Tanner Baze Fitness

  Myth- The human body can only absorb 30-40 grams of protein in one sitting.

Truth- This particular myth was so prevalent during my days of pushing pills at GNC that I blindly believed it without giving it a second thought. It was something I recommended to nearly every customer who was purchasing protein. Amazingly I don’t remember one customer ever disputing my authoritative stance on protein absorption. That’s really sad considering just how wrong I was.

Bro’s who pound protein shakes daily will be the first to tell you that the body can only handle up to 30-40 grams at a time, and that everyone is different. Anymore than that and you’re going to waste the rest of that protein in the toilet. But a few simple questions would likely leave these bro’s scratching their heads.

Does protein source matter at all when it comes to absorption?

What about those who practice intermittent fasting and consume over 2,000 calories in just around 8 hours?

What happens when you eat a large steak, commonly seen as one the best muscle building foods?

To dispel that we need to look at one term that’s commonly used in this claim that dispels the myth itself: absorption.

You’re body is going to absorb nearly all of the protein you ingest, since absorption refers to the amount of protein that will be broken down circulated through the bloodstream. It is worth noting that the amount that the amount directed towards muscle building is a different story, but that differs on a case by case basis.

Another important point to look at is the speed of absorption of some foods, and the efficiency of absorption of some foods. Eggs for example absorb at a rate of 1 gram per hour. Making it the slowest absorbing protein.

What about steaks and their amazing muscle building properties? Steaks are some of the most efficiently digested protein sources available. The digestibility of steaks are 97%. Meaning that when you consume a mouth watering New York strip, 97% of the protein content is absorbed into the bloodstream. Sure sounds like a whole lot more than 30-40 grams considering most steaks are in the 60 gram range.  

Myth- Lifting with high reps and low weight is the best way to “tone” your muscles.

Truth- This myth makes a rapid resurgence every bikini season, along with the treadmills getting more run than they do in the winter months. Men and women alike begin the quest to finding “tone” muscles that they’ll be proud to show off at the beach. Usually the process to getting “tone” muscles involves a fair share of cardio, along with repetition ranges in the 20-30 range. Dear Lord that sounds agonizing. Please oh please don’t subject yourself to this shit for brains myth.

Lets look at a couple of facts about repetition ranges and the benefits you get from them, then lets address this “toning” myth.

1-6 reps = strength gains

6-12 reps = good for hypertrophy (growth of muscle tissue, something we all want)

12 - and up = endurance purposes.

Notice nowhere in this was the word “tone” used. That’s because repetition ranges don’t have any effect whatsoever on whether or not you see muscle tone. Hate to burst your bubble, but it’s the truth.

So how does one go about getting muscles that are “tone” and look good? 2 simple steps, incredibly simple ones at that.

1. You lift much heavier than you are currently. I can just about guaran-damn-tee that. Lifting heavier weights will bring about not only a much more effective calorie burning effect (yay! fat loss!), but it will also cause strength and size increases. Who doesn’t like feeling stronger? Or filling out your clothes in the parts you want to fill out? Which provides a perfect segway (those things look so fun) into the second part of getting tone.

2. Lose some fat. Yep. One of those things that’s far easier said than done. When you carry less body fat, you have no choice but to show off the muscles you work so hard to build. Fat loss comes primarily from diet, so if you can get your diet (a word you should look up the definition to) under control then the fat will start to fall off. Providing your doing the right kind of work. Which should consist of lifting heavy weights relative to your strength, a few cardio sessions, and resting properly.

  Myth- You should not eat within 3 hours before bed, especially carbs, because it will be stored as fat.

Truth- Ryan Reynolds is a great looking dude. I’m comfortable enough with my sexuality to say so. I swoon over him everytime he graces the silver screen. For one of his roles (Blade Trinity) he got absolutely shredded. He looked lean and tight with abs that may or may not have made me question if I was really into girls. In an interview about his prep for the movie he mentioned his meal plan consisting of no eating within 3 hours before bed. He was not the first person to give this a go, and certainly won’t be the last. But is this eating style really the easiest way to get ripped? Hardly so.

Dr. Layne Norton posted an article recently on www.simplyshredded.com, and dispelled this thought process in the way only the guru slayer can. This blog post is going to summarize what he talked about, with a little of my own experience.

How’d the no food, especially carbs before bed come about? It sounds really good in theory. You’re going to sleep, so you won’t burn as many calories. So naturally you want to avoid food because it will end up getting stored as unsightly body fat. Not so fast speed racer.

You’ve got to keep in mind that a night of sleep is ideally a 7-9 hour fasting session. If you exercise, this is a pivotal time for you to recover, and give your body fuel to recover. That includes eating carbohydrates.

What about the fact that you burn less calories during sleep? Doesn’t that play a factor?

