The Smarter Sculpted Physique: Training | Nutrition | Muscle Gain | Fat Loss

----------------------------------------

♦ Food, Diet and the Holiday Season ♦

----------------------------------------

It’s the Holiday season and time to start fretting about diet and weight gain, right? Not so fast. Healthy diet psychology celebrates and embraces food during the Holidays.

♦♦ “What you resist, persists.” ♦♦

• Food has been part of holiday traditions for hundreds of years, spanning both time and cultures; it is included in the happiness of the Season.

• Resisting food during the holidays is silly. It just needs to be managed.

• Proper diet psychology is about “managing celebration.”

• This isn’t the time of year to wage war against yourself.

• Scott suggests “…a time to embrace” from Ecclesiastes chapter 3, 1-8 includes the embracing of food in its proper time:

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens…”.

• Scott made a practice of scheduling a two-week-long break from diet each year during Christmastime.

• If the Holiday season has no importance for you, then go ahead and stick to your diet.

• A free mind doesn’t mean total hedonistic approach to food indulgence… the free mind is an adult mind.

• The Cycle Diet is a diet of inclusion, not exclusion; you can live [and maintain a great physique] in a world of food abundance.

• The Cycle Diet allows for refeeds. These can be built into the program.

http://thecycle.diet/

• Lean into food during the holidays rather than fighting it as fad diet gurus would advise.

**Get an entire module of "Food Freedom" as a Free Email Course. 100% Free. No Credit Card Required.

https://foodfreedomcourse.com/free/

--------------------------------------------------------

♦ Research and Support for Hardgainer Solution 2.0 ♦

--------------------------------------------------------

A study published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology in 2017 found that training to failure slows down recovery, supporting the key tenet of recovery emphasized in Hardgainer Solution 2.0.

♦♦ Train like you have something to accomplish, not something to prove. ♦♦

• The study, published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology Dec 2017, demonstrated that training to failure slows recovery.

• The hardgainer trainee shouldn’t train to failure at any time, even for one set.

• Following a routine used by a pro (who may be on PEDs) leads to overtraining and overuse syndromes.

• The true hardgainer has a very specific dilemma of balancing adequate stimulus and recovery for optimum adoptive response.

• The study looked at three different resistance training protocols using the bench press and squat. It showed that training to failure slows recovery 24 to 48 hours post-exercise.

• Not training to failure enables the trainee to train again sooner.

• The hardgainer is already susceptible to overtraining, so avoiding it is critical.

• Leave the gym feeling invigorated, not exhausted.

• HGS 2.0 is the result of feedback from hundreds who wrote and commented on the original HGS, along with Scott’s own biofeedback and that of his clients. It focuses a bit more on recovery than did the original [although the original did as well…just not to the same degree.]

• HGS 2.0 provides enough stimulus to engage adoptive response without tapping into ability to recover.

• Whole body training based on innervation methodology with emphasis on inter and intra-workout recovery makes the most sense for the hardgainer trainee.

• Scott: Compound exercises tax recovery more than do single joint exercises.

[Reference]

Moran-Navarro R, et al. “Time course of recovery following resistance training leading or not to failure.” Eur J Appl Physiol. 2017 Dec;117(12):2387-2399.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28965198

**Special Offer - Get a FREE week of workouts from my most popular workout program, The Hardgainer Solution:

http://hardgainersolution.com/free/

-------------------------------------------------

♦ Metabolism First: How Diets Make You Fat ♦

-------------------------------------------------

Scott’s said for years that calorie restriction diets set in motion a metabolic cascade that make a person fatter over the long term. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2011 comes to a similar conclusion.

What happens to the body long-term after weight loss, particularly with diets that emphasize short-term loss over long-term consequences?

♦♦ Train the metabolism to be a fat burning machine, not a fat storing machine. ♦♦

• "Abelisms" highlighted here:

- Metabolism must be fed, not starved.

- Coax the body and it responds. Force the body and it reacts.

- Coax the body = relative calorie deficits vs. forcing the body = absolute calorie deficit.

• Low-calorie, low-carb diets, intermittent fasting, cleanses, etc., have unintended long-term consequences.

• Diets aimed at short-term weight loss set physiological processes in motion that lead to weight gain. These happen in the immediate, residual, cumulative realms of time.

• Metabolic resets are really just deprivation diets.

• Deprivation, calorie-restriction diets program the body’s “computer” to store fat.

• Ghrelin is the hunger hormone. It stimulates food intake and promotes fat storage. The study showed an increase in ghrelin after 62 weeks.

• Lose weight fast is a recipe to gain weight slow…and forever.

