Be fit and eat fat!

27 | Male |   Science graduate and physiotherapy PhD student. I exercise without a gym, and I eat a lot of fatty foods. Fat tastes good, fat keeps me feeling full and fat gives me the energy for my fit and healthy life!

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Strength increases and progressing - calculations

I recently did an informal survey of published scientific papers looking at strength gains from resistance training programs in (intermediate) trained males. Most studies included men who had at least 1-2 years of resistance training experience (as evidenced by the average initial bench press 1RM across all studies being 95kg). 

Findings

In all, I included 34 studies, which gave before and after values for the bench press 1RM (1 rep max). Because these studies were testing many different hypotheses, such as length of rest interval, periodisation, or the effects of dietary supplements, I decided for simplicity to just average the values of all included groups that performed resistance training. Also, the sample sizes didn’t vary much, usually only about 6-15 people, so I just averaged the study without standardizing for sample size. So this is not a formal meta-analysis by any means.

Overall, I found that bench press 1RM increases by about 1% per week. This means if somebody had a 100kg bench press 1RM at the start of a 10-week study, after 1 week their bench press would have gone up on average to 101kg. After the 10-week study finished, their bench press 1RM would be 110kg.

Implications for training

I think this might be useful to inform what is a realistic rate of progression in weight training. Based on the various estimates for how 1RM translates to other intensities, your 10RM (10 rep max) is about 75% of your 1RM. This means the person with a 100kg bench press 1RM would have been able to do 10 reps of 75kg on bench. By the end of the 10 weeks, with a 110kg bench press 1RM, they would have been able to do 10 reps of 83kg (as 83kg is now 75% of their 1RM). So they have added 8kg over 10 weeks to their 10RM. As 75kg is now just 68% of their new 1RM, they would have been able to put out about 12 reps at 75kg. That is, they added about 1 rep every 5 weeks to their 75kg bench press.

Obviously this is a very rough estimate. Strength increases aren’t going to translate directly to the endurance required for higher rep ranges, and may not increase perfectly linearly. And these results are only for bench press, the percentage increase might not be the same for other exercises. And as all studies were of men, I have no idea what this implies for women.

Implications for bodyweight training

It’s a bit trickier to do this for bodyweight exercises, but not impossible, because you don’t really need to know the actual weight you’re lifting to estimate how much more strength you need to add a rep (as long as we assume the weight is roughly constant). In the 5-12 rep range, each additional rep requires you drop the weight by 2-3% of your 1RM, and the weight you lift is around 60-85% of your 1RM. If you keep the weight constant then, you need to increase your 1RM by 2-3% divided by 0.6-0.85, so between 2.5 and 3.5% roughly.  This means you don’t actually need to know the weight you’re lifting to know how much it should progress in percentage terms. For example, if you can do only 6 reps of an exercise, then you’re lifting 0.85*Xkg, where Xkg is your current 1RM. To do 7 reps, 85*Xkg needs to be 0.83*Ykg, where Y is your new 1RM. So 0.85*X=0.83*Y, which means Y=1.024*X, or a new 1RM that is 102.4% of your current 1RM. If you repeat that at a higher rep range, say 9 to 10 reps, you get 0.75*X=0.77*Y, so 102.6% of current 1RM. So a general rule of thumb is that in the 5-10 rep range, to progress to doing one extra rep requires you increase your 1RM by about 2.5%.

Given we know that increasing your 1RM happens at about 1% per week, it would take about 2 to 3 weeks for you to add another rep to your exercise if you keep the resistance (i.e. bodyweight and exercise form) constant. Any progression scheme requiring you to add reps faster than this is too optimistic (if it’s saying you should be training to failure each set, at least).

Progressing bodyweight training by adding weight

If you can estimate how much weight you’re lifting, you can possibly add weights to your body to progress instead of adding reps. This might allow for much finer control over progression. For instance, if you are doing pullups, you’re lifting everything but your arms, which is about 88% of your bodyweight (if you’re male, 90% if you’re female). If you can do 9 pullups, that means your 1RM is about (1/0.77)*10RM, where 10RM is 0.88*bodyweight. If you weigh 80kg, then your 1RM is 91.5kg. Each week, you might be expecting to increase that 1RM by 1%, or 0.9kg. You could add 77% of that increase to your 1RM, or 0.7kg, to your pullups each week and still do 9 reps. Thus, instead of having to wait 2-3 weeks to progress by adding another rep, you can progress every week by adding a small amount of weight.

You could even do a hybrid of the two strategies, by adding weights until you’ve improved your 1RM by about 2.5 to 3% to allow you to add a rep when you remove the weights.

