Uncensored Podcasts S01

Breakfast: The Most Important Meal of the Day

November 9, 2011 by John Barban Leave a Comment

When it comes to both fat loss and muscle building, the common fitness lore is that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

In order to make a statement about ‘breakfast’, we first have to define what ‘breakfast’ means. This sounds simpler than it really is.

For example, is breakfast simply the first meal of your day no matter how long you’ve been awake? Or is it only breakfast if you eat it within a certain number of minutes and hours after waking up?

: Is this what breakfast is supposed to look like?

Is breakfast defined by the specific foods you eat? Does breakfast have to be bacon and eggs, or cereal? Or can it be beef stew, or a bowl of pasta, or a vegetable stir fry, or an ice cream cone?

Before we start talking about the virtues and benefits of breakfast, we have to know what the word ‘breakfast’ means. And this is precisely what we are going to do in today’s podcast.

We look at the research on the phenomenon known as breakfast and break it down for you so that you can see the difference between the results and the opinion of the researchers. We’ll get to the bottom of the information on breakfast and determine what breakfast even is, and if there is a way to use this meal to your advantage with your fat loss and muscle building goals.

John

For more information as well as how to get access to Venus UNCENSORED, click the link below:

Venus UNCENSORED Premium Podcast

Filed Under: Food, Podcast, Uncensored Podcasts S01 Tagged With: Breakfast

Dietary Protein: What you Need to Know

November 2, 2011 by John Barban Leave a Comment

Protein is the one macronutrient that has the most praise from a health and fitness standpoint. It is marketed to help build muscle AND burn fat. If you browse any fitness magazine or related websites, you will find dozens of claims on how to most effectively ‘dose’ protein. Protein is no longer regarded as simply a macronutrient component of various foods, but rather it’s considered like a drug…

… that needs to be dosed at specific levels and specific times of day.

If you search the fitness media you will find claims about any and all of the following topics related to protein:

: Do you see food or specific doses of protein?

– specific times of day to take it

– a specific grams per pound of bodyweight to ‘dose’ for muscle building

– specific doses of protein for pre post and during a workout

– specific proteins to eat during the day vs at night

– specific proteins to eat pre and post workout

– specific proteins for fat loss vs muscle gain

– specific proteins for your gender

And there are likely more that I have missed. The point is that the issue of protein has become needlessly complicated. The specificity of dietary protein is largely overstated by the diet and fitness industry in an effort to sell elaborate and high priced protein supplement products.

This isn’t to say that protein isn’t important for maximizing your muscle building and fat loss efforts because it definitely is. The real issue is separating the useful information from the nonsense.

In today’s podcast, we’ll discuss the in’s and out’s of dietary protein and what you really need to know about it.

John

For more information as well as how to get access to Venus UNCENSORED, click the link below:

Venus UNCENSORED Premium Podcast

Filed Under: Podcast, Uncensored Podcasts S01 Tagged With: dietary protein, protein sources

Bodyfat Is An Endocrine Tissue, Not Just Stored Energy

October 26, 2011 by John Barban Leave a Comment

Bodyfat, adipose tissue, subcutaneous fat, brown fat, white fat, healthy fat sick fat, belly fat, visceral fat, gut fat, butt fat, arm fat, back fat, thigh fat, cellulite…just plain ol’ FAT!

There is more than just fat in a fat cell

As you might have guessed this podcast is about bodyfat. Specifically, we’re going to talk about what it is and how it’s regulated. In the past, bodyfat was thought to simply be a storage tissue for excess energy. It was assumed to be relatively inert and simply sit there holding energy in the form of fat for future use when calorie intake isn’t sufficient.

Over the past 20 years, this view has changed and now researchers know that bodyfat is a dynamic and metabolically active tissue that plays multiple roles in our daily functioning.

Your bodyfat is capable of producing various hormones, and converting hormones into different forms. It also produces inflammatory cytokines and other messenger molecules that act as signals to the rest of your body. The total amount of bodyfat you have will change how it communicates and acts on the rest of your body.

All of these recent discoveries have led researchers to re-categorize bodyfat as an endocrine tissue.

An endocrine tissue is a tissue in your body that secretes hormones as messengers to signal function for the rest of the body. And it’s now clear that bodyfat is more than just stored energy, it’s in fact an endocrine tissue.

Understanding bodyfat from the perspective of endocrine tissue as well as energy storage will give you more insight into it’s purpose and it’s regulation.

