Protect Your Psychic Space From Information Overload

Here’s the next episode of the UNCENSORED Podcasts Season 2.

Today’s topic:  Protecting your psychic space from information overload

Are you suffering from paralysis analysis?

Are you suffering from paralysis analysis?

Learn how to protect yourself from getting distracted from your goals

Do you think others are concerned about your health -or- do they just want to be right?

  • Before the internet everyone relied on magazines or libraries.
  • Now there is a 24 x 7 endless stream of never ending opinion and anecdotes.
  • Everyone will have an opinion.  Even if you are successful you must be doing something wrong.
  • The secret is;  there is no secret
  • Before the internet and knowing that Leptin even existed in the body people figured out how to get fit.
  • For the people who have already gotten in shape; you know what you did, you know what worked, keep listening to your own body.
  • The old fashioned simplistic approach that has always worked will be attacked

Today Brad and John will talk about how to protect yourself from information overload and paralysis analysis.

 

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What Is Maintenance?

Here’s the next episode of the UNCENSORED Podcasts Season 2.

Today’s topic:  Maintenance

What is maintenance?

What is maintenance?

What is maintenance?

The real answer is that you’re never actually just sitting in one spot at the exact same weight, and body fat %. You’re always fluctuating a little bit throughout the day, and throughout the year.

Maintenance is more of a transient state that you can dip in and out of when you you’re not necessarily trying to gain more muscle or burn more fat.

You can ‘hold’ and maintain a certain level of body fat and muscle for a given length of time and then get ready to push it hard again.

The step-wise progression

In all the body transformations I’ve ever seen it’s always a step-wise pattern. This means you will improve for a given amount of time. Then you’ll need to take a break. Once you feel ready you can push forward again. The amount you move forward is dependent on your goals and how hard you expect to push things.

Thinking about maintenance is also about managing expectations and where you expect to go based on the energy you’re putting forward.

Moments of maintenance happen for many reasons including lifestyle factors, seasonal changes, periodic moments of being sick, generalized stress.

For example over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season you may simply set a goal to just make it from November to January without gaining fat mass.

In this case you’re actually working to just maintain, and you’d probably have to consider it a win just to make through the holidays without gaining fat.

Maintenance is a mode you go into throughout the year, and it’s normal to go through phases of muscle growth vs muscle maintenance and fat loss vs maintenance.

In this podcast we discuss what maintenance is, how to define what it is and how often you should expect to be in maintenance mode.

-John 

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The Downfall of Hero Worship

Here’s the next episode of the UNCENSORED Podcasts Season 2.

Today’s topic: The Downfall of Hero Worship

 

How does Hero Worship skew the reality of our physique goals?

How does Hero Worship skew the reality of our physique goals?

Bigger, Faster, Stronger… but at

what cost?

In the world of entertainment and sports, performance means everything.  So much so that the individual’s who have achieved a superior level of performance in their respective profession are often referred to as a “Hero” by fans and followers alike.

There is no doubt that they have dedicated a tremendous amount of time & effort into becoming the “very best” at what they do. Although this is quite admirable, is it wise to compare ourselves to our favorite hero?

This podcast is unique, because it was spurred from another podcast in which Joe Rogan (from The Joe Rogan Experience) in a highly controversial interview with Victor Conte (from the BALCO scandal) , reveals the widespread use of doping and performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) in entertainment and sports.

This is one of the many examples in which the  views and opinions of our favorite heroes have become jaded once discovered that PEDs played a role in their success.

So…How does Hero Worship skew the reality of our physique goals?

These questions and much more will be answered in John Barban’s & Brad Pilon’s discussion on “The Downfall of Hero Worship.”

They will provide further insight and analysis into this growing investigation of PEDs and what it means for the person whose looking to improve upon their physique.

