It’s that time of year where everyone has made a resolution to lose weight and transform their bodies. And it’s the time of year where the internet is FLOODED with new diet strategies.

Some Crazy, Some Foolish, Some Dangerous…and a couple of gems.

It is also the time of year where all the new Transformation Contests start.

As you can imagine Transformation Contests + New fad diets = Recipe for diet disaster, horrible rebounds and feelings that you just can’t do it.

So, in order to do our part for helping prevent the fad crash diet mess from happening to you, John Barban and I have created a complete guide to PROPERLY managing your way through a body transformation. (This is why I haven’t been around much)

Because I’ll be honest – this is the one time you CAN diet wrong. You CAN lose muscle and you CAN make yourself tired, lethargic and miserable.

It happens when your body fat levels become very low (We’re talking 6 pack low). In this state…you really can mess up dieting.

Consider a man at roughly 5% body fat who decided to try fasting and dieting, while working out 6 days a week and ends up feeling tired, lethargic…and well, lousy the whole time.

What did he expect? Was his goal 0% body fat??!!!

To be honest, I think most of the weird stuff people do when dieting – carb cycling, fat loading, cheat days, crazy workouts -are all band-aid solutions covering the fact that they are dieting wrong.

Really, really wrong.

Mostly, it’s from taking advice from bodybuilders on steroids – you know the guys and girls who are already insanely RIPPED, but still do 2 hours of cardio a day for the weeks before their contest, just so they can be ultra-mega-insanely RIPPED. (HINT- natural people can’t do this, not without losing a little muscle, and generally feeling like they are perpetually hung over)

Look – when you start to get really really lean, things start to change…and this is when you can mess up a diet, especially when you fall prey to the more-is-better mentality.

This isn’t a departure from Eat Stop Eat in anyway – I actually consider this an add-on to ESE for people who want a bit more structure and who are trying to win a contest and want to make sure they don’t mess up during the final weeks.

And since I know that some people just need a tiny bit more structure when they are dieting  John and I have put together a guide on how to do it right.

We’ve called it the Transformation Diet Plan, and it’s based on the Reverse Taper Diet Protocol and the Theory of Fat Availability. Two things you need to know if you actually want to make it through a diet and not feel (and possible look horrible)

Here’s the deal.

There are two versions of the Transformation Diet (one for women and one for men)

They are now available for individual purchase, but only until Friday night at midnight.

The Reason:

Simple, we only want about 500 people tops in on this first round so we can get your feedback and make the necessary additions and changes if need be before we release it to the general public….As you know, sometimes you need to be fluent in “Pilon” to understand me ??

So we’re doing a test run right now… and won’t likely put this back out until April or May (depending on how much fine tuning we need to do).

Okay, that’s the deal, here’s what you get…

- You get a very concise manual about how everything works and how to use the software.

Yep, we’ve got some crazy new software, which tells you exactly:

*Your Ideal Waist Measurement,

*Your Ideal Shoulder Measurement,

*Your most Likely ‘Target’ Weight,

*Your maximal fat loss per week,

*How many calories you should eat per day,

*How many fasts you’re “allotted” per week,

*What your estimated weekly change will be

And as part of the first group to get your hands on it it’s almost 50% off this week. The discounted rate is part of the deal on our side, the part we want from you is feedback on how it’s working for you and what you’d like to see added/changed moving forward.

So the deal is you get it for a big discount, and we get your input on how to make it better (and of course you get the new version with the upgrades you recommend for free when they’re ready)

So that’s the offer.

All in all, this is a very COOL product.

If you’re thinking of attempting a transformation I feel it’ll be a great tool for you to succeed.

Point blank, I really don’t care WHICH transformation contest you are in – if you’re looking to lean down and possibly WIN a transformation contest WITHOUT losing lean mass, WITHOUT feeling lethargic and weak, and WITHOUT the crazy hassles of trying to figure out everything for yourself… this is for you.

If you just want to wing it, then it’s NOT for you. No biggie, just the truth.

