Exercise on the holiday

The holiday involved a significant amount of cycling each day.  The truth is that we were actually only moving the pedals for 4-6 hours over the course of 8 or 9 hours each day – this was no Tour de France – but with a bike that is heavier than my usual racing bike and additionally weighed down with touring gear this was a significant effort output for my legs.

Cycle touring - no Tour de France but still requiring muscle adaptations

By the end of the fourth day I was beginning to get a sore knee caused by knots that were starting to form in my right quad muscles.  I made a concerted effort to massage the knots by hand overnight which reduced the soreness for the fifth and final day.  A follow up rolling effort once we’d returned to the car (where we’d stowed a foam roller) and made it to our hotel for the night made a real difference to the knots and by the next morning a brief rolling session showed that the knots were mostly cleared.

The subsequent problems

After returning home I spent the whole afternoon standing up doing the washing, ironing and tidying up.  We’re doing a bit of a rearrangement of the house so I spent several hours standing in front of a bookcase reorganising books – I’m a bit obsessive about having books organised into alphabetical order.  As the afternoon wore on my legs started to stiffen up.  I thought it was the knots coming back but a rolling session didn’t reveal any knots.

A special treat post-holiday pizza and cheesecake evening (yes, I know – distinctly not paleo) followed and I went to bed stuffed full, satisfied but a little sore.

The next morning I woke up and I can only describe the way my legs felt as “puffy”.  It was similar to the sensation that you get when you suffer from a severe insect bite or sprain where the swelling is so extreme that it starts to be constrained by the skin.  It’s incredibly uncomfortable.  I was still able to walk but the legs of my shorts were tight on my thighs and kneeling down or standing still for too long created additional discomfort.

Call me excessive but it almost felt like my skin was going to split to release the pressure at any moment.

What I think happened

I hadn’t done much cycling before the tour, having only managed to fit in one or two rides of two hours each in the weekends leading up to the holiday.  The sudden increase of cycling effort was therefore a shock to my quads.  They may have been strong from the squatting I’ve been doing, but squatting and cycling are very different activities.

To handle the cycling it is likely that my muscles rapidly developed additional capillaries to enable my body to supply my muscles with blood to help wash toxins away from them and to provide the muscles with plenty of oxygen.

By spending the afternoon after we got home standing up rather than moving about the blood will have filled up all the capillaries, thanks to gravity, and the additional blood would have swollen up the capillaries.  The intake of significant amounts of carbs that evening would then have contributed to the swelling in my legs by replenishing glycogen stores in my muscles.  So my legs really were swollen.  The combination of additional blood and filled glycogen stores will have made my legs larger than ever before and my skin wasn’t prepared for the increased girth.

That’s my theory and if it’s right then it’s a real warning about the possible side effects of significant changes to exercise patterns and subsequent rapid changes to muscle composition.  Do you think I’ve hit on the right reason for the puffy sensation in my legs?

Related posts:

1. Lessons learned: regular physical assessment
2. Lessons learned: office survival
3. Lessons learned: the benefits of being fat-adapted

What does a raw food diet entail?

Raw food is defined as food that is not heated at temperatures above 46-48 degrees Celsius (115-118 degrees Fahrenheit).  The majority of material and studies available that look at raw food diets concentrate on raw veganism – diets based entirely on raw plant food – however there is another element to the raw food diet when people also consume raw meat and dairy.

Are your vegetables better raw or cooked?

Potential benefits of a raw food diet

Those who consume raw food diets swear by its healthful benefits including:

• weight loss;
• increased energy;
• clear skin;
• improved insulin tolerance; and
• improved overall health.

Some bodybuilders use a raw omnivorous diet.  Joshua Trentine, a pro-bodybuilder in the US, recently converted to a raw food diet with the assistance of Randy Roach and noted during an interview on Super Human Radio the following additional benefits:

• increased muscle bulk;
• decreased fat;
• easier to consume large quantities of meat, thus dealing with the problem of consuming sufficient calories when bulking;
• increased stamina and strength during workouts.

In particular, Josh noticed that drinking large quantities of raw (unpasturised) milk doesn’t cause him to gain fat, whereas he used to gain a lot of fat when drinking pasturised milk to gain strength and muscle.

Common arguments against raw food diets

I was given a copy of Richard Wrangham’s Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human“ for Christmas.  I’m only partway through this at present but I was particularly interested in one of his early chapters where he presents his view of the raw food movement.

The main arguments against raw food diets, presented in both Richard Wrangham’s book and in an article on Precision Nutrition, are based on the Giessen Raw Food study and reports of how people have fared when they have been forced to follow a raw food diet while stranded in the wild (most often at sea or in forests).  It’s worth noting though that most of these scenarios concern diets with no or minimal meat consumption.

The Giessen Raw Food study

The Giessen Raw Food study involved the analysis of data compiled from questionnaires completed by 513 raw-foodists who ate a 70-100% raw food diet.  They observe in the abstract that most raw foodists who were questioned ate a vegetarian diet.  Some of the key observations from the study included:

• low BMIs, with the lowest BMIs in those who had the highest raw food proportion in their diet.
• direct correlation between the proportion of raw food in the diet and the menstrual cycle, with women with a higher proportion raw food diet also showing a greater likelihood of absent or rare menstruation.  It should be noted that studies by Rose Frisch have found that if a woman’s adipose tissue constitutes less than 17% of her body weight then she ceases to menstruate so it seems that this is likely to be a function of the reduced BMI, rather than being due to the higher proportion of raw food in the diet.
• body weights of almost a third indicated chronic energy deficiency.