In today’s UNCENSORED training, you will also discover:

  • Why your favorite hero should serve as a source of inspiration, not imitation
  • Why self-diagnosing will become more prevalent as science and technology develops
  • What are the benefits of Vitamin & Mineral Profiling
  • How genetics play a role in achieving optimum performance
  • The impact of The “Use or Lose” Mentality on entertainment & sports
  • How different athletes’ are tested depending their sport
  • The Culture Difference between “Bodybuilding” and “Entertainment/Sports Performance”
  • If strength will help determine your looks
  • How to determine your ideal Body-Image Model
  • What are some of the benefits of a Transformation Contest
  • The psychological impact of taking progress pictures and undergoing a photoshoot

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Is Fasting Bad for Women?

Here’s the next episode of the UNCENSORED Podcasts Season 2.

Today’s topic: Intermittent Fasting, Intermittent Feeding and Gender Differences

Could Fasting Actually be Bad for You?

What are the Benefits of Intermittent Fasting?

Could one benefit be a goal to achieve 0% BF?!

Of course not!  When incorporating fasting into your lifestyle you should know what to expect and understand why you are doing it.  Do you want to create room for extra weekend calories? Or use fasting as a tool to lose one additional  pound each week?

When our friend Eric tried fasting at about 7% body fat before his competition he could hardly push to the 24 hour mark and felt terrible. Was this a surprise? Not really.

If you are already ripped, you can’t expect to fast four times a week for 24 hours.  The less body fat you have the more your body will try to “protect it”.

This is something most people don’t realize and even major fitness articles are wrong when they state “Fasting doesn’t work” or  “Intermittent Fasting is Dead” and so on.

Truth be told, intermittent fasting has become quite popular in 2012.  As the trend follows with everything that receives a lot of attention and popularity, there is always some negative feedback attached as well.

Today, we will analyze a blog post from a woman who tried fasting and misunderstood the effects of dieting on her hormones and blamed fasting for being unhealthy. We will also cover her false conclusion of a famous mice study on fat loss and fasting.

John Barban and Brad Pilon will also show you the difference between intermittent fasting and intermittent feeding and explain which is more useful as a fat loss or bodyfat maintenance tool.

In today’s UNCENSORED training, you will also discover:

  • Different fasting protocols you can follow and how to determine which one will fit you the best
  • How to make (intermittent) fasting sustainable
  • Discover at what point you have to reduce the frequency and length of your fasts
  • How to optimise the whole process of dieting so you get the results, feel good, and don’t burn out
  • Learn whether there any “side effects” of dieting or  intermittent fasting/intermittent feeding
  • What steps to take when you read other blog posts about intermittent fasting and want to remain objective
  • How to take into account your limits when training, dieting and fasting
  • What fundamental questions to ask yourself when you reading an article/journal which quotes a research study
  • The second part of the  Eat Stop Eat lifestyle you can’t forget about
  • What the signals indicate you to stop fasting
  • The difference between intermittent fasting and intermittent feeding and when to use them

 

Women’s Guide to Eating for Muscle Gain

Here’s the next episode of the UNCENSORED Podcasts Season 2.

Today’s topic: Eating for Muscle Gain and Fat Storage

How much do you need to eat to build muscle?

How Do You Store Fat?

When we eat more calories than our body can use we begin to store those extra calories as fat. Although this process occurs  in  both men and women, the primary locations of fat storage differs betweeen the two genders.  For example, men tend to store fat in the stomach region while women in the hip/thigh region.  This genetic predisposition of fat storage leads to a variety of  body types or shapes: “Apple, Pear, Banana” just to name a few.

As a person begins to exceed the standard Body Mass Index (BMI) range their body shape eventually balloons into a rounded appearance.  Nevertheless, there is a popular belief amongst  people that even if they are below the BMI range known as obese, their body shape  is dictated by their genetic predispositions for fat storage.  However, this is only partially true.

There is no category of body shape that will restrict you from building  muscle only in a certain area.

