Showing posts with label nutrition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nutrition. Show all posts
Friday, February 24, 2017
PLEASE - would you Help Me Help You Tune In Dial Up Shift Gears for your WELLTH SUCCESS
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How can i Help - i’m asking this all the time when engaging with folks who share they’re a bit tired or stressed, or they’re keen to start getting fit, i really want to help! i can HELP SO MUCH - trust me…). I mean, i KNOW - it’s my research ok - that we’re complex and that we can defeat our best plans if we try one practice and expect great results, and we don’t get them, because the other bits of our complexity don’t get tuned to support the new practice.
Like if you start lifting, how make it possible to make sure your rest and food and partying align with that new thing so you feel great rather than totally fatigued? so you burn fat rather than actually start to store more of it? and then feel frustrated because what you believe is supposed to work - stops working.
It’s a personal challenge to let folks have their process but also offer - in a trustful way - that i’m here if you’d like some feedback. I get a little eager.
Like just last night, i asked on twitter for pete’s sake when someone just said they’d successfully lifted some heavy stuff i aks - so what is your aspiration in doing this new thing?
And perhaps they’ll share what they hope to achieve - like they’re now lifting weights and they say it’s cuz they want to get leaner. Like lose weight really.
And i’m trying really hard not to jump up and down and go (in 145 characters)
Too intense?
And see i KNOW that it doesn’t matter about food, right away - moving is great. What's importnat is beginning to build self- efficacy. And hopefully not hurting yourself.
What i’m really trying to do is just flag up - well, you can start here if that sounds great, but if you want to have a chat about this WHOLE THING - rather than try to hack this space and DIY it, and maybe get it right; maybe not, a wee conversation could give you view of the horizon you could use to be aware of some more of the factors you could play with as well to get to your goals FASTER and having more FUN doing it and less risk of injury or frustration.
How say that? Or not? should i not try?
And ok the other thing is - how build trust? This person may never catch up with me about this - why should they? they don’t know me - but maybe they’ll have this conversation with someone else who has a wholistic view.
or not.
Oh it’s hard to shut up shut up shut up and not say oh wow can we talk about this? because i really really like to hear what people do, how they come to their decisions about what they’re doing, and how they support this.
And i like to say “you won’t believe how this really tiny thing can make this HUGE difference? want to know more? How you can test it for yourself?" Cus sometimes these little conversations help figure out that there may be some beliefs that aren’t helpful that are interupting making real gains towards the aspiration.
For instane, a colleague shared about her running, and i offered a tip about pacing she thought was really useful (practicing offer a little and shut up) so when i saw her again, we talked about her runs over the winter - how she wasn’t really cuz it’s wet and yucky out so she’s running up and down her one set of stairs at home. Fantastic. I ask if she’d like to look at something to complement that stair practice if she doesn’t feel like running. She says yes, sure (not sure if she’s just being polite).
So i ask has she ever thought about lifting heavy
stuff (i’m actually thinking about the power of swinging a kettlebell) - and she tells me, no she doesn’t want to bulk up. AND THERE IT IS: the huge belief about weights that keep women from protecting ourselves from osteoporosis. And that’s just the kind of belief so important to explore!
Because guess what? that lack of lifting heavy stuff, means lack of muscle, means lack of stress on the bones from having to support the muscle that is pulling load, means lack of need to have bone because we’re use it or lose it systems, means less tissue laid down, means a future likelihood of osteoporosis. Why don’t guys have as much incidence of osteoporosis? more muscle mass, more stress on bones, more need therefore to have bone, so more bone tissue, more resilience. Jeeze eh?
And as for bulky? What i wouldn’t give for some biceptual bulk! Ha. SO i share as well, it is SO SO hard for women to build mass.
I actually finally say “do i look bulky?” NO! comes the reply Exactly AND I”m REALLY WORKING IT! (See? small white gal - lifts heavy - looks well not like x-fit champion to be sure).
Anyway, to get back to my point about this personal challenge.
I LOVE to talk with folks about how to help them TUNE IN what they’re already doing right now to better support their aspirations. To help them get their foot off the brake if it’s there - if they don’t even know or suspect their foot is on the break while hitting the gas. Or maybe how to shift gears to really pick up momentum - because things are revving really high but things aren’t changing. That ever happen? OR folks just don’t know things they’re doing could feel better, easier...
My challenge is i’d love to develop a way to engage with folks so that i could offer this kind of tune up without overwhelming that person and so it invites trust to explore - not making that person feel defensive - open the possiblity that’s inviting. That i’m keen to hear rather than prescribe; that anything i offer is testable to see how it works etc etc.
So if you connect with me and health or anything about performance comes up - first let me say so sorry if i get a little carried away - i’m working on it to pull back.
And second: as i’ve written about in detail before you really are doing everything you need to be doing for health - you move, you eat, you sleep, you talk with others, you seek to learn new things - all fantastic. What you may find helpful is some insight into how to tune what you’re doign already on those fundamentals to get to that resonant frequency with with these activities where they really just hum. When that dialing in occurs, you can build that resiliane, leanness, fitness, as effeciently and joyfully as possible.
So please pardon me - i’d love to learn about your health aspirations and if i can help you find your path more quickly more joy less chance of injury - at bottom, on my side, this is likely a joyful path for making contact with another human. Some people cook for others; i coach and research and design for health and wellbeing (“wellth”). Thanks for your patience.
Thanks for listening. Have a great fitness practice thing today, whatever you're doing. And heh - door's open...literally
Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Like if you start lifting, how make it possible to make sure your rest and food and partying align with that new thing so you feel great rather than totally fatigued? so you burn fat rather than actually start to store more of it? and then feel frustrated because what you believe is supposed to work - stops working.It’s a personal challenge to let folks have their process but also offer - in a trustful way - that i’m here if you’d like some feedback. I get a little eager.
Like just last night, i asked on twitter for pete’s sake when someone just said they’d successfully lifted some heavy stuff i aks - so what is your aspiration in doing this new thing?
And perhaps they’ll share what they hope to achieve - like they’re now lifting weights and they say it’s cuz they want to get leaner. Like lose weight really.
And i’m trying really hard not to jump up and down and go (in 145 characters)that’s so great that’s super. Heh, what about your diet? You know you can’t outrun a donut, right? not that you’re eating donuts, but i mean working out is great, you’ll get stronger, help your bones all good - but if you really want to kill the fat, if that’s your aspiration, and you’re doing the strong thing, it’s really diet not exercise that’s the prime mover there - i mean do you want to dial that in. And heh, do you know how to do that? what are you doing? i know how to do that. You don’t really know me, but i’m insured, i’m certified, i help people, heh just talk with me, promise this is going to be great. C’mon - maybe what you’re doing is perfect, but maybe just a little tweak could make it exponentially better - like totally - you’ll be so amazed. Really: you’ll be able to test it yourself. It’s awesome.
Too intense?
And see i KNOW that it doesn’t matter about food, right away - moving is great. What's importnat is beginning to build self- efficacy. And hopefully not hurting yourself.
What i’m really trying to do is just flag up - well, you can start here if that sounds great, but if you want to have a chat about this WHOLE THING - rather than try to hack this space and DIY it, and maybe get it right; maybe not, a wee conversation could give you view of the horizon you could use to be aware of some more of the factors you could play with as well to get to your goals FASTER and having more FUN doing it and less risk of injury or frustration.
How say that? Or not? should i not try?
And ok the other thing is - how build trust? This person may never catch up with me about this - why should they? they don’t know me - but maybe they’ll have this conversation with someone else who has a wholistic view.
or not.
Oh it’s hard to shut up shut up shut up and not say oh wow can we talk about this? because i really really like to hear what people do, how they come to their decisions about what they’re doing, and how they support this.
And i like to say “you won’t believe how this really tiny thing can make this HUGE difference? want to know more? How you can test it for yourself?" Cus sometimes these little conversations help figure out that there may be some beliefs that aren’t helpful that are interupting making real gains towards the aspiration.
For instane, a colleague shared about her running, and i offered a tip about pacing she thought was really useful (practicing offer a little and shut up) so when i saw her again, we talked about her runs over the winter - how she wasn’t really cuz it’s wet and yucky out so she’s running up and down her one set of stairs at home. Fantastic. I ask if she’d like to look at something to complement that stair practice if she doesn’t feel like running. She says yes, sure (not sure if she’s just being polite).So i ask has she ever thought about lifting heavy
stuff (i’m actually thinking about the power of swinging a kettlebell) - and she tells me, no she doesn’t want to bulk up. AND THERE IT IS: the huge belief about weights that keep women from protecting ourselves from osteoporosis. And that’s just the kind of belief so important to explore!
Because guess what? that lack of lifting heavy stuff, means lack of muscle, means lack of stress on the bones from having to support the muscle that is pulling load, means lack of need to have bone because we’re use it or lose it systems, means less tissue laid down, means a future likelihood of osteoporosis. Why don’t guys have as much incidence of osteoporosis? more muscle mass, more stress on bones, more need therefore to have bone, so more bone tissue, more resilience. Jeeze eh?
And as for bulky? What i wouldn’t give for some biceptual bulk! Ha. SO i share as well, it is SO SO hard for women to build mass.
 |
| not me |
Anyway, to get back to my point about this personal challenge.
I LOVE to talk with folks about how to help them TUNE IN what they’re already doing right now to better support their aspirations. To help them get their foot off the brake if it’s there - if they don’t even know or suspect their foot is on the break while hitting the gas. Or maybe how to shift gears to really pick up momentum - because things are revving really high but things aren’t changing. That ever happen? OR folks just don’t know things they’re doing could feel better, easier...
My challenge is i’d love to develop a way to engage with folks so that i could offer this kind of tune up without overwhelming that person and so it invites trust to explore - not making that person feel defensive - open the possiblity that’s inviting. That i’m keen to hear rather than prescribe; that anything i offer is testable to see how it works etc etc.
So if you connect with me and health or anything about performance comes up - first let me say so sorry if i get a little carried away - i’m working on it to pull back.
And second: as i’ve written about in detail before you really are doing everything you need to be doing for health - you move, you eat, you sleep, you talk with others, you seek to learn new things - all fantastic. What you may find helpful is some insight into how to tune what you’re doign already on those fundamentals to get to that resonant frequency with with these activities where they really just hum. When that dialing in occurs, you can build that resiliane, leanness, fitness, as effeciently and joyfully as possible.
So please pardon me - i’d love to learn about your health aspirations and if i can help you find your path more quickly more joy less chance of injury - at bottom, on my side, this is likely a joyful path for making contact with another human. Some people cook for others; i coach and research and design for health and wellbeing (“wellth”). Thanks for your patience.
Thanks for listening. Have a great fitness practice thing today, whatever you're doing. And heh - door's open...literally
Tweet Follow @begin2dig
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Sunday, February 19, 2017
Vegetarians are Sissies.
