I wonder if your ever going to run out of ideas as to how to say the same thing over and over again???

This was a comment that was left on my blog over the weekend.

It didn’t make me mad, because quite frankly..it’s a fair statement. My message is a simple one: Eat Less, workout, don’t stress as much.  Yet here’s the deal…Here’s the reason why I have to repeat myself.  You don’t need anyone’s permission to eat less. YOU need to give YOURSELF permission to eat less and not stress about it.

That’s where I come in.

We’ve been brainwashed into thinking that eating a little less is bad for us. We’ve also been given hundreds if not thousands of rules that “We must follow” This Brainwashing and these rules…they create guilt and self-doubt every time we try to lose weight. Which is why there are millions of people who want to lose weight, but ‘don’t know how’ …or, who are simply afraid to eat less.

So that’s why my message is repeated.

To be successful at losing weight, you need to be able to eat less, guilt free. There are probably thousands of people who kinda, sorta want to try Eat Stop Eat. But they are worried about their muscle and their metabolism. “What if they get hungry, What if they get tired, what about starvation mode etc?”

In other words, they haven’t given themselves permission to believe that losing weight can be simple. And even if they try Eat Stop Eat, it’s not going to work nearly as well without that permission. Eat Stop Eat is NOT going to work if you are stressing out EVERY TIME you fast. (I can only imagine that those 24 hours must be almost unbearable if you think your actually doing something wrong or bad.)

So it’s a simple message, but it needs to be tackled in a hundred different ways. Everyday People think up 100 new ways of making you think you are doing things wrong in your life. My job is to remind you that Losing weight can be simple and almost mindless..if you let it.

BP

Acia Berry…

Eating this fruit or even drinking the acia berry juice helps to increase your energy, makes you feel great and can even help you lose weight….

My thoughts:

I doubt it. Very, very much. If Acai worked so well, you wouldn’t have to Spam my comments section with 23 comments in two days, AND you wouldn’t need to steal the pictures off of my blog and use them as your fake before and afters….just saying.

Eat Stop Eat works because it’s an amazing way to eat less. Acai berry works because it contains 100% pure Magic and TInkerBell Dust.

You pick which one fits into your life better.

BP

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Firstly, as you may or may not have noticed, I play with the the look of my blog…a lot.

Most likely this is to compensate for the fact that the www.EatStopeat.com site is a bloody nightmare (damn you iweb).

So I apologize for all the color changes etc..but it’s keeping me sane.

OK, now..onto nutrition.

Last post I talked about how eating responsibly is basically listening to your grandma.

For me, this meant

No treats before dinner, but if you eat all your veggies you can have dessert.

No chocolate for breakfast.

Did I mention eat your veggies?

Etc.

Then I had the idea..actually, scratch that, I’m lying…

Then Daniel emailed me with the idea that we should collect up as many grandma sayings as possible on this blog.

GREAT IDEA.

So I’ll start..grandma words of wisdom..or WWGS?

With all apologize to my American Friends, I would never EVER have gotten away with soda pop for breakfast, diet or regular it wouldn’t matter.

Grandma would NOT approve of a 500 ML of diet coke for breakfast.

OK, now your turn…

WWGS?

At least big muscular ones.

Apparently neither do cartoon animators.

I’m not even sure how Batman stood up…let alone pulled of 15 foot flying jump kicks.

But here’s the truth.

About 50% of your muscle mass is in your legs.

Yet a typical 5 day workout routine has you training legs once a week.

You train your upperbody 4 times and your legs once.

That’s probably not the quickest way to gain muscle mass.

(also..it becomes obvious why so many people have shoulder problems)

Bottom line: If you your looking to gain muscle…don’t neglect the area that contains 50% of your muscle.

What I’m trying to say is…squat.

BP

PS – (Don’t forget Eat Stop Eat…big legs are only really impressive when they aren’t all fat)

Weird.

Apparently this stems from an ongoing attack against milk, mostly from fitness personalities and raw food / vegan lifestyle advocates.

