5 weight loss confusions

2019-11-202019-11-20 by Steph

When you start losing weight, you will learn new things. And over time, you will notice that there is conflicting advice. Here are 5 weight loss confusions that you can avoid to stay on the track to reach your goal.

I wrote 2 articles (Part 1 and Part 2) about fitness vocabulary to know the basics of fitness.

Confusion 1 – Do sugar and carbohydrate get fat?

There are two things to influence a lot of people to use a diet: a clear description and a fascinating plot. This combination is a strategy based on the use of emotions by marketers. That’s why people buy a diet low in fat, low in carbohydrates or low in sugar.

There is an example of the combination:

“People say that you are not healthy because you eat a lot of junk food. That’s not true, you’re not inattentive. You are trapped in fraudulent science and processed foods”.

Let’s see if there is a difference between different trend diets:

This scientific study is about Ketogenic low-carbohydrate (KLC) and Nonketogenic low-carbohydrate (NLC) diets. The result is that to lose weight, there is no difference between the two.

This study focuses on diets containing various amounts of carbohydrates, protein, and fat. The result is that low-calorie diets help to lose weight, no matter the quantity of the three.

This study is about the difference between a low-fat diet and a low-carbohydrate diet. The result of this 12-month weight loss diet research shows that there is no difference. Dietary effects on weight loss didn’t include genotype patterns and baseline insulin secretion. Unfortunately, It was not possible to see which of these 2 types of diets was useful for whom.

This study shows that there is no reason to exclude added sucrose in weight loss diets.

With these several studies, you can learn some principles:

Overeating can make you fat. It’s not a unique food.

If you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight, even if you ingest healthy food.

If you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight. It doesn’t matter how much sugar or carbohydrates you ingest.

Confusion 2 -Can I burn fat in a specific part of my body?

There is confusion created by magazines or newspapers. You can see training plans that aim to thin the thighs or fat of your arm or other body parts.

The reality is different. Scientific studies show that training a specific muscle boost blood flow and lipolysis. In fact, lipolysis is the process of decomposition of fat cells into energy. The study is here.

Work a muscle burn calories and gain muscle. It helps to burn fat that covers the muscle but not in large quantities. The study is here and here for abs exercise $.

Confusion 3 – What is the best choice to burn fat: lift weight or cardio?

Most of the time, when people want to lose weight, they do cardio like biking, jogging or other.

Cardio is a part of the process, but it is not enough. Study here.

Studies show that a lot of people gain more weight when they start cardio. Study here .

Here the reasons why cardio is not enough to weight loss:

It burns only the calories of the last meal – when you do 30 minutes of cardio, your body uses the last calories you eat. To reduce your weight, it is necessary that your body also burns the calories you store. You need to reduce the amount of fat you store in your body.

Body adaptation allows you to use fewer calories for exercise – Studies show that the body over time uses less and less energy to do an exercise. The consequence is that you burn fewer calories and stagnate (plateau). Sometimes people do more cardio to get over the plateau. This seems like a good idea, but it causes muscle loss and a decline in metabolism. Here the study .

Scientific studies show that it is a nice method to keep muscle and lose fat. Unfortunately for the majority of people, weightlifting has a bad reputation.

Research from Duke University revealed something interesting. It was with 196 overweight women/men between 18 to 70 years old separated into three groups:

Group 1: Three days of one hour of weightlifting training per week

Group 2: Three days of cardio per week. 45 minutes at an average level.

Group 3: Three days of weightlifting and cardio per week.

Something surprising happened after eight months. Group 2 lost the most weight but also lost the most muscles. Group 1 lost the most fat and gain muscles. This means that the combination of weightlifting and cardio has different effects. This makes you lose less weight because of muscle gain. Also, this makes you lose more fat because of several physiological causes. Here is the study.

Confusion 4 – Does a diet can disturb my metabolism?

There is a term that is often used when people talk about diet, it’s metabolic damage. Metabolic damage means that there is a disorder in diverse physiological structures. The consequence is that your body burns fewer calories than you need in relation to your body weight. It can take weeks or years to fix it.

