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.
My whole life, except for one summer when I was very poor in 2006 or so, I've easily sunburned and so avoided the outdoors like crazy unless I was covered in sunscreen. At one point, I when I was a lawn-guy, I gave up entirely on sunscreen and just wore breathable slacks, long-sleeve shirts, and fishing hats to mow (this is smart by the way, I was in the sun for like 7-10 hours a day).
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."
If you go to any gym, you'll find a great deal of unusually specific information about strength training. Strangely, you'll find very little in-depth knowledge of anatomy, physiology, or scientific literature appended to it.
This information is Bro-Science. The problem with Bro-Science is that it differs from gym to gym based on a combination of the shared experience present and the amount of time people spend on the Internet and what lifting forums they frequent.
I've mentioned before that I have a genetic bone disorder and have utilized my interpretation of scientific publications to self-experiment.
This self-experimentation has had positive health results. Other times I have merely yielded knowledge about what does not help. For instance, I've had pretty bad acid reflux for the past few years. I recently discovered from my mother that I also had terrible reflux as a baby. I might even have a weak LES muscle. I don't know, I haven't been to the doctor for it for years because they just prescribe proton pump inhibitors or histamine blockers. I can buy those and as far as I can tell, they have long term deleterious effects on the human body.
Researchers have found that under the typical conditions of care for obese and overweight individuals that:
"current nonsurgical obesity treatment strategies are failing to achieve sustained weight loss for the majority of obese patients. For patients with a BMI of 30 or greater kilograms per meters squared, maintaining weight loss was rare and the probability of achieving normal weight was extremely low. Research to develop new and more effective approaches to obesity management is urgently required.(58)"
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.