Typically, the anti-milk talk looks something like this:

Here’s some of the nasty surprises hidden in your milk:

• Pus
• Synthetic growth hormone
• Dangerous Antibiotics

Plus, did you know that Pasteurization kills most of the enzymes in your milk rendering it practically indigestible?

Now here’s my issue:

This seems like a classic case of Parrot Phenomena…

People just echoing what other people said because it sounds good.

However, whether you are a Journalist or a Scientist..you know it’s of UTMOST IMPORTANCE to always check your references.

After all no one wants to be caught up in Food libel lawsuit.

(In many US States it is illegal to disseminate misinformation about foods…think of back when Oprah
Winfrey was sued by Texas beef producers for questioning the safety of hamburger meat.)

I mean, if it’s true, it’s true…but you need to be able to back it up.

Now I’m not a big milk drinker, but I’m not exactly an anti-milk person either.

(To tell you the truth, this just isn’t an area of my life put a lot of though into.)

So this is what I did..I contacted experts in Dairy Science and the part of the Canadian Government responsible for regulating Milk.

Then I contacted the Dairy Association, and then some ‘Dairy Industry insiders’ (people who work in the industry but do not speak on the industry’s behalf)

Within days I received several excellent responses.

I then cross-referenced these responses with the available scientific literature, and government regulations.

Here is what I have found:

A very big part of the reason for every one’s confusion is that the laws and regulations differ from Country to Country.

So the laws in Canada are different then the laws in the US and the laws in Europe or Australia.

(part of the problem with the on-line world…we’re a global community, but our food is not)

In Canada, Antibiotic use in Milk are completely monitored with zero tolerance.

The milk from any animal being treated for an infection like mastitis needs to be withheld from the milk supply for a specified withholding time (dependent on the drug, but typically between between 72 and 96 hours) after the last treatment.

Additionally and as a measure of control, a sample of individual producer bulk tank milk is taken at the time of milk pick-up. That milk sample is tested for milk components and presence of antibiotics in individual farmer’s milk. If presence of antibiotics is discovered, milk is discarded from the food chain and hefty penalties apply to the producer.

There are huge penalties for antibiotic residue in milk.

Canada does not allow the use of growth hormone (BST – bovine somatotropin). So in Canadian milk, this is a non-issue.

So already much of the information being spread about milk is factually INCORRECT in the country of Canada (however, this doesn’t mean it’s incorrect where you live).

The concept of milk being ‘full of pus’ is absurd.

Yes, there is an allowable Somatic cell count (Typically neutrophils), but this doesn’t mean “pus” (there’s somatic cells in human breast milk too). It’s true that the US allows a much higher somatic cell count that most countries (including Canada)…but this does not mean that your milk is streaking with pus.

And while it is very important to monitor the Somatic cell count of milk the use of the term pus is pejorative, basically….scaremongering.

Lastly, I can’t help but wonder if the people who are scared of the somatic cell count of milk eat meat…seeing as I’m pretty sure that the meat from an animal would be particularly high in somatic cells.

Bottom line of this fact is that, YES it sounds gross. YES it is an important part of the milk production system that needs to be monitored closely. And YES it makes me a little uncomfortable knowing that the amounts allowed in the US are much higher then in other countries. But these facts are also being used as SCAREMONGERING – Using terms and imagery to emotionally influence your opinion of milk.

In this sense I think the tactics being used are far worse than the actual item being discussed.

As for the idea of milk being “practically indigestible”, there is an easily accessible amount of research showing amino acids entering the blood stream after ingestion of milk, of insulin levels increasing after the ingestion of milk, blood glucose levels increasing, Calcium levels increasing as well as many hormones altering in response to the components of milk entering the blood. If the components of milk were not making it into the blood stream this would not occur.

Bottom line: I have no idea whether or not milk is good for you, but its fine for me. And, the laws that govern milk where you live may be different than the laws where other people live.

Regarding things like filtration and pasteurization, Here is an important fact to consider. Well it may or may not change the nutritional quality of milk, it does protect a food supply for over 330 Million people (Canada and US)…

While slightly less nutritious milk doesn’t sound great, salmonella, e.coli etc sound and feel much, much worse.

