What I meant by can of worms term is that 'weight loss', to most people, equals what they see on a scale. 250lbs last week 240lbs this week. I have lost 10lbs. While technically true, it means close to nothing. Chances are, that person lost 8lbs of water from system shock and dehydration, .25lbs of actual fat, and 1.75lbs of muscle from malnutrition and the persons body going into starvation mode. Drag this out over a longer length of time, the dehydration lessens, but the others remain somewhat constant. Causing a longer term problem with the loss of actual lean body mass, which in turn lowers metabolic rate, etc, etc...

Would you say that overtraining...for example burning 2000 cals a day through cardio while only eating 1200...can also cause this type of problem? I've been trying to burn 1000 cals a day in cardio, sometimes twice if I do cardio before and after work.

Btw someone brought in a load of donuts and left them in the faculty lounge at work...man that was tempting and ordinarily I would have scarfed 2-3 without even thinking...but I willed myself to walk away. lol

At my age almost everything I eat turns to blubber regardless of how much I work out. My largest downfall is craft beers. I love em and they are LOADED with empty calories.

Yes, that will cause serious problems. You're body will be going to your lean mass/muscle and stripping it down for energy (which is what calories are) if you are only eating 1200 calories a day. And if you're burning 2k a day through cardio alone, you need to put the other ~2500 you are probably burning anyway. So if you're short 3k calories, you're asking for trouble. Fat is stored energy that your body burns when you are in a caloric deficit - but so is muscle and if you are consuming too few calories (which 1200 is), then your body will strip your muscle for energy

Read this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate

Personally, my body needs ~2100 calories a day just to support vital functions (my BMR). A day at work without the gym is going to add over 1k calories on top of that. Obviously several hundred more when I do hit the gym. You NEED to eat enough to allow your body to function properly. Try to find a calorie estimator online, and just subtract 10-20% of that for your daily goal. If you keep eating 1200 calories a day, you're going to wither and look & feel like hell.

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I know there's some guys in this thread that really know their stuff, and I'm curious to get some opinions on this guy's plant based diet. Not looking to go vegan, oh hell no, but this guys seems to have some solid concepts and articulates them clearly and I'll take help from wherever I can get it.

http://thriveforward.com/

Here's an introductory video:


I came across this because I gave up sugar for 30 days a little over two weeks ago and I found it difficult to shake the cravings so I was googling around exploring different ideas.

Basically where I'm at is I lost 60 lbs from May to the beginning of December, and since I've only lost 5 lbs. I've got that last 20lbs of bodyfat I'm trying to get rid of and I'm definitely putting in the work in the gym. Clearly the problem is with my diet and it seems like I have issues with craving sweets, especially in the mid to late afternoon.

anyway, look forward to feedback and opinions.

Thanks

-s

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I don't want to sign up for that site so I'm only going by the video. Obviously promoting eating plants and whole foods is a fundamental to good health, but I don't care for the "nutrients matter, not calories" angle. When you eat a plant based diet and are a distance runner, you're going to burn a shit-ton of calories so you don't have to worry about calories. And personally, I don't want to look like that guy. Vegetarians are no doubt healthy (if they do it right) but if you weight train and want a decent amount of lean mass, you're going to be missing out on some complete proteins by going truly vegan.

I know guys like Tony Gonzales claim to be vegan and are totally yoked, but he apparently supplements with soy protein and still eats some chicken and fish - and, I would imagine, a ton of grain and bean based carbs. But again, most of us don't exercise for a living and have access to what he does. I think it's decent advice to train and eat like the guy you want to look like.

I don't think giving up something is the answer - like the guy says in the video, if you completely restrict something or an entire group, you're probably going to struggle. Obviously sugar isn't something you want much of, but having a couple pieces of chocolate during the day or after dinner won't hurt. People seem to get tripped up with the "everything in moderation" mantra, because they think they can have a bunch of small servings of their vice food(s) every day. Long term trends are what count with weight loss, so you have to be able to sustain something sensible and effective.

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I've found that keeping some type of carb and protein constantly in my system helps me avoid the urge for sweets. Its when I'm feeling starved and blood sugar is low that chocolate seems flat out irresistable. One reason why I drink a protein BCAA supplement drink immediately after working out now.

As for fruits and veggies, they are important now because they have antioxidants and help flush out free radicals from your system after exercise.

I found earlier in my diet when I was just eating raw veggies and fruit at lunch, I felt like I couldn't work out as hard as I do when I have some pasta or rice with lunch.

Alcohol along with a high carb meal is very bad as well. Carbs are great, just have to make sure one is using them for energy and not eating an excess before going to sleep.

Plant based diets and I don't get along, so I won't really have an opinion on the video. I will, however, reinforce the age old adages that "you are what you eat" (careful guys this isn't the shack ), and "abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym". Those last 20lbs are the hardest to get rid of, but they will come off over time if you're diligent.