Some other thoughts on not eating raw food

In addition to the Geissen Raw Food study, there are a couple of other articles worth reading for a full picture of some of the arguments against raw food.

1. An article on Chemical Crystallinity summarises a scientific study that showed that cooking eggplant was more beneficial than leaving it raw – again, this is a study focused on a raw vegetable that is then being expanded to cover “raw food”.
2. Mark Sisson wrote an incredibly helpful article on raw eggs.  It’s a balanced article and leaves you to make up your own mind.  It seems there are both benefits and problems so the answer may be to eat them both cooked and uncooked.

A case for a raw omnivorous diet?

So far, there seem to be plenty of reasons not to eat a raw food diet.  But as I mentioned before, the studies and reports on which these are based seem to mostly rely on diets with almost no meat.  Richard Wrangham acknowledges this, although he also seems to believe that a raw food diet has to be low in meat.

On the other side of the debate are the bodybuilders who have successfully followed a raw food diet over the years.  Bodybuilders need to build and maintain significant muscle mass and subsequently tend to have a high BMI.  These individuals do not seem to struggle with building muscle mass and Josh Trentine has certainly reported beneficial growth-related side-effects.

Is it possible that the missing element in so many raw food diets is meat?

Home-testing

In the spirit of carrying out a controlled scientific study I included 2 raw eggs in Chris’s daily shake for four weeks.  As good science and a blind study, I didn’t tell him (I was in trouble once I stopped and told him what I’d been doing for the last month).  My observations were as follows:

• I managed to add approximately 150 calories into his daily calorie intake without him noticing.  He was no fuller after breakfast than he had been before.
• While he continued to bulk during the month, there was no noticeable shift in his body composition to a leaner look.
• Towards the end of the study period he had a bad fried egg at breakfast time which put him off eggs for a bit.  This could have just been the bad fried egg or could have also been related to the raw egg.  Either way, this was the cue to terminate the study.

I can see two possible conclusions.  Either raw fooding isn’t everything it is cut out to be, or if you want to use it for muscle gain and body composition purposes you need to change over to raw fooding to a much greater degree than a couple of eggs a day.  The only benefit I can see so far from such a small nod to a raw food diet is the ability to increase calorie intake with minimum effort.

Since there’s no way I’ll get Chris eating raw meat and “bulking” is not on my agenda we’ll be going back to a cooked food diet with periodic “rare” steaks until I get the bug to try some raw fooding again.

I’ll write more once I’ve finished Richard Wrangham’s book and if I ever try raw meat, but in the meantime I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has tried a raw food diet, especially while training.

Related posts:

1. 15 Ways to Survive a Desk Job – Part 1 (food and drink)
2. Improving nutrition for muscle gain
3. Workout nutrition: timing

I’ve been watching a lot of World Strongest Man re-runs recently (having conveniently given Chris some DVDs of them for his birthday – whenever possible, always give the person you live with something that you will also enjoy).  Gary Taylor, the Welsh ex-Olympic lifter who turned strongman in the 1990s and won World’s Strongest Man in 1993, has a rear-view that inspired me to revisit this important topic.

When last writing about glutes I had finally mastered glute muscle activation, crucial for progress in so many lifting exercises, but I still didn’t have an appreciably attractive figure from behind.  Since then, I’ve continued incorporating weighted glute bridges and weighted hip thrusts in my workouts as assistance exercises.

It seems to have made all the difference.  I feel my glutes working all the time now and I uncovered a rear-view that I could be proud of at the end of my last cutting cycle.  As a result I feel attractive far more often, I enjoy the feeling of my jeans being tight on my bum knowing that it’s not a layer of fat that will slowly squeeze out over the top of the waistband but the result of hard work that I can be proud of.

The work is never over, I wouldn’t want to return to the days of atrophied glutes, but I always keep my ear close to the ground for more news on things I can do to work my glutes.  So I’ve set out below links to various glute-related news I’ve seen since my last glute-related article.

• Mike Reinhold assessed a study carried out in 2008 by Presswood et al which looked at the anatomy, dysfunction, assessment and progressive strengthening of the gluteus medius.  An article which emphasises how important good glute strength really is.
• Following on from his assessment, Mike then found some follow-up research which used electromyographic (EMG) signal amplitude of the gluteus maximus and gluteus medius muscles during exercises of varying difficulty to determine which exercise most effectively recruits these muscles.  Mike summarises the findings on his blog, but for more detail of the results, there is a useful powerpoint with the research paper.
• Continuing to look at EMG work, a study by Mercer et al (2009) compared activation during forward and lateral step ups and found that activation was greatest when doing lateral step ups and specifically during the upwards phase.  It should be noted that their test group were “older” adults (mean age of 79.4) rather than younger athletes.
• I’ve been singing the praises of Bret Contreras, otherwise known as the Glute Boy, for my introduction to the glute exercises that made all the difference to me.  If you want to get to know a bit more about him, Nate Green interviewed him for Testosterone Nation – it makes for entertaining reading.
• Bret also wrote an incredibly long and technical article about the glutes which covers almost everything you may ever need to know about the glutes.  I first saw this article when it was published last October and I’m still trying to digest it in full.  One to keep revisiting I think.
• Slightly off-topic, but to combine EMG and Bret Contreras, Andrew Heffernan has written about the recent EMG work that Bret has been doing to study the activation of different muscles when doing different exercises in an attempt to identify the best exercises for different muscles.

