Joe's 6 Month Change

Before

After

6 months ago Joe weighed 146 pounds and was 12% body fat. He had never lifted a weight in his life and had a very unhealthy diet. He came to me one day asking me to get him in shape, and I had an idea. I decided that what I would do was create a diet and work out with him, to try and get results. So over this period of time, his lifestyle has completely changed. Midway through, his results were incredible; he weighed 172 pounds, and had lost fat. His exact numbers were that he gained 28 pounds of muscle and lost 2 pounds of fat, while getting his body fat down to around 10%. The crazy thing was that he still looked little. His progress since then is still completely stunning he has put on a total of 30 pounds. By the end his numbers were 29 pounds of muscle and 1 pound of fat. His body fat has gone down to 9% and his bench max went from 95 pounds to 160 pounds, adding a stunning 65 pounds in 6 months. Joe is living proof of how successful the Wiefit diet is. In 6 months Joe completely changed his body health and composition. He is more confident and will continue to grow. His diets varied between the different bulk up diets Brian and I decided to put him on and towards the end a diet more for leaning out and adding just muscle while cutting fat. Joe’s confidence has risen and he is much happier now than he was 6 months ago. Towards the end, Joe was beginning to add more fat onto his body, so for the next 6 weeks he will be on a lower carb diet to get the glycogen out of his muscles and to burn fat. This will cause his body to go back into muscle building mode, and in 6 weeks he will be back on a bulk up diet.  He feels better and he eats much healthier. Without this diet Joe would probably still be in the same eating cycles. 

Chest Workout

Carb Cycling

As promised this blog will be about carb cycling. This plays a huge role in the Wiefit diet for losing fat. Again it is an idea that is fairly new to the nutrition world and is becoming more and more popular. Basically how it works is by cycling carbs. It can be a day to day thing or even month to month. If it is day to day, the person on the diet may go 4 days with little or no carbs then the next three eat healthy carbs in their diet. In a month to month scenario the person will go a month with a low carb diet then a month with a healthy diet involving carbs. This works by tricking the body into using fat for energy. Once again I stress that the first source of energy the body wants to use is the glycogen stored in the body. By cutting carbohydrates, the glycogen is removed from the muscle and the body turns to the fat for energy. However, before your body goes to muscle for the energy, you will give your body carbs again which will be stored as glycogen, because your muscles are running low on it. With this process, you will get similar results to a low carb diet without cannibalizing muscle mass and without the many other drawbacks associated with a low-carb diet.

Creatine

Many are very cautious to begin using creatine as a supplement in their training and diet programs. They hear many false rumors and some even compare it to steroids.However for many it can be a very useful aid in their training and can very quickly help you pick your workout up if you have hit a plateau. Creatine does two major things for your body to help build muscle. One is allow for your muscles to absorb more water. This will make muscles look bigger and be harder as well as allow for them to be more powerful. The other use in the body is in the aid of making ATP. ATP is the major source of energy. Creatine is stored in the muscles as creatine phosphate. When your muscles run out of ATP during exercise creatine helps the body create ATP in a quicker manor allowing the muscles to keep working. For a more in depth explanation of this idea go to http://www.building-muscle101.com/how-does-creatine-work.html.

Why are no Carb Diets not good for building muscle? Why do they usually fail?

The body uses carbs for 2 main things. The first use is energy. Carbs are stored as glycogen in muscle and when using those muscles the glycogen is burned as energy. The second is fat storage, which is where no carb diets are correct. Unused carbs are stored in the body as adipose (fat) tissue. If you eat no carbs the body will use your stored fat for energy because there are no carbs to be harvested. The problem here is that the body also uses proteins and muscle that you have for energy. On a no carb diet you will lose a lot of weight, but it won't all be fat. You may lose 30 pounds but 5 or 7 of those pounds may be muscle. The other problem is that your body needs and craves carbs when you are on this diet. So the second that you begin eating carbs again, the body will absorb more carbs than it usually would. For this reason most people gain back more weight than they lost after these no carb diets. The better way to lose fat and keep/build muscle is to carb cycle. I will provide another post about carb cycling in a couple days...

Heavy Whipping Cream's Use

Many people that are on a certain nutrition diet at Wiefit see heavy whipping cream as an ingredient in their protein shakes, and automatically question it because of the amount of fat that it contains. The thing that they don't understand is it's use in the body. The fats in the heavy whipping cream raise testosterone levels in the body, which aid in muscle growth. The amount of muscle gained on the diets involving heavy whipping cream far outweighs the minor amount of fat that is put on because of the whipping cream. So next time you guys trying to put on muscle quickly, rethink putting heavy whipping cream in where the diet tells you too!

Biological Value of Protein in Food

Over this Spring Break, my dad and I went on a fishing trip, and caught a bunch of fish to eat. When thinking about the fish, I began to think about something Brian was talking about called the biological value of proteins. The biological value of a food refers to how quickly and effectively the protein in the food can be digested and used by the human body. Brian spoke about a couple foods, and one he referred to was fish. He said it had a very high biological value, so i decided to see just how high it and other foods were. I found that eggs are one of the highest at 94%, with fish slightly ahead of beef at 76% with beef at 74%. What these numbers show is the percent of the nitrogen that is absorbed by the body.  A ratio of nitrogen incorporated into the body over nitrogen absorbed gives a measure of protein 'usability' - the BV.