Some bad news today.

If you want to look better than most people, you have to do things differently than most people.

You are going to have to eat a little less and exercise a little more than most people.

Because, what most people are doing simply isn’t getting the job done.

And here is a very startling visual example from recent research:

This graph is telling you three interesting things:

1) Body fat % seems to be pretty normally distributed across the North American population (the woman’s numbers look a little skew right to me, but in general, it’s pretty even).

2) For a man, the average body fat percentage is around 25-ish%, while for a woman it’s around 40-ish%.

3) If you want to be under 12% bodyfat (men) or under 22% bodyfat (women) then you are going to have to be an outlier.

out·li·er – A value that is far from the average or mean.

Now this research was compiled from about 13,000 people between the ages of 20 and 80 using DXA. To me, that’s an OK number of subjects to draw conclusions from.

So here’s the deal – if the prospect of being average doesn’t make you happy, then you have to commit to being different, very different.

Be your own outlier.

Take a look at what everyone is doing and do things just a little differently.

Obviously, obsessing over healthy eating while still eating more than we need to is not giving us the body fat percentage that we want.

Either is watching TV shows about people who are losing weight.

And ‘wanting’ to lose weight is a lot different then taking action to lose weight.

Do things differently.

Be your own outlier.

While everybody else is talking about weight loss, reading about weight loss, watching TV about weight loss you need to actually take action.

This is what will make you different.

No more talking, no more reading, no more thinking…insert Nike Slogan Here.

Eat Less, Move more and be your own outlier.

BP

**Am J Clin Nutr 2009;90:1457–65.

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In case you haven’t noticed, the human body has a basic shape.

By and large we are all roughly related in how we look.

If I put a person, a gorilla and a hippopotamus together in a room, chances are you would easily pick out the human.

If I was abducted by aliens right now, and was forced to describe the male part of the human race, this is what I would say:

They average about 5′10″ in height, with about 148 pounds of lean mass. At any given height they can vary greatly in weight, but this is due to their ability to store energy in the form of fat mass.

If I was asked to explain further I would say this:

Their height is normally distributed with a standard deviation of about 3 inches. This means that 95% of all men fall somewhere between 5′4″ and 6′4″ in height.

At any given height their lean mass is also fairly normally distributed with a standard deviation of about 7 pounds. Meaning, an extremely athletic healthy male can have about 14 pounds more lean mass than the average, and a man can be about 14 pounds less than the average before we begin to worry about them being in a disease state.

(or imagine the picture a 6 year old child would draw if they were asked to draw a man or a woman…it would probably be pretty obvious and pretty average looking, not too fat and not too skinny)

In other words, our physiology, much like everything else about the human body, is VERY tightly regulated. Everything is interconnected.

Yes, there are some anomalies that somehow have more muscle than anyone else, just like there are some men who are 7 feet tall. But these are very very rare cases (About 2.5% of the population).

For the most part you and I are limited in how much muscle we can add, based on the fact that we are all human beings. There are checks and balances EVERYWHERE in our bodies.

And this is for GOOD reason.

Here is something that people selling exercise programs with claims like “Add 60 pounds of muscle in 6 weeks” don’t want you to think about.

Many of the things that can cause your muscle to grow beyond its normal limits are also connected to higher than average rates of cancer.

After all, cancer is by definition, uncontrolled growth.

• Chronic high testosterone? Correlated with Increased Cancer risk.
• Chronic high insulin? Correlated with Increased Cancer risk.
• Chronic high Growth Hormone? Correlated with increased Cancer risk.
• Chronic high IGF-1? Correlated with increased Cancer risk.

The point of all this is – You are human. So be happy with your build, work towards increasing your muscle mass and decreasing your fat mass, but have REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS.

From my findings, an adult human male can expect to gain about 14 pounds of muscle through strength training, for a female its closer to 6. After that any muscle growth is extremely slow.

If you want more muscle and are willing to go the pharmaceutical route to get it, just be aware that there may be long term health ramifications.

If you want more muscle and are NOT willing to go the pharmaceutical route, and are upset about your lack of progress remember – there are good reasons why you are limited in your ability to grow.

Eat less and move more. Try your best to build muscle while keeping your body fat low, and remember you are human. This means you are probably not going to be 250 pounds and 5% body fat any time in your life unless you are also about 6′10″ tall.

BP

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It’s the unknown that kills a good diet plan.

The little treats here or there that can derail months of work.

And the underestimations of calories in a food, well…that’s just UNBELIEVABLY AGGRAVATING!

Over the summer we had a Baskin Robbins move into our neighborhood.

As a treat, my family would go once a week for ice-cream. Sometimes twice a week of the grandparents were around.

I’m a chocolate mint kinda guy, so I normally get the chocolate mint ice-cream in a waffle cone – about 500 calories…but occasionally, I’d order the chocolate milk shake.

