"I eat what I want and that makes me feel good. What's wrong with that?"
There's a painful irony in that. That's whats wrong.
Eating crap food and overeating overstimulates reward centers. This makes eating crap and overeating seem extra pleasant. It's why we perceive donuts as tasting really good. This level of reward stimulation can't occur with healthy foods, because truly healthy foods don't have high calorie counts, or large amounts of fats, sugars, and sodium (which are the cause of the over-stimulus of the brains reward centers).
Healthy foods are very satisfying to eat, definitely enough to live a gratifying and rewarding life. But junk food and overeating take the flavor reward and sense of elation to abnormal levels.
Once this stimulus occurs, reward seeking habits are initiated and most people will experience a heightened drive to overeat again. And again. This is our brain trying to get repeat access to what caused the rewarding feeling. When we compare the abnormal elation experienced with eating crap to the comparatively lesser elation of healthy food, we perceive the crap as the more compelling choice. When you remove the crap for a period of time though, your brain can adapt, and you feel very rewarded by healthy foods. Re-introduce lot's of crap food again, and you'll feel driven to seek the crap.
When this drive is occurring, the reasoning part of our brain is impaired, making it harder to recognize the harm in the choice to overeat. The reward drive can be very influential.
Usually we're aloof to the fact that reasoning is impaired (which is why the impairment is successful), and the altered reasoning caused by reward seeking causes us to perceive that it makes perfect sense to justify overeating.
"Donuts? Makes sense. Apples? Those are stupid". Actually, the apple is typically not even on the radar when donuts etc are around.
Because access to the elation caused by eating crap is prioritized by reward seeking brain chemistry and circuitry, we find ways to justify eating crap and overeating.
For most people this causes harm in excess fat gain, and - or harm in chronically cycling between fat gain and loss, and the emotional roller coaster that goes along with that. And also getting caught up in the cycle of adding more exercise to reconcile all the crap we eat.
Most of us have heard and used the expression, "come on, one won't hurt you", to encourage a person to eat some kind of crap. Pick that apart and it can be seen that really this is about covering up the potential harm while exaggerating how good it's going to be.
Drill down further and we find little truth to the sentiment. It rarely really is "just one". Chances are this justification was used earlier that day or week. You could argue that one piece of whatever isn't harmful, and I would agree with that for many people, for many different occasions. But what I'm addressing here isn't the actual one time here, one time there indulgence that doesn't result in fat gain.
In reality one large meal results in acid re-flux, indigestion, and constipation.
For many people who struggle with chronic overeating, one piece of cake may trigger appetite. You know what happens with that? Often the person will graciously say thank you and enjoy that single piece (or two) in public, but then later in private continue to overeat because the reward driving behavior has been stimulated. Why would we knowingly contribute to that harm? Because, ironically, we see crap food and overeating as rewarding.
Does this happen all the time with everyone? No, but don't use that to discount how frequently this actually occurs with many people who struggle with weight and eating (the majority of the population).
For the few that occasionally overeat and eat crap and don't get caught in these cycles, this doesn't apply to you, and no, you can't use your situation to justify encouraging others to overeat. This amounts to encouraging harm. What is the point in that?
Most people will gravitate towards feeling they are included in the part of the population that doesn't struggle with eating and fat gain. This is usually the reward seeking - reasoning - impairing expressing its self to justify eating more.
All this leads to many people who struggle with weight cycling and weight gain to live ironically; wanting to revisit high calorie, high fat, high sugar, high sodium foods so they can have an "enjoyable" experience. But in reality the weight gain and conflicting emotions cause physical and emotional anguish.
We don't need overeating or frequent junk food to have an enjoyable experience.
One of the more disturbing expressions of this irony is trying to express satisfaction with excess fat gain and obesity with euphemisms like, "love the skin you're in".
This is an effective manipulation of the legitimacy of sense of self worth.
It's important to feel good about ourselves, but it's important to not have that sense veiled by dysfunctional thinking.
An athlete may develop compulsive exercise habits wherein to feel good about themselves they have to appear a certain way, and exercise no matter what. Those suffering compulsive exercise will often justify their actions by telling themselves they're healthy and fit, exercise is good for them, etc.
A person with a smoking habit may justify that they are their own person and they're going to "stand up for their freedom". The expression of this stance will evoke feelings of personal autonomy, justice, and self aggrandizing, all of which feel good. The sense of feeling good is a distraction from acknowledging the harm of smoking and that really the smoking should be stopped.