You may not drink milk, or only drink organic or  even raw milk, and you have your reasons, but there are a lot of people who drink or are only able to drink normal grocery store milk, I believe keeping them safe if important.

Milk isn’t perfect (I hate the fact that typical cream has dextrose, carrageenen and locus bean gum in it), but it’s not ‘evil’ at least, not to me.

Bottom line: This post wasn’t meant to address the 2 million reasons people seem to have for drinking or not drinking milk, just the four I mention above.

In my opinion, based on what I have learned, You don’t need to drink milk, and I don’t believe you need to avoid milk either, it’s a food like any other food – The poison is in the dose.

Lastly, if you write on-line, check your facts. I’d hate to see anyone in a food libel suite just because you were too lazy to actually check the information you are sending out to millions of people around the world (The key here being around the world…what’s true in your backyard may not be true in mine)…hence, the title of this post.

BP

PS-

Here’s a good way to enjoy milk (if you want to) and lower the risk of any of these bad things…Eat less.

Seriously.

I once had breakfast with Pro Body Builder who drank over 10 GLASSES OF MILK during breakfast alone.

I  might have 10 glasses over a week or two week period.

Simply Eating less (and taking breaks Eat Stop Eat style) make a lot of these ‘is it good for you or bad for you arguments’ obsolete.

The poison is in the dose.

**Note: The point of of the post is to share what I have learned about milk. I’m all for healthy discussion, but I will not be responding to any “Milk sucks, you suck” comments – let’s keep this civil.

Most obviously, it’ll help you lose weight.

AND, it helps you overcome obsessive compulsive eating.

But, it also causes some issues…

As a group, people following Eat Stop Eat have chosen NOT to ‘buy-in’ to the typical nutrition nonsense.

We’ve learned that to be lean, all we have to do is workout and eat less…(kinda obvious, I know)

And, we’ve also learned to relax about what we eat..try to eat responsibly, but also enjoy the foods we like.

So why is this an issue?

Well, because everyone else just can’t FIGURE US OUT.

They don’t believe it can be this easy.

So they look for other explanations…

Let’s face it, we’re becoming a group of people that other people HATE…

We are actually those people who “Eat whatever they want are are still losing weight / stay lean”

Just the other day, we had a family friend accuse my wife of having a ‘fast metabolism’!

Yeah, It MUST be our super fast metabolisms

So in a round-about way the problem with Eat Stop Eat is this:

We might actually be contributing to other people’s nutrition-confusion.

But really, they choose what they want to believe.

If they WANT to believe the ONLY POSSIBLE way to lose weight it to never eat another MICROGRAM of sugar ever again..fine.

With ESE you truly can have your cake and eat it too!

Good food, lean body, less stress.

BP

PS – How would you like to be the person that everyone accuses of having a “fast metabolism”?

(just in time for summer) ==> www.EatStopEat.com

From the most underground e-books, to the latest best seller on Amazon, I’ve read through stacks of them.

Actually, I USED TO.

I avoid reading that kinda stuff these days because, well most of the time, once I finished reading a diet book, I feel like I need to take a shower.

They are just that sleazy.

Sure, they’re some of the greatest examples of marketing this side of beer commercials, but the actual information in them is a combination of basic good nutritional practices (you should eat more fruits and vegetables) and make-believe (never eat carbohydrates past 6:45 pm when in combination with fats).

Most of the time the marketing story starts like this… “My special ‘melt the lard’ program guarantees you will lose fat fast without losing any muscle”.

The part I have a trouble with is the “without losing any muscle”.

It seems losing muscle is something everyone is deathly afraid of doing…

And that it’s somehow something that typically happens when dieting.

Here’s my issue with this:

Most of the bodybuilders, athletes and fitness models I’ve talked with are convinced that they lose muscle when they are dieting.

But they are exactly the people who probably shouldn’t worry.

At all.