The confusion comes from stories where someone has failed to lose weight. For example: “He gained weight with a very low-calorie diet and an intense workout program”. Because of these stories, a lot of people believe that a diet can disrupt their bodies.

Take a look at the scientific field. Some studies show that a long period of very low-calorie diet affects metabolism.

Click here for the study .

When you reduce your weight by 10%, your metabolic rate can drop. For example, a diet with few calories, little protein, and no weightlifting program.

These metabolic adjustments can continue after the period of weight loss. This is real for people who use radical diets to lose weight. It is possible to stop these changes by eating more calories, more protein and lifting weights.

Click here for the study.

Confusion 5 – Can a diet put the body into famine?

A lot of people see a diet like deprivation or a famine. They tell a lot of stories such as: “Be careful with your calorie reduction, don’t be too radical. This can slow down your metabolism and make it more difficult to lose weight.

The best way to avoid metabolic damage is to have a slight reduction in calories. When there is a reduction in calories, your body responds by stopping weight loss.

There is a study on human metabolism, click here.

This research began in 1944, at the end of the Second World War. At that time, there were many hungry people in Europe and it was important to help them in the healthiest form. 36 people chose to starve in the same state as the prisoner of war camp.

For six months, the volunteers performed several hours of manual labor and ate about 1,500 calories a day. They walked also 22 miles a week. It was difficult at the end of the experiment because some men had almost starved to death. They only had skin on their bones.

There is a surprise, their metabolism was not devastated. When the volunteers lost 25% of their body weight, their metabolism also lost 20%. In contrast, scientists expected more than a decline of 20 percent after six months.

The second step of this experiment is to help the 36 individuals to regain their normal weight. This recovery plan lasts 12 weeks. The average metabolic rate was 10 percent lower than predicted by scientists.

This research shows that the “famine mode” diet is not true. All the volunteers continued to lose weight until the end. Of course, the speed of losing weight decreased but not stall.

When you see someone eats 1500 calories per day and have a workout program for six months and lose weight. Why are you skeptical about the efficiency of a basic diet?

I hope it helps you to stay on track to have a better body.

Share this article if you think it can help someone you know. Thank you.

-Steph

An Extraordinary Tool To Solve All Your Problems

2018-06-08 by Steph

What’s up ? This is THE stephane ANDRE ! I watched an Olivier Roland’s video and I learned some good stuff.

Nature has given an extraordinary tool to every human being. This tool has different performance depending on the people but it’s the best for solving problems compared to the tools invented by humans.

This tool is our brain. This tool is better than a computer because a computer needs a human to work. For now, artificial intelligence has lower performance than the human brain.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t use our brains to find solutions and solve problems that are important to us. Many of us consume a lot of distractions. The question is : « Are we asking enough questions to our brain to find solution ? ». If you don’t give problems to your brain, your brain will be less and less efficient. It’s the same principle for your body.

If you give junk food to your body all day long, you will be fat, bitter, you will not have any more energy, you will not have any more libido. Everything that will comes out of you brain will be diminished in quality and quantity. If you will give healthy food to your body all day long, you will be slim, you will have more energy, you will have a better libido. Everything that comes out of your brain will be increased in quality and quantity.

Training your brain

To improve the brain to solve problems, it’s necessary to ask questions. A question is the interface between our brain and reality. This is what will put the brain in mode : « search for solutions ». By asking questions, you will look for different angles of approach to deal with the problem. The better the question and the better the solution to the reality of the world.

To have a good quality of question, it’s necessary to learn to educate oneself with books, trainings, meeting people who share their experiences, etc. Realize that you have to dedicate time to solve problems, allows you to organize your days. It’s like dedicating a few hours in your day to play sports. There is a method that I advise you to test, it’s to have a diary.

