My Ah-Ha Moments

By Mark Young

We’ve all experienced those moments where, in a burst of insight, we say to ourselves “Ah-Ha” and something complicated suddenly becomes remarkably clear. This article will detail 5 of the most powerful Ah-Ha moments I’ve had in my career.

Calorie Intake Controls Your Metabolism

If you want to lose weight you need to eat more food. When you follow a calorie restricted diet, your metabolism falls to match your intake.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say your metabolism is burning 2000 calories per day. This is determined by the exercise you do and the amount of energy your body requires just to keep you alive. If you eat 2000 calories per day your weight will stay the same because there is no difference between what you’ve taken in and what your body has burned off.

You want to lose weight so you decide to follow a calorically restricted plan and drop your calories to 1200 (or even 800 as some poorly constructed plans suggest). This creates a difference of 800 calories per day. For a week this amounts to a total of 5600 calories or 1.6 pounds of fat!!! Not too shabby.

After a month or two on the plan you’re down a ton of weight, but you’ve noticed that your weight loss has slowed significantly. The problem is that your body has determined that you are starving yourself and it has decided to slow down your metabolism to match your intake as a protective mechanism.

You’re still consuming only 1200 calories per day, but your metabolism is now burning off 1500 so the difference is only 300. This is obviously much different than it was before and now you’re only losing just over half of a pound per week. You decide to stick with the plan because it has worked so far and maybe things will sort themselves out.

Your body decides to show you otherwise and continues to decrease your metabolism until you reach a complete plateau. Your metabolism reaches the point where it exactly matches your input and you can’t lose a single pound. You reduce your calories a little more, but the same thing happens and you’re almost at the end of your rope. Finally, you resort to exercise, but you’re far too exhausted because your intake is too low to give you the energy or nutrients required.

Eventually the frustration is overwhelming so you ditch the plan altogether. From the months of starvation your cravings are intense and at this point you could care less about what you stuff in your face so you’re packing in everything in sight. You’re following the See-Food Diet. If you see it, you eat it. You’re eating more than you used to eat and you’re probably consuming around 2400 calories per day. But your metabolism has not budged and is still running at 1200 calories so the difference is 1200 calories per day in favour of fat gain. This amounts to almost 2.5 pounds of weight gain per week! That’s faster than you lost it in the first place. In three months you’ll be at least 10 pounds heavier than when you started!!!

Keep in mind that this is the BEST case scenario because it assumes that all you lost during the first three months is fat and that your muscle mass (which burns calories) was left intact. Sadly, this is rarely the case. At this point if you started another calorie depriving plan you’d repeat the process only to do more damage and result in more weight gain.

5 Hours of Exercise is the MINIMUM Required for Long Term Weight Loss

Here are two scenarios designed to produce a weight loss of about one pound per week:
(Note: We don’t actually count calories at our facility. This is done for demonstration purposes only.)

Scenario #1:

Average Daily Calorie Output (Metabolism + Exercise 2 hours per week) = 2000 calories
Average Daily Calorie Intake (Food) = 1500 calories
Difference = 500 calories per day

Scenario #2:

Average Daily Calorie Output (Metabolism + Exercise 5 hours per week) = 2500
Average Daily Calorie Intake (Food) = 2000 calories
Difference = 500 calories per day

While on the surface these might look like the end result is the same, I can guarantee you that the physique produced by scenario #2 will be leaner and healthier than the physique produced by scenario #1. There’s even research to support it.

Of course, many dieticians would disagree, but if you don’t believe it I’d suggest you try it out for yourself. We’ve done it both ways and the difference has been astounding.

I won’t get into the science of why it works (that’s a whole other article), but a great side benefit is that when you exercise more, you get to eat more. When you eat more you can consume more nutrient rich foods that supply your body with the vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients that your body requires to leave you feeling totally energized. When you’re energized you have less cravings for junky food. At the same time, your metabolism climbs not only because of the exercise, but because you’re consuming more food.

The only thing you have to do is make time for the five hours of exercise per week and consume the right foods and the transformation will be INCREDIBLE. Not only will you look better, but you’ll feel like a million bucks.

