Whether you are a physique competitor, an athlete or an average gym goer, each of us is trying to figure out a way to expedite the fat loss process. The answer is very simple, but it is not easy. The results depend on your level of commitment, how much fat you want to lose and how far you are willing to go to get there. Here are my first five:

1. You spend too much time sitting down. The majority of us have jobs that require us to sit in front of a computer screen all day. People who are on their feet the majority of their day are a lot leaner than their seated counterparts. The metabolism slows down dramatically when you are slouched on a chair or lying on a couch. When you are standing and walking around, your body has to do a lot more work, and that uses energy in the form of calories.

2. You are not eating enough protein. When we put food in our bodies we use energy in the form of heat/calories to break that food down. This is referred to as the thermic effect of food. Protein requires more energy than any other macronutrient to break down. So your body has to work harder to break down that piece of chicken than a baked potato, even if it has the same numbers of calories. That chicken breast will also keep you fuller making you less likely to eat more food later on.

3. You are not getting enough sleep. You need to shoot for 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night as a minimum. Studies show that most North Americans are lucky to get 5 or 6. Making sleep a priority will balance out your hormones and help you recover mentally and physically from the stressors of the day. When you don’t meet these requirements, your body will secrete excess cortisol (which is a stress hormone) and bedtime is not when you want your cortisol level high as it heightens alertness and signals your body to store excess fat.This elevation in cortisol further increases the likelihood of developing diabetes and obesity.

4. You are drinking too many calories. I have put a number of my clients on a diet by making only one change and the results were remarkable. I asked them to drink nothing but water with each and every meal for a month. No juice, no pop, no pasteurized dairy and no booze. Try it and you will find you are eliminating an average of 300 to 500 calories daily. For many it is twice that. Over the course of a month, that is a lot of calories.

5. You are not strength training. Studies have shown that 9 out of 10 people go to the gym and jump on the first treadmill, stationary bike or elliptical trainer they see when attempting a fat loss regimen. While cardiovascular exercise should have a place in every exercise program, the effects it has on fat loss are short term. If you want to create a healthy thriving metabolism, you need to lift weights too. For every pound of muscle you can add to your frame, your body will require an extra 50 calories a day to feed that muscle. So the more muscle you have, the more you can eat without gaining weight. An added bonus of an intense lifting session is an increase in metabolism of up to 5-7% over the next 24-72 hours, if you are working hard enough.

Every Internet guru is trying to capitalize on the widespread confusion that exists in regards to nutrition. There is a Paleo Diet, a South Beach Diet, an Atkins Diet and more recently a Mountain Dog Diet. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. It seems like every day some new book is being written by a self-proclaimed expert claiming to have found the holy grail of food. They tell you exactly what to eat, what not to eat and when to eat it. If you follow all of their advice down to the last detail (as they suggest you must) without ending up with an eating disorder, more power to you ! And all you have to do is pay $29.99 for the e-book and a recurring monthly fee of $9.99 to join their website.

I have nothing against capitalism and I believe that everyone has the right to make a living by selling their knowledge. However, the vast majority of nutritional products and services sold on the Internet today are marketed in such a way that leave us believing that unless we use their products, we are destined to a life of poor health. This is not knowledge or sound advice, it is simply manipulation.

Like many people I’ve been guilty of looking for the silver bullet, the one diet that can solve all my problems. I’ve concluded that it doesn’t exist. There are a lot of great marketers out there who can convince you of just about anything. My advice is not to read it. Not that you should refrain from educating yourself, but you should avoid inundating yourself with conflicting viewpoints on the same subject. There is an old saying that if you ask ten different people the same question, you will get 10 different answers. And those answers will make you more confused than when you started, and leave you with even more unanswered questions.

We are all guilty of using the Internet as a crutch from time to time. Whenever something pops in our minds that we are unsure of, we Google it. We figure that the answers are there already, so we avoid doing any critical thinking. Too often the answers we find are a “one size fits all” and this isn’t reality. Here’s a personal example: You can read on the Internet that oatmeal is an extremely healthy food option. It is loaded with fibre, high in vitamins and minerals and great at lowering bad cholesterol. So a number of years ago I went out to a holistic grocery store and I bought a box of certified organic steel cut oats, the highest quality oats you can find. About a half an hour after I finished the bowl, I felt lethargic, weak and was borderline depressed. I figured this must just be an aberration. So I had another bowl the next day with the exact same result. I haven’t had another bowl since. Clearly oatmeal is not a healthy option for me.