Irrelevant stuff that I found interesting when researching the above

For interest’s sake, a recent paper by  Eckel et al 2017 found that when men with an average 100kg 1RM on bench press do a pushup, their upper body supports about 74% of their bodyweight (averaged across the up and down positions, which were 72% and 76% respectively). They could also do about 24 pushups until they fatigued. For women with an average 42kg 1RM on bench, a pushup involved pushing 70% of their bodyweight (66% in up position, 73% in down position)). The value is lower for women likely because women carry relatively more weight around their hips than their torso than men do. They could do just 11 pushups before they fatigued.

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Dips are a fundamental exercise of gymnastics and bodyweight training but they also involve a shoulder range that can be difficult and even risky. Dean Somerset has a recent post on this issue. It also explains why bench dips (dips on a bench behind your body) might not be a great idea as the first progression towards dips. And lists a few tests you can do to see if you're ready for dips.

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My current opinion on fats

When I started this blog years ago, I was deep into the paleo diet craze. Saturated fats were good, grains and legumes were bad, etc etc. While I never really went down the low-carb path (because I loved potato), and I did quickly realize that most grains weren’t that bad really, I did firmly believe that saturated fats weren't bad and saturated fats were good.

Now, having read years of literature on the topic and thought much abuot it, I wish to briefly discuss my opinion on this issue.

Total fat consumption

I still stand by my initial notion that there is no reason to be afraid of fats. There's no evidence that reducing total fat consumption from typical numbers (around 30-40% of energy intake) has any health benefits, especially when replacing it with carbohydrate.

That said, there may be some situations where athletes are training intensely so need carbohydrate more than fat, and so a low-fat diet may be beneficial for performance.

Different types of fatty acids

Here is where I think I've changed my mind the most.

Monounsaturated fats are easy. I always thought they were good, and I still think so.

Saturated fats are a bit trickier. I actually think Wikipedia does a fairly good job of covering the science on this controversy. I now think that it's not quite so certain whether saturated fats are good or not, and some common saturated fats (lauric, myristic and palmitic) might be worse than unsaturated fatty acids.

Polyunsaturated fats might not be as bad as I thought. However, I still think you should be getting these fats from nuts, seeds and maybe even fish/meat rather than vegetable oils. And I still don't think you should cook with polyunsaturated fats (use these oils for salad dressing if you ever use them). But I wouldn't shy away from eating something like walnuts simply because they're high in polyunsaturated fats.

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[aerofish]

[thegaitguys]

and what have we been saying for the last several years?

“The development of bone marrow edema after transitioning from traditional running shoes to minimalist footwear is associated with small intrinsic foot muscle size, according to research from Brigham Young University in Provo, UT.

The findings, epublished in late October by the International Journal of Sports Medicine, suggest that runners with small intrinsic foot muscles may benefit from strengthening exercises prior to attempting the transition to minimalist running.

Investigators randomized 37 habitually shod runners to 10 weeks of running in minimalist footwear or their own shoes, and performed magnetic resonance imaging at baseline and after the intervention to detect bone marrow edema and assess intrinsic foot muscle size.

Eight of the runners in the minimalist group had developed bone marrow edema at 10 weeks, as well as one in the control group. Those who developed bone marrow edema had significantly smaller intrinsic foot muscles than those who did not.

In addition, running in minimalist footwear was associated with a 10.6% increase in abductor hallucis cross-sectional area, a statistically significant change”.

Source:

Johnson AW, Myrer JW, Mitchell UH, et al. The effects of a transition to minimalist shoe running on intrinsic foot muscle size. Int J Sports Med 2015 Oct 28. [Epub ahead of print]

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So your barefoot shoes make you more muscular, albeit only bulking up your intrinsic foot muscles.

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Four psychological tricks to help stick to your New Year's resolutions

Every year, millions of people around the world make New Year’s resolutions. And every year, the great majority of us break and abandon those resolutions. Psychology research can help.

1. Have cues attached to your goals.

2. Focus on the big picture instead of the here and now (e.g. Don’t ask yourself “Do I want to work out right now?” but instead ask “Do I want to be the kind of person who works out?”).

3. Restore willpower by doing things that you enjoy.

4. Avoid temptation in order to conserve willpower.

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Micro workouts actually work out!

