Tag Archives: diet

Using a Paleo approach for weight loss and muscle gain

Posted on 15 February, 2017 by Will Nicolson | Leave a comment

Up until now, we’ve largely focused on using paleo, primal and ancestral teachings to clean up our diet and lifestyle. Admittedly, these are two of the 3 key pillars of true health and happiness…but what about the third? That third pillar, in case you’re wondering, is exercise, and it’s arguably the biggest element of health that people are most confused over.

Throw your conventional view of exercise out the window

Think of exercise, and your mind turns into an infomercial. State-of-the-art treadmills, high-tech ellipticals, snazzy rowers, bouncy things, multi-purpose things, ab-tightening devices and, if you’re getting a bit racy, perhaps a rack of ultra-polished dumbbells. It’s ok – my mind conjures up much the same images as well, despite the fact that I’ve completely retrained how I approach exercise. That being said, what you need to do before we progress is metaphorically (and perhaps literally, if there’s no-one directly below) throw that cheesy infomercial-style gym equipment out the window.

This equipment is designed to provide a “quick fix” in your quest for a better body. But really all it’s doing is introducing convenience into the mix: with the exception of dumbells, you don’t have to think about the exercise you’re doing. Just jump on the treadmill, tap a few buttons, and you’re free to think about all of life’s other troubles. I still do a double take when I see someone hop onto the stationary bike, pick up a magazine, and just cruise for half an hour. Those same people invariably wonder why they’re not losing weight, when they’re hardly even getting their heart rate up!

Next, stop pounding the pavement and wondering why you’ve got injuries coming out your ears and the weight refuses to budge. Repetitive movements like this put the body under extreme stress, due to repeated impact with hard surfaces and physically jarring the bones and ligaments of your legs and feet. And when the body is under stress, it holds on to all the fat it can – thinking that there are hard times ahead. Do you really want to look like a long-distance runner, anyway? They’re all stringy and unhealthy looking…typically because they are unhealthy!

Finally, stop finding excuses to NOT exercise! You literally don’t need anything to get a good workout – just a few square feet of empty floor space. Abandoning this reliance on fancy gym equipment or even a nice spot to go running will ensure you don’t ever miss a workout opportunity.

High intensity training for weight loss

High intensity interval training, or HIIT, is all the rage in the alternative fitness circles these days. And it’s with good reason – HIIT offers vast quantities of calorie destruction with just a fraction of the time (and money) investment compared to the average gym or cardio workout. It’s now a well-accepted fact that our bodies respond better to short, focused periods of exercise. A 10 to 15 minute HIIT workout does that – elevating your heart rate, jump-starting your aerobic system, and fatiguing your muscles in a concentrated time slot, which minimizes the amount of stress you’re putting your body under. Remember, less stress means more weight loss, and achieving higher intensity means more calories burned faster. It’s a win-win, really.

In my opinion, if you’re looking to kick that jiggly belly or Beyonce butt fat quickly, ditching the elliptical or long runs and adopting HIIT 2 to 3 times a week is the far better option. If you’re searching for inspiration, a good starting point is to get your hands on a proven workout program. Dr Josh Axe’s “Burstfit” program provides super-intense workouts that’ll get you sweating and probably swearing a bit as well. But it’s not for the faint of heart. Otherwise, if you’re not looking to make quite as much of an investment, this DVD series comes well reviewed and for a fraction of the price.

Heavy lifting and bodyweight for muscle gain

If you’re looking to simply stay toned and slim, a few high intensity workouts per week is probably sufficient. But if you’re looking to bulk up, develop those biceps, broaden those shoulders or chisel those abs, you’re going to have to introduce something else into your life: heavy lifting.

Lifting heavy weights, otherwise known as resistance training, is an excellent way to shock your muscles, which signals to your brain that you need an increase in muscle mass in that region in order to prevent muscle damage. The heavier the weight, the greater the mass added – in theory, anyway. But this doesn’t mean that you should jump in the deep end and start doing 80-pound dumbbell bench presses when all you’ve been doing before is 10 lb bicep curls. Start by performing a 8-10 rep set of the exercise with a given weight. If you perform that set too easily with the weight, increase the weight until it becomes difficult. If you only manage to do 7 reps with that weight, use the next lightest weight. And so on.

