Do You Diet Like A Sumo Wrestler?

For centuries Japanese Sumo wrestlers have been taking normal and underweight boys and turning them into morbidly obese adults.  (They do not accept overweight boys as they don’t think that they have the discipline to become a Sumo.)  They don’t get that fat by accident.

They work at it.  They have getting fat down to a fool-proof system.

The funny thing is that a lot of what people do to try and lose weight is exactly what the Sumo use to gain a ton of it.

The Top 5 Strategies That Sumo Use To Get Fat Fast

#1-3:  Dieting Like A Sumo (Common diet advice that actually makes people fatter!)

#1.  Skip Breakfast

In one of my biochemistry textbooks it says this:

“Animals that have fasted and are then fed high-carbohydrate, low-fat diets show marked increases in their… fatty acid synthase [the name says it all – it synthesizes, or makes fat] within a few days.”* (1)

Skipping breakfast is a great way to extend the fast and the ramp up the fat creating machinery inside of your body.  (More on the low fat diet in #3.)

The new, junior level Sumo are not allowed to eat breakfast because they are the ones most in need of gaining weight fast.  (After you’ve become morbidly obese, it’s ok.)  The goal is to get very hungry so that it’s easy to overeat later in the day, to keep your metabolic rate suppressed, and to create the ideal environment for maximum fat storage.

Simple solution: Eat breakfast within an hour of waking up.  Duh!  And, make it one of the largest (if not THE largest) meals that you have in a day.

Make sure that it contains protein, as this seems to make people feel fuller longer and to reduce overeating late in the day without willpower.  (You want to use your discipline to create the conditions that will lead to success.  You do not want to try to use steely discipline to resist temptation all day long.  It won’t last very long.) (2)

And, if you workout first thing in the morning, read #2.

#2.  Workout On An Empty Stomach

You wouldn’t know it to look at them, but Sumo live a very structured and disciplined life.  They wake up very early and exercise for hours each day.  Doing their workout without any food in the system is actually a great way to boost weight gain.  Fasting workouts elevate cortisol levels (belly fat), increase appetite, and help you to build less muscle (suppress metabolism) and to gain more fat.

Simple solution: If you workout first thing in the morning (which I would love to be able to do), have something before or during your workout.  If fat-loss (or maintenance of fat-loss) is your goal, all you need is a little bit of whey protein and water and you are good to go.

This provides a little bit of fuel for a better workout, jump starts recovery (less soreness and faster progress), and elevates metabolism for a few extra hours post workout.

Try 1-2 scoops of some sort of low-carb whey powder.  I currently like the Vitamin Shoppe’s generic “mixed berry” flavor.  Mix it up and start sipping during your warm-up and finish it by the end of your workout.

If weight has never really been a problem for you and you are more interested in gaining weight, then a protein/carb mixture is probably for you.  Something like Surge by Biotest.  (Google it.)

#3.  Eat a High-Carb, Low-Fat Diet

Long before anybody knew what a carbohydrate, or insulin was, the Japanese figured exactly what kind of diet you need to eat to become a fat-ass.  (A professional fat-ass at that.)  The very funny thing is that their ancient  “fat-ass” diet looks an awful lot like our modern day food pyramid.

To create morbidly obese adults, the Sumo eat a high carb (57%), low fat (16%) diet.  And, the Sumo with even worse body composition (less muscle, more fat, similar weight) eat an even higher carb (80%) and lower fat (9%) diet. (3)

In one of my biochemistry textbooks it says the following:

“Fatty acid synthesis [making new fat inside of your body] is maximal when carbohydrates and energy are plentiful and when fatty acids are scarce…”*

“Insulin stimulates fatty acid synthesis.”  (Their emphasis.)

And

“The hormone insulin inhibits the mobilization of fatty acids and stimulates their accumulation.” (1)

Large amounts of carbohydrates (esp. refined carbs) stimulate the secretion of large amounts of insulin, and, as you can see above: high insulin levels make it hard to access your fat and easy to create more of it.