Here’s the truth about losing muscle mass while dieting. I don’t believe it. Not at all.

I have taken over one hundred body fat measurements on amateur body builders and fitness models.

None of them lost any more than 1 or 2 pounds of lean mass while dieting for a competition!

They drop anywhere from 20 to 50 pounds of fat, but lose almost no muscle!

My measurements were taken with a BodPod, and validated with both skin fold calipers and limb circumference measurements, so I’m sure they were accurate.

And, these are the same findings that are being published in peer reviewed research papers (so it’s not just me).

All of these athletes were on different types of low calorie diets and loads of different supplements or no supplements at all; however, none of them were losing muscle.

This is for one reason and one reason only.

People who are weight training while dieting (within reason) WILL NOT LOSE MUSCLE.

I believe this is for one main reason.

In MASSIVELY over-simplified terms: By lifting weights, you are telling your body you need that muscle.

Your body recognizes that need, and thinks:

“Whoa. Looks like I’m dieting again. I need to burn something for some extra energy but if I get rid of some of this muscle, it’ll make this whole lifting weights thing even harder. I better keep this muscle and burn something else, maybe this fat over here…”

So as long as your diet doesn’t consist of “eat nothing for 6 months straight” the number one way to ensure you don’t lose any muscle while you are dieting is by lifting weights.

Protein may play a role on in this (almost all of the people I was tracking were eating a high protein diet), and even I’m a fan of slightly higher than average protein intake (not daily, but as a running average) but other than that, no fancy diet program works better than weight training for preventing you from losing muscle while you are dieting.

So here’s the issue.

In food marketing, you can’t do this.

You can’t put “Fat Free” on an apple…because it’s obvious that it is fat free and implies that other apples may not be fat free.

You can’t put “Calorie Free” on a bottle of water..because again, its obvious and it implies that other water isnt’ fat free (real water, not sports water or any of that nonsense)

BUT..

It gets even trickier…

Since most diets IMPLY that muscle loss is a GIANT risk, it almost becomes a necessity that you advertise that muscle loss won’t happen (I state this with Eat Stop Eat all the time, mostly because, whether right or wrong, it is something people are now extremely worried about).

So bottome line:

Misleading advertising creates bad public perception and public beliefs.

In other words, it’s because of Misleading advertising that I almost have to say…Eat Stop Eat won’t make you lose muscle as long as you are resistance training, nor will most other diets.

BP

?

Finally saw a UFC fight that was worth staying up late to watch.

(and trust me, this is an AMAZING feat of will power for me..)

Now, regardless of whether or not you approve of Mixed Martial Arts I can tell you that there is some valuable lessons to be learned from this sport.

After watching George St. Pierre continually improve as a fighter (he’s the guy who one the main fight) I realized some rather obvious things and some not-so-obvious things.

Firstly, the Obvious:

Progress needs Progression.

Next, the non-obvious:

You can’t FORCE progression.

These two rules go for building muscle or losing fat or getting better at an activity….really, they go for everything in life.

Everybody talk about progress, but nobody talks about the fact that progress doesn’t work when you force it.

In fact, the go-to health and fitness Bravado is FORCE IT, FORCE IT, FORCE IT!

The mantra of almost any get rich quick scheme is FORCE IT, FORCE IT, FORCE IT!

Yet, in my opinion the truth is:

You need to improve, BUT you need to get rid of the obstacles that are preventing you from improving.

You just can’t push your way through everything (Forcing it doesn’t always work).

Sometimes you need to be smart and remove your obstacles INSTEAD of going through them….

Banging your head against a brick wall so to speak.

Some Examples:

When it comes to losing body fat, it’s all about eating less.

But ‘eating less’ is much easier to type, then it is to actually do.

Most of the time, it’s because, well…we really like to eat.

So an example of REMOVING The problem instead of FORCING your way thought it, would be not keeping foods in your house that you
‘love’ enough to pig out on (even though you know the consequences).

(And you know I’m a big fan of allowing people to enjoy their food.)

