Now, everyone knows that foods high in sugar and simple carbohydrates make you fat. It's not rocket science to look at a bag of skittles and understand that they won't help get you lean. There is, however, a lot of bad information floating around about foods that are supposedly healthy for you and that support fat loss and muscle building, most either the result of the moron "brotritionist" at your local, commercial gym or the deep advertising pockets of the food industry.

This being said, here are some of my least favorite foods and why they suck.

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The last few weeks have been the source of much cognitive dissonance for me, as the information presented in this class coupled with other research and studying I have been doing about related topics has really challenged my paradigm for understanding not only our food system, but our entire social structure.

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When I typically address nutrition with a client, there are 3 key areas that I must tackle: Quality (what you eat), Quantity (how much you eat), and Timing (when/how often you eat).

Today, we’ll tackle timing first. Now, the first rebuttal that I usually hear when I question the frequency of someone’s meals goes something like, “Yeah, I know I should be eating more often. Six small meals like everyone says, right?” This means that they have the basic concepts down, but only on the level of what they’ve heard their friend say or watched on an Oprah special.

Here’s why eating more frequently is so important:

Let’s say you were good and followed the “3 solid meals a day” routine, which I remind you most people don’t. Breakfast skippers, that means you. Anyways, at this model, the average gym patron feels they are doing pretty well. Not too hungry, sometimes tired in the middle of the afternoon, but that’s normal, right? Not exactly.

What’s actually happening in this format is detrimental for 2 reasons, especially for the client looking to drop bodyfat and look lean.

First, the fact that we only eat several times per day does not change the fact that our body requires energy constantly. This means that, during those times that we are not taking in any calories (Blue), our body has to turn to an internal source to stay alive. In this case, it will most often attack your lean muscle tissue, which is your body's  fat-burning engine!

This effectively lowers your metabolism over time, since the less muscle tissue you have, the fewer calories your body can burn at rest, and the fewer calories you can eat to maintain the same weight. Second, eating in this format throws our bodies into starvation mode. One side effect of this is catabolism (the breaking down of muscle tissue for energy) which I discussed above. The second is what happens to the food that you are eating. Because your body is thrown off by not being fed regularly, it seeks to store as much of what you do take in as an emergency supply.

This means that, no matter how healthy those 3 (or fewer) meals you’re taking in are, they will not be processed efficiently, and much of them will be stored as body fat as an emergency supply of energy. So, you can see that poses a problem for the gym member looking to lose weight. This also explains the New Year’s phenomenon that you can see happening in health clubs around the country: join in January, eat less/move more, lose weight quickly by burning up lots of muscle, hit a plateau, gain most of your weight back very quickly because your metabolism is actually slower, give up and join again next year.

So the first thing that we want to accomplish with you nutrition program to keep you from falling into these same patterns is make it so you are eating smaller quantities more often, not starving.  

You can see that these smaller meals are able to be completely utilized by your body to fuel your workouts. After this, we can successfully add exercise to increase your calorie deficit and help you get lean!

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Our bodies run on energy, and energy comes in the form of calories. The key to body transformation is to balance the number of calories we take in (food) and the calories we burn (activity).

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So, you've just made your New Year's resolution to get back in shape (hopefully, this time will be the last time).  You've got your new workout clothes, uber chic Sigg bottle full of water, fancy new gym membership, hopefully a kick ass personal trainer so you know what you're doing, and you're about to stop into the local supplement shop and stock up on all of the supplements you are going to need.

If you're like everyone else (and by this point, I hope you're at least somewhere on your path to not), then you are about to grab a fist full of fat-burners and protein bars and shakes.

Now stop (colaborate and listen).  Before you go shopping for ANY supplements, please check out my post about supplementation.  It will give a good idea of what supplements you actually need to be taking before worrying about most of the crap that is available out there.

Today, however, I want to focus simply on protein/energy bars.

Without getting ahead of myself and ruining the ending (kind of like telling you that the couple always get back together after the big argument scene in romantic comedies), the moral of this story is don't buy them. Period.

Now, I'm not trying to sound like a Nazi.  I understand that it can be difficult for some people to eat the ideal 6+ times a day.  I get it.  I feel your pain and I understand.  I would simply argue that there are better places to be getting your calories.

The "energy bar" market has had quite a boom over the last year, with several new offerings from Cliff and Snickers just to name a few.  It seems like everone is throwing some protein into something else and calling a health product. 

Take the Snickers Marathon bar for example:

• 290 calories
• 10g fat
• 20g protein
• 40g carbs
• 21g sugar

"Everything you need from an energy bar with the Great Taste you expect from SNICKERS."

Actually, it's everything about a SNICKERS bar with some protein added in for marketing purposes.  Take a look:

Regular size Snickers candy bar:

• 266 calories
• 11g fat
• 37 carbs
• 5g protein
• 28g sugar

Little confused? Yeah, me too.  A normal Snickers bar has fewer calories, the same amount of fat, the same amount of carbs, and a bit more sugar. 

