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A collection of brunch foods high in calories sugar and saturated fats.

Are weekends ruining your diet?

Are weekends ruining your diet?

If weekends are ruining your diet, here’s what you need to know.

Have you ever found yourself sticking to your diet Monday through Friday, only to completely blow it on the weekends? It’s a common problem that can have serious consequences for your weight loss goals. So if you’re working hard to lose weight during the week, but then undo all your progress with weekend indulgences, it’s time to take a closer look at your habits.

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Three reasons you’re not building muscle

When you’re new to the gym, just about anything will add muscle to your body. You can simply show-up, try hard and see some pretty decent results. But once the golden period is over and all those newbie gains have dried-up, why can it seem so hard to build any muscle? 

Well it goes without saying that if building muscle were easy, we’d all be walking around jacked and invisible lat syndrome would not be a thing. And while there are a lot of variables that go into building muscle, the core principles are well understood and time-tested. 

In my experience as a trainer and as someone that’s been around the gym for almost thirty years, here’s three common reasons why you’re not building muscle. 

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Tracking Data

Progress on my cut: Master of straight lines?

Just a progress update and some observations as I push deeper into this cut. Between my hamstrings and body weight charting, I am proving to be the master of straight lines.

As progress on this cut continues, I hit a new low weigh-in this morning of 188.5 lbs.

At the the start of this cut, I was torn. Do I simply drop the chub or look to push deeper into lean this time around? However, I ended-up deferring that decision, opting instead to change the nature of the game and see how far I could get without any kind of food tracking or unnecessary restriction.

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Workout mistakes: Part 3 – You’re not eating to support your goals

In part 2 of this series, I covered the fundamentals of training and physique transformation to help get you focused on the things that matter most. In this post, we explore nutrition and eating to support your training goals.

Eating is an emotive subject, much abused in the industry with terms like “clean eating” and “eating healthily”. They make sense as abstract statements, but they do little to help you translate that into practical advice.

How has something so simple as eating to meet your needs become a veritable minefield and major cause of confusion for so many people?

Bombarded with vague, misleading and sometimes purposefully incorrect information, more and more people are struggling with diet and nutrition.

There always seems to be some new diet or eating protocol to follow, and even the common sense approaches have now been sufficiently debased so as to leave the most pragmatic among us confused.

Well I’m here to help, and with this post I plan to cover:

  • Energy balance
  • Understanding your maintenance calories
  • Food quality
  • The importance of consistency

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I owe you an apology

I just wanted to say sorry, James.

When we talk of diet and exercise, we often joke about bulking and cutting and generally have a bit of a laugh. It’s what we do.

And yet, deep down, we know there’s a more serious part to the conversation; I mean, health matters.

But mostly, we just let of steam, using humor and hyperbole to lighten the conversation and color our daily discretions.

But the other day, I let you down. You. My son. Someone I love more than life itself.

After poking fun at each other as we often do, the conversation changed. You were being sincere about wanting to shed a few pounds, lose some weight, get fit. You started to describe some perfectly reasonable steps as to how you’d do it, and I shot them down.

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Exactly one month into the cut

IMG_20150607_085456It’s been almost a month to the day since the end of my last bulking phase. If you recall, I ended the bulk at 187.75lbs, a couple of pounds shy of my 190lb target. Truth be told, I have far from mastered the art of the bulk, and I was grateful to see it end. Still, we’ll do better next time.

As bodybuilders, we say a lot of things that need added context to make complete sense, especially to the novice trainee. For example, consider some of the things I say regularly:

  • “I’m not even dieting yet”
  • “I don’t do any cardio at all”
  • “I don’t track my macros”
  • “I pretty much eat what I want”

All of these things are both completely true, and yet, very misleading without context and some added narrative.

Hence, the goal with this update is to be very specific about what I’ve done during the last month, and evaluate where we are as we head into the second half of this cutting phase.

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Cravings, failings and goals

I got an email from a good friend over the weekend who is struggling with lack of progress, and in particular with food cravings. Moreover, the psychological impact of both stalling on progress and giving in to cravings is starting to take it’s toll on his well being.

Now, anyone that’s been around the iron long enough will know that cravings and disappointment with progress are commonplace and effect all of us from time to time.

What’s important is that we learn to embrace these things as part of the life-style and not “label” ourselves as weak or failures.

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Bodybuilding diets made simple

I see a LOT of posts every day about the minutiae of dieting; macros, calorie tracking, food journaling, nutrient timing, feeding the anabolic window, fasting, carb cycling … the list is possibly endless. And, truth be told, I’ve tried some or all of these techniques over the years as I work toward my physique goals.

However, over the last six months in particular, I’ve come to the realization that bodybuilding diets are, in fact, incredibly simple.*

So here’s my wisdom distilled; the four phases of the bodybuilding diet:

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Progress update: Week two of the mini cut

Today marks the end of the second week for my cutting phase, and I was both pleased and unnerved at the result. I weighed in at 184.5lb on the morning scale, that’s about 3.5lb down from the start of the cut.

Pleased?

Well, this is a cutting phase after all, so seeing the scale move is both desirable and appropriate. I was also largely happy with the number. While 1.75lb per week is a little on the high side, I’d expect to see that rate of loss drop-off in later weeks… at least not without another significant change.

But why unnerved?

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The journey to 190lb is over… for now

Screen Shot 2015-05-27 at 10.51.46 AMAs most of you are are now painfully aware, I’ve been pushing hard on this latest bulk to reach 190lb. Alas, my window closed this morning with 187.75lb showing on the morning scale.

Still, I’m not disappointed.

I’ve learned a lot about my body this last six months and managed to add quite a bit of size to my frame. Said differently, I’ve created a really solid foundation for the upcoming cut, and ultimately for another run at size in the new year.

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Tenets of my upcoming cutting program

Helmut Strebl
There are few leaner than Helmut Strebl!

Just three weeks or so now until the next weigh-in, and unless something changes between now and then, the plan is to up the density of my workouts and start a cut. Hence, my attention is slowly shifting to what that workout and diet will look like and how I’ll approach the overall process.

Based on what I’ve learned over the last year or so of training, here’s what I’m envisioning as the key tenets of my cutting regimen:

  • Build an enjoyable program
  • Focus on density
  • Eat as much as possible while still making progress
  • Minimize cardio

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