I train clients in basic barbell movement as a side hustle and while I’ve tried some unusual approaches to dieting that make sense to/for me, they are far from the mainstream of dietary practice or science. In other words, they’re not what I would recommend to the general population. That being said, I do think that for individuals trying to lose weight there are some pieces of the puzzle that could get you 50-80% of the way toward your goals without creating a major hassle in your life. These are the low-hanging fruit of weight loss:
I went on a very low carbohydrate diet several years ago to solve my heartburn. I’ve since experimented with various dietary subtractions/additions to help avoid the seemingly inevitable fatness of middle age and the constant complaints of people in their 30s about getting old.
What will this do to my training? Rip think it will make me sorer. Maybe he’s right for most people.
Every January, I always eat a steak and eggs diet with minimal dairy. It’s an easy way to shed any extra fat as Texas gets hot again. My carb intake is therefore between 10-20 grams per day. But I also have been trying to lift every day since mid-November. Having eaten very little carbohydrate in November-December and essentially none in January has given me some interesting personal insights into carbs and training. You don’t need them. I weigh 158 right now. At my heaviest, I weighed 173 in 2013. My max squat back then was 365. Every week since November I’ve hit 355 for a single rep. My deadlift max at 173 was 375. Now it’s 405. And my bench max back then was 200. Now it’s 205. And I’m almost never sore despite working up to heavy squats daily. But I will say this since I’m used to using fat as energy, if I were to say, binge on rice-full Chinese food and ice cream, I could perhaps more easily achieve a PR on a high-rep set the next day, but I seem to be far less sore in general as a consequence of eating so much more protein.
Self-experimentation is similar to foraging and hobbies more than strict lab-science, he says:
"My self-experimentation resembled foraging, hobbyist, and artisanal exploration, Professional science is a poor match for any of them. The similarity of foraging, hobbyist, and artisanal exploration suggests that our brains are well-suited for jobs with a lot of exploitation and a little exploration. Although full-time scientists are expected to explore full-time, full-time exploration is very uncomfortable."
When I was a personal trainer I had always hypothesized that strength training would lead to positive outcomes for pregnant women and the child, particularly if they had been training prior to the conception of their child.
Since I'm not a research center and such training could be high risk, I just wouldn't train a pregnant woman. The wisdom in the early 2000s was, "don't engage in strength training if you're pregnant." Among trainers the wisdom was, "that doesn't make any sense, but don't do it to avoid a lawsuit."
Mark Rippetoe has a way with words, he's particularly good at expressing well known, but unstated truths in the most devastating way possible:
In fact, since there exist so few examples of correctly-instructed cleans and snatches in any high school, college, university, or professional strength program, and since it seems to be impossible to convince you that 1.) doing them wrong is a bad idea and that 2.) you're doing them wrong, I really think you guys should just stop using them in your programs altogether and just focus your attention on getting everybody's squat below parallel, and getting everybody's deadlift up over 500 with a flat back. Maybe stop them from bouncing their bench presses off their chests like trampolines, too, and give their spotters a different way to work their traps. Given several months, perhaps this can actually be accomplished.
And even for men to prefer gymnastic exercises by far to the baths, is perchance not bad, since they are in some respects conducive to the health of young men, and produce exertion—emulation to aim at not only a healthy habit of but courageousness of soul...But let not such athletic contests, as we have allowed, be undertaken for the sake of vainglory, but for the exuding of manly sweat. Nor are we to struggle with cunning and showiness, but in a stand-up wrestling bout, by disentangling of neck, hands, and sides. For such a struggle with graceful strength is more becoming and manly, being undertaken for the sake of serviceable and profitable health.[1]
A friend recently asked if I could help her design a strength training program (and I just finished). And while I made one for my wife and made jump/chin-up/and general strength programs for clients in the past, I still just felt the need to look more into the research on women’s health issues and the relationship between those issues and strength training. Of course, the general benefits of the iron pill still apply.
In Luther’s 95 theses, he observes, “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.”
I think that Luther is correct here. For instance, in Romans 12:2, Paul summarizes the Christian life as being “transformed by the renewing of the mind.” Luther’s thought is that the entire Christian life is looking to God’s revelation in Christ, looking to ourselves as sinful and in need of grace and mercy, and transforming our minds on the basis of that revelation.
