To Eat Meat Or Not To Eat Meat

Enough Already! I have just read another article that says we actually evolved into carnivores. If evolution is true, we were probably more physically akin to carnivores earlier on during our evolution than later on. The bottom line is humans are capable of, and designed for, an omnivorous diet. There is scientific evidence for both sides – carnivore & herbivore. Which makes us omnivores. Which in turn means we are more than capable of surviving on various diets. It is not about eating meat or not eating meat. It is about eating a clean, healthy, balanced diet that provides us with all the nutrients that we need.

I have chosen a vegetarian diet, and I do very well on it. I have my reasons for being a vegetarian, and if you would like to know them, just ask me. My diet is not lacking in any nutrients, protein, vitamins, minerals... I get everything I need from a vegetarian diet. If you think that isn't possible, just look up famous vegetarians or vegans. You will find world class athletes, bodybuilders, cage fighters and strength coaches.

I cannot stand it when vegetarians are portrayed as skinny, weak and malnourished. Sure, there are vegetarians out there that are, but they are not following a good, balanced diet. Have you noticed how many meat-eaters are fat, weak and malnourished? Just because your diet includes or excludes certain foods doesn't mean either is a good, healthy diet. Both diets can be good, or bad.

I follow a vegetarian diet. For those of you who remain unconvinced that a vegetarian diet can be healthy and provide everything an athlete requires, I challenge you to come on down and join me for a workout. So far everyone who challenges my diet hasn't even come close to challenging me physically.

FIT AND FAT

Most people start physical training to alter their body shape. A few will be looking to gain muscle size, or train for performance, but most people want to reduce body size (or more importantly; body fat). Making changes to our body shape is predominantly down to what we eat and drink, in other words, calorie control. Yet the shocking truth is, exercise is an inefficient form of calorie control. Yes, you can be fit & fat! Exercise does drive our bodies to change, but slowly without quality fuel. You may have a killer training session in the gym, but a (insert dietary no-no here!) later on can easily undo all that hard work, and even put in more calories than you burned. You could have a great gym, a personal trainer and be following the best program in the world, but if you neglect to put effort into changing your diet, you are setting yourself up to fail, or at best, driving with the handbrake on.

Remember, we get healthy to lose weight, we do not lose weight to get healthy.

Different diets

As I am the process of the Excel Body Transformation process, my dietary intake is foremost in my mind. I would like to take this opportunity to let those of you who do not know, that I am a vegetarian. I am often amused at how shocking this news is to some people! You may find it more shocking to find out that there are many world class athletes who follow a vegetarian diet. Bill Pearl is the first who comes to mind – 4 times Mr Universe – proof that huge muscle growth is possible on a vegetarian diet. Mike Mahler, a world class kettlebell strength & conditioning coach is a Vegan. Other examples are Olympic athlete Carl Lewis and tennis player Martina Navratilova. The list goes on...
With proper planning, it is perfectly possible to obtain all your protein requirements from vegetarian sources. Remember, being a vegetarian doesn't mean excluding a food group. Vegetarians do not excluding protein (or more correctly, amino acids), They simply choose to exclude meat.
Some people may argue that being vegetarian is not a healthy choice, but I would strongly disagree. I have followed a vegetarian diet for many years with exceptional results. However... the bottom line is it works for me. I feel stronger and healthier than I ever did before. There are many dietary options out there – find the one that works for you. If you place or have a restrictive diet for any reason, it does not mean you cannot get the results you want. Do not avoid something because it is difficult – find another way to accomplish your goals.

Remember your first day of kettlebell training?

Do you remember you first KB session? The exercises were strange, they seemed to go on forever (2 or 3 minutes!), hard to co-ordinate.. etc? Do you remember how much you ached over the next few days? How tight your hamstrings were? How sore your bum was? That your abs were on fire and the small of your back felt like a rhino had run you over? Then a few weeks later, several sessions later, how you grew accustomed to the new exercises, how you began to love them, and how exhilerated you felt after a good workout? Well it's time to get those feelings back - all of them! I want you to feel like the exercises are alien. I want you to feel aches in places you didn't know you had. I want you to feel like you've been run over by a rhino.