Once you lose the  fat necessary to achieve the lean, ripped look we begin to look very similar to one another.  What will make the biggest difference is the size of your muscles. Everyone will look different at their ideal numbers of course, but the overall body shape will be the same. Once you lose the fat,  your body’s  fat storage patterns become irrelevant.

So it’s up to you, you can choose whether to let your genetic predispositions  dictate how you store fat or change your physical appearance through strategic training and add more size to your frame.

How Much Do You Need to Build Muscle

The second part of this podcast is about the amount of food/calories you need to consume to build muscle.

We’ve already explained why bulking is a bad idea, hell even Pilon tried bulking up slowly in the last podcast.

So it would seem that overeating doesn’t help. So what’s the answer then, how much do you really need to eat to avoid undereating, but also overeating? What do you have to do?

If you are asking yourself those questions you are missing  two critical  factors to your success.

The two factors that must be taken into consideration are birth and/or training age.

A 20 year old guy or girl who just started training and is still in juvenile muscle growth is a different case compared to somebody who is in his/her late 40s and has been training hard for the last 15 years.

Which is exactly what Brad Pilon and John Barban are going to discuss today. So, if that is something that interests you, just scroll down to log inside the AI cockpit and listen to this episode.

In today’s UNCENSORED training, you will also discover:

  • Whether there is anything you can do to improve your physique besides fat loss and muscle building
  • What  BMI/BF% range you will  need to be under to allow your muscles to dictate your body shape
  • What waist  percentage of your height is still safe for “bulking”
  • Whether there is actually an amount of calories you need to eat to build muscle
  • What determines how much you need to eat to build muscle at the rate you want
  • Learn what  stubborn fat is  and whether it’s any different from the rest of your body fat
  • What it means when people store fat in as opposed to around the muscle
  • What it takes to add more muscle if not bulking
  • What role does birth and/or training age  play in your diet if your goal is building muscle
  • What do you do after you get to your ideal numbers? Do you need to keep training or Is it possible to grow even more?

 

DEXA Results from Slow Bulking and Muscle Imbalance Correction Training

Here’s the next episode of the UNCENSORED Podcasts Season 2.

Today’s topics: Body Composition Analysis – DEXA Results

You can use DEXA scan to track down effectiveness of your training and diet.

From season one of uncensored podcasts you already know how you can use DEXA to track your progress.

But did you know that it’s also a very useful tool for experimenting with your body?

Check out how John and Brad used DEXA scan to measure effectiveness of the things they were trying in the last couple of weeks. Each of them tried a different thing.

John’s Experiment – Muscle Imbalance Correction Training

As you may already know know John can’t do barbell bench press, because off his shoulder issue. The last time he got his DEXA the results were astonishing, on his right side there was almost 2 pounds less lean mass (shoulder and arm). That’s a pretty big difference, it was obvious that the right side was significantly weaker and less developed.

Because of this, he decided to try to bring the right side back to normal, so both of his shoulders and arms would be balanced.

Now this is tricky, because if you just do barbell based exercises, one arm will work harder than the other and you will only make the problem worse.

So how would you go about it?

And how do you track such is small difference?

You can’t even go just by feeling and strength, you need to get another DEXA done to confirm the results.

John decided to create a specialized plan for himself and get another DEXA scan done at the end of this test to see what he could do about this.

As it turned out, you really can affect one side of your body and bring your lagging part back to normal to balance them out.

Surprisingly the answer wasn’t more weight, but more work and better muscle activation – as John shares in today’s episode, he had to take more time to warm up the right side to achieve the same activation throughout his regular workout.

Listen to the podcast for more information on this experiment.

Brad’s Experiment – Slow Bulking

As Brad confesses in today’s episode, he really wanted for bulking to work and I mean who doesn’t, eating more for more muscles? Sounds like a bodybuilder’s dream.

Well, the reality is different and rather boring.

