Chris Aceto on cardio
Aerobics and Getting lean
Bodybuilders use a combination of aerobic exercise and diet to cut up for competition and I have always felt that the diet, how you eat and what dietary strategies you use to rip up, are far more important in getting ripped to the bone than aerobic exercise. The downfall to strict dieting includes an adaptation in the metabolic rate where the body burns fewer calories each day thereby “canceling out” the caloric deficit created by eating less. One way to overcome the metabolic slowdown is to take a break from dieting every 4-6 days and increase your intake of carbohydrates. Increasing your carbohydrates once every 4 to 6 days can help maintain adequate thyroid levels - the hormone that influences how many calories you burn each day. Increasing your intake of carbs also helps to re-saturate the muscles with glucose from carbohydrates - known as muscle glycogen- giving you reserve energy to train when you return to a lower caloric intake. Furthermore, by re-filling your muscles with glycogen, you are preventing the loss of muscle tissue as protein from muscle tiisue can become (along with body fat) a main source of fuel when glycogen stores remain low for an extended period of time.
Some bodybuilders – many good ones including top pro’s avoid a low calorie diet and prefer huge amounts of aerobic exercise to burn off body fat. If you have to choose either “over”dieting, really restricting your caloric intake to rip up or “excess” aerobic work, performing 2 to 3 hours of cardio each day, in all cases, you will hold onto, retain and keep more muscle by choosing a strict diet. In my opinion, when it comes to aerobic exercise, it is very over rated in getting you lean. Why? Because it leads to
1. a slower metabolic rate
2. Decreased testosterone levels
3. Decreased insulin sensitivity
While decreasing calories can cause a metabolic slowdown, increasing caloric expenditure also causes a metabolic slow down by two mechanisms. First, the body adapts to aerobic work by becoming efficient. The more you ride the stationary bike, walk the treadmill and run, the less calories the body burns. That is, a person performing 16 straight weeks of daily aerobic work, 45 minutes a day, will burn up to 25% less total fuel in the sessions during weeks 15 and 16 compared to weeks 1 and 2. The second way the metabolism slows is through the burning of body protein; muscle tissue. I have always suggested bodybuilders perform no more than 45 minutes of continuous aerobic work at any one session, and usually no more then four 45 minutes sessions a week as more than 45 minutes usually causes a metabolic shift where muscle or protein becomes a major source of fuel. So, the individual working really hard on the treadmill can expect to burn muscle tissue during minutes 46 on. Or the person exercising for 60 minutes can expect to burn a good amount of muscles tissue during the final 15 minutes of his hour of aerobic exercise. When the body burns muscle tissue, the metabolic rate crashes, thyroid hormones drop and cortisol levels rise. Excessive cortisol levels can cause a drop in testosterone levels further causing a metabolic slow down. The third destructive event of excess aerobic work is a drop or decrease in insulin sensitivity. That is, high cortisol levels, the result of too much aerobic work, prevents, or more specifically decreases the muscles ability to uptake sugar from the blood and store it as glycogen! This, in turn “chokes off” the body’s ability to stay in an anabolic state or muscle “growth” state.
On the flip side, excess dieting can increase insulin sensitivity helping the body to form muscle glycogen, aiding in muscle retention. And excess dieting does not cause as great a testosterone drop as excess aerobic work. One reason appears that excess dieting does not cause as serious a surge in cortisol.
Dr Wayne Miller and colleagues at The George Washington University Medical Center examined studies carried out over a 25 year period. Their aim was to discover the effects of aerobic exercise combined with diet on weight loss. Their finding are below and indicate aerobic exercise combined with diet only leads to moderate/small decreases in weight loss compared to dieting alone.
METHOD WEIGHT LOSS
Aerobic exercise 7lbs
Restricted calorie intake 17lbs
Aerobic exercise and restricted caloric intake 20lbs
While the results focus on weight loss and do not specifically reveal details as to how much of the weight loss was body fat and how much may have been muscle tissue and the results do not tell us details about diets - were they high or low carb diets, hi protein or low protein, hi fat or low fat…the table is interesting and reveals that dieting or restricting calories is as effective at losing weight as is restricting calories and performing aerobic work. My opinion is that eating less will cause the body to lose fat but also put it dangerously close to the point where the metabolism may begin to slow. Adding aerobic work (expending calories) is similar to the dieter trying to accelerate fat loss by going over board and severely decreasing calories. When calories fall. The metabolism also falls, having little effect on fat loss. For best results, to rip up, start early, make small cuts in calories, decrease calories further if needed and increase your carbs once every 4th day to boost the metabolism. When it comes to aerobics, start with 4 20 minute sessions weekly and build to 4 45 minute sessions. Any more and you’ll be compromising your muscle mass.