After all that glute talk I’m off to spend some more time watching reruns of Gary Taylor.  Particularly the second minute in this video of his winning performances from 1993…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI_U_AIULH0

Edit (5 March 2010): As a late addition to this post, I’ve just seen Bret Contreras’s recent post on “What Women Want“, highlighting the varied approach that women may need to take combining the big lifts (like squats and deadlifts) with other exercises like weighted glute bridges and hip thrusts to ensure firm and shapely glutes without huge muscular thighs to accompany them.

Related posts:

1. Glute Guy workouts
2. Glute bridges
3. Blog-watch: All about the glutes

I’ve set out below various parts of the debate so that you can reach your own conclusions.

Pre workout nutrition

A small study by Hackney et al (2009) comparing the effects of protein and carbohydrate pre workout nutrition for trained individuals carrying out resistance training.  This showed that the protein group had a more significant increase to their resting energy expenditure. 

The conclusion by the researchers was that having a protein supplement prior to weight training could be a simple and effective way to increase energy expenditure.  Therefore if you are training to improve your body composition then getting protein into your pre workout nutrition seems to be important.  Unfortunately this study seems to clearly divide protein and carbohydrate and doesn’t comment on having a mix of the two together pre workout.

Do we even need carbohydrate for our workout nutrition?

Having become quite open minded about workout nutrition after writing last week’s article, I was unsurprised to discover DiPasqual’s idea that ingesting carbohydrates straight after our workouts to “replenish the glucose stores in the muscles” is a myth.

In an article on Bodybuilding.com he summarises his argument that while exercise increases insulin sensitivity and depletes glycogen, the body increases glycogen in the body (both muscle and hypatic (liver) glycogen) as a priority after exercise.

As soon as the body increases the glycogen in the body substantially, our insulin sensitivity drops again.  However, it is advantageous to keep insulin sensitivity high for as long as possible after the workout since increased insulin sensitivity:

• enhances amino acid uptake;
• enhances protein synthesis;
• increases profusion of muscles so gets more nutrition into muscles and enhanced anabolic effects from protein synthesis; and
• alerts the body to use fatty acids as the primary fuel after exercise.

Loading up on carbohydrate straight after the workout rapidly decreases insulin sensitivity so that the fatty acid burning, enhanced protein synthesis benefits of the heightened insulin sensitivity stop. 

Think twice before having a potato post workout

This idea is supported by a study carried out by Garcia-Roves et al (2003) which concluded that preventing the supercompensation of glycogen after exercising results in the persistence of exercise-induced increases in protein synthesis.  However, it should be noted that this study was carried out on rats (who were exercised through swimming), not resistance training humans.

Newsom et al (2009) have also noted that a carbohydrate deficit after exercising contributes to the insulin sensitising effects of exercise, though again there is an issue with relying on this study – it relates to acute aerobic exercise, not resistance training.

Protein: the alternative to post workout carbohydrate

It is clear from a study carried out by Koopman et al (2004) that protein is needed in post workout nutrition in order to stimulate muscle protein synthesis and optimise protein balance (when compared to carbohydrate only post workout nutrition).

A study carried out by Børsheim et al (2002) looked at the stimulation of net muscle protein balance when 6g of amino acids (an active part of protein) was administered 1 and 2 hours after resistance exercise.  Interestingly this showed that the protein synthesis benefits from the amino acids administered after 2 hours were even greater than those from the first dose.  So perhaps the best thing you can do after your post workout protein shake is to have some more an hour later.

Choice of protein source

It seems that, whatever you believe, we must have protein after our workout and indeed, most of us are programmed to drink down a whey protein shake or a pint of milk as soona s we get out of the gym for our post workout protein source. 

But there are a few things to be aware of with dairy proteins:

1. Whey protein undergoes a gluconeogenic response and gets into our system very quickly so that a lot of it gets converted into glucose and hits insulin sensitivity levels.  A study carried out on diabetics using whey protein with their meals reflected the higher insulin responses they had to these supplemented meals.
2. All proteins release insulin but Robb Wolf mentions in the Paleolithic Solution Episode 9 (about 28 mins in) that dairy proteins produce much higher levels of insulin.

So if you are trying to keep your insulin sensitivity elevated for as long as possible after a workout it may be beneficial to avoid dairy proteins as well as carbohydrates post workout.  That leaves things like lean steak and fish as optimal post workout “snacks”.

Sardines post workout?

Summary

From the research I’ve done it seems that while protein in pre workout nutrition seems to be a given, the choice of post workout nutrition depends on your goals.

If body composition is a priority (eg figure athletes) then consider avoiding significant levels of carbohydrate and dairy in post workout meals.  This optimises the enhanced protein synthesis and fatty-acid-burning triggers caused by the increased insulin sensitivity.

If maximising the glycogen in muscles is more important (eg. powerlifter training on a very frequent basis) and body composition is not a priority then maybe continue to load up on carbohydrates as part of the post workout nutrition.  Just don’t neglect the protein.

