Posts Tagged ‘study’

Vitamin D: The Real Facts,Truths, and Sources of The Sun Vitamin

13 Oct

Tags: America, body, cereal, Cod, D Vitamin, fat, foods with vitamin d, health and vitamin D, hormone, how much vitamin D safe tanning beds, hydroxyvitamin, hyperphosphatemia, importance, intake, low vitamin d levels, Men, milk, News, obesity, problem, quality, Research, Salmon, sources of vitamin D, Studies, study, sun, supplement, tablespoon, the sun vitamin, thyroid, Vitamin D, what are healthy vitamin D levels
Posted in Fat Loss | 19 Comments »

Originally Posted at Figure Athlete.com by Leigh Peele

When you research, read, and watch the news as much as I do, you can see the new nutrient and supplement trends coming a mile away. Sometimes they’re valid, other times they aren’t. I can say for certain to buckle up and hop on the D-train because it’s here to stay. In fact, this isn’t a newly found miracle baby; this is an age old savior that we’ve been neglecting.

What is Vitamin D?

vitamin D

Vitamin D is a fat soluble steroid hormone (and if we weren’t playing fast and loose with the terminology, it technically isn’t a vitamin at all). The main job of vitamin D is to maintain normal blood levels of calcium and phosphorus. Note that’s the main job. It’s said that over 200 genes are affected by vitamin D. It doesn’t matter where you turn, its uses are everywhere. Bone, heart, insulin, depression, pain, happiness, cancer, fibromyalgia, thyroid… you name it, vitamin D plays a role.

Michael F. Holick, a leading researcher on the importance of vitamin D, has said that “Vitamin D deficiency is the disease of neglect.”

And he couldn’t be more right.

The cure for rickets — a widespread epidemic in the children of the softening of the bones — was found by sticking children on the roof of a building. Can you sit there and take that in for a moment? An illness that was making the limbs of children turn into mush was cured by the sun.

You may wonder what this has to do with you, but bones should be your pride and joy. Not to mention the fact that recent studies show an alarming rate of newborns and mothers are becoming more and more deficient. Are past problems coming back to bite us in our vitamin-deficient rears?

Beyond just bones, being too low in vitamin D can lead to a decrease in thyroid function. Although not directly involved in synthesis or secretion, a deficiency can produce increases in the levels of parathyroid hormone.

On the wellbeing side, an increased occurrence of depression and a decrease in mental focus have been found time and time again. There are also links that have shown women who supplement with vitamin D may lose fat easier than those who don’t.

Currently, the desired levels are 30 to 75 ng/mL-nmol/L, and anything less is seen as deficient, though higher doesn’t necessary mean you’re at a toxic level. The concern is for consistent levels above the 200 range.

The bottom-out number should really be 30; however, we’re seeing study after study show that levels are constantly hitting below this all around the world, and the aftereffect is becoming an epidemic.

ng/mL	nmol/L	Status
< 11	< 27.5	These levels suggest severe illness, usually seen in rickets or sick infants.
< 10-15	< 25-37.5	While not directly or instantly crippling, these levels overtime may contribute to illness both acute and chronic.
≥ 30	≥ 75	Seen by some to be the desired range and achieving of optimal health.
Consistently > 200	Consistently > 500	Could be toxic and lead to hypercalcemia and hyperphosphatemia.

Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] concentrations and health

How Do You Get It?

Vitamin D is the “sun vitamin,” meaning that you should receive 80 to 100% of your intake from the sun. When ultraviolet (UV) rays hit the skin, they’re absorbed and converted, setting into motion your body’s process of creating vitamin D. In truth, this should be the end all for receiving your daily intake.

However, things just aren’t that simple.

vitamin D
What About Food Intake?

Vitamin D can be found in small amounts in certain fishes, fortified milks, and egg yolks.

The problem is that the intake would have to consist of very high levels and multiple times daily to give you the effects you need. It also would depend on the quality of your food. With fish, for instance, it’s been shown that farmed salmon (fish raised in tiny boxes eating crappy fish food) held at least 25% less vitamin D than wild-caught salmon.(1)

Take-home point being, if you think that the Wal-Mart fish nutrients are doing something for you, think again. What they eat is what you eat. As well, the fortified milk and cereal claims of vitamin D can be off by as much as 80% of what the label says.

