How To Make Any Exercise More Effective

Carrie: Lovely people this is Carrie Brown. I have with me, the fabulous Mr. Jonathan Bailor.

Jonathan: Carrie thank you for calling me fabulous. I am quite honored and happy to be here joining you here today.

Carrie: We’ll have fun, what’s not to love.

Jonathan: We absolutely do and we are going to have fun continuing with our lovely reader questions which again, sorry I keep saying this, but please if you have questions ask them, we love them. Do it over the Smarter Science of Slim support group. Please do not do it in a private e-mail or private message because we want this lovely Q and A to be available to the world so we can all benefit.

Carrie: Not to be pedantic, but their listeners lovely, not readers, they’re listening to us.

Jonathan: Oh I said readers.

Carrie: You did?

Jonathan: I am incorrect, I stand corrected. I have mentioned this before but I will mention it one more time just as a reminder if you do have a question. We have been doing this for a couple years now chances are it may have already been answered. So feel free to go reader favorite search engine and type in Smarter Science of Slim in quotations and then type in your question and chances are you will find an answer for it already which is great.

Carrie: Love that. Modern technology is fantastic.

Jonathan: It’s like is there an app for that? Kind of it’s called Google. That happened to me the other day I felt kind of bad. My brother sent me an e-mail and said hey I have a friend, read your book and he has this question. It was super basic, it was like go and google and type in the question. It wasn’t even specific to the Smarter Science of Slim, it was something like, I don’t know how do you make an omelet. I don’t know or something like that and I was just like google how to make an omelet.

Google is useful, so is Bing. Anyway I digress. Carrie Brown, Timothy Evans has a question for us.

Carrie: Hi Timothy.

Jonathan: Timothy says a bunch of very nice things about the podcast which we very much appreciate. He is a gentlemen who very much enjoys exercising. He has been lifting weights for nine years three to four times a week and he does the traditional Joe Weider inspired split routine where you do different body parts on different days, four to six sets per major muscle group, that kind of thing.

He is basically just asking does it sound like something could be beneficial when incorporated into a sane diet and life style. My goal is similar to your goal which is to add lean mass but do to so with health being the number one concern. I appreciate your time and look forward to your thoughts. Thank you Tim good question. Carrie I know you don’t care too much about this.

Carrie: Was it so obvious that my eyes glazed over?

Jonathan: Good thing they are just listeners and not viewers. So Tim the key thing to keep in might right is just do what you enjoy, do what works for you, but the science is quite clear that if we fully fatigue our muscle fibers, like once our muscle fibers taken to failure it’s taken to a failure, taking it to failure repeatedly is a bit like going to boil hot water with the intention of making it hotter. Once waters boiling its boiling.

Carrie: The boiling point is?

Jonathan: In fact you are just wasting energy and it may become counterproductive. That saying if you like it, it’s all good you just want to watch out for over training. A lot of people will unintentionally over train. So the key thing to keep in mind is if what you’re doing is working and you like it, that’s great there is really no need to change it.

Now if something happens in your life and you don’t have as much time on your hands and you need to cut back, good news we can help you with that. Or if you just don’t really want to keep going to the gym that frequently, good news we can help you with that. Or if you want to keep going to the gym just focus on training a little bit more slowly, focus a bit on using a little bit more resistance, focus more on the eccentric portions of your movement and in fact maybe expand your exercise repertoire to include things like maybe a yoga or a tai chi.

Things that are an excellent compliment to strength training. So now you can still go to the gym but work on things like your flexibility, work on muscle groups that you may have never worked on before because they are not traditionally worked on in most strength training routines. All kinds of fun ways to spend time in the gym if you like doing that.

Just keep in mind again that it’s about recruiting as many muscle fibers as possible and the way you do that is by using more resistance. If you use more resistance you have to use less volume, less frequency and less duration. Simply because there is an inverse relationship between the quality of an exercise and the quantity of it that you can do. Bottom line, do what works for you and let the science guide you.

Carrie: You’re awesome.

Jonathan: Wa-hoo.

Carrie: I just sit here because my answer would be resistance not reps and then we get this elegant, beautiful, just all-encompassing wonderfulness of an answer from Mr. Bailor. Thank goodness you’re here.

Jonathan: You called me fabulous and you just gave me that so I don’t. . .

Carrie: I don’t know what’s wrong with me today.