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Vegetarians are sissies. This thought occured to me after having been vegetarian for - oh a really long time (decade+) then going back to omnivore - and more recently (past year-ish) exploring what i'm calling "opportunistic veganism" That is: i optimise for not eating meat, includeing dairy especially when i’m eating away from home. It's kinda fun.
It's opportunistic because i'm looking for opportunities to practice veganism. And the biggest, easiest win consistently and especially at home is: getting rid of dairy. Black coffee; black tea. Artisan breads.
I don't know why more folks don't start exploring heading towards a Plant eating regimine simply by first skipping out animal outputs rather than the animals themselves. Surely there's a name for this inverted vegetarianism?
Yes, any egress from an animal can be readily skipped. I haven't touched dairy since i started on this - and i haven't missed it. Milky tea - once a fave has been replaced with Black tea. Cheese as garnish has been replaced by cashews ground up with nutritional yeast (a combo known as vegan crack - and with good cause) - it's like parmesan. Yogurt? who needs it? I've got: water kefir, fermented oatmeal, saurkraut, home made red wine vinegar, sourdough.
alternatives to yogurt abound - and are cheaper and producable at home - like this saurkraut.
Which brings us to why vegetarians are sissies. Most vegetarians -not all but most - are saying they're not ok with animal slaughter (or aesphixiation). That's nice. So why are they ok with well, how describe it? animal slavery?
Great you're not eating the hamburger - but that burger is just the end point of about 7 milk cows - or more - and that's not even healthy in terms of tracing say e-coli contamination. But i digress: point is, vegetarian sissies, after a life time behind bars - of those milking stalls - those poor tired girls are retired to macdonalds.
And those chickens you're not eating? That's limiting cruelty of factory framing is it?
What makes eggs ok? Are they all from free range hens? No? Yes? Are you sure those free range hens are really ranging freely? Does that restriction of conviction include the eggs in all the processed foods you may be having too?
And let’s remember that for every female chick that is forced to squat in a barn to lay eggs, the male chicks are asphyxiated to go into cat food. For your pet. Way to go.
We won't even talk about all the itty bitty baby sheep that give their lives for parmesan cheese.
Hence the morality of vegetarianism - for those that claim that rationale rather than "i don't like the taste of meat" now kinda escapes me: once you look at the infrastruture that enables the animal outputs (ie dairy) to be produced/sold, it feels like vegetarianism on "moral and ethical grounds" is neither: it's hypocracy isn't it?
And speaking of that dairy infrastructure, what's easier to do? learn to skip the milk and like black coffee or give up bacon? You’ll crow about giving up steak but not cake?
Worried about less calcium if you skip milk in coffee? Have some kale. Or broccoli. Get a double benefit of all the nutrients in the veg -including calcium - and fewer calories. And if you’re trying to be a little more resilient, learning how to do without what seems stupidly essential, find alternatives - means you’re just a little more versatile - a little less a slave to your tastes.
In terms of energy conservation and feeding the planet: What if all the demand for dairy dried up. First milk, then eggs then cheese. Imagine if all that acid whey poured off as waste in the making of greek yogurt - just dried up - cuz we weren't buying it anymore.
And then even baking started to change to find amazing egg and milk alternatives (they're there).
So - i'm saying this - especially to vegetarians: why not experiment with finding your opportunisitic vegan by starting with inverting the whole vegetarian thing. Start your un-animal quest by Taking a pass on the energy and un-ethics of dairy.
Just see how that goes - you don't have to be a fascist about it. It's just, let's get real: vegetarianism is not really protecting animals. As we've seen, dairy is the pre and post process of meat practices. So if you’re skipping meat on ethical grounds, what are your ethics for dairy?
For example: at a restaurant if there are no pre-fabricated mains on the menu that suit, i can ask if the chef will put together some ingredients that are on the menu: beans & greens make the scene.
This approach works really well at most hotels for breakfast-included buffet scenarios too: the staff can use the ingredients for omlettes to create something good. Even Brit full english buffets often have tomatoes and mushrooms, and the fruit area will have dark berries.
On the go, i also travel with a Dose Locker full of brown rice protein powder and Enerex Greens powder: nutrition anywhere anytime. Worst comes to Worst, oh gosh i can skip a full meal. I can do some hunger and be ok with that. OR i can eat the fish. Or the cow. Remember: i'm making a choice. I'm an opportunistic vegan - creating vegan opportunities all the time, as much as possible/desireable. It's fun. That's the thing: i'm taking control of my nutrition.
TO practice, why not go dairy-free? Up your veg instead. You can still get all those lucious fats that dairy offers and even more nutrients and fiber just by upping say avacados. Skipping dairy is also an easy way to start effortlessly reducing intake of excess calories if you’re trying to lean out but want to keep up your nutrition.
And heck: i am not vegan-pure; i'm opportunistic.
Sometimes i don't ask exactly what's in that oatmeal chocolate chip raisin cookie...
ANYWAY
Why not use that privilege to gain some skills on how to be more resilient?
Learning to eat less animal and animal related products - learning how to go without from time to time intelligently - is a great way to become more resilient. When we don’t HAVE to do something is a great time to learn HOW to do something so we’re not limited by our current constrained preferences.
Cutting dairy is a great way to start such an exploration, because for most of us, that dairy is just a bonus not an essential nutrient anyway - loads of other foods offer similar advantages, from fats to vitamins.
After you get un-dairy under control (up those greens and avocados and anything dark really) - you can try being an opportunistic vegan. You’ll be smarter about food, more reslient, and have more fun no longer being held captive by the buffet, but getting better food too, guaranteed.
Update: Feb 26 - i forgot that i posted this about male chicks back in 2010 - how time flies: The Evil Vegetarian and Her Eggs - with asphxiation video can you believe it! Tweet Follow @begin2dig
It's opportunistic because i'm looking for opportunities to practice veganism. And the biggest, easiest win consistently and especially at home is: getting rid of dairy. Black coffee; black tea. Artisan breads.
I don't know why more folks don't start exploring heading towards a Plant eating regimine simply by first skipping out animal outputs rather than the animals themselves. Surely there's a name for this inverted vegetarianism?
Yes, any egress from an animal can be readily skipped. I haven't touched dairy since i started on this - and i haven't missed it. Milky tea - once a fave has been replaced with Black tea. Cheese as garnish has been replaced by cashews ground up with nutritional yeast (a combo known as vegan crack - and with good cause) - it's like parmesan. Yogurt? who needs it? I've got: water kefir, fermented oatmeal, saurkraut, home made red wine vinegar, sourdough.
alternatives to yogurt abound - and are cheaper and producable at home - like this saurkraut.
 | ||
| beyond home made saurkraut, there's kombucha, water kefir, red wine vinegar, soaked/fermeted oats. who needs yogurt? |
Which brings us to why vegetarians are sissies. Most vegetarians -not all but most - are saying they're not ok with animal slaughter (or aesphixiation). That's nice. So why are they ok with well, how describe it? animal slavery?
Great you're not eating the hamburger - but that burger is just the end point of about 7 milk cows - or more - and that's not even healthy in terms of tracing say e-coli contamination. But i digress: point is, vegetarian sissies, after a life time behind bars - of those milking stalls - those poor tired girls are retired to macdonalds.
And those chickens you're not eating? That's limiting cruelty of factory framing is it?
What makes eggs ok? Are they all from free range hens? No? Yes? Are you sure those free range hens are really ranging freely? Does that restriction of conviction include the eggs in all the processed foods you may be having too?
 |
| THis barn apparently qualifies as "free range" |
And let’s remember that for every female chick that is forced to squat in a barn to lay eggs, the male chicks are asphyxiated to go into cat food. For your pet. Way to go.
We won't even talk about all the itty bitty baby sheep that give their lives for parmesan cheese.
Hence the morality of vegetarianism - for those that claim that rationale rather than "i don't like the taste of meat" now kinda escapes me: once you look at the infrastruture that enables the animal outputs (ie dairy) to be produced/sold, it feels like vegetarianism on "moral and ethical grounds" is neither: it's hypocracy isn't it?
And speaking of that dairy infrastructure, what's easier to do? learn to skip the milk and like black coffee or give up bacon? You’ll crow about giving up steak but not cake?
Once in awhile: skip dairy
To all the non vegetarians out there who want to explore less animal in your diets, i say good for you. Why not start easy and with great health benefits: skip dairy first - it’s more ubiquitous in your daily life but can be easier to eliminate, especially if you want to go higher nutrient for a leaner fitter you.Worried about less calcium if you skip milk in coffee? Have some kale. Or broccoli. Get a double benefit of all the nutrients in the veg -including calcium - and fewer calories. And if you’re trying to be a little more resilient, learning how to do without what seems stupidly essential, find alternatives - means you’re just a little more versatile - a little less a slave to your tastes.
In terms of energy conservation and feeding the planet: What if all the demand for dairy dried up. First milk, then eggs then cheese. Imagine if all that acid whey poured off as waste in the making of greek yogurt - just dried up - cuz we weren't buying it anymore.
And then even baking started to change to find amazing egg and milk alternatives (they're there).
So - i'm saying this - especially to vegetarians: why not experiment with finding your opportunisitic vegan by starting with inverting the whole vegetarian thing. Start your un-animal quest by Taking a pass on the energy and un-ethics of dairy.
Just see how that goes - you don't have to be a fascist about it. It's just, let's get real: vegetarianism is not really protecting animals. As we've seen, dairy is the pre and post process of meat practices. So if you’re skipping meat on ethical grounds, what are your ethics for dairy?
The Opportunistic Veganism Advantage: Better Wholer Food especially on the road
No one says you have to go Vegan full on all the time. A fantastic way to explore opportunistic veganism is to do it away from home. Here’s a few tips on how.Practice on the Go
Folks who ask me (usually over dinner) about not consuming animal have heard me say if survival ever comes to a choice between me or the cow, the cow is going down. But i feel i'm put in that position less and less, or my opportunistic practice means i've learned how to dance that situation less and less.For example: at a restaurant if there are no pre-fabricated mains on the menu that suit, i can ask if the chef will put together some ingredients that are on the menu: beans & greens make the scene.
This approach works really well at most hotels for breakfast-included buffet scenarios too: the staff can use the ingredients for omlettes to create something good. Even Brit full english buffets often have tomatoes and mushrooms, and the fruit area will have dark berries.
On the go, i also travel with a Dose Locker full of brown rice protein powder and Enerex Greens powder: nutrition anywhere anytime. Worst comes to Worst, oh gosh i can skip a full meal. I can do some hunger and be ok with that. OR i can eat the fish. Or the cow. Remember: i'm making a choice. I'm an opportunistic vegan - creating vegan opportunities all the time, as much as possible/desireable. It's fun. That's the thing: i'm taking control of my nutrition.