It sure doesn’t. In fact researchers have found that while you initially fall asleep your metabolic rate does slow, during REM sleep (the kind we need more of) energy expenditure significantly increases. This increase creates a balancing effect, showing that your metabolic rate during a night of sleep does not change any significant amount compared to hours you’re awake. Another interesting point is that exercise increases your metabolic rate during sleep, meaning there is greater fat oxidation (burning) while catching your Z’s.

The intermittent fasting folks have done very well by ignoring this outdated nutritional dogma by eating some of their largest meals at night time. In fact, in the past few months I’ve conducted an experiment on myself by consuming large amounts of food, especially carbs at night. Something I used to never do. I then workout in the morning on an empty stomach except for BCAA’s and creatine. This “skipping of breakfast” is to save myself time, and also try new things. I’ve noticed a couple of occurrences I really did not expect over the course of the past few months.

1. I’m leaner than when I ate breakfast before my workouts. I owe this to not only my workout regimen (high intensity, little rest, high volume weight lifting) but also due to the fact I use a large amount of stored glycogen (carbs stored in muscle tissue and the liver for energy, specifically high intensity energy). Due to the fact my body has tapped into glycogen stores, whenever I consume carbs and protein post workout my body focuses on replenishing that glycogen, leading to burning more fat as energy.

2. The pumps I get are better than before. This is something I really did not expect to happen at all. Any seasoned weightlifter knows that carbs before a workout can do amazing things for the pump that you experience. Which is why I was so blown away by the pump and energy I feel during my “fasted” workouts. This is due to the fact my stomach is empty, so I don’t have as much blood flow towards my stomach to digest. This allows more blood flow to head towards whatever body part split I am using that day. I also found my energy levels to be extremely high, which can be attributed to the fact that our body has much more fuel stored than we often give it credit for (another reason eating 2-3 hours isn’t necessary for everyone).

  Myth- Women should not lift weights, for they will immediately turn into She Hulk.

Truth- There’s a very popular e-card that floats around fitness circles that states:

“The myth that women shouldn’t lift weights is perpetuated by weak men who fear strong women”. I think there’s quite a bit of truth to that statement. For many reasons since people started to take health and fitness seriously, women were relegated to the cardio areas. The treadmill, stair stepper, elliptical, and exercise bike were their tools and those alone. I’m here to tell you it should no longer be that way. Women have every right to hang out around the iron, and I say more of them should begin exercising that right.

A grossly overdeveloped female bodybuilder is the image most people conjure up when a girl says that she lifts weights, even if she has the body of a drop dead gorgeous fitness model. This has been the case for quite a long time, and unfortunately it’s still far more widespread than it really should be.

There’s a multitude of reasons women should lift weights, and why they won’t immediately turn into She Hulk. I’m going to cover just a couple though.

1. Women need as much muscle as they can get on their frames.

Resistance training (weights) not only causes stimulation within the muscle fibers that cause strength increase and size increase, but it causes the bones to react as well. As many women know, they must strengthen their bones as much as possible to prevent the onset of osteoporosis. Osteoporosis affects more and more women each year, which after long enough can be an ailment that severely diminishes quality of life. Weight training along with a healthy diet is the preventative measure in this situation. Weight training will cause the bones that are moving weights to increase in size and strength, making them more durable and longer lasting.

Women also need muscle due to its metabolically active nature. The more muscle mass a woman carries, the more calories she is going to burn on a daily basis just surviving. This means there’s less time a woman must spend on the treadmill to achieve that slim waist line. Her sculpted arms developed in the weight room have already taken care of that.

2. Women lack a pivotal ingredient in the muscle building equation.

Testosterone. Every lady is familiar with this. Every woman has had to fight off tons of young fella’s attempting to woo her. What was driving that young man’s attempt at charming the pants right off you? Testosterone. What also gave that young fella pimples he had to cover up and unbearable body odor? Testosterone.

Testosterone also helps guys out in the weight room immensely. It’s our trick to building guns worthy of buying tickets to see. Without the high levels of testosterone a male has, it becomes increasingly harder to build muscle. This is where testosterone and it’s lack of a presence in women becomes important. Due to females having so much lower levels in their bodies, they must work even harder to build a few pounds of muscle and strength gains.

Fitness Myth #3- Eating fat makes you fat.

Truth- Quick. Name the 2 macronutrient categories humans cannot live without. Like some help? Protein and fat. Note what’s absent. Carbohydrates. This is pretty remarkable considering vegetables are carbs huh? What’s even more remarkable, inuits in the North live on a diet of almost exclusively meat (seal, whale). They without a doubt are used to such a diet, but a Doctor by the name of Alfred Pennington lived an entire year on an almost exclusive meat only diet. An odd thing happened at the end of his year long experiment, all of his blood work turned out much better than before. Better cholesterol, better triglycerides, better blood sugar, and better blood pressure.