Jonathan: I got Carrie a fresh glass of water so maybe I may have to bring her more glasses of water more frequently. I love it. Alright, Carrie next question is from the lovely Denise Adams. Carrie why don’t you take this one?

Carrie: Denise has a question. She bought the book, she read, she’s listened to the podcast, she’s very excited and she wants to know if we have heard of a program called Ideal Protein. She was thinking of using it to jumpstart her program. She’s about twenty pounds overweight and she has been that way for two years now and she’s really kind of just kind of getting fed up with that.

Jonathan: You can talk but when you’re done I am so excited to answer this one.

Carrie: Okay go.

Jonathan: Can I go?

Carrie: Go.

Jonathan: Okay so a couple things. Less than 5% of the population was overweight way before the Ideal Protein program existed so the Ideal Protein program cannot be required to not be overweight. I don’t know what the Ideal Protein program is but I can promise you that eating whole natural foods, and doing a little but higher quality exercise is more sustainable and as effective if not more effective as any trendy, fancy program.

Carrie: Spendy, don’t forget spendy.

Jonathan: Spendy program. I don’t know what the Ideal Protein program is. It might be lovely. The thing to keep in mind though is with, and remember I have some of the inside scoop on some of this right and I’m, here’s me Jonathan being open and honest. I am trying to figure out right now Carrie and I give a lot of information away. We have full time jobs and there’s always people looking for ways to monetize information.

When you call something like a very specific program thing that you have to do and if you don’t do this program nothing else is going to work, here’s the bottom line. None of those programs existed before we had a problem. So bottom line, maybe they work, I don’t know. But do you need to spend that much money and do something that unnatural when if we just ate real whole foods, moved and did a little high intensity safe exercise we’d be good to go. Just do that, just do that for thirty days and you will be happier and healthier and have more money in your pocket.

Carrie: And more time on your hands.

Jonathan: And more time on your hands. This idea of “I’m getting desperate”, I totally feel for you Denise and I would pause it that you may be feeling desperate because you have tried things like this special program X and this special program Y and this special program Z and you’re not at fault. Because that’s what we are constantly bombarded with is that there is this special secret nuanced program that if we just knew this Hollywood tip or trick, okay couple things.

One if anything is effective it is not a secret. Like there is a reason everyone has heard of the Atkins diet. A lot of people that go on the Atkins diet lose a lot of weight and there’s a lot of research showing that a very low carbohydrate diet when practiced properly, as for example the New Atkins for a New You book where Dr. Westman, Volek and Phinney explain it is incredibly healthy and it has profound effects.

Anything that is effective is not a secret and the person selling it would never try to keep it a secret because they are trying to keep money. So first of all if anyone says they got a secret they don’t that’s a gimmick. Second of all they certainly don’t have a secret because there is no secret to health. All we have to do to not become sick is not expose ourselves to things that make us sick.

Carrie: Jonathan.

Jonathan: What? Sorry.

Carrie: You need to stop banging on the table.

Jonathan: Oh I am banging on this table? I get excited about this stuff because Denise is like so many of us and I was and I know you were Carrie before we learned this science that there are these charlatans out there saying that there’s this special thing or this one thing we’re missing.

Carrie: Raspberry ketones.

Jonathan: Raspberry ketones. If you don’t want to have the flu you don’t need to have magic, you just need the flu virus to not go in your body. If you do not want to become overweight there is no magic pill. It’s just that there are substances which cause your body to lose its natural ability to regulate your energy balance. They are called processed starches, sugars and fats. Processed fats because other fats are good for us.

If you eat those chances are your body is going to break down, you are going to become over weight, you will become diabetic, you’re going to get heart dieses, probably get cancer. If you don’t eat those things and you eat whole natural foods, things you find in nature, things every single person up until forty years ago stayed healthy and fit without even knowing what a calorie was or even knowing what exercise was.

If you just do that you will do what every other human being that has ever lived up until the last three generations has done. That’s stay slim and healthy without really trying. So please if you feel desperate take that desperation and channel it into the beautiful simplicity that is eating real whole foods. Just commit yourself completely to that. If you can’t find it in nature, don’t eat it. Directly in nature. There is no such thing as a Cheerios tree or bread bush.

If you cannot find it directly in nature, wheat, you don’t eat wheat directly in nature it has to be milled and turned into bread. If you cannot find it directly in nature steer away from it. Please, please don’t fall victim to the secrets and the gimmicks. Okay I get too excited about this I am just going to stop. Denise I love you, hopefully that was helpful.