Here’s a chart that gives you a general rundown of food sources for vitamin D:

Food	IU per serving	Percent DV
Cod liver oil, 1 tablespoon	1,360	340
Salmon, cooked, 3.5 ounces	360	90
Mackerel, cooked, 3.5 ounces	345	90
Tuna fish, canned in oil, 3 ounces	200	50
Sardines, canned in oil, drained, 1.75 ounces	250	70
Milk, nonfat, reduced fat, and whole, vitamin D-fortified, 1 cup	98	25
Margarine, fortified, 1 tablespoon	60	15
Ready-to-eat cereal, fortified with 10% of the DV for vitamin D, 0.75-1 cup (more heavily fortified cereals might provide more of the DV)	40	10
Egg, 1 whole (vitamin D is found in yolk)	20	6
Liver, beef, cooked, 3.5 ounces	15	4
Cheese, Swiss, 1 ounce	12	4

Selected food sources of vitamin D (2,3)

Differences in Vitamin D

Vitamin D comes in two main forms: vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) and vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol). There’s a D1, D3, and D5, but in short, their importance and our control of them isn’t the main topic here.

Vitamin D2 is made by the UV irradiation of ergosterol in yeast, and vitamin D3 is made by the irradiation of 7-dehydrocholesterol from lanolin and the chemical conversion of cholesterol.

It’s suggested that D3 is far superior to D2 at raising levels in the body and holding them higher for extended periods of time.(4,5) Because of this, if you’re going the supplement route for your intake of vitamin D, D3 is the winner of the group.

The overall goal of vitamin D is to raise serum levels in the body and do so as best as possible. To date, both D2 and D3 supplements at prescription-grade levels have shown to do this. D2, however, has been shown to be toxic at higher levels. (It should be noted that you can’t achieve toxic levels of D in the body with just the sun.)

How Long is Too Long in the Sun?

This is the tricky part and most often misunderstood. Obviously, there’s plenty of data to back up that being in the sun too long without protection can lead to skin cancers. The flipside is that being in the sun too little might lead to cancer as well.

bikini babe
You may think that applying some sunscreen will get you the best of both worlds, but sadly sunscreen has been shown to block upwards to 95% of vitamin D uptake from the sun.(6)

What are you to do?

A good solution is to spend fifteen minutes in the sun and then apply your sunscreen. It’s suggested that fifteen minutes a day can be enough. However, for a lot, that isn’t the case. And unless you’re living below 42 degrees North latitude (a line approximately between the northern border of California and Boston), in the wintertime you aren’t going to get it at all.(7)

Studies also show that if you’re African America or Hispanic then you need near double what Caucasians need.(8,9)

The Do’s and Don’ts of Vitamin D

If you find yourself stuck inside, above the magic line, or of darker skin, then you might need to look at better options of getting vitamin D.

1. Don’t be obese: Obesity blocks vitamin D intake by as much as 55%.

2. Don’t be scared of the sun: We’re a culture of extremes and look at where it’s got us. You need some sun, so don’t be afraid of it. Just call it quits before you burn like a lobster.

3. Do eat cod liver oil: Cod liver oil in supplement form is a really simple and easy way to get in lots of D3 during those months when you may not be able to.

4. Don’t be scared of the tanning bed: If you’ve ever known a friend with an iguana or turtle, then you know that in order to survive they need those ultraviolet exposures. Well, so do you!

Exposure to tanning beds resulted in a 100% increase in blood concentrations of vitamin D.(10) The problem is, just as with the sun, people take things too far. It’s a great way to get what you need in the winter months, but the same “don’t overdo it” rules apply.

5. Do get tested: In general, you should be getting a full vitamin and mineral testing every six months. Is it time for a checkup?

6. Do hit the numbers: While 400 IU is the recommend dosage, there’s nothing wrong with getting 1,000 IU, especially from D3, and namely during the “off season.”

7. Do take this seriously: I’m not usually one for dramatics, but there are so many low level health problems that can lead to higher level problems, and issues from a vitamin D deficiency can be really simple to solve.

Take it seriously; get in your sun, get in your oils, and take advantage of the problems you can fix every chance you get.

—

References

1. An evaluation of the vitamin D3 content in fish: Is the vitamin D content adequate to satisfy the dietary requirement for vitamin D?