Next, focus on key areas for your resistance training. Don’t be fooled by those buffoons who stand in the gym doing bicep curls for what seems like hours – if they’re looking like the Hulk, it’s probably because of all the nasty protein shakes and freaky supplements they’ve been taking. You don’t want to be that guy or gal – they might look good, but they’re not healthy!

Key areas are those that work out a full range of muscles at one time – these include squats, deadlifts, shoulder presses, kettlebell swings, and maybe the odd bench press. Compound exercises with heavy weights are better than specific movements with lighter weights.

Finally, keep it short and simple. As explained above, spending too long on a workout can stress the body and curtail your results. 20 minutes max of resistance training, only 2 to 3 times per week, and ideally only 3-5 exercises per workout. It’s quality that we’re looking for, not quantity.

Getting creative with workouts is key

Two of the biggest reasons why many people fail to stick to their exercise goals are:

They get bored of their workout routine
They use lack of access to “equipment” or the gym as an excuse not to exercise

Regarding the first point, it’s super important to mix things up on a regular basis. Changing up your workout at least every 2 months, if not more regularly, will ensure your brain doesn’t get bored and, more importantly, your body doesn’t get bored of the same repetitive movements. Performing the same series of exercises week after week can cause your body to plateau, meaning your muscles become accustomed to the movements and stop growing and/or burning fat. Besides, you want to look forward to your workouts, right? Not dread them. And if you find you can let your mind wander during a workout, you need to change it up, fast.

Regarding the second reason people fail to reach their exercise goals – this is where it can get super fun! When I travel or find myself in a new place, I take great pleasure in hunting around for things that I can use to formulate a workout. People seem to think that you need to have designated exercise equipment in order to exercise. Wrong!!! So wrong. If anything, that equipment makes it too easy to perform exercises, and the whole point is to challenge your body, not take shortcuts.

Even at home, I prefer to use unconventional tools and items to pizazz up my workouts and challenge my muscles and coordination in different ways. At the moment, I’m using a 10 liter container of filtered water as a dumbbell/kettlebell replacement (10 liters = 10 kg, which is a good weight for many exercises – just make sure it has a handle!), and a yoga mat. That’s it. And between the two of them, I can do a huge range of exercises.

Here’s a few other things that you can use when you’re away from home or the gym to get a good workout:

Strong lateral branches on trees, for chin-ups, wide-grip pull-ups, leg raises (abs), or simply hanging
round, heavy rocks (these are great for things like weighted squats, swings, lunges, and deadlifts – just make sure you have your shoes on!)
open fields or parks, for sprints and bodyweight exercises
sledge hammers/log splitters – these two provide some of the best workouts on the planet. Provided you have something solid to hit (like a tyre for the sledgehammer or a log – duh! – for the axe), they work a wide range of muscles throughout your body. Ten minutes with these bad boys and you’ll be hurting! Be very mindful of your form, though, and of your own safety.

The point is, get creative – the world is your oyster when it comes to exercise! If nothing else, investing in a kettlebell is a very wise thing to do, as there’s such a wide array of exercises you can do with them and they’re easy to transport. For men, I’d recommend starting with a 20 lb kettlebell, and for women, 15 lb or less should be effective initially.

Diet can make or break a weight-loss regime

Ok, so you’ve integrated all of the above considerations into your workout routine and you’re still not getting results. What the heck is going on? If you’re not losing weight or putting on muscle as desired, look to your diet.

With regards to weight loss, probably the number one dietary roadblock is carbohydrates. Whether they come in simple sugar form, or complex form, an overload of carbs can provide excess energy that you’ll struggle to burn off, even with those high intensity workouts. Here’s a few weight-loss pointers regarding carbs:

cut your fruit intake back to one or two servings a day. Sure, they’re nutritious, but they also contain a heap of fructose that elevates your blood sugar and is easily converted into fat in your body. If you must partake in some fruity goodness, stick to low sugar-fruits like raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, lemons and the occasional orange.
abolish all processed foods – these invariably contain a truckload of sugar. That includes “gluten-free” products as well.
stick to complex carbs like sweet potato, squash, and green plantains. Don’t go overboard on these either!

