The No Carb Athlete

 What a week! This was an off week for me. It started off, Tues, with a late-night video shoot at the gym. I didn't get to bed until after 1am. Then, I was being less than smart about some late evening "decaf" coffee Wed evening. I was up until almost 4AM before I fell asleep. That threw the rest of the week into a spiral of inconsistent sleep.  To finish it off, last night was a late night again, and I had to get up at 4AM this morning to drive Nat to the airport.  Needless to say, physiological stress, training, and recovery have all been completely out of wack this week. Is it a surprise that my numbers are all over the place today? Nope. If you aren't sleeping well and getting enough of it, you will stall your progress. You need sleep to help reduce inflammation, restore metabolic efficiency, and build muscle.  Secondly, even if you are making progress, being inflamed will mess with the readings on a body comp scan. If you're not happy with your numbers and yo...

Carbs make us fat. This is a true statement, but not a complete one. Over-consumption of fuel makes us fat. Carbs are the most abundant and easily available fuel available. So they are a leading cause of obesity. Guess what else is fuel.....fat. It's possible to gain body fat by over-consuming fat. That's what I did this week. 🤯 My carb intake was less than 5g per day yet I gained about 2 pounds of fat this week. You'll see why when you look at my macros. Remember, fuel is either used or stored. Calories don't matter, "Fuel calories" matter a lot. Last week I averaged 2578 cals per day and I lost some body fat. This week I averaged 2515 cals per day and I gained fat... How does that happen? 2 things changed . I lowered my protein intake so my overall calorie intake went down. I increased my fat intake to find how much I could have before I gained body fat. I'm going to say it again for the folks in the back. TOTAL CALORIES IN TOTAL CALORIES OUT DOESN'...

The common practice of calculating your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) and subtracting your Total Calorie intake is an unsophisticated and obsolete solution to managing body composition. Using calories as the primary metric to manipulate body composition is limiting, and over-simplistic. These traditional methods operate under the idea that a caloric surplus is needed to gain lean mass. That's flat-out incorrect. If the basic premise of a method is wrong, everything following that method is wrong. In this video, I'm going into detail about how I am ADDING muscle mass, LOSING body fat, INCREASING my base metabolic rate, and eating in a total calorie DEFICIT. If you think you have to gain fat to build muscle, it's time to try something new. I've done this before. I've coached other people on how to do it. It is consistently and verifiably repeatable across all ages, genders, body types, and experience levels. The numbers don't lie. 6 Week Trends BMR: +26 ca...

I know, it's a crazy thing to say, isn't it? Being in a caloric surplus is a great way to gain weight but it doesn't guarantee muscle gains or the maintenance of any gain post cutting. The oversimplification of how we build muscle and lose fat has screwed so many people it's sad.  Nutrition is about nutrients and how they support metabolic function. There are a thousand different things that happen when we eat food. To boil all of it into "Eat Less, Work More" is a myopic and damaging practice. This week I bumped my fat up a little bit to 155g. That was the goal last week but I only averaged 145g. This week I actually averaged 155g. Shooting for 155g of fat to start locking in my Maximum Energy Threshold (MET). Looking at my body fat mass this week, it seems that 155g might be my number. Finding out my MET gives me exact data that I can use to manipulate my energy intake and find a balance between managing body fat and satiety. The idea is to not be hangry or ...