I’d love to hear from you if you’ve seen other research that disagrees with this information – workout nutrition seems to be a minefield of contradictory studies!

Related posts:

1. Workout nutrition: timing
2. Selecting your carbohydrate source
3. Improving nutrition for muscle gain

Recently a couple of things have got me thinking about the timing of my pre and post workout nutrition.  The first was a series of articles that cropped up on various blogs and online magazines.  The second was my cutting cycle.

I’ve been doing some further reading and thought I would share some of the things I learned along the way.

My current workout nutrition timing

For a lot of people pre workout nutrition doesn’t seem to be of great importance, but I have always had some sort of pre workout snack.  This is most likely to be because I workout in the evenings and I’m usually starving by the time I get home from work.  There’s nothing more unpleasant than working out on an empty stomach.

Post workout, when not cutting, I was having a small follow-up snack.  I was making sure that I had this within 20 minutes of leaving the gym, paranoid that if I didn’t do that I would be missing the vital “window of opportunity” to get the benefits of my post workout snack.  During my cutting cycle in January I dropped my post workout snack entirely.  Interestingly I didn’t see any significant drop-off in my performance in the gym and I got the impression that I was continuing to gain some muscle.

Of course, I tend to workout in the evening or late afternoon, so the reality is that I usually have my dinner within an hour of leaving the gym as well.

Exploding some myths and the importance of pre workout nutrition

As an excellent starting point for anyone who wants to learn about pre and post workout nutrition I recommend reading and article by Dave Barr on Testosterone Nation which summarises ten myths surrounding workout nutrition and provides references to the supporting research that explodes these myths, or at least makes you think twice about them.

The key points for me on reading this article were:

• pre workout meals enhance muscle blood flow and nutrient delivery during exercise;
• pre workout meals, nocturnal feeding and multiple post workout drinks are more beneficial than a single post workout drink;
• the “post workout window” lasts at least 24 hours; and
• consuming a protein shake immediately after training hinders optimal results (better to wait up to an hour to have your shake).

Above all it seems that pre workout nutrition is as important, if not more important, than post workout nutrition.

Do we need to down a shake straight after dropping the bar?

Timing of post workout nutrition

The last point that I’ve pulled out from Barr’s article suggests that consuming a protein shake immediately after training hinders optimal results (better to wait up to an hour to have your shake).  However, Barr is comparing the results from two separate studies to conclude that protein synthesis rates are 30% lower if the protein shake is ingested immediately after training.  My concern is that the content of the post workout nutrition differs in these two studies so they can’t be compared directly like this.

I mentioned above the study by Tipton et al. (2003) which concluded that the “window of opportunity” lasts for at least 24 hours.  This was based on comparison of the response between 3 hours and 24 hours and shows that there is no difference between these two periods.  This can be tagged onto the study by Blake et al. (2000) which shows very little difference in protein synthesis rates between 1 hour and 3 hours.  So it seems that you’ll get as much benefit from meals you consume an hour after exercising as you will 24 hours after exercising.

However, a separate study by Levenhagen et al (2001) compared leg glucose uptake, whole body glucose utilisation and protein synthesis in athletes taking in an oral supplement consisting of 10g protein, 8g carbohydrate and 3g fat either immediately or 3 hours after a 60 minute session of moderate-intensity exercise.  The study showed that immediate ingestion of the supplement gave higher levels of glucose uptake and protein synthesis than leaving this for 3 hours.

Authors of articles who support the argument that the window of opportunity is very large seem to ignore the Levenhagen study, while those who support the immediate nutrition argument seem to only make passing comment to the Tipton and Blake studies.

Summary

There are plenty of things to learn from this, but I’ve picked out some key points below.

• Pre workout nutrition is vital to good performance and improvement.
• Post workout nutrition has an enormous “window of opportunity” and you’ll still be getting glucose uptake and protein synthesis benefits from your meals for at least 24 hours after you stop exercising.
• Despite my previous point, getting some nutrition in immediately after your workout looks like it will give you some maximal benefits.

So it seems I might have been getting a slight loss of benefit by dropping my immediate post workout snack, but I still get benefits from my dinner less than an hour later.

I’d love to hear from you if you’ve seen other research that disagrees with this information – workout nutrition seems to be a minefield of contradictory studies!

Related posts:

1. Workout nutrition: protein, fat or carbohydrate?
2. Improving nutrition for muscle gain
3. Selecting your carbohydrate source

• Omega 3 and 6 ratio
• Acid-base balance
• Different carbohydrate sources

I’m explaining why these are areas to look at when planning your diet and why, in particular, they matter to Chris with his muscle and strength gaining goals.

For the final instalment I am going to briefly address the issue of how different carbohydrate sources are processed by the body and how this should impact on our pre-workout carbohydrate choices.

Are all carbohydrates created equal?

Not really.  When I was first introduced to the principles of carbohydrate in relation to weight training, I learned that carbohydrates provide the glycogen energy source that is stored in the muscles.  Weight training and anything else that uses your muscles uses up these stores and then you need to take in more carbohydrates to replenish these glycogen stores.

However, glucose from carbohydrates is actually stored in three different places.

1. Directly in the bloodstream for immediate use as energy.
2. In skeletal muscle as glycogen.
3. In the liver, again in the form of glycogen.