Optomizing Vegan Meals at Events
A quick tip: at various events when asking for dietary requirements "vegan” can quickly get translated as lots of pasta. To avoid this starch fest, you can add "gluten free” too and even add “please add lots of dark greens like spinach, broccoli” Such meals can still be epic fails, but often my special meal turns out to be tastier than the chicken or beef entree. I also usually get more whole foods when everyone else is getting a lot of white bread and mystery meat. Try it yourself: see what happens.Optimizing Air Plane Food
On planes? If available, try the asian vegetarian option or similar before you go on your flight for your "special meal" - or bring your dose locker. Or consider fasting: which helps with jet lag (at least in mice).Pretend to be Vegan Once in Awhile
Go ahead: pretend to be a vegan and see what license that gives you to EAT BETTER FOOD OUT - especially when restaurants don't know what to do and they ask you what would that include? Fantastic!TO practice, why not go dairy-free? Up your veg instead. You can still get all those lucious fats that dairy offers and even more nutrients and fiber just by upping say avacados. Skipping dairy is also an easy way to start effortlessly reducing intake of excess calories if you’re trying to lean out but want to keep up your nutrition.
And heck: i am not vegan-pure; i'm opportunistic.
Sometimes i don't ask exactly what's in that oatmeal chocolate chip raisin cookie...
ANYWAY
Takeaways
- vegetarians are sissies (or (neo)liberal humanists). most of the veggies i speak with have rationalised their double standards to say they’re ok with them. That it’s just too much to try to go all the way. To which i offer: INVERT YOUR PRACTICE FROM TIME TO TIME try switching it up from time to time - learn the skills to skip/replace the dairy nutrients from other sources and confront the animal by having it on your plate. own up. If not why not?
- ALL OF US try exploring going animal-less by less animal outputs. Just see what your paleo or regular life would be like if you pulled back on the animal stuff by cutting out animal outputs. Start there. Get some skills. Learn what the “intead of Dairy try X for more nutrients” Use the un-dairy as a way to (a) get healthier (b) learn more about how you and food connect to feel better.
- have fun: be an opportunistic vegan more of the time to eat better when out - and those opportunities may become more and more frequent. Start with the out of the house; see what habits trickle to the back home.
Coda: We are so Privileged - let's practice options
if we can dance in these meat or not meat choices, we're all extremely lucky and privileged.Why not use that privilege to gain some skills on how to be more resilient?
Learning to eat less animal and animal related products - learning how to go without from time to time intelligently - is a great way to become more resilient. When we don’t HAVE to do something is a great time to learn HOW to do something so we’re not limited by our current constrained preferences.
Cutting dairy is a great way to start such an exploration, because for most of us, that dairy is just a bonus not an essential nutrient anyway - loads of other foods offer similar advantages, from fats to vitamins.
After you get un-dairy under control (up those greens and avocados and anything dark really) - you can try being an opportunistic vegan. You’ll be smarter about food, more reslient, and have more fun no longer being held captive by the buffet, but getting better food too, guaranteed.
Update: Feb 26 - i forgot that i posted this about male chicks back in 2010 - how time flies: The Evil Vegetarian and Her Eggs - with asphxiation video can you believe it! Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Kill the Big Pill: Body Comp Change is Complex, not Single Factor
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What does body comp change take to succeed? There's a UK surgeon, Nick Finer, who says it's too hard for seriously fat people to lose weight because we just keep adjusting homeostatically to the weight we're at. Now i've seriously questioned this before (see: set point theory is crap). But Finer's solution for body comp success? Gastric Bypass. One gets the impression that he'd like roaming NHS trucks to pull the overweight over into the vans and gut clamp 'em on the spot. Cheap fix. Consequences? A few. Enduring effectiveness? Maybe not so much (interesting discussion of this report on obesity discussion). No successful, enduring change it seems, is so simple. We must, it seems, be willing to get a bit more complex.
Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler
- attributed to Einstein
Indeed, as other professionals, like Susan Roberts of Tufts, suggest from actually working with people when they're conscious rather than innert and knocked out on an operating table as so much plumbing, our engagement with food is complex - involving yes homeostatic components (the physiological us), but also hedonic components (the social/psychological us) - and the multiple factors of the one can and do affect the multiple factors of the other (discussed here in change is pain).
So if we are such complex systems (and we are) how likely is *ANY* single factor solution - whether Pill or Clamp or Diet - to succeed? As complex systems, the body comp solutions that last and endure and have positive long term effects seem to be the ones that respect this complexity. And they are the ones that take work, and a readiness to engage what it takes to change.
Consider Arnold's advice (yesterday's post) that a champion will want to do "anything it takes" to achieve their vision (or goal). Ok, one might say, great to talk about bodybuilding - the hotbed of drug use. Sure. Let's say that's so. But one still cannot *just* pop a pill and, ta da, succeed. Arnie describes spent five hours in the gym a day, one of which was posing practice, another flexibility work, the rest, working working working. Success takes reps - lots of them - to succeed. And success means also practice on a variety of levels. For arnie, he had a head game, posing, movement, weights work, training plans. All of that took reps. Multi-factor.
And success also takes a willingness to confront failure, learn from mistakes and keep going. Arnie notes it in his video, but so do all the writers on talent of late like the Talent Code
and Talent is Overrated
: the neurological role of making mistakes and figuring out what went wrong and correcting those errors is a key factor in getting better, improving performance. Enter the Coach to help figure these things out. Pat Summitt, below, is just one example of a great coach who, in her case, helps her athletes succeed as scholars and bball players.
Learning from mistakes, by the bye, in body comp is we can see very different than so-called yo-yo dieting where one keeps doing the same thing - sticking to a diet, losing weight, and then as soon as off the diet, regaining the weight, so pick another diet - and getting nowhere. That doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results has often been given as the definition of insanity.
So, given that enduring success (a) takes practice, (b) using errors for feedback on refining prcess and (c) in particular is Multi Factor, what are the components of success in body comp?
If someone asked me "hey mc, newly precision nutrition level 1 certified person, taking Arnie's Champion attitude, i'll do anything it takes to change my body comp. What does it take? Just tell me," i might be inclined to say:
Ok, it the key factors are time, patience, perseverance, some ongoing self-love, social support, and coaching/knowledge (food later: we have to plan for success first).
Strategies for Enduring Change
Time
Time is probably the biggie. Why? well, we can get that one pretty easily: physical change takes time to affect. But more than that, the biggie about enduring change is behavioural as well as physiological, and that means changing habits. IT takes both time and lots of reps to create new habits; we're rewiring the brain. Literally. Especially if what we're doing around food is often already habituated as a stress response, i'll say again: change is pain on the brain.
How Prep for Time: Once up for this notion of Taking Time, then having strategies to support new practice of change, and having support to persist with these changes is pretty key. Are strategies in place? Is the social support system in place?
Strategies for Time Change: Approaches like Precision Nutrition has several strategies for change: the precision nutrition system,
overviewed here; their lean eating program with daily support, discussed here, and their certified coaches for one on one support. Martha Beck's Four Day Win 
has step by step strategies for building up food practice habits and supporting some self-love in the process. Brad Pilon's Eat Stop Eat has very simple strategies: stop eating once a week.
Commitment
Body comp change does take a pretty constant level of commitment - that's the patience and perseverance - where, as arnie says, his happiness is that every rep was one more leading to his goal. So what are the reps in body comp? In a way we get to count the done and the note done. Here, the reps are often as much what one does do - eat right, exercise - as what one doesn't do - skip the multiple cookies for just one; skip the extra helping.
Prep & Strategies for Committment: Celebrating the Reps of the Done and the Not Done: how about keeping a log as one might for exercising to track not calories, but all the times we've said Yes to the right things, and One Less to the "wrong"?
Self-Care and Support
It will take some self-love and self-support - to care about and for oneself and be as gentle with oneself as one would with a best friend - to see the scale weight fluctuate up and down, but to trust the trend to be heading down. If it's not heading down after two weeks of New Practice, awesome to have an expert in your corner for guidance and support.
The main message here is time, patience, self-love, support and balanced guidance: when engaging in body comp change, that's a long term committment - even if one only has the proverbial five pounds to lose - and that that's ok. It's like a long term relationship - there are the ups and the not so ups. But being in for the long haul with ourselves is ok: we have the rest of our lives.
After all, if something takes months rather than weeks or a year rather than a month, presumably we have a few more years after that to enjoy the fruits of our labours? That so sounds like it kinda sucks that it's not now and today, or "in just 60 days" and it's not that one can't do extreme programs and get some results acceleration (and be exhausted), but our bodies do kind need the long view.
We're cyclical
Another thing i've been learning about is another "well that's obvious" - is that body comp is cyclical, and our own cycles are different from each others' There are times when we have more energy to give to change and maintenance than others. The winter when it's colder we may put on more fat to stay warm, or that may be the time we really peel it off - working out to stay warm. This is another reason to say it takes time to do body comp work: part of the process is learning our cycles, and by learning them we can tune them.
Food?
Intriguingly, with all this talk of commitment, "getting on a diet" may be less important than heuristics
about food and some basic food knowledge. Michael Pollan puts it well in Defence of Food
: eat less; mostly plants.
Precision Nutrition has a few more heuristics: eat protein at each feeding; get veggie variety at each feeding; get good fats in during the day; skip useless calories drinks of all kinds like juice and pop; save starchy fast carbs till you deserve them - post workout. Eat Stop Eat says eat less daily, and stop eating once or twice a week for about 24 hours. There's also the "change one thing diet" - commit to one less meal in front of the tv for a week, then maybe two less - it's part of the long haul: pick *one* thing to change, commit to that and build up success from there. As Martha Beck suggests, develop strategies that you believe will be successful, and then make that one even easier. Build successes.
Folks like Georgie Fear have created recipe books that make following these heuristics delicious and fun. Hers is called Dig In and it's great. Georgie's site also has TONS of free recipes, too.
Gourmet Nutrition vol. 2 is a lovely book of recipes (hit the free sample download) likewise tested for flavour and sitting well with good eating habits. And once we know what to look for in good food, we can start to assess food recipes for ourselves. If you find another source you like, please post it in the comments.
Take Home: We need MultiFactor Strategies for the Long View.
Arnie's view of success is that each rep takes the champs closer to their goals. Implicit in each rep is that it's part of a plan for success, and that plan is multi-factorial, complex (not complicated). Arnie got that winning is not just about lifting big, but moving well, attitude, balance, timing, etc. Why would our own body comp change goals be less complicated?
So how can we help each other to take the long view, and celebrate that anrie-esque joy that each rep is one step closer to the vision we have of ourselves?
Part of that success is getting that taking a single factor approach is likely doomed. I once read that the reason that most small businesses fail is that they don't plan for success. Martha Beck in the Four Day Win concentrates vigerously on planning each action for diet success ahead of time; Precision Nutrition likewise takes pains to emphasis progressive practice of habits before thinking about individualization. Good coaches likewise work with a us based on where we're at with stages of change. But in each case, there's respect for the fact that we're talking about change, and that's a multifactorial thing that requires DYNAMIC multifactorial approaches.