And, if you’re not really looking to get super shredded…if you just want to get down to being beach ready and looking great then Eat Stop Eat is all you really need.

But, if you’re going for broke and trying to win a contest – Please do not do it without reading this manual first

Here’s the ‘buy link’ when you’re ready, really a drop in the bucket for the amount of sanity you’re getting ready to get back.

SUPER IMPORTANT POINT ==> The software is different for men and women – they use completely different algorithms, so please… make sure you get the RIGHT one.

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==> WOMEN CLICK HERE

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==> MEN CLICK HERE 

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We’ve done my best to give you a “done for you” approach to body transformations

BP

PS – Please promise me you’ll read the manual BEFORE you play with the software, otherwise it could all get a little overwhelming

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Contraction dependent muscle growth (also called work induced muscle growth) is “Non-Uniform Muscle growth”. Using new measurement techniques we are finding regional differences in muscle activation along a muscle during exercise – and where this activation occurs seems to be dependent on the exercise of choice.

Meaning weight training can affect different parts of the same muscle in different ways – as an example if you do bicep curls you don’t stimulate growth equally along your entire bicep..some parts get ‘hit’ more than others.

From what I have found the difference seems to be along the ‘length’ of the muscle – so sometimes the effect is more ‘proximal’ and sometimes it’s more in the middle.

As an example – if you were to train Biceps 3 times a week, for 12 weeks and I were to graph the Cross Sectional Area of you Biceps before and after those 12 weeks, the graph would look like this -

The largest changes happen in the middle of the muscle.  As a more illustrated example we can use the picture below – most of the growth would occur at “B”

This regional difference seems to be dependent on the muscle and the exercise – sometimes the majority of the growth is right in the middle, sometimes it’s closer to the shoulder.

So what does this all have to do with steroids?

Well, we now have some pretty concrete evidence that contraction induced muscle growth causes non-uniform muscle growth – parts of the muscle (typically the middle) grow MORE than others when stimulated by contractions (Weight training).

So here’s my theory – With steroid use, especially at high doses, you are essentially BATHING the muscle in anabolic signals for days and weeks and months.

The WHOLE muscle gets the anabolic signal.

Thus, you may get a different muscle growth pattern when using steroids.

Back to our bicep example – a steroid user may see a more uniform growth in his Bicep. So not only would the middle of the muscle increase in size (B), so would that parts closer to the shoulder AND the parts closer to the elbow (A & C).

My bet is that steroid use creates a different ‘look’ than people who are just weight training. It may also explain why steroid users can simply get ‘bigger’ than the non-users – it could just be that they are getting more growth in areas of the muscle that simply will not grow much without steroid use – while this doesn’t sound like much if you are only thinking ‘biceps’ but consider the same scenario using every muscle in the body..that’s some serious untapped growth potential.

This is all hypothetical of course, and it’s confounded by the fact that the vast majority of steroid users also weight train (so they still get the growth at ‘B’) … But the fact remains that steroid use seems to create a ‘fuller’ looking muscle and now we may know why.

BP

So here is a really simple diet hack for you that works for breakfast. Now, I’m not going to go into the whole Breakfast vs. No Breakfast argument because, well…it’s silly and a waste of time.

Instead I’d like to suggest the following:

BEFORE you have breakfast, or even start planning your breakfast, have a tall glass of water. Don’t ‘pound it back’ – just drink it at a normal speed.

This will give you time to A) figure out if you are actually hungry and B) Figure out If you actually even want to eat breakfast.

It will also make sure you are not confusing thirst for hunger.

This simple hack can save you hundreds of calories over the day, since the one thing that all the breakfast research DOES agree on is that eating a big breakfast leads to a higher total calorie intake at the end of the day…Of course people like to play with the stats and tell you that eating a bigger breakfast means you eat less for the rest of the day..but they are just playing with numbers .. Yes a big breakfast may mean you eat a little less at other meals, but consider if a 2,000 calorie breakfast makes you eat 150 less calories at lunch and 100 less calories at dinner, chances are it also STILL caused you to grossly overeat for that day. But I digress.