Quotes from the study that speak to long term effects of low-energy dieting:

• “Caloric restriction results in acute compensatory changes, including profound reductions in energy expenditure and levels of leptin and cholecystokinin and increases in ghrelin and appetite, all of which promote weight regain.”

• “Ratings for preoccupation with thoughts of food, as compared with baseline ratings, tended to increase at week 10 (P=0.09) and were significantly increased at week 62 (P=0.008).”

• “…many of these alterations persist for 12 months after weight loss, even after the onset of weight regain…”

• “…in an environment in which energy-dense food is abundant and physical activity is largely unnecessary, the high rate of relapse after weight loss is not surprising.”

[Reference]

Sumithran P, et al. “Long-Term Persistence of Hormonal Adaptations to Weight Loss.” October 27, 2011 N Engl J Med 2011; 365:1597-1604.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa1105816

**A whole food plant-based diet lets you get lean (and stay lean) without trying. Learn more about whole food plant-based diet at NutritionStudies.org, and check out the Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate Course.

https://nutritionstudies.org/courses/plant-based-nutrition/

**Get an entire module of "Food Freedom" as a Free Email Course. 100% Free. No Credit Card Required.

https://foodfreedomcourse.com/free/

----------------------------------------------------

♦ Reflections on my Discussion with Dr. T. Colin Campbell ♦

----------------------------------------------------

Scott makes some high-level observations about health, longevity and integrity following his interview with Dr. Thomas Colin Campbell.

♦♦ Live until you die. ♦♦

• If you’re in your 40s or 50s, it’s never too early to think about the quality of your life moving forward.

• Surviving isn’t the same thing as thriving. Add life to years, not years to life.

• Dr. Campbell is finishing another book at age 84. Many people at that age are retired and suffering health problems.

• Scott’s dad lived until he was 87 but had a litany of health issues that began around his 50s. He ate a typical American diet, where the plate was several shades of beige and few bright colors (i.e., fruits and vegetables.)

• Dr. Campbell said during the interview that he takes no meds or supplements. He demonstrates the benefits of a whole food plant-based lifestyle.

• If carbs are so bad for us, why is Dr. Campbell so healthy?

• Ellsworth Wareham, cardiothoracic surgeon, worked into his 90s and lived until he was 104. He attributed his longevity to a plant-based diet.

• Long-term health benefits should accompany weight loss [meaning weight loss should be accomplished in a healthy way.]

• Dr. Campbell followed where the research led him, an example of integrity.

• “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” –Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

**Want to learn more about a whole food plant-based diet? Visit Dr. Campbell’s Nutrition Studies website. Take control of your health: enroll in the Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate course.

https://nutritionstudies.org/

**Get an entire module of "Food Freedom" as a Free Email Course. 100% Free. No Credit Card Required.

https://foodfreedomcourse.com/free/

-------------------------------------

♦ Magic Tricks and Photo Shoots ♦

-------------------------------------

Scott shares personal stories from his bodybuilding past to illustrate techniques the fitness and supplement industries use to create the illusion that their products work.

♦♦ The Story Behind the Story ♦♦

• To prep for one photo shoot in Muscle Mag, Scott enhanced his vascularity by taking a sauna and chewing niacin a few minutes beforehand.

- Warm air and niacin improve superficial vascularity; makes vessels disappear beneath the skin.

- Niacin can make the skin red and itchy.

• Techniques like this are used in before and after photos to promote supplements.

• Supplement companies began paying Scott to transform models with 12-week programs to get them photoshoot ready with training and diet. They would then credit the bodybuilders’ appearances to the supplements.

• Scott never took any of the supplements that his photos were used to promote.

• White backgrounds are used in photo shoots to accentuate the model’s ripped appearance.

• Scott and Andy would have Cycle Diet cheat days shortly before photo shoots and showed up super-lean.

• The Cycle Diet kept Scott and Andy photoshoot ready year-round.

http://thecycle.diet/

• Thinking a supplement will create a great physique instead of diet and hard work is like thinking you can be a rock star without learning how to play guitar.

• If [a supplement] sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

**Special Offer - Get a FREE week of workouts from my most popular workout program, The Hardgainer Solution:

http://hardgainersolution.com/free/

-----------------------------

♦ Engaged to be Divorced ♦

-----------------------------

Scott compares repeated diet failures common with fad dieting to the cycle of unhealthy romantic relationships.

Remember: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result.”

♦♦ People who don’t learn from their history are destined to repeat it. ♦♦

• Unhealthy relationship cycle: Meet, courtship, engagement, wedding, honeymoon, facing that the relationship won’t work, divorce, learning nothing, then repeating the same cycle later thinking it will be different this time.

• This cycle is often repeated because the process of meeting and courtship is glorified. This is true of vogue diet trends.