So when considering a new practice - and body comp change is just such a practice - ask: does that thing i'm looking at respect the complexity that is me? does it recognize the physiological, social and psychological parts of the process? Does it have plans to address each of those parts? If not, change that one thing?
If you need a hand, the above are some great starting points. If you'd like some one on one guidance beyond the PN forum for instance, a list of coaches certified in multifactorial nutrition coaching is here. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
- attributed to Einstein
Indeed, as other professionals, like Susan Roberts of Tufts, suggest from actually working with people when they're conscious rather than innert and knocked out on an operating table as so much plumbing, our engagement with food is complex - involving yes homeostatic components (the physiological us), but also hedonic components (the social/psychological us) - and the multiple factors of the one can and do affect the multiple factors of the other (discussed here in change is pain).
So if we are such complex systems (and we are) how likely is *ANY* single factor solution - whether Pill or Clamp or Diet - to succeed? As complex systems, the body comp solutions that last and endure and have positive long term effects seem to be the ones that respect this complexity. And they are the ones that take work, and a readiness to engage what it takes to change.
Consider Arnold's advice (yesterday's post) that a champion will want to do "anything it takes" to achieve their vision (or goal). Ok, one might say, great to talk about bodybuilding - the hotbed of drug use. Sure. Let's say that's so. But one still cannot *just* pop a pill and, ta da, succeed. Arnie describes spent five hours in the gym a day, one of which was posing practice, another flexibility work, the rest, working working working. Success takes reps - lots of them - to succeed. And success means also practice on a variety of levels. For arnie, he had a head game, posing, movement, weights work, training plans. All of that took reps. Multi-factor.
And success also takes a willingness to confront failure, learn from mistakes and keep going. Arnie notes it in his video, but so do all the writers on talent of late like the Talent Code
and Talent is Overrated: the neurological role of making mistakes and figuring out what went wrong and correcting those errors is a key factor in getting better, improving performance. Enter the Coach to help figure these things out. Pat Summitt, below, is just one example of a great coach who, in her case, helps her athletes succeed as scholars and bball players.Learning from mistakes, by the bye, in body comp is we can see very different than so-called yo-yo dieting where one keeps doing the same thing - sticking to a diet, losing weight, and then as soon as off the diet, regaining the weight, so pick another diet - and getting nowhere. That doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results has often been given as the definition of insanity.
So, given that enduring success (a) takes practice, (b) using errors for feedback on refining prcess and (c) in particular is Multi Factor, what are the components of success in body comp?
If someone asked me "hey mc, newly precision nutrition level 1 certified person, taking Arnie's Champion attitude, i'll do anything it takes to change my body comp. What does it take? Just tell me," i might be inclined to say:
Ok, it the key factors are time, patience, perseverance, some ongoing self-love, social support, and coaching/knowledge (food later: we have to plan for success first).
Strategies for Enduring Change
Time
Time is probably the biggie. Why? well, we can get that one pretty easily: physical change takes time to affect. But more than that, the biggie about enduring change is behavioural as well as physiological, and that means changing habits. IT takes both time and lots of reps to create new habits; we're rewiring the brain. Literally. Especially if what we're doing around food is often already habituated as a stress response, i'll say again: change is pain on the brain.
How Prep for Time: Once up for this notion of Taking Time, then having strategies to support new practice of change, and having support to persist with these changes is pretty key. Are strategies in place? Is the social support system in place?
Strategies for Time Change: Approaches like Precision Nutrition has several strategies for change: the precision nutrition system, overviewed here; their lean eating program with daily support, discussed here, and their certified coaches for one on one support. Martha Beck's Four Day Win has step by step strategies for building up food practice habits and supporting some self-love in the process. Brad Pilon's Eat Stop Eat has very simple strategies: stop eating once a week. Commitment
Body comp change does take a pretty constant level of commitment - that's the patience and perseverance - where, as arnie says, his happiness is that every rep was one more leading to his goal. So what are the reps in body comp? In a way we get to count the done and the note done. Here, the reps are often as much what one does do - eat right, exercise - as what one doesn't do - skip the multiple cookies for just one; skip the extra helping.
Self-Care and Support
It will take some self-love and self-support - to care about and for oneself and be as gentle with oneself as one would with a best friend - to see the scale weight fluctuate up and down, but to trust the trend to be heading down. If it's not heading down after two weeks of New Practice, awesome to have an expert in your corner for guidance and support.
Prep for self-love: Do we celebrate the Wins of Change, let's call them? whose your buddy who's there for you? where's your on-call expert to reality check what you're doing?
Strategies for self-love and support: Finding a friend can be hard, since one's current posee might not feel one with a person's committment to change. There are however quite a few diet forums on the web for folks in similar situations to oneself. Again, this is why i dig precision nutrition: the forum is a huge asset since not only experts but folks in exactly the same place as ourselves who have been through it, are going through it, are there.
A note on Threat Reduction and Diet: In z-health Sustenance, we also talk about change as being percieved as a threat. Being in a threat place is not an optimal place to support performance change. Threat means our nervous system, responsible for all sorts of hormonal interactions, perceives a threat to our very survival. Interest in shedding calories is the antithesis of being in a threat place. So we need strategies to help support change that lets us reduce the threat response so we can get to a place to work on performance. Without that, how likely are performance oriented strategies like diet change going to be?
Likewise, each stage of change
, too, may take slightly different strategies. Finding support/expertise for those changes may be key.
All the Time in the World; With a little (self) Love in Your HeartA note on Threat Reduction and Diet: In z-health Sustenance, we also talk about change as being percieved as a threat. Being in a threat place is not an optimal place to support performance change. Threat means our nervous system, responsible for all sorts of hormonal interactions, perceives a threat to our very survival. Interest in shedding calories is the antithesis of being in a threat place. So we need strategies to help support change that lets us reduce the threat response so we can get to a place to work on performance. Without that, how likely are performance oriented strategies like diet change going to be?
Likewise, each stage of change
, too, may take slightly different strategies. Finding support/expertise for those changes may be key. The main message here is time, patience, self-love, support and balanced guidance: when engaging in body comp change, that's a long term committment - even if one only has the proverbial five pounds to lose - and that that's ok. It's like a long term relationship - there are the ups and the not so ups. But being in for the long haul with ourselves is ok: we have the rest of our lives.
After all, if something takes months rather than weeks or a year rather than a month, presumably we have a few more years after that to enjoy the fruits of our labours? That so sounds like it kinda sucks that it's not now and today, or "in just 60 days" and it's not that one can't do extreme programs and get some results acceleration (and be exhausted), but our bodies do kind need the long view.
We're cyclical
Another thing i've been learning about is another "well that's obvious" - is that body comp is cyclical, and our own cycles are different from each others' There are times when we have more energy to give to change and maintenance than others. The winter when it's colder we may put on more fat to stay warm, or that may be the time we really peel it off - working out to stay warm. This is another reason to say it takes time to do body comp work: part of the process is learning our cycles, and by learning them we can tune them.
Ever considered an energy log? When do workouts feel great? when is energy more up or more down than usual? does it correlate to anything else in our days?
I've been finding sleep is a great indicator/corelator of differences, and being lazy about logging it's why i like things like Zeo for logging those subtle differences in quality of sleep, or occasionally monitoring my heart for HRV to see if i'm more pooped than not?
Food?
So where's the food in all this?
Intriguingly, with all this talk of commitment, "getting on a diet" may be less important than heuristics about food and some basic food knowledge. Michael Pollan puts it well in Defence of Food: eat less; mostly plants.Precision Nutrition has a few more heuristics: eat protein at each feeding; get veggie variety at each feeding; get good fats in during the day; skip useless calories drinks of all kinds like juice and pop; save starchy fast carbs till you deserve them - post workout. Eat Stop Eat says eat less daily, and stop eating once or twice a week for about 24 hours. There's also the "change one thing diet" - commit to one less meal in front of the tv for a week, then maybe two less - it's part of the long haul: pick *one* thing to change, commit to that and build up success from there. As Martha Beck suggests, develop strategies that you believe will be successful, and then make that one even easier. Build successes.
Yes but what about the Food?
Gourmet Nutrition vol. 2 is a lovely book of recipes (hit the free sample download) likewise tested for flavour and sitting well with good eating habits. And once we know what to look for in good food, we can start to assess food recipes for ourselves. If you find another source you like, please post it in the comments.
Take Home: We need MultiFactor Strategies for the Long View.
Arnie's view of success is that each rep takes the champs closer to their goals. Implicit in each rep is that it's part of a plan for success, and that plan is multi-factorial, complex (not complicated). Arnie got that winning is not just about lifting big, but moving well, attitude, balance, timing, etc. Why would our own body comp change goals be less complicated?
So how can we help each other to take the long view, and celebrate that anrie-esque joy that each rep is one step closer to the vision we have of ourselves?
Part of that success is getting that taking a single factor approach is likely doomed. I once read that the reason that most small businesses fail is that they don't plan for success. Martha Beck in the Four Day Win concentrates vigerously on planning each action for diet success ahead of time; Precision Nutrition likewise takes pains to emphasis progressive practice of habits before thinking about individualization. Good coaches likewise work with a us based on where we're at with stages of change. But in each case, there's respect for the fact that we're talking about change, and that's a multifactorial thing that requires DYNAMIC multifactorial approaches.
So when considering a new practice - and body comp change is just such a practice - ask: does that thing i'm looking at respect the complexity that is me? does it recognize the physiological, social and psychological parts of the process? Does it have plans to address each of those parts? If not, change that one thing?
If you need a hand, the above are some great starting points. If you'd like some one on one guidance beyond the PN forum for instance, a list of coaches certified in multifactorial nutrition coaching is here. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
How To Coach Nutrition for Health, Fitness and Body Comp Goals: do the Precision Nutrition Level 1 cert
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When is a PhD useless? Ok that's extreme, but if you listen to John Berardi talk about his nutrition coaching and his PhD, he says it's when it didn't help him do what he wanted to do: coach folks how to improve their nutrition and achieve their fitness, health and body comp goals:
Whether you're intrested in upping your nutrition know how for training others, or just want to know what a great coach would be able to offer, this course overview may be of interest.
Success: I've just completed the PN level 1 cert, and it's very good (and i'm v.happy, too. You know, yay i passed? happy dance time). One might ask, how would i know a good nutrition course if it fell on me since i don't hold either an RD or a PhD in Nutrition or Exercise Physiology myself? Well, here's the thing: i have a lot of reps designing and evaluating grad and undergrad courses in a number of subjects, and reviewing text books for publishers. Quality will out. The same stuff that makes a good course in one area, i've seen, pretty much makes a good course elsewhere too.
