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ninerbuff wrote: »

Good to see you bro! I need to find a couple of your threads to nominate as sticky's again.

Good to see you too! I'm hoping to get on here a bit more. Which won't be hard since I've been a complete stranger as of late. And from what I remember, they weren't willing to sticky a lot of those old threads... MFP wasn't big on stickies. Is that different now?

I'd like to know what's your approach to teaching a newbie on how to progress to do a full body weight pull up if they've never done one before. Insight from others in the biz is how I like to learn.

Absolutely! Talking shop with other pros has been a huge part of my education process.

My go to for progressing to full body weight pull-ups is bands. I actually use this with my clients at my gym and it's awesome:

http://www.amazon.com/Lifeline-4-PUR-Pullup-Revolution/dp/B003KNC1MO

Of course it depends on starting point. If it's someone who's overweight, I'm going to focus on fat loss before considering the exercise.

And if it's someone who's never really trained before, I'm going to focus on rows and pulldowns before doing any assisted pull-ups. Once there's a semblance of baseline strength in place, I'll generally move to a combo of eccentric pull-ups and band assisted pull-ups.

I'm also an advocate of doing them frequently. It's the best way to get better at something. Often times I'll have them do pull-ups 2-4 times per week. As their strength improves, I'll have them start their first set with no assistance and ride that until they fail. Then I'll bring in assistance.

As with most everything else... it's a matter of finding the baseline from which progressive overload needs to start from.

WalkingAlong wrote: »

Hey Steve! Any thoughts on alternate day fasting?

Not really. It wouldn't be my first option if I were going to have someone experiment with IF.

kgeyser wrote: »

I saw the title of this thread and thought "oh great, another weight loss expert post from someone who's been here a week" and then I saw "stroutman81" and said "oh hells yes!"

Hi Steve! I'd like to get your thoughts on something I know some of the ladies here are struggling with, at least the ones on my FL and groups. Many of us have reached the point where we are at a healthy weight and are just trying to lower BF% (within 5-10 lbs of goal). We're all following the standard advice for recomp: lift heavy, lots of protein, eat at a slight deficit.

Everyone knows recomp is a painfully slow process anyway, but the frustration many of us are having is that We. Are. Hungry. And not only are we hungry, but lifting heavy on a deficit gets to you after awhile and you hit a wall with your progress. I've seen some people mention recomping while eating at maintenance - I am curious as to whether this is more beneficial or whether the recomp process would slow even more, or if there is something else you would recommend as far as training or diet that we should incorporate. Thanks!

Haha! I was wondering how many people would read the title and think "spam" or "guru."

Excellent question!

This stage in the process can be very trying. Up until now, you could measure progress partially by way of the scale. Even when there's more fat to lose, I still suggest relying on measurements and pictures too. But again, the scale is still helping paint the trend you're heading in.

Once you're a relatively lean female trying to get leaner though... the scale goes out the window. Seriously. I've taken women to the leanest levels they've ever been... to leanness that allows them to see their abs... and even on a monthly basis the scale can be totally irrelevant in terms of what's happening with fat and muscle.

The leaner you get, especially as a female, the more sensitive your bodies get from a stress response perspective. Wonky stuff can and likely will happen with water balance and once you factor water flux into the equation... in the context of very minor tissue mass adjustments over the course of a month to begin with.... the scale just poops the bed as far as reliability goes.

This fact right here has been the slayer of *most* progress for lean women trying to get leaner. They're patient... but not patient enough. They'll push it hard for a month or whatever... but eventually they cave and it typically entails - at a minimum - some off time from the calorie deficit. More often than not though it entails binges. This is fueled by a whole lot of complex machinery under the hood that impacts physiological and psychological drive to eat. And pair that machinery with other things that often accompany these women (not you, speaking generally here) such as a poor relationship with their body and/or food, faulty expectations, a desire to program hop, etc and, again, you have a recipe for a lack of patience and emotional volatility.

And when you're tiny, there's just not a heck of a lot of room to wiggle. It's like we all live in cardboard boxes. The bigger we are, the bigger our boxes tend to be. These boxes represent calorie capacity. As you lose weight, your box shrinks. Before long, you're left with very little room to move around. After a period of time, you wind up going crazy and break right through the cardboard walls.

Going beyond the walls means increasing calories and when you do that, your box starts to get bigger again. And thus the viscous cycle ensues.

Take me for example. I'm 195 lbs with a maintenance intake of roughly 3250 cals/day. I have a 110 lb female client who has a maintenance of approximately 1500 calories. She can't build a big enough deficit to expect anything more than maybe a pound or two per month. And that's assuming her body doesn't get watery in response to a deficit and it's assuming she's REALLY damn consistent and accurate.

The slightest deviations can very easily close some of that deficit thus causing an even slower rate of fat loss.

So horse = beat.

Sorry about that.

That's the crux of the problem for the vast majority. I can't stress this enough and I know for a fact that a number of women reading this are going to think to themselves, "Not me." But I'm also certain that some of you thinking that are wrong.

It boils down to the process getting slower and slower as it goes along and progress concurrently get harder and harder to come by. Read that twice.

If that's not you, though, maybe you're NOT in the deficit that you think you are. Some people need to eat fewer calories than they feel is safe or optimal for their size. Maybe you're someone who needs a bunch of cardio on top of your deficit, which is very unfortunate. I've had clients who've had to go as low as 8 or so cals/lb with near daily low intensity cardio in order to lean out. Or maybe you need to start experimenting with some form of cyclic approach where carbs are being undulated across the week in ketogenic/refeed fashion (which can potentially offset some of the defensive machinery discussed above thereby minimizing food seeking, hunger, and potential metabolic decline.