Jacket potatoes (and sweet potato) - a source of glucose

The liver and glycogen storage

The liver’s key function is to serve as our detoxification organ, breaking down environmental toxins, hormones and other toxic materials in the body and making them more water-soluble so that they can be flushed out of the body, either through urine or faeces.  Additionally, the liver not only stores glycogen but regulates release of glycogen and the subsequent glucose levels in the blood.

The liver itself doesn’t measure the glucose levels in the blood.  This role is carried out by the pancreas which then releases hormones to signal to the liver that it should release more or less glucose into the blood.  If more glucose needs to be released then the pancreas releases the hormone glucagen as a signal to the liver, if less glucose needs to be released then the pancreas releases insulin.  Diabetes occurs when this ability to produce insulin is impaired in the pancreas so that the pancreas cannot signal to the liver to stop releasing glucose.

The liver is capable of storing up to 10% of its volume in glycogen.  Once the liver’s glycogen stores are full, any carbohydrates being sent to the liver are converted to triglycerides.  These are long-chain fatty acids which break down insulin sensitivity and can lead to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.  This is where the liver becomes marbled with fat and ceases to be able to carry out its normal detoxification roles, leading to a build-up of toxins in the body.

In actual fact, the liver can also synthesise glucose from certain amino acids, lactate and glycerol through the process of gluconeogenisis.  As such, there is no such things as essential carbohydrates, since the body is perfectly capable of producing these itself, provided you give it the right building blocks.

If you want an easy introduction to the way the liver stores glycogen and how an excess of liver-related carbohydrates can impact on the liver, Robb Wolf discusses this in detail towards the end of the first 10 minutes of Episode 9 of the Paleolithic Solution during which he is talking about dairy and inflammation.

Which carbohydrate sources are sent to the liver?

While carbohydrates should, theoretically, be stored in the order of bloodstream, skeletal muscle tissue then the liver, certain forms of carbohydrates go directly to the liver without first ensuring that the other sources are full.  

An easy way to divide these is between glucose and fructose.  

While fructose is a carbohydrate, it is processed in the liver (to convert it to glycogen for storage and then convert it to glucose to be released into the bloodstream once it is needed), whereas glucose is sent to the glycogen stores in the muscles first.

The problem with fruit as a pre-workout carbohydrate source

Fruit is a good source of carbohydrates but looking on Wikipedia, the chart of fructose/glucose ratio for common foods shows that some of the most commonly eaten fruits have very high ratios.  The two fruits we used to use as the primary carbohydrate sources in most of our pre-workout snacks, apples and pears, have ratios of 2:1. 

For workout carbohydrates we really want the glucose to be replenishing the skeletal muscle stores, so using something that is then stored in the liver is not ideal.

Blackberries - better than apples and pears but perhaps not great pre-workout nutrition after all

In addition, fructose apparently disappears from the blood twice as quickly as glucose.

I’ve got a few other concerns about high fructose intake too:

• too much fructose can eventually lead to diabetes;
• fructose is connected to higher oxidation and inflammation; and
• fructose bypasses the key rate-limiting step that controls how fast we convert sugars into energy.

What can I use instead?

The obvious choices are pasta, bread, rice and potatoes.  However, if you are on a paleo diet then these mostly come off the list.  For this reason, sweet potatoes and yams are tolerated by most athletes on the paleo diet as acceptable carbohydrate sources when consumed as part of the pre-workout food.

After one week of eating sweet potato Chris is already struggling with the sweetness of this and I’ve had to move him onto normal baked potatoes pre-workout.  This is certainly proving to be a big shift for us in our diet mindset and one of the biggest hurdles to overcome.

What do you do for workout-related carbohydrates – particularly if you are following a paleo diet?

Related posts:

1. Workout nutrition: protein, fat or carbohydrate?
2. Low carbohydrate diets
3. Blog-watch: low-carbohydrate diets

• Omega 3 and 6 ratio
• Acid-base balance
• Different carbohydrate sources

I’m explaining why these are areas to look at when planning your diet and why, in particular, they matter to Chris with his muscle and strength gaining goals.

Today it is the turn of the acid-base balance.

What is the acid-base balance?

Acid-base balance is the shorthand to describe the requirement for the human body to keep itself in homeostasis.  Base, in the name “acid-base” relates to alkalinity.

The body is very sensitive to pH levels and needs to keep pH levels with a certain range in order to function.  If this balance is not maintained then the enzymes that are critical to our bodily functions can no longer operate and, ultimately, we will die.

All foods present themselves to the kidneys as either acid or alkaline base.  Once the body has processed these we are left with a net acid load or a net alkaline/base load.  Our bodies then use natural mechanisms to adjust this and ensure that it remains within a certain pH range.

What happens if acid levels from our diet are too high?

If you have a high acid-load on the body this will be recognised by the cells and they will take action to rectify the balance through two possible techniques. 

The first is hypercalciuria.  Since calcium has a strong base (alkalinity) it is leached from the bones.  Once the calcium has neutralised the acid in the body it is discarded in urine along with the neutralised acid.  Hypercalciuria therefore degrades existing bone and also reduces the creation of new bone.

The second technique used by the body is negative nitrogen balance.  Glutamine binds hydrogen ions to form ammonium, enabling the body to then expel the acidic hydrogen ions (along with the glutamine that has been attached to these ions).  Unfortunately for us, skeletal muscle contains the greatest glutamine store in the body.  Our bodies therefore break down muscle in order to release the glutamine and excrete it resulting in the permanent loss of glutamine from the body.

