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Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn.
If we missed a meal, the energy would run out and we would die. The only reason we don’t have to live like that is our bodies can break down body fat (and other tissues when necessary) and burn it for energy when food energy isn’t available.
If you consistently consume fewer calories than you burn, you’ll lose weight, regardless of how much carbohydrate or sugar you eat.
Your body adapts to the exercise to reduce calorie expenditure.
Research shows that high-fat meals cause more immediate fat gain than high-protein or high-carbohydrate meals.
Meal frequency has no significant effects on total daily energy expenditure or weight loss. If you want to lose fat quickly and not muscle, then you want to include resistance training in your weight loss regimen.
This is why your number one goal as a natural weightlifter should be to increase your whole-body strength. And the most effective way to do that is heavy weightlifting.
The most reliable way to gain a considerable amount of muscle is to gain a considerable amount of strength.
Most guys only need to gain about 20 to 25 pounds of muscle to have an impressive physique, and literally anybody can do that, no matter how skinny and weak they are when they touch a barbell for the first time.
Compound exercises are superior to isolation exercises for gaining muscle and strength because they train many muscles at once, allow you to lift heavier weights, and significantly raise testosterone and growth hormone levels.
Cardio does have significant health benefits—some of which you don’t get from resistance training—and it can help you burn more energy, which means faster fat loss and easier weight maintenance.
Except for those that aren’t digested, all these types of carbs have something very important in common: they all end up as glucose in the body.
You overload, damage, and fatigue your muscles in your workouts, and then feed and repair them after.
There are three primary “triggers” or “pathways” for muscle growth: mechanical tension, muscle damage, and cellular fatigue.
One of the substances that carbs are converted to in the body is glycogen, which is stored in the muscles and liver and is the primary source of fuel during intense exercise.
A low-carb diet will reduce your strength and muscle endurance, which makes it harder to progressively overload your muscles in the gym and thereby maximally stimulate muscle growth.
According to a 2010 survey conducted by the American Psychological Association, the lack of willpower is the number one obstacle people face in achieving their goals.
Research conducted by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, Case Western Reserve University, and the University of Maryland shows that they do better in school, earn more money, make better leaders, and are generally happier, healthier, and less stressed.2 They also have better social and romantic relationships (they can keep their mouths shut), and they even tend to live longer.3
To make matters even worse, your brain is now anticipating the imminent spike in insulin and energy, so it begins to lower your blood sugar levels. This makes you crave the burger even more, and before you can give it another thought, you’re in line salivating.
Furthermore, when dopamine is released, it also triggers the release of stress hormones that make you feel anxious.8 This is why the more you think about the thing you want, the more important it becomes to you and the more you think you have to have it right now.
Those with higher levels of willpower do better in school, earn more money, make better leaders, and are generally happier, healthier, and less stressed, have better social and romantic relationships, and tend to live longer.
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
If you want to see this in action, the next time you face a willpower challenge, deliberately slow your breathing to about 10 to 15 seconds per breath, or four to six breaths per minute.
In fact, research shows that simply thinking about people with high levels of self-control can temporarily increase our willpower.
Regardless of the types of tasks performed, people’s self-control is at its highest in the morning and steadily declines as the day wears on.
A simple way to implement this coping strategy in your life is to put a mandatory 10-minute wait time in place before you allow yourself to act on a craving or other impulsive urge to do something you know you shouldn’t.
Moral licensing refers to telling ourselves that by being “good,” we reckon, we “earn” the “right” to be a little (or a lot) “bad.”
Like most everything in life, you don’t need to be anywhere near perfect to win in the fitness game—you just have to be good enough most of the time.
People with vague, unrealistic, or uninspiring fitness goals (or none at all) are always the first to quit.
BMR = 10 x weight (in kilograms) + 6.25 x height (in centimeters) – 5 x age (in years) + 5
If you haven’t eaten protein in the three to four hours preceding your workout, then it’s a good idea to eat 30 to 40 grams before you train.
Eat 30 to 40 grams of any type of carbohydrate about 30 minutes before a workout.
It’s a good idea to eat 30 to 40 grams of protein within an hour or two of finishing a workout.
Adding carbs to your postworkout meal will keep insulin levels elevated for longer, which is desirable from a muscle-building standpoint because insulin suppresses muscle protein breakdown.
CalorieKing (www.calorieking.com) SELF Nutrition Data (nutritiondata.self.com) The USDA Food Composition Databases (ndb.nal.usda.gov)
A study conducted by scientists at the University of Sydney found that people following traditional “fast” training on the bench press gained more strength than with slow training.18
While you can use HIIT principles with any type of cardio, if your goal is to preserve muscle and strength, your best choices are biking and rowing.
Your rest periods should consist of active recovery, which means you should keep moving, not come to a standstill.
There is no reason to be alive if you can’t do the deadlift!
Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”
powerlifters who were squatting 1.6 times their body weight had better joint stability than college basketball players and recreational runners.
Use a medium grip that’s just a little wider than shoulder-width apart. Keep your arms at about a 30-to-60-degree angle relative to your torso.
In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.
Giving up on our long-term goals for immediate gratification, my friends, is procrastination.
when you can measure something and express it in numbers, you know something about it, and when you can’t, your knowledge is lacking.