Attention, it’s a special diary because you’ll ask yourself questions. The first thing is that you’ll tell events of your life and this will allow you to better understand them and better understand yourself. And the second thing is that you’re going to ask yourself questions. There will be general questions like: « How can I become happier ? ». And more specific questions like : « How can I become happier with the 80/20’s law (Pareto’s principle) from today and see a measurable result next week ? ».

With questions, you put your brain in mode : « search for solutions » and you find several ideas to test to solve the problem. It’s the human process to find a solution since first hominids. Imagine, millions years ago, first hominids already found solutions because of a constraint. Imagine this scene, a hominid finds an animal with a carapace that is dead. The hominid is hungry and seeing the animal dead, he’s even more hungry. He asks himself this question : « How can I eat this animal that I can’t eat ? ». His brain goes into mode : « search for solutions ». After a few minutes, he remembers that by tapping a stone on something, the stone become sharper. After several tests, he manages to cut the animal with a carapace that dead to eat it.

Virtuous circle

This human process is a virtuous circle. You ask yourself questions to find solutions to problems. These solutions create other constraints that lead to others problems. So you have to ask yourself other questions to find a solutions. To evolve, we need challenges and there are always challenges in the world. Do you realize that millions of years ago, first hominids created tools with stones and wood and today we have internet technology ? With internet, people from distant country can read my blog’s articles 24/24 7/7, it’s incredible.

Among these questions, there will always be questions that will have different answers depending on what the situation you’re in your life. For example the question : « How can I become happier ? ». When you’re single, you have a solution. When you’re in a relationship, you have another solution and when you have children, you have another different solution. Solutions are influenced by different variants in your life and it’s important to ask yourself this question throughout your life.

Reserve some time in you day to ask yourself questions to solve problems. It’s a kind of physical activity for your brain. It’s a good process to become a better version of yourself. But beware, there are solutions that you will find quickly and others, it will be necessary to work on for months or years to find the solution.

Subscribe to my newsletter and share this article if you think it can help someone you know. Thank you.

-Steph

Change Your Diet Successfully

2017-03-01 by Steph

I read a Nerd Fitness article and there is good stuff.

I imagine you took you 1st January’s resolutions to have a better body. Do you always to that ?

88 % of people fail to reach their fitness resolutions for a year ! Yes, studies prove it. But there are 12 % who succeed. Let’s see.

Momentum

I’ll use the game « Super Mario Bros » to explain. When we start the game, we’re small, we don’t have armor (or powers). If we run on an enemy, we lose a life and we start at the beginning of the stage. We restart, we restart and we restart.

And if on our way we find a mushroom, we change, we become bigger and stronger. We can be hit by an enemy one time without restart the stage. If we can continue without being hit, we can fin a Fire Flower. We can attack our enemies at a distance and we must be hit three times to restart the stage.

Healthy eating habits

Everything is difficult when we start something new. We need to be careful because we’re attacking from everywhere. The Matrix use parties, birtdays or advertisements to prevent you from having a healthy diet.

Each times we don’t resist to these attacks (temptations), we feel we have failed and restart to the beginning. The truth is that every day is a success. If in the day you eat one healthy meal, it’s a success !

By giving our maximum to eat a healthy meal a day, we build our strength, then you’ll eat 2 healthy meals a day and we’ll become stronger and so on. Little by little we build a healthy eating habits and we’ll find the Fire Flower to attack enemies like in « Super Mario Bros ».

Short Time Diet

The problem I have with these « diets » is that is a temporary food change to achieve a result adn then return to old habits.

For 6 months people struggle to lose weight and then gain even more weight than before. I see my friends do this and I can tell you that every 2 years, everybody notices that they gained a lot of fat. It’s weird.

Diets are like invincible star in « Super Mario Bros », it’s a power that lasts 10 seconds. We can go very far in the stage without being hit by enemies. The problem is when we take the invincible star when we’re small and after we have to fight the Boss. The Boss hit us one time and we restart the stage.

We have more change to beat the Boss when we cross the stage slowly by accumulating coins and power up that we can find rather than invincible star.

To change your diet, it’s the same principle, it’s the transition to a new lifestyle. It’s not temporary, it’s a lifestyle to be healthy all the days of the year all the life.