In the past Brad has tried every way you could think of (and more) to make bulking work. He tried the standard 6 meals a day, 300 grams of protein, cheat days and even cheat weeks with 10 000 calorie intake and no result at all…well he did gain fat, but that’s not what he was really after.

So, it’s safe to say that bulking doesn’t work.

Then a couple months ago he thought about another way of trying bulking. He realized that each time he would try it, it would be a very quick process, never slow. So he decided to go about bulking up slowly, just a couple hundred calories here and there, he didn’t change his workouts, recorded everything and did a DEXA scan after the experiment was after.

If you wanna find out about the whole process and more importantly the results, go down and listen to the podcast.

In today’s UNCENSORED training, you will also discover:

  • How to prepare the muscles that you have hard time activating for the workout
  • How can you bring up a lagging part back up to balance it with the rest of the body if lifting heavier doesn’t help
  • What is slow bulking  and whether it can work for you
  • How you can get your goals hijacked with focusing on strength gains
  • Why it’s important to stop chasing weight at some point and what’s more important when the goal is muscle growth
  • How if you are not careful “body building” can turn into weight lifting and power lifting and why this is dangerous to your physique goals
  • Is there a relationship between being well trained at a certain movement/exercise and looking good? (The answer to this might surprise you)
  • How DEXA can help you see clearly through fitness disbeliefs and help you discover what truly works for your body and what’s just BS you should avoid

 

Eat for “Flavor” & The 6 Step Recovery Method from Orthorexia

Here’s the second part of this month’s UNCENSORED Podcasts Season 2 on Orthorexia.

Check out the first part here: The Side Effect of Modern Society and Even Scientists Can’t Escape

What we covered in the first part:

  • We’ve talked about how certain foods can completely mess up your personality and social identity
  • You learned why people in the fitness industry feel superiority over you because of their diet choices
  • You discovered why you should bother tracking and testing things related to nutrition and not just training
  • You learned about the connection between people suffering from orthorexia and drug addicts
  • You also discovered what’s really in the root of the search for healthy eating and if that goal is really achievable
  • You learned that orthorexia is a marketing driven eating disorder and that the food and fitness industry are making billions just from people getting fatter every year

Let Go of the Good Food/Bad Food Belief

You need to learn to let go of the good food, bad food belief and dump all the bad food lists. And instead start focusing on the foods that taste good, are filling and make you feel great.

It’s a mind shit and a whole different perception, especially if you have been exposed to the mainstream fitness media for the last couple of decades.

Ask yourself this question: ” What do I like to eat?” And eat exactly that!

A lot of people will be thinking that this statement means you can eat burgers and ice cream all day long. Well, that’s not true. Nobody can do go on a diet like that and that’s a pretty boring lifestyle to have.

There are lots of food choices, if chicken with broccoli and chocolate with ice cream are the only meals you know you are limiting yourself and preventing yourself from tasting some amazing foods that are also rich in nutrients.

Get a variety in your diet and start experimenting with different cuisines. Just ask yourself, what exotic meal you haven’t tried yet?

Believe it or not, there are other foods and meals outside the “healthy” recommended by fitness media and “unhealthy junk food” like chocolate or burgers. There are a lot of other options and they can be very tasty.

Today John Barban and Brad Pilon will show you how to switch  from good/bad thinking into “eating what I really like and what makes me feel good” and “what would be the best and most tasty option for me?“.

If you’ve heard the first podcast and you’ve read so far then you understand what’s the point of it, but you may still be unsure of the whole process, so before you listen to today’s episode where John and Brad discuss this in great detail, let’s look over the steps you can take to recover from Orthorexia and start eating for flavor:

  1. Realize that any health message is a marketing message
  2. Understand that you won’t cheat death, and especially not by choosing different foods
  3. Create new food lists, but assign them different meanings (e.g. rank them by flavor)
  4. Make a list of foods that makes you bloated or that you are allergic to
  5. Evaluate every food on those lists based on how much you enjoy it, how many calories it contains etc.
  6. [you will have to listen to the interview for this one :)]
There is a lot of choice outside the traditional healthy and unhealthy lists AKA good foods/bad foods. European and Asian cuisines are very rich in different flavors and tastes, just start experimenting. Today we are going to give you the permission to do that and explain you why it’s beneficial and how to go about it.