Likewise there is a current trend to use the halo effect of sense of self worth to justify overeating and being unhealthily overweight. The irony in each of these situations is that the actions of the over-exerciser, the smoker, and the over-eater, are demonstrably harmful. And the reality is, in moments of personal clarity, most people suffering from excess weight gain will feel distraught with their weight and inability to reconcile chronic overeating.
Because sense of self worth is so important, it's easy for well intended people with empathy to be misguided and fall into the trap of supporting chronic overeating while believing they're supporting a persons right to feel okay about being overweight. This shouldn't be about isolating excess weight to feel good about, it should be about deeper sense of self that goes beyond body composition, that includes the healthy sense of awareness that being chronically overweight is unhealthy and causes harm.
In short, you're okay, the excess body fat isn't... Because the excess body fat is a result of dysfunctional eating and unhealthy behaviors that cause physical and emotional distress. Maintaining the excess fat means maintaining the overeating and distress. Ironically, being okay with excess body fat, means being okay with self-harming habits and emotional, physical distress. You don't get self worth from that.
The end result of this can only be sustained suffering, where the overeating that caused the excess fat gain and all the typically hidden turmoil that goes with it, to continue, now under the protective veil of sense of self worth.
Where we've gone wrong with this, where the irony of overeating is at play again, is that there is a tendency to "fat shame". Ironic, since the majority of the population is overweight.
Ironic because the majority of the population encourages others and themselves to overeat, the very action that causes fat gain.
Fat shaming is disrespectful, stereotyping, derogatory, and prejudice. It's a lousy situation to be overweight and endure this mistreatment from others. Low self esteem is understandable here.
It's important to find a way to self respect, as well as respecting the humanity of others, regardless of body-fat percentage.
It's also important to not use sense of self worth as leverage to justify harmful overeating.
When the legitimacy of personal sense of self worth is superimposed over the real-life physical and emotional health issues tied to excess fat gain, misdirection occurs.
It's already hard enough to escape chronic overeating, a habit who's calling card is denial. Further enabling this denial isn't helping anyone.
We use celebration, humor, sense of self worth, enjoyment, and expression of care for others as enablers to justify overeating. Each of these have positive attributes that make it easy to capitulate to the false reasoning that overeating is okay.
And back to the irony of overeating we go. Chronic overeating and cyclical overeating cause emotional and physical harm, but we sugar coat this harm with heart-string playing manipulative cover-ups.
Cris LaBossiere
Strength training and mountain biking. My two favorites
Friday, July 17, 2015
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Using BCAA's for performance update
I forgot to take the protein supplements for one workout. Didn't make a difference.
So I thought, might as well put a hold on taking them for a couple weeks and see what happens.
My performance increased.
Does this mean that BCAA's decrease performance? Not at all.
Recall from my introduction to my BCCA supplement experiment that when I first went on them I had an increase in performance.
..And that increase in performance was expected anyway because I was in a recovered state when I started. Regular exercise causes regular fatigue. When you feel or measure this fatigue starting to reduce your performance, you go into recovery mode where you preference more rest rather than more training.
Somewhere between 3 to 10 days of more days off and lighter exercise, you'll notice your performance starts to increase again, and then surpass your previous best.
This will immediately be followed by increased fatigue and decreased performance.
Changing whether I took BCAA's or not had no effect on my performance. What effected my performance was how hard I trained, and how much I paid attention to my body to properly recover from reasonably hard training (not an all-out suffer-fest).
Performance naturally increases and decreases anyway. When you train right, you net an overall gain over time, as you go through the normal cycle of fatigue and recovery.
The take home here is to realize this, and not allow yourself to fall for confirmation bias, where we assign a causal effect to things we want to believe in.
I can easily see how a person could take a supplement, experience increased performance that was going to happen anyway, then draw the conclusion that it must have been the supplement.
Although it seems futile to me, I'll go back on the BCAA's again, for the purpose of writing about my experience, and giving you an honest account of what happens.
Monday, March 30, 2015
Getting ripped with BCAA's
Branched Chain Amino Acids, BCAA's.
Leucine, isoleucine, and valine.
I'm on another supplement trial. Two of the many suggested promises of taking BCAA's before, during, and after, or just before and after training are;
1) Decreased DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness). The soreness and stiffness you can get between one and three days after hard strength training (or any challenging activity that you're either not used to, or you've increased the intensity of).
2) Increased endurance, shorter recovery periods, reduced muscle damage for endurance training, like cycling and running.
I'll update my experience here over the next two months, adding a review on studies on BCAA's.
