bone-dropped.html Granted, I don't run because I don't see the point, but this might help...

[Alethea]

Alecto, I hear your points, and agree with what you are saying. I'd like you to read my post more carefully, as you are making the same points I was, or overlooked things I said, or seem to be putting words in my mouth.

I explained why spreading out your food intake over a day is generally a good idea - you can only absorb so many nutrients at any given point, which IS science and why multivitamins have limited use, so you'll absorb more nutrients in total if you spread them out. I didn't mention 6-8 meals at all.

Drink 8 cups of water is a useful starting point to determine how much you personally need, which varies.

The exercise you choose depends on your goals - are you trying to increase specific bench marks, etc? Progressively increasing weight is effective, as is changing exercises to work muscles in different ways.

I'm not sure why you argued with me, I don't think our opinions are that different.

[67alecto]

Alecto, I hear your points, and agree with what you are saying. I'd like you to read my post more carefully, as you are making the same points I was, or overlooked things I said, or seem to be putting words in my mouth.

I explained why spreading out your food intake over a day is generally a good idea - you can only absorb so many nutrients at any given point, which IS science and why multivitamins have limited use, so you'll absorb more nutrients in total if you spread them out. I didn't mention 6-8 meals at all.

Drink 8 cups of water is a useful starting point to determine how much you personally need, which varies.

The exercise you choose depends on your goals - are you trying to increase specific bench marks, etc? Progressively increasing weight is effective, as is changing exercises to work muscles in different ways.

I'm not sure why you argued with me, I don't think our opinions are that different.

Once example would be in what you said about Dantes. The way I read what you said was that you were disparaging his workout for not having enough variety.

Dantes is a god at lifting, but when it came to our side-plank challenge, I was at his level. THAT is the advantage of variety.

How is that even relevant? How one person trains doesn't have anything to do with how someone else changes if their goalsa are different. Based on how much oxygen his body can manage, Lance Armstrong should be able to shatter the New York Marathon record, completing it in 2 hours when the record was around 2:05. The math is there.

Yet when he ran it, he barely cracked 3 hours.

The equivalent would be a marathon runner rubbing it in his face...THAT is the advantage of my way of working out over yours.

Actually, it just reinforces that training methods need to vary based on your goals. It is the cliche of comparing apples to oranges.

You can't say you agree with an article's points and then disagree with it. The article states that Barefoot running is not the best for everyone despite what a vocal minority with no scientific basis behind it says. Your statement was "Barefoot Running is Not the Be-All End All. True, but... Barefoot running is best". You're saying you agree with them...and then disagree.

Again, the reason I got riled up is that this gets incredibly confusing for people who are trying to find a successful way to lose weight. They need to understand that the first thing they need to master is burn more than they eat. Once they master that, then they can worry about macronutrients, protein shakes, specific ways of working out, and so on.

[Alethea]

I would never dream of disparaging Dantes. He could lift my 1rep max, and me with it. I have nothing but respect for him, particularily as he varies his workouts, and doesn't just do straight deadlifts, but also a variety of other movements that work the same muscles in different ways - exercise choices, grip, reps, sets... he switches up a lot of things. I suppose my example was a poor one, but I was trying to think of examples as to why doing a variety of movements might be encouraged in things like PX90, which isn't a specific training program for power and strength, even if their explanations of "muscle boredom" are misleading.

All my arguments are saying that ChristinaH is presenting one half of the story. While she is correct in what she is saying, she doesn't seem to consider the points I brought up. Thus my constant repetition of "yes, but"

And you are correct. The calories in vs calories out is indeed the first lesson to learn. But as you said, there are other things to consider once one realizes that. I lost 30 lbs using your method. But then I stalled. And now I have to consider the other things as well.

[Glenndingo]

I agree with the whole eat less move more mentality. I've never weighed over 200 pounds in my life, and I've always had a job that demanded some form of physical activity, I worked construction, I delivered construction materials, I worked in a plywood processing mill, the list goes on. I also ate whatever I felt like, drank as much beer as I wanted, and partied my ass off. The common conception in the construction workplace was once you became some sort of operator/supervisor and started making more money you got fat -- and people did. I'd seen people I worked with put upwards of 20-30 pounds on in a year after just becoming operators, because the machines did the work. When I was younger doing this (20-22 years) I didn't mind the physical labor aspect as it was a workout while getting paid. I was functionally strong and thin because all physical activity was high, and all movements were compound.

After joining the Marine Corps, I got to see this reinforced. The guys who stayed active in their later ranks (Staff NCO and above) remained strong, and able to take any physically demanding task on with decent or amazing results, and the ones who became sedentary...got fat. I've seen it for almost 10 years now (over 5 years in the Marine Corps, and I've had some form of payroll job since I started bagging groceries at 14). It's the american lifestyle that makes people fat. The human body is a factory and as long as you keep fuel in the generators and keep the moving parts oiled everything runs as it should.

I just don't believe in magical diet pills, or 6 minute workouts that "blast your abs and train your whole body". It takes physical exertion, and dedication to do anything. The reason Crossfit and P90x works well is because of the intensity of the workouts and compound body movements, doing isolation or non functional movements is just mental masturbation. In the same breath not training your whole body is a recipe for disaster because why would you train your upper body to the point of being able to overhead press 200 pounds, while not being able to squat 200 pounds (these people exist).

Being sedentary makes people fat, out of shape zombie food, and I am not by any means an expert on physical fitness or nutrition, nor do I have all the answers on how to be the strongest, fastest, or fittest athlete on the planet, but what I do know is the body will adapt to what you do. Originally we had to actively hunt food, farm crops, and maintain our own homes/land. Now we can get in a car, get food without even getting out of our seat, eat it, then go to our respective job...sit in front of our computer, and snack all day -- removing activity seems to add weight.

TL;DR: The only real rule I agree with on guides to lose weight/get strong/get ripped etc is to physically exert yourself in accordance with your goals, there is no magic to it...just be more active.