Don't settle for mediocrity. Don't allow yourself to slip comfortably into knowing the basic KB drills and just going through the motions. Next time grab an unusually large KB and go for it! Really push the pace and make yourself work for something worthwhile. Do not fade to grey in the background, grab your KB, rise up and go for it!

Remember, "Challenge Everything - especially yourself."

What fizzy drinks do to you...

Here is an article I found on Blisstree.com, written by Liz Lewis. Most people seem to drink Coke, or a similar fizzy drink from time to time. Ever wondered what it did to your system? Read the article below, then tell me if you feel like reaching for a can of Coke again!

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Have you ever wondered why Coke comes with a smile? It’s because it gets you high. They took the cocaine out almost a hundred years ago. You know why? It was redundant.

• In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.
• 20 minutes: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat. (There’s plenty of that at this particular moment)
• 40 minutes: Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.
• 45 minutes: Your body ups your dopamine production stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works, by the way.
• >60 minutes: The phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, providing a further boost in metabolism. This is compounded by high doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners also increasing the urinary excretion of calcium.
• >60 Minutes: The caffeine’s diuretic properties come into play. (It makes you have to pee.) It is now assured that you’ll evacuate the bonded calcium, magnesium and zinc that was headed to your bones as well as sodium, electrolyte and water.
• >60 minutes: As the rave inside of you dies down you’ll start to have a sugar crash. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. You’ve also now, literally, pissed away all the water that was in the Coke. But not before infusing it with valuable nutrients your body could have used for things like even having the ability to hydrate your system or build strong bones and teeth.

This will all be followed by a caffeine crash in the next few hours. (As little as two if you’re a smoker.) But, hey, have another Coke, it’ll make you feel better.

*FYI: The Coke itself is not the enemy, here. It’s the dynamic combo of massive sugar doses combined with caffeine and phosphoric acid. Things which are found in almost all soda.

One Rep Max

Firstly, to explain, a “one-rep max” is the maximum amount of weight you can shift, only once and no more, through a particular exercise. There is nothing wrong with this, everybody has a one-rep max, but for the majority of us we will realistically never find out what that is.

Yet so often I see programs designed using the “one-rep max” as a base for calculating the desired weights. The most recent I read was where an instructor was advising people to use a weight that was 50% of their one-rep max for 2 sets of 12 reps. From reading what he had written, the plan was designed for average people just wanting to achieve a all-around general level of health & fitness – non-specific. Performing a one-rep max requires perfect technique, a solid and strong muscular base of not only the desired muscles for the exercise, but also the deeper stabilising muscles. For this demographic of people, their fitness levels are nowhere near high enough to ever perform a one-rep max without a good chance of injury. How is such a person then supposed to calculate the right weight to use, if they need to know their “one-rep max” to start that equation?

Knowing your one-rep max is only useful if you are interested in performing it. A far better way to ascertain the right weight to use is as follows: If you are performing 12 reps, choose a weight that you can perform correctly 12 times. If you can do 14 or 15, the weight is too light. If you can’t manage 12 clean reps, the weight is too heavy.
So forget about your one-rep max, unless you are training specifically to perform such an optimal feat of strength.

How Badly Do You Want It?

Everyday I have people telling me that they either want to, or need to, get fitter and/or lose weight. I have many people who constantly tell me that they are going to join the gym ‘soon’, or that they want personal training ‘soon’. Whilst this is encouraging, to know that people are thinking about improving their health and fitness, it is also disheartening when time passes and they never actually follow through with their plans.

Whilst I do not dispute that people want to lose fat weight and improve strength & fitness, the actual desire to achieve those goals is seriously lacking.
Almost everybody wants to achieve more, whether it is fitness, financial, spiritual or otherwise. But in order to do so effort is required. The greater the goal the more effort is required. To be blunt, most people are lazy and will fail. Sitting on the sofa, watching television, eating a ready meal is far easier than getting down the gym for a serious workout followed by a planned and cooked from scratch healthy meal.

Time to separate the men from the boys. You can either be living a fit, healthy life, or you can be a coach-potato who dreams about it.

If you have the desire and motivation, you will do what it takes to achieve your dreams. You realise that in order to achieve what you desire, you have to get up and work at it. Only then will you turn those dreams into reality.

To achieve what you want, you have to want it badly enough. So the question remains, how baldy do you want it?