Carrie: That was a very long answer. But once again brilliant.

Jonathan: Goodness sakes. Carrie, got anything to add I am all out, like I am kind of drained right now. I usually get angry about some of this stuff.

Carrie: I completely feel your pain Denise. I have been on the dark side as all of our listeners know. But if you follow all the things which actually wasn’t a lot, he just said it a lot of different ways. But if you follow what Jonathan just said that is your best, healthiest route to getting where you want to be.

Jonathan: Carrie I am going to say it one more time because I really, I don’t actually think for a lot of us this has actually set in. Because when it does set in it is impossible to not have your life transformed. Let me give you an example. This is why sometimes people say to me “Jonathan this is really information a problem, I don’t know what to do.” People just don’t do it. I tell them no.

Here is the example I give. I have never met a mother or a father who knowing gives their child cigarettes. Just like oh here Billy have a cigarette. Why? Because they know just how deleterious cigarettes are to their child’s health. They know that. The child may very well, they are addictive, they are brilliant, people who smoke really really enjoy it but we still don’t give cigarettes to children, schools, yadda yadda yadda.

That’s because we know how bad they are for us, we know how permanent the damage is and we know how pervasive the damage is and we know how addictive they are. Once you understand just how horrible edible products are, just because it’s sold in the grocery store does not mean it’s harmless in moderation. It doesn’t at all. The more we are learning about these things the more we are seeing what causes inflammation in your brain. The more we are seeing how it causes permanent, when you get fat cells they never go away.

70% of overweight children will struggle with overweight for their entire lives.

Carrie: Because they have fat cells. Because they have more fat cells now.

Jonathan: They are predisposed for the rest of their life to struggling with obesity and even if someone did let their child smoke which would be horrific the child smoking wouldn’t really affect their psychological experience. Like kids wouldn’t not go to the prom with them because they smoke and they wouldn’t necessarily be teased or be called fat or not be picked for a team because they smoked.

But when we eat these edible products we not only damage ourselves metabolically but we experience so much psychological damage. So it’s doubly bad. So the reason I bring this up is literally once you understand that just because it’s edible doesn’t mean you should eat it, or just cause a food marketer markets it. . .

Carrie: As delicious.

Jonathan: As delicious.

Carrie: Does not mean it’s healthy.

Jonathan: Does not mean it’s healthy. Once you understand how addictive these things are and how permanent and pervasive the damage is, I feel like it’s hard not for that to change you. As evidenced by the fact that like now that everyone knows that smoking’s bad for them, it doesn’t mean that no one smokes it just means no one smokes then gets lung cancer and is like. . .

Carrie: And is surprised.

Jonathan: How the hell did I get lung cancer? I am desperate to not have lung cancer anymore. Everyone who gets lung cancer and has smoked is like, yup that’s what happens when you smoke. I get it. When we can make that mental shift to understand that when we eat non-food it breaks our body in a way that when you breath in, when you eat polluted food it breaks down your metabolic system like when you breathe in polluted air. Breaks down you respiratory system.

They are analogous. One causes lung cancer, one cause diabetes, other cancers, heart disease and obesity. It’s an information problem just like they used to cover up how bad cigarettes are for you, they are covering up how bad edible products are for you. But they are losing and they will lose in the coming decades and we can be the catalyst to help that change. That’s what I am desperate for. I am desperate for us to be the catalyst to embrace the truly simple nature of health which is eat food and move. That’s it.

Carrie: If you couldn’t tell lovely listeners Jonathan is really passionate about his.

Jonathan: Oh my god I’m sweaty. I got all sweaty. We have to move onto a different question because I will literally keep talking about this. Okay next question. Alright here we go, here we go. There’s actually a couple good questions here. So first question.

Carrie: Whose it from?

Jonathan: I don’t know. G Nickel.

Carrie: G Nickel.

Jonathan: What up G Nickel? So can we substitute with sane, the various sane food groups we talk about. Non-starchy vegetables, whole food fats, nutrient dense proteins and low-fructose fruits to obtain the desired number of sane servings per day. For example, can we add either low-fructose fruit or nutrient dense protein if we can’t get enough veggies. To be very concrete if I can’t eat ten non-starchy vegetables in a day, could I just eat, and I could only eat five, should I just eat five additional servings of fruit or five additional servings of protein?