Education

To can change food habits effictively, educating on food is very important. Sugar in processed food is very addictive. When we stop to eat processed foods, we my be lacking as an addict, having a crisis and eating a large amount of it. It’s for this reason we call it « junk food », foods for junkies.

Sugar has the same chemical reaction than cocaine in our brain. Read this article .

Like a junkie we say :

« Just one it’s not bad »
« Why I need to lose weight, it’s no use »
« I stop to eat it tomorrow »

Slowly but surely

I took several months before getting used to a healthy diet. Each month, I had food goal. It’s was like eat a healthy meal during the day, drink green tea, buy only 2 cookies packs during the week, drink a little bottle of water. From month to month, it became easier without having a hug desire for sugar. And if I a desire for sugar (because it still happen), I eat a teaspoon of honey (mmmmh, honey is so good).

I think it took me 9 months to have a complete healty diet. Now, I always adjust my food with smartphone’s application MyFitnessPal and it’s fun because adjust my food is like do an update with an application, it’s cool.

Execution

The first time we play « Super Mario Bros », we don’t have weapon and armor. We know if we’re hit one time, we restart the stage and a enemy come to us. We press all buttons on the controller to understand how to make move Mario. Serously at this precise moment we don’t think, we execute.

To start we a healthy diet is the same thing.

Perfect meal ?

Forget that, eat pasta or rice with vegetable with meat, tuna or eggs.

Perfect breakfast ?

Forget that, eat oatmeal or a plate of pasta or rice with vegetable with meat, tuna or eggs (it’s really my beakfast, I’m not joking)

Let’s do both things at the same time : education and execution.

What is your worst diet you tested ?

-Steph

P.S. Do you want a free training program ? Click here

3 Things To Be More Productive

2016-12-26 by Steph

I watched an Olivier Roland’s video and there is good stuff.

There 3 things to boost your productivity

Mirror

Have a mirror on your desk. Some scientific studies show when we have a mirror next to us, we have a greater probability to take good decisions to reach our goals. For exemple, if you want to lose weights, you will eat healthy foods rather than junk foods when you have a mirror in front of you.

In fact, we don’t know why it works but there is a theory like what we have more conscious of ourselves and we have more guilt and shame when we didn’t resist to a bad temptation.

Have a productivity system

Like in every domains, there is methods more efficient than others to be more productive. It’s better to have a productivity system than noting, really. A productivity system is a way of organizing.

The most famous method is « Getting things done ». This book is a little bit complex but there is good stuff inside.

It’s possible to make a mix of serveral books about productivity system like « Zen to done ». This book is a simplifiction of « Getting things done ».

The concept is to have a Word files or another word processor with your goals of the week. These goals must be done this week. Then you set your most important tasks of the day, max. 3 per day. These tasks must be done at the end of the day. It means that if it’s 19h or 7pm and all tasks haven’t been done, I stay at work to do it. I stay because it’s the most important tasks of the day and these tasks help me to reach my goals of the week.

Have a Word file or a word processor file help you to see what are your priorities. When you determine your most important tasks of the day (the day before or in the morning), they must help you to reach your goals of the week. When everydays you do some tasks that help you to reach your goals of the week, it’s really really cool.

Once you have done your most important tasks of the day, you do the rest by trying to group them.

Take breaks

It’s useless to work 4 hours non-stop without take a break. This decrease your productivity. The ideal is to have a method like the « Pomodoro », it means tomato in italian. This called « Pomodoro » because it’s a kitchen timer. For 25 minutes of work, you have 5 minutes of break or for 50 minutes of work, you have 10 minutes of break.

All 4 « Pomodoro », around 2 hours, you will take a break of 20-30 minutes. During this break do a meditation or play a musical instrument or walk in the nature to get your head out of the work. Don’t use this moment to make phone call or check your emails. Do something really different of your work to back to work more productive on current tasks.

Do you have some tips to be more productive ?

