Hey what about beer and your eating plan? Here is my take with help from Joel Marion… Its great when one of your mentors thinks along the same lines as you do.

So, when it comes to Cheat Days and the Warrior Fit Body Solution program, one of the more common questions I receive is the beer question:

“How many beers can I drink?”

Well, within the manual one of the few “rules” I place on Cheat Days is that alcohol consumption be limited.

Why?  Because alcohol intake lowers leptin levels, which is the exact opposite of everything we are trying to do hormonally on a Cheat Day.

So, what then, is the solution?  Well, if you’re looking to get DRUNK, then I’m afraid there is no solution. However, if you just happen to enjoy the taste of beer (like me) and similarly prefer beer as your beverage of choice to wash down your Cheat Day feast, then there is one particular beer that actually may be able to boost your fat loss results:

O’Douls, non-alcoholic. Realistically there are a ton of Non-alcoholic beers out there.

Fact is, it’s everything that beer is, just without the alcohol, and tastes strikingly similar to most other domestics.  In fact, in a recent “study” (performed in my kitchen) 7 out of 7 people were not able to tell the difference between O’Douls and 2 other alcoholic domestic brews.

So, how can it help you burn fat?

Well, if you’re familiar with the science behind the Warriors eating plan, then you know that simple carbohydrates are by far the most effective nutrients for boosting leptin levels.  O’Doul’s contains plenty of simple carbs, without the leptin-plummeting alcohol content (and it tastes just the same…after all, it is beer).

And it also contains ZERO crap carbs, like high-fructose corn syrup (the most common “beverage” sweetener), which has repeatedly been shown to be one of the most fat-promoting carb sources around.

So, for a Cheat Day choice of beer, I gotta recommend O’Doul’s.  Yes, it’s non-alcoholic.  Get over it.

But what if you want to have a beer during the week, not a Cheat Day?  Is that totally off limits, or is it OK to sneak a light beer every so often?

Answer:  Will a light beer on rare occasion totally sabotage your results?  (I know, that’s a question, not an answer).

Considering that most light beers are around 100 calories, if you had 2-3 a week, I’m going to say no, that’s probably not going to make a substantial difference (especially if you’re compensating for that intake via other means [an extra exercise session, decreased cals elsewhere, etc]).

But hey, if no alcohol is the deal breaker then why not go for the lowest calorie and lowest carb content?  Here are the Top 3 lowest-calorie, lowest-carb beers:

1.  Bud Select 55 (55 cals)

2. Beck’s Premier Light (64 cals)

3. MGD 64 (64 cals)

They’re all less than 3 carbs per 12 oz. and a whopping 2.5% alcohol by volume (that’s how they’re so low calorie).  But, I actually like Beck’s and MGD 64 ? full flavor beers despite the minimal calorie content.

So, if you want to enjoy the refreshing taste of an ice cold brewsky (or 5 or 6) on your Cheat Day, go with the leptin-boosting properties of O’douls instead of the leptin-crashing properties of other alcoholic brews.  O’Douls contains the right types of carbs to positively affect leptin (i.e. simple, fast acting, insulin-spiking carbs), while alcohol unfortunately counteracts the intended hormonal purpose of the Cheat Day.

On other days, a 60-calorie low-carb beer won’t do much damage, but it’s all about moderation (limit to a couple times a week and you’ll be good).

Make no mistake I still recommend the O’Douls with no alcohol.

And again remember that this is a lifestyle change and you want to make it as simple and least disruptive as possible to be able to continue for a healthy long lived happy life.

To your health,

-Darrin Walton

Here’s a post from Fitsugar. One way to have your strawberries I never thought of.

One of the best things about Spring is the abundance of fresh strawberries — raw, cooked, baked, or pureed, I can’t get enough of ’em. I’ve even been known to freeze baskets of berries so I can still enjoy them after the season ends.

One of my favorite ways to enjoy strawberries is to toss them with balsamic vinegar; the sweet flavors of the strawberries pair nicely with the tart, acidic flavors of the vinegar. This snack is fantastic on a hot day, or a great way to have a light, healthy dessert after a meal. I slice and hull berries from one basket and toss in about one teaspoon of a good balsamic vinegar. Let that soak for about 20 minutes and you’re done. If I’m feeling extra snazzy, I’ll add chopped mint, black pepper, or a little bit of sugar. Eat alone, drizzle over yogurt, or serve next to your favorite cookie.

Try it out…be adventurous you may end up loving it and remember that strawberries have more vitimin C than oranges.

Train hard live lean,

-Darrin

Here’s an excerpt from an email I received today on the benefits of grass fed animals. Some of this may surprise you on the abundance of omega-3’s and CLA. Check it out…

I know you’ve heard all of the buzz over the last few years about the health benefits of wild salmon and other fish that have higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids.

However, did you know that there’s a “land meat” that has similar omega-3/omega-6 ratios as wild salmon?  In fact, this “land meat” not only contains as much, or even higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids, but without the possible negatives such as heavy metals (mercury, etc) and PCBs that can be found in fish frequently.

I’ve talked about this type of meat before and how it’s one of the healthiest forms of meat you can possibly eat… It’s grass-fed beef and other grass-fed ruminant meats such as bison, buffalo, lamb, and venison.

Now I know that a lot of people will try to convince you that meat is not good for you… and to be honest I partially agree with them when it comes to your typical factory farm-raised meat where the animals are fattened up with huge quantities of grains & soy that are not their natural diet & given unhealthy doses of hormones, antibiotics, etc.

However, when animals are healthy and eat the diet they were meant to eat naturally, the meat is actually healthy for us.

Let’s take beef for example… When cattle eat mostly grain and soy, the fat composition of their meat becomes higher in inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids and lower in beneficial omega-3 fatty acids.

On the other hand, when cattle eat mostly grass instead of grains/soy, their meat becomes higher in omega-3s and lower in omega-6 fatty acids. In addition, grass-fed beef also contains much higher levels of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which has shown some promising benefits in studies for losing body fat and gaining lean muscle mass.

A similar comparison can be made between wild salmon and farm raised salmon. Wild salmon is a healthier option than farm raised salmon and has higher levels of omega-3s because the wild salmon eat what they’re supposed to eat naturally. On the other hand, farm raised salmon are fattened up unnaturally with grain/soy based food pellets which detrimentally changes the salmon’s fat ratio of omega-6 to omega-3.

The problem is that it is VERY hard to find healthy grass-fed meats in typical grocery stores. In fact, even at health food stores, you might find some “organic” meats (which is at least a little better than standard), but it is often hard to find any real grass-fed meats.

Wouldn’t it give you peace of mind to know that you and your family are eating meat that is actually good for you instead of the mass produced junk at most grocery stores? I know where I’m getting most of my meat and I know how they were raised and fed. Do you?

If you are interested in more information on where you can get quality local grass fed beef at a reasonable price let me know by email at crookedtreecattle@gmail.com

Stay healthy and lean,

-Darrin Walton

It’ about goddamn time. New York Times nonetheless.
What I find frustrating is that he says “some” studies have found health benefits with smaller meals, when the opposite is true as well. And not to mention, while some studies found an insignificant increase in metabolic rate with a dozen mini-meals per day, the great majority of meal frequency studies point in favor of lower meal frequencies as noted in a widely cited review of the topic (the difference is statistically insignificant in