2. Nutrition Coordinating Center. Nutrition Data System for Research (NDS-R). Version 4.06/34. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2003.

3. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. USDA Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 16. Nutrient Data Laboratory Home Page, 2003.

4. Houghton LA, Vieth R. The case against ergocalciferol (vitamin D2) as a vitamin supplement. Am J Clin Nutr 2006;84:694-7.

5. Nesby-O’Dell S, Scanlon KS, Cogswell ME, Gillespie C, Hollis BW, Looker AC, et al. Hypovitaminosis D prevalence and determinants among African-American and white women of reproductive age: third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988-1994. Am J Clin Nutr 2002;76:187-92.

6. http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/80/6/1678S.pdf

7. Cranney C, Horsely T, O’Donnell S, Weiler H, Ooi D, Atkinson S, et al. Effectiveness and safety of vitamin D. Evidence Report/Technology Assessment No. 158 prepared by the University of Ottawa Evidence-based Practice Center under Contract No. 290-02.0021. AHRQ Publication No. 07-E013. Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2007.

8. Nesby-O’Dell S, Scanlon KS, Cogswell ME, Gillespie C, Hollis BW, Looker AC, et al. Hypovitaminosis D prevalence and determinants among African-American and white women of reproductive age: third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988-1994. Am J Clin Nutr 2002;76:187-92.

9. Yetley EA. Assessing vitamin D status of the U.S. population. Am J Clin Nutr. In press.

10. Holick, M. F. (2004). Vitamin D: importance in the prevention of cancers, type 1 diabetes, heart disease, and osteoporosis. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 79, 362-371.

Are You a Fat Writer?

09 Oct

Tags: 100 calories, Activity, Activity Level, amount, Bad, blog, blogger diet, burn, Calorie, calories, calories burned in a day, calories burned sitting, carbohydrate, change, computer, cortisol, deficit, desk training, difference, Fat Loss, fat writers, fight, healthy, HIIT, how to burn calories easy, how to burn fat at a desk, how to lose fat while sitting, increase, level, Men, Min Burpees, Min Fast, Min Jumping, Min Planks, Min Speed, movement, office exercise, office training, person, plan, Rate, reading, REST, stress, study, sweet, Timer, tips, Training, training for writers, war, weight, why cant office workers lose fat, workout, writers fat
Posted in Fat Loss | 16 Comments »

When I was writing my books one of the biggest problems I faced when trying to control my weight and maintain the body I wanted was dealing with the harsh change of my activity level. I went from training people in person all day long to spending a large chunk of time stuck at a computer. Sure I was producing a masterpiece, but I was also producing an ass.

In a day we burn X amount of calories. Everyday it changes. If you have a day you lay in bed and do nothing, you burn very few calories. If you have a day where you shovel snow so that you can go to the store and shop for two hours and then return home to make food for another hour and then you try to get in that HIIT workout before bed, then you burn a lot of calories.

To put it simply, you move more, you burn more.

The drag is that if you move less, you burn less.

During that period of time as I was finishing up my books I went from a daily caloric burn of 2500-2800 calories on average to 1600-1900 on average (the days I was really caught up in writing).

That is a decrease of roughly 1000 calories. That is a huge difference, HUGE.

What if I would have been trying to lose fat?

Some days, even eating 1200 calories, I wouldn’t even land in a 500 deficit. That is a harsh truth to face. Recently I have had a lot of arguments come my way about the fact that the calories you take in don’t matter. Just don’t eat “x” amount of “these kinds” of foods and you will be fine. However, the majority of my clients that come to me come because even with doing those “things” right, even with restricting carbs, even with avoiding those “bad” foods like a plague, they still couldn’t budge the fat. They still could not obtain the bodies they wanted.

You can blame carbs or fats all you want but at the end of the day, a fat free salad can still cause you to be stuck in your fat loss efforts.

Quick Fact: If you weigh roughly 130-160 pounds, are a generally healthy person, then every hour you sit and write you burn the amount of 1 egg or less.

Try and wrap your head around that. The average large egg is roughly 70 calories. At that weight, you hardly burn an egg. The average writer/blogger/forum poster can spend hours at a time writing, ranting, and working up one heck of a cortisol filled appetite.