Carrie: I was going to say that veggies are your first, that’s the most important thing. Get your ten servings of non-starchy veggies in. However, if you are in a place where you absolutely cannot, staying sane is better than being insane.

Jonathan: So what Carrie said is true. If you have to choose between starving to death and eating more low-fructose fruit or protein but do not, do not think that I can’t eat ten servings of non-starchy vegetables so I am going to eat ten servings of low-fructose fruit. That is not, do not do that.

Carrie: So you can’t, unless you’re in a situation where you can’t you should not switch out the food groups with each other.

Jonathan: Exactly. The one, and there is a little bit of a nuance here, we talked about non-starchy vegetables. Non-negotiable, they got to happen, they are therapeutic. Nutrient dense protein again, non-negotiable, therapeutic. We have talked about how for some people maybe eating a bit more low-fructose fruit and a bit less whole food fat may work better for them and for other people, especially people who have struggled with overweight and weight cycling, eating a bit more whole food fat in place of some of the low-fructose fruit may work better for them.

So you can sort of switch those two but switching the protein with the vegetables, no. Those are fixed.

Carrie: But if you’re just starting out or your choice is something insane or one of the sane groups, go with the sane group.

Jonathan: Absolutely. I love it. Last question. Is there too much, is it possible to have too much, this again is from G Nickel. Is it possible to have too much of either vegetables, proteins or fats per day?

Carrie: Is it possible? It’s not possible to eat too many non-starchy veggies. Your stomach would explode before you could do that and you don’t want that. It is possible to eat too much protein and fats and low-fructose fruits.

Jonathan: So Carrie said it all. That’s it, there you go.

Carrie: Yeah that’s sort of a clear cut simple answer.

Jonathan: When in doubt eat more non-starchy vegetables. Read my lips, more non-starchy vegetables to make a quote from a long time ago. Carrie that was so fast so we can do one more question. Thank you G Nickel for all the wonderful questions and they are short which we love. G Nickel asks, I see that a three, oh this is a good one. Good job G Nickel. I see that a three hundred and fifty milliliter of V8 claims to have the equivalent of three servings of vegetables. Can I drink V8 juice instead of or as my sources of non-starchy vegetables?

Carrie: I can’t tell for I have to look at a label to be able to give you the right answer to that one.

Jonathan: So the key thing in general. So juice is not a whole food. Remember we are about whole foods. Juice is the whole food with all the fiber extracted and we know that the key part of a sane life style is fiber. Water, fiber, protein. Juice of any kind is not swappable for anything because it is not a whole food. Now if you want to take your own vegetables and make your own V8 juice out of your own vegetables that’s brilliant.

I have done that, peppers in there, some carrots, some tomato, it’s delicious.

Carrie: But don’t juice.

Jonathan: Don’t juice. Blender.

Carrie: Put it in the blender and blend the living daylights out of it.

Jonathan: Like everything if your choice is drinking a soda or drinking a V8, drink a V8. But please do not see the V8 or anything, [inaudible 0:22:09], Naked, what is the? Jamba Juice, any of these things masquerading as blended goodness, not quite goodness.

Carrie: If you have the opportunity to read the label I would highly encourage you to do it with any kind of juice because you just flip it over and see how much sugar is in it and that would give you your answer right there.

Jonathan: And to end in a positive note Carrie and this is right up in your ball park. The individuals name is Gary, I see right here at the bottom of the post it’s Gary. So probably Gary Nickel. Gary, what about soup? My wife made a great squash homemade soup. Is this a viable option for getting more veggies?

Carrie: Yes.

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Carrie: Fantastic. Soups, we love soups and smoothies are the absolute best way to get the maximum way to get non-starchy veggies into your day.

Jonathan: Carrie has given an amazing answer. So the smoothies often are going to be sweeter options and the soups, they are just savory smoothies that you eat out of a bowl. Basically. They are incredibly filling and incredibly delicious.

Carrie: And they are very comforting too.

Jonathan: You can find them at Carrie Brown. . .

Carrie: Carriebrown.com

Jonathan: Thank you for the wonderful questions listeners and thank you for putting up with me on my soap box. I am literily going to go do a few yoga poses right now because I am not kidding. I’m sweaty and I am a little upset. Thank you for the great questions getting me fired up and remember this week and every week after let’s keep slim simple. Let’s make sure we are actually becoming healthy as we try to be healthy and let’s eat more and exercise less but do that smarter. Chat with you soon.

Carrie: See yeah.

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