Streamlining your diet for maximum muscle gain

Next, if you’re like me and struggle to put on muscle mass, you need more protein!! I can’t stress this enough. There seems to be some notion amongst many people that it’s easy to get too much protein in a given diet – newsflash: it’s not easy at all! You have to eat a LOT of protein to even come close to exceeding your daily maximum, and the truth is that most people aren’t getting enough.

According to Tim Ferriss in The 4 Hour Body (an excellent read, by the way!), you should aim for 1.25 grams of protein per pound of lean bodyweight, which means you subtract your bodyfat first. I’m 167 pounds and, last time I checked, I had a bodyfat of 14 %, so I aim to eat 143 grams of protein per day. It’s not easy, but it makes a real difference to building muscle mass. Chris Kresser largely agrees with Ferriss, and in some respects advocated even more protein. For more information on the subject, check out this article.

Ultimately, everyone can benefit from more protein in their lives. And I find one of the best ways to increase protein intake is to add in a high-quality protein powder. We’ve talked before about how awesome this grass-fed, organic whey protein powder is, but if you can’t stomach dairy then Chris Kresser recommends this hydrolyzed beef protein – arguably the best source of protein on the planet.

Top tips for success

Scrolled through all of the above but still confused? Here’s my recommendations in a nutshell.

Weight loss:

replace low-intensity cardio workouts with high intensity (HIIT) workouts, 2-3 times/week
mix up your exercise routine at least every 2 months, and get creative!
tone down on the carbs, especially simple sugars.
continue to eat a paleo-style diet

Muscle-gain:

lift heavy stuff! Ensure you factor in 2 to 3 resistance training workouts each week. Limit workouts to 3-5 exercises (e.g. squats, deadlifts, bench press, shoulder press) and less than 20 minutes in duration.
ensure at least 2 rest days between workouts to allow muscle recovery.
get lots of protein. Lots. Consider introducing a high quality protein into your diet.
stick to a paleo-style diet, but considering introducing grass-fed, organic milk for extra protein and fat.

Good luck on your quest to a better body, and let us know how you get on!

Wanting to detox and beat sugar cravings? Think about your genes.

Posted on 3 November, 2014 by liivih | Leave a comment

I’ll be the first one to put my hand up and say I feel like I’ve spent a lot of my life struggling against my body. Having a naturally stockier build, or ‘sausage body’ as I like to lovingly call it, I definitely went through a chubby phase in my tween years.

Struggling to lose weight & feel good

It’s a classic story a lot of people can probably relate to, men and women alike. Working through puberty, wanting to look good and feel attractive, all while being bombarded by all sorts of confusing, conflicting and media-hyped messages about fitness and nutrition. I remember always being told that if I exercised enough, I could eat whatever I want. However, being a bookish kid, I usually didn’t exercise much, but still wanted to eat tasty snacks. So I would feel guilty about food and always be trying to “eat less and exercise more”.

How guilt-inducing, frustrating and exhausting is the Eat Less & Exercise More approach?!

All too many people, myself included, find that that whole thing only ends with disappointment and hating your body even more. It’s high time for a better strategy.

Surprise: you’re an animal!

Here’s a thought: last time you went to the zoo and you were looking at those chimps and gorillas, did it strike you how similar they are to us? How despite all our fancy clothes and perfumed soap, we’re really just animals too?

Animals don’t sit around stressing about whether they ate too many bugs or leaves, they just know what’s right for them to eat, and how much, and they just go on enjoying life with a fit, muscular, healthy body. Shouldn’t we feel that way too? Wouldn’t that be incredibly liberating?

If we look at ourselves as the ‘humanimals’ that we are, living in our habitat, we can gain insight into what our genes are programmed to thrive on, and understand why we may seek out or crave certain foods. From that basis of simple knowledge, we can move forward eating and enjoying food care-free, while having that fit, healthy, happy body.

Understanding the ‘humanimal’ mind

You’re going to be so relieved after you read this. There is a solid scientific reason you crave, dream about, and feel drawn to all those tasty sugary naughty junky foods. Your brain is literally programmed to be able to pick them out of a crowd.