How do I know whether foods are acidic or alkaline?

In 1995, Remer and Manz calculated the Potential Renal Acid Load (PRAL) of various foods and the PRAL is a measure that is still used by people today when assessing the acidity of various foodstuffs.  I’ve included links to a couple of sites that have tables of PRAL values for common foods later on in this article.

As a general rule meat, fish, dairy, grains and eggs are all acidic, while fruit and vegetables are alkaline. 

Broccoli - a good base

Interestingly hard cheeses and some other dairy products also give some of the highest PRAL scores.  So when you consume lots of dairy products, thinking you are improving your calcium levels, you could easily end up with exactly the same amount of calcium in your body as you started with, or possibly even less.

Where can I learn more?

There are numerous different sources of information about acid-base balance available on the internet.

• An excellent introduction to this was written by John Berardi for Testosterone Nation.  This includes a handy table of the PRAL levels of different foods.
• Wikipedia not only gives a readable introduction to acid-base, but also provides links to several other acid-base tutorials and University sites in the “External Links” section.
• Another summary of acid-base, including details of how to calculate it yourself, can be found on the Bitter Poison site.
• Finally, IronMan Magazine published an article highlighting the study carried out in 2008 by Ceglia et al. on the use of potassium bicarbonate as a supplement to help increase your alkaline levels.

Summary

My take home lesson for today is that we should be taking in a good helping of alkaline foods every day and preferably a little with every meal – plenty of fruit and vegetables. 

By doing so we can hopefully keep our bodies closer to a neutral or alkaline level and minimise the risks of:

• losing calcium from bones through hypercalciuria; and
• skeletal muscle being broken down to release glutamine due to the negative nitrogen balance.

If you can’t get enough fruit and vegetables into your diet then you should be considering supplementing with potassium bicarbonate.

It’s a frightening thought that we could be spending all this dedicated time in the gym building up muscle and bone density only to reverse (or at least hinder) the effects by creating an acidic environment in our bodies due to our diet.

What do you think?

Related posts:

1. Blog-watch: acid-base and bone density
2. Improving nutrition for muscle gain
3. Selecting your carbohydrate source

Recently I’ve done quite well at meeting my own nutritional goals.  However, while I have been cutting, Chris has been working on turning into the Incredible Hulk and has some serious training goals in his sights.  Despite training hard his progress has been slowing and I think this is mostly diet related so I’ve been doing some detailed research to help him reach the next level.

What is he eating at the moment?

A standard day for Chris at the moment has the following:

• Breakfast:  5 eggs and broccoli.
• Early morning snack:  Homemade shake (30g whey protein, 30g egg yolk powder and 10g flaxseed).
• Mid-morning snack:  Tuna coleslaw (made with 1 can tuna, 1 cup raw cabbage and 1 tbsp mayo).
• Lunch:  Celery, cucumber, corned beef, peppered salami, 2 boiled eggs, 50g cheddar cheese.
• Mid-afternoon snack:  Homemade shake (as before).
• Dinner:  Beef Bolognese (or chilli or curry) with broccoli and cottage cheese.
• Supplements:  6g fish oil, glucosamine condroitin, 2,000iu Vitamin D.

Fitday analysis:
Total calories: 2,904
Protein: 277.4g
Net carbs: 39.5g
Fat: 170.1g

Pre-workout snack on weights days:  250g yoghurt, stewed fruit (3.5 apples and 3 plums) all mixed together, plus a banana and a spoonful of honey.  He also has a protein shake mid-workout. 

Fitday analysis of workout food:
Total calories: 694
Protein: 38.2g
Net carbs: 118.3g  
Fat: 6.2g

What are the likely problems?

• There aren’t enough calories going in.  He’s gained noticeable muscle in the last few months and the extra muscle needs more calories to maintain, yet we’ve hardly changed his diet in the last 4 months.
• He’s getting some tuna, which is a good source of omega 3, but he also has a lot of meat, eggs and dairy so his omega 6 to 3 ratio is almost certainly too high.
• I’m concerned that he’s got a very high acid-base – he struggles to eat enough vegetables and fruit since these fill him up a lot and limit the space for bulking up on calories.
• His pre-workout snack is fairly low protein and the majority of the carbs in it come from fructose (the stewed fruit was my previous attempt to improve his acid-base balance).

There are probably other issues, but these seem like the big ones to start with.

Next week I will do a detailed series of three posts explaining the technicalities behind the omega ratio, acid-base balance and fructose.  In the meantime, I have outlined below what would need to change in his diet to resolve the problems.

Omega 6 and omega 3 balance

I’ve tried to reduce the omega 6 sources, stripping out the corned beef and salami as a start and have instead replaced this with lean meat, such as pork loins, and avocado to replace the fats in his diet.  I’m also going to increase his fish a bit to increase the omega 3 in his diet.

Since it is possible to cook lunch at the weekends, Chris is also going to be finding himself facing liver and onions for weekend meals.  Organ meats are an excellent source of omega 3 and this should therefore help to redress any imbalance that may occur during the week.

Wish me luck with this – Chris hates liver!

Acid-base balance

Foods present themselves to the kidneys as either acid or alkaline base, but the cells in the body function optimally within a certain pH range which is not particularly acidic.  Therefore if you let the body get too acidic it will make adjustments internally to rectify the imbalance.