So far BCAA's have done nothing at all to reduce DOMS. I was taking 3 grams 15 minutes before strength training and immediately after. This did nothing for performance, and nothing to change my perception of DOMS.
I found plenty of broscience recommendations to consume at least double the amount I was taking (I was following the manufacturers recommendations listed on the container), as well as adding a dose in the middle of the workout.
I have no confidence at all in speculative broscience confabulations about how great people recall their performance increases being. I understand that one of the common arguments broscientists make is that researchers are stupid lab people who don't understand the real world of training, and so "real" training advice should be sought from people in the gym. I guess this means making no exception for the exercise physiologists who are also athletes or avid exercisers. This perception also introduces an interesting irony in that the anti science gym rats will gleefully purchase, consume, praise, and recommend products made by the very scientists they rebuke.
Confidence or not, I still tried the broscience dose. You know, to be thorough. I still found no change whatsoever in DOMS or performance, or recovery.
As usual I was careful about recording my strength training; every rep and every set recorded.
I keep detailed records of my training on the bike as well. So any change from the norm would show up in my training records.
With looking at my blood lactate, heart rate, wattage (how hard I'm peddling), and my perceived exertion, my rate of progress is the same as usual. Small, predictable increments every week or two, nothing out of the ordinary.
My daily resting heart rate and orthostatic heart rate testing has revealed I'm not recovering any earlier or later than usual. This is after three strength training sessions and three bike training sessions.
With BCAAS, and the specific promised improvement claims I'm testing, there is supposed to be an immediate noticeable change. This is because all of the amino acids I'm taking will be metabolized quickly. The process takes hours, not days or weeks.
So far BCAA's are fail. But as usual, I will be thorough and finish off the supply I bought, waiting out any possible subtle trending affect that a broscientist might protest about.
Something to think about.. 6 grams of BCAA's amounts to 24 Calories. Nobody in their right mind who understands nutrition and exercise energy demands is going to be believing that ingesting a mere 24 Calories could possibly contribute to any kind of endurance improvement. Especially when carbohydrates and fats are the predominant fuels for muscles, with protein contributing little energy (10% to 15%). So the endurance improvement claim is a non-starter. But who said broscientists are in their right mind?
Worth mentioning:
One of my gym rat buddies I was working out with was keen on being kept up to date on my BCAA trial. He joined me for the workout where I added the extra broscience recommended dosage.
I had a great workout. My friend remarked, "I wonder if your extra reps today were from the BCAA's." "It's plausible", I said. After all, that's why I'm doing this.. to see if training performance improves.
But it wasn't so. The very next workout I didn't perform as well and cut my last set to avoid junk training when fatigued.
Looking at my training records my "good day" was part of my normal fatigue/ recovery cycle, which is normal for everyone. It takes about 14 to 21 days to go through the cycle. My improvements were from the natural adaptation to good training, not from the BCAA's.
In coaching there is this old saying, "beware the third week of training". It refers to the common occurrence that regular performance orientated training causes a gradual accumulation of fatigue, which by the third week of training, shows up as diminished performance and feeling a bit sluggish.
The remedy is to be mindful of the trend, and start backing off a little (or taking a break for a few days more than usual) around week three or so. After paying more attention to recovery protocols you start your "cycle" over again, and sure enough, around week three (ish) you start losing a few reps on some exercises, or your cardio activity will start feeling a bit tight at the start, a little harder to push, and heart rate is usually higher than normal for the same pace.
Likewise you will experience a few workouts per month where everything clicks and you perform a little better than usual.. but there's a catch.. we all know these days are fleeting and within a few workouts of the stellar day, much of the time, sometimes even the very next workout, your performance starts slipping again.
My few extra reps? Well I've had workouts like this cycle consistently. It's predictable. You train, and you adapt. The adaptation is expressed through greater strength and or endurance. Did more reps with the same weight? Great. You're experiencing the expected adaptation to exercise. That's why we train: to stimulate a response in our bodies. The few extra reps I achieved were right on schedule.
Same pattern as before taking BCAAs, same pattern now, and the pattern will continue after I stop taking BCAA's.
The most important part of why this is worth mentioning was the susceptibility to confirmation bias. My friend wanted there to be a possibility that the supplement was working, and, despite my scepticism, so did I.
The reality of hitting a fatigue cycle the next week as well as reviewing my normal rate of progress quickly disintegrated any current wishful thinking on my part that might be lurking in my subconscious. That's the trouble with our natural human fallibility of confirmation bias (automatically choosing to see things in a way that supports an existing belief or a "power of suggestion" outcome).