I figured, “It’s a treat, besides it’s probably about 750 calories, I can handle that”

You can imagine how mad I was when I saw this:

1300 Calories!

Almost Double what I thought.

Brutal.

Luckily, I wasn’t trying to lose weight this summer, so it wasn’t a giant deal, but this is where the “I didn’t change a thing, but gained weight” stories come from – forgetting or underestimating the calorie content of foods.

Eating responsibly means being aware.

You can still have chocolate milk shakes from Baskin Robbins if you are trying to lose weight, you just need to be aware that the darn thing has 1300 Calories.

Being aware – it’s the key to weight loss.

BP

PS – The secret to losing weight while still occasionally having a large chocolate milkshake? Share it with a friend!

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I do not think that we will progress in our understanding of the science behind muscle growth until we begin to openly discuss the use of anabolic steroids.

As far I am concerned there is only 1 thing that has shown a clear, reproducible dose-response relationship with muscle size in humans (other than height).

It’s not protein or calories. It’s not even workout length, weight lifted or even Growth Hormone.

While all these things may (or may not) play a role, the only thing that has a clear dose response relationship is testosterone.

We know some athletes use it. We know some recreational lifters use it. We know some fitness models use it. We even know that some h0llywood celebrities use it. (I’m saying ’some’ to keep me out of trouble).

We also know that for various reasons a large percentage of these people lie about using it.

This skews all of our data.

Because people lie about using steroids we have no idea what the natural limitations of the human body are. It is a GIANT confounding variable in the study of exercise and muscle growth.

For instance:

Eating high amounts of protein has been a giant let down for most people, so why is it still be touted as a muscle builder? Well, maybe protein works differently for guys and girls who are on 2,500 mg of Testosterone per week.

Eating big? A great way to make you fat. UNLESS…more calories may actually mean more muscle when you are using D-bol and Trenbolone.

It always kills me when I hear big guys (typically power lifters) tell little guys that the key to getting big is to eat McDonalds 8 times a day. For some reason they leave out the side order of Anadrol.

Without mentioning the steroids, the ‘prescription’ for getting huge muscles is also the exact same prescription for becoming an obese North American.

Now, I’m not advocating steroid use, but what I am saying is that to truly start to understand what causes muscle growth, we need everyone to be open about steroid use.

This is why most fitness magazines are useless, as are most fitness websites. Having people tell you about their awesome new workout that helped them put on 30 pounds of muscle without telling you about their new steroid stack that went along with the workout is just useless information.

As is ‘muscle building advice’ from guys who have been the exact same weight for the last 5 years.

The bottom line is that we are not nearly as far along in understanding muscle growth as we would like to believe, and we are not going to move forward until steroids are openly discussed.

BP

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Just more proof that you can’t trust what you see.

Of course, since this is an ad, the fake abs may themselves be faked via photoshop…so this could be a case of faked fakes.

I found this very fitting considering our recent discussion of Hollywood body idolization, and because I still think much of the muscle and tone we see in movies is a result of a combi

nation of dedication in the gym, a good diet of fruits and vegetables, video editing, makeup, and lighting.

BP

PS – If you really want abs, read this ==> My truth about 6 pack abs

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Haven’t heard of it yet?

Don’t worry, you will.

Invictus is a new movie that is coming out soon that stars Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman.

So why does it get it’s own workout? Well Matt Damon plays Francois Pienaar, the Captain of South Africa’s Rugby team in the early to mid 1990’s. And, at minute 0:57 of the trailer for Invictus, you see Matt with his shirt off for about 1.5 seconds.

Sounds silly but this is the equation:

Male Hollywood Celebrity Appears “Jacked” in a movie = On-line Hysteria over “How he did it”.

Think the Christian Bale Batman Workout, the Gerard Butler 300 Workout, or the Hugh Jackman Wolverine workout.

It works every time, without fail. Hollywood Celeb gets jacked, someone tries to cash in.

So I’m going to Preempt everyone with this one:

I know EXACTLY how Matt Damon got in shape for this movie…It’s the exact same way Hugh Jackman got in shape, which is the exact same way Gerard Butler got in shape and the same way Christian Bale gets in shape.

They dedicated themselves to Hard work and some form of resistance training.

We should all realize by now that there IS NO SECRET.

It doesn’t matter if you are lifting giant rocks, kettle bells, dumbbells or small barnyard animals.

It’s the hard work that gets the results, not the trendy tools.

Matt, Gerard, Christian, they are no different then you or me…well, other than the lifestyle and money part.

They work hard, they stay dedicated and consistent and they get results. It’s not some secret new workout of the start that until now was kept secret…It’s hard work.

So there you go… If you want to look like a Movie Star, the secret is hard work.

The trick to it all? Next time you are in the gym imagine there is a 10 million dollar movie role on the line. You get in shape, you get the role.

BP

PS- you can see the trailer here ==> http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/invictus/

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