Sounds absolutely absurd. Sounds like heresy in mainstream nutrition circles. This is due to the fact that we’ve been led to believe for decades that low-fat is the way to go for a healthy heart, and a lean body. This is single handedly the biggest nutrition fallacy in the past 3 generations, and a guideline that I believe shoulders a major part of the blame for our current abysmal health status in the United States.

These guidelines came about due to cherry picked research on the part of a very vocal and determined Ancel Keys, who as a scientist basically threw his own scientific method out the window (I will post about the origins of the low-fat guidelines at a later date).

You see today the major crux of American’s health problems today can be traced back to excess blood sugar (glucose) and insulin running rampant throughout our bodies. When we as a nation jumped on the low-fat wagon in the 1980’s, we were forced to replace fat with something else. What filled that void unfortunately was not protein, but in fact carbohydrates.

As technology advanced, so did the technological productions and innovations (food as a innovation? sounds ass backwards) that became our food. Nearly everything we touched was a refined, easily digestible carbohydrate. This was bad news bears to say the least. Diabetes rates began to climb, not ironically obesity rates climbed with it.

Americans were eating diets consisting of 50-60-sometimes 70% carbohydrates. This was all converted to glucose, causing our pancreas to work endlessly to secrete insulin to keep up. When our cells and muscle tissue could no longer absorb glucose, it would then be stored as fat.

WHY FAT IS PHAT

There’s a multitude of awesome things about the smooth, rich, creamy substance that is fat. It is necessary for hormone production, keeps your brain firing on all cylinders, it helps keep you full, AND it helps you BURN FAT!

Say it again, I know it sounds ridiculous. FAT HELPS YOU BURN FAT.

When we consume more fats you not only thrive and have optimal health, but fat has to take something’s place. That something should end up being refined carbohydrates.

Fat provides one of the densest sources of energy, making it one of the best foods available for people to eat and thrive on.

It’s also very important to note that it takes large amounts of fat at one time for you to hit a caloric surplus and begin storing it on your waistline.

Another important factor to keep in mind, is that when you begin consuming more fat the amount of fat you oxidize (burn) will increase. Meaning that eating fat will over time with help you start to rid your body of excess fat you’re carrying.

Eating more fat also isn’t going to immediately buy you a trip to your cardiologist either. When it comes to heart disease the major culprit is inflammation (named the Silent Killer in Time Magazine 2004). In fact only 20-30% of the cholesterol in your blood right this moment is there because of the cholesterol (another totally misunderstood part of the human body, newsflash: it’s necessary for life) you ingested. The other 70-80% is there because the body produced it. Any guess at when the body starts to produce more? Hint: when you eat more carbohydrates.

In closing, there’s a huge number of benefits to fat. I’m a fan of fat in almost every regard except for the trans kind. Fat will without a doubt be the subject of many blog posts in the future, including cholesterol and it’s unfair blame for heart disease, and saturated fat and it’s health benefits (yes benefits, not health ramifications).

Myth #2- Eating every 2-3 hours is optimal for fat loss and muscle gain. Anything over 4 hours is stored as fat, due to “starvation mode”.

Truth- This myth holds a place near and dear to my heart. When I first started to get serious about my health and fitness as a GNC employee I read every magazine I could get my hands on. It seemed in every article I read about buying my ticket to shredsville or building muscle all gave me the same eating suggestion. “Space your meals every 2-3 hours apart. This will stoke your metabolism like a fire, won’t let you overeat and store as much as fat.”  It made sense, I even suggested it to customers looking to lose weight. Hell, even the Personal Training certification program I went through gave me this exact suggestion. I’m really glad now that I’m a curious individual, because this is one of the most ass backwards and widespread suggestions you will ever come across.

This suggestion simplifies the mechanism that is our metabolism, and promotes a suggestion that is usually good for Type-2 Diabetics to the widespread public (Type-2’s do well eating small, low carb meals due to keeping blood glucose levels low and regular, minimizing glucose spikes).

However, for the general public who are interested in building muscle and losing fat (all of us, duh) this is hardly the optimal way to get your meals in for a couple of reasons.

1. People have lives. It’s a sad existence you live when you are so obsessed with getting your meals in that you know nothing but tupperware containers and a clock. I for one felt ruled by the clock when I would watch to make sure it was time to eat, otherwise I’d surely go catabolic and start breaking down muscle tissue (another lie that has spread like wildfire).

2. The vicious glucose cycle you initiate when you begin this process. You see when you take in a balanced meal of protein, fat, and carbs the carbs are converted to glucose. Your body secretes insulin to drive this glucose into the cells for energy. When the glucose/insulin cycle has run it’s course (2-3 hours), you’re left with low glucose levels and your body is screaming at you to eat more. Which is no problem if you can carry your tupperware with you everywhere you go, and stop your life to heat up meal #6.