Also, in recognised training certs like the NSCA CSCS (which i do hold), there is a Big Component on bioenergetics, how the body uses nutrients for exercise, as featured in the text Essentials of Strenght and Conditioning
. That courses' materials are pretty comprehensive. Similarly there are excellent general course texts in Exercise physiology like the awesome 7th edition of McArdle and team's Exercise Physiology.
In both cases, the text material covers a lot more than nutrition. Meaning that, compared to PN's cert which is solely focused on nutrition coaching (with an eye on the need for exercise too), is better.
I still highly recommend doing the CSCS or related to get the foundational knowledge for those of us who mayn't be coming through a formal sports degree program, but for getting deeper into how to fuel someone's fuel to meet their health, fitness and body comp goals, more is needed. And the right more. Hence PN L1
In the PN cert, the course is delivered in two parts: nutrition fundamentals and nutrition coaching - all focused around health, fitness and body comp goals for the person involved. I take it that's a pretty unique emPHAsis.
Nutrition and Energy, part 1
The first half of the PN certification focuses on the usual stuff one might expect to be covered in a course about nutrition, like how carbs and fats and proteins are processed in the body, but for me, it's done in a more accessible while still not oversimplified way. It also has components that the trainer certs so far have not. For instance, it's chapter on Water Balance goes well beyond what i've found in any of the cert texts and several grad course texts. The explanation on hyponatremia (too much water) is fantanstic - and by the way, too much water in a practical sense means relative to sodium balance. Amazing and rather critical point. Likewise the case study on how to use water effectively over a ten day period to make weight for a competition. Nice practical wisdom.
Something else nicely done is digestion itself. Rather than just getting info on macro & micro nutrients, we get the big picture: what happens to a lump of food from the moment it enters the body till it leaves the body. Makes sense but you'll be hard pressed to find that in most units on nutrition or even text books on bioenergetics. Did you know that a hunk of food once it's moved from the stomach into the gut has a name? It's called the chyme. Before that, once masticated to be swallowed, it's a bolus.
Combined Play
That may seem like nice info but not essential. Fine. The thing that really gets me going about this course are the questions posed in the study guide to see if one has grokked what's going on in the material. They are so basic that one wonders why this stuff isn't a core highschool curriculum. We may not come with a manual, and there's lots of stuff we don't know, but there are some things over which there is a larger consensus. How do you do with these questions:
Above and beyond the nutrients, the vitamins, the phytochemicals, the authors are dead keen on people talking about, thinking about FOOD rather than macro/micro nutrients. "Because people eat food" and because food is more than macro/micro nutrients. Its got psycho- / sociologico- components, and these things are important for coaching real people who eat real food. Ah but we like to play with supplements, too, do we not? Well that's actually in the coaching section: how to understand when and where these might come into play.
Successfully Coaching Change, part 2
While this kind of clarity around digestive and absorptive processes especially relative to energy needs is fascinating and important, and i feel the better for having it, where the course sets itself apart is in how it maps out a process of coaching towards "outcomes based" goals. That is, goals that are meaningful, doable and especially, trace-able.
There is as much attention to this part of coaching as professional practice as there is to the nutrition theory. Here's a practical take away. Folks who have used PN know that measures it takes are not only the scale and girth, but also 7 site skinfolds. Actually getting readings at each of those skinfold sites can offer up information about what may be going on in the body if say, fat is being lost from all but one of those sites. How bout that, eh? I'd spend a lot of time going through the literature looking at the accuracy of one measuring technique over another and why and when 7point sf's are good; had not once come across the value of any of those sites for specific information. Wicked.
Oh and here are a few questions from the Coaching part of the program:
The coaching part of the program has mutliple key components presented in progressive sensible fashion, each situated within when someone would do what : from gathering info, to interpreting it, to using it to formulate a plan, to assessing when it's actually the program not client adherence that may need tweaking; how to tweak a plan. And more: how to anticipate and work with client issues around getting one with their new nutrition practice.
Course Approach: Athlete at the Center
I've said recently how i really like the model of coaching that puts the athlete at the center and then considers the athlete's needs (i use the term athlete in the z-health way where if you're moving you're an athlete). I've presented the 9S model (overview here) that includes categorizes those needs in terms of sustenance, suppleness, strength, spirit, speed, skill, stamina, structure and style. The job of a great coach is to be able to figure out what the athlete needs when, and how to offer those skills to that athlete in a way that the athlete can hear and use.
The Precision Nutrition Level 1 cert gives a coach an awful lot of those tools for the sustentance part of that coaching. It helps the coach
Course Materials:
Beyond the approach and deliverables of the cert content, this course just kinda sings of quality, thought and beta testing. From a pedagogy perspective, this course presents really well constructed, well considered material, from the content to the study aids (and there are copious study aids for various learning modes). Likewise the material has been used for a module in a masters program, so it's had high level students test it out. And students are not shy of sharing what they think of materials. Its apparently thrived in that environment.
If you're interested in checking out the program, PN has made a TON of material available to provide a clear sense of the course. If you sign up to the waiting list to do the course you'll see that what's on the label is what's in the tin. To connect you with some of those weigh points:
Text Book Overview. The table of contents for the PN Cert textbook is online here. That will give you a very clear idea of the material covered and assessed by the program in both bioenergetics and coaching parts. Because the material here is not a single module in a larger program as it is in various trainer certs there is space to go into the material in a meaningful and applied way and in significant but practical detail. It's just a great book.
Previewing the Coaching Methodology: If you'd like to get a flavour of the coaching methodology, there's a free, five day, 12 mins a day, mini course for trainers that PN has set up - and they provide the forms used for client assessment, too. I'm kinda stunned at how much material is given away in this wee freebie. If this mini-course speaks to you, then the cert will be right up your street. 6 forms of those used in the course for assessments are provided - that gives one an idea of the kinds of tools one will be able to offer a client to develop a meaningful assessment and build an effective outcomes-based program.
Likewise, if you'd like a sense of the bibliography that informs this approach towards client support, here's an overview of the coaching books Berardi recommends.
Questions to ask a prospective coach on Nutrition
Even if you're not personally interested in taking a PN cert, looking at the above will help get a handle on what a great coach will be able to do to work WITH and FOR you and your goals.
So if you're looking for a nutrition coach - someone to help you get going or tweak what you're doing, an easy thing you can do is just look at who's already listed with PN and go from there.
If you'er interested in someone who isn't listed, there are some questions you may want to ask:
Summary: Qualified
Last year i did a five day super intense course on nutrition and getting into some very intense topics in what's going on with inflammation, foods, diets and looking at the homeostatic and hedonistic attributes that contribute to why, effectively, change is tough. That course too spend a good deal of time on coaching practice with emphasis on motivational interviewing and approaches very much in sync with Berardi's above. We practiced these techniques a lot. I keep thinking what great synergies there are between these two programs.
Looking Ahead from "theory" to praxis. Now PNL1 is what PN calls the "theory" side of their certification process. At a chapter a week, it's about a 16 week course. Some folks doing 2-3 chapters a week, it's faster. There's an invitation-only Level 2 which is a practicum and it's 6months long. It hasn't started up. But based on how much further ahead i feel with just this "theory" on nutrition coaching, i am prepared to be gob smacked by what the Level 2 practicum will require and provide.
I've worked with folks before on nutrition planning. I've felt good about my work with folks and their progress. Right now, with this cert, i have to say i feel WAY better. I have better tools, resources, knowledge to enhance the skills i have and offer way better support.
Excellent course, highly recommended. If you're looking for a great cert to add effective practical nutrition coaching to your practice, this is an awesome course. Even the exam is great - with an 80% pass rate. Really engaging. How often does one say that about an exam.
Likewise, of course, if you're looking for good nutrition coaching, the PN certified directory is a great place to start. G'head, call me.
Related Posts
Precision Nutrition: personal nutrition benchmarking. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Enter the Precision Nutrition Level 1 certification, designed by Berardi, the co-founder and chief science officer of Precision Nutrition, and Ryan Andrews, RD and director for education at PN (and interviewed recently here at b2d). Its design fills a considerable gap in the nutrition coaching space for health, fitness and body comp success. Why? because it covers not only nutrition fundamentals, but then devotes the same amount of energy to how to apply and coach that esoterica in a way that is meaningful for people who eat food.Ultimately, I went to study in the Exercise and Nutrition Lab at the University of Western Ontario, and wrapped up my grad work in Exercise Physiology and Nutrient Biochemistry. But really, I never learned what I set out to learn — exercise and sport nutrition coaching.
John Berardi, PhD, CSCS
Whether you're intrested in upping your nutrition know how for training others, or just want to know what a great coach would be able to offer, this course overview may be of interest.
Success: I've just completed the PN level 1 cert, and it's very good (and i'm v.happy, too. You know, yay i passed? happy dance time). One might ask, how would i know a good nutrition course if it fell on me since i don't hold either an RD or a PhD in Nutrition or Exercise Physiology myself? Well, here's the thing: i have a lot of reps designing and evaluating grad and undergrad courses in a number of subjects, and reviewing text books for publishers. Quality will out. The same stuff that makes a good course in one area, i've seen, pretty much makes a good course elsewhere too.
Also, in recognised training certs like the NSCA CSCS (which i do hold), there is a Big Component on bioenergetics, how the body uses nutrients for exercise, as featured in the text Essentials of Strenght and Conditioning. That courses' materials are pretty comprehensive. Similarly there are excellent general course texts in Exercise physiology like the awesome 7th edition of McArdle and team's Exercise Physiology. In both cases, the text material covers a lot more than nutrition. Meaning that, compared to PN's cert which is solely focused on nutrition coaching (with an eye on the need for exercise too), is better.I still highly recommend doing the CSCS or related to get the foundational knowledge for those of us who mayn't be coming through a formal sports degree program, but for getting deeper into how to fuel someone's fuel to meet their health, fitness and body comp goals, more is needed. And the right more. Hence PN L1In the PN cert, the course is delivered in two parts: nutrition fundamentals and nutrition coaching - all focused around health, fitness and body comp goals for the person involved. I take it that's a pretty unique emPHAsis.
Nutrition and Energy, part 1
The first half of the PN certification focuses on the usual stuff one might expect to be covered in a course about nutrition, like how carbs and fats and proteins are processed in the body, but for me, it's done in a more accessible while still not oversimplified way. It also has components that the trainer certs so far have not. For instance, it's chapter on Water Balance goes well beyond what i've found in any of the cert texts and several grad course texts. The explanation on hyponatremia (too much water) is fantanstic - and by the way, too much water in a practical sense means relative to sodium balance. Amazing and rather critical point. Likewise the case study on how to use water effectively over a ten day period to make weight for a competition. Nice practical wisdom.
Something else nicely done is digestion itself. Rather than just getting info on macro & micro nutrients, we get the big picture: what happens to a lump of food from the moment it enters the body till it leaves the body. Makes sense but you'll be hard pressed to find that in most units on nutrition or even text books on bioenergetics. Did you know that a hunk of food once it's moved from the stomach into the gut has a name? It's called the chyme. Before that, once masticated to be swallowed, it's a bolus.