The reason is that we’ve evolved very little since we were hunter-gatherers, living off of the land and what we were lucky or clever enough to find/kill that day. Therefore if we were scanning the landscape and there is a calorie-rich food source visible (let’s say some nice sugary berries) our eyes snap right to it and we feel alarms in our brain like “FOOD! RIGHT THERE! OMG FOOD! EAT! EEEEEAT.” This is because in general the hunter-gatherer approach would be to eat more when food is available, since we don’t know if it will be available tomorrow.

Well, your brain has precious little, if anything, different from that hunting-gathering ancestor of yours. So you get precisely those same EATRIGHTNOW signals when you slap eyes on an ooey-gooey grilled cheese sandwich, or a picture of a chocolate cake. (I started drooling typing that, wow. There’s the animal brain for ya!)

Cravings are not a bad thing

We’ve been taught and guilted into feeling like whenever we crave a food, we are naughty naughty bad and we should just quell that down and control ourselves. If we give in to cravings we will just be fat and ugly forever.

Newsflash: those cravings are literally programmed into your DNA. They are your body telling you what it needs right now.

But, this message comes with a very important caveat. These days, our body’s signals can be a liiiiiittle bit confused, what with our modern flashy environment and unnatural foods and chemicals and distractions, etc. So, your body may be telling you that you “need to eat 2 burgers and an ice cream after yes definitely the ice cream”, however there is a lot at play there.

You also may crave more food after you’ve just eaten because the food may not have been very nourishing, or you may be needing water. Therefore your body sends signals to eat more because it is seeking more water or nutrients.

It doesn’t know how to tell you “I need vitamin C!” or “Feed me some omega 3’s!”, all it can say is “eat!” and hope that it can get some of what it needs from there.

Our ancient brains are overwhelmed in this modern world

Studies show that historically food would definitely not have been constantly available, and we would have been a lot more programmed to be able to survive off of fat stores. We would be easily able to switch to burning our body fat to get us through a few days of not finding much food.

The problem is nowadays we have food available constantly. Our monkey brains are programmed to pick out high-carb, sugary foods to be able to survive and get energy fast, but now we’re literally surrounded by those foods, at arm’s reach, ALL the time. And our monkey brains still want them just as bad.

Foods high in carbs and sugars convert to fat the fastest when we eat them. They are a quick easy source of energy and our bodies just love to store them away for later use. That includes a sweet potato or whole-grain cereal just as much as a cupcake or chocolate bar.

Because these foods burn the fastest, they often leave us in the lurch. We swing from “Mmm yummy i’m full that was delicious” to “OMG I am HANGRY, FEED ME NOW”, waaaay too fast.

The thing is, once you understand WHY you have cravings and get hungry way too often, it’s so easy to re-program your approach to work WITH your genes and that crazy monkey brain.

It doesn’t need to be complicated. The monkey brain is simple, and we can have it in our palm in no time. How to get there you ask? It’s all about breaking the sugar/carb addiction, and choosing more nourishing foods.

How to keep your monkey brain happy, not hangry

Eat more fat – Yes, fat! Avocados, salmon, coconut oil, grass-fed butter, full-fat milk, full-fat greek yogurt, quality cheese, eggs. It’s aaaaall good baby!
Eat good quality protein – Organically raised, happy, free-range animals and fish. Dairy and eggs from the same.
Get good sleep – Those hunger signals we were talking about before get just sooo much more confused when you are tired. The energy has to come from somewhere, and if you’re not rested, you’re going to be mighty tempted to get it from a chocolate chip muffin.
Use a proven plan – I love programs like the 21 Day Sugar Detox, which is wildly popular and gets rave reviews left right and center. It’s a fast and well-tested way to press the reset button and learn how to work WITH those genes instead of against them.
Lose the body shame! – Once you understand what you’re genetically programmed to want, you realize it’s not your fault. Using a simple program like the 21DSD teaches you to be confident in the right food choices, enjoy eating, and get on with living life! Enough said!

I hope you’ve enjoyed these guidelines on how to make your genes work for you.

If you want a well-engineered plan to take away all the mind-sweat and give you an excellent kickstart, more info on the 21 Day Sugar Detox can be found by clicking the image below! Cheers!