[Hugh Jackman, getting jacked on a cup of joe]

I drink coffee. I love coffee. And I love a good walk.

The most powerful yet legal fat-burning cocktail I’ve ever experienced is:

1. Day-fasting
2. A cup of coffee (I prefer Americano — espresso and hot water)
3. A nice long walk.

Of course, you can do a high-intensity workout like CrossFit or some form of high-intensity interval training in place of the nice long walk. And I sometimes do. But there’s just something inherently good (physically and mentally) about a nice long walk.

In any case, about this cocktail:

Intermittent fasting releases catecholamines that are lipotrophic (fat breakdown), facilitating fat metabolism. And coffee enhances fat metabolism during physical activity (but not so much during inactivity). 

Whether my goal is to burn fat or not, I enjoy walking because it’s inherently a human function, and because it is anti-inflammatory. Inflammation has been associated with poor joint health, accelerated aging, insulin resistance, leptin resistance at the hypothalamus level, and of course heart disease.

While chronic high-intensity exercise may increase inflammation, a nice long walk has been shown to decrease it. 

Of course, we burn more calories (better to help weight loss or prevent weight gain) when we exercise more intensely, but if frequency and intensity outpace recovery, then we’re not doing any favor to our underlying health and may even inhibit fat loss. A walk is easy on the body, while still burning decent calories.

And taken with coffee, much of the energy for walking comes from metabolized fat. Good for looking good.

Skip a meal. Drink some coffee. Take a walk. And look good.

[Picture from the Sartorialist.]

It’s almost time for summer fun in North America. Move more, eat less. Let’s enjoy life!

Fitness professionals like to complicate things more than necessary. Take sports conditioning, for example.

They talk specialized programming, the various qualities of strength, training cycles, and countless other variables. They’re valid factors, but they’re mostly based on studies done in a vacuum and under limited conditions.

I believe that these factors are mostly irrelevant for the average person desiring to excel in recreational sports.  

Fitness professionals sell the concept of specialized conditioning (exercise to enhance a particular sport) to their clients. (Really it’s a way to sell a service.)

This specialized conditioning program, however, is virtually useless for the average person, unless he/she has reached at least 95% to 100% of maximum potential in that sport — in other words, elite or professional level.

Only at this level can specialized conditioning give a slight edge. But until then, train hard in the sport itself. Enhance your performance with skill practice, intense drills, and game participation… not specialized exercises in the gym.

8-Olympic-gold-medalist Michael Phelps was forbidden by his coach to go near a gym until he maximizes his development as a swimmer. Only after maximum development as a swimmer could a specialized conditioning program give him an extra edge.

There are many other examples of elite athletes not using a specialized conditioning program, yet excel at their sports. 

If you’re like me and have a real job, friends, family, and a life, but you also want to participate in recreational sports (even at a serious level), then just make your body fit, strong, and sport-ready. A general — but good — exercise program will more than suffice.

Don’t waste time and effort on a specialized conditioning program that does little for your recreational sport endeavors. Just be fit, strong, and healthy.

Getting cut is not about exercise as much as it is about diet — specifically eating better and eating less. It’s that simple.

Look around in the gym. People bust their asses year after year, but not all of them are lean and cut. Sometimes it’s genetics, but often it’s because of how they eat. It’s that simple.

There could be many reasons for not being lean, but a guaranteed way of obliterating definition and muscular tone is eating too much crappy food. It’s that simple.

Eat more fresh vegetables and more fresh fruits in place of food that’s been processed, packaged, or boxed. And, be like the French and other nations that don’t suffer an obesity crisis, and stop snacking. It’s that simple.

Anyone who tells you that overweight is more complicated than that — like it’s a result of metabolic dysfunction, energy regulatory impairment, thyroid problems, etc. — is trying to confuse you or trying to make themselves appear more knowledgeable.

They might be correct, but it’s often nothing that can’t be resolved by eating better and eating less. It’s that simple.

There’s something cool about simplicity. Take the guy in this picture from the Sartorialist blog.

The simplicity of a plain white t-shirt and a pair of khakis can make a sonorous statement.

I’ve decided this same simplicity is the platform for this blog.