So in your quest for abs King Leonidas would be proud of, you’re cycling between hardly full (due to the 300-360 calorie meals) and hunger pangs that only a hibernating bear are familiar with. Sounds like a really fun way to look good. Sign me up.

In the next week days I'm going to publish a 7 part series on fitness myths that seem to be absurdly popular. Some of these are deeply embedded in the public's mind when it comes to weight loss and fitness. Some are slowly losing traction, but it's imperative to keep spreading truth in a world where there's information overload. 

Myth #1- You need to spend hours a week grinding away with cardio to burn off excess fat.

Truth- This is undoubtedly one of the widest spread fitness myths that exist in the wide world of weight loss. Go to your local health club/gym/park/etc. and you're bound to see the majority of people plodding away on the treadmill, elliptical, stair stepper, bike, or rowing machine (something I actually love).

What's funny and sad at the same time about the people who look to this as their primary form of exercise is that if you looked at them a year from now, would you notice a drastic change in their appearance at all?

Let me answer that for ya. You wouldn’t. More often than not, they look the EXACT same.

There’s a variety of reasons for this seemingly odd phenomenon, and bad diet is definitely one of them. But the others have to do with the respective benefits of cardiovascular exercise. Cardio is without a doubt an excellent way to work the old ticker, and keep yourself healthy. In fact, when you take part in cardio exercise and stay in the “fat burning zone” (50-75%) a higher percentage of the calories you burn comes from fat. That sounds awesome. That sounds like a no brainer, of course you need to tons of cardio.

Except it’s nowhere near that simple. You see the body is a pretty remarkable machine. It possesses the ability to adapt to exercise, and it adapts to cardiovascular exercise very quickly. In fact it can adapt to said cardio exercise in as little 3-4 sessions, leading you to burning fewer and fewer calories each session. That does NOT sound cool, or like an efficient and enjoyable way to fat loss.

Another issue is that when cardio is your primary form of exercise, you are slowly atrophying the muscle tissue in your body. This is a major issue for a couple of reasons.

1. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue, meaning it requires more calories than fat just to exist in your body. The more muscle mass your body has, the higher your metabolic rate will be. A higher metabolic rate means more calories burned on a daily basis.

2. With resistance training and HIIT (high intensity interval training) your heart rate increases during, and after exercise. This is thanks to a phenomenon known as EPOC (Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption). In layman's terms EPOC means that after resistance exercise your body will consume oxygen at a higher rate for hours (24-48!) which means more calories burned during this time. Regular cardiovascular exercise does not elicit this response. In fact your heart rate and oxygen consumption will return to normal in just an hour or two after a rather intense bout of steady state cardio.

It was mid summer, the gym was packed full of women. They were all getting ready for a class that was about to start. Class probably isn't an accurate description, a phenomenon is more like it. Zumba. My little sister had talked me into this emasculating experience. I had figured “what the hell, it really won’t be that bad. All the women rave about it being a great workout anyways”. They were right about an outstanding cardio workout. Boy was I wrong about it being that bad though. I was one of the 2 guys out of 30 some odd women of various ages. All ready to start gyrating their hips in ways that would make any self respecting weight lifting guy question his very existence. The class itself was a great cardio workout, I was sore in parts I had forgotten existed, and was forced outside of the very place I preach about leaving: my comfort zone. It was awful.

But you want to know something? I tell that story to people all the time. In fact I LOVE to tell that story.

Doing things we’re bad at allows us an opportunity to grow as people in this odd journey we call life. I’m a firm believer that one of the main purposes for our time on this Earth should be to constantly grow. In every aspect imaginable. To read new books that challenge your thinking, to try new foods, to workout in ways that are completely unfamiliar to you. This is all imperative to your growth as an individual. Very few people though pick up a new habit or try something completely new and excel at it.

To be blunt, you’ve got to embrace being bad at something. Being bad at something is fun. Being bad allows you to see new areas where you can improve, and also allows you to realize just how much you really are good at. I’ll guarantee you it’s much more than you think.

Being bad is intimidating though. It can paralyze you in fear. Make every little self conscious doubt you’ve been harboring start to creep up and tell you to quit.

Thats why you’ve got to embrace being bad even more. To beat back those fears. Beating back those fears is a victory in itself. I constantly go through my day trying to accomplish “little wins” where I put myself in an uncomfortable situation.

My Zumba experience was immeasurably important to my work as a trainer. I work with people everyday who are new to exercise. People who are intimidated of the gym environment. I’ve been bad at plenty in life, but Zumba was a brand new kind of bad. A kind of bad I needed to experience so I could walk in future clients shoes.