This hack is simple – Start your day with a glass of water. Give it 5 or 10 minutes and then decide if you are hungry.  And, if you are hungry figure out what you want to eat.

All to often, I’ve been almost FINISHED by breakfast before I realized that I wasn’t really hungry in the first place – I was thirsty and going through the habit of eating in the morning.

BP

PS- Since it’s thanksgiving in the US right now, this Diet Hack will probably be very useful to a lot of people!

Picture in your mind a 6 foot tall piece of marble – it is 3 feet in diameter…the closest thing to a perfect cylinder you will ever see. It’s a beautiful piece of rock, polished to perfection – not a single dent, crack or crevice.

Now wrap your piece of marble in a giant blanket – and what do you get? (Other than a giant piece of marble wrapped in a blanket)

Well, you get the dents, crevices and bulges that come from the blanket…not the marble.

(try as a might, I can not find a Google image of a giant piece of marble wrapped in a blanket)

Now, take away the blanket and wrap the marble slab in plastic wrap.

No matter how thin the plastic wrap is, no matter how tight, what you get is…still smooth.

Because the slab of marble underneath is smooth.(Obviously)

Ok..so where am I going with this?

Repeat the same thought experiment, but take away the perfect marble cylinder, and replace it with the statue of David.

Now…with the blanket you still get all the the dents, crevices and bulges that come from the blanket…this is analogous to having excess body fat…you see the shape of the fat, not the body underneath.

And, with the plastic wrap what do you see? you see the contours of the statue..the abs, the chest, the freakishly large hands….

So bringing this to a point- To look lean, to have ‘muscularity’ – dents, crevices and bulges in all the right places… you need to have something underneath the plastic wrap – In other words it does not matter how little body fat you have if you are the perfectly smooth CYLINDER.

So, if you are relatively low body fat, but still don’t have abs, or the ‘look’ you want, perhaps your focus is in the wrong area, instead of dieting even more,  maybe it’s time to start carving the statue.

Eat Stop Eat – it’s intermittent fasting combined with resistance training for a reason

BP

PS- If you think you’re ready for it – this is the workout I’m currently using – Compound Cluster Cycles

It was written by J.D. Roth of GetRichSlowly.org.

To say it resonated with me would be an understatement. His views on money mirrored my views on weight loss so closely that I’ve decided to ‘commentary’ on his post here on my blog.

Below you will find J.D.’s original article, with my comments in [Blue]

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Today I’m going to rant.

I get a lot of requests from reporters who want quotes for their stories about personal finance. That’s fine. I’m happy to help when possible. What bugs me, though, is that nearly every single reporter pitches her story with the same caveat: “I need tips about saving, but I don’t want the same old stuff. I need new, unique ways to save money.”

[The weight loss and diet industry is no different. People want stories and articles about weight loss, but every request for help comes with the same caveat: "I need tips for weight loss, but I don't want the same old stuff. I need new, unique ways of losing weight" and I'm sure J.D. would agree when I say that this is largely because the new, unique ways move magazines and sell books]

sigh

“New, unique ways to save money” have become the bane of my existence. I loathe these requests. Why? Because the basics of personal finance never change. They haven’t changed in thousands of years, and they’re not going to change for thousands more. Fundamentally, all you need to know about managing your money is this: Spend less than you earn.

[Obviously, if you visit this blog with any regularity, you know how I feel about the basics of weight loss. No matter how many tricks and tips are invented it will always come down to spending more energy then you eat]

That’s it. If you spend less than you earn, you’ll do fine. Everything else is details. Those details are important, I know, but most of them are common sense and widely known.

Reporters don’t want to hear that the best ways to save money are to cut cable television (and other monthly expenses), start a vegetable garden, clip coupons or buy a used car. No no no. These ideas aren’t good enough. So, you end up with articles that claim they’ll save readers $5,000 a year — but only if you can get rid of your hot tub or ditch your pet ostrich or give up the vacation home on the lake. In other words, by constantly striving for new, unique ways to save money, reporters make their articles mostly useless.