Believe me, the topic on which this blog is based — looking physically good — was not born out of simplicity. It is a long road.

Let Me Gloat

Years ago, I started out wanting nice arms and ripped abs.

Eventually I earned a degree in exercise science. Then for the next 2 decades I earned a living in the fitness industry — through which time I’ve successfully worked with hundreds of private clients in the area of weight loss, muscle building, physique competitions, amateur and professional sports, and general health.

I also have trained for numerous personal goals — fat loss, competitive sports, bodybuilding competitions, powerlifting meets, and Olympic-style weightlifting meets.

And I’ve subscribed to a shit-load of scientific journals (most of which, I’ll admit, have put me into a coma). I still read many. I’ve also read countless blogs, but recently I’ve reduced them to just a couple dozens that I enjoy. It was time I simplify.

Full Circle

Formal education took my career into the area of athletic performance. But in the end, I’ve always known that most people I work with fundamentally enjoy a lean, well-defined body.

These days I’m back to being all about building this much coveted body — you know, nice arms and ripped abs. 

A Topic I know Well

With my rich, professional experience, I believe I know how to build a great-looking body.

But I am reminded of a pretty cool tale:

A man trying to fix his broken boiler has failed at the task for many months. Eventually he gives up and calls in an expert. An engineer arrives and gives one gentle tap on the side of the broiler, and the damn thing roars to life. The engineer gives the man a bill and the man argues that his bill should be smaller, on the account that the engineer took only a moment for a simple tap. The engineer patiently explains that the man is not paying for the time it took to tap the broiler, but for the years of experience involved in knowing that all you need is a gentle tap.

Getting a lean, well-defined body requires the same gentle tap. Contrary to what the magazines, books, and internet would tell us, getting a hot body should not be so complicated.

As long as you put in the work, the process should be as simple as a gentle tap. 

And Style?

Well, I love clothes, especially those with statement and panache. Worn with attitude they enhance the look of their owners. Perhaps fashion takes the obsession out of body, and put the joy into possessing a nice one. It’s very well for this reason that i love clothes.

So, this being my blog, you’ll find lots of posts about trendy clothes, too — especially if they’re on great bodies.

Just as earning a head-turning body should not be so confusing, fashion should neither be so complicated. If it looks good, or merely different from the mundane, then I’ll share it on this blog.

Simple enough.

In the last 20 years of being in the exercise industry, this is what I learned about building muscle:

• You must make the muscle stronger
• You must make the muscle fatigued

Strength: You need to make the muscle stronger with high-tension work (using 1 to 5 reps), because this inflicts microtrauma to the cells. This damage calls in inflammatory cells (macrophage and neutrophils) which are believed to provide growth-promoting factors, thus triggering sarcolemmic hypertrophy, or increased muscle size due to added cellular structures.

Fatigue: You must induce intense metabolic fatigue in the muscle with higher repetitions (6 to 12 reps, or more). This fatiguing work causes a cellular influx of blood, nutrients, and growth factors. This is believed to produce sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, or increased muscle size due to added cellular fluid.

Muscle strength. Muscle fatigue.

Anything Else is Useless Complication

A complicated exercise program has its place; it should be reserved for those who have reached 98% of their muscular growth or competitive sports potential.

For the Elitists with Strange Bulges (and Linebackers)

People who may benefit from a complicated exercise program are typically elite athletes of various sports, including bodybuilding, powerlifting, and Olympic-style weightlifting… and those using or abusing steroids for aesthetic reasons, like those deriving psychological satisfaction from the achievement of grotesque muscular bulk.

When an individual is hovering right under his muscular growth potential, the intelligent manipulation of exercise programming becomes more important just to achieve a slight improvement — which at this level may be the difference between first and second place. An exercise program, in this circumstance, can and should be complex.

For the Rest of Us Immortals with Hot Bodies

OK… for the rest of us average folks who just want a nice, lean physique with decent muscle to look good in (or out of) cool clothes, a simple exercise program will be more than sufficient for appreciable muscular growth — so long as we progressively make our muscles stronger, and induce metabolic fatigue in them.

So if you’re not into building the huge, gigantic body of a meathead, then keep your training simple. This way you won’t have to live in the gym and can still enjoy the many facets of life.
[Just use this, and periodically use bigger ones.]

