Friends don’t let friends skip leg day, or so the saying goes… Small legs, chicken legs, the triumphant retort of any one to any body with a good bench or built upper body… But is it justified? Legs are important to sports performance and good physique, not to mention your long term health (A smaller thigh circumference is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular and coronary heart diseases in both men and women) but what’s an appropriate ratio? After all, you know me, I’m all about ratios Well, let’s look at the research. We can look at the body shape of top level athletes to figure ..read more

During intense, intermittent exercise and throughout prolonged physical activity, your muscles rely on glycogen for energy. Now, you may be wondering, what the heck is glycogen? Glycogen Structure Most of the carbohydrates you eat are converted to glucose. When the body doesn’t need to use all of this glucose for energy, any extra is stored in the liver and muscles for future use. This stored form of glucose is made up of many connected glucose molecules and is called glycogen. When the body needs a quick boost of energy, your muscle glycogen particles are broken down, freeing glucose molecule ..read more

Have you ever wondered how and why your body regulates how much you eat and how much you weigh? It’s a really interesting question and one I think we’ve been looking at backwards for far too long. We know that our bodies have internal ways to regulate how much we eat, and it seems that the main drive behind how much we eat (beyond taste and social issues) is our bodies attempting to maintain an ideal amount of body fat. Which begs the question… ideal for what?? Traditionally, we’ve said it’s for ‘energy storage,’ allowing us to have enough body fat to get us through a famine… Yet, a 170-pound ..read more

Firstly, let me be clear – Diets work. Saying anything less is disingenuous. They may not work as well as we would hope, but they absolutely work. All those ‘Diets Don’t Work’ headlines are nothing more than clickbait. However, there is a problem with diets… and that problem is what happens after the diet. You see, at any given time, more than a third of Americans are on some sort of diet. Sadly, most are going to be disappointed, because even when successful (which is rare), most of the weight they lose will be regained within a few months after the diet ends. And this really shouldn’t be su ..read more

Human growth hormone is a peculiar hormone, while it’s known to be anabolic in nature and is involved in cell growth and regeneration, yet it is also a pivotal fat loss hormone that is required to increase the use of fatty acids as a fuel source during times of fasting. Typically, when we talk about ways to increase GH levels we discuss fasting and sleep and exercise, however temperature can also play important roles in increasing GH levels. Growth Hormone is known to increase following endurance and resistance training workouts in both men and women, young and old. And, while the role that g ..read more

Allen’s Rule is a rule of biology that states that the appendages (ears, limbs, and tails) of animals living in cold geographical regions are consistently shorter than those of closely related animals occupying warmer climates. Allen’s Rule is almost wholly dependent on environmental temperature; that is, a secondary growth response in mammals to help maintain constant core body temperatures, and is not a result of nutrition or exercise practices of the animals in question. Allen’s Rule also makes itself apparent very quickly. When researcher Maria A. Serrat housed mice at cold (7 °C), room t ..read more

It has been a great year for Eat Stop Eat. Lots of people tried this way of life, and almost as many fell in love with its simplicity and effectiveness. And, I heard from a lot of people following Eat Stop Eat… Almost 10,000 emails about Eat Stop Eat, and over 1,000 comments on this blog. From all of these emails and comments, what I find the most interesting is the number one complaint I get about the Eat Stop Eat lifestyle: “Do I really have to drink my coffee black??” This is the biggest push back I get. I tell people not to eat for 24 hours, to only go to the gym to build muscle, to avo ..read more

I often get asked my opinion on the optimal length of a fast, unfortunately I don’t ever have a clear answer. To be honest, a 24-hour fast isn’t THAT much better than a 20-hour fast, in the same way that a 20-hour fast isn’t THAT much better than a 16-hour fast, which of course isn’t THAT much better than a 12-hour fast. However, this doesn’t mean that a 12-hour and 24-hour fast are basically equal. The same logic can be applied to longer fasts that go beyond 24 hours. The way I see it, the optimal length of fast is largely dependent on what you are expecting that particular fast to do for yo ..read more

Here’s a really interesting study result for you. When researchers studied the effect of various diets on cycling performance they found no difference between people who fasted 24 hours the day before versus people who overate by double their daily calorie needs the day before. While this is good news (fasting doesn’t affect next day sport performance), what really stood out to me was that the people who fasted burned the most fat during their cycling test. While this seems like a no-brainer, there is a catch – They all ate breakfast before their exercise test. The subjects in this study fast ..read more

Fasting for 24 hours, once or twice per week, combined with resistance training is what has always worked for me. Or, at least it’s what has worked for me from when I first started fasting in 2006 until now. Yet, every now and then I veer off course and chase whatever shiny new object the nutrition and fitness world has to offer, and it has a lot of shiny objects to offer. Luckily for me this doesn’t happen too often, but it does happen, and sometimes I get so lost that I have to go back to the basics to remind myself not only does fasting work, but I also have to remind myself why it works ..read more