As a general rule meat, fish, dairy, grains and eggs are all acidic, while fruit and vegetables are alkaline and it is therefore crucial to make sure there is plenty of vegetation included in your diet.  It’s also worth avoiding the worst of the acidic foods, such as hard cheeses.

To address this I’ll be stripping the cheese out of Chris’s lunches, trying to get some more alkaline veg into his meals and I’ll be swapping one of his shakes to a shake based on coconut milk and avocado, as inspired by Mark Sisson.

Time to increase the alkaline foods

Carbohydrate source

Currently, Chris’s pre-workout snack sources much of it’s carbohydrate from fruit but fruit is processed by the body in a very different way to other glycogen sources so I’m going to swap the fruit for sweet potatoes in the hope that he gets a better effect from the carbohydrate.

The diet going forward – putting it all together

Trying to rectify these problems results in the following amended menu:

• Breakfast:  5 eggs and broccoli.
• Early morning snack:  Coconut and avocado shake (2 cups coconut milk, ½ avocado, 30g protein shake).
• Mid-morning snack:  Tuna coleslaw (made with 2 cans tuna, 1 cup raw cabbage and 1 tbsp mayo).
• Lunch:  Celery, cucumber, 2 grilled pork loins, ½ avocado, 2 boiled eggs, ½ pot cottage cheese.
• Mid-afternoon snack:  Homemade shake (30g whey protein, 30g egg yolk powder and 10g flaxseed).
• Dinner:  Beef Bolognese (or chilli or curry) with broccoli and ½ pot cottage cheese.
• Supplements:  6g fish oil, glucosamine condroitin, 2,000iu Vitamin D. 

Fitday analysis:
Total calories: 3,102
Protein: 275.4g
Net carbs: 49.6g
Fat: 183.4g 

Coconut and avocado shake

Pre-workout snack:  
3 medium sweet potatoes
1 tub cottage cheese
1 scoop whey powder 

Post workout snack:
1 cup blackberries
125g quark 

Fitday analysis of workout food:
Total calories: 766
Protein: 77.9g
Net carbs: 84.7g
Fat: 4.3g

This increases his daily calories a little but should also fix some of the things that may have been negatively impacting on his performance and results.  We’ll see how it works out for him.  Do you have any other suggestions of things I might try?

Related posts:

1. Diet to gain muscle as a woman
2. Workout nutrition: timing
3. Workout nutrition: protein, fat or carbohydrate?

Grip is one of the most ignored but also one of the most vital parts of lifting.  If you can’t hold onto a bar weighing two or three times your bodyweight, it doesn’t matter how strong your legs are – you still won’t be able to deadlift the bar without dropping it.  Similarly, if you are doing weighted pull ups, you need to be able to hold onto the bar securely, otherwise your arms and back will not be the limiting factor.

Grip also has crossover with plenty of real-life scenarios.  A few that instantly spring to mind for me are:

• moving furniture (there’s never an obvious way to pick up furniture that doesn’t involve a pinch grip or other awkward hold);
• opening bottles and jars;
• carrying heavy shopping (particularly important at this time of year); and
• serving up food from a heavy pan that you need to hold up for some reason.

Using grippers

In the second half of this year I’ve been working on improving my grip using grippers.  These are springs of varying tensions of which the official competition brand are made by Captains of Crush, but cheaper and equally good if you are interested in improving your grip and less interested in competing are sets made by Ultimate Grip.

Gripper collection in difficulty order (bottom left to top right) - notice how unchalked the top row ones still are...

Ultimate Grip provide some useful guidance on how to develop grip strength through progressive workouts.  The important thing to remember though is that grip strength is based on muscles and like every other part of your workout you should aim to apply the same principles of sets and reps and frequency as you do to the rest of your training.

How have I progressed with my grip workouts

When I began in the summer, I couldn’t close the easiest of our grippers (HG100).  I can now get a reasonable set of about 10 reps out with each hand on the next gripper in the range (HG150) and have noticed a big improvement in other areas of my life.

Driving to work I frequently only use a pinch grip for the steering wheel now, and I don’t exert any effort for that either.  My rock climbing has also improved, climbing on some of the routes with pinch holds that were previously unapproachable for me.

Other grip workout methods

There are other things you can do that don’t involve investing in grippers including lifting and holding weights plates in a pinch grip or making bars and dumbbell handles thicker (with a towel or similar wrapped round them).

Diesel Crew provide an insightful article on homemade grip devices which is well worth reading.

When to fit in a grip workout

This is perhaps the one thing I’ve struggled most with.  When I first started out I could do a grip workout at the end of my arms workouts twice a week.  But my grip improved to the point where I was no longer getting easy gains at about the same time that I also increased my arms workouts to increase my work capacity.

For two weeks I watched my numbers of reps reduce, rather than increase, before finally giving up on trying to do grip workouts at the end of a workout.  I now try to fit in a grip workout on two of my days off (usually Monday and Friday evenings).

