Barnson.org

Bodybuilding.com’s resident twelve-week transformation specialist, Kris Gethen, has put out a free video series on how to do your own twelve-week transformation with him as your virtual personal trainer, with a video for every single day of your transformation:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/12_week_daily_video_trainer_main.htm

I’m excited to follow along as I undertake my current twelve-week challenge. What kind of body will you have by May 31?

–Matt B.

The U.S. is left with a disaster scenario thanks to Presidemented Bush. His work destabilized our nation and imperiled long-term safety and prosperity. Meanwhile, I’m so fed up with the Obama administration already. For his entire campaign we heard “change”. This guy hasn’t brought any change. He’s brought “tinkering”. His slogan should have been “tinkering we can believe in”.

This made me realize, thanks to a recent post by Matt, that the two political parties really don’t have anything to offer as a distinguishing platform. Nobody in today’s two-party system is really out to change anything. They’re only out to amass power and then minutely tweak existing systems to keep their contributors appeased. Never mind we have some systems that are truly broken. Keep adjusting, tinkering, modifying, but don’t bring any real ideas to the table that result in change. That’s the Democrat and Republican way.

When was the last time you truly trusted people in government to come up with the big ideas? If I had been voted President…

1. NO LONGER ARE WE A SUPERPOWER. The United States is no longer interested in serving as the global police. We are done with holding everyone’s hand. We’re trying to put a democratic government into a nation half a world away but we can’t put a man in an apartment here at home? NATO – over. UN – over. We are people who raise kids, play baseball and grow old. Please come visit us because we like tourists. We hope you like our food. But don’t expect us to pick up the phone for your request of military, diplomatic, or economic intervention unless a true coalition of the willing amasses and brokers our involvement.

2. SELL ALASKA AND HAWAII. I’m looking at a ridiculous deficit. I’m also looking at two states that came into the union in 1959 and today account for less than a percent of our population. On the 50th anniversary of their ratification into the union we are packaging them for sale to Russia for half a trillion. I only wish we could sell Texas to Mexico as shameful punishment for Bush.

3. ACCEPT THAT SOMEONE NEEDS TO BE BETTER OFF AND SOMEONE NEEDS TO BE WORSE. We become an export country. The only way we ensure continued safety and prosperity is by building things that other countries want. A societal mores is continuously promoted that levies honor and accolade among those people who build and ship things that other countries buy. We prop up industries that serve other countries buying needs. We penalize those industries at home which are the tantamount of massaging each other’s back for no real productivity gain. For example, lawyers get a salary cap because they do nothing except translate English into a language nobody else can understand. As a result of all this, the U.S. becomes valued for something else entirely, which means…

4. CUT MILITARY BY 66%. The reason we currently need to have a big military is because we operate as the world’s superpower. We don’t need a military if we become innocuous. I think our #1 export right now is our military. And we’re paying for it. But each person in the citizenry will serve in the military for 2 years between the ages of 19-21. We all learn how to defend.

5. INSTITUTE THE FLAT TAX. The last thing we need is keeping 2.5% of our population working to help the rest of us figure out the 9,000,000 worded tax code. It’s out. Flat tax is in.

6. END THE RIDICULOUS OVERVALUATION OF PEOPLE WHO CONTROL MONEY. Explain to me again how investment bankers on Wall Street really help actual growth? They are vapor paper. Capitalism only goes as far as production and sale of exports takes us.

7. STOP BAILING OUT BROKEN SYSTEMS. When something breaks, it breaks for a reason. Trying to revive a dying fire with watered-down sticks doesn’t do anybody any good. We either retrain labor or don’t get involved.

8. A PENAL COLONY FAR AWAY. With the proceeds from the sale of Hawaii and Alaska we buy some land that becomes a distant penal colony. If you are charged and convicted of a serious offense, you are going far away to a cold and terrible place where criminals are tossed together in a hellish pit of terror. All the jails here are closed.

9. EVERYONE MUST SERVE IN THE POLITICAL PROCESS. Similar to mandatory military service, everyone must take part in some way in our political process. Through volunteering, appointment or weekend service, everyone is involved with the process.

10. LIVE AND BREATHE A MANDATE THAT ESPOUSES REAL ‘VALUES’. We are happy to live in the hills, the valleys, the shadows of tall trees. We are happy to share the earth peacefully with each other. We trade in ideas and intellect. Come over and meet my family. A smile is mightier than the fist.