Combined Play
That may seem like nice info but not essential. Fine. The thing that really gets me going about this course are the questions posed in the study guide to see if one has grokked what's going on in the material. They are so basic that one wonders why this stuff isn't a core highschool curriculum. We may not come with a manual, and there's lots of stuff we don't know, but there are some things over which there is a larger consensus. How do you do with these questions:
- What are the two most important nutrient/energy stores in the human body? How are the responsible for survival?
- What does cholesterol actually do? Why is it important.
- What are ketones? why are they formed?
- What happens to carbs from mouth to cell?
- What's the relation of the fat we eat to our cells' membranes?
- In what ways can you estimate water needs for clients?
Above and beyond the nutrients, the vitamins, the phytochemicals, the authors are dead keen on people talking about, thinking about FOOD rather than macro/micro nutrients. "Because people eat food" and because food is more than macro/micro nutrients. Its got psycho- / sociologico- components, and these things are important for coaching real people who eat real food. Ah but we like to play with supplements, too, do we not? Well that's actually in the coaching section: how to understand when and where these might come into play.
Successfully Coaching Change, part 2
While this kind of clarity around digestive and absorptive processes especially relative to energy needs is fascinating and important, and i feel the better for having it, where the course sets itself apart is in how it maps out a process of coaching towards "outcomes based" goals. That is, goals that are meaningful, doable and especially, trace-able.
There is as much attention to this part of coaching as professional practice as there is to the nutrition theory. Here's a practical take away. Folks who have used PN know that measures it takes are not only the scale and girth, but also 7 site skinfolds. Actually getting readings at each of those skinfold sites can offer up information about what may be going on in the body if say, fat is being lost from all but one of those sites. How bout that, eh? I'd spend a lot of time going through the literature looking at the accuracy of one measuring technique over another and why and when 7point sf's are good; had not once come across the value of any of those sites for specific information. Wicked.
Oh and here are a few questions from the Coaching part of the program:
- Why is it important to know a client's previous exercise habits?
- What are five staple supplements for regular or occasional use?
- What are five strategies you can use when choosing supplements to improve the risk/reward profile?
- What are the most common food allergies in adults?
- When displaying professsional committment to your clients, what key factors should you keep in mind?
- When might counting calories be important to your client's success.
- What can you suggest to clients who lack social support?
- What's your client's limiting factor for making change?
The coaching part of the program has mutliple key components presented in progressive sensible fashion, each situated within when someone would do what : from gathering info, to interpreting it, to using it to formulate a plan, to assessing when it's actually the program not client adherence that may need tweaking; how to tweak a plan. And more: how to anticipate and work with client issues around getting one with their new nutrition practice.
Course Approach: Athlete at the Center
I've said recently how i really like the model of coaching that puts the athlete at the center and then considers the athlete's needs (i use the term athlete in the z-health way where if you're moving you're an athlete). I've presented the 9S model (overview here) that includes categorizes those needs in terms of sustenance, suppleness, strength, spirit, speed, skill, stamina, structure and style. The job of a great coach is to be able to figure out what the athlete needs when, and how to offer those skills to that athlete in a way that the athlete can hear and use.
The Precision Nutrition Level 1 cert gives a coach an awful lot of those tools for the sustentance part of that coaching. It helps the coach
- assess where an athlete is at with respect to nutrition and nutrition change right now
- it provides sufficient knowledge on nutrition and communication to be able to understand how to tune a program for that athlete
- if offers strategies to help guide the athlete through the change process.
- it affords a network of colleagues to connect about challenges in practice.
Course Materials:
Beyond the approach and deliverables of the cert content, this course just kinda sings of quality, thought and beta testing. From a pedagogy perspective, this course presents really well constructed, well considered material, from the content to the study aids (and there are copious study aids for various learning modes). Likewise the material has been used for a module in a masters program, so it's had high level students test it out. And students are not shy of sharing what they think of materials. Its apparently thrived in that environment.
If you're interested in checking out the program, PN has made a TON of material available to provide a clear sense of the course. If you sign up to the waiting list to do the course you'll see that what's on the label is what's in the tin. To connect you with some of those weigh points:
Previewing the Coaching Methodology: If you'd like to get a flavour of the coaching methodology, there's a free, five day, 12 mins a day, mini course for trainers that PN has set up - and they provide the forms used for client assessment, too. I'm kinda stunned at how much material is given away in this wee freebie. If this mini-course speaks to you, then the cert will be right up your street. 6 forms of those used in the course for assessments are provided - that gives one an idea of the kinds of tools one will be able to offer a client to develop a meaningful assessment and build an effective outcomes-based program.
Likewise, if you'd like a sense of the bibliography that informs this approach towards client support, here's an overview of the coaching books Berardi recommends.
Questions to ask a prospective coach on Nutrition
Even if you're not personally interested in taking a PN cert, looking at the above will help get a handle on what a great coach will be able to do to work WITH and FOR you and your goals.
So if you're looking for a nutrition coach - someone to help you get going or tweak what you're doing, an easy thing you can do is just look at who's already listed with PN and go from there.
If you'er interested in someone who isn't listed, there are some questions you may want to ask:
- how do you assess where i'm at and what my needs are?
- How do you refine goals?
- What is your style of coaching?
- How do you measure progress?
- how frequently do we meet?
- What materials will you provide me?
- How long will "it" take to get where i want to go with you?
- How will you assess that?
- What kind of tuning do you do on an approach, when?
Summary: Qualified
Last year i did a five day super intense course on nutrition and getting into some very intense topics in what's going on with inflammation, foods, diets and looking at the homeostatic and hedonistic attributes that contribute to why, effectively, change is tough. That course too spend a good deal of time on coaching practice with emphasis on motivational interviewing and approaches very much in sync with Berardi's above. We practiced these techniques a lot. I keep thinking what great synergies there are between these two programs.
Looking Ahead from "theory" to praxis. Now PNL1 is what PN calls the "theory" side of their certification process. At a chapter a week, it's about a 16 week course. Some folks doing 2-3 chapters a week, it's faster. There's an invitation-only Level 2 which is a practicum and it's 6months long. It hasn't started up. But based on how much further ahead i feel with just this "theory" on nutrition coaching, i am prepared to be gob smacked by what the Level 2 practicum will require and provide.
I've worked with folks before on nutrition planning. I've felt good about my work with folks and their progress. Right now, with this cert, i have to say i feel WAY better. I have better tools, resources, knowledge to enhance the skills i have and offer way better support.
Excellent course, highly recommended. If you're looking for a great cert to add effective practical nutrition coaching to your practice, this is an awesome course. Even the exam is great - with an 80% pass rate. Really engaging. How often does one say that about an exam.
Likewise, of course, if you're looking for good nutrition coaching, the PN certified directory is a great place to start. G'head, call me.
Related Posts
Precision Nutrition: personal nutrition benchmarking. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Friday, August 20, 2010
Cocoa drink reduces DOMS. Really? Well, Maybe...
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What if cocoa in a drink of protein and carbs could mitigate DOMS - delayed onset muscle soreness? This is what researchers in a newly published Aug 2010 study have explored. And thank goodness, since most of us have struggled with DOMS at one time or another - new routine and next day or next few days our muscles pay for it. We walk like cowboys coming off a long jaunt in the saddle. Could Cocoa with your recovery beverage of choice be the winner? Let's remember, there are very few approaches that have been shown to help reduce the signs of DOMS - those are detailed in this 2parter here - and as Mike T Nelson comments how we measure DOMS is pretty important when making claims about what is actually reduced in the DOMS experience. Just to recap
Now in a way, there have been a couple kinda similar studies: one that looked at chocolate milk vs something like cytomax (all carbs) and something like endurox (4:1 carb to protein) for recovery, not DOMS. In that study chocolate milk was shown to be as good as a carb beverage and better in a *certain test condition* than protein + carbs well all of us cheer that low-fat chocolate milk option. Except for the tons of folks for whom milk is not a happy thing, from lactose intolerance to immune responses with dairy. Intriguingly various dairy interests supported the research.
Just The Cocoa Facts, Sir. The question has been bound to come up well, what if we ditch the dairy and just look at the chocolate bit, or in this case, the cocoa bit? Especially if this time the research is supported not by a dairy but a chocolate company. Hershies in this case. The researchers who did the reesarch also decided not to look at the big picture of recovery but to focus on DOMS reduction. Why? Because, they argue, we seem to see free-radical release go up conincident with the muscle damage of exercise, so perhaps, putting an anti-oxidant like cocoa into the system may help mitigate those effects and possibly reduce the DOMS experience. Interesting. And there's no small challenge they say in trying to measure anti-oxidant effect:
Starting from Scratch. So thar ya go: the researchers will put together their own drink and compare it with water for effect on DOMS. They are going to use TWO of the four markers for DOMS described above: the biomarkers like CK and LEFS - Lower Extremity Functional Sacle. In LEFS, participants report on a scale of 0-4 the perceived difficulty of carrying out a physical task (actual survey here, pdf). So one biological test and one subjective scoring test. It is SUCH a drag that DOMS tests are not standardized! And asking someone to reflect *about* how they'd find getting out of a car if they haven't gotten out of a car, for instance, is yup pretty durn subjective. Interesting, but subjective when there are measures like ROM and force production also available, and even perceived soreness from pressure.
Findings about Cocoa in Particular? That aside, what did the authors find? Not too much. The drink had no effect on the biomarkers of damage. So they didn't mitigate its biological effects. The authors think however that their use of LEFS rather than the usual in DOMS studies VAS is a step up because LEFS asks about daily activities rather than just how a poke feels. And as to their results with LEFS checked at 24 and 48 hour intervals?
Here's personally where i'd actually like to see the raw data just to confirm that the direction of change for the non-drink group WAS that their scores went down (got worse) rather than up. We have to trust the authors' reporting. And i hate that.
The authors also spend considerable time speculating over why their form of cocoa rather than dutched may be a better use of cocoa to what's in chocolate milk
Concludium
This is why science is so cool: after an entire paper of data, experimental set up, discussion, yada yada yada, this is what we get
Related Work. Interestingly, a previous study by Green and company that states rather categorically in its title that Carb or Carb/Pro drinks have no effect on DOMS is set aside by the present researchers. They suggest that really, Green's study didn't actually elicit anything with which to have a response to mitigate:
So all the more reason for the the authors to have studied a similar drink without the cocoa, rather than water, or along with water, they would have a stronger basis to assert that it's their anti-oxidant/flavonoid cocoa that's the Special Sauce for toning down DOMS. So why mightn't the authors have done something so obvious? I'd speculate something like the following.