Today I start every morning with 4 organic free range eggs, a handful of nuts and berries and I feel fantastic for the next several hours. I am what is termed ‘a fast oxidizer’ and fast oxidizers tend to have strong appetites, crave and do well on heavy proteins and fatty foods, tend to get hyper yet feel exhausted underneath, feel anxious, nervous, jittery and are prone to emotional ups and downs. Most carbohydrates absorb into my system at a rapid pace, leaving me hungry and low on energy. I still eat them in small amounts, I just don’t make them a focal point of any meal. My body functions better with foods that are high in protein and fat.

If you are struggling to figure out what foods work best for you, start eating different foods and record how you feel several hours later and even into the next day. Ask yourself: “Do I have energy today?”, “Do I feel bloated and tired?”. It may sound a little tedious, but it is worth it. Consider seeing a registered dietitian or a holistic nutritionist and get a food intolerance test done. They will show you on a sliding scale which foods your body is most compatible with and which ones it is not. Jumping from one fad diet to the next every couple of months is not the answer. Put the effort into doing more research with your body and I think you will like the results.

So which diet will work best for you? The one you develop for yourself.

Part 1 of this article established that in the initial years of training, the fastest route to muscle growth is to focus on compound lifts (multi-joint) and to work the body as one. This is great for the novice trainee with lower strength levels, butless effective once strength levels begins to increase.

In order to maintain continued growth (hypertrophy) in any muscle group, heavier loads and greater volumes are required. With that comes equally longer recovery times. Performing exercises such as heavy squats and deadlifts, places a tremendous amount of strain on the central nervous system. So after performing a heavy deadlift workout on a Monday using 350 plus lbs for multiple sets and repetitions, it is not possible to walk back into the gym on the Wednesday expecting to perform that same workout, fully recovered. Studies have shown that it can take anywhere from 7 to 10 days to recover from a training session performing deadlifts using those kind of loads. If you are a novice trainee working with a modest amount of weight (100 lbs at 4 sets X 6 reps) and you feel great a couple of days later, you would more than likely able to re-train that muscle group 48 hours later with a 105 lbs load.

Getting stronger is a two fold process. During the initial stages of strength training (6 weeks) increases in strength are a function of the brain becoming more efficient at sending messages to the working muscles. We don’t see a lot of visible muscle growth even though we are getting stronger; increases in strength are primarily based on neural efficiency. The second part of this process is the reward of muscle growth. In order for the body to account for the increased demands being placed upon it, it must increase the size of its skeletal muscle through growth in the size of its component cells. The recovery process varies depending on load, volume and the particular muscles being worked. Generally speaking, upper body muscles have a tendency to recovery and regenerate faster than lower body muscles. This can be attributed to the fact that the lower body muscles can handle a lot more tension (weight) than the upper body and will therefore have more muscle damage, requiring more time to heal and repair.

There are a number of different workout schedules that can be performed. I have seen trainees who have a lot of time to train who will isolate each major muscle group over a 5 day period (e.g., Day 1: Chest, Day 2: Back, Day 3: Legs, Day 4: Shoulders, Day 5: Arms, Day 6: Off, then repeat the cycle). They perform an inordinate amount of volume on each muscle thus requiring 5 or 6 days to recover before they can be trained again. This is an extreme example and it is not very realistic. Most people lead busy lives and don’t have the time or the desire to spend their life inside of a gym.

For my clients who have reached the stage where full body workouts are not as effective as they once were, I recommend breaking up their routine into an upper/lower body split. This way their upper and lower body will get hit twice a week. During one lower body session the emphasis would be placed on some version of a squat (front squat/back squat/split squat) and the other day would focus on a deadlift variation (barbell deadlift/trap bar deadlift/Romanian deadlift). The two upper body sessions would focus on different variations of presses, rows and a little assistance work thrown in to hit lagging body parts and the smaller stabilizer muscles. With this type of training split they get the best of both worlds– time to get in a sufficient amount of volume to elicit muscle growth and an opportunity to recover between workouts. The added bonus is that they now have the ability to hit these muscles twice a week. Training a muscle more frequently will lead to more muscle mass and greater strength gains assuming that it has fully recovered from one session to the next.

