Beans and Biscuits

My great-grand parents, Henry and Mena Bennett, whom I called Poppy and Mom-mom, observed most of the twentieth century. They survived two world wars, the great depression, Korea, Vietnam, Water-Gate and disco. Even in my earliest recollections of them, they were already old. Intellectually, I know they were once young, I just never knew them that way. Most of my memories of them revolve around Fishing, working in the garden, and making home made ice cream. I did as a matter of course stay with them, particularly in the summer when I was out of school. The garden had all sorts of vegetables, and a bean patch that would have made Thoreau proud. They were not fat, and actually would probably be considered skinny by todays standards. I can still recall what they ate for breakfast every day, Corn flakes with milk and sugar, biscuits with butter and jam, coffee with cream and sugar. Every day. Being a woman of her generation, my great-grand mother used real butter and cream, real sugar, lard and gold medal flour to make her biscuits, and made her own jam. Lunch, especially this time of year as berries and other fruits become available locally, was often a piece of freshly baked pie or short-cake. I can still picture in my mind, Mom-mom standing at the sink in a plain house dress capping and slicing strawberries with the smell of short bread in the oven. How eagerly I waited for the cast iron skillet containing the short bread to be pulled from the oven. And the still warm biscuit to be topped with a generous scoop of sweetened strawberries and topped with clotted cream. Few things can match such childhood memories. The dinner I remember most often was biscuits and beans. Might great grand father loved lima beans. From a big pot with a big piece of fat pork came the beans served in blue agate bowls. My great grand mothers biscuits ( My grand mother has commented that my great-grand mother made biscuits every day for more than 60 years) and stewed tomatoes rounded out the meal. They would cut small pieces of the pork and mix it with my beans, and butter my biscuits. The stewed tomatoes were not my favorite, but I ate what was in front of me and didn't complain. Perhaps it was the love with which she made everything, but nobody could cook like my great-grand mother. The most simple foods had a flavor and a comforting effect that no gourmet meal can touch.

By current standards they did everything wrong. They ate butter and pork fat. They ate sugar and white flour. They ate fried foods, remind me sometime to tell you about her clam fritters. And in spite of all that they lived to ripe old ages with out succumbing to heart disease or diabetes. They lived quietly and with a deliberateness seldom seen today. How much did they know about how to live that we failed to learn?

Eat Food

Michael Pollan summed up his most recent work in seven words; Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants. Now I am going to admit that I have just started reading "In Defense of Food", but the admonition to "eat food" has gotten me to thinking. I suppose for a variety of reasons I always thought what most people ate was indeed food. By definition, if you ate it, it was food. Then on a recent trip to the grocery store, I actually started looking at many of the products lining the shelves of the store. Normally I just focus on the list. Being a man, I get the list. I go from item to item dutifully retrieving the items on my list, paying little attention to the various and sundry products not on my list. Generally the only isles I travel are canned goods and frozen foods for beans, fruits and veggies. I hit the produce, deli, dairy, and meats. During the holidays, I might visit the baking isle but thats about it. Even so, many of our groceries are purchased from our co-op where much of the food is in bulk bins, not boxes. On this particular occasion however I wandered aimlessly up and down the isles looking at all the brightly colored packages. All the while thinking, people eat this crap? I guess they must because the store certainly stocks a lot of it. I picked up a couple of boxes that had pictures of what looked like food on the cover and read the ingredients. Most of the stuff in the box wasn't anything I recognized as food. Is sodium benzoate, hydrolyzed starch, or red dye number 5 really food? They are not any where in my cupboards or list of ingredients in any of my cook books (I have a collection of more than 100). One box had a picture that looked like fish. The first Ingredient however was hydrolyzed starch, followed in order by salt, sugar, hydrogenated soybean oil, and then finally fish. It seemed like everything in these brightly colored boxes that I examined was what I would call imitation food. There is no way conceivable in my mind that a steady diet of this stuff could possibly be good for you. One of the things had processed and reformed meat. Why would you need to reform meat? Its already formed when they butcher the animal, and nature got it right the first time, it doesn't need to be reformed. For a while I had an image in my head of sending the bad meat to reform school. It was silly, but so is reformed meat. After passing what was probably an inordinate amount of time gawking at people and what was in their carts I realized that I was the only person I saw that didn't have a cart full of brightly colored boxes of imitation food. I'll bet that I was also the only person I saw that day who could stand up straight, look down and see their toes. Coincidence?

Average Guys Guide #10 plan B

The alternative plan for Spring Training for the Average Guy, cleaning it up to look better nekid, or close to it.