It's already getting very long in the tooth though so I'll stop there and let you comment before we continue the discussion.

yankeedownsouth wrote: »

Just wanted to say, Hi Steve!

Well if it's not one of my favorite people!

Hi Dawn.

SkepticalOwl wrote: »

Thanks so much for the response! I've been tracking my input and weight daily for about a month and a half and using rolling 7-day averages for the weight I think my TDEE is between 2200 and 2300, so to gain .25 lb/week I'd eat about 2450-2550 assuming my current level of activity. I could cut back my cardio to decrease this, of course. The problem with that is I just really enjoy it, so I may need to decide how important the six pack is to me after all, which you already mentioned.

All that aside, though. Is SL a good choice for my purposes or is there something else you'd recommend? And would you add accessories- I'm thinking specifically pull-ups.

Thanks again!

That's a damn high TDEE! But again, if your mileage is way the hell up there... it's understandable.

As for the running, this whole process of deciding how to exercise is littered with compromises. We speak in terms of what's optimal for getting lean while maintaining muscle. But that path of optimality isn't always a best-fit for someone based on their preferences. And at the end of the day, if optimal isn't sustainable... or even if it's disliked because of either what you're doing or not doing... is it really optimal?

So you have to do you... and as long as you're willing to live with the consequences and compromises, then have at it.

As for strong lifts... I haven't looked at it in forever. I just don't look at a lot of the popular stuff out there. But if you're going to be bulking, I'd much sooner do something with more volume in it. I love an upper/lower split for bulking... it's my go to in most cases.

Then again, volume for your lower body might have to be kept in check given how much you're running. But that doesn't mean you couldn't jack up volume for your upper body.

I like bulking routines, in general, that have a foundation of strength work akin to what you'd see in 5x5 or SL paired with some metabolic/hypertrophy work through higher rep sets, RPT, and/or extended set protocols such as rest-pause stuff.

It's certainly not the way... but it's my preferred approach.

My bulking programs typically have more isolation work thrown into the mix as well.

Liftng4Lis wrote: »

Hi Steve, can you explain this a little bit more: I know there's a lot of talk about reverse dieting and all this metabolic damage flying around the industry. And adaptive thermogenesis is certainly a real phenomenon.

Oh I just think it's way overstated. I think more often than not peoples' "metabolic damage" is really just what I refer to as the funnel effect. Liquid running through a funnel flows smoothly and quickly at the top. But as the funnel narrows, everything slows down and gets backed up. Sometimes you have to stop pouring into the funnel in order to allow for the backup to work it's way through the narrowing space.

That's the exact nature of fat loss as we get leaner and leaner.

Except most people don't know how to live in that narrow space.

And metabolic damage is a very convenient justification as to why they're struggling in that narrow space. And there are all sort of people writing and selling massively overpriced products feeding they hype of metabolic damage. So it's driving this mindset where people are quicker to turn to the idea of having a screwed up metabolism than they are to much more likely things such as water weight, not enough time, closer to maintenance than they realize, etc.

Again, I'm not saying adaptive thermogenesis doesn't exist.

Hardly.

But I do think there are tons of people "reverse dieting" who don't need to be.

That being said, there's definitely a contingent of our population who do in fact diet and train far too hard... pushing what I label the jackhammer approach where they try and beat the fat off their bodies. And in these cases... sure... backing off of all the stress they're applying... from diet to training... is likely a good idea.

Liftng4Lis wrote: »

OHHH can I have another??? You rock! How long can water weight last? I quit smoking 2+ mos. ago, sleep 4-5 hours a night and well overall am just one of those stress balls who probably exercises too much without recovery. I was told all of this plays into water retention??

I can't answer how long water can stick around. If you're completely high strung though, and you're overdoing it on top of inadequate sleep and recovery... it could be a permanent state.

Now of course a calorie deficit is a calorie deficit. If you diet hard enough and long enough, eventually the fat loss will outpace the water storage in terms of scale weight. Just ask someone dealing with anorexia.

But primary goal should be to chill the heck out. Find ways to induce relaxation and a quieting of the mind in your daily routine. Give yourself timeouts. Check irrational and extreme thoughts and counter them with logical ones. Learn and embrace the art of mindfulness.

I'm serious about this stuff.

The body - especially the female body - can be crazy sensitive to stress. Like I said in the post above to the other woman (starting to notice a recurring theme in this thread yet?)... there's all sorts of machinery under the hood that regulate our body's response to stress. A lot of it has to do with hormonal regulation. Just do some research on cortisol and it's relationship to aldosterone.

But suffice it to say that some of the hormones involved can lead to water retention. And let's say you go causing 5 lbs of water retention. And let's also say that you're calorically set up, knowingly or not, to lose .5 lbs per week.

Newsflash:

Most women... especially the high strung ones... aren't going to have the patience to wait 10 weeks for their fat loss to outpace their water retention. They're either going to beat themselves harder, thus potentially causing more water storage or they're going to cave and binge, thus reversing the direction of their fat.

See how that works?

I think the best article I can remember reading about this came from (the now infamous porn star) Lyle McDonald who wrote an awesome review in Alan Aragon's Research Review about metabolic damage.

Don't ask me what month if you're a subscriber... I can't remember and I'm WAY behind in reading my AARRs.

But the point is, most women would do a heck of a lot better if they relaxed, inserted some sanity into their lives, and stopped doing the equivalent of punching themselves in the face every single day with excessive cardio, dieting, anxiety, and stress.