What Supplements Should You Take to Help You Achieve Your Health & Fitness Goals?

Here’s the second part of this month’s UNCENSORED Podcasts Season 2.

The topic?

Supplements.

Here’s what you discovered in the first part (link to the 1st part here):

  • What a supplement is, how the industry got started, and what it has evolved into
  • What is the definition of supplements in various countries and why it matters
  • How important supplements are
  • What’s the lifecycle of a supplement product
  • How the process of putting new supplements on the market works
  • How come government regulators have no control of what’s on the market
  • What ingredients are added into supplements are useless and serve just as marketing

“Will These Supplements Help Me?”

Often times guys on the Internet and in our community ask us “What supplements should I take?” or “Will this supplement help me?”.

Should you take those? Are they worth the money? How will you track the results? Or will you just go by the “feeling”?

The issue is that it’s impossible to answer those type of questions.

If you want an accurate answer that can actually help you (not the generic crap found on the web) with your fitness goals, you need to get clear on what is it you really want and what do you expect out of the supplements.

Another thing that will determine what supplements to use and how much of it we will recommend you taking is your budget, how much money can you spend on supplements? 50 bucks? Or 1000 bucks? That’s a pretty big difference. Somebody who is a sponsored athlete or works in a supplement lab will have different options than a college student.

For example a question “Will this product give me the body I want?”or “Can this product do what I want it to do?” is way better and gets to the point of what you really expect from it.

But even those two questions aren’t perfect, when you start thinking about it, you’ll soon find out that it’s not that easy to figure out the right question (after you listen to the podcast, try to come up with a good one and share it in the community so others can comment on it).

This is just one way of looking at it, another way would be to take a different approach and actually set your goals first and then try to match the right product to that desired outcome.

However, in this case you will find a pretty nasty barrier.

And that’s the fact that supplements contain a lot of ingredient that will have absolutely zero effect on your body.

When you look into each product you will see a bunch of stuff you have never heard about, but almost always there will be one big ingredient that’s usually responsible for all the results. In many cases it will be creatine, or caffeine, depends on the supplement.

Why is that?

Well, the top selling supplements are exactly the same as ten years ago and they will most likely be same as the best selling supplements ten years from now.

There is just a couple of items that are packaged in a thousand different ways.

The product isn’t what’s different, they are roughly the same, it’s the marketing around it that makes all the difference.

Supplement companies fight a difficult challenge and that’s pointing out the ingredient.

Nobody gets excited about plain Creatine monohydrate anymore, simply because it’s been around a while. So, they have to sell some “enhanced version” of creatine to pump up the sales.

It has nothing to do with finding some new amazing and proven ingredient that nobody has ever heard about and adding it to the current product, it’s just a simple desire to sell more products.

Today John Barban and Brad Pilon will reveal more information about the supplement industry and also coach you on how to ask the right question and how to find supplements that will help you with:

a) Building Muscle

b) Losing Fat

c) Improving Health

d) Boosting Energy

In today’s UNCENSORED training, you will also discover:
  • How to approach weight loss supplements and what do they really help with (hint: they are not burning your belly fat)
  • What are the realistic expectations for using the supplements that are on the market
  • What supplements companies are should be trustworthy (bigger or smaller? Why??)
  • How the Natural Standards Database (you have access to it in the immersion account through cockpit) can help you pick supplements
  • Step by step how to intelligently choose and test supplements
  • What side effects really are and how it applies to you when you take supplements (or drugs)
  • Pilon’s sneaky techniques he used to sell supplements in the past

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Can You Go Past Your Genetic Ideal with More Protein?