So the Wife o’Weed has received an iPhone 3G. I’m sure I’ll answer this question as I play with it, but why would I need to jailbreak it? What apps or features would I need that Apple doesn’t allow?

Any advice or recommendations are welcome

Thanks Weed

Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/startrek/startrek_trailer3_large.html

As I’m sure many of you have noticed, I’ve slowed down a lot on the blog postings. Despite my goal of “a post a day”, I’ve realized that I just don’t have time for all the things I want to do in a given day without sacrificing something.

What is the thing slowing me down lately from what I want to do? Well, as you probably guessed based on the content of my recent blogs, it’s mostly the whole fitness thing. Relentlessly tracking food intake, hitting the gym, and living an active lifestyle takes a lot of time and mental effort. An overwhelming amount at first, but the amount required seems to be tapering off as I grow more comfortable with my new habits.

But in all of this, the quest for balance continues. I want enough time for my family. For my wife. For my blog. For my work. For my hobbies. Can I do it all in one day? One week? How do I achieve balance in so many areas of my life?

The further I get along as an adult, the more I’m starting to realize that, at least temporarily, one must become unbalanced to regain balance in life. As a for-instance, during college we spend an inordinate amount of time on studying and in class so that we can have the fundamental knowledge necessary to survive and do well in our chosen professions. Once in the workplace, the hard work in school simply fades back to quiet mastery of the subject at hand.

The same lesson seems to apply to physical fitness. I’ve simply never been a fit person, nor have I ever established a long-term routine, gained the background knowledge, or even developed enough of an interest in the topic to be effective at keeping myself fit. Now that I’ve realized some of the benefits, I’ve been consuming information like a starving man consumes food after a long fast.

Isn’t that the way it is with so much of life? To achieve true balance, I first must be unbalanced in order to gain mastery over an area of my life. Then once I’ve gained that mastery, the confidence and competence that come with such wisdom allow me to re-establish a new sense of order, with the new-found knowledge taking its place as part of a harmonious lifestyle.

I think I’ll come through it much better for the effort. But to achieve my long-term goals, in the short-term I’ve had to sacrifice some of my favorite pleasures. Thanks for hanging with me through the intermittent silence and myopic focus I’ve had lately.

–Matt B.

One of the revolutions in personal diet management in the 2000s has been online diet-tracking software. Two of the leaders in this personal tracking area are Fitday.com and LiveStrong.com’s The Daily Plate. Both play an important role in improving the health of Internet-connected people everywhere, but have strengths and weaknesses

1. Fitday.com. If you are extremely detail-oriented, you’ll love Fitday. It gives you details on everything you eat, and you can break it down by macro and micro-nutrients. If you purchase Fitday PC, you can track everything without having an Internet connection, and it offers much more detailed reporting. With personal customizable foods, easy data entry, and superb reporting tools, it’s a great combination of ease-of-use with advanced reporting and monitoring tools. Even more advanced reporting and utilities, as well as freedom from advertisements, are available with their Premium membership.

2. Livestrong.com’s The Daily Plate. This has a much, much larger database of foods than fitday.com because users can submit foods for everybody else. This makes it really nice for quick look-ups for on-the-go food tracking. You can even use an iPhone app to look up your food and put it in while eating on the road. Easy-to-use web interface, plugins to both Facebook and Twitter, it’s nice. Through their association with LiveStrong.com, The Daily Plate now has the benefit of large user groups, online forums, and social networking for fitness nuts. Big downsides: unless you buy a Gold membership, you can’t get detailed micro-nutrient tracking like on fitday.com, and eventually they delete your food history (not sure how far back it goes before they delete).

I used Fitday for my last twelve-week challenge; I’m using Livestrong’s Daily Plate this time around. I miss the detailed micro-nutrient tracking, but since I already have a pretty good idea of where my diet put me last time and I’m eating similar stuff (hey, I lost over 20 pounds of fat and put on 6 pounds of muscle, I’ll stick with the plan!) I know what the deficiencies tend to be. Basically I take a twice-daily multivitamin pack and eat plenty of spinach and other potassium-rich foods.

If you’re looking for some way to track everything you eat, both fitday.com and livestrong.com’s Daily Plate are superb resources with active communities of users and support. Heck, why not try both and swap between them based on your current needs? That’s what I’m doing, and both work really well to help me stay honest on my diet and fitness regimen.

–Matt B.