[Similarly, very few people want to hear that weight loss is mostly about eating less. It HAS to be about hormones and meal timing and burning an extra 5,000 calories every day]

Instead, I think reporters should have the guts to promote the basics. Why? Because they work.

[ditto]

The basics of personal finance

We’ve covered this a zillion times before — including a four-part series in April during which I described my core financial framework — but let’s do a quick review.

Smart personal finance can be reduced to one simple equation:

PS-

Original article is here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2011/10/24/why-i-hate-new-unique-money-tips/

J.D. Roth’s website is here:

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/

My other posts of fat as debt here:

http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/big-fat-debt/

http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/extreme-couponing-for-fat-loss/

http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/how-to-calorie-budget/

http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/lean-and-rich/

http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/gain-the-fat-back/

http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/on-being-average/

http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/the-root-of-obesity-and-debt/

http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/how-to-gain-fat/

I think you are wrong Brad.

Take 2 hypothetical males of the same height and frame size. 1st guy(thin) weighs 60kgs (132 pounds) and has 6% body fat.

2nd guy(muscular) weighs 80 kgs (176 pounds) and has 6% body fat.

Now according to Katch mc ardle’s formula: (RMR = [LBM (KG) x 21.6) + 370])

1st guy BMR is 1588 cal.

2nd guy BMR is 1994 cal.

Lean mass of 1st guy from Katch’s formual 56.4 kgs. (124 pounds)

Lean mass of 2nd guy from Katch’s formula is 75.2 kgs. (165 pounds)

(That’s a 41 pound difference, very difficult for two guys of the same height to have a 41 pounds difference in skeletal muscle mass and both be very lean.. but I’ll let it slide)

Now assuming that both have similar size internal organs which is a safe assumption i presume, the difference in lean body mass in this case refers to muscle which is 75.2 – 56.4 = 18.8 kgs. (ONLY if they are the same height, which then makes the 40 pounds Lean Mass difference highly suspect)

Now difference in BMR of the 2 guys is 1994 – 1588 = 406 cals. (correct)

So calories needed to maintain 1 kg muscle mass = 406/18.8 = 21.6 calories per Kilogram or 10 Calories per pounds. (correct)

Now the point here is that the 80kgs guy requires 400 calories more than the 60kgs to maintain his weight including his lean mass. So if both are trying to maintain their weight, the 80 kgs guy can eat 400 calories more than the 60 kgs guy without getting fatter which means he burns 400 calories more than the smaller guy effectively. (makes sense based on your assumptions)

So the conclusion is that muscular guys can eat more than skinny guys because their extra muscle will burn extra calories. (explanation below)

The mistakes made here is are very common ones. They’re made by trainers, students, heck even some PhD’s.

The first mistake is trying to use McCardle Katch (or any equation for that matter) to compare differences between two people. That’s not what these equations were meant for. Nor were they made for estimating the metabolic changes that result from adding or subtracting skeletal muscle.

This is because these equations utilize a homogenous ’21.6′ as the metabolic rate for ALL lean body mass combined. (Hence why our commenter above came to the conclusion that 2.2 pounds of muscle (a Kilogram) burns 21.6 calories per day).

The truth is we know the metabolic rates of all of the compartments that make up ‘lean body mass’ this includes the highly active heart, liver and kidneys and the (by comparison) barely active component of skeletal muscle (when at rest).

So the 21.6 is the approximate value of all of your lean body mass combined, but NOT the ‘calorie’ burn of each individual compartment of your lean body mass. (Muscle burns about 6 calories per pound, per day when at rest).

So our two men above would still have a very significant 250 calorie difference in daily Resting Metabolic Rate.

The question is, can two men of equal height vary by 40 pounds of skeletal muscle? And if they could, would either man be considered healthy?

Chance are, these two men would be different heights, and as we know, metabolic rate is scalable to height, since our highly metabolic organs are also scalable to height.  – This is a main reason why a 6’2″ man has a higher metabolic rate then a 5’6″ women…I know, I know – not fair

Bottom line – you can’t really use metabolic equations to try and identify metabolic changes that result from increases or decreases in Lean body mass. It’s an easy mistake to make, and one that’s not properly explained on most websites that provide these calculators.