• Deprivation and denial diets are back, alive and well. A few of the current vogue diet trends:

- Seven-day metabolic reset

- Intermittent fasting

- Keto diet with intermittent or true fasting

-One meal per day

• Cutting carbs is a form of fasting.

• Thinking a diet will work doesn’t change how the mind and body will respond to it.

• Diets that call for deprivation and denial run counter to the hardwiring of the brain, and are therefore doomed to fail in the long term.

• Falling in love with a diet blinds the dieter to internal signals from the body that the diet isn’t healthy, sustainable, or abusive to the body.

• “Keto flu” is the body’s way of signaling that something’s wrong.

• Deprivation diets are repeated when hope wins out over experience.

• Metabolic compensation system operates in the immediate, residual and cumulative realms of time.

• Fad diets operate in the short term, immediate time frame.

• People don’t talk about their diet failures. All that’s publicized in social media are the short-term results.

• Consequences of unhealthy diets can be experienced long after the diet is abandoned.

• The longest, most important relationship you will ever have is the one you have with yourself.

• Since when does a survival diet have anything to do with robust health?

♦ We are the only mammal on the planet that fears its food.

**Get an entire module of "Food Freedom" as a Free Email Course. 100% Free. No Credit Card Required.

https://foodfreedomcourse.com/free/

--------------------------------------------

♦ Nutrition Research Lies and Deception ♦

--------------------------------------------

Scott reacts to a recent podcast featuring a debate between plant-based diet advocate Dr. Joel Kahn, and alternative medicine practitioner Chris Kresser who promotes paleo and a line of supplements.

♦ “A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.” - C.H. Spurgeon ♦

• People want their preconceptions reinforced; they will often not challenge what they hear if what they hear agrees with the preconception. Few seldom fact-check what they hear.

• People love to hear good news about their bad habits.

• Scott references Ryan, of Happy Healthy Vegan (http://www.happyhealthyvegan.org/), who also reacted to the Rogan podcast with a series of YouTube videos of his own that debunk Kresser’s comments from the interview.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsBnt486V1E

• During the debate, what was represented was the exact opposite of what the referenced research says. Also, Kresser defends not having a study to support claims by replying “Lack of evidence isn’t evidence against.”

• To highlight the fallacy in the ‘lack of evidence” comment, Scott makes up a Rice Cake Diet as an example: it calls for eating four rice cakes a day and taking a line of supplements. He says there’s no science behind it but that “lack of evidence isn’t evidence against” it.

• It’s possible to mix a little bit of truth and a misrepresentation of research to make a point. This is true with fad diets.

• Scott immediately gets suspicious when he sees supplements being promoted along with a particular dietary approach.

• During Scott's work years ago in the supplement industry, he learned that single nutrients are identified as important, then isolated in a powder or pill then marketed as must-haves.

• In his book Whole, Dr. T. Colin Campbell discusses the benefits of the whole food instead of a single ingredient.

**Want to learn more about a whole food plant-based diet? Visit Dr. T. Colin Campbell’s Nutrition Studies website (https://nutritionstudies.org/). Take control of your health: enroll in the Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate course.

**Get an entire module of "Food Freedom" as a Free Email Course. 100% Free. No Credit Card Required.

https://foodfreedomcourse.com/free/

-------------------------

♦ If Seeing is Believing ♦

-------------------------

Coach Scott shares the specifics of his own recent medical lab results to demonstrate how his body has responded to a vegan diet.

♦♦ Feeling good is as important as positive health measures ♦♦

• Scott goes line by line through his laboratory report, showing the number count tresholds for each item. All tested within healthy ranges.

• He asked his doctor specifically to include measures for iron, B12, protein, and sex hormones, since those are frequent targets of vegan diet naysayers.

• Vegan diets are reputed to not provide sufficient protein or B12, yet his B12 tested well.

• Scott eats fortified vegan foods, and drinks 1 to 2 liters of nut milk. A single cup provides 50% of daily B12 needs.

• Scott takes no vitamin supplements.

• Testosterone levels continue at healthy levels. Scott says he’s been tapering his dose of hormone replacement meds.

• His BP tested as 110/70, though he regularly salts his food with plain, iodized table salt. High sodium has been associated with hypertension (high blood pressure.)

• Hematology measures (hemoglobin, red blood cell count, hematocrit, platelets, etc.) all fell within the healthy range.

• Scott’s lab results run counter to what low-carb diet advocates say about high carb diet effects on blood sugar, lipids, protein, and sex hormones.

*Disclaimer: These are Scott’s results. While clinical studies have shown whole-food plant-based diets to be healthy, individual results may vary. Lifestyle factors, such as exercise, smoking choice, stress level and sleep, all affect overall health.