So on my “week off” from training — and with a very relaxed eating regimen — I decided to get my blood tested. This is after 6 months of low-carb and 4.5 months of lifting, with about 50 pounds of fat lost and 10-15 lbs of muscle gained. I was pre-diabetic before starting, and unfortunately diabetes isn’t really reversible… just controllable. I wanted a baseline of health markers before starting my next twelve-week fat-loss challenge.

According to my doctor, eating low-carb and lifting weights — or at least losing fat and lifting weights — is “the right thing to do for someone with a strong family history of Type 2 diabetes who is worried about getting it himself”. She’s Dr. Mardi Trunelli in Riverton, UT. Her husband body-builds, and I look forward to our next visit at the end of the twelve-week challenge I’m starting today.

Height: 6’1″ Weight: 220 lbs Body fat percentage: 18-20% (getting this tested at the “Bod Pod” tomorrow!) Resting heart rate: 72 Blood Pressure: 130/90 Cholesterol: 177 Triglycerides: 93 HDL: 54 LDL: 104-105 (derived figure) TSH: 1.9 Insulin: Normal CBC: Normal CMP: Normal

The good: * I’m pretty normal across the board. In the words of my doctor, “a perfectly healthy thirty-five year-old man”. * HDL above 40. * Triglycerides look really good. * LDL is close to optimal.

The bad: * I’m obviously still over-fat and showing the signs of it. I’m doing much better than when I was obese, but six months of right-eating and lifting won’t erase decades of zero exercise and eating crap. * Blood pressure is a little high. Given my low triglyceride numbers, according to my doctor it’s still very normal and not a significant risk because I’m under 40 years old, but I’d like to lower it to below 120/80. * Despite being “near optimal”, I’d like to get my LDL below 100, preferably below 60.

Prescription: More of the same, doing what I’ve been doing. Shed another twenty pounds of fat through low-carb eating and exercise. I shed 21 lbs of fat last 12-week cycle; can I do it again?

Yeah, I know there are people out there who got astounding results and double-digit fat percentage reductions during their twelve weeks. My eating plan is very sustainable, and from where I sit, I got into this for my health and hoping to avoid an early grave like my relatives. It took me decades to get this fat; it will take a while to come off.

–Matt B.

I admit it… I didn’t vote for the guy. But this quote today about his feelings on where our political party has gone in the past thirteen years or so sums is up perfectly.

“Our moral soapbox was completely taken away from us because of our behavior in the last few years,” he said. “For us to now criticize analogous behavior is hypocrisy. We’ve got to come at it a different way. We’ve got to prove the point. It can’t be as the Chinese would say, ‘fei hua,’ [or] empty words.”

Finally. A fellow Republican who gets it. I’m still a Republican because of the three tiers I consider fundamental to the platform:

1. Fiscal Responsibility
2. Strong military
3. Small government.

I watched my party rally behind George Bush Jr. in ever-increasing spending bills to fund a war that substantially weakened both our military capability through constant deployments and our National Guard through unheard-of mobilization levels. I watched as Homeland Security took over as arguably the most important and visible of all the Cabinet departments.

I’m sick of watching my party go down the tubes. Let’s get back to our roots: reduce government, reduce spending, keep the military strong yet little-used. And let’s stop being hypocrites who embrace those core values only when it’s convenient.

–Matt B. The Republican.

Santa Claus apparently is aware of my current fitness fetish, and graced me with one of the much-ballyhood, infomercial-promoted “Iron Gym” units. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s a chin-up bar that you can hook to a doorframe and take down without any permanent mounting hardware.

Now, if you buy it off the infomercial, they’re going to up-sell you on so much crap and shipping costs that you’re going to spend $70 by the time you’re done. On the other hand, you can hit your local Wal-Mart, CVS, or Walgreen’s and pick one up for under $30. You don’t get the ab straps, you don’t get the extensions, and you don’t get the longer bar, but what do you get?

Yep, a solid chin-up bar for less than $30.

So I’ve been using this for the past couple of months. At first blush, I had to laugh, because the infomercials advertise how you’ll get a “ripped, muscular physique” using the Iron Gym. When you pull out the brochure included with the product, the very first page is five diet tips, and then one tip to tell you to do the exercises included in the brochure to build muscle.

Yep. Basically, I could sell a bronzed Nike tennis shoe and sell it as The Iron Shoe, and successfully claim that you can get a ripped, lean physique by following these five diet tips and holding this shoe up in the air for 10 minutes every day. And I’d be right. It’s the diet that makes your abs show up. All it takes is a low body fat percentage. No device will make them show through 20% body fat.