-Steph

P90X, Insanity, Weight Watchers, Shakology And Nutrisystem (part 2)

2016-12-13 by Steph

I read a Nerd Fitness article and there is good stuff.

There is more than 1 million fitness product and diet system. This is what I think of certain.

Shakeology

Replace one of your meal each day with a shake. Shakeology’s shake pretend have « 70 nutritious ingredients to help to detox and protect the body of free radical damage and help against food carving and help to have a healthy libido » ».

Advantages

Like Nutrisystem and Weight Watchers, Shakeology is simple. Replace a meal with a shake and lose weight. I didn’t try but people say it taste good and it has a good source of protein and a nice amount of protein per shake with a little sugar.

If you travel, it’s easy to have a little shakeology’s powder to drink it to replace a meal.

Disadvantages

I don’t suprise people lose weight with this plan if they follow it exactly. They replace a meal (around 500-1000 calories) with a Shakeology’s shaker which is only 120-160 calories. It’s a reduction of caloric intake of 380-780 calories. Remember, just 500 calories less per day can have as result to lose 0.45kg (1lbs) per week.

For me, a meal of 120 calories is not good because you will be not satiated and not satisfied.

What happens when you don’t have Shakeology’s powder ou you don’t have acces to a blender or you’re traveling. Can you continue to consume the same amount of calories and maintain the same nutritious plan ?

Shakeology is good for people who want lose 4.5kg (10lbs) without changing lifestyle. It’s only for short term.

Juice cleanses

Stop to eat and drink this juice during 3-10 days to detox your body and lose weight. There is a million of juice cleanses, the concept is to not eat and replace all meals by a juice of fruits or/and vegetables.

Advantages

Instead to eat food, you just going to drink liquid calories all day. Because you don’t eat a lot of carb and sodium ( because you don’t eat solid food), you can lose a huge amount of water. Losing water can cause weight loss but it’s temporary. It’s not like losing fat !

You will eat more fruits and vegetable than usual.

Disadvantages

I think during these 3 days where you will not eat foods, you will ve miserable. You will just drink some fruits/vegetabels juices instead meals. You will essentialy drink sweet water with fibers.

The most of weights you will lose during these 3 days will be water according to the amount of carbs, grains and sodium that you consume usually. This weight loss is false because it’s only water.

When you will eat solid foods, the weight will quickly return.

If you want to a detox, take some days to eat a lot of protein, spinard, broccoli and cauliflower. If you want make real change in your life, read the next.

Exercice and diet

Instead to buy some powder’s shake, receive foods at home or replace solid foods by liquid, there is a philosophy named « Exercice and diet ».

No need to buy some weird stuff but it requires make changes in your lifestyle. The goal is to move more than stay seated and eat more real foods than processed foods.

Advantages

Every sytem talked before are solutions to short term. « Exercice and diet » is done to change the lifestyle for all life.

Instead to dramatically change how you eat and move during 3 months, you must change small things which will have long term results.

Rather to do exercice with a DVD during 90 minutes everydays, start with a walk,

Rather to count points or receive foods at home, study to cook and eat real foods.

Rather than being dependent on something to have success, be independent to have success.

« Exercice and diet » is the best to have long term results, to have results for life. If you’re traveling you know the different type of foods, you know how to eat healthy outside home. If you don’t have access to a blender or you can’t receive foods at home, you know how to cook a basic meal. If you can’t use a DVD player, you can do a complete bodyweight training session in a room or in a park.

« Exercice and diet » doesn’t ask you to spend a lot of money or buy fancy stuff or buy pre-prepared foods. It doesn’t ask you to have several hyper strict weeks and once it’s over, back to old habits. People make me laugh when I see them before summer, during summer and after summer. Rather that you have a new version of you (like updates) : healthy and happy !

Disadvantages

The big « Exercice and diet » disadvantages is that requires commitment and changes. No shake, no foods receive at home, no DVD but instead you must take of your health.

There is also another challenge to have long term change in your diet. Eat cookies, cakes and muffins are bad for you. You need to change this to see results.