In this podcast, you’ll learn how and why things change in your body depending on how much fat you are carrying and what this means from a diet and nutrition standpoint.

John

For more information as well as how to get access to Venus UNCENSORED, click the link below:

Venus UNCENSORED Premium Podcast

Filed Under: Bodyfat, Podcast, Uncensored Podcasts S01 Tagged With: adipose tissue, bodyfat, endocrine tissue

Venus Index: The Shape of an Athlete

October 12, 2011 by John Barban Leave a Comment

Fat loss is relatively straight forward. The fat comes off of your body in a systemic way and you can’t choose what parts of your body will burn the fat. It simply comes off all over and at it’s own pace so to speak. There are of course areas on your body where more fat will tend to accumulate (hips and thighs is the typical area for women).

This area seems to accumulate fat faster and at a higher proportion to the rest of the body. When you start losing fat this area seems to lose it slower when in reality there is simply more of it in this area so it takes longer for these areas to come down.

This is cover of FHM featuring Olympic athletes...A Venus Index body can also be a high performance body.

Losing fat and attaining a bodyfat level that is approximately between 18-22% is likely what it will take to be at the ideal Venus Index. But it’s not just about fat loss, the next step is building muscle to create the Venus Index shape. And this is where targeted muscle building comes in. Being ‘skinny fat’ isn’t going to cut it as a Venus. The body we’re talking about it a lean but muscular body, a body that has shape and power.

In today’s podcast, we’ll go over research that indicates many top level athletes in various sports all have the ideal Venus Index waist, muscle mass and are within our projected weight ranges. In short, we’ll show how the Venus Index body is also a high performance body.

John

For more information as well as how to get access to Venus UNCENSORED, click the link below:

Venus UNCENSORED Premium Podcast

Filed Under: Podcast, Uncensored Podcasts S01 Tagged With: venus index athlete, volley ball players

Unethical Diet and Fitness Marketing: It’s Everywhere

October 5, 2011 by John Barban Leave a Comment

The diet health and fitness industry has it’s fair share of shady salesmen and dubious claims. In fact, it might be the worst offender for false claims and marketing ‘hope’ with no real science or evidence to back up the claims. The marketing in the diet and fitness and health industries are largely based around a fear based model.

This sign should be on the door of every health food store

The basic pattern is to get you to become aware and afraid of something that you were never aware of or afraid of, work you up into a frenzy about it, then sell you a solution to remove the fear. This is the easy way out of marketing and sales. It’s also irresponsible and in many cases can cause serious psychological harm and turmoil for the unassuming customer.

The problem stems from a blurring of the lines between what is a real health practitioner vs a pseudo practitioner. Who can you trust? Who has a read background and a real degree that qualifies them to give you real health advice and guidance?

Should you be listening to the ‘fitness co-ordinator’ at the local gym? Or even worse the sales rep who is trying to hustle memberships and personal training? Or should you restrict your advice to your family physician? It’s hard to know where to draw the line and who to listen to and who to ignore.

In todays uncensored podcast we’ll discuss these blurry lines and give an example of advice gone wrong. The industry is inherently irresponsible so the onus is on you to take responsibility for your health, and for what advice you choose to follow.

Coincidentally the day we recorded this podcast this story about reebok having to pay $25 million for false claims on their ‘toning shoes’ hit the interwebs. Check it out here: Reebok gets slammed for false claims

John

For more information as well as how to get access to Venus UNCENSORED, click the link below:

Venus UNCENSORED Premium Podcast

Filed Under: Podcast, Uncensored Podcasts S01 Tagged With: diet and fitness marketing, false claims, unethical diet and fitness claims

Calculating Metabolic Rate

September 26, 2011 by John Barban Leave a Comment

Metabolic Rate…Metabolism, BMR, RMR…these are buzz words that the diet and fitness media throw around all the time, however it’s greatly misunderstood.

There are many ‘metabolic rate’ calculators online that you can use to supposedly find out what your specific metabolic rate is by typing in your height, age, gender and weight. Some even have an ‘activity factor’ built into the calculator that is supposed to incorporate the amount of calories you are burning when you partake in various daily activities.

Do you think a simple calculator can guess your metabolic rate exactly?

Metabolic rate calculators are meant to be estimators, not fact. If you type your information into a calculator and it says your metabolic rate is 2500 calories per day, but when you eat 2500 calories per day you gain weight, then you have proof that your metabolic rate is actually lower than this number. You also have proof that the calculator is wrong.

