Well I usually hang out on the urbanfreeflow forums but decided to come around here a bit to see how your forums were. I'm relatively average in parkour but my big interest lies in fitness so you'll see me post almost only in this section. This is an article I wrote for the UFF forums about a week ago, and as I had promised M2 when I accidentally contacted him (thinking he was still a mod on UFF), I'm posting it here for you guys. I'm planning to write some more, covering specific diets for cutting/bulking/maintenance and parkour specific fitness. That should be coming along within a week from now.

Enjoy.

Part I: The foundation of healthy habits[/size]

Here we will discuss the basic things that you will need to consider for living a healthier life. These are all little things that you need to take into account every day in order to succeed. The most important thing when choosing a new diet or exercise plan is commitment. In this first article I am mostly going to discuss the very basics of good nutritional habits for those who have no clue where to start. If you already have some knowledge in these things, simply brief over this section and move on to the next.

Goal setting
You don’t generally decide to change your life habits just for the heck of it. People do that because they have goals that they want to achieve (be it losing weight, gaining muscle, or improving athletic performance). The first and most important thing is to USE these goals to your advantage. This isn’t a psychology paper, but you need to know that goal setting is the most important part of anything you take up. If you have no goal, you won’t commit to what you are doing and you will just give up after a few weeks. Set yourself some realistic goals to reach within a realistic time frame. Log your results in a chart to see how you progress, look at yourself in the mirror to see any changes… Do whatever it takes but you need something to motivate you, to keep you pushing on. Enough of that now, and let’s get into the more interesting stuff.

Micronutrients
We have all had some things hammered into our heads by our caring parents in our childhood, like “Eat your veggies, they’re good for you!”. I’m sure everyone has been told that once. Well our parents couldn’t have been more right. Too many people look at nutritional data in terms of proteins, carbs and fats. This is wrong because even though you can find yourself meeting your daily requirements of these macronutrients you can have a severe lack of micronutrients (vitamins & minerals) that will hamper your recovery and diminish the effectiveness of your workouts. Studies have proved that most amateur athletes had this problem. Unfortunately it cannot be fixed by simply popping a few multi-vitamins in the morning. It will help, but a balanced eating plan will make that so much easier. What this means is simple: eat as much fruits and vegetables as you can. They are good for you and you can sue me if you manage to grow fat by eating too many apples and carrots.

Macronutrients
Another important thing to consider is the macronutrient balance. You can vary it quite a bit depending on your current exercise plan and goals, but there are basic rules that you need to know of. First of all, high GI carbs are the plague. What is a high GI carb? Anything that’s remotely close to sugar is one. Carbohydrates have the property to trigger an insulin response when they are digested. High glycemic index (GI) carbs will cause a massive insulin spike in your bloodstream. In fact, an increase in your blood sugar level (or glucose) will cause the pancreas to increase insulin production. Insulin is an anabolic hormone that does a number of things. Mainly, it increases glycogen/fat/amino acid synthesis by a great deal, forces the reduction of protein degradation and forces cells to absorb circulating amino acids. These high GI carbs also tend to be stored as fat if there is nothing else to do with them. Lower GI carbs generally release their energy at a much slower rate so there never is a surplus of glucose to be absorbed in your cells. There is one moment in your day where it is advisable to consume high GI carbs, but I will be covering that later on. On the other hand, low GI carbs are excellent for you. They provide you with a steady amount of energy that will last a few hours after the meal instead of having a peak.

Second, trans fats should also be avoided as much as possible. They are un-saturated fats (aka good fats) that got transformed into a very nasty type of fat. This happens when the manufacturers add hydrogen to a vegetable oil to make it more stable. There would be no trans fats if the process was allowed to complete it’s cycle, but the problem is that fully hydrogenated oils would be like a solid wax and could not be used for anything. So they partially finish the hydrogenation of their oil (which is why we always see “partially hydrogenated” oils) and this causes the molecules to reconfigure, swapping the hydrogen atoms around the chain of the double bonded carbons that did not become chemically satured. This is why they are called “trans” fatty acids. Their has been a direct link that has been made between the consumption of trans fats and such things as obesity, metabolic syndromes and diabetes.

