The Fitness Adviser

Like many people, I was never really into swimming growing up besides for leisure. Sure, I knew how to swim and took a few courses here and there in different summer camps. But in general, I never had a serious interest in it and by the time I hit high school age I almost completely stopped swimming (which is sort of funny considering I made time to sail).

[One of my dreams is to take a boat out to the ocean and just watch the most graceful and beautiful creatures to be found on the planet. I also think that anyone who ever wants to take a voyage out to the ocean is safer and better off if they're a solid swimmer as well.]

With so many people trying to lose weight, and so much information on fat loss targeted towards those people, the skinny guy (or girl who wants to add a bit of good looking muscle) gets left out in the cold. As someone who has been skinny and had to work to put on weight and muscle, I know how frustrating it is to have trouble putting on weight. You work out, eat a tremendous amount of food, but still aren’t able to put on weight, and sometimes even lose weight.

At a certain point, you throw in the towel, blame your genes and metabolism, and forget about your dream of turning into a ripped guy. Well, it’s time to reawaken your dream of getting ripped, because it wasn’t your metabolism that was holding you back. It was just the way you were going about putting on muscle mass.

We live in the information age. There’s so much knowledge being fed to us every second with so little time to actually digest it, that we end up more confused than when we started. This is also what’s happening with the fitness advice of today. There’s so much information on new “special techniques to get you strong”, that we forget about the simple, core exercises that have been proven to work for decades. In that spirit, I’ve listed the three core exercises for building muscle.

[Unlike other places, you'll never hear me lecture about the biology of muscle growth in prehistoric animals. Here at The Fitness Adviser, you'll get practical, easy to understand advice on how to meet your fitness goals.]

It’s Time To Get Old School

Note: As not to cause any confusion, this post is directed towards otherwise healthy people who have no underlying metabolic disorders such as diabetes or people who are post gastric bypass surgery. It does not apply to you if you have been instructed by a physician or other health professional to eat multiple small meals a day.

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Today I had planned on writing “How to Get Through a Bad Injury Part II”, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not until I got something off of my chest (and it’s not a barbell). That something is this complete and total myth that eating 6 meals a day is somehow better for your metabolism. Everywhere I go online, I see countless people, including people I like, praising the idea of eating 6 meals a day and it’s great effect on your metabolism.

There is a huge amount of misinformation out there when it comes to weight loss, building up, and staying nutritionally healthy. Today, I’m going to set the record straight. Here’s the lowdown on what it really takes to lose weight, gain muscle, and stay healthy…

1) If you take in more calories than you expend, you’ll gain weight. If you take in less calories than you expend, you’ll lose weight. (Here’s a calculator to see how calories you need to maintain your weight. Eat 500 calories less a day, and you’ll lose a pound a week. Eat 500 calories more a day, and you’ll gain a pound a week.)

Make sure the calories you do eat have a positive effect on the body. To do this, avoid eating “empty calories.” Things like candy bars, popcorn, and essentially all processed foods. Try to eat a diverse collection of foods, meaning meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and some bread. Once you do that, you should notice an immediate and positive change in the way your body feels, and your energy level.

All of us today are way too self-conscious about our bodies. We believe there’s a specific way that every person should look, leaving no leeway for variability in builds. Most commonly, men believe they should look massively muscular, and women believe they should look extremely skinny.  Despite knowing that different people have different builds, we’re all guilty of falling for these stereotypes. So let’s take a breather from our preconceptions and remember a few things…

• For both men and women, there are different builds. Some men are naturally bigger, some naturally smaller. Same with women.
• All of the builds look good.

That being said, don’t fall into the trap of believing that your build can be an excuse for being underweight or overweight. While you may be a man who is 5′5 and your natural weight is around 135, that doesn’t mean that it’s okay for you to be 120. If you’re a woman who is 5′6 and has a natural weight of 140, you shouldn’t be weighing 170.