What’s the best training schedule to maximize muscle growth? Anyone who takes their training seriously has sought the answer to this question. I am not convinced that there is any perfect formula. My own practical experience tells me that the right answer comes down to training age (how long you’ve been training), strength levels, and one’s ability to recover. Our bodies are all genetically unique, so what works for one trainee might not be optimal for the next.

Forty years ago, training was a lot simpler. The entire body was trained in one workout and the goal was to get stronger from one session to the next. Today’s fitness and bodybuilding magazines promote elaborate body part splits with daily training and excessive volume. I recall the first barbell set my parents bought me for the house. I was 16 years old, 6’2 and a whopping 135 after a good meal. I looked at the manual and performed all the exercises it included: squats, presses, rows and curls. I took a day off and then did it all over again. Over that 6 month period I gained quite a bit of size and strength. I was consistent, I didn’t deviate from the plan and that is what works.

One day I started reading Muscle and Fitness and Flex magazines, the ones with muscle bound super heroes on the front cover and my gains came to a screeching halt. Every month there would be a new magical training program that promised to put slabs of muscle on my bony frame. I’d try it for a week or two, the results wouldn’t come quickly enough, and then I’d move onto something else. I did this for years with very little to show for my efforts. At the time, I was too naive to realize that the bodybuilders who follow these elaborate training schemes are blessed with superior genetics and superior pharmaceuticals.

After years of frustration, I decided to research the best training programs for the average guy who has a hard time putting on muscle, and has a tendency to add fat. Just about everything I read brought me back to the same conclusion–I had it right, from the start. Train 3 to 4 times a week, stick with compound lifts, keep sessions under an hour and eat lots of high quality food with plenty of rest. I’d come full circle.

A novice trainee with modest strength levels can make consistent gains for a couple of years with a 3 day a week program that consists of 3 exercises each session. Heavy bench presses, chin ups and squats one day, then overhead presses, rows and deadlifts the next. Monday you would perform Workout A), Wednesday Workout B) and then repeat Workout A) on Friday.

Generally speaking, heavier loads require greater recovery time. Once a trainee reaches a certain strength level, the program needs to evolve. In Part 2 of this blog I will discuss alternative training splits for the advanced trainee.

To recap, in order to get stronger you need to have a plan of action. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is a great physique. Progressive resistance is the key to any strength program. There are plenty of variables that can be manipulated, but adding weight to the bar should be your #1 goal if you are new to the iron game.

If you want to get really strong, you need to lift free weights. Stick with barbells and dumbbells and stay away from machines. I can’t be more emphatic about this. The problem with machines is that they force your body to move in an unnatural path. Every trainee has a different physiology and machines cannot adjust for this. They force your body to move in a fixed plane. So when performing a seated chest press on a hammer strength machine, trainee A’s arms and shoulders will be forced to move in the exact same path as trainee B. This is an injury waiting to happen because trainee A has much longer arms than trainee B. Barbells and dumbbells allow your body to move more freely because you are not just moving the weight in a specific direction, but you are also required to balance it. The need for balancing forces the stabilizer muscles to activate and do their job. When training with machines, the stabilizer muscles are rarely required to participate because the weight is already balanced for you, and this leads to injury.

When it comes to getting strong, nothing works like squats and deadlifts for the lower body, and pressing and pushing variations like chin ups, rows, bench presses and overhead presses for the upper body. A variety of compound exercises will hit all the major muscle groups. A compound exercise operates at more than one joint, as opposed to an isolation exercise that operates at one joint. A biceps curl is an isolation movement (flexes at the elbow joint) whereas a chin up is a compound movement (extends the shoulder and flexes at the elbow). So a chin up will give you the most bang for your buck because it works the most muscle. The basis of your training should be composed of compound movements. Isolation exercises can be used sparingly to bring up a lagging body part or used to strengthen smaller muscles to protect your body from injury at the end of your training session. When training any exercise, my approach doesn’t change. I treat it as practice because I am continually attempting to perfect a movement. It can take years to master an exercise such as a squat or deadlift. The more efficient you become at a particular movement, the more you will be able to lift.