Other interesting reading on grip work

• If you really get into grip work, you could consider joining the Grip Authority.
• Try browsing the forums on Gripboard – a repository for all things grippy.
• Mark Twight, in his book Extreme Alpinism, recommends holding a bar parallel to the floor with straight arms as if you had just done a deadlift.  Then open out your hand, letting gravity cause the bar to roll to the tips of your fingers (but without dropping it) before curling your fingers back up to bring the bar back into the palm of your hand.  As you get stronger, you can add weight to the bar.
• The World’s Strongest Librarian, Josh Hanagarne, got into bending nails which can only do good things for your grip.  His blog is well worth checking out for general reading if you want to kick back and read some interesting stuff – he writes about just about anything and everything!
• Finally, for some reading about someone who does completely crazy things for finger strength, I also recommend Adam T Glass’s blog “Walk the road less travelled”.  Adam is one crazy guy and if you’re squeamish like me then some of the videos where he gets injured might turn your stomach.
• For something amazing, watch this clip on Adam’s blog of Jedd Johnston setting a new world record for the two hands pinch lift (256.4lb).  Impressive (and inspirational) stuff.

Is grip something that you actively train, or do you train it as a by-product of your main workouts?

Related posts:

1. Lessons learned this week: the menstrual cycle and making workouts more challenging
2. Lessons learned: workouts to suit your body
3. Lessons learned this week: the art of relaxation

Turning a weight-loss diet into a muscle-building diet

For a muscle-building cycle I like to keep the structure of my meals and the sort of food I am eating the same as any other time.  This is partly because, even when building muscle, I continue to eat a paleo diet and I still have to fit my meals round a standard work day. 

There are some simple rules I am following:

Non-workout days

• Keep carbohydrate intake at 50g or less
• Total calorie intake as 13-14 times lean body mass (‘LBM’) (this is a low quotient, but my work capacity is still not that great – if I could do more exercise on non-workout days I could take this a little higher)
• Protein intake at least 1g per pound of LBM

Workout days

• 500-600 calories more than a non-workout day
• All additional calories in pre and post-workout meals
• Protein intake of 1.5-2g per pound of LBM
• Carbohydrate intake approximately 1g per pound of lean body mass or fractionally over (I have about 100-110g carbohydrate on a workout day, my LBM is at about 98 pounds)
• Most additional carbohydrates in the pre-workout meal
• Post-workout meal to be protein-based with minimal carbohydrates

What does a muscle-building diet look like for me?

For non-workout days my diet is very much the same as it was for my weight-loss cycle.  I have an extra egg at breakfast and lunchtime, I’ve got a spoonful of mayonnaise in my tuna coleslaw (which makes it much more palatable), but otherwise there are no changes.  I’m so small that those items make up the extra 200 calories I can have each day.  Making most of the changes with eggs is fantastic since an egg has such a good balance of protein and fat.

The workout nutrition is a bit more of a challenge.  I’m very busy at work at the moment so I was after something I could keep in a big Tupperware box in the fridge for the whole week.  By sticking to the paleo diet I also have to eat quite a lot of volume to get in sufficient carbohydrates.  It would be easier if I was going to sit and eat a small bowl of pasta with something on the side.

So how did I deal with the challenge?

Workout nutrition

After playing about on Fitday for some time (I really recommend Fitday to anyone who is trying to work out their nutrition balance) I settled on a mix of plain probiotic yoghurt with stewed fruit (generally a combination of apples, pears, plums and rhubarb – I spent a lot of the summer stewing and freezing fruit) and whey protein for my pre-workout meal. 

I spend an hour or so on a Friday night preparing the fruit and then mix it up with the yoghurt in an enormous box.  By Saturday afternoon when I have my first helping the fruit juices have thickened the yoghurt up so that it has a creamy, slightly solid texture to it.

As a side-note, I only stir in the whey protein to each portion just before I eat it.  I don’t know how much to make of the noise everyone makes about denaturing the protein, but it’s easy enough to stir it in once a portion is in the bowl.

Four portions of pre-workout nutrition (without the whey) and a seriously big tub!

Just to give you an idea of how this actually looks (and why stewing to ease digestion becomes pretty crucial for me), a single portion of last week’s mix would have included:

• 250g yoghurt
• 3-4 apples
• 1 stick rhubarb
• 2-3 plums
• 30g whey protein powder (stirred into the mix it sweetens up the acidity of the yoghurt and fruit, though at the moment I’ve only got chocolate flavour, which is a bit odd).

Post-workout nutrition is much simpler.  I just have a small portion of quark. 

Quark is a beautiful foodstuff.  Made by leeching the whey out of yoghurt, it is incredibly high in protein but low in both fat and carbohydrate.  It’s also quite gentle on the stomach and easy to eat (it behaves a bit like a dry cream cheese), which is what you want at the end of a workout.

Does this work to build muscle?

It should do.  I can’t make any promises.  Women have to be incredibly careful when putting on muscle as it is incredibly easy for them to put on fat if they eat too much.  In comparison, men can generally get away with eating as many calories as they like when bulking and they won’t have too much trouble.  Last time I tried putting on muscle I got it wrong.  I followed general advice written for men, ate a huge amount and put on plenty of fat.

However, I’m taking more care this time.  I’m not eating everything in sight, and I’ve hopefully got the correct pre/post-workout macronutrient balance.  I’ve certainly done a lot more reading up on women-specific sites before starting out this time.

I’ll let you know what’s happened to my body composition and workout numbers in a couple of months.

Related posts:

1. Improving nutrition for muscle gain
2. What diet is best for losing weight?
3. Workout nutrition: protein, fat or carbohydrate?