Weight and Deductive Reasoning

**Puts Sherlock Holmes hat on***

I was hanging out with one of my best friends and favorite humans, Jon, yesterday.

On an average week I see Jon:

• Tuesday he comes to the office to work and hangout

• Wednesday night is family night, which we spend with Jon’s family

• Hiking on a Saturday or Sunday

So I see Jon a few times a week.

In a previous update, I mentioned how I am not weighing myself and why that’s the case. Yesterday, Jon - who knows a lot about fitness - guessed that I had gained about 15 pounds over the last few weeks (since starting this new methodology).

When I started building out this new methodology I was sitting between 219 and 221 pounds - so an extra 15 lbs would put me around 235. I told him that I doubt it, because the math doesn’t support it:

1. I have been over 235 lbs before and I do not feel that heavy

2. 15 pounds on the scale would be approximately 3.75 pounds of new muscle tissue (remember, muscle is 75% water, so 3.75 pounds of tissue will be about 15 pounds of weight). 3.75 pounds of tissues would require 13,125 calories over maintenance - and I’m simply not overeating that much.

This morning I was curious, so I stepped on the scale:

221.4

Here is a recap of the anecdotal evidence:

The Human:

• Same weight. Maybe, on average, half a pound heavier.

• Look fifteen pounds heavier

This combination generally suggests that shape has changed. If shape has changed, its generally because distribution of weight has changed (body fat %, for example). And there’s more…

The Exercise:

• In the gym AT MOST 70 minutes a week, often much less, split into three sessions.

This is already enough, combined with the above bullets, to create some confusion.

The Nutrition:

• Protein is lower than its been in the past, somewhere between 180 and 200 grams a day on average

• Replaced the volume of protein with carbohydrate, mostly white rice because I’m lazy and rice with garlic salt is amazing.

The Hypothesis/Deductive Reasoning

• Being leaner makes men look much larger than being heavier does. I have always believed (more-so now than ever) that people trying to “bulk” should be trying to get less fat, not more fat. Most men are fatter than they think they are and would look better if they stopped trying to gain weight.

• Carbohydrates are awesome.

• It’s looking more and more (to me) that volume in the gym is, indeed, overrated for building muscle. Which makes sense through the lens of adaption, recovery and over compensation.

I also don’t believe that most people should do what I’m doing.

When you’re dealing with a complex system, nuance is important.

For example, the whole theory/methodology assumes that the only thing that matters is triggering the mechanism for your body to adapt - and doing no more than that. If you do not train with the proper intensity to trigger that mechanism, there will be no adaption response.

And I’ve been in a lot of gyms over a lot of year…

Most people do not train with enough intensity in the proper range to trigger the specific mechanism I am trying to trigger (muscle growth).

For example…

If you train super hard for super long and/or with super high reps, the limiting factor becomes your cardio, endurance and lactic acid build up. You may “feel the burn” but the limit is your ability to displace lactic acid or your general endurance. So the adaption is more likely to be cardiovascular in nature.

The body may be adapting to SOMETHING, it just may not be what you want or expect.

I ‘m the opinion that your muscle building activities should optimize building muscle, your cardio activities should optimize for improving cardio, your fat loss activities should optimize for fat loss.

If you try and do it all at once, it’s not optimal for any of them AND you will have less control over what the body actually adapts to.

Here’s an example:

Instead of trying to use your gym time to build muscle and burn fat, you could do this:

1. Use gym time to build muscle. Which means whatever is optimal for muscle building.

   1. Additional muscle will increase your metabolic rate, so it’s already aiding in the second priority.

2. Walk a lot. The lower your heart rate is during activity, the higher percentage of fat you are using for energy. The higher your heart rate, the more glucose is necessary, which is pulled from the muscle and starts to eat into the recovery of the recovery and adaption process.

Here’s a mind-blowing thought experiment about all this hardcore cardio people do:

Remember: the higher your heart rate, the more glycogen you will pull from muscle mass for energy.

Walking generally burns the highest percentage of fat - less calories, total, but a higher percentage of those calories being stored fat.

Okay so…

Your muscles might store 350 grams of carbohydrates.

That’s 1,400 calories.

So if you go do an insane 90 minute cardio session, with your heart rate super high the whole time, the energy is likely being pulled from glycogen stores in skeleton muscle. Body-fat will be unfazed because you pulled the energy from glycogen stores.

Make sense? Okay…

And then, when you eat, the glycogen will be replenished, restored in your skeleton muscle.

Deplete glycogen stores.
Replenish them.
Repeat.
Bodyfat remains the same.

That’s a lot of really hard work to make no real progress - just depleting and replenishing energy stores.

Okay now…

Same situation…

Your muscles might store 350 grams of carbohydrates.

That’s 1,400 calories.

You walk for 90 minutes.

Yes, you will be burning less total calories in that timeframe, but nearly 100% of it will be body fat.

Make sense?

Here’s the takeaway (in my opinion):

If you are doing something to be less fat, do the thing that makes you less fat in the most efficient way possible. Depleting and replenishing the same glycogen is not the most efficient way to do that.

If you’re looking to improve your performance as much as possible, do the thing that improves your performance the most in the most efficient way possible.

If you’re looking to do a few different things, prioritize them properly and do them separately, not together. Otherwise you end up working really hard to get nowhere.

And NEVER FORGET…

I’m not a doctor. I’m not a fitness professional. I’m a total amateur, consult someone smarter than I am before trying anything at home.

Nic