I cannot stress enough the importance of getting stronger in different rep ranges. Your body is composed of different muscle fibres (fast and slow twitch) and different fibres respond to different loads and rep ranges. Fast twitch fibres have a greater capacity for strength and explosive power, but are highly fatigable. They are activated with lower repetition ranges and heavier loads (1-6 repetitions or 85-100% of your one-rep maximum), whereas slow twitch muscle fibres have a minimal capacity for strength and explosive power, but have high endurance capabilities (8 to 15 repetitions or 60-80% of your one-rep maximum). So it’s strongly advisable to practice getting stronger in your lifts by alternating rep ranges each week. As an example, in week 1 start with 5 sets of 5 repetitions at 85-90% of your 1 repetition maximum. Then in week 2, try 4 sets of 8 repetitions at 75-80% of your 1 repetition maximum. For week 3 you would start with 3 sets of 12 repetitions at 65-70% of your 1 repetition maximum. Once you get to the point where you can complete all your sets and reps at the load you have started with, it is time add weight to the bar. Five pounds for smaller muscles and ten pounds for larger muscles is a good rule of thumb. Try alternating this pattern from week to week between the 3 rep schemes and you should see gains in both size and strength.

In next week’s blog I will discuss training splits. The pros and cons of full body workouts vs. lower/upper body splits and how to figure out which one is right for you.

It’s more common than you might think. The same people in the gym day after day, week after week, year after year and nothing changes. I could recite their routine from the minute they walk in until the minute they leave. They are predictable and so are their results. Complacency is the kiss of death in the gym. If you are not growing, you are regressing. If you want to grow and get stronger in any area of your life, you need to get out of your comfort zone and get to work.

Start by getting organized and devise a plan. You can begin by going to the nearest Dollar Store and picking up a steno pad. Then you can start tracking your progress each and every time you train. It may sound tedious, but it is the only way to make progress. Every set, every rep and the corresponding exercise needs to be recorded. Then the next time you train, you’ll know the exact numbers you are trying to beat from the previous session. Whether it is more weight, more reps or shorter rest periods, the goal is to always improve. That is how you get stronger. Don’t be discouraged if from time to time you don’t beat your previous numbers. If you stay the course, you’ll see your numbers go up and your body will reflect that. This much I can promise.

I spent my first 5 years in the gym walking around aimlessly, running purely on instinct. The barbells and dumbbells looked ominous and so did the guys who were lifting them. On the other side of the gym, those shiny new Nautilus machines that were all the rage in the late 80’s looked much more appealing. The more futuristic they looked, the more time I spent on them. I thought that as long as I did a few biceps curls, some bench pressing and hit the leg extension from time to time, I would grow. I was mistaken. My first year in the gym resulted in a net gain of 3 lbs of solid muscle. For someone who has been training for 20 years, that is quite an accomplishment. But for a teenager in his first year of training whose testosterone levels are at their highest, this is very disappointing. Gains of up to 15 to 20 lbs of muscle in the first year of training for a male between the ages of 18 to 25 is not uncommon. That is provided you are performing the right exercises, eating enough high quality food and giving your muscles enough time to recover.

Next week I’ll discuss which exercises give you the best bang for your buck and the role frequency of training plays and how it relates to recovery.

In last week’s article I offered the first 5 reasons why you might not be getting the results you are looking for. Continuing now with 6 through 10 ….

6. You are wasting your time performing too many isolation moves. Compound lifts are the way to go. These lifts work your muscles at more one than one joint. A squat which works at the hip and knee joint is going to activate more muscle and require more effort than a knee extension which only works at the knee joint. So you are building more muscle and burning more calories. Stick with squats, deadlifts, pressing and rowing variations to get the most bang for your buck.

7. You are a program hopper. With the advent of the internet, there is just waaaay too much information out there. You will read one article and it will tell you to do one thing and then the next week you read something else telling you to do the exact opposite. Now you are confused. We have all fallen into this trap at one time or another. My advice to you is to pick a program from a reputable source and stick with it for a minimum of 6 weeks and don’t read any other fitness articles in the meantime. If by the time you have finished the 6 weeks you are not happy with the results, then by all means try something else. Consistency is the key to progression.

8. You perform the exact same routine each and every time you go into the gym. The same weight, the same exercises, the same order. When you first start training, any new stimulus will cause muscle growth, but if you are not consistently challenging your muscles with more weight, more repetitions, shorter rest periods and new exercises, your gains will come to a screeching halt in record time. I see people at my neighbourhood gym who are clearly committed to their exercise routine, but take a picture of them and compare it to the 5 years prior and the difference will be negligible, if any.

9. You are not stretching after your training session. For years we have been told that we need to stretch before we train to avoid muscle strains. This is completely backwards. Stretching post workout will enhance recovery by increasing blood and nutrient flow to your working muscles and will help maintain flexibility and hopefully improve it over time.