The Gritty Realities of Reseasrch on a Shoe string - or Little Hershies Kiss
When one is designing a study, Saul Greenberg once suggested an heuristic to me about research i live by: think about the optimal outcomes of the study proposed. What will the best results be? Is that optimal outcome significant? If the authors of this paper had run that exercise what would they have said: the BEST we will be able to say if our results have an effect is that we will (a) see a difference in biomarkers and (b) see a difference in perceived soreness. And givent that, what will be be able to say about cocoa? Nothing. The best we will be able to say is that cocoa was in the mix and maybe it contributed to decreased DOMS, so best case: it's worth doing the next study to isolate this out.
Why not do the full study the first time? It would take either longer or would take more participants. There are costs to that. So, given that the authors didn't see any A but they did get some B which is sufficient to say "maybe" cocoa plays a role, i hope Hershies is sufficiently keyed up by this "maybe" to fund the next study that would compare the two formulations. Which will be the longer or bigger trial anyway. That could have been done from the start. But maybe Hershies said "what can you do with X dollars? if we like what you do maybe we'll give you X*y" - and so there we are. Maybe. I speculate wildly.
Well what can i tell ya? What can i possibly say?
All we do know from the data is that taking the drink before exercise rather than after exercise had no real effect on DOMS; taking the drink afterwards, the authors suggest based on their 24-48 hours DOMS increasing, shows it does.
So maybe maybe something in the composition and timing of the beverage that helped. What bit is a rather open question. One might say ah yes but there are other studies comparing say c.milk with carb/protein and the c.milk did better so it must be the C for Chocolate? Maybe. Maybe maybe and more maybe.
Might be a fun personal experiment: next time a new routine is in the offing, blend in those whole cacao beens and go nuts! you may even feel better for the next 24-48 hours. It's chocolate! how could it hurt?
Citations
Related
What if cocoa in a drink of protein and carbs could mitigate DOMS - delayed onset muscle soreness? This is what researchers in a newly published Aug 2010 study have explored. And thank goodness, since most of us have struggled with DOMS at one time or another - new routine and next day or next few days our muscles pay for it. We walk like cowboys coming off a long jaunt in the saddle. Could Cocoa with your recovery beverage of choice be the winner? Let's remember, there are very few approaches that have been shown to help reduce the signs of DOMS - those are detailed in this 2parter here - and as Mike T Nelson comments how we measure DOMS is pretty important when making claims about what is actually reduced in the DOMS experience. Just to recapLet's review what's measured in assessing DOMS in the literature.
Study Designing: So if one were to see if cocoa were effective how would we do it? Normally in an experimental condition, there's the thing being tested - in this case cocoa - and then there's a control - like water to see what happens without any intervention - and sometimes - in fact often - there's an alternative protocol, so you can see not just if the thing you're interested in has an effect but if it's the same or better than some usual standard - like a carb or protein+carb drink.Caveat Emptor
- what's in the blood: usually there are markers in the blood like creatine kinase and LDH - these are markers of muscle damage - we may have the same CK levels and have very different responses to soreness
- then there's the subjective measures of soreness themselves using rating scales.
- then there's the more objective bits: Range of motion and force production.
B2D buddie Mike T. Nelson of extremehumanperformance.com asks the question: is the experience of soreness directly correlated to a drop in performance? Mike in conversation makes the point that pain perception being a brain thing is going to be pretty individual. So how DOMS success is measured is something to bare in mind when looking at the studies following that claim to be effective against DOMS - are we talking DOMS pain reduction (always nice) or performance in a DOMS state?
Now in a way, there have been a couple kinda similar studies: one that looked at chocolate milk vs something like cytomax (all carbs) and something like endurox (4:1 carb to protein) for recovery, not DOMS. In that study chocolate milk was shown to be as good as a carb beverage and better in a *certain test condition* than protein + carbs well all of us cheer that low-fat chocolate milk option. Except for the tons of folks for whom milk is not a happy thing, from lactose intolerance to immune responses with dairy. Intriguingly various dairy interests supported the research. Just The Cocoa Facts, Sir. The question has been bound to come up well, what if we ditch the dairy and just look at the chocolate bit, or in this case, the cocoa bit? Especially if this time the research is supported not by a dairy but a chocolate company. Hershies in this case. The researchers who did the reesarch also decided not to look at the big picture of recovery but to focus on DOMS reduction. Why? Because, they argue, we seem to see free-radical release go up conincident with the muscle damage of exercise, so perhaps, putting an anti-oxidant like cocoa into the system may help mitigate those effects and possibly reduce the DOMS experience. Interesting. And there's no small challenge they say in trying to measure anti-oxidant effect:
Although various experiments have been conducted to investigate the effect of antioxidant dietary supplementation on biomarkers of skeletal muscle damage and oxidative stress, the results are often equivocal and difficult to compare because of considerable variations in sampled populations and exercise protocols (18). Moreover, the practical application of antioxidant supplementation research studies has been considerably limited because of an overwhelming failure for measuring and reporting functional indices of exercise-induced muscle damage such as soreness (18). Therefore, the purpose of this pragmatic experiment was twofold: first to investigate the overall effectiveness of a welldefined custom manufactured cocoa-based protein and carbohydrate prototype drink on skeletal muscle cell damage and inflammatory biomarkers and perceived soreness associated with exhaustive exercise and secondly to assess if drink consumption before exercise offered additive effects. We hypothesized that the cocoa-based protein and carbohydrate prototype drink would decrease skeletal muscle cell and inflammatory biomarkers and perceived soreness compared to water, a standard fluid often consumed during exercise bouts.We also hypothesized that consuming the test drink before exercise would elicit further reductions in oxidative stress markers and perceived soreness.
Starting from Scratch. So thar ya go: the researchers will put together their own drink and compare it with water for effect on DOMS. They are going to use TWO of the four markers for DOMS described above: the biomarkers like CK and LEFS - Lower Extremity Functional Sacle. In LEFS, participants report on a scale of 0-4 the perceived difficulty of carrying out a physical task (actual survey here, pdf). So one biological test and one subjective scoring test. It is SUCH a drag that DOMS tests are not standardized! And asking someone to reflect *about* how they'd find getting out of a car if they haven't gotten out of a car, for instance, is yup pretty durn subjective. Interesting, but subjective when there are measures like ROM and force production also available, and even perceived soreness from pressure.
Findings about Cocoa in Particular? That aside, what did the authors find? Not too much. The drink had no effect on the biomarkers of damage. So they didn't mitigate its biological effects. The authors think however that their use of LEFS rather than the usual in DOMS studies VAS is a step up because LEFS asks about daily activities rather than just how a poke feels. And as to their results with LEFS checked at 24 and 48 hour intervals?
For those trials where the test drink was ingested after exercise we noted significantly less of a reported change from 24 to 48 hours by the participants. This indicated a decrease in perceived DOMS and therefore less difficulty in performing various physical tasks 48 hours postexercise.Why does less change between 24-48 hours mean decreased DOMS?
DOMS gradually increases 24 hours postexercise and typically peaks 48 hours postexercise before beginning to decline (16).Now i'm a bit annoyed that for this to be the BIG RESULT, we only get a couple summative values for the questionnaire rather than the raw data for lets face it, only 13 participants. Here it is
Consuming the test drink after exercise resulted in a mean change of 2.6 plus or minus 6 compared to 13.7 plus or minus 10 for the control.In LEFS, the total score is out of 100, with a 90% confidence interval. What this suggests is that the scores changed by about 6 times as much in the non-drink case, which the authors suggest means that DOMS didn't get much worse in the drink case.
Here's personally where i'd actually like to see the raw data just to confirm that the direction of change for the non-drink group WAS that their scores went down (got worse) rather than up. We have to trust the authors' reporting. And i hate that.
The authors also spend considerable time speculating over why their form of cocoa rather than dutched may be a better use of cocoa to what's in chocolate milk
Concludium
This is why science is so cool: after an entire paper of data, experimental set up, discussion, yada yada yada, this is what we get
Based on the findings of our experiment we conclude that a recovery drink composed of a carbohydrate-to-protein ratio of 3.5:1 with the addition of flavonol-rich cocoa may (emaphasis mine -mc) decrease perceived muscle soreness after exercise.There is nothing in the results to show that any one of the elements in this drink - the protein, the carbs or the chocolate - has any particular effect on mitigating DOMS. Indeed, one previous study that said cocoa is fine for ldl, but not for reducing inflamation, which would kinda suggest that cocoa mayn't help with DOMS. The authors say that while there results show a similar lack of change in biomarkers, maybe it's the combination of protein/carb/cocoa that's having the effect. That is the subjective response.
Related Work. Interestingly, a previous study by Green and company that states rather categorically in its title that Carb or Carb/Pro drinks have no effect on DOMS is set aside by the present researchers. They suggest that really, Green's study didn't actually elicit anything with which to have a response to mitigate:
Therefore, it may be possible that the protocol of Green et al. did not impose adequate skeletal muscle cell damage to induce substantial perceived postexercise muscle soreness in participants.This helps the authors to say it's not cocoa alone; not clear that it's really not protein/carbs alone.
So all the more reason for the the authors to have studied a similar drink without the cocoa, rather than water, or along with water, they would have a stronger basis to assert that it's their anti-oxidant/flavonoid cocoa that's the Special Sauce for toning down DOMS. So why mightn't the authors have done something so obvious? I'd speculate something like the following.
The Gritty Realities of Reseasrch on a Shoe string - or Little Hershies Kiss
When one is designing a study, Saul Greenberg once suggested an heuristic to me about research i live by: think about the optimal outcomes of the study proposed. What will the best results be? Is that optimal outcome significant? If the authors of this paper had run that exercise what would they have said: the BEST we will be able to say if our results have an effect is that we will (a) see a difference in biomarkers and (b) see a difference in perceived soreness. And givent that, what will be be able to say about cocoa? Nothing. The best we will be able to say is that cocoa was in the mix and maybe it contributed to decreased DOMS, so best case: it's worth doing the next study to isolate this out.
Why not do the full study the first time? It would take either longer or would take more participants. There are costs to that. So, given that the authors didn't see any A but they did get some B which is sufficient to say "maybe" cocoa plays a role, i hope Hershies is sufficiently keyed up by this "maybe" to fund the next study that would compare the two formulations. Which will be the longer or bigger trial anyway. That could have been done from the start. But maybe Hershies said "what can you do with X dollars? if we like what you do maybe we'll give you X*y" - and so there we are. Maybe. I speculate wildly.
Well what can i tell ya? What can i possibly say?
All we do know from the data is that taking the drink before exercise rather than after exercise had no real effect on DOMS; taking the drink afterwards, the authors suggest based on their 24-48 hours DOMS increasing, shows it does.
So maybe maybe something in the composition and timing of the beverage that helped. What bit is a rather open question. One might say ah yes but there are other studies comparing say c.milk with carb/protein and the c.milk did better so it must be the C for Chocolate? Maybe. Maybe maybe and more maybe.