Novelty Diets Work
Most of the top pro’s I know use some type of nutrition advisor to prepare for a competition. In most cases, the pro who uses an advisor ends up with far better results than having tried to get in shape on his own. One reason might be simplicity and novelty of the diet. In other words, the person being given a diet by someone else- especially if the bodybuilder is paying for the advice- is likely to stick with the diet, cheat less, and see good results.
One study supports this idea. Forty-five adults referred to an obesity clinic. Patients were to follow one of three possible diets each diet creating a caloric defecit.
One goup followed a diet that was comprised of normal-every-day foods.
9 of the 14 subjects completed the 16 week diet
Average weight loss: 5.7 lbs
Another group followed a “special diet” called the “milk diet” comprised of milk and unsweetened yogurt only.
11 of the 14 subjects completed this 16 week diet.
Average weight loss: 24.6 lbs
The third group followed a “special diet” called the “milk-plus” diet in which they could select a favorite food to supplement a “milk diet”
11 of the 17 subjects completed this 16 week diet.
Average weight loss: 18 lbs
As you can see, all three groups lost weight with no exercise and no supplements. Of the three diets, the “novel” diets, the milk diet and the milk plus diet yielded greater weight loss and greater adherance (completion rate) than the group who ate a regular diet comprised of common every day foods. The authors of the study conclude that simply “naming” a diet or calling it something special not only helps individuals feel more motivated to stick with it, but likely prevents them from cheating. Similarly, a “diet guru” will likely help a pro see better results because the pro believes there may be something “novel” or different, something special about the diet the guru gave him.
Interestingly, the milk diet group got the best results as eating the same foods may lessen or decrease the appetite. Still, other assumptions include; milk contains casein protein and casein may be better than other proteins (fish and meat) in helping to retain lean body mass while reducing calories. The assumption is the milk diet and milk-plus dieters consumed either a higher protein intake than those eating regular foods and a higher protein intake while in a calorie defecit can help maintain metabolic boosting muscle. If the dieter can get his body to hold more muscle while dieting, his metabolism will stay elevated and he will lose more weight.
Source: Summerbell CD et al. Randomised controlled trial of novel, simple, and well supervised weight reducing diets in outpatients. BMJ November 28, 1998;317:1487-9.
Some Fat (not a zero fat diet) Is Helpful in staying Lean in the off season
A new study offers good news for the bodybuilder who sticks to a super low fat diet even in the off season in hopes of staying lean. Eating a diet containing moderate levels of fat--as opposed to a strict low-fat diet--is easier on dieters' taste buds and may result in more long-term weight loss.
Many bodybuilders tend to avoid fat even in the off season and, as a result, over eat calories from carbohydrates. In an attempt to cut out fat calories, they replace the fat with carbohydrates- and then some. Since carbohydrates are a strong appetite stimulant, the bodybuilder ends up eating more calories…sometimes a lot more than he needs each day resulting in gaining too much body fat .Dr. Kathy McManus of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues compared weight loss success and overall satisfaction among overweight people on a moderate-fat diet with those on a more conventional low-fat diet. In the study, 31 people consumed a moderate-fat diet and 30 consumed a low-fat diet. While people in both groups experienced roughly the same amount of weight loss after 6 months, the real difference came at the end of the study--12 months later.Those who ate the moderate-fat diet lost an average of about 9 pounds, while those on the low-fat diet not only gained back the weight they originally lost, but weighed about 6 pounds more than they did at the start of the study. After 18 months, 54% of the people originally recruited to the moderate-fat diet group were still actively participating in the study, but only 20% of those in the low-fat diet group still were. "Reductions in percentage body fat, body mass index (a ratio of a person's height and weight) and waist circumference were all greater in the moderate-fat group," the report indicates.Those consuming the moderate-fat diet, who were then followed for an additional year, lost a total of 7.7 pounds over the entire study period.
: Source International Journal of Obesity 2001;25:1503-1511.
And if you need one more opinion: I as well notice better fat loss
without the cardio, goddamn all those wasted hours
.gif "IP Gear")
