Calculating Metabolic Rate – How To REALLY Do It

Metabolic Rate…Metabolism, BMR, RMR…these are buzz words that the diet and fitness media throw around all the time, however it’s greatly misunderstood.

There are many ‘metabolic rate’ calculators online that you can use to supposedly find out what your specific metabolic rate is by typing in your height, age, gender and weight. Some even have an ‘activity factor’ built into the calculator that is supposed to incorporate the amount of calories you are burning when you partake in various daily activities.

Do you think a simple calculator can really estimate your metabolic rate exactly?

Metabolic rate calculators are meant to be estimators, not fact. If you type your information into a calculator and it says your metabolic rate is 2500 calories per day, but when you eat 2500 calories per day you gain weight, then you have proof that your metabolic rate is actually lower than this number. You also have proof that the calculator is wrong.

This however is not how many people view this sort of situation. I get countless emails from people who say they’ve used a calculator and the calculator says their metabolic rate is X or Y, and when they try to eat that much they gain weight. Instead of believing that the calculator is broken or wrong they instead believe there is something wrong with themselves because they don’t fit into what the calculator said.

The tragedy is the fact that most people have the automatic assumption that they are broken instead of the calculator. This has to change if people are going to start having a healthier attitude and clearer picture of what it takes to get in shape and stay in shape.

In today’s podcast, we’re going to get to the bottom of what is behind metabolic rate calculators and what we know about metabolic rate in general.

We’ll explain how you  should view the numbers these calculators give you and how to use it as a general starting point to explore where you  might need to start if you’re trying to lose weight or get in shape.

Once you start viewing these calculators for what they really are you, can let go of any potential roadblocks or fears you might have about your ‘metabolism being broken’.

John

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Deconstructing Media – How To Read Between the Diet & Fitness Lines

Diet and fitness information can be found in print, television, online, from health care practitioners, and just about everywhere else. It seems that everyone has an opinion on what to do for ‘fitness’ and ‘health’. So how do you know who to listen to and who to ignore?

The words tell a difference story when you know whats going on behind the scenes

Is it as simple as picking one group of people and following everything they say? Or is it more prudent to pick and choose from various camps and philosophies and piece together your own unique system?

How do you even know where to start? Do you need to go back to school for a degree in physiology? That sounds a bit drastic. It makes more sense to just follow the advice of a professional who has already done this work. But just like any profession, some health care practitioners aren’t as good as others, and the message you get from them depends on the medium.

The story you’ll get from a practitioner when you see them in an off the record face to face conversation can be drastically different from the story they might write in an article for a popular website or magazine. You have to learn how to consume recommendations and information based on the media and platform it’s being delivered from.

In today’s podcast Brad and I break down an article that was sent to us online. We’ll teach you what specific buzz words to look out for and what they mean legally. We’ll explain what influences most articles you find in print and online and how the message can become distorted.You’ll see how selectively pointing out parts of the truth and leaving out other parts can paint a picture exactly opposite of what the facts say.

Finally you’ll learn how to think your way through any article you read and decide if the message is credible, has any real backing in science, is worth looking into further and ultimately taking action on.

John

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The Lifestyle of being in great shape: Interview With Jason Gottlieb Part 1

There is some down time and recovery time that we all need after dieting and training hard and pushing our bodies to a new level.

Managing the physical and physcological states after recovery might be an even bigger challenge than getting in shape in the first place. You can trick yourself into thinking that maintaining your new shape is effortless but it isn’t. Staying in shape takes a new kind of effort compared to the effort it takes to get into shape in the first place. This is the elusive state of ‘maintenance’ that seems to be the hardest part for most people.

Jason got into awesome shape

This is the Adonis Index look

At some point you need to come to a realization that it has to become a lifetyle that you live and embrace. It’s something different from preparing for a contest or dieting for a photoshoot. In many ways it’s less strict and less intense, but it’s a new skill set and a new mindset that you must learn.

Once you’ve gone through a transformation you will know what it takes to change your body and you’ll know that you have it in you to do so. Maintaining that new body is a different step entirely. The physical effort isn’t has hard, but the psychological and mental effort will be a new challenge and new learning experience.

It’s not always going to be an all or nothing 100% blitz the way a contest or photoshoot prep is. Maintenance requires smaller changes but ones that must last for longer.

The real game of maintenance is not a physical one but a psychological one. It’s learning to see what you really look like on a daily basis. It’s learning to adjust your daily routine and your social routine to fit with your body ideal goals as well as your social goals. It’s learning to manage your overall stress and pick your spots when to push hard and when to back off.

This is the first part of a two part podcast were Jason and I talk about how he managed his condition and learning to maintain his shape from one contest to the next and got into phenomenal shape and won the open contest. We discuss how he is learning to deal with maintaining his new shape and some of psychological tricks he uses to objectively perceive where he is and not let his mind play tricks on him  (and believe me, your mind will play tricks on you)

This is something we all have to deal with after getting in shape. Making it a lifestyle and having the body you want on a daily basis while enjoying life is the ultiamte goal. Jason has made some major strides to making this a real lifestyle and he shares them with us in this two part interview. Today is part 1.

John

Branched Chain Amino Acids – Benefits, Side Effects, and Real World Results

Branched Chain Amino acids (BCAA’s) are a popular supplement in the bodybuilding industry, specifically they’re marketed for building muscle, preserving lean muscle during dieting, and even increasing fat loss while dieting.  But do any of these claims hold up to scientific scrutiny?