But I digress.

Anyway, if you are in need of a chin-up bar, the Iron Gym does the trick. I could do two consecutive chin-ups in January, and now I can do six. Then take a break, come back, and do six again. After several sets, eventually I fatigue the muscle enough that I can’t do at least four, and I call it done for the day. My eventual goal is to be able to crank through twenty chin-ups without stopping, and twenty pull-ups without stopping so that I can be that guy who cranks out the chin-ups and is ready for more.

I’ve done some ab work hanging from it, and am tempted by the ab straps to make those easier with less strain on my hands and shoulders. My ab workouts have reached the point that I need to do leg lifts, and doing so from a hanging or dip position gives much more resistance than doing leg lifts on the floor. My only difficulty is preventing my body from swinging, and I bet that the hanging straps — or some DIY solution, since I’m too cheap to lay out the 10 bucks to order them — would help prevent the swings.

Push-ups? Sure, it works fine, and I don’t get the pain I usually get in my left wrist after a set using this instead of flat-on-floor pushups. Extra star since this works as advertised, and if you really want to do hard-core incline chest exercises to rip the pectoralis major muscle, put your feet up on a chair.

Dips? Yeah, the Iron Gym sucks for dips. Get yourself a chair instead, it works better with a much better range of motion.

Sit-ups? My couch does a much better job at holding my feet down.

But for a chin-up bar that you don’t need to permanently mount and that doesn’t damage your house, it does a great job. I store it in the laundry room, hang it from the bathroom door frame for my chin-ups, then remove it when I’m done. It’s convenient, takes little space, gives me a nice upper-body workout when I can’t get to a gym, travels easily, and is worth the $30 for those features alone. I like the multiple grip positions; in particular, the two perpendicular bars seem to really help me chin-up without additional aggravation to my delicate rotator cuff.

The reality is, you could go to the hardware store and pick up some spare pipe and mounting hardware for $5 to install a chin-up bar in your house that will give you equal benefit. The Iron Gym’s real benefits are portability, ease of use, and convenience with a chin-up bar that isn’t an eyesore when it’s not in use. Plus it doesn’t scratch the doorframe; nobody needs to have any idea that I use the bathroom door-frame for home workouts.

I give it four stars out of five. It only loses the one star because the infomercial exaggerates its benefits; you need to diet to get a ripped, lean physique, and some of the exercises they tout on the infomercial simply don’t work as well as they let on. The Iron Gym helps with the upper-body workout, works as advertised for chin-ups, pull-ups, and push-ups, but won’t get you there by itself. And particularly it won’t get you there if you don’t use it.

If you’re in need of a home chin-up bar and will use it, go pick one up today. If it’s going to gather dust in the garage, or if you have space to mount a chin-up bar permanently in your house, give it a pass.

–Matt B.

Received a question regarding eating low-carb from a rugby player over on my my favorite bodybuilding forum; I’m a little out of my element here, since I don’t play rugby, but some general advice seemed in order to answer this guy’s questions.

Let’s talk about muscle metabolism briefly.

Your muscles basically operate in two modes: * Lipolysis * Glycolysys

Lipolysis is the basic process used for fat loss. Your fat cells release fatty acids (or you ingest them and they come through the walls of the small intestine), which are then broken down by the liver into glycerol and fatty acid chains called ketones or ketone bodies. Your cells absorb the ketone bodies for energy. While fat is over twice as calorie-dense as carbohydrates, it’s much tougher to liberate the energy and this metabolic pathway is slow; even absorption of ketones — which are a preferred fuel source for cells — is slow. Gluconeogenesis, another process fueled by the liver, provides glucose derived from proteins. This is one of the keys of why low-carb works: you take advantage of this slower metabolic pathway that requires more chemical reactions, thus you can eat more overall calories and still lose an equal amount of fat. Dietary fat and protein are also highly satiating, which helps the low-carb dieter too.

Glycolysis is the basic process used for carbohydrate metabolism. Your pancreas releases insulin, which binds to insulin receptors on your cells and provides, if you will, a “super highway” of energy to your cells, with the insulin receptor/insulin pairs acting as the traffic cops directing huge amounts of glucose into a cell. The cell can use the energy immediately (well, it takes mitochondria to get the job done, but let’s not complicate this), or store it with other ingredients as glycogen in organs and muscles, or store it as triglycerides if stored in a fat cell.