Third, un-saturated fats can be consumed more than you think. A lot of people think all fats are the same and should all be avoided. Fats are a very calorically dense food that provides you with quite a bit of energy. Essential fatty acids are even more required because they cannot be synthesized by the human body from the other fatty acids. This means that if you don’t eat them, you won’t get them. EFA’s are mainly hormone related, and most of their functions remain unclear to the public. I have to admit I have never looked into this myself and therefore I can’t say much about them, except the fact that you need them if you want a healthy and balanced diet. Other unsaturated fats such as those found in cold pressed vegetable oils are also excellent for you. They are a healthy source of calories that should not be overlooked.

You should also know that there are certain combinations that are good and others that are bad. This mainly has to do with the carbs spiking the insulin. Since an increased nutrient uptake will follow a high GI carb consumption, it is better to avoid consuming any fat along with these carbs. This would cause the fat to be sucked into your cells and stored there for later use. Obvioulsy this is not something desirable. On the other hand, if you consume some high GI carbs (after your workout, mainly), do take advantage of the increased nutrient uptake and consume some quality proteins with them.

Proteins really can’t harm you. Generally the old saying “the more the better” can apply for protein consumption as long as you try not to exceed 1,5 grams of proteins per kilogram of bodyweight. If like me you have a big appetite you’ll end up eating more than required, but if anything it will be evacuated by your body (a.k.a. you'll piss it out) if there is any excess.

Fluids
Now we have pretty much covered the basics of healthy eating. But what about healthy drinking? We all heard that it was good for our health to have some red wine at dinner. The thing is, alcohol fucks up your hormones every time you ingest even the smallest quantity of it. And the active ingredients that are good for you in wine are all found in better concentrations in green tea. So you’d be better off drinking that instead, since it also has the very interesting property to speed up your metabolism. Some brands have other things added to them, like my favourite: “Ginseng & Lemon Green Tea”. Tastes real good and the ginseng helps with providing a bit of energy. But you’re not going to be living off green tea. One or two cups of it each day will be enough for a sufficient metabolism boost. I honestly have no idea of the actual benefit it gives for the metabolism, but in the complicated fields of metabolic balancing any boost is a good boost.

Now something else you need to consider is water consumption. Intense athletic activities such as parkour or working out will undoubtedly cause your body to lose a lot of water. You need to replace this water by drinking A LOT. Probably a good 80% of the population doesn’t drink enough water. It’s a pure fluid, that helps clean your body by washing out the bad stuff. When you don’t drink enough water, the kidneys can’t function to their full potential so part of their workload is transferred on to the liver, who has to work double time. Water helps fat metabolism by reducing the stress on the liver (by making the kidneys more efficient) so it can fully perform it’s duty at maximum capacity. On the other hand, water costs nothing. Compare that with the standard energy drink at two bucks per bottle, and you should be saving a lot of money. There are numerous other benefits that I won’t list here because it would be way too long, but I want you to understand that water is ESSENTIAL for you. Drink as much of it as you can.

Generally it is a good advice to avoid any beverage that contains calories. Now obviously you are not going to stop everything – I know I like my orange juice in the morning – but you definitely need to cut out all the sodas, energy drinks, gatorades, powerades, etc. Some of these can be good after your workout to replace the lost fluids while spiking your insulin, but if they are consumed at any other type of day they are just contributing to make you fat. Also avoid the diet sodas, even if they have no calories the crap they contain is of no good to your health.

Metabolism & hormones
Your metabolism is probably one of the hardest things to understand about your body as it fluctuates greatly throughout the day. There are an almost infinite amount of causes that will make these fluctuations happen and for the most part they are hard to define. However, muscle building and weight loss are both closely linked to your metabolism so you better know the basics of how it works. Your Basic Metabolic Rate (BMR) represents the amount of calories you will burn throughout a day if you sit still and do nothing. It depends mostly on your age, fitness level and genetics. Some people are born with lightning fast metabolisms that burn 2500+ calories per day while others have very slow ones that will burn a short 800 calories per day. The average is located somewhere around 1500 calories per day. The more muscle you have, the higher your BRM will be to maintain this muscle mass. As an example, we can take two 200 pound guys weighing 5’9’’ at 20 years old. One has 8% body fat and the other has a whopping 24%. The lean guy will have a much higher BMR since most of his mass is composed of muscles that need to be fed if they are to be maintained while the fat guy will probably have a very low BMR. Makes sense? Good.

Now, the basic hormones in your body that you want to keep at a high concentration in your bloodstream are HGH (human growth hormone) and testosterone. There are tons more, but they will generally react favorably to the things you will do for increasing HGH and testosterone levels. In short, hormones have key fat burning, muscle synthesizing and cell regeneration&growth properties that really cannot be overlooked. Hormonal balance, coupled with your metabolism, is what will make or break your success in the gym for the most part. These are of course affected by your life habits, so it is exact to say that your general life habits (eating, sleeping, etc.) are what will have the most effect on your fitness level.