BP

Tonight I’ll be baking and prepping a large, large amount of food. In planning for this momentous occasion I’m reminded of why Eat Stop Eat works so well.

Quite simply – The amount of food people consume at a meal is determined to a large extent by the amount of food placed on the plate in front of them.

This simple fact is part of the reason why women have such a hard time with weight loss – When I go to the restaurant with my wife, and we order the same item off of the menu, we get the exact same meal….even though she weighs almost 50 pounds less than me.

From the restaurant, fast food, dining out point of view, it’s definitely a ‘man’s world’ most portion sizes are too much for your averaged sized adult male, let a lone an adult female.

So the point is this, without restraint – the amount you eat is the amount put in front of you.

Whether you are ‘eyeballing’ a portion of mashed sweet potatoes, or are eating at a restaurant, the amount you are served is the amount you eat, and is the amount you become accustomed to eating – it becomes your new normal – the amount you become used to eating.

This is part of why Eat Stop Eat works so well.

Restraint 24/7 can be mentally and emotionally taxing. It means constantly taking less, or even NOT finishing what’s on your plate.

Eat Stop Eat allows for an all or none approach once or twice a week, followed by moderate restraint the other days of the week. This is a large part of what makes Eat Stop Eat work so well.  After all with Eat Stop Eat we abstain from eating once or twice a week, so that on the other days we can enjoy our food.

Because food is meant to be enjoyed.

Happy Canadian Thanks Giving!

BP

Thank you everyone for all of your votes, the results have been very interesting to say the least.

What was supposed to be a very simple experiment has actually opened my eyes to some very interesting findings.  I’ve learned that most of us (myself included) think of ‘metabolism‘ using a number of assumptions, which may, or may not, be correct.

The first assumption is that a faster metabolism is a better metabolism. Interestingly, outside of fitness dogma there is no real evidence to suggest that a higher metabolism is a healthier metabolism. In fact, there is research to suggest (but not prove) that there is a correlation between an elevated Basal Metabolic Rate and mortality. However, I doubt there’s any relation at this level, which leads to point two…

As some of you rightfully pointed out,  we have very little concept of the magnitude of difference required to truly consider a metabolic rate, high or low. The two examples I gave had *roughly* a 200 calorie difference over 24 hours. Some people made the assumption that a 200 calorie difference is ‘next to nothing’ while other made the assumption that this number was large and significant.

You’ll notice that I said (or typed) *roughly* in the paragraph above. I did this because our standard 4 calories per gram of Carbohydrate, 4 calories per gram of protein and 9 Calories per gram of fat are actually just estimates. Not only this but they are estimates for the calorie content of the Carbs, Fats and proteins in our foods, not our bodies (so they take into account digestion ‘losses’).  And within our bodies there is actually a fair amount of variation of how many calories (energy) a gram of each can provide, especially in the protein – depending on the amino acid make up this number can very greatly.

The other assumption we tended to make was that a higher oxidation rate of protein was ‘bad’. True, on the surface it seems to scream ‘muscle loss’, but in reality it COULD be a higher rate of protein turnover that includes a better rate of breaking down damaged proteins in the body and replacing them with new ‘undamaged’ proteins….in this light a higher protein turnover could be a good thing…quicker recover and even better, more durable muscle building…Healthier organs..we just don’t know..after all – It could also mean muscle loss or even a disease state.

I’ll admit that when I posted the question I really didn’t have a preconceived answer to which one was ‘best’. One obviously burned slightly more calories, while the other slightly more fat.

As was rightfully pointed out the differences were small enough to probably be inconsequential.

In fact, both are realistic fluctuations in metabolic rate that you would go through depending on time of day, what you ate, fasted versus not fasted etc.

One of the important lessons from all of this is that regardless of which metabolic rate you ‘had’ in the scenario, the answer to ‘how would I lose weight?’ would be the same – eat less.