This however is not how many people view this sort of situation. I get countless emails from people who say they’ve used a calculator and the calculator says their metabolic rate is X or Y, and when they try to eat that much they gain weight. Instead of believing that the calculator is broken or wrong they instead believe there is something wrong with themselves because they don’t fit into what the calculator said.

The tragedy is the fact that most people have the automatic assumption that they are broken instead of the calculator. This has to change if people are going to start having a healthier attitude and clearer picture of what it takes to get in shape and stay in shape.

In today’s podcast, we’re going to get to the bottom of what is behind metabolic rate calculators and what we know about metabolic rate in general.

We’ll explain how you should view the numbers these calculators give you and how to use it as a general starting point to explore where you might need to start if you’re trying to lose weight or get in shape.

Once you start viewing these calculators for what they really are, you can let go of any potential roadblocks or fears you might have about your ‘metabolism being broken’.

John

For more information as well as how to get access to Venus UNCENSORED, click the link below:

Venus UNCENSORED Premium Podcast

Filed Under: Metabolism, Podcast, Uncensored Podcasts S01 Tagged With: BMR, metabolic rate, metabolism, RMR

Reading Between the Lines – How To Deconstruct Diet & Fitness Media

September 20, 2011 by John Barban Leave a Comment

Diet and fitness information can be found in print, television, online, from health care practitioners, and just about everywhere else. It seems that everyone has an opinion on what to do for ‘fitness’ and ‘health’. So how do you know who to listen to and who to ignore?

The words tell a different story when you know what is going on behind the scenes

Is it as simple as picking one group of people and following everything they say? Or is it more prudent to pick and choose from various camps and philosophies and piece together your own unique system?

How do you even know where to start? Do you need to go back to school for a degree in physiology? That sounds a bit drastic. It makes more sense to just follow the advice of a professional who has already done this work. But just like any profession, some health care practitioners aren’t as good as others, and the message you get from them depends on the medium.

The story you’ll get from a practitioner when you see them in an off the record face to face conversation can be drastically different from the story they might write in an article for a popular website or magazine. You have to learn how to consume recommendations and information based on the media and platform it’s being delivered from.

In today’s podcast Brad and I break down an article that was sent to us online. We’ll teach you what specific buzz words to look out for and what they mean legally. We’ll explain what influences most articles you find in print and online and how the message can become distorted.You’ll see how selectively pointing out parts of the truth and leaving out other parts can paint a picture exactly opposite of what the facts say.

Finally you’ll learn how to think your way through any article you read and decide if the message is credible, has any real backing in science, is worth looking into further and ultimately taking action on.

John

For more information as well as how to get access to Venus UNCENSORED, click the link below:

Venus UNCENSORED Premium Podcast

Filed Under: Podcast, Uncensored Podcasts S01 Tagged With: diet and fitness articles, reading between the lines

Should you take BCAA’s? – Facts about Branched Chain Amino Acids

September 12, 2011 by John Barban Leave a Comment

Branched Chain Amino acids (BCAA’s) are a popular supplement in the bodybuilding industry, specifically they’re marketed for building muscle, preserving lean muscle during dieting, and even increasing fat loss while dieting. But do any of these claims hold up to scientific scrutiny?

BCAA's - Should you take these suckers or not?

When you take a closer look at the research you’ll find out that the experiments on branch chain amino acids are done with a very specific timing and protocol with specific end point measurements. Fitness marketers then tell you to recreate the experimental settings in your daily routine in an effort to mimic the results of the study.

But what are the results anyway? Most people just want to build muscle and drop bodyfat and look good…and I can tell you that neither muscle building nor fat loss are ever measured in these studies. In almost all cases the research looks at surrogate end points such as protein synthetic rate which is then extrapolated to mean ‘muscle building’.

In today’s uncensored podcast, we’ll discuss the research on BCAA’s what the methods and results mean and if you should even take them.We look at the effect popular fitness media has on our choices in supplements and how the success of one supplement can mold our opinion of other supplements.

Things to consider are your personal fitness goals, your current state of health (are you lean, overweight, obese, diabetic etc), the amount of time you have to spend working out and the amount of money you have to spend on supplements.

The intersection of your training experience, your goals, what you expect from BCAA’s and your budget will determine if you should take them or not.