This is how scams, hoaxes, and things like horoscopes work.. they prey on the vulnerability of our natural gullibility, wishful thinking, habituated beliefs, and susceptibility to the power of suggestion.
Had I not been taking any supplement my buddy and I would have simply treated the extra reps workout as one of those normal adaptation days where you're more recovered and have a better workout. Just like we always do.
This is what most people will be experiencing when they perceive a supposed performance increase with any supplement they take. They will be expecting to feel better, and so they allow this perception, and will even fake the perception to justify using the supplement. Or they will simply experience a normal adaptation to training and attribute it to the supplement. When they have bad training days, it's just a bad day or whatever.. And when they have a good training day, it must be the supplement. That's confirmation bias.
Herd mentality applies here too. If a bunch of people you know are getting "benefits", well then, you are too, and now you can have a communal placebo effect love in with all your friends.
Yeah, I know.. You didn't want to here that. But hey, if you can have just as good training results with healthy eating, proper recovery, and good sleep, without the supplements.. maybe that's a better place to be. Better for the wallet. Better for the psyche too, because now you can enjoy your fitness without falling for the promise of false hope.
Stay tuned.. See if I get ripped abs, or ripped off, with BCAA's
Final results:
OK, after a couple months on BCAA's I experienced no change in my normal rate of improvement. This means my rate of adding reps and increasing the weight I lift was the same before, during, and after my BCAA trial.
The most important take home here is that if you're motivated and train efficiently you'll make progress, because adapting to exercise is coded into our DNA. If you train right and eat right, you can't avoid making gains.
Equally important is recognizing our vulnerability to wanting to believe a pill is going to, or is, adding to our performance. If you're not on anything and you squeeze out more reps you'll be satisfied that your training is working. If you're on whatever performance supplement and squeeze out more reps you're likely to want to attribute those reps to the supplement, and not the training.
That's just how our heads work. Be mindful of this so you don't deceive yourself, and are not deceived by hype or personal testimonials from others who don't realize they have succumbed to the placebo effect.
Leucine, isoleucine, and valine.
I'm on another supplement trial. Two of the many suggested promises of taking BCAA's before, during, and after, or just before and after training are;
1) Decreased DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness). The soreness and stiffness you can get between one and three days after hard strength training (or any challenging activity that you're either not used to, or you've increased the intensity of).
2) Increased endurance, shorter recovery periods, reduced muscle damage for endurance training, like cycling and running.
I'll update my experience here over the next two months, adding a review on studies on BCAA's.
So far BCAA's have done nothing at all to reduce DOMS. I was taking 3 grams 15 minutes before strength training and immediately after. This did nothing for performance, and nothing to change my perception of DOMS.
I found plenty of broscience recommendations to consume at least double the amount I was taking (I was following the manufacturers recommendations listed on the container), as well as adding a dose in the middle of the workout.
I have no confidence at all in speculative broscience confabulations about how great people recall their performance increases being. I understand that one of the common arguments broscientists make is that researchers are stupid lab people who don't understand the real world of training, and so "real" training advice should be sought from people in the gym. I guess this means making no exception for the exercise physiologists who are also athletes or avid exercisers. This perception also introduces an interesting irony in that the anti science gym rats will gleefully purchase, consume, praise, and recommend products made by the very scientists they rebuke.
Confidence or not, I still tried the broscience dose. You know, to be thorough. I still found no change whatsoever in DOMS or performance, or recovery.
As usual I was careful about recording my strength training; every rep and every set recorded.
I keep detailed records of my training on the bike as well. So any change from the norm would show up in my training records.
With looking at my blood lactate, heart rate, wattage (how hard I'm peddling), and my perceived exertion, my rate of progress is the same as usual. Small, predictable increments every week or two, nothing out of the ordinary.
My daily resting heart rate and orthostatic heart rate testing has revealed I'm not recovering any earlier or later than usual. This is after three strength training sessions and three bike training sessions.
With BCAAS, and the specific promised improvement claims I'm testing, there is supposed to be an immediate noticeable change. This is because all of the amino acids I'm taking will be metabolized quickly. The process takes hours, not days or weeks.
So far BCAA's are fail. But as usual, I will be thorough and finish off the supply I bought, waiting out any possible subtle trending affect that a broscientist might protest about.
Something to think about.. 6 grams of BCAA's amounts to 24 Calories. Nobody in their right mind who understands nutrition and exercise energy demands is going to be believing that ingesting a mere 24 Calories could possibly contribute to any kind of endurance improvement. Especially when carbohydrates and fats are the predominant fuels for muscles, with protein contributing little energy (10% to 15%). So the endurance improvement claim is a non-starter. But who said broscientists are in their right mind?