Simple solution: Eat fewer carbs (esp. refined carbs), and more fat.  And you should also avoid stuffing yourself with as much food as possible too, but that is very easy on a lower carb, higher fat diet as most people just don’t get very hungry.

Can you really binge on bacon and eggs for breakfast?  2 or 3 eggs and a little bit of bacon and most people are just done eating.

But, give me a basket of blueberry muffins and I will eat the whole dozen and still be hungry!  (And also need to take a nap.)

#4-5:  Not Dieting, Just Things To Avoid

#4.  Eat Lots Of Carbs Before Bed

The Sumo eat 2 large meals per day – one before their midday nap and one before bed at night.  Both have huge quantities of starch in them.

Your body can only do a few things with carbs – store them as glycogen (stored carbs); burn them for immediate fuel, or store them for fat.

Your body’s capacity to store carbs is very limited, and if you haven’t done anything intense to deplete them, then there is essentially no room in your muscles to store them.  Even if you are very active, you just can’t create that much space in your glycogen fuel tank.

The most efficient way to burn off carbs is with intense anaerobic exercise – wrestling, sprinting, lifting, etc.  You tend not to do this stuff when you are a sleep.

This really only leaves one final destination for the high carb meal – body fat.

Simple solution: If you have the kind of body that can handle starchy carbs, eat them earlier in the day, or in small portions after an intense workout.  Definitely don’t eat them before bed.

#5.  Drink Lots of Beer

Well, that’s it really.  Drink a lot of beer and then go to sleep.  Great way to get fat.

Simple Solution: Drink less beer less often, and try to avoid getting hammered before bed.

*(Stuff in [ ] is my paraphrasing to make it more understandable… I’m pretty sure that’s not how you are supposed to do it.  Believe it or not, I did not do very well in English or writing.)

Oh, and I almost forgot, don’t forget to vote for me as The Best Personal Trainer in DC right here.  There are only a few more days left to vote!

Thank you so much for your help!

References

1.  Berg, et al.  Biochemistry. W.H. Freeman. New York. 2007 (Chapter 22)

2. Leidy HJ, Racki EM. The addition of a protein-rich breakfast and its effects on acute appetite control and food intake in ‘breakfast-skipping’ adolescents. Int J Obes (Lond). 2010 Feb 2

3.  Nishiwaza, T. I., et al. Some factors related to obesity in the Japanese sumo wrestler. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Oct: 29(10):1167-74

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, The DC Fitness Advisor and the Fitness Expert for the PCOS Challenge TV Show. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

It Really Has Been A BIG, FAT Lie – The Real Science Behind Dietary Fat, Cholesterol and Your Health

I originally did this interview to help my clients maintain their fat-loss. On the nutrition side of things I use low-carb diets to help people drop a lot of body fat without being hungry. However, there is one huge problem with low-carb diets – other people’s ill-informed opinions.

Here’s a typical conversation:

Coworker: “WOW! You look fantastic – like you’ve dropped 40 pounds. You never even had a neck before. How did you do it?”

My client: “I’ve been eating low-carb and lifting weights and doing intervals.”

Coworker: “WTF!? Are you trying to kill yourself!? Low-carb diets are the most dangerous things ever – all that fat and cholesterol is going to make your heart explode!”

My client usually says nothing, and inside a very negative conversation begins. “Hmmm… What if they’re right? What if I am trading my health for a great body? What if all this steak and eggs really is going to kill me?”

The problem is that their coworker is sincere, BUT the information is sincerely wrong.

They literally have NO IDEA WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT whatsoever. They’ve probably never read and comprehended primary research on nutrition in their entire lives. (By the way, almost none of the students in my 400 level nutrition classes had ever read a single study on their own. They were just parroting what the food pyramid said.)

Very few people understand statistics, research design, biochemistry, or anything else that makes reviewing research worthwhile. As a nerd, I keep two different biochemistry textbooks in my office to read for fun.