Have you ever noticed how when in the middle of a back and forth conflict you turn to food? Have you ever noticed that while in the midst of what should be your Pulitzer Prize winning smack down, that all you want to do is grab a ciggy or glazed doughnut? That is writers stress at its peak! The intensity and passion of your emotions in that given situation need to be fueled! But guess what, on average you barely deserve a hard boiled egg. Is what your grabbing even close to what you are burning?

Why do you lunge for the carbs?

The only thing that suppress that stress and feeds the angry rage or blissful muse is insulin spiking, sugar bearing, sweet carbohydrates. Your body is smart, it will grave what it needs, and if it is around, you are going to go for it. You either fix or you feed the stress, which will it be?

How do you fix the stress?

Getting up and moving in interval sets of time is a big help towards…

Keep caloric burn up so that you can eat more
Lower stress levels by reducing cortisol
Upping serotonin levels so that you aren’t in such a bad mood and wont fight on the interwbz

Beyond that knowing that your nutrient intake is on point and that your calories are under control is the next. If you don’t know how to do those things then I suggest reading those books I gained an ass for.

>>Click Here<<

If you can’t do that I am not going to leave you hanging. Here is the best tips to up your calories while still writing your master pieces and being able to stuff your face with hot pockets.

Tip #1-Timer Training

I did a study on 3 people just this past month who sit all day. The difference in caloric burn in timing training was an average of 340 calories a day per person. That is huge and with little effort. Timer training is very simple, all you do is set out specific intervals of time where you can fit in as much aggressive movement as possible in the shortest amount of time. I recommend every hour doing 5 min rounds of the following…

1 Min Jumping Jacks
1 Min Speed Crunches
1 Min Burpees
1 Min Fast Body Weight Squats (Advance to Pistols if need)
1 Min Planks

If you hit at that every hour for 8 hours that is a 30 mins workout that will lead you to getting ripped in no time.

EDIT: For the Skirt Ladies (or men cause you know, equal fat loss rights here). Kick off heels though okay ladies/gents.

1 min Jog in Place
1 min Push Ups (if bent knee throw a proposal under there;) )
2 Min Plank Variations (Standard, One Arm Switch, One Leg Switch, Side)
1 Static Lunges

Enjoy!

Tip #2- Pace Yourself

Every time you take a call you stand up and start pacing. Pacing during a phone call can increase your caloric burn 200% over sitting. Meaning in 20 mins instead of burning 20 calories you can burn 60.

Tip #3- The Unstable Air Chair

I did another study around 5-6 months ago know with 4 people and monitored their burn while sitting on a Swiss exercise ball while working. Posture and caloric burn improved on average of a little over 100 calories. Please note that some did experience hemorrhoid increase, so get the H if need.

Overall if you combine just these three things you can increase your daily burn, without going to the gym, and without losing writing time on large levels, by upwards to 500-600 calories a day. You can still write your award winning piece, and looking hot doing it.

How many hours a day do you normally sit? Should you just be eating eggs every hour on the hour?

(HFCS) High Fructose Corn Syrups-New Sweet Surprise Commercials

03 Sep

Tags: Alan Aragon, Bad, basis, Corn Syrup, dangerous, doubt, end, Fructose, HFCS, HFCS commercials, high fructose corn syrup, industry, information, Research, right, study, sweet suprise, sweet surprise commercial
Posted in HFCS, healthy eating, high fructose corn syrup | 8 Comments »

By the end of this post you will never be confused about what is good and bad to eat again.

I don’t know if you have caught the new commercials on tv, but apparently corn was starting to get a little bitter about their constant bad press. It isn’t that I disagree really, I just think it is funny as an industry, as a country, that we are making pro High Fructose Corn Syrup ads. That is just the funniest thing I have seen in a long time.

To quickly note, sugar isn’t just sugar. Nothing is ever that black and white, but, is HFCS going to kill you, are they right? The short answer is, under current research, there is no danger with intake of HFCS on small levels. If looking for a interesting take on various HFCS study information hop over to Alan Aragon’s Research Review for the August edition. It might just surprise you.

I will be the first to admit that I have “feelings” about substances. My feelings about substances that you take into your body are pretty simple. I am going to do you the favor of sharing with you…the system. I have a rating system that I have designed that without a doubt will allow me to make, on average, the best food decisions. I guide by this rating system everyday. Sure, there are occasions where I have intake that goes against this rating, however it is rare and it is by just personal choice, not phobia.

