Paleo Diet | Successful Primal Living

Approximately two months ago, I began a new workout routine which increased the frequency of my squats. At the same time, I decided to tweak my diet.

Fast forward two months, I still weighed the exact same. HOW DISCOURAGING. Luckily I had a body fat analysis done prior to starting, and decided to take another one to see if anything had happened.

To my surprise, my body fat % had gone down 4.1%, and my muscle mass had correspondingly gone up!

So test your body fat! Most gyms have a body composition analyzing machine (let’s face it, the good ones are kinda expensive to buy…), and so do some workplaces.

A Bio Impedance Scale - A Step Above Regular Scales

Before making any changes in your routine/diet, make sure you get some numbers to compare down the road. The scale is way too blunt of an instrument! If that’s still not doable, take before/after pictures, look in the mirror, and pay attention to how your favorite pair of jeans and lucky shirt fit you.

- Continue reading Importance of Body Fat Analysis AKA Why the F@&$ Do I Still Weigh the Same?

This post is archived under Workouts.

In my time, I have seen many attempts at cutting (the act of drastically reducing weight, usually for a competition).

One of the most drastic ones I’ve ever seen was a reduction to 1000 daily calories coupled with a maintenance workout. The logic employed by the fella was that he didn’t have the willpower to sustain a long-term, more gradual diet, and would thus be more successful in losing the weight very quickly with hardcore measures, then transitioning into maintenance.

This is a good examples, and an even better teaching experience. Here are some pointers with such a regimen:

1. Your metabolism is going to slow down. You cannot compromise on the workout.
2. Your metabolism is going to SLOW. DOWN. It would help to take a fat loss supplement high in caffeine, such as Animal Cuts. I personally prefer Animal Cuts because I can pick out the blue pills, which essentially dehydrate the body. This is a cool effect that make you look very dry, but in reality is kinda useless in terms of performance, and tricking you into thinking you lost more weight than you actually did.
3. You are going to lose muscle. There’s pretty much no way around this one. However you can minimize damage. One way to do this is with a cyclic ketogenic diet (Basically Atkins with a 36 hour carb up period at the end of the week).
4. Diet supplements will somewhat help with your diet, but prepare to be hungry. Some days, you will have the urge to FEAST as a reward for putting yourself through such a grueling endeavor. Don’t. This will set you back farther than you started, and will discourage the shit out of you. Which brings us to number 5
5. Fiber is your friend. I cannot say this enough. Cabbage, lettuce, broccoli. Eat it raw, steam it, salt it, pepper it, lemon it. Do anything and everything, just don’t sauce or saute it.
6. Finally, go to bed hungry, and generally chug a lot of zero calorie liquids, from water to diet sodas.

This approach takes ridiculous mental effort, and you are likely to fail. But if you have the cojones to take this on, best of luck and please let us know your results!

- Continue reading Desperate Times – Desperate Measures

This post is archived under Workouts.

I pick things up, and put them down. I pick things up, and put them down. Although created to symbolize oaf-like gym rats, this is one of the greatest mantras I have ever heard.

Our ancestors did not have slaughterhouses, or giants pens and corrals. Our ancestors had plains, savannas, jungles and forests. Our ancestors ran kilometre after kilometer, running down animals they had injured. They then lugged back kilogram upon kilogram of delicious and nutritious meat. And they were good at it (Proof: The Human species still exists).

Gravity is your frenemy. Go shake hands. Today. Unless you already have 10% bodyfat and can do something like 75 unassisted push ups, you do not need to be doing isolation exercises.

That’s because your body machinery does not require this. Doing an isolation exercise when you are not already ultrafit is like putting a turbocharger in a Honda Civic without upgrading any of the other components. Basically it is dangerous, it will slow your progress down, and as an added bonus you will look like a fool.

So you ask, how do I upgrade the whole car? Easy: You need to do compound exercises, at least 3 days a week. A compound lift is defined as “A lift that utilizes a freakin’ ton of muscles from all of your body”. I found that in the dictionary of awesomeness. Ok, maybe I made it up, but you get the gist.

Here are my favorite compound lifts:

• Squats
• Deadlifts
• Bench Press

She probably squats more than you.

Arnold doing the bench press (because the google results for

These 3 exercises can make up 60% of your weekly routine. And Rambo, before you come and tell me it’s too simple, why don’t you try it out. If you haven’t been lifting properly, then you can’t start with big boy weights, because your form sucks, and it makes the whole gym session pointless.

So, how do you know if your form sucks? Stay tuned for the next post in which I will go into the details of proper form while doing squats, deadlifts, and bench presses.

- Continue reading The Definitive Primal Workout Guide

This post is archived under Workouts.