Worth mentioning:
One of my gym rat buddies I was working out with was keen on being kept up to date on my BCAA trial. He joined me for the workout where I added the extra broscience recommended dosage.
I had a great workout. My friend remarked, "I wonder if your extra reps today were from the BCAA's." "It's plausible", I said. After all, that's why I'm doing this.. to see if training performance improves.
But it wasn't so. The very next workout I didn't perform as well and cut my last set to avoid junk training when fatigued.
Looking at my training records my "good day" was part of my normal fatigue/ recovery cycle, which is normal for everyone. It takes about 14 to 21 days to go through the cycle. My improvements were from the natural adaptation to good training, not from the BCAA's.
In coaching there is this old saying, "beware the third week of training". It refers to the common occurrence that regular performance orientated training causes a gradual accumulation of fatigue, which by the third week of training, shows up as diminished performance and feeling a bit sluggish.
The remedy is to be mindful of the trend, and start backing off a little (or taking a break for a few days more than usual) around week three or so. After paying more attention to recovery protocols you start your "cycle" over again, and sure enough, around week three (ish) you start losing a few reps on some exercises, or your cardio activity will start feeling a bit tight at the start, a little harder to push, and heart rate is usually higher than normal for the same pace.
Likewise you will experience a few workouts per month where everything clicks and you perform a little better than usual.. but there's a catch.. we all know these days are fleeting and within a few workouts of the stellar day, much of the time, sometimes even the very next workout, your performance starts slipping again.
My few extra reps? Well I've had workouts like this cycle consistently. It's predictable. You train, and you adapt. The adaptation is expressed through greater strength and or endurance. Did more reps with the same weight? Great. You're experiencing the expected adaptation to exercise. That's why we train: to stimulate a response in our bodies. The few extra reps I achieved were right on schedule.
Same pattern as before taking BCAAs, same pattern now, and the pattern will continue after I stop taking BCAA's.
The most important part of why this is worth mentioning was the susceptibility to confirmation bias. My friend wanted there to be a possibility that the supplement was working, and, despite my scepticism, so did I.
The reality of hitting a fatigue cycle the next week as well as reviewing my normal rate of progress quickly disintegrated any current wishful thinking on my part that might be lurking in my subconscious. That's the trouble with our natural human fallibility of confirmation bias (automatically choosing to see things in a way that supports an existing belief or a "power of suggestion" outcome).
This is how scams, hoaxes, and things like horoscopes work.. they prey on the vulnerability of our natural gullibility, wishful thinking, habituated beliefs, and susceptibility to the power of suggestion.
Had I not been taking any supplement my buddy and I would have simply treated the extra reps workout as one of those normal adaptation days where you're more recovered and have a better workout. Just like we always do.
This is what most people will be experiencing when they perceive a supposed performance increase with any supplement they take. They will be expecting to feel better, and so they allow this perception, and will even fake the perception to justify using the supplement. Or they will simply experience a normal adaptation to training and attribute it to the supplement. When they have bad training days, it's just a bad day or whatever.. And when they have a good training day, it must be the supplement. That's confirmation bias.
Herd mentality applies here too. If a bunch of people you know are getting "benefits", well then, you are too, and now you can have a communal placebo effect love in with all your friends.
Yeah, I know.. You didn't want to here that. But hey, if you can have just as good training results with healthy eating, proper recovery, and good sleep, without the supplements.. maybe that's a better place to be. Better for the wallet. Better for the psyche too, because now you can enjoy your fitness without falling for the promise of false hope.
Stay tuned.. See if I get ripped abs, or ripped off, with BCAA's
Final results:
OK, after a couple months on BCAA's I experienced no change in my normal rate of improvement. This means my rate of adding reps and increasing the weight I lift was the same before, during, and after my BCAA trial.
The most important take home here is that if you're motivated and train efficiently you'll make progress, because adapting to exercise is coded into our DNA. If you train right and eat right, you can't avoid making gains.
Equally important is recognizing our vulnerability to wanting to believe a pill is going to, or is, adding to our performance. If you're not on anything and you squeeze out more reps you'll be satisfied that your training is working. If you're on whatever performance supplement and squeeze out more reps you're likely to want to attribute those reps to the supplement, and not the training.
That's just how our heads work. Be mindful of this so you don't deceive yourself, and are not deceived by hype or personal testimonials from others who don't realize they have succumbed to the placebo effect.
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