There’s Something for Everyone, but For Many the Choices Are Obvious

Gentlemen, below, your pick for a Sushi date? Or, ladies, which body would you rather rock?

Do you prefer a “fighter look” like this elite competitor?

Or like these “average people” who happen to be great actors?

Believe me, it does not matter what kind of workout you do, just as long as you work hard and incorporate the two basic principles — increase muscular strength, and induce muscular fatigue. The clients I work with have all experienced this personally, and I’ve seen it first-hand and second-hand.

Keep it simple…

I was eating dinner tonight and had a thought: what if we could lose fat by eating with chop sticks?

The literature shows that if we eat slowly, we tend to eat less. By pacing our meal, our stomach has a chance tell the brain that we’re satiated before we can shovel too much food in. And we already know that when we eat less, we’re more successful at losing weight.

Although fat loss and being lean are the result of many biological, habitual, and social factors, perhaps those of the Far-East have an advantage that the typical Westerners do not: they eat with chop sticks.

[A lean and beautiful young lady eats with chopsticks. Photo of Nicole, borrowed from the NicoleKiss blog]

Not A New Idea (as always)

So I googled “weight loss” and “chopsticks,” and evidently I wasn’t the first to be poked in the eye by the chopstick idea. The ideas are all the same — you lose weight if you use chopsticks.

While the concept sounds reasonable, most of the information seems to oversimplify the concept. I think we can still eat a lot even with chopsticks. We still have to actively slow down, and chopsticks give us that advantage.

Eat Less, but Taste Your Food

The beauty of eating is that we get to taste the food. By eating with forks and spoons, however, we tend to shovel too much food into the mouth at once and thus miss the opportunity to truly taste individual components of our food, like the interplay of spices on the meat or the herbs infused into the sauteed vegetables. The mouth merely mashes everything into an amalgamation of mush. And we call this eating.

With chopsticks, we tend to pick up one or, at most, two items on the plate at a time. This allows us to taste just one or two things at a time, in small quantity with each bite.

No overwhelming of the taste bud, no gluttony.

Make a Point to Taste Your Food 

In addition to putting less into each bite, we must make it a point to taste it. Because even with the use of chopsticks, we can still shovel pieces after pieces of food into our mouth without really tasting any one item. And we’re back to where we were with the spoon and fork.

Use Chopsticks, Enjoy Your Food

So, use chopsticks. If you don’t know how to use them (my wife learned only recently), learn to use them. Then make a habit of tasting your food. Don’t rush. Enjoy.

This way we tend to not overstuff our stomach before the signal of satiation reaches the brain. It’s one of the ways to get lean.

But another cool thing about chopsticks is that they can be an instrument of art, or they’re just straight-up a hip and urban thing. Everyone should own a pair — for home or for on-the-go.

[Bruce Lee, getting ready for some ass-whooping with his own pair of... chopsticks?]

I’ve been training myself and hundreds of clients for nearly 20 years.

Throughout this period, I’ve used various training methods: bodybuilding, Superslow, powerlifting, so-called functional training, and olympic-style weightlifting. And in recent years it has been all about athletic development.

At times I even used a combination of these methodologies.

A Look of Disproportion

In the end, however, most people I work with — myself included — just want to be healthy and possess an attractive physique… not to  have a disproportionate look!

Most of us don’t care about winning lifting trophies, or prancing around a bodybuilding stage in purple bikinis. We don’t want to possess a barrel torso like that of the powerlifter, a thick set of legs and hips like that of the weightlifter, or the odd-looking, cartoon caricature of a bodybuilder.

Most people I know don’t need (or want) to look like this, or train like this, to play a round of golf or a pick-up game of basketball on Sunday afternoon. We don’t need to do any of this to go to the local coffee shop.

A Need for Change

I asked myself why I’ve been beating up myself and my clients with these brutal programs that are based on maximum athletic development. It all made no sense.

So I took 2 decades of practical experience, the theoretical knowledge gained from my Sports Medicine degree, and years of reading scientific journals, and made things easier on myself and the people I train.

I began to exercised for aesthetics — for looks.