Now you have probably figured out that having a high BMR is a good thing. It allows you to eat more and not risk getting fat and generally people with higher BMR’s will have more energy throughout the day. Here are a few things that you should do to ensure that your metabolism and hormone levels are high all the time. Keep in mind that these tips are VERY important since a high metabolism, combined with high levels of growth inducing hormones will undoubtedly generate very impressive results in the gym.

First off, a regular sleep pattern is required if you are to have any success. A hard working athlete needs to have a minimum of 8 hours of sound sleep per night. This is not easily done for most of us college students since most of the social life at this age seems to be happening at night. You can get away with 7 hours of sleep, but less than that will really hamper your results by a good deal. Find a way to get in this sleep as it is extremely important. When you break up your muscles in the gym, they essentially remain broken up all day. It’s when you’re sleeping at night that your body repairs these micro-tears in the muscles to make them bigger and stronger. Not getting enough sleep will make your muscles take longer to recover and they’ll generally end up not being ready for the next workout, still sore from the last.

Metabolism and hormones are also affected to some point by the exercises you do in the gym. Working all in isolation exercises, for example, won’t trigger much response for your body. For maximum hormonal and metabolic response to be reached, you need to recruit as many muscles as you can for every exercise. This means you have to pick compound movements that will make many muscles work at once. Such exercises are the squats, leg presses, deadlifts, bench presses and pull-ups (and all of their variations). It is okay to work on isolation exercises to finish your muscles after they have been thoroughly exhausted by the compound exercises but this kind of exercise that work only one muscle group at a time should never be the bread & butter of your workout plan.

Another thing that will play an important role is keeping your body well fed throughout the day. This means splitting up what you are currently eating into 5-6 smaller meals per day, that have to be taken at a 3-4 hour interval. This will keep a constant flow of nutrients coming to your muscles and organs so they never have to destroy their own cells for energy. While the whole of America seems to be stuck with the idea that 3 square meals per day is good for you, it’s really time for things to change. People tend to over-eat at all of these three meals and this is what is making the populations more and more fat. Eating a reasonable amount of food 6 times per day is incredibly better as it will keep your metabolism constant, and your body will remain an anabolic environment (anabolism = creation of new cells because there is an excess of energy ; catabolism = destruction of existing cells for energy purposes) all day long.

Post-workout nutrition
Good, well-planned, post-workout eating habits will also tend to favour an anabolic environment and good hormonal levels. The science of post workout nutrition has been researched a lot throughout the years and it is one of the only things in the fitness world that most trainers agree on. As explained earlier, high GI carbs will cause a massive insulin spike. You can see insulin is a nutrient shuttling platform. So, if you consume a rather large amount of fast GI carbs immediately after your workout, you will have an increased nutrient uptake capability. This is very much enhanced by the fact that after an intense workout your cells are literally starving and they are dieing for these said nutrients. These two factors create a “window of opportunity” that will last approximately an hour after the workout where nutrient uptake, carb efficiency and protein synthesis will all be maximized. To make the most out of your workouts, you need to use this by consuming some proteins along with this high GI carb drink.

What happens is that the increased carb efficiency will cause close to 100% of your high GI carbs to be stored as glycogen in your muscles. This is because your glycogen stores are depleted and need to be refilled. This analogy should help make things clearer: when your car’s gas tank is empty, you need to fill it up if you want to keep going. If you think of your glycogen stores as the gas tank, your body works the exact same way as a car. You’re out of fuel and you need to refill. Isn't it simple?

The reason you want to consume these proteins along is simply because their synthesis is maximized at this time, so some fast digesting proteins are called for if you want to quickly get these amino acids into your muscles. Optimally a hydrolyzed protein shake would be called for, since hydrolyzation is a process that makes the proteins partly digested so that your body can absorb them almost immediately. These proteins (generally in powder form) cost quite a bit of money however, and are not easily accessible to anyone who is running on a tight budget. So if these are not an option, simply opt for some egg whites not too long after the work out.