**Get an entire module of "Food Freedom" as a Free Email Course. 100% Free. No Credit Card Required.

https://foodfreedomcourse.com/free/

-----------------------------------------

♦ A Dialog with Dr. T. Colin Campbell ♦

-----------------------------------------

Best-selling author and nutrition scientist Dr. Thomas Colin Campbell joins Coach Scott Abel for a conversation about whole food-plant based diet, as well as commentary on the myths, business, and politics of nutrition.

Dr. Campbell’s new book, due out in 2019, seeks to answer the question “how can we know as much as we do [about plant-based diet], and still get pushback?” and also will attempt to find out why his evidence-based message on nutrition is so difficult for the establishment to accept.

♦ Why is there so much resistance to plant-based dieting? ♦

• It’s the whole food—not the individual nutrient in that whole food—that matters.

• Taking a single nutrient we think matters and put it in pill form doesn’t have the same benefit as when consumed in the whole food. Combinations of nutrients matter.

• The supplement industry sells “single-cause-single-effect” products.

• Scott uses the analogy of using vowels and exclamation points for writing. Just because they’re important doesn’t mean they should be used with abandon.

• Dr. Campbell has gotten to know professional, hall-of-fame caliber athletes who have tried plant-based eating and improved, even when in the peak of their condition. Lower protein, not higher protein, is the key.

• Most people think protein only comes from animals. We [can] get ideal levels of protein from plants.

• Chemicals in animal protein increase the risk of cancer.

• Oils out of a bottle, or refined sugars, are also a problem.

• Dr. Campbell grew up on a dairy farm and never had any intention of learning what he has about dairy products.

• The meat and dairy industries, as well as fitness industries, have a lot to lose if [plant-based eating] catches on.

• Campbell references studies that show direct correlation between introduction of animal protein into the diets of different populations and certain types of disease.

• Glutens belong to a class of compounds called lectins which affects a small percentage of the population (perhaps 2-3% but not 30 to 40% of the population).

• The Plant Paradox demonizes lectins, which are only found in plants.

• Complexity creates confusion. This plays into the hands of people who want to take a small piece of information and exploit it.

• Fame and fortune take precedence to actually helping people.

• Good science involves experimentation, observation and peer review.

• The average person doesn’t understand what makes one piece of research good or bad.

• Dr. Campbell is 84, has never taken meds, occasionally takes an aspirin.

• Scott asks if there’s any supplement he’d recommend. B12 maybe. It’s not harmful.

• Campbell’s Center for Nutrition Studies offers a certification in Plant-Based Nutrition.

• Plant-based eating can cut healthcare costs, and we could feed the world.

• Scott: Two essentials of any diet strategy: 1. Must be sustainable and 2. Must serve the body. Campbell agrees, particularly to sustainability.

• We need to start thinking about sustainable food production.

• Campbell doesn’t like the term “vegan.” It’s born out of ethical considerations and doesn’t take science into account. Also, the vegan diet has a high degree of fat in it…they’ve traded one type of fat for another.

• Scientists whose work Dr. Campbell respects and admires:

Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. John McDougall, Dr. Pam Popper, Dr. Michael Greger and Dr. Neal Barnard.

------------------------------

Visit Dr.

-----------------------------

♦ I Wish I Could Eat Carbs ♦

-----------------------------

Scott’s clients are frequently asked what they eat to get so lean and stay that way. Their “high-carb diet” answer often surprises people. Scott provides scientific research in attempts to expose that fat makes you fat, not carbs.

♦ The fat you eat is the fat you wear ♦

• Scott’s clients consume a high-carb diet.

• Some who think “carbs make you fat” often believe only [a select few] can eat carbs and be lean, that lean carb-eaters are somehow special.

• A 2001 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition looked at the effects of overfeeding.

- Two populations were studied: overweight women, and lean women. The study concluded that lipogenesis (fat) increases after overfeeding with glucose and sucrose to the same extent in lean and obese women, but does not contribute greatly to total fat balance.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11722954

• The traditional Okinawan diet is renowned for its healthiness.

• Okinawa has 2-1/2 times the Japanese national average of people over 100 years old.

• Following the introduction of Western diet there (e.g. fast food), the next generation of Okinawans became the fattest in Japan and prone to a range of obesity-related illnesses.

• Human evolution studies are often cited by Paleo and Keto diet advocates. A recent study from University of Chicago shows that high carb diets were necessary for brain development.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/682587

**Do you love carbs but fear they’ll make you fat? Can you eat carbs and be lean? Absolutely! Find out how. Check out Scott’s Food Freedom course. The first module is FREE.