10. You are stressed out all the time. From a hormonal standpoint, being consistently stressed out and anxious is a recipe for disaster if your goals are to gain muscle and lose fat. When we are in this state our bodies produce excess amounts of cortisol which is an anti-catabolic muscle eating hormone. Granted, a certain amount of stress is healthy. We all need a bit to get us going in the morning and feel a sense of purpose, but too much and you will experience the pitfalls.  Make a point of taking more time for yourself. Learn to say ‘no’ to people. We overcommit to our families and our jobs and quite frankly I think it is slowly killing us. It is a very empowering feeling when you are able to pick and choose the commitments that you want to make instead of feeling obligated to say ‘yes’ every time someone asks of your time. Put aside an hour of each and everyday just for you. 

Steak and eggs are apparently making a comeback.  When I was growing up doctor’s were recommending that we minimize saturated fat to the extreme and we could accomplish this by keeping our servings of red meat and whole eggs down to once or twice a week. The prevailing belief was that one yolk and a few egg whites were ideal and only lean cuts of meat like tenderloin, striploin, sirloin or chuck were acceptable. If you were to eat a rib eye for dinner or 4 whole eggs for breakfast, a cardiologist would warn that you were putting your life on the line with every bite. Up until recently, this is what has been in every health magazine and medical journal across the continent. Minimize your fat intake and you can eat all the carbohydrates you like without any risk of clogging your arteries. We have been following these dietary guidelines over the past 40 years and in the process we have become fatter and fatter.  Heart attack rates, stroke, diabetes and cancers are higher than they have ever been.

Conventional wisdom would have you believe that too much saturated fat is one of the underlying culprits. I cannot stress enough that this is the furthest thing from the truth. Saturated fat is mostly neutral in your bloodstream and it may actually have some health benefits. Numerous studies over the last few years have shown zero association between saturated fat and heart disease. The truth is that diets that substitute excess carbohydrates for saturated fat may actually increase your risk for heart disease. Without getting into great detail in regards to the numerous different types of fatty acids, fat does not travel freely into the bloodstream. Fat and water don’t mix. For all intents and purposes blood is water. So fat is unable to travel freely around the blood system.

Our bodies store carbohydrates to be used as energy in both the liver and in our muscles. The carbohydrates that are stored in the liver are used for day to day functions, such as breathing, walking and sleeping. Our bodies can only store a finite amount of carbohydrate. It can vary depending on muscle mass, body fat levels and insulin sensitivity. The problem arises once our stores are full and yet we keep consuming carbohydrates. Picture a bathtub where the water is filling up faster than it’s going down the drain. These excess carbohydrates start spilling into your bloodstream with nowhere to go and no real purpose to serve. So your body’s only option is to use these excess carbohydrates for long term fat storage. This becomes a vicious cycle that reduces your insulin sensitivity by forcing your pancreas to produce excess insulin and eventually can lead to diabetes, heart disease and a myriad of other metabolic illnesses.

I am not in favour of radically eliminating carbohydrates from the diet. We just eat way too many.  I recommend a moderate carbohydrate intake to my clients, friends and family. The key is to get them from nature made sources, namely fruits and vegetables and to either minimize or eliminate man made options. Vegetables and fruits are loaded with vitamins, nutrients and fiber and are by far and away our best carbohydrate options.

When you sit down to eat a meal, do you ever stop to think where your food came from  ? I think it is important that all of us have the ability to trace our food back to its place of origin.Until the advent of the supermarket in the middle of the 20th century, you couldn’t go to one place to buy all of your food. Everything was specialized. Face-to-face contact with your local farmers was common place. It was normal.

You had to wait for the milkman to come by once or twice a week with your milk. Milk came in sealed jugs with the the cream still on top. Homogenization, the worst thing dairy men did to milk, didn’t start until the 1960’s. Best-before dates were a week to ten days at most. Now with ultra pasteurization, milk can keep for several weeks to a few months. It may be void of all its healthy enzymes and have little leftover besides sugar and protein, but it will keep ! Small dairy farms with a dozen cows are a thing of the past. They have been replaced by large factory farms with the robotic milking of up to 500 cows at a time. This is the new standard. The idea of tracing where your milk comes from is virtually impossible unless you are willing to buy into a cow share from a privately owned farm which many people are now doing.