In general – The point I was hoping to make is that we spend far too much time worrying about our metabolism.

Yes, if the difference was 200 calories, and you calculated that out over a year it would be a 70,000 calorie difference, and while 70,000 sounds really impressive the question is – does it really matter? The same question can be asked about the 0.3 grams difference in fat oxidation. Yes, if calculated over a year and assumed to be ALL body fat it equates to around 6 pounds of Fat…but does this matter?

In fact, it seems from all of this that what really matters is the calories we put IN to our bodies.

Yes, metabolic rate stuff is sexy, and most arm-chair physiologists think they have it all figured out…even though most of what we know are generalized estimates based on populations, but the truth is…metabolic rate is a big vague grey area. All those metabolic equations that we use to predict our metabolic rates are actually mediocre at best in there estimates. They are useful for predicting the average metabolic rate of a group of people with similar characteristics, but not the metabolic rate of an individual.  Simply put, You do NOT know how many calories you burn – neither do I.

Even if you spent 24 hours in a respiratory chamber, or did a test with doubly labeled water..it only tells you the amount of calories you burned during the test. The test might last 2 hours or several days – it doesn’t really matter.

Yes, we have some great ball part numbers – but that’s all they are…ball park

So suggesting that we can measure a 0.3 gram difference in fat oxidation, and that this difference would survive over hours to days is a mistake (one that I suggested in my last blog post – so my fault, not yours), so is assuming that a 10% decrease or increase in your metabolic rate is a good or bad thing.

We really don’t know.

Which is why the answer to our weight loss issues becomes “eat less”, and “eat the amount that allows you to lose weight”… not the amount the online calculator says you should eat, not the amount your friend ate to lose weight, not the amount that ‘sounds right’.

The biggest mistake we have been making is ‘setting’ an amount of calories we THINK we should be eating for weight loss. Then when that amount doesn’t work, instead of accepting that our assumed number could be wrong, we immediately  move to thinking that WE are somehow broken, damaged or wrong.

Chances are there’s nothing wrong with your metabolism, just the assumptions and estimates that people constantly push on you.

BP

Metabolism A burns (oxidizes):

3.9 grams of protein per hour.

3.5 grams of Carbohydrate per hour

5.0 grams of fat per hour.

Metabolism B burns (oxidizes):

2.8 grams of protein per hour

2.0 grams of carbohydrate per hour

5.3 grams of fat per hour

Let me know which one you’d prefer.
BP

Basically – Abs scream out loud “Successful fitness person RIGHT HERE!!”

I’ll be honest with you, time and time again I’ve proved to myself that throwing a picture of my abs on twitter or Facebook gets far more attention than any of my scientific work. Really, Abs trump a Master’s degree in this odd world of health and fitness.

They are considered by many to be proof of success.

But just like a trophy wife, this isn’t always the case.

Some people who are extremely unhealthy have abs. Some people who really don’t care about fitness or nutrition also have abs. And there are many, very healthy people who don’t have abs.

So here is what you need to know about abs -

They come and go..and if they go, don’t freak out, you can get them back. If you don’t have them, it doesn’t mean you are unhealthy or a health and fitness failure.

After all, in the grand scheme of things whether or not you have abs is a very, very small component of your life.

And even if you had abs, but lost them… don’t worry..they are not gone forever.

I’m not sure what part of the health and fitness industry has built this feeling of ‘permanence’ into our thinking, but it has to go away.

If you lose muscle while dieting, guess what? You can build it back.

If you lose your abs because you’re dealing with something else in your life, Guess what? You can get them back.

In fact, every single transformation contest you see on-line has at least one person who had abs, lost them for a great deal of time then got them back.

So the important lesson for today is this – every single part of your health is transient/temporary. You don’t just diet and get abs then have them for the rest of your life. You don’t work up to a 500 pound bench press then just have it for the rest of your life.

They key to health and fitness is learning how to balance your life and fitness. And to do so sometimes you have to prioritize and move some parts of fitness to the back burner.

But don’t worry, you can always get them back and the process will actually be easier than it was the first time.

BP