It’s easier on the joints, the back, and the knees. There’s a lot less physical stress, but still just the right amount for positive adaptation to stressful situations, both physically and psychologically. It’s a nice balance.

Putting Exercise Into Perspective

Training for aesthetics means that we may not be as strong as a powerlifter that back-squats a thousand pounds, or an Olympic weightlifter that clean-and-jerks 3 times his own weight.

But I know that proper exercise of any kind — even those not considered by the fitness gurus as “functional training” — will make us better and healthier people. The fact that we do some lifting (even if for only aesthetics) invariably makes us functionally competent.

If I have ripped abs, defined legs, and veiny arms, then I’m fine being functionally competent.

Sleekness is the New Black

In future posts I will write more about the exercise that I use to build just the right amount of muscle in just the right places, for that sleek movie-star, fashion model physique. It involves manipulating the hormonal responses first, and then targeting areas you want to increase muscularity.

This sounds complicated, but it’s not and takes a lot less time than you think.

I call this the economics of aesthetics exercise.

Stay tuned.

These pictures are taken from the Sartorialist blog.

I love that this girl rides a road bike without wearing the typical multi-colored, fake-sponsorship Lycra kit. Not only does she look stylish on the way to the local cafe, but the whole scenario represents an active lifestyle.

I grew up in the generation that feared shorter shorts, but with a lean body and a flair of confidence, I’m warming up to the style. This ensemble is simple and easy, and the defining characteristic that makes the whole thing work is the veins down the biceps.

So how do you lose the fat, get a lean body, and beat up the world?

Most of you probably already know that a body like Brad Pitt’s comes mostly from exercise and dieting.

But we’re talking about getting lean through fat loss. The scientific literature tells us that fat loss is mostly ineffective through exercise. Rather, fat loss relies heavily on diet.

Intermittent Fasting (IF)

The fact is this: there are many fat-loss diets that work. No single fat-loss diet works best for everyone, but the diet that works best for you is the one you can adhere to permanently.

With that said, the fat-loss diet that seems to offer the best adherence has been the one utilizing the concept of Intermittent Fasting, or IF.

There are many very smart people who have written about IF, like Brad Pilon, Martin Berkhan, and Mark Sisson of Mark’s Daily Apple. (I also write about IF regularly on my other blog.)

Having adopted IF myself, I can tell you this dietary lifestyle is the single easiest diet for weight loss and weight maintenance. It is sustainable in its simplicity. And, although many biological complexity is involved in the energy regulatory system that causes fat loss, the fundamental rule to losing weight is still based on a calorie deficit.

This is why IF is so effective for a lot of people — it averages a calorie deficit through time, but without restricting your joy for food. I don’t know about you, but I still enjoy good food and great champaign with close friends.

Check Your Gut

The human gut is essentially in two states: fed or unfed. While we sleep through the night, the gut is in an unfed state. When we just chowed down lunch, our gut is in a fed state.

So it is fair to say we’ve all done IF practically all our lives, every time we went to bed. Intermittent fasting is simply a replication of the same condition, but during the daytime.

The unfed state is actually very natural for the human body and should make up the majority of our lives; this is so that the body can free its resources from the process of digestion and focus on other biological processes — like recovery, rebuilding, and cellular house-cleaning.

Glorified Gluttony

Our culture, however, have conditioned us to eat constantly, to snack throughout the day, and eat as many as 6 so-called “small” meals a day.

Since it takes 3 to 4 hours to digest a meal, it means our gut is constantly in a fed state, digesting from the moment we wake to the time we go to bed. Talk about overworked — it’s such a pervasive (and perversive) theme to our society. Work work work.

The French Don’t Work Themselves to Death

The French are known to eat less, because they don’t snack between meals. Reports claim they truly enjoy their food slowly, enjoying every bite slowly, and this might allow them to eat less. They also simply go longer between feeding.

Intermittent Fasting, a Multitude of Positive Effects

Intermittent fasting studies show that going longer between feedings has positive health impact, from improved hormonal profiles, blood lipids, brain protection, and blood pressure to increased fat metabolism. So it seems that it’s not just eating fewer calories that decreases body fat, but that going longer between meals can also decrease body fat and improve health.

Filippa Hamilton, French Model

Kevin Flamme, French