Now the ratios: this all depends on your weight and age, but consuming between 50 and 80 grams of the fast sugars, along with 30 to 40 grams of proteins has been found to work best. Some people go crazy on the sugars and will end up consuming up to 160 grams in their post-workout shake. This can be good for hard-gainers with very fast metabolisms but it is not advisable for most trainees since some of these sugars are likely to be stored as fat. A very cheap and effective weight gainer combination that I am using is 600-800ml of chocolate milk with anything that contains proteins. Sometimes an energy bar, sometimes liquid egg whites, and sometimes protein powder.

- End of part I -

peace.

I suppose you already know your stuff very well by the way you talk 

There will probably just never be a common agreement on some things in the fitness world... Which is actually a great thing because strenght coaches and trainers always try to find other ways to show that their way is the best. Anyone who's read about fitness a bit knows that there is no "good" way to do things. The is one general trend that almost everyone seems to be following. The article I write was more for getting beginners to follow this general direction, which seems to be right for the most part. When I get into the details of advanced nutrition I am sure that we will find lots of things to argue on because ressearch in these fields is contradictory for the most part.

Do you have a link to this study about fastings causing an anabolic environment? I'd be really interested to learn more on that. Never heard about something like that before... And I also can't really figure out the science behind it by myself.

peace.

Princess, go to the Crossfit.com message board and search for "Intermittent Fasting", there is tons of discussion on there about it. Most notably, Robb Wolf and the entire crossfitnorcal.com crew have been tweaking the protocol for some time now and have seen some impressive strength, lean-body-mass and energy increases without any of the potential fat-gain that some people experience with the whole post-workout nutrition protocol. You might also dig through the archives on http://www.arthurdevany.com/, as he applies a cool intermittent fasting concept to his training and has results that are astounding. He was featured on T-nation at one time...lemme see if I can dig up the article....

Woot, here it is:  http://www.t-nation.com/findArticle.do?article=05-124-feature

Either way, it's majorly intriguing! The most interesting thing seems to be this: Caloric restriction has been shown to increase longevity in laboratory studies. The downside is that it leads to a decrease in muscle-mass along with all important anabolic hormones. Then comes Intermittent fasting, which appears to have all of the life-extension benefits without any of the downsides.

For me, I have a hard time making IF work on a daily basis, it just always seems that my schedule changes enough each day to negate it being practical...maybe it's a cop-out because I love to eat, but just like you said, there's no "right" way, so much as there's an optimum way for each person.

Either way, I love the article, and I'd love to have you contribute more often to the site! The way I see it, the more information the better, and if you ever quit learning you might as well quit altogether!

Edit: Oh yeah, and on the note of the final part about sleep; for some more interesting info on that, check out the book "Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival". If  you can get past the reactionary writing-style it has some very interesting info about the effect sleep has on our metabolism/gene-expression.

Great gear.. Thanks a lot.

Will be reading that tomorrow morning I suppose. And also I'm thinking the cross-fit forum can be an interesting place... never checked it out before. You'll probably see me coming here on a daily basis, since I partly came to this site searching for a good fitness forum.

peace.

Just finished briefing over a few articles/ressearches about IF. I'm pretty interested - enough to give it a try. What I'll do is eat nothing after dinner until 9-10AM, after my PK or lifting session. Then I'll get in my usual food for the day... And keep going that way for 2 weeks. I'll see if I lose or gain any weight. I have a slight concern though: right now I'm following a very high calorie bulking diet (probably in the order of 3500-4000 calories per day, since I've got a damned ectomorphic metabolism) and I'm not sure I can stuff all that food in between 10AM and dinner time. I'll have to find a way, but it's already hard to do it when it's spread between 8AM and 11PM.

And one more thing: do you believe it's actually something that would promote muscle growth enough to work in a bulking diet? I've seen all the benefits IF brings (longevity, reduced heart disease risks and so on) but didn't really read anywhere that it would be good for gaining a lot of muscle mass. And since my stupid metabolism already makes it hard to put on muscle I'm worried that IF might not be too good for me right now. AND, I really don't want to lose weight 

peace,

Sounds good to me.

MSN: devil_face33@hotmail.com... I'm sorry I don't got IM. Could always download it though.

I'm pretty sure this should be a pretty interesting experience. The method I used the most frequently in the past to estimate my daily caloric needs was to play around with Berardi's massive eating calculator (http://johnberardi.com/updates/july262002/na_masscalculator.htm) and with other BMR calculators I'd find on google. I've never really looked into the zone diet to be honest and right now what I'm following is much closer to a 55/30/15 (carbs/prots/fats) than to the zone's 40/30/30. Anyways... just add me on msn or let me know if you'd rather have me download IM.

peace.