Do you find it hard to find time to do a 45 minute workout three times a week? I know I do. I had been doing Friday nights, Sunday mornings and then just needed to find time for one workout during the week. And we know from research that you can’t just do all strength train on just one day per week and expect the best results (McLester et al 2000). But the good research news from Denmark is that you can split that workout into lots of tiny workouts and it will work just as well! This paper compared doing three 45 minute workouts per week to doing nine 15 minute workouts per week, and didn’t see much of a difference because the total amount of exercise was the same (Kilen et al 2015). However, I must point out that neither workout protocol demonstrated an increase, compared to before training, in variables such as lean body mass or strength, as measured by either the one-rep max (1RM) or maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) of any exercise. This is probably because the exercises were equally split between strength training, high-intensity interval training and endurance training. One strength workout per week, or equivalent, isn’t enough to yield the best results (McLester et al 2000). This is still useful research, but more work needs to be done to see if strength training alone could be distributed over the week for equal results. My conclusion would be that the best workout is the one that you do. Even if doing three 45 minute workouts per week is optimum, it won’t be optimum if you keep skipping one of those workouts because you can’t find the time!

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We are creatures of habit

The majority of things we do every day are habits we have, or soon will have, rather than deliberate acts of intention or will 1. We only have a limited amount of willpower, so to be efficient our brains direct our behaviour automatically. This allows us to do amazing things like drive our usual route home from work almost on autopilot while deep in thought about something completely different, like obsessing over that question your boss asked you that you didn't answer as well as you’d wished you had. But relying on habits to drive you home makes it pretty likely that you will forget to pick up some milk on the way home, even though you really meant to do so.

Research indicates that your intentions are pretty good predictors of our behaviour when it comes to irregular or occasional actions 2 but intentions only explain about 25-30% of our more regular actions. So intending to get healthy and fit is very likely to result in you joining a gym but it’s not very good at getting you to actually work out every few days. Actions performed regularly, be it going to the gym or skipping your workout to sit at home, become habits and proceed without much input from your intentions. So it’s pretty normal to think to yourself “I really wanted to work out today, but I didn't”.

The slightest change in cues can influence whether you act out of intention or out of habit. Students who habitually ate popcorn at a cinema did not eat stale-tasting popcorn when in a meeting room on campus, because they disliked it, but did eat the same popcorn when at the local cinema 3. The cues of the cinema caused the students to act against their intentions. This explains why many people who find it hard to exercise and eat well when at home can find it very easy to work out and avoid junk food when on holidays. The cues that activate their laziness at home are absent, so they are freer to act how they want to act.

 So by now I bet you want to know how you can form a new ‘good’ habit or kill an old ‘bad’ habit. Well, here are some tips from psychology research:

 How to kill a bad habit:

Think ‘Don’t do it’ whenever you notice yourself slipping into an old habit. Though technically this just makes you better at self-control rather than killing the old habit, it’s still very effective 8.

Use your habit cues for inhibition or good habits. If finishing dinner is your cue to go serve dessert, interfere with this bad habit by planning to go for an after dinner walk or have a piece of fruit after dinner instead.

Change the habit cues. Hide, or don’t buy, those sugary snacks you find yourself seeking or avoid driving past that fast-food restaurant that you often find yourself at. If you don’t know what your cues are for a bad habit, moving house or changing jobs are also effective, probably because they change so many cues (perhaps also for your good habits, so be careful).

Make the undesired actions harder to do or less rewarding 4. This could be as simple as putting the unhealthy food in the back of the pantry so you have to rearrange everything to get it to it, or buying your third favourite ice cream instead of your favourite. This won’t kill the habit straight away but it will make it easier to kill with other techniques.

How to form a new habit:

Give it time. It takes an average of 6-10 weeks to form an exercise habit 5,6, but this can be as short as 18 days or as long as 254 days 5·

Have a consistent and predictable routine for the action you want to become a habit. This doesn't always mean doing it at the same time of the day, but just always doing the action after some stable cue. For example, you might aim to always go for a walk after dinner, even if dinnertime varies a lot. You might work out at the same time, or might work out at the same location but at different times 7.

Try to make the good habits as rewarding as possible. Involve friends, make the healthy food as nice as possible, run or ride your bike in places that are really scenic, or even just think about your own awesomeness after a workout to give yourself a high. This is all about giving yourself positive reinforcement.

Your likelihood to pursue a deliberate goal or fall back on habitual behaviour can be influenced by stressors like time pressure, distraction and difficulty of the task, all of which cause people to act more habitually 1. Thus, it is important when trying to create a new habit that you make it as easy as possible for yourself and choose a time when you’re not stressed about other things. We fall back on habits because they are easy, so the easier you can make an action, it will not only feel easier (like a habit) but you will also do it more and it will feel familiar and comfortable and become easier.