The Definition Diet

Unlike plan A, there is no measuring, weighing or counting of anything. The diet goes like this; eat as much meat, eggs, cheese and green vegetables as you want, just don't stuff yourself in the process. The only exceptions to the green vegetables are red peppers, summer squash, mushrooms, and cauliflower. So if its not on the above list don't eat it, no exceptions. Now you can add butter, oil, avocados and cream to make your food taste better, and for cooking. You can drink water, coffee, tea, wine and hard liquor (Max of 3 drinks total per day for men, 2 for women). Again, no exceptions - Not even diet soda or crystal light. Spices and seasonings of all kinds are fine as long as the don't have any type of sugar or starch in them. Thats it. If you don't see it mentioned, it isn't part of the plan. I may seem to repeat myself here, but people always seem to say but what about ...., If it isn't on the list the answer is no, you can't eat it or drink it. Not for the next 6 weeks. For the first few days, you might feel a little rough, suck it up. In six weeks you can accomplish what the plan A guys are going to take 12 weeks to do. But like most things in life there are trade offs. So you'll just have to console yourself for the next 6 weeks with delmonico steaks, broccoli with cheese sauce and Jack Daniels or Cab Sav for dinner.

The workout requirements for plan b are the same as for plan A. Though I would recommend the Circuit Training option over the strength training and cardio combination. I recently came across a good collection of routines for this program in a book called the "Abs Diet - Get Fit Stay Fit". Its an interesting assortment of workouts using a variety of equipment that can be adapted easily. While the routines are certainly not strength focused, they will meet the bill for fitness and fat loss.

Average Guys Guide #10 plan A

Spring Training for the Average Guy, cleaning it up to look better nekid, or close to it.

The Neutral Diet

I call this the neutral diet because it is not high or low in anything. There will be some extremists who say that it's too much/little protein, or too many/too few carbs or too much/too little fat or too what ever. To all of them I say b*llsh*t. Now there are a couple of assumptions built in to the neutral diet. The first being that you are willing and able to do hard exercise 3 or 4 days a week. The second is that you are willing and able to plan and track your eating. Lastly, that you are at a body fat level that would be considered "healthy" by the ACSM. This means 15-24% for males, 22-31% for females. If you are fatter than this you can still use the basic template, just don't do the refeeds. If you are leaner then this it may not be enough calories and cause you to stall or lose lean mass.

The set up is simple. Your weight in lbs. equals the number of grams of carbs. Divide your weight in lbs. by 3 to get the number of fat grams, and multiply your weight in lbs. by 0.7 to get your grams of protein. Recalculate your diet with every 10 lbs of lost weight. To move from fat loss to maintenance ,add 200 calories to your day, in weekly increments. in a balanced manner. This set up provides sufficient carbs to fuel your work outs and avoid muscle glycogen depletion, adequate protein for muscle building and repair, and adequate fat to maintain hormonal tonus and provide satiety. While that sounds all sciencey, it means this, your won't "bonk" during your work outs, you shouldn't lose lean muscle, your hormone levels shouldn't get all crazy, and your food can still taste good.

As part of this, include one free meal a week, and one carb refeed every other week. Now, about free meals. These are not an excuse to go face down in a buffet until they call the cops to escort you out. Generally speaking I recommend this meal be eaten out with out worrying about your diet. Have a dessert and fried food if you like. Just don't gorge your self. The refeed is a bit more structured. In these, double the amount of carbs you eat for one day, while keeping the fat and protein level close to normal. Many people use refeeds to indulge in candy, pop-tarts, and pancakes with syrup. All of which are fine, as long as fat and protein levels are maintained.

The associated work out plan I recommend for this is three circuit training sessions a week using alternating routines, or two full body strength training sessions with some type of interval training done on two other days. If you don't know which way to go, try one for a month, then try the other the next month. See which one you prefer, or even continue to alternate on a monthly basis. Fred Fornicola has two excellent examples of circuit training on his blog.

Dumbbell Routine

PHA

Interval Training is explained here.

Keep this up for three months and you can drop enough fat to need smaller pants.

Colpo and Eades, they're both wrong.

I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about the recent Internet dust up between Dr M Eades and A Colpo. Two very bright individuals with strong ego's. Each with a vested interest, for very different reasons, in the existence, or lack there of, of a metabolic advantage in very low carb ketogenic diets (VLCKD). The basic problem for each of them is that each of their arguments can be, and have been negated. There are a number of studies that categorically find that any and all weight loss is a matter of caloric balance. There are other studies that find the exact opposite. To assert that there is a universal advantage to VLCKD's, is to invite a "black swan". In other words, all it takes to negate the argument, is a single person for whom the advantage does not exist. The same holds true for the opposite argument, one person who shows a metabolic advantage on a VLCKD, negates the argument that caloric balance is all that matters.

So what are we left with? A paradox? Not quite. 