But there’s a BIG difference between allowing yourself the occasional piece of cake, or dessert at your favorite restaurant
and DESTROYING a box of Orea Cookies every week, just because they are there.

Remove the problem instead of trying your force yourself through it.

Don’t make every day of your life a constant WILL POWER BATTLE…

The easier solution is to simply avoid keeping the Oreos in your house.

When it comes to workouts, it’s all about lifting “more”.

Now ‘more’ may be volume, weight, intensity…however you personally want to improve, something has to increase.

In the case of working out, it’s typically things that you ignore or try to ‘push through’ that are preventing you from
progressing.

From my experience this doesn’t work….EVER.

If you have a weak point it needs to be fixed…you can’t just ignore it and force your way though it.

(just like you can’t pretend the bag of Oreos isn’t there)

Getting back to George St. Pierre, this is how he became champion -

He consistently improved his weak spots…he didn’t ignore them.

For you, this means addressing injuries…

Especially those nagging injuries that you ignore thinking they will ‘go away’

It doesn’t work, and its preventing you from reaching your goals.

Get them fixed.

Don’t force your way through them, roll with them..rest if you need rest, get it fixed if it needs to be fixed.

Ignore exercises that aggravate and concentrate on the ones that seem to help.

I’m bench pressing again because I finally took the time to address my shoulders.

The result is bigger, stronger shoulders and a pain free bench press (and a stern lesson to treat this lift with a little more respect)

For many people, it’s the lower back.

If you have a bad lower back you can’t squat, or bench, or even curl without some form of pain.

If you are going to progress, look for things you are trying to ‘force’ …..then remove them (If you can).

As funny as it sounds, you can’t force progress, you allow progress to happen.

For fat loss, if food is your issue, instead of ‘dieting’ and fighting a hard battle, you could just use the Eat Stop Eat philosophy and simply remove the problem once or twice a week. (Basically ‘Allowing’ fat loss to happen, rather than trying to force it to happen).

Saves you lots of effort, lots of decisions..no more forcing it, you just remove it.

BP

PS- Speaking of MMA and bad backs, Eric Wong is an MMA specialist who has a free report on exercises that help back pain.

Obviously, I’m not an expert in back pain by any means, but I know Eric had a really (really) messed up back, and now he’s pain free so it may be worth a look..you can check it out here:

http://www.bulletproofback.com/back-pain-report.html

It’s time to get rid of “Cookie Tuesdays” and “Cake Thursdays”

It’s also time to get rid of the “Cookies and treats at every meeting” mentality.

You CAN make it through an hour meeting without needing cookies…

(Besides..conspiracy theorists think the cookies are just there to keep you sedated)

If you are going to win this battle against obesity…then it’s not a war you can only fight at home.

You have to take it to the office too.

And remember, I’m all for eating the foods you love…but it all has to be within the realm of eating less.

You CAN have cake while dieting..just not at every meeting.

Here’s my final thought from back when I worked in an office that was meeting crazy

1. You shouldn’t have to bribe your employees to go to a meeting

2. The meetings shouldn’t be any longer than they need to be…so you really shouldn’t have to nourish your employees.

3. If you have employees who are trying to lose weight, having treats can be just as offensive as NOT having treats. Especially when you employees try to guild trip each other into eating.

and finally

4. Eat Stop Eat. There’s a LOT of us out there now (we’re the ones losing all that weight) …we may not tell you, but we might be fasting…so be nice.

BP

Some are short, and some are tall.

But nobody was ‘meant’ to be fat.

You can always improve.

You can work within your strengths, and improve on your weaknesses, but you can’t change you you are.

But your body fat?

That’s not you.

It’s hiding you.

I know this sounds ‘new age’, but it’s true.

You don’t need to be ‘shredded’ to have self-worth.

6 Pack abs wont make you a better person.

But, if you want to change how you look, body fat is the ONE thing you can really change.

One small change to the way you eat, and some dedication to stick with it.

That’s all it really takes.

Some people are big and strong, some people will always be small.

But nobody was meant to be fat.

BP

(This is my reasoning for Eat Stop Eat)