Fruits and vegetables were once bought at local farms in the summer months and the excess were either frozen or made into soups and jams, because in winter months very little can be grown in climates where the temperatures dip below freezing.  In those days everything was seasonal. You couldn’t eat apples in the spring or asparagus in the winter. Now when I make my weekly trip to Whole Foods, my strawberries are from California, blueberries from Ecuador and my Garnett yams come from Mexico. Transportation has come a long way in the last 50 years. The problem with this is that the produce we are eating has been picked 4-6 weeks prior and has lost a lot of its nutrients. Fruits and vegetables have their highest nutrient content as soon as they have been picked and unless they are either eaten or flash frozen right away, their nutrient content dwindles dramatically.

How many of you go to a butcher shop to buy your meat ? Have you ever thought to ask the butcher what farm your ground beef came from and how it was raised ? It is rare that they will be able to tell you. When I first began to buy grass fed beef at Whole Foods, I made a point of asking the butcher which farm and in which state my meat came from. He gave me the name and I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to trace it back to a website through the Internet. It is clearly not local, which is not ideal, but it is better than the alternative. Currently, 98 percent of meat, fish and poultry purchased in North America comes pre-packaged from factory feed lot farms. If you have watched any of the documentaries available over the last 10 years (Food Inc, Fed Up, King of Corn) then you will know that purchasing this type of meat is far from being your best option from a health and morality standpoint.

We are living in a fast paced world. Everyone tries to cram as much as they can into their day. Kids typically eat on their own when they get home from school and the parents eat later at night once the homework and extracurricular activities are complete. Food now needs to be convenient and is viewed strictly as fuel to get us through the day. The idea of savouring our food is a lost art. I find this very disconcerting. Try and make a point of sitting down to eat with friends and family members as often as you can and take the time to enjoy your food and the people you are sharing it with. It promotes a sense of togetherness and communication that today’s families are sorely lacking.

In my next blog I will discuss the benefits of consuming beef and dairy from grass fed cows and why feeding cattle genetically modified (GMO) corn and grains is so harmful.

Whether we are eating, drinking, sleeping or breathing, our bodies require energy in the form of calories to undergo metabolic processes. The body requires more calories to break down an apple consisting of 80 calories than exist in the apple itself. The reason being that breaking down the fibre takes a lot of work for your digestive system. The body tries to digest the fibre, but it cannot. In an attempt to digest and eliminate the fibre, the body expends more calories than it would with most other foods.

Now consider a glass of orange juice containing the same number of calories. There are somewhere between 8 and 10 oranges in a 250 ml glass that has been squeezed for juice, but there is very little fibre remaining. The longer it sits on the shelves in the grocery store, the less life force that juice will have–your body can’t tell the difference between that glass of juice and a can of coke because it is mostly sugar water. These liquids will work their way through your body at a rapid pace causing a spike insulin as described in Part 1 of this article. The moral of the story is that fibre is your friend. We need to chew our foods as much as possible; that is why we have sharp teeth. They serve an important evolutionary purpose.

I do not want to tell you what to eat. The sources of your macro-nutrients are entirely up to you. I only know what works for me. I am a fast oxidizer, meaning that carbohydrates enter my bloodstream at a rapid pace and don’t provide me with the sustained, prolonged energy that my body requires. So I get the vast majority of my calories in the form of meat, eggs, fish and dairy products (protein and fat). The metabolic benefits of these foods are that they take your body a lot of work to break down, they keep you fuller for longer, provide sustained energy, and the insulin spikes are negligible. Besides burning calories as proteins are broken down, they raise your metabolism by rebuilding muscle fibres faster. Muscles require more energy/calories to rebuild themselves even when they are not being used.  So the more muscle you have, the more calories your body burns. Your body will require approximately 50 calories per pound of muscle a day to maintain it’s existence. Hence, high protein diets combined with strength training are the best recipe for staying lean and muscular.

For those who are vegetarian or vegan, there are plenty of alternatives to get your protein and fats. Beans, lentils (legumes), nuts, seeds, non genetically modified soy and leafy greens to name a few. These foods are in some instances better because they contain both fibre and protein. So you can get the best of both of worlds.

Regardless of what food groups you choose, focus on eating real food in it’s most natural state possible. Real food should have a lifespan. The foods you find in cans or boxes in the aisles of a supermarket will in most cases last indefinitely because they were never alive to begin with. The foods on the perimeter have a best-before date and they tend to rot over time. Despite what you may have thought, best-before dates are a good thing.