Might be a fun personal experiment: next time a new routine is in the offing, blend in those whole cacao beens and go nuts! you may even feel better for the next 24-48 hours. It's chocolate! how could it hurt?
Citations
McBrier NM, Vairo GL, Bagshaw D, Lekan JM, Bordi PL, and Kris-Etherton PM (2010). Cocoa-based protein and carbohydrate drink decreases perceived soreness after exhaustive aerobic exercise: a pragmatic preliminary analysis. Journal of strength and conditioning research / National Strength & Conditioning Association, 24 (8), 2203-10 PMID: 20634742
Karp JR, Johnston JD, Tecklenburg S, Mickleborough TD, Fly AD, & Stager JM (2006). Chocolate milk as a post-exercise recovery aid. International journal of sport nutrition and exercise metabolism, 16 (1), 78-91 PMID: 16676705
Mathur S, Devaraj S, Grundy SM, & Jialal I (2002). Cocoa products decrease low density lipoprotein oxidative susceptibility but do not affect biomarkers of inflammation in humans. The Journal of nutrition, 132 (12), 3663-7 PMID: 12468604
Wiswedel, I., Hirsch, D., Kropf, S., Gruening, M., Pfister, E., Schewe, T., & Sies, H. (2004). Flavanol-rich cocoa drink lowers plasma F2-isoprostane concentrations in humans Free Radical Biology and Medicine, 37 (3), 411-421 DOI: 10.1016/j.freeradbiomed.2004.05.013
Green MS, Corona BT, Doyle JA, & Ingalls CP (2008). Carbohydrate-protein drinks do not enhance recovery from exercise-induced muscle injury. International journal of sport nutrition and exercise metabolism, 18 (1), 1-18 PMID: 18272930
Related
- Nutrient timing May make a difference for recovery
- Carbs or Protein before bed?
- Kinds of protein for that recovery window?
- Supplement Curmudgeon - does that stuff do anything for you?
- Creatine and Beta Alanine for Aerobic Endurance?
- How about CoQ10 for endurance?
- would you like a heart rate monitor with that?
Thursday, June 3, 2010
660 seconds (11 mins) of minimal resistance training = a HUGE difference for fat burning
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We know pretty unequivocally that the biggest part of a fat loss program is nutrition. That's first. BUT we also know that exercise can really help with keeping that program going. If we look at work on obesity and the role of exercise, we're looking at 5 hours of exercise a week (along with diet and expert support).
5 hours may be a good and healthy norm, but do you know any geeks who will say ya you bet i can get that 270-300 mins a week in. You bet. Not.
So a question might be, what's the minimal amount someone - especially someone at risk of being obese - can do in terms of working out to achieve a metabolic difference - where that metabilic change is to a boost start burning more calories in a day, and in particular burning more fat calories.
Researchers in 2009 took a look at just this question. The answer is - we're not entirely sure, but here's something that looks really promising:
Just to be clear about what the program included:
So not what anyone would call a super arduous program or one that folks without mobility/pain issues could perform as these moves are all done on machines. Some of us might have chosen different moves - like only compound moves without machines - but let's leave that aside. These have the advantage of also being seated, which for an inactive overweight population may be a good thing.
Main Pluses. The main thing is that after 6 months, the folks doing this very simple, every-other-day program had significantly greater fat free mass (FFM) - or lean mass (eg, muscle) than the Control group. That's nice. But what is associated with this in terms of potential fat loss support? An upped metabolism, as measured by various metabolic resting rate measures. Faster metabolism is a known associated outcome with exercise; that means more fuel will get used more quickly. For example, 24hr energy expenditure went up from 13091 kJ's a day to 13618. That's a big deal.
And one more finding - the RQ measure - checking expiration gasses - showed that the (resistiance training) RT group seemed to have an upped "fat oxidation" level - that is, burning more fat for fuel, as opposed to carbs. That's what we want from exercise: more fat burning.
Reality Check. Working out alone doesn't cut it for fat loss. In the results, both groups over six months had their weight go up and their BMI go up. That's not good. BUT the fat mass increase in the RT was "non-significant" at 3.3% but definitely significant in the C group at 8.8%. Note, there was no specified dietary intervention in the study; the only mandated change was the exercise program:
Take Aways. So what are the possible take aways from this study? One the authors suggest is that 11 mins. of resitance trainging might pose an interesting alternative to cardio/aerobics. As the authors state "the positive influence of even a small amount of RT on fat oxidation suggests an important role of RT on body mass management."
So imagine the benefit of combining a minimum 11mins of resistance training with some simple non-calorie-counting nutrition habits (like those found in precision nutrition) and who knows how the world might change?
Simple Program for fat loss? workout: 11mins of resistance, 3 days a week + nurtition: Change one thing a month with say the PN habits (download), and suddenly persistence of simplicity carries the day.
If you try this approach or know someone who will, pleaes let me know how it goes.
Citations
We know pretty unequivocally that the biggest part of a fat loss program is nutrition. That's first. BUT we also know that exercise can really help with keeping that program going. If we look at work on obesity and the role of exercise, we're looking at 5 hours of exercise a week (along with diet and expert support).5 hours may be a good and healthy norm, but do you know any geeks who will say ya you bet i can get that 270-300 mins a week in. You bet. Not.
So a question might be, what's the minimal amount someone - especially someone at risk of being obese - can do in terms of working out to achieve a metabolic difference - where that metabilic change is to a boost start burning more calories in a day, and in particular burning more fat calories.
Researchers in 2009 took a look at just this question. The answer is - we're not entirely sure, but here's something that looks really promising:
Long-term resistance training (RT) may result in a chronic increase in 24-h energy expenditure (EE) and fat oxidation to a level sufficient to assist in maintaining energy balance and preventing weight gain. However, the impact of a minimal RT program on these parameters in an overweight college-aged population, a group at high risk for developing obesity, is unknown. PURPOSE: We aimed to evaluate the effect of 6 months of supervised minimal RT in previously sedentary, overweight (mean +/- SEM, BMI = 27.7 +/- 0.5 kg x m(-2)) young adults (21.0 +/- 0.5 yr) on 24-h EE, resting metabolic rate (RMR), sleep metabolic rate (SMR), and substrate oxidation using whole-room indirect calorimetry 72 h after the last RT session. METHODS: Participants were randomized to RT (one set, 3 d x wk(-1), three to six repetition maximums, nine exercises; N = 22) or control (C, N = 17) groups and completed all assessments at baseline and at 6 months. RESULTS: There was a significant (P < 0.05) increase in 24-h EE in the RT (527 +/- 220 kJ x d(-1)) and C (270 +/- 168 kJ x d(-1)) groups; however, the difference between groups was not significant (P = 0.30). Twenty-four hours of fat oxidation (g x d(-1)) was not altered after RT; however, reductions in RT assessed during both rest (P < 0.05) and sleep (P < 0.05) suggested increased fat oxidation in RT compared with C during these periods. SMR (8.4 +/- 8.6%) and RMR (7.4 +/- 8.7%) increased significantly in RT (P < 0.001) but not in C, resulting in significant (P < 0.001) between-group differences for SMR with a trend for significant (P = 0.07) between-group differences for RMR. CONCLUSION: A minimal RT program that required little time to complete (11min per session) resulted in a chronic increase in energy expenditure. This adaptation in energy expenditure may have a favorable impact on energy balance and fat oxidation sufficient to assist with the prevention of obesity in sedentary, overweight young adults, a group at high risk for developing obesity.
Just to be clear about what the program included:Participants performed 1 set of 9 exercises designed to train all major muscle groups (chest press, back extension, lat pull down, triceps extension, shoulder press, leg press, calf raise, leg curl, and abdominal crunch) using a resistance of 3–6 1RM, approximately equal to 85–90% of 1RM.
So not what anyone would call a super arduous program or one that folks without mobility/pain issues could perform as these moves are all done on machines. Some of us might have chosen different moves - like only compound moves without machines - but let's leave that aside. These have the advantage of also being seated, which for an inactive overweight population may be a good thing. Main Pluses. The main thing is that after 6 months, the folks doing this very simple, every-other-day program had significantly greater fat free mass (FFM) - or lean mass (eg, muscle) than the Control group. That's nice. But what is associated with this in terms of potential fat loss support? An upped metabolism, as measured by various metabolic resting rate measures. Faster metabolism is a known associated outcome with exercise; that means more fuel will get used more quickly. For example, 24hr energy expenditure went up from 13091 kJ's a day to 13618. That's a big deal.
And one more finding - the RQ measure - checking expiration gasses - showed that the (resistiance training) RT group seemed to have an upped "fat oxidation" level - that is, burning more fat for fuel, as opposed to carbs. That's what we want from exercise: more fat burning.
Reality Check. Working out alone doesn't cut it for fat loss. In the results, both groups over six months had their weight go up and their BMI go up. That's not good. BUT the fat mass increase in the RT was "non-significant" at 3.3% but definitely significant in the C group at 8.8%. Note, there was no specified dietary intervention in the study; the only mandated change was the exercise program:
Differences in reported dietary intake (total energy, carbohydrate, fat, protein) were not significant between the baseline and intervention periods for either RT or C, or between the 2 groups during the intervention. The mean intakes for total energy, and percent of dietary carbohydrate, fat and protein were 9538 kJ/day, 50%, 34%, and 16%, respectively. There was no difference for either group at baseline and 6 months between energy and macronutrient intake during the three days of standardized food prior to or during the calorimeter stay.In other words, eating habits didn't change BUT over six months, these folks gained lean mass, had there metabolic rates go up, and instead of losing fat free mass as in control, had their fat free mass go up.
Take Aways. So what are the possible take aways from this study? One the authors suggest is that 11 mins. of resitance trainging might pose an interesting alternative to cardio/aerobics. As the authors state "the positive influence of even a small amount of RT on fat oxidation suggests an important role of RT on body mass management."
So imagine the benefit of combining a minimum 11mins of resistance training with some simple non-calorie-counting nutrition habits (like those found in precision nutrition) and who knows how the world might change?
Simple Program for fat loss? workout: 11mins of resistance, 3 days a week + nurtition: Change one thing a month with say the PN habits (download), and suddenly persistence of simplicity carries the day.
If you try this approach or know someone who will, pleaes let me know how it goes.
Citations
KIRK, E., DONNELLY, J., SMITH, B., HONAS, J., LeCHEMINANT, J., BAILEY, B., JACOBSEN, D., & WASHBURN, R. (2009). Minimal Resistance Training Improves Daily Energy Expenditure and Fat Oxidation Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 41 (5), 1122-1129 DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e318193c64eTweet Follow @begin2dig
Miller, W., Koceja, D., & Hamilton, E. (1997). A meta-analysis of the past 25 years of weight loss research using diet, exercise or diet plus exercise intervention International Journal of Obesity, 21 (10), 941-947 DOI: 10.1038/sj.ijo.0800499
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