John

For more information as well as how to get access to Venus UNCENSORED, click the link below:

Venus UNCENSORED Premium Podcast

Filed Under: Podcast, Uncensored Podcasts S01 Tagged With: BCAA's, Branched Chain Amino Acids

Orthorexia and Food Cults

September 5, 2011 by John Barban Leave a Comment

***As requested by many of you in the forums and over email, here is the Orthorexia and Food Cults podcast that was previous posted on the Adonis Index site earlier this year***

Orthorexia is a term coined by a physician Dr. Steven Bratman. It’s defined as an unhealthy obsession with health food…ironic to say the least.

Some people end up worshiping at the alter of a new food cult without even realizing it

Many people can fall victim to some degree of orthorexia as they search for the one ‘right’ way to eat, but each of these diets is nothing more than an unscientific fad that is more marketing and fear mongering than it is science.

Diet fads come and go and each one has it’s villian food and it’s hero’s all the way from it’s champion founder to the champion foods.

Low carb diets, blood type diets, raw foodies, macrobiotic, paleo and so on, each one will profess the merits of eating specific foods while removing many other foods from your diet for good. But is there really any proof that these diets can help you live healthier or longer or improve performance or the way you feel…or do anything at all?

In most cases these diets quickly become like a cult with all of the ugly consequences like becoming socially isolated from other people who are not part of the cult, the development of an elitist attitude about the given way of eating above any other form of eating and a general smugness of it’s followers as they assume they have become ‘enlightened’ to the one and only way to eat.

The reality is there is little if any scientific evidence to support any of these restrictive styles of eating. They are usually focused on minor and insignificant points about mixing and matching their ‘correct’ foods and miss the point of getting total calories under control and developing consistent exercise habits.

In todays uncensored podcast we’ll discuss orthorexia and food cults and how many of the diets that people read about and follow start to take over other parts of their lives.

We’ll also discuss how the champions of many of these cults don’t even follow their own recommendations.

John

For more information as well as how to get access to Venus UNCENSORED, click the link below:

Venus UNCENSORED Premium Podcast

Filed Under: Food, Podcast, Uncensored Podcasts S01 Tagged With: food cults, orthorexia

Getting In Contest shape: Interview With Erik Ledin Part 2

August 29, 2011 by John Barban 1 Comment

This is the second part of an interview series I did with Erik Ledin. Originally it was never meant to be a two part interview, but Erik has so much to say that we just kept going…(I’m sure we could talk for 100 hours on this topic). So this is the second part of our lengthy conversation.

Part 2 of our interview with Erik Ledin

Today we talk about supplements, and what might be useful.

Expecting perfection will only set you up for disappointment. Setting realistic goals with realistic expectations is important to being in a positive mindset.

You also have to realize that the leaner and sharper you get the harder and harder the path becomes. The process might be the same, however you will discover that going from 25% bodyfat to 15% bodyfat feels much easier than going from 15% bodyfat to 8% bodyfat.The actual number of pounds lost might actually be less, but the effort increases exponentially.

We’ll also discuss metabolic efficiency and the law of diminishing returns from doing more and more cardiovascular training. It might seem that more cardio simply equals more fat loss, but this isn’t always the case.

You also must be wary of the so called perfect time to train or eat. If you’ve heard that cardio on the morning on an empty stomach is the best time to train, but you simply cannot get to the gym in the morning, or just flat out hate working out in the morning, then you simply won’t do it. This can lead to feelings of self doubt and failure, and a mindset that it’s just too hard to get in shape or that “it’s just not for you”.

The reality is that compliance and consistency is what will win the race. That means the workout and diet must fit into your life and not the other way around.

These are all factors you must consider when you decide to change your body.

The process is actually rather simple but not necessarily easy. It requires effort and consistency, but if you stick to it you can take your body as far as you want.

John

For more information as well as how to get access to Venus UNCENSORED, click the link below:

Venus UNCENSORED Premium Podcast

Filed Under: Podcast, Uncensored Podcasts S01 Tagged With: contest prep, Getting in Shape with Erik Ledin, Interview with Erik Ledin part 2

Breakfast: The Most Important Meal of the Day

Dietary Protein: What you Need to Know

Bodyfat Is An Endocrine Tissue, Not Just Stored Energy

Venus Index: The Shape of an Athlete

Unethical Diet and Fitness Marketing: It’s Everywhere

Calculating Metabolic Rate

Reading Between the Lines – How To Deconstruct Diet & Fitness Media

Should you take BCAA’s? – Facts about Branched Chain Amino Acids

Orthorexia and Food Cults

Getting In Contest shape: Interview With Erik Ledin Part 2

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