Phi-Life Series: Muscle Building & The Anabolic Continuum

Today we bring you another podcast from our phi-life series.

Phi-Life is a series of podcasts where John Barban and Brad Pilon discuss their ideas and concepts on the topics of muscle building, fat loss and health. In a nutshell they are just thinking out loud and recording it for your benefit.

Today’s topic: Muscle Building & The Anabolic Continuum

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Where are you in the Anabolic Continuum?

 

Muscle Building is one of the most elusive goals of  bodybuilders and gym-goers alike.  Furthermore, it has puzzled scientist’s in research studies who have been unable to effectively control and/or determine the results of a muscle-building research study.

When it comes to muscle building, it’s important to identify where an individual is in the Anabolic Continuum.

The Anabolic Continuum takes into account the several factors that determines your potential for muscle building. A few factors for example are: height, weight, age, and years of training experience.

Your ability to build muscle follows a very logical progression. Specifically, with your response to weight training.

Today John Barban and Brad Pilon will discuss further intricacies of the Anabolic Continuum, as well as provide some tips and suggestions to ensure you remain on track for your training and muscle building goals.

 

You will also learn and discover:

What are confounding variables and how they can impact a research study

The difference between responders and non-responders in research studies

How to predict your lean muscle mass

How to determine where you are on the anabolic continuum

Are you in the right place in your weight training life

Is there a specific way that you should be training

What are the knowns and unknowns when evaluating an individual for a research study

Listen to the podcast here:

Phi-Life Series: The Most Reliable Tool for Tracking Weight Loss that Nobody Uses

Today we bring you another podcast from our phi-life series.

Phi-Life is a series of podcasts where John Barban and Brad Pilon discuss their ideas and concepts on the topics of muscle building, fat loss and health. In a nutshell they are just thinking out loud and recording it for your benefit.

Today’s topic: Money Doesn’t Lie – Tracking Weight Loss not with Calories, but Your Finances

Do you know how much do you spend on food?

Do you know how much do you spend on food?

If you like numbers, you will like today’s podcast. If you hate counting calories,  then this podcast is for you as well.

It’s something most people don’t think about. However, there is a link between how much money you spend and how you spend it AND the amount of fat you are carrying around your belly.

Money doesn’t lie, where you choose to spend your money is a good indicator of  your diet , what results you can expect from it, and even who you are as a person.  Discovering who you really are may be quite shocking, so not everyone is willing to look at this type of data and face the facts.

When you look at someone’s bank account and more specifically the money spent on food, you can get a pretty good indication of how that person eats.

The truth is, money is neither good nor bad. If you are a consumer, it’s a way of obtaining what you desire. If you are an investor or entrepreneur it’s a tool to make your plans become a reality.  Since we live in a society that’s economy-based, you’re a part of the economy whether you like it or not. So you might as well learn how the economy works and how to make it work for you.

While this is not a website about finances, we recognize that money and calories are tied together. There is a fine line between you paying for energy and paying for weight gain. Once your body has what it needs, anything after is money you are investing only to  to gain a return fat.

In the U.S.,  people spend more than 1.6 trillion dollars a year on food alone. That’s a lot of money…and a lot of food.

What’s also interesting is this data indicates that Americans spend most of their money on food in restaurants and prefer to have it prepared rather than going to the grocery store and cooking it themselves. This is the complete opposite of what most Europeans prefer. Could this one decision or habit affect your ability to lose fat?

In this episode of Phi-Life podcasts, Brad and John will share with you several findings on this subject. They will also discuss the national economic food trends in the U.S. and how the analysis of one’s finances can predict weight gain. It’s pretty incredible, but also very logical when you hear it.

You will also learn and discover:

  • How much red meat does the average American consume per year
  • Why (and how) tracking your finances through  your  food budget can help you lose weight and save money
  • How your  eating habits encourage food companies to produce more food and thus contribute to the growing obesity rate
  • The simple truth about your environment and why  you are fighting an uphill battle with your diet
  • Pro’s and con’s of being an average consumer
  • How you maybe setting yourself up for failure and weight gain with your spending habits
  • How to budget for fat loss (finance not calories)
  • Why you should track how much money you spend on food, and more specifically what type of food and where it comes from
  • Why tracking your finances might be simpler than tracking your calories

Listen to the podcast here:

Phi-Life Series: Can Fasting and Training Add 20 Years or More to Your Life Span?

Today we bring you another podcast from our phi-life series.

Today’s topic: Life Extension

Life extension and anti aging products have become very popular in the last few years, a few of these products include: many types of health foods, supplements, workouts, drugs, and even special therapies.

One of the biggest claims actually comes from intermittent fasting when used as a tool for extending one’s life span, some say that it can add decades to your life.

The question is, can it really add that many years to your life? This is what John Barban and Brad Pilon will answer for you today.

What’s the secret to life extension?

Technically, there are only two ways we can approach the anti aging process. First, the obvious one is to create protocols around your diet, workouts, drugs and therapies and wait for the results.  However, the issue with this approach is that you need at least one generation to have valid data and more importantly you can’t tell people what to do for the rest of their lives. The only way this approach can work is to study mice, keep in mind that mice are very different from humans, so not everything that applies to mice will apply to us.

The second approach is to reverse engineer this process and to actually study the people that have lived the longest (over 100 years).

Strangely enough, there is very little they have in common. There is no single workout or diet you can copy and hope to live for as long as them.