Whew! OK, brief biology lesson over. Sorry if it was review for you, but I think it’s useful for this discussion.

A lot of people wonder about the relative efficiency of glycolysis vs. lipolysis. The short answer is “we don’t know”. There hasn’t been enough science done to establish exact ratios, and as a matter of fact this “metabolic advantage” is a hotly-debated topic precisely because some research shows that it has a profound effect, and other research suggests such an effect doesn’t exist at all. Human trials are problematic for various reasons. Animal trials, on the other hand, demonstrate that high-fat, low-carbohydrate diets require 10%-35% more calories than calorie-restricted diets for equal fat loss while preserving muscle tissue.

That 10%-35% figure is difficult to nail down; we are not sure of the exact ratios, and once again it’s a contested area in the science right now. But I’m going to run with it for now, because it’s useful.

Back to rugby. If you’re on a strict low-carb regimen, another way of looking the fact of reduced calorie efficiency is that you’re operating at a 10%-35% energy disadvantage compared to your teammates and opponents. Your glycogen reserves will also be largely depleted, and such reserves provide the average person with enough energy for around two hours of strenuous effort. That number’s a bit fuzzy, too… after around 20 minutes of strenuous effort, your body kicks lipolysis into high gear anyway to supplement glycogen metabolism. That’s the heart of the “fat burning zone” stuff people like to discuss with cardio routines, because your body recognizes that glucose metabolism won’t be enough to get you through this strenuous exercise.

So what are your options if you want peak performance as an athlete, but you want to take advantage of the fat-stripping advantages of lipolysis in a low-carb diet? Well, for certain sports like bodybuilding, baseball, football, golf, and others where the focus is on brief, strenuous effort with rest periods between, you need do nothing. Your body will probably keep up just fine relying on protein and fat metabolism. If you keep well-hydrated and ingest some carbohydrate-laden drinks while exercising, you’re golden and your body should be able to keep up just fine.

For any sport in which the goal is just to complete the event rather than to win it (e.g. a marathon or century), you also need do very little. Pace yourself to stay out of the zone at which you deplete your energy stores; your pace will be a little slower, but your body would have been in lipolysis anyway to get you through the event. Keep ingesting carbohydrate-laden drinks during the event; marathon winners usually derive most of the calories they burn during the run while they are running from the drinks they ingest. The “carb-up” the night before such an event can actually hurt the performance of a low-carber during such a long run or cycle, and you’re better off staying with an eating pattern you know your body supports. Do make sure those sports drinks you consume during the run agree with you. Many a low-carber has been laid low during a marathon or half-marathon by explosive diarrhea because they drank an unfamiliar sports drink! Many steer clear of the carbs during marathons and do just fine on their lipolytic metabolism alone. But, of course, they aren’t really competitive; they just get it done at a pace they can sustain without that glucose superhighway working for them.

But what about sports that involve more constant and intense effort, such as basketball, rugby, and soccer(outside of the US: football)? For those, you’re going to have constant periods of running that are depleting your glycogen stores, plus bouts of strenuous effort that require maximum anaerobic effort that deplete your stored glycogen. Realize, I’m not a sports nutritionist and have no formal qualifications in this field (I’m a UNIX system administrator for a living), but I understand the science and think the following are logical conclusions:

1. Additional carbohydrates on the day of the bout preceding the event will almost certainly be useful, and used. No need to pig out on pasta here, just include more carbohydrates than those of us that have sedentary jobs where the only workout we get is in the gym.

2. Since you’ll be practicing daily, hopefully with intense effort, a generally increased level of carbohydrate is warranted day-to-day to ensure you have some glycogen available for the first twenty minutes of practice.

3. Consuming plenty of glucose-laden sports drinks during your match if you are on the field a lot probably won’t hurt your fat-loss efforts at all.

4. Creatine supplementation assists in the ATP cycle and muscular hydration. 5g per day during the season will help both build muscle and keep your energy levels higher during periods of prolonged exertion.

As always, measure, experiment, measure, adjust, repeat. I’d suggest just starting toward the high-end of the MANS program — around 50-60g of carbohydrate per day — and then evaluating your performance as you go along. Sugary sports drinks during your match will keep the insulin floodgates open for glucose metabolism, and may be all you need to keep your energy levels high throughout the contest.

Regards, Matt B.