Each argument assumes that the only independent variable is diet. When dealing with human beings however, things like diet do not exist in a vacuum. One of the big, if not the biggest variable in determining if someone will show a metabolic advantage with a low carb diet or not, is insulin sensitivity. If you are resistant to insulin, and/or have hyperinsulemia, then I have little doubt that carbohydrate restriction will allow you to eat more calories and still loose weight, then would be possible on a standard high carb low fat diet. Hence the existence of a metabolic advantage. If, however, you are insulin sensitive, a low carb diet will not affect your weight loss or gain beyond caloric balance. --No metabolic advantage. (In fact I've seen two studies that show that insulin sensitive people do better on low fat diets) 

So what we really should be asking is how do we tell who is going to derive the most benefit from low carb diets. If you and your doctor are willing, go and have some lab work done. A standard lipid panel, A1C, and fasting glucose, would get the job done. The standard lipid panel is going to provide you with your HDL and triglyceride numbers. Ideally when you divide your triglyceride number by your HDL number it should be less than 2, 3 is ok but not great, 4 is not good, and 6 is really not good. Your fasting glucose should be less than 100, and your A1C less than 6. Depending on where you are in your progression with insulin resistance, the Tg/HDL ratio will be the first place it will show, followed in order by high fasting glucose and then elevated A1C. If your glucose is over 126,and/or your A1C is over 7, you probably have or are well on your way to diabetes, and your doctor has probably already scheduled you for more tests. If any of the following apply to you, you can benefit by cutting down on your carb intake; fasting glucose is over 95; A1C is 6 or more; TG/HDL ratio is above 2. The farther you are from these values, the more you need to cut your carbs. If you are diabetic, or very close, then you may need to down to less than 50g of carbs, if you are just a little off, then somewhere between 100 - 150g will probably do the trick.

No Time to Workout??

Here is a video of Dr El Darden busting the no time to workout myth.

5 Minute Workout

Average Guys Giude #9

Right now, there are three types of guys, and perhaps gals, that have done the basic routine I laid out. The first group reached the strength mile stones in ExRx rather quickly, wondered what all the fuss was about, and probably stopped reading this blog as I obviously had no clue. They are now doing WestSide or DC training. The second group, is getting close or can see the possibility of getting there in the not too distant future. They think I have a clue. The third group is wondering how in gods name are they ever gonna lift that much weight. They wonder about me and the the authors of the strength standards, and question our drug free status.

Now lets make sure we are all on the same page here. If for example, you are a 198lb guy, the novice one rep max for dead lifts is 289lbs. This means if you are doing 225 -230 for eight reps, your one rep max should be about 289. If after six months of exercise, and three months of dead lifting, you are nowhere near the weight you would need to get to hit your one rep max, its time to re-evaluate. First, are you really trying? If you are really trying, then, probably less exercise is in order. That's right, less not more. While in many mainstream publications and web sites, they will tell you you need more, I am here to tell you you need less. Even for the guys in the second group, many will get stronger faster buy doing less. The name of this blog is lowcarbhit. Well my friends, its time to up the ante, and try a little new school, old fashioned HIT (High Intensity Training). First thing, drop any and all cardio and conditioning work. (Hold your applause till the end.) Next get a stop watch with a cord. Now lets re-organize your workouts. From this point on you are only going to be doing one set of each exercise. The goal is to reach fatigue in about 55 - 90 seconds, this is why we have the stop watch. I want you to preform the exercises in a deliberately slow manner. I am not worried about a specific time that each rep should take, just move as slowly as you can while still moving . If you need to, reduce the weight you were using by 10 -20% so you can slow down your rep speed. Don't worry about counting the reps, we're going to be tracking time. For example, you are about to due a set of bicep curls. With the stop watch around your neck or otherwise easy to get to, start the watch just prior to grabbing the bar. Do your curls slowly, and keep going until you reach a point where you can't move the bar. Put the bar down and stop the watch. Subtract 10 seconds from the time on the watch. If it is less than 50 seconds, you used to much weight. If its more than 90 seconds, add a little weight next time. This is how all you exercises will be done except for the dead lift. On the dead lift stop at the last full rep you can complete in good form. Your new routine looks like this;

Dead lifts
Overhead Press
Rows
Pushups
Curls
Ball Squats/Wall Sits

For those folks who workout in a gym your workout looks like this;

Leg Press
Shoulder Press
Row
Chest Press
Lat Pulldown
Low Back Extension

You are going to also reduce the number of times you work out from twice a week to once every 5 days, or a Mon, Fri, Wed schedule. Meaning you will workout On Monday and Friday one week, Wednesday the next week, and so forth. Don't be fooled, if you work each exercise as hard as you can work it, you will need 5 days between workouts. If in doubt, take 7 days between workouts. Keep this up for a good 4 - 6 weeks, and you'll be surprised at how strong you can get.