Are you ready for my rating system that will help you guide by what to eat and what not to eat on a daily basis?

The System:

Eat Often=Foods that have a lot vitamins, minerals, and nutrients.
Eat Little=Foods that don’t.

That is the system.

Ask not what your food does to you, but what your food does for you.

Sleep, eat, and screw…yourself over?

25 Aug

Tags: Asia, belt, Calorie, carbohydrate, cortisol, damage, decline, deficit, Fat Loss, ghrelin, hormone, hours of sleep, leptin, metabolism, Rate, REST, sleep, sleep fat loss, sleep hunger, sleep study, sleep weight loss, stress, study
Posted in rest and diet, sleep and hunger, sleep for weight loss | 8 Comments »

In 2004 a study was done (1) that showed that lack of sleep for a short period of time saw an 18 percent decrease in leptin, a hormone that helps regulate the brains signaling for need of food, and a 28 percent increase in ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger. What this means is that in a very brief amount of time lack of sleep can do a big damage on fat loss efforts. Sleep loss seems to alter the ability of leptin and ghrelin to accurately signal caloric need and could lead to excessive calorie intake when food is all around. Add the chance of being hungry already due to a deficit and we get a final result that is not exactly optimal.

For the record, if you think just one night of no sleep is okay, think again. This recent 2008 study shows just one night of sleep affects hunger levels. (2)

To throw a different kind of log on the fire you have to look at the average decline of sleep in general over the past century. On average now adults are getting roughly 6 hours of sleep a night. We are seeing a decline in sleep and an increase in belt lines. While it is important to put so much of a focus on food this isn’t always the main issue at hand. Yes, overall calories do matter when it comes to fat loss. Sleep or no sleep, if you are eating in an excess little will matter. That being said, if you are set up to fail from get go, it is going to make this process that much harder.

One might want to argue that, again, the reason that the obesity problems are so out of control is due to the increase of carbohydrate intake over that same period of time. To this I want to point back to the original study (2004) in which that the 4 hr sleep folks wanted more candy and cookies and less dairy and meats. Why? When we lose sleep we increase hunger and decrease feeling of fullness and feed. However, we also increase cortisol and stress stimulation in the body. The main thing that blunts this in the body is carbohydrates. Since your body is pretty good, on average, of craving what it wants then it is going to lead you more to doughnuts and less towards the egg whites. The worst part is that lack of sleep decreases carbohydrate metabolism so you, again, are set up to fail. To point to a interesting side note it makes you wonder and think why Asia is starting to hop on board so fast with the obesity issues, being that a recent study showed there sleep has decreased by 2 hours a night on average. A country with already a very high carbohydrate diet is now suffering a worse fate. Could it be all that stress and lack of sleep isn’t helping?

I still blame Starbucks and McDonald’s myself.

My assignment to you:

1 week of sleep charting and accounting of your sleep habits.

I see so often people worrying about how many grams of starch carbs they are getting in a day, but neglect sleep. The goal is to try and get at least 7 hours of sleep at night (more is better) for 1 week. By the end of this I want you to share how you did putting an extra focus on how it affected your fat loss. Next Monday I am going to re-visit with you to see how it unfolds.

I am providing you with a PDF download I totally stole from some site off of goggle. I have no idea what they are selling or if they are. This is not a promotion for their product. I googled “sleep journal”, looked at a few, and thought this one was simple enough. I urge you to log even more than what this asks but I figured worst case you can print this off right now, and get going this evening.

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/pdf/sleepjj.pdf

Nite, nite.

1-http://www.annals.org/cgi/reprint/141/11/846.pdf
2-http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18564298

Can you be healthy and be fat? Does fat equal sick?

12 Aug

Tags: article, Dana, Dana Torres body, Fat Loss, healthy, healthy diets, hormone, News, obesity, overweight, Queen Latifah, study, Torres, weight loss
Posted in Dana Torres body, Queen Latifah, healthy and fat, obesity study | 4 Comments »

So um…how about that Queen Latifah post eh guys?

In my last post there were three main things that were misunderstood and need to be explained.

1-Being overweight means being unhealthy?

I never said that. I did say that “this is about understanding what 50 extra pounds of fat CAN do to the body.”