Core Training Might be Useful After All

I’ll admit it. I’m quick to resist trends. When someone comes up with a new diet or a new exercise program I’ll read the information, but unless it is backed by science and a long history of successes I won’t give it a second glance. The tried and true methods are usually the best.

When core training burst onto the scene a few years back the only information about “the core” was a slew of marketing hype and complete garbage with no reference to scientific material or even anecdotal results. It was a media driven circus and people were dropping loads of cash on stability balls and wobble boards like crazy. In fact, many chiropractors I know still do this. I basically bucked the trend altogether and didn’t give it another thought.

For years my wife urged me to reconsider my decision and I finally came around this past year, thanks to her persistence. What I discovered is that there is more to the core than balancing single legged on a Bosu ball with a blindfold and singing “Gonna Make You Sweat” by C&C Music Factory.

Sure, there are still plenty of shady people capitalizing on the public desire to find some new and exciting quick fix, but I’ve finally come to terms with the word core. It still doesn’t mean what most people think it means and most people are still doing it wrong, but I’ve accepted core training as a mainstay in our programs…and that’s a huge leap for me.

By the way, if you’re looking for an incredible resource about the appropriate use of stability balls and similar devices check out “The Truth About Unstable Surface Training” HERE.

Crunches are a Completely Ineffective Way to Train the Core

The “core”, as we’ve discussed, is often a catch phrase used to sell overhyped and overpriced exercise programs on late night television. It is also composed of more than just the abdominals that everyone so desperately desires.

In reality, the core is made up of all of the muscles that surround and provide support to the middle of the body. It contains, the rectus abdominis, internal and external obliques, transverse abdominis, multifidus and other low back extensors, glutes, and maybe the even the hip flexors just to name a few.

To start with, crunches are bad for a couple reasons:

1. When spines are tested in spinal research labs they use machines that bend them back and forth repeatedly until a disc herniates. This is exactly what crunches are doing to your spine. If it helps, try to think of bending a credit card back and forth repeatedly. At first you’ll start to see the card turn white as the plastic weakens and then eventually…SNAP. It’s all over and there’s nothing you can do to bring it back to the way it was before.

2. Most people are dominant with their rectus abdominis (the six pack muscles) and have underactive external obliques. Since crunches only train the rectus you’re only contributing to something that is already an issue which can eventually lead to lower back pain.

However, the main issue with crunches is that they don’t allow the abs to function in the primary role they were designed for…to support the core. If you question this notion, just think about the last time you walked around a social gathering doing a crunching motion. Unless bowing is very customary around your friends (this would mean bowing every second or so) you’d probably look nuts.

Static exercises like planks, deadbugs, pallof presses, chops, and lifts are the very best way to train the abdominal portion of the core because they train all of the muscles that function in the role of stabilizers as they’re meant to be used.  In fact, the guy in the picture above probably doesn’t do any crunches at all!

You Can’t Possibly Know Everything

I know stuff. In fact, I feel that I know a lot more than a lot of people and I work hard every day to stay on the cutting edge. However, the single greatest lesson I’ve learned over the course of my time in this field is that no matter how much you know, you can never know nearly enough. Every time I start to forget this fact I pick up a book, listen to a fitness audio CD, or go to a conference and am completely floored by how much I still have to learn. What’s even tougher to take is that whenever I learn more, I know that people are continually coming out with new stuff to learn. Sometimes I just wish people would take the next 100 years off of producing great information so I could catch up.

Of course, I’m being facetious here. I absolutely love the influx of new information all the time. It makes me feel alive and reminds me that there are so many more exciting things I’ll be able to attain in my lifetime in this industry.

In my attempt to stay current I read for AT LEAST half an hour each day while walking on the treadmill each morning. (By the way, this gets in an easy 3.5 hours of exercise per week above and beyond my workouts…while multitasking!) In fact, I usually read more than that (about an hour per day).

Despite my efforts, there is always going to be more to learn and this is one of the most humbling and exciting things about working in this field.

Why should you care about this?

Because it reminds me that most of us spend countless hours doing mindless activities each day like watching TV or surfing around for people we don’t even like to pad our friend list on Facebook. If we all took just half an hour per day to learn more about something we really wanted to know or doing something we’ve “always wanted to do” our lives might look totally different than they are.

Posted: December 9th, 2008 at 03:15pm By: mark