I may disagree with this guy (and Jester) as to WHAT the primary foods of a diet are, but I certainly don't disagree with the premise that fit doesn't necessarily equal healthy. My 'fitness level' is more a by-product of my lifestyle than anything else, and I let it go at that. I'm healthy in the sense that I'm rarely ill, my body feels good for the most part, and my measurables are all within range. (Other than BMI since I'm a 235lb, 5'10" powerlifter)

My household (everyone in it) regularly spend 4 to 5 days per week in the gym training toward some goal. Mostly something competitive because we believe that there is an extra drive that you get by training for a competitive purpose. This could be anything from a big powerlifting meet or strongman competition for me, to a mud run or 10k for one of my daughters. We also all kind of follow the same type of diet, with individual tweaks, and individual weaknesses. Non of us are perfect, and all of us have one or two food nemeses.

Personally, I follow a mixture of intermittent fasting and carb backloading. So a typical non-training day would look like;

• Wake up at 5am having roughly 10 hours of fasting since 7pm, the previous nights dinner
• Continue fasting until 11am or so to get somewhere around 16 hours of fasting in
• 11am - Eat some form of protein (MEAT) and a green leafy salad
• 4pm - Syntrax whey isolate protein 32oz water / 52g Protein
• 7pm - Eat some form of protein (MEAT) and a green leafy salad

And then a typical training day would look the same, but I would eat ANYTHING (and I mean anything. Think doughnuts/ice cream/gooey pastries) that I have been craving post training session, and I would add another 32oz protein drink pre-workout and a 24oz BCAA drink intra-workout.

I don't drink alcohol, sodas, or any other sugary or super sweet drinks. (Again, this isn't ALWAYS. My wife and I share a popcorn and Mountain Dew at the movies.)

Six months ago, I would have agreed with you Anguish. After watching the documentary "Forks over Knives" and then backing up the claims in it by reading The China Study and multiple writings by nutritionists and doctors, I am sold on a whole-foods, plant-based diet (I don't use the word 'Vegan' unless I'm trying to order at a restaurant). I don't want to save the whales, and I'm not even against eating some chicken or fish now and then. I'm still planning a nice prime rib on my birthday.

There is an ever increasing amount of empirical and scientific data to back up the concept that animal based products are not good for your overall body health. I didn't 'give up' anything. I started increasing my intake of nutrient-dense badass superveggies (Kale is one of my favorites) and found that other foods didn't 'feel' right anymore. Your body will let you know how it feels about your dietery selections, you probably just haven't been paying attention (If your bowel movements could set a record at the NFL combine, you're doing it wrong). Over time, I just decided that an apple sounded better for breakfast than a doughnut because I didn't feel like shit after I ate the apple. I can still eat doughnuts, I just choose not to 99% of the time.

I'm going to give dairy it's own paragraph here because I think it's up there with sugar among the worst things you can put in your body and it gets pushed as a healthy food choice by the American media constantly. Just think about the purpose of cows milk for a minute. A baby cow is born and it drinks milk as it's sole source of nutrition so it can go from being a 60lb baby calf to a several hundred pound cow that can feed itself. When it's big enough to feed itself, the cow doesn't drink milk anymore. So unless you're planning on quintupling your bodyweight over the next year or two, dairy products should be extremely limited in your diet. Dairy also promotes the growth rate of cancer cells btw. If you're going to do it though, look for organic, grass fed dairy products.

This is getting stupid long, so I'm going to keep this part short. Organic is a must for most foods. GMO's are bad, duh? At the very least, google "The Dirty Dozen" for veggies and buy those organic (Potatos and Apples are consistently the top 2 but it changes every year). If you've ever seen a cow farm (a meat farm, not a dairy farm) it's gross as hell. They are packed in like sardines on a packed dirt (no grass) patch of land and they just dump corn mush on them to feed them. Chicken farms are nasty too. Get free range, air cooled chicken (if it isn't air cooled, it's been cooled in a big vat of water and chlorine).

We had a whole thread on sugar here a few months back. Google 'Sugar the bitter truth' for a sciency video about sugar. The guy in that video also has a book out, I forget the name at the moment, but it covers a lot more and tones down the science to a more layman level.

Absolut, totally get you on the 'moderation' line man. Moderation doesn't mean you can have a little bit every day it just means you can enjoy a treat once in awhile and if you're taking care of your body correctly, meaning your waste handling mechanisms aren't all jammed up from eating an American Diet, then your body can process that load just fine (pun intended).

TL;DR Go organic, don't eat dairy, limit meat intake, sugar is bad.

P.S. I can't speak for powerlifting because I don't think that's a natural function of the body, but there are several Vegan/Vegitarian MMA Fighters that don't seem to have trouble getting enough of what they need from a plant-based diet. Link

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President of the Perfect Parents Society - est. 2013

This is really good stuff guys.

I'm working off the assumption I have cravings in the afternoon even after quitting sugar because my diet is deficient in something. I don't think it's lack of calories. I use a service called training peaks and log all my workouts and everything I eat so I'm not rationalizing or doing anything crazy/unsound. I even use a withings wifi scale that takes my weight and bodyfat% and automatically uploads it to training peaks.