Folks need to really analyze my statement.

50 EXTRA pounds of FAT means that you are 50 pounds, of pure fat, over the ideal/healthy body fat range, leaving you in the land of Obesity. This is not a 5′4″ woman weighing 160 pounds that has 28% body fat. This is a 5′4″ woman weighing 200+ pounds that has 35%+ body fat. So your joints, sugar levels, hormone function…you name it are all impacted; your body will not be ideal or healthy. Sure, a short-term visit to obesity-land isn’t going to do much damage right away, but neither does smoking or drinking like a fish. However, you only have so long before those bad habits catch up with you and start costing a price.

I can show you a lot of information, from good studies, explaining how that kind of excess weight leads to problems. Sometime it can be as simple as just joint/energy-based impacts, but trust me, everything has a chain-and-effect result, and the little things add up in the aggregate.

2-Now, a look like Dana Torres can only come from 4 hours a day in the gym or with athletic training.

This is not a mythical body for a female. This does not take drugs. This does not take 4 hours in the gym everyday.

Again the lack of education is where the problem is, the naysayers aren’t getting it.

Now let me pre-face this by saying that her ACTUAL AB and BODY structure is as unique as…well her face is. Different people have different abs. Below is another example of about the same body fat percentage, but with a completely different ab structure.

Now while the second example is about the same amount of leanness and a very similar ab structure, this woman would have to get a little more ab muscle and a little lower in body fat to see the sort of “six pack” ab that Dana Torres has. Even then her abs might not be shaped the same way or ever as pronounced as in the first example.

The second example is also of a fitness model/bodybuilder, not an Olympic athlete. I know nothing about her except she posts from Figure Athlete.com. I merely went there to look for a picture example and almost immediately landed on what I needed. This is because women like this are everywhere and their approach is simple to do…if you know how. Notice I didn’t say easy to apply. The second example woman busted her butt and is in every way an “athlete” in her own sport. However, to achieve her results is more about watching your nutrition and training BALANCE than it is deprivation and aggressive movement.

3-Lastly it is thought, even though I stated it a few times, that I seem to think that “thin” means healthy. Not at all. Personally, I think common sense means healthy…but that is another topic.

In the case of the ever so popular growing “study” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26143255/) that overweight people can be healthy, well there are some problems with the methodology.

One, the study wasn’t even a study, it was a research article. It was put together from data collected through various methods of surveys over 5 years. It wasn’t controlled either. In short, it was not a “study” in the scientific sense (not that there isn’t something that we can learn from the interesting, elaborate…article…of collected surveys).

However, can any real definitive answer of the health of Overweight people really be given from this “study”?

Nope, not a little, not even close.

So the moral of the story is: NEVER trust a news source spin on a study. Always read the actual study and if you can’t get your hands on it, there are usually big hints in the article itself like this…

From the MSN article:

The new study, appearing in the latest issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, used government surveys from 1999 to 2004 that included lab tests and height and weight measurements. Participants reported on habits including smoking and physical activity.

This is no different than filling out a quiz for a magazine while sitting in the weighting room of the doctors office.

Overall my point is…

-You can be whatever it is you want to be.
-There is nothing to celebrate in, at best, joint stress and postural dysfunction from being largely overweight.
-I still think U.N.I.T.Y is one awesome song.
-Education and the facts will set you free.

Alan Aragon-Girth Control-A Review

23 Jun

Tags: Alan Aragon, carbs, discovery, eating, education, fat, Fat Loss, Girth, Good, health, information, knowledge, Loss, Muscle, plateau, protein, quality, reading, Research, science, speed, stop, Studies, study, taubes, trainer, Training
Posted in Alan Aragon, Fat Loss, review | 2 Comments »

I’m going to admit I’ve been guilty of skimming books. I read, and I read A LOT.

When I was about 11 years old I remember that infomercial sweater guy who had a speed reading course on his amazing discovery “show,” and I wanted it soooo bad. Needless to say I didn’t get it, but I did learn to read pretty fast anyway. Sometimes I read too fast and sometimes there were books you just can’t read that fast at all.

Enter Alan Aragon’s Girth Control: The Science Of Fat Loss and Muscle Gain.