It’s simple to learn but difficult to apply for people who search short term results. Everybody know we need to do more exercices and stop to eat junk foods but we can’t force our brain to do this. It’s for this reason we need to educate ourselves about willpower.

Results aren’t instantaneous like a click. « Exercice and diet » results can often take several months of change before seeing solid results.

Did you have some experiences with others programs or diet system ?

-Steph

P.S : Do you want a free training program ? Click here

Create the Headquarter

2019-10-102016-11-28 by Steph

I read a Nerd Fitness article and there is good stuff. We need to set up our own environment to build our success. I mean create the headquarter.

Do it like a superhero, look :

Bruce Wayne has his Batcave to create tools to fight crime.
Superman has his Fortress of Solitude
Tony Stark has his lab and J.A.R.V.I.S for his Iron Man suit.

It’s our turn to create our own headquarter to have success.

Our brain

We’re creatures of habits. More we do an activity regularly, more our brains need to use less his energy to do this activity.

Remember when you learned to drive a car, you very focused because you had to be attentive to :

Check mirrors
Hands at 10 and 2
Turn on blinker
Step on the right pedal
Look car mirrors and watch out for other cars

When you learn to drive you’re always tired after a session with a car and it’s normal because you create new habits. Now, you know to drive, it’s a habit. You don’t think about what you must do when you driving, it’s almost instinctive.

It’s the same thing with other activities like brush teeth, make a phone call or ride a bike.

When you do an activity a lot of time, your brain creates a new and faster pathway that needs less brain energy.

We need to build better habits by decreasing the amount of brain energy needed to do them.

Your decisions, your environment

There are 2 places where you spend most of the time :

Your home
Your School/work/spaceship

Objects from these environments influence your behavior. Your brain analyzes every time what is around you and what you do when you see these objects :

If you see a vendor machine, your brain will say: « I can buy something to eat ».
If you see candy on your desk, your brain will say: « I can eat a lot of sugar »
When you see a couch and a big TV, your brain will say: « I can have a lot of hours of entertainment here »

Now, look at new habits we want to build :

If you want running after school/work – you need to avoid to sit on your comfy couch and avoid your refrigerator. The solution is to go straight to your bedroom to put your sport’s clothes and sport’s shoes and you go straight outside. You avoid all the house’s distractions.
If you want to cook healthy meals – you need to eat before to go shopping at the supermarket. You need to avoid all the fast-foods on the road and go straight to the supermarket. In the supermarket, you buy only what has on the list and you go back straight to home to cook a healthy meal.
If you want to stop to check your messages on your email or social media 25 times per day – You need to try and force your brain to say: «I’m focused on the task I’m doing ». This case is the same thing that to type a blog’s article in the middle of Disney’s World Park.

Audit your headquarter

There are several examples of how you can do an audit of your own headquarter to make better decisions.

Watch too much TV? Cancel your annual subscription tv or cable (you will save a lot of money). Buy an Android TV (Google), Apple TV or Netflix and paid only for the shows you want to watch. It’s difficult to watch shitty shows and you can’t change to watch your favorite shows.

Lose your time on your computer? Block yourself of the website you check every 5 minutes (Facebook, etc). I will write an article to increase your productivity with your computer.
Do you want running every morning? Sleep with your sport’s clothes and your sport’s shoes next to your bed. Put your clock alarm across your bedroom.
Do you want to train after school/work? Prepare your sports bag before you sleep and put your sports bag in front of your front door to don’t forget it. In this way, after school/work you will go straight to the gym.
Do you play to much in video games? Unplugged your system. In this way each time you want to play, you have to plug everything and when it’s finished, you unplug everything. Video games are cool but we must not forget the real game of life.
Tired to eat junk food? Throw out all the junk foods of your house. Because you know, it’s hard to eat junk food at 9 PM when you have only healthy foods.

Note: Don’t make a lot of change at once. Stay focus to build one new habit to delete a bad habit. It’s easier to replace a bad habit with a good habit.

Which new habit do you try to build for your headquarter?

-Steph