[befiteatfat]

Coke vs coke: Sweeteners as addictive drugs

So I’ve been doing a little bit of reading about animal and human research into the addictiveness of sugar. Here’s a brief summary of the things:

Rats, when given the choice between pushing a lever that releases sweetened water and another lever that releases cocaine or heroin (intravenously) will choose the sweet water. This occurs with sugar-sweetened water (Cantin et al 2010) and artificially sweetened water (Madsen and Ahmed 2015).

Though similar studies haven’t been done in humans, the brain regions activated by food cravings are very similar to that activated by addictive drugs like nicotine (Tang et al 2012).

This means that treatment methods that work for cravings in drug addicts may have value for treating sugar cravings (Davis and Carter 2014). These are some examples (all from the previous reference unless otherwise stated)

Blame your brain not yourself. Addicts can feel shameful about their lack of self-control (and this shame can cause them feel bad, which actually decreases self-control), but acknowledging the biological nature of their urges can help them feel compassionate for themselves instead.

Surf the urges. Understanding that urges are temporary and will eventually subside if not acted upon can inhibit said urges.

Do what makes you happy. Negative moods reduce self-control, as mentioned above, so developing good emotional regulation and doing things that help fight depression (like exercise) can help control urges (Smith et al 2008).

Train your self-control. Every time you are exposed to a food cue but resist the urge to eat the food, you strengthen the regulatory networks in the brain responsible for self-control.

Don’t fatigue your self-control muscles. Just as you can’t expect to be able to work out for hours on end, don’t force your brain to exert self-control all day every day. Some exposure to temptation is good for a brain workout, too much will deplete your self-control and lead to relapse.

[goodquoteco]

I am no longer in love with her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (via hqlines)

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Maybe I was wrong

 I’m sure I’ve said a few times that you need to lift heavy to gain muscle and get stronger. I’m pretty sure I made fun of other workouts on Tumblr that used lighter weights for 30 reps. But a recent study (Schoenfeld et al 2015) indicates that I may have been wrong. Seems that, at least for the short term, even well trained people can gain muscle mass in the 25-35 rep range, as long as they’re lifting to failure.

Read more on Brad Schoenfeld’s blog here: Look Great Naked: Does Light Load Training Build Muscle in Experienced Lifters

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Protein synthesis and muscle hypertrophy: No more proxies - Evidence Based Fitness

I love it when a study is just throws everything into disarray. Because it means that in the next few years, research will have to pick up the pieces and we'll have some exciting discoveries.

So what does this mean?

I think this is a huge blow to a lot of protein synthesis research as it pertains to hypertrophy. It means that single-point testing is probably not predictive of hypertrophy. It calls into question almost all of the evidence looking at nutrient supplementation and hypertrophy short of the trials that actually measured hypertrophy (which is most of them, because there are not that many ultrasound or MRI studies on hypertrophy). It also means that strategies to promote MPS (eating frequent doses of protein over the course of the day, for instance) may actually be ancillary, and not core, must-do behaviours.

[onlyfitgirls]

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Best gif I've seen all week.

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This is how I feel about pretty much all peri-workout nutrition. It's great motivation, but also super awkward and looks funny. And makes me feel a little sick sometimes.

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The glutes and the hamstrings are the primary hip extensors. But the hamstrings also act as knee flexors. This means if you're extending your hips while you have your knees flexed, as in the above photo, your hamstrings will be struggling to shorten to their shortest possible length while your glutes will still be within their normal range. In technical terms, the hamstrings are actively insufficient, allowing you to really target the glutes specifically.

As a further cue to try to reduce the activity in your hamstrings during this exercise, try to think about sliding your foot forward and straightening the knee. Don't actually do it, obviously, or you'll go sliding backwards along the ground. Which brings up another point, try to do this exercise on a mat or on carpet, rather than on smooth ground. On a smooth surface you'll be activating your hamstrings more to prevent yourself from sliding.

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What if I said there was an exercise that's probably just as important as your workout, but isn't done in the gym? What if it also only took a few minutes each day and required equipment that is cheaper than any gym membership? And you can do it at home, and much of this exercise you do using your phone or computer? I bet you're thinking this sounds amazing, and you'd certainly do this exercise.

But if you tell somebody to weigh their food and count calories and macronutrients, I suspect they'd think this is far too much effort. Maybe they eat away from home a lot, consuming unknown quantities of food. Or maybe they're scared of the judgment, scared that the scale will tell them they're eating the wrong way.

Don't be scared. And don't be lazy. The ramifications of screwing up your diet can be that your hard work at the gym goes to waste if you don't end up losing fat or gaining muscle. And as I said, it's actually not that much effort. You don't need to do it every day, just every now and then to get an idea of the energy content of foods and your energy requirements. It's an exercise, and you'll be building a sense of how much of what foods to eat. For the time it takes, that's totally worth it.