Here’s the second part of this month’s UNCENSORED Podcasts Season 2.

Here’s what you discovered in the first part (link to the 1st part here):

  • What’s catch up growth
  • What’s the disinhibition/inhibition model and how does  it apply to muscle growth
  • How taking drugs basically means adding another engine to your car (body) meaning what bodybuilders do, doesn’t apply to your case in any way
  • That fitness media completely loses touch with scientific research
  • You can’t stimulate your body to grow more than it’s designed to, you can only remove inhibitors to allow your body to keep growing to its full ideal
  • Different inhibitors that are preventing your muscle from growing
  • That almost every single image you see of bodybuilders is enhanced, but after a while you’ve gotten used to it and started thinking of it as your genetic ideal

What Role Do Protein and Amino Acids Play in Muscle Growth?

It’s generally accepted that higher amino acid intake allows for muscle synthesis in the otherwise fasted state, but…

Can higher protein intake stimulate more muscle growth?

…the truth is, you can’t eat your way to muscle growth.

That’s just not going to happen.

In reality your goal should be to hit an adequate amount, in both calories and protein. Everyone thinks the key is in some sort of excess, but that’s the “stimulation model” forced at you by fitness media.

You have to realize that everybody has an energetic reserve. In fact a large person can go days without eating and still not have it affect the metabolic processes in his body.

It’s no the deficit itself that’s the determinant, but the ability to handle it, which depends on the amount of the reserve. In other words, the leaner you are the more and more frequently you will eat.

…And what if you try to eat more?

Well, in a nutshell your body deals with excess by burning it, storing it or by getting rid of it.

So, let’s say you buy a weight gainer product and you try to dose your way up to bigger muscles.

Well, once you listen to todays podcast you’ll understand that you’re consciously investing in storing these excess calories as fat! That sucks, doesn’t it?

But that’s pretty much what the food and supplement companies are selling you. You are paying to be fat, how crazy is that?

Now that applies mostly to excess calories, but too much protein works almost the same. Most guys think you have to take a protein shake five times a day and even in the middle of the night, because your “body is starving“, right?

The truth is that your body is pretty well-designed and it handles excess protein in a smart way – it stores it as a reserve and uses it during your fasted state.

There is a sweet spot to every biological process. You can also imagine each process as a spectrum. On the left side you have a malnourished, 14 year-old marathon runner and on the right side you have the wanna be bodybuilder who is mega dosing calories and protein, but he is just getting fat. Both are extremes, you want to be in the middle, eat enough protein and calories to maintain what you have and build even more muscle while losing all the fat and getting ripped.

One of the keys to understanding how all this works is realizing that your body is not static, it’s dynamic.

Your body is breaking down and building things up every day – you are not built of the same stuff as you were a year ago.

Just like your bank account, something goes in, something goes out, so over time it may look the similar, but it’s never the exact same money.

In today’s UNCENSORED training, you will discover and learn:

  • What’s the genetic ideal and genetic ideal shape for you and if you can go beyond it
  • What role does protein play and what you need to do to remove protein intake as an inhibitor
  • The answer to whether extra protein intake helps with muscle building
  • What happens when you get from the adequate intake spectrum below to the low levels of caloric and protein intake or on the other hand to high levels of excessive intake
  • What are your only ways of affecting the shape of your body
  • How the environment you live in translates into your ability to get in shape
  • What body are you capable of building when you remove all of the inhibitors
  • What’s novel stimulus and how it relates to muscle growth
  • What’s the difference in muscle gains and strength gains
  • If small forearms are preventing you from making your arms bigger
  • How a calf injury can mean shoulder pain and inability to work out properly
  • Revealing an argument why you should fast to remove yet another inhibitor
  • Whether working out and or running is removing an inhibitor, introducing new inhibitor or accelerating your growth (hint: it’s not the one you think)
  • How to look at your life with a new mindset and target all the inhibitors and remove them

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