There are a few common indicators such as:

  • Low Stress Levels
  • Activity (both mental and physical)
  • Low Bodyfat Percentage

Apart from these three things, each individual lived a different lifestyle. In other words, you can’t guarantee that a low carb diet or powerlifting type of training will help you to live to be a 100.

The even greater question to ask  is will lifestyle changes help you live longer or are you at mercy of your genetics and faith?

If so, what is the  best  approach to take?

This is what John and Brad will attempt to answer for you today in our podcast.

You will also learn and discover:

  • Is it even possible to study anti aging and have any measurable data?
  • Does modern science currently offer anything you could use to delay the aging process?
  • What is your best bet when it comes to living a greater QUANTITY and QUALITY form of life?
  • What’s the magical age that determines you will  have a good chance of living to be a 100?
  • What are some things you can control that will help you improve your life and live longer?
  • Can you make the aging process enjoyable?

Listen to the podcast here:

Phi-Life Series: The Untold Difference of Marketing Fitness Claims in North America

Today we bring you another podcast from our phi-life series.

Today’s topic: Geographic Influence On Claims

If you take a look…You will begin to realize the many different forms of advertising that exist in the marketplace.

Did you know that advertising claims in the health and fitness industry are regulated differently in each country?

For example, in one country a product might claim to help you lose 10 pounds in 30 days, while in another country  that same product  will claim up to 20 pounds of weight loss!

This is true because from a marketing perspective, what might work in one country might not work in other. We actually find this happening quite often.

North America is a prime example.

You can have the same product for both the  U.S. and Canadian market. However, each country will have a completely different claim.

What the companies are able to get away with saying depends on their government’s regulations.  If you live in the U.S., you may be accustomed to hearing certain phrases such as, “Lose 30 pounds in 30 days” or when marketing muscle building products usually to men something like “How to build 20 pounds of lean muscle in the next 4 months.”  These phrases are commonly found in TV ads and  fitness magazines. However, if you tried to marke the same product with this claim in Canada you might lose millions, because people simply wouldn’t believe it to be possible and nobody would buy.

The claims that you’re exposed to on a regular basis in your home country will have an effect on where your “BS radar” is set.

If you showed the U.S. ads to Canadians they would be very skeptical, however for U.S. viewers transformation from fat-average to fitness model in couple of months might not be that thrilling or impressive at all.

What’s even more interesting is how all the media channels tie-in to one another.

Ever thought to yourself, “If everyone keeps saying it, it must be true right?“.

That’s the very moment your judgement becomes clouded by media and your your skeptical eye begins to  diminish.

Today Brad Pilon and John Barban will discuss how claims on print media, video media and product packaging vary in different countries and why that affects your buying decisions.

You will also learn and discover:

  • The difference in what the government allows you to be exposed to and what you then believe is realistic to achieve
  • Why consistency in print, visual, website commercials matters and how it affects your judgement
  • How marketers used a false unsupported claim “U.S. Formula” to boost sales in North America
  • That you are more  of “a product of your own environment”  than you may think
  • That if you can predict the greatest possible claim people will accept, you will make a lot of money
  • If it’s possible to know which claims are true
  • Why the claims can be so different from country to country, but people have the same physiology

Listen to the podcast here:

Phi-Life Series: The Real Story Behind Supplement Packaging

Today we bring you the first of many podcasts from our phi-life series.

Today’s topic: Supplement Packaging

What do you think is the most important thing in supplement development?

If your answer was ingredients, you would be incorrect.

Do you think supplement packing is not important? Do you think that you make your buying decision only based on the ingredients? You might be surprised…

When developing a new product, the supplement developers actually work backwards from packaging.

In reality the package is what will sell the product, not the ingredient. The ingredients are pretty much the same across all the products, so that’s not what sets a specific supplement apart or even what will make you choose one for purchase.

One can hardly imagine how complex the process of just “creating the package” really is.

It’s not only the color of the supplement that matters. It’s the questions of whether you put the ingredients into capsule or powder form? If so, do those contents belong in a  bottle or package?

Packaging is the first impression a customer will have with a product.

The next step of the process is figuring out what to say, what font to use, what colors to use, what fitness model to endorse the product with what particular claim and much more.

You simply cannot sell a supplement without the right package and claim, because that’s what drives sales.

Everything must fit together, the claim has to fit the cover and everything has to be in-sync from a buyer’s perspective.

Packaging is utmost importance for a supplement company. In today’s podcast you will  discover just how much it matters and what really goes into packaging   design.

This is not to tell you that supplements are evil and should be avoided at all costs., Quite the opposite, certain supplements can help you with your fitness goals. However, understanding whats goes behind the scenes will help you pick the supplements you really need and avoid spending money on products that are useless to you, but may look very appealing at first.

Today you have a chance to get inside the heads of previous supplement developers – John Barban and Brad Pilon.

You will also learn and discover:

  • What colors entice you to buy
  • The reason some supplements are on the market (not all supplement are backed by clinical studies)
  • The exact steps that take place before the supplement is put on the shelf
  • [For supplement developers] How to make an impression on your customers and stand out in competition
  • How package size correlates with the magnitude of promised results
  • How supplements can get away with outrageous claims
  • How your thought process as a customer affects package development
  • If it matters whether the supplement cover looks pretty or not

Listen to the podcast here:

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