I'm trying to operate at -1kcal/day 6 days a week to produce just shy of 2lbs of bodyfat loss a week. as I've lost weight my BMR has of course been dropping, and I don't burn as many calories from working out since I'm in much better shape now (my lactate threshold is 163 beats per minute which is damn good for a 42 year old man who was an obese smoker less than a year ago). I've been doing the work, logging the data, everything that was working for me up until December but I have less wiggle room to work with calorie-wise and these late day cravings keep sabotaging me.

I've always thought I had a glucose sensitivity since I have a really bad sweet tooth hence the reason for the sugar quit. I can tell you I fall asleep more easily and sleep better since I kicked the sugar to the curb, but the hunger pangs late in the day have not gone away and so there's still a mystery here.

I'm not kicking my whey powder and my meat to the curb. Hell no. But I'm open to getting away from prepackaged foods and moving more towards eating whole and unprocessed foods. This sugar quit has really opened my eyes to just how pervasive it is, it's in frigging everything! Try to buy one bag of groceries at the store that has no refined sugar or high fructose corn syrup in it and you'll quickly discover what I mean.

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You have destroyed us. You found the flaw in the crystal. We are gone. You are alone.

If you're just into the whey protein for the protein, get yourself a real blender (Vitamix) and make your own 'shakes' (green smoothies).

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President of the Perfect Parents Society - est. 2013

I have a blendtec and make smoothies whenever it's practical. The whey shake is the post workout recovery drink, not dragging my blendtec to the gym! Lots and lots of research showing that whey protein taken within 20 minutes of a workout produces the best bang for the workout. the longer you wait to take in the recovery drink the less good it does you.

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You have destroyed us. You found the flaw in the crystal. We are gone. You are alone.

Well, I think hairs are being split over "plant-based." Meaning it isn't meat based but that isn't the same as being vegan. This is right from the article:

"Training for his fights now, Fitch has adopted a new fighter diet along with a few other UFC guys. The new MMA diet has gone vegetarian. They haven’t done vegan, as fish, eggs, and whey protein are still part of their competition and training diet."

A lot of china study, vegan rhetoric is anti-protein. Obviously this isn't the case here. Start with whole foods, eat the right amount of protein, carbs and fats for your goals and don't be stupid with processed foods is pretty much how I go about it. I guess I've just gone through enough rounds with people who think protein is the devil that I'm a bit jaded by the subject.

And stop being scared to learn how to weight train and making excuses about it not being natural

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There's certainly a lot of things that are not food in our food nowadays.

Jester, check your pm's

Not as much as the supp companies lead you on. theres a lot of recent info about the "post exercise window" being debunked. If you're eating properly throughout the day, then you're fine. I stopped taking whey after a workout a long time ago and havent noticed any difference at all. I go home and have dinner, which is probably the most anti-catabolic thing you can do.

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Well that's interesting. This crap is so confusing!

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You have destroyed us. You found the flaw in the crystal. We are gone. You are alone.

Well, the idea is to make it not confusing by being consistent with meeting your goals each day. You can essentially disregard nutrient timing since you aren't a professional athlete/Olympian. Just hit your goals for protein/fat/carbs every day with good food and you're fine. Theres pros & cons for everything as far as when to eat, fasted training, etc. But at the end of the day, if you ate when you were hungry and when it was convenient, ate decent food and hit your goals, you can't come up with a con for that.

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Who's anti-protein?
http://www.3fatchicks.com/top-8-vegetab ... n-protein/

I generally don't recommend playing with soy proteins lightly, some soy stuff is pretty bad for you too, but it is pretty protein dense. I haven't done a lot of research here since my wife is allergic to soy anyway, we just kind of skipped it all together. But it's there if you want it, just do some research first.

I'm not debating at all that protein isn't part of a healthy diet, clearly it is essential to have protein. You can get it without the meat though. I didn't work too hard for that link, I know there is at least one UFC guy who is vegan and you can find plenty of athletes who eat a vegan diet.

I don't think we're very far apart, and I don't think either of us is intent on making changes, but I wanted to add those bits to the discussion.

Oh, and I'm not afraid to weight train, I think I misread weight training as bodybuilding, which when taken to the extreme doesn't reflect anything that the average person needs. Maybe it isn't possible to get the protein you need to be Mr. Universe from plants but that doesn't concern me.

BTW, how much vitamin K is in your chicken?

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President of the Perfect Parents Society - est. 2013

I meant other people that use the China study and veganism as the construct for ideal health I've "debated" with have been oddly anti-protein, I didn't mean you.

Powerlifting and bodybuilding are different things. The last thing my body is capable of is a defined muscle, so I just lift to get stronger and because I can't run.

But more interestingly, you found a girl to marry you? Good god man, how much chloroform did that take?

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My real life persona is much more accommodating to members of the opposite sex. I'm just a nerd / nice guy who likes to rage on Seahawks message boards. Incredibly blessed with an amazing wife, we just celebrated 10 years in July.

P.S. About 12 pints.

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President of the Perfect Parents Society - est. 2013