Oh yea, but it has less protein.  That's why it's an "energy bar." Gotcha.

So I may sound a bit harsh, and I understand that there are better options out there when it comes to supplements. 

Offerings from EAS, Promax, and other big name brands should be a lot better than something made by Snickers, but they really aren't. 

EAS Myoplex Lite Bar:

• 190 calories
• 4.5g fat
• 15g protein
• 26g carbs
• 11g sugar

Promax Bar:

• 280 calories
• 7g fat
• 20g protein
• 37g carbs
• 24g sugar

And these are from legitimate supplement brands! Brands that I actually like and approve of!

The problem is that, in order to sell their product, it has to taste good.  And to taste good, there usually has to be sugar in it. 

Now, not all sugar is bad.  In some programs, such as a muscle gain program where the goal is to increase calorie intake, these products of far less concern.  For those looking to lose fat, however, it is just not beneficial to have such a high percentage of your calories coming from sugar.

So, although you may think that you are eating something that fits right into the healthy lifestyle you are trying to live, you may in fact be undoing all of your results with mislabeled candy bars! Think twice before grabbing a box!

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As I'm sure most of you know by now, I've been learning a lot about the problems that exist in our current industrial food system model, and the implications that those practices have on us as consumers and participants in a greater system. 

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It seems to me that every time I stop into 7-Eleven, Arco, AMPM, or really any convenience store (and trust me, this isn't often since I rarely have to leave the car in Oregon, high five for gas pumpers) that there is a new energy drink that has come out. It makes me feel old when I recall the "good old days" when it was basically Red Bull and Rockstar, right before Monster eve came out.

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If there was one thing that set my approach toward meal plan design apart from the rest of the other tips, strategies, and methods that I hear about on a day-to-day basis it would be my attitude toward calorie counting.

It sucks. Plain and simple.

Think about your last shot at “eating better,” whatever that means.  You probably started eating more fruits and veggies, organic yogurt and nuts as snacks, and began to look at the caloric content of your food.

After all, calories in calories out, right?  Yes and no.

Now, to some extent this is true.  If you eat more than you burn, you shrink.  Eat more than you burn and you grow, although the type of body mass you acquire depends on your activity and the kinds of food that you are eating.

An extra 500 calories of Taco Bell isn’t going to end up turning into muscle. Sorry to piss on your campfire if that’s what you were hoping.

The other bone I have to pick with counting calories, aside from the fact that if you have a job, life, friends, or family you probably don’t have time to do it, is that it’s simply too retroactive.

You find out at the end of the day whether or not you screwed up and end up wasting the entire day.  I don’t know about you, but those aren’t really odds that I would want to contend with if I’m trying to accomplish something any time soon.

I’ve also noticed that people are far too easily swayed by “low calorie” advertising for crappy food. 

“It’s only 100 calories! Now I can have diet mini cookie crisps snack bites designed just for women like me by companies who really understand me like Nabisco!”

This being said, I believe that the time has come for a complete paradigm shift (there’s my college education kicking in again) when it comes to our approach toward healthy eating and body transformation.

 Enter macronutrients.  Protein, carbs, and fats.

 Now, as I’ve already discussed in my blog post on macronutrients, each of these serve different functions in the body and are processed differently.

 Protein and fat are used for building and rebuilding muscle tissue.

Carbs are your fuel for doing work.  They provide energy in the form of sugars and glucose for you to do things. Workouts ideally.  Any carbs that are not used for these tasks are very likely to be stored by the body, and we store energy as fat.

It would follow, then, that we should approach our intake of these macronutrients from a much more functional perspective rather than looking at your daily intake as a loose quota where you can eat whatever you want up to a certain point.

Our goal should be to take in enough carbohydrates to provide the fuel for our body to perform whatever physical activity is going to occur in our day without spilling over, and the rest of our calories should come from the other two categories.

For the active person, this provides a lot more carb freedom because their energy requirements are going to be a lot higher than someone who sits on their ass all day long. 

This is why it is so important to have a meal plan that is customized to YOUR BODY, not anyone else’s, regardless of whether you weight the same, are the same height, happen to be a woman, have blue eyes, or like long, leisurely walks on the beach and candlelit dinners with good friends.

The amount of muscle mass your have, your goals, and your activity level all determine what kind of macronutrient breakdown your body needs to accomplish your goals.

So, if you’re not working with someone who understands how to design this kind of a meal plan for you, I encourage you to take this proactive kind of approach toward your nutrition.  That way you have guidelines for how to eat based on what your body needs and what it can legitimately process during your day.  This allows you to go into each day with a plan to follow rather than winging it until you hit your quota.

All of my 1-on-1 clients and boot camp clients receive this kind of customized nutrition planning with their programs.  If you are still stumbling through your meal planning and would like to finally take charge of your nutrition so that you can guarantee consistent results, be sure to check out UNDERGROUND Boot Camp.  It is the fastest, most cost-effective way to transform your body like you never thought possible.

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