Alan Aragon is by far one of the coolest guys I have never met. I have had the pleasure of talking to him a few times and can assure you that he is as smart as he is, and he also “get’s it.” That’s a rare quality. Most who are really smart like that miss the boat. They don’t “get it” and they can’t communicate with people. Instead, they just end up talking in a gibberish that only 10 other “smart people” can understand. It becomes an intellectual pissing contest if you will. It’s sad to see, but a bit funny to watch.

You don’t get that with Alan. However, this post isn’t about him really, this is about Girth.

The first time I read Girth I would call it “more grazing.” I saw enough to know that I would like it if I REALLY read it.

I got the urge to read it again, and really read it. Maybe I’m just smarter or maybe it’s just that I am dying for quality information but it was a heck of a great read the second time around.

First, who is this book for?

Currently, my readers right now are a bit all over the map, and I will be honest that for some of you the beginning aspect of this book may be too technical at first. However, I encourage you to push those boundaries of knowledge comfort anyways. Sometimes it’s a good thing to challenge your ability to learn. That is not to say that this is fat loss rocket science, I’m simply noting that some parts are advanced in discussion (i.e. scientific).

I will say if you’re a trainer and you want to be worth a grain of salt, you will buy this book. And if you ever read the phrase “studies show” and it actually means something to you, then you should buy this book.

Most of the world does not realize what a study is and how flawed they are in general yet many will make really important daily life choices because of them, or worse because of press summaries of those same studies. That can be a very dangerous thing for your ability to choose your own destiny and to go outside of that box that you have stuck yourself in.

If you ever want to free yourself of relying on the words of others, if you ever want to provide yourself with the ability to be the ones “in the know” then this is one hell of a place to start. This is the kind of book Taubes wishes he could write.

“With bills to pay and/or mouths to feed, scientists aren’t magically exempt from the many temptations and the guerrilla tactics of doing business.”

The first three chapters teach you how to understand research on a level of the technical and, even better, how to form opinion from scientific observations. These first sections are the ultimate lesson in study do’s, dont’s and they did what’s?

After that you get into the bulk of the book which is the teaching of what proteins, carbs, and fats really are and why we have the feelings and theories behind them that we do.

Is GI index really important?

What kind of role does insulin really play on fat loss?

How much protein do we really need?

How are fats changing the way we look at health?

One of my favorite parts of the book is the insertion of studies. While it may seem at first glance that Alan keeps the reading buried a bit too deep in data, you have to look between the lines a little bit and see that sometimes he is downright exposing hypocrisy and the ridiculous acts of our government and the lives of other cultures. Point being, it’s only dry if you don’t see the work for what it is: an exposure.

“I’ve always felt that Mother Nature winced every time a yolk hit the waste basket. Having scoured the research, it’s comforting to know that my gut feeling on the issue has a fair amount of support.”

Following that statement are some great study highlights about the effects of yolks on our health. I don’t know if any of you read the recent headlines about how eating eggs will kill you, but Alan can easily show you not only is this not the case but also, again, how to read an actual study and see it’s flaws.

There is also some talk of supplements in Girth, what they do, and if you need them. A book that saves some money in your pocket is always a good read as the majority of us are always walking to GNC.

Alan finishes out the book with what you need to do to achieve either fat loss or muscle gain on a optimum and successful level. This is where his information, for the most part, is a pretty easy read. He covers some great topics from fasting, pre/post workout nutrition, interval training, and the bodies ability to adapt to dieting down.

“The body is simply doing its job as an adaptive survival unit when a plateau occurs. When you stop to think about it, the ultimate goal is to plateau!”

Obviously my focus is on fat loss, and, well, technically Alan is my competition but what can I say, the man does his job and he does it well. If you already have my books (’cause you know you should) then why not add Alan’s to the collection as well? Never be afraid to learn more, never be afraid to keep diving deep. There are few of us out there in the world who don’t like to be told what to think and do. I think this is why I liked Girth so much; I like those who scream against the crowd.

It’s safe to say that Girth delivers on the knowledge front. I hope you take a chance and believe in your ability of thought and give it a shot as well. Always strive to put knowledge in your own hands because that’s the true way to lead to a new life.

Knowledge is fat loss power.

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To get Girth go check out Alan’s site at www.alanaragon.com.

And if you want to DOUBLE your learning efforts take 10 lousy bucks ($10 USD) and sign up for his research review as well. (Click Below)