Most people get their opinions from other people who get their opinions from other people who got their opinions from the media, and the people who report on health and exercise are not usually scientifically literate. They will write up whatever the spokesperson for the study has to say and will almost never critically evaluate the study. (For an example read this on red meat and this on a sham diet study.)

So what I did for my clients was arrange an interview with Gary Taubes. He’s one of the few people on planet Earth who has reviewed the entire field of literature on public health, nutrition and obesity.

He spent multiple full-time years with multiple assistants in multiple libraries – whose salaries he paid – and hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money to do this. If there is a study out there that was ever published ANYWHERE on diet and health he has read it and is great at helping people understand it.

So Gary, will the saturated fat and cholesterol in a low carb diet kill you?

This was actually my fear when I first started a low-carb diet 10 years ago as an experiment. I’d sit there eating scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast waiting for my heart to blow up, then I did some research.

I wanted to see how we came to believe this idea that saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for you, and whether or not our beliefs were justified. Believe it or not, I have actually read all of the field going back to the 1800’s. One of the things that I was looking for was the point when the idea that saturated fat and cholesterol were killers was still controversial. That was in the 1970’s.

The first thing I saw was… the rest of this interview is published at Primer Magazine.

OH, and please don’t forget to vote for me right here.  It only takes 2 clicks to vote and I would really appreciate your help.

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, The DC Fitness Advisor and the Fitness Expert for the PCOS Challenge TV Show. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

Can you please take 60sec to help me out? Pretty please?

Can you please do me a very quick favor?

Can you please click here and vote for me for top DC personal trainer:

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/bestofpoll/nominees/1136/vote

THANKS!

Washingon, DC Fitness Job: Would You Like To Have Fun, Make Money & Help People At The Same Time?

We are looking for someone to take over teaching our group interval classes.

Benefits:

• Good pay (and the potential to move up to THE best paying fitness job in DC)
• No planning on your part (You simply execute our system and coach the participants to move through the workout correctly and safely. We will train you in how to do our classes and how to modify exercises for all levels of fitness.)
• Fun
• Steady income

Who we looking for:

• Someone very punctual – we’re only looking for people who arrive early
• Someone very professional – clean, well groomed, good language
• Someone very reliable – you’ve got to be in town to teach the class
• Someone who can follow directions – we are only looking for people to implement our program, not someone interested in reinventing the wheel
• Someone who brings their best EVERY day – if you can’t put aside whatever is going on in your life and show up with positive energy to give to our clients, then don’t bother

What to do if you are interested:

• Do not email us
• Do not call us
• Do not visit us
• Send your resume to:

Josef Brandenburg
c/o Definitions
1070 Thomas Jefferson St., NW
Washington, DC 20007

Breaking News: Michelangelo’s David Comes To Washington, DC For A Month

Have you heard that Italy is sending Michelangelo’s David to visit Washington, DC for a month?

The historic museum trip has 3 generous sponsors that provided free food unfortunately.

This brings up an important point:  How To Make The Body You Want last forever.

After you’ve cleaned up your diet, worked hard in the gym/ and/or at home, disciplined yourself to be consistent with all of the other demands on your time and energy, and navigated the myriad of obstacles and setbacks that are sure to come up, you will arrive at the body you wanted when you started.  Most people think that this is the end of the road.

No.  No.  No.

The conscious or unconscious belief that most people have is that eating better and exercising regularly is something that you do until your clothes fit again (or your arms are as big as you want them).  Then, after you look and feel the way you want to, then you can go back to what you were doing before you got in shape.  (Occasionally people will say this in a sentence, but usually they will demonstrate their belief with behavior.)

The way you used to eat and the way you used to exercise (or not exercise) was the problem. If you go back to your old lifestyle, then you will also go back to your old body.