(women click here for your version of this post)

BCAA’s – Should you take these suckers or not?

When you take a closer look at the research you’ll find out that the experiments on branch chain amino acids are done with a very specific timing and protocol with specific end point measurements. Fitness marketers then tell you to recreate the experimental settings in your daily routine in an effort to mimic the results of the study.

But what are the results anyway? Most people just want to build muscle and drop bodyfat and look good…and I can tell you that neither muscle building nor fat loss are ever measured in these studies. In almost all cases the research looks at surrogate end points such as protein synthetic rate which is then extrapolated to mean ‘muscle building’.

In today’s uncensored podcast, we’ll discuss the research on BCAA’s what the methods and results mean and if you should even take them.We look at the effect popular fitness media has on our choices in supplements and how the success of one supplement can mold our opinion of other supplements.

Things to consider are your personal fitness goals, your current state of health (are you lean, overweight, obese, diabetic etc), the amount of time you have to spend working out and the amount of money you have to spend on supplements.

The intersection of your training experience, your goals, what you expect from BCAA’s and your budget will determine if you should take them or not.

John

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Lean Body Mass Lies Within Common Fear Based Marketing

The diet and fitness marketing world largely functions on fear based marketing. The basic template is to throw some science-y sounding terms at you that make you believe there is an absolute right and absolute wrong way to go about losing bodyfat and gaining muscle mass.

You might describe Greg Valentino as having a pathologically high level of lean body mass.

Even though millions of people on a daily basis gain muscle and lose bodyfat doing it their own way, the marketing will have you believe most of them are doing it wrong and that the consequences are dire.

One of the most pervasive marketing induced fears is the fear of losing muscle mass when you decide to diet down and reduce bodyfat. This message has been trumpeted for years and now it is taken as common knowledge that when you eat less calories you will automatically lose muscle mass.

This is an illogical fear as anyone who has gained muscle in the past knows that muscle mass is not a constant state, but is more correctly viewed as a transient state based on multiple factors including your hydration status, your current training status, your age, use of drugs or not, genetic predisposition, injury/sickness status (ie: do you have a broken bone, tendonitis, a sprain, the flu etc).

Somewhat ironically fat mass is more stable on a day to day basis, but can be changed quite rapidly by simply increasing or decreasing your calorie intake. Muscle mass can appear different on a day to day basis based on hydration status and some of the other aforementioned factors, but it takes years to build it up.

Diet and fitness marketing is training us all to always look at the cup as half empty. When we lose bodyfat, we’re told that we’ll just ‘gain it all back when we got back to eating normal’. Conversely when we lose some lean body mass (and potentially some muscle mass) while dieting we’re lead to believe it is gone forever and we can never again build that muscle mass back up again.

We’re taught that almost any action we take is a lose-lose situation.

Losing and gaining lean body mass is at the root of the fear based marketing directed at men who are working out trying to build muscle and reduce body fat.

This fear mongering has to stop, and in today’s podcast Brad Pilon and I try to put a stake in the heart of this message once and for all to help clear your mind and remove any mental roadblocks that might be holding you back from getting into your best shape.

We’ll review some research explaining the concept of pathological increases in lean body mass, and the fact that being obese might actually bring with it too much lean body mass that must come back down to physiologically normal healthy levels before you can truly have the body you want.

We’ll also discuss the difference in perception of gaining and losing muscle mass vs fat mass, and how the human eye can detect very subtle changes in your body shape that can play tricks on your mind if you’re not prepared to deal with the visual changes that come with dieting and training.

John

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Learning to Maintain a Change: Interview With Erik Ledin Part 1

Getting in shape is a lifestyle not a destination. It’s an ever evolving process that changes throughout life as you change.

Learning that your body and you fitness and your shape is a not just a moment in time, a contest, a one day goal, but rather it’s a lifestyle.

Erik is one of the best in the business for getting people prepped to be on stage.

Sure you may compete in a contest, one of our contests, or getting in shape for an event or a photoshoot, but you must understand it’s just a stop along the way of the bigger journey of your life.

Date specific motivation can help push you to a new level of body composition and fitness can help kick start your journey, but it cannot be your only way to motivate yourself.

Adopting a lifestyle of training and fitness is with an eye on your diet as it relates to your body composition is truly a lifestyle change and a way to live for your entire life and not just a 12 week run at an event.

Today’s podcast is a part 1 of a two part series I did with a friend and diet/fitness coach Erik Ledin.

Erik has over 11 years of experience coaching people into the best shape of their lives from pro bodybuilders and fitness competitors to every day gym rats and stay at home mom’s who just want to finally get in shape.

We’ll dig into the psychology of diet, training, and the common post contest malaise that hits many competitors. We also talk about what it takes to finally adopt the true lifestyle of taking care of your body and staying in shape…the elusive state of ‘maintenance’.

Erik will also walk us through is philosophy on how to prepare for a show/event. We talk about the psychological issues, dieting, training and how your past history of dieting and training is going to define what to do with your body right now.

Listen up cuz this is an awesome interview.

John

P.S. The audio file ends rather abruptly today, it’s not an error, its just my less than adequate editing skills!

P.P.S. You can read more about what Erik does at this website here: Lean Bodies Consulting

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