The 3 Skills You Must Have To Make The Body You Want Last Forever

#1.  Learn how to come out of a spin: Just in case you weren’t aware, you are human.  That means that you are most definitely going to fall off the wagon at some point.  Maybe you’ll have to work 80-100hrs a week for a while, you’ll have a major family tragedy, get pregnant, or something else will get you off track.

The  common response to realizing that you’ve messed up is, “see, I always do this.  I messed up again.  I don’t know why I just can’t ever seem to keep it up.  I always fall off the wagon.  I don’t even know why I tried in the first place, I’m just a screw up.  I should just give up and stuff my face…”

I know how that feels, and I have most certainly been there too.  It’s not a good place.

People who are successful long term and people who fail long term have one thing in common:  They both fall off the wagon.

People who are successful long term and people who fail long term have one important difference too:  The successes pick themselves up ASAP, refocus on where they want to be and get started back there; the failures wallow in misery and spend their energy insulting themselves.

#2.  Start with the right attitude: Getting and keeping the body you want is a 3 step process:

• Step 1:  get it.  Do what it takes to get what you want.
• Step 2:  find out how many carbs you can eat, and how little exercise you can do to keep it.
• Step 3:  when you mess-up, reset, go back to #1

This is not a quick fix.  This is a new life.

#3.  Learn how to cook: Most people cannot cook period.  They only way that most people (or restaurants) can make their food taste good is by making it unhealthy – extra sugar, high fructose corn syrup and trans-fats.

Healthy food can and should be good food too.  Investing a few bucks in a good cookbook, and some time in learning how to cook will pay huge dividends in life – more energy, less fat, more muscle, and you might even impress somebody special in your life.

Here is my new favorite cookbook:

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, The DC Fitness Advisor and the Fitness Expert for the PCOS Challenge TV Show. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

Josef in the News… Check me out!

Jimmy Moore did an interview with me recently about 10 Fitness Myths that hold people back from getting the bodies they want (esp. as it pertains to folks on low/lower carb diets).  That is FREE right here to download as a podcast or just to listen to at your computer.

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, The DC Fitness Advisor and the Fitness Expert for the PCOS Challenge TV Show. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

Can I Save You 225 Minutes?

What do you think would happen if you added 225min of “target heart rate zone” cardio to your week? If you did 45min of jogging on 5 days per week, do you think that you’d lose some fat? Do you think your results would come in faster?

Nope.

It turns out that what will actually happen is NOTHING. You’d get the same results if you had watched American Idol, Desperate Housewives, and a couple of DVD’s.

I’ve reported on research like this before, but here is some more.

Researchers took obese women and divided them into 4 groups:

1. Exercise group (EX) – they did 45min of aerobics on 5 days per week.
2. Diet group (D) – they ate a reduced calorie diet (which only works because you end up eating fewer carbs FYI)
3. Diet + Exercise Group (EX + D) – the did the 5 days @ 45min per session of aerobics + ate the same diet as the D group
4. Control (C) – they didn’t do nothin’

At the end of 12 weeks there was “no significant change for EX relative to C.” In other words doing aerobic exercise is as effective as sitting on your ass… that is to say that it does nothing.

At the end of 12 weeks there was no significant difference between D and D + EX.  To quote the researchers: “Aerobic exercise training during a 12-week period has no discernible effects on body composition.”

Here’s the link to the free abstract, the full text costs however (I don’t get the money).

Well, That Study Wasn’t Long Enough!

Some people are thinking that the people in the above study just didn’t workout long enough.  The thought is, “what if we took the exercise that did not work before and make them do more of it and for more weeks, then it will work.”

Researchers in Seattle thought of this.  They took overweight people and had them do 60 minutes (fifteen more minutes baby!) of aerobic exercise for a whole dang year!

After 12 months of exercising for 6 hours per week here are the results:

• Men lost 3.96lbs on average
• Women lost 3.08lbs on average

With a big salad I can lose that much going to the bathroom.  (Some times I weight myself before and after just for fun.)

What’s funny is that the researchers said, “these data support the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Institute of Medicine guidelines of 60 min/d of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.”

REALLY!?!?!?!?  By the researchers numbers I’d need to 30 hours of aerobics per week if I wanted to drop 20 pounds this year.

Resistance training & interval training, however, DO work.  You can read more about that here and here.

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, The DC Fitness Advisor and the Fitness Expert for the PCOS Challenge TV Show. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

How To Workout When The Weather Sucks, or You’re Snowed-In At Home

It’s Snowmageddon in Washington, DC. Gyms are closed. Cars are buried. And if your gym was open today, it’s still a pain to walk there. But that’s OK, you don’t need a gym to get a killer workout.

This video lays out the entire workout, the warm-up, the rest periods, and equipment substitutions too.

Here’s the crib notes:

Part 1 – the warm-up:

The warm-up is actually THE single most important part of any workout. Now, I don’t mean a boring, waste of time warm-up like walking on the treadmill – really, why on earth do people go to the gym to go walking! – I mean something that will actually do your body some good.

Think about it. We wake up, and sit down to eat breakfast, then sit for an hour to get to work, then we sit at our desk for 8-10hrs, then we sit in our cars for another hour, then we site down to watch TV for two hours… why the hell would we go to the gym, sit down on a bike, then do bicep curls and crunches? Do we really need to spend our hour at the gym hunched over like we are the rest of the day?

Walking lunge with OH reach 5-8/side
Walking Spiderman 5-8/side
Walking side lunge 5-8/side
Inch worm 5-8
Single leg bridge 10/side

Part II – fat blasting interval workout

Now that your body is ready to do some real work, let’s do some real work that will make you stronger, fitter and way better looking.

We’re going to use time for this workout instead of reps. You will need a timer – a watch, a Gymboss, or even a kitchen timer will work just fine.

If you are a beginner – start with 30sec of work, followed by 30sec of rest; intermediate do 40/20, and for the advanced folks, go with 50on.10sec off.

This will take 20min. We’ve got 5 stations, that we’ll cycle around

Squat to press

Valslide plank

Lunge jump

Valslide mountain climber

KB swing

You can get a Valslide right here. They are super useful for home or hotel room workouts.

You can also pick up a kettlebell right here.

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, The DC Fitness Advisor and the Fitness Expert for the PCOS Challenge TV Show. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

Super Bowl Party for a Super Body

Conventional Super Bowl food and football look like this:

But the people in the Super Bowl look like this:

or like this:

Here’s a menu and recipes to help you have a great time while you avoid heart burn, weight gain and feeling like crap.

Chips and dip

There are a lot of dips you can choose from:  salsa, baba ganoush, and guacamole, are my favorite.  I just go with the better store bought stuff because I rarely have the time to make it myself.

#1.  Baked Rutabega Chips

These don’t come out all that crispy, but they are still very good and you can spoon pretty much anything on top of them.

Ingredients

1 Rutabaga, peeled and sliced into thin “chips” (a food processor makes this quick and easy)
1 TBS olive oil + 1 TBS to coat your baking sheet
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp Old Bay Seasoning

Directions

Preheat your oven to 425 F.  Mix all the ingredients except 1 TBS of olive oil that should be left over for the baking hseet.

Coat a baking sheet with the remaining olive oil, and then spread the seasoned chips out in a single layer.

Bake for about 30 minutes, turn them once or twice.

#2. Low-Carb Cheese Crackers

Ingredients

4 slices (approx 1 oz each) cheddar cheese (pre-sliced from a grocery store – I’ve used several brands and they all seem to work fine.)

Parchment paper

Directions

1.  Take cheese and fold into quarters (you end up with 4 pieces of cheese that are about ¼ the size of the original slice) and place on baking sheet that has been covered with a sheet of parchment paper.

For best results and crisp leave the unbaked cheese out overnight.

2.  Preheat oven to 400 F, and put cheese in oven when the oven heats to 400.
3.  Bake for 8min

For a crisper cracker – leave the cheese on the parchment paper for an hour or more to help it dry out.  The longer it sits out the dryer it gets and the crisper your cracker.

Nutrition

Makes 4 servings of 4 crackers

Regular cheese crackers – 18g net carb per 1oz serving
These cheese crackers – .5g net carb per 1 oz serving (4 crackers)

#3.  Raw veggies

I know.  This is very anticlimactic, but it’s also probably the easiest one to do.

Pizza

Low-Carb Pizza Green

1 La Banderita (there are other brands too) low-carb tortilla (you can get them at Safeway, Harris Teeter and probably other places)                               5g net carb
2-3 tbsp pesto (fresh is better, watch for added sugar)       1g net carb
1 handful spinach                                                                        .5g net carb
½ cup cooked chicken                                                               1g net carb
½ cup mozzarella cheese                                                          1.5 g net carbs
Pinch parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Low-Carb Pizza Red

1 La Banderita (there are other brands too) low-carb tortilla (you can get them at Safeway, Harris Teeter and probably other places)                               5g net carb
2 tbsp no sugar added pizza sauce                                          2.5g net carb
4 slice tomato                                                                                2g net carb
½ cup cooked chicken                                                                1g net carb
1 small handful fresh basil leaves
½ cup mozzarella cheese                                                         1.5g net carb
Pinch parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions – Same for both (ingredients are listed in ascending order: tortilla first, next thing on top, etc.)

1. Pre-heat over to 400 F and lightly spray large baking sheet.
2. Place tortillas on sheet and add ingredients (Ascending order – so tortilla 1st, then pesto, then spinach, and so on)
3. Bake for 8min, cut up and enjoy!

Nutrition

Green = 9g net carb per pizza
Red = 12g net carb per pizza

Quesadillas

Ingredients

2 x 6” La Tortilla Factory low-carb tortillas
1/4 cup plain, cooked chicken breast     (optional – you can put anything else inside or nothing except cheese)
1/2 cup     Salsa
cooking spray

Instructions

1. Heat skillet with cooking pray
2. Place cheese and chicken between the tortillas, and cook until brown on both sides and cheese is melted.
3. Eat with salsa, and a side of raw veggies like peppers, cucumbers, celery or carrots.

Jalapeño Poppers (not deep fried)

This one is all new and from a client.  It turns out that you don’t have to batter and deep fry a jalapeño to make it taste good.

Ingredients:
- jalapenos
- cream cheese
- bacon (you can also use turkey bacon, and I guess some sort of veggie “bacon” would work too)
- toothpicks

Preheat oven to 350.
Cut jalapenos in half and de-seed with a spoon.
Fill jalapeno halves with cream cheese.
Wrap 1/2 slice of bacon around each filled jalapeno, then secure with a toothpick.
Bake for 20-25 minutes until the bacon starts to squeeze the cream cheese a bit (I use a baking drip tray to let the grease drip off).
Eat. They are addictive.

And for dessert Pineapple & Cream Crepes

Ingredients
1-2 oz mascarpone                                                 125-250 kcal (.5-1g carb)
2 oz super thin slices of pineapple                     27 kcal (5g carb)

Instructions

1. Cut off top and bottom and sides of pineapple, and place in freezer for 10-15min.  With a very sharp knife and careful technique, or preferably a mandolin (you can find one for a good price online), slice 2oz of pineapple.  This should yield 3-4 thin slices.

2.  Take half the mascarpone and put into center of pineapple, and roll around.  Enjoy!

Nutrition Facts

Makes 1 serving @ 152-277 kcal , and 5.5-6g net carb per serving

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, The DC Fitness Advisor and the Fitness Expert for the PCOS Challenge TV Show. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

The Scales Can Lie – How You Can Be Normal Weight, Yet Obese

After 40 years, medical research has finally caught up with the fitness industry (well, the few competent folks in the fitness industry) when it comes to scale weight.  The “shocking” new news made it a big splash in The Wall Street Journal is that “you can be normal weight and fat at the same time.”  The “amazing” discovery is that, low and behold, scale weight is not the be all and end all after all.

However the people that did this study caution that “the findings [that body fat % is as important or more important than scale weight] need to be validated with additional research.”

Well, while they take 10 years and $100 million to do additional research here’s how you can apply this NOW for FREE.

#1.  Ignore traditional advice

It takes a lot of time to do and it sucks when it comes to results.  Case in point – the Women’s Health Initiative 2006:  The experimental group reduced their saturated fat and cholesterol intake and cut their overall caloric intake by an average of 360 calories per day for 8 whole years.

Let’s do the math on that to see how many pounds that they should have lost if the whole “calories in vs. calories out” thing worked in the human body:

360calories/day x 7days/week x 52 weeks/yr = 131,040 calories (food calories, so, technically, that’s kilocalories).

A pound of fat has 3,500 calories.  So, they should have lost 37.4 pounds per year.

However, on average they lost about 2 pounds.  BUT, and this is particularly apropos to the article, they GAINED in waist circumference!  In other words they got fatter at a slightly lower weight.

#2.  Measure what matters

What matters most is what your body is composed of – body composition.  How much of you is fat and how much of you is lean?  This determines how you look naked.

It is entirely possible for a woman to drop 2 sizes (i.e. 8 to a 4) but to only drop 5lbs on the scale.  If she were to just go by the scale, then the 3 months that it took to achieve this would seem like a waste – only 5 pounds in 3 months!  But, if she looked at herself in the mirror she would say, “wow!  No more cellulite!”  And if she looked at how her clothes fit, she’d notice that her pants don’t stay up.  (By that I mean that her pants are too big for her now.  What were you thinking?)

It’s possible for a man to gain weight while loses body-fat.  If you just went by the scale, you would say that he failed – he gained weight.  But if you looked at him in the mirror, you’d see exactly what most men want – more muscle and less fat at the same time.

Traditional weight loss programs emphasize the number on the scale, and have people on low-fat, low calorie diet doing lots of aerobic exercise.  On this type of program 25-50% of what you’ll lose will be lean body mass.  So, if you drop 10 pounds, up to 5 could be lean body mass.

In body composition, losing fat and gaining muscle are both positives.  On the scale the above person would be a success.  But, in terms of body composition, they made no progress at all – 5lbs of lean lost, and 5lbs of fat lost = 0lbs net progress.

The most practical way for most people to measure their body composition is with a tape measure.  It is simple, fast, reliable (if you get spring-loaded tape measure so you always use the same amount of tension) and does not require you to be dunked underwater with no air in your lungs or to be exposed to radiation.

Most health clubs offer skin fold caliper readings, BUT, these are neither accurate nor precise (reliable) unless you happen to get somebody who has done several thousand skin fold measurements in a research setting.  That is unlikely with the low pay and high turnover at health clubs.

The electric scales and hand held devices for measuring body fat (bioelectrical impedance) are horrible in my opinion.  I’ve measured myself twice in a day and been 9% mid day and 13% in the evening.  I don’t even think that they’re useful to measure change with.

If you really, really want a very accurate, direct reading of your body composition there are 3 options:

•    DEXA – a machine that uses x-rays to measure both bone density and body composition.  (The draw back is that you have to be exposed to radiation, so you can’t do this very often.)

•    Hydrostatic weighing – underwater weighing.  This is a way to get your density – body composition.  Just unpleasant, but no radiation.

•    Bod Pod – uses a chamber of pressurized air instead of water and a scale to get your density.  This seems to be less accurate the leaner you are.

If you’d like a fool-proof, time efficient program to optimize your body composition for life, check this out.

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, The DC Fitness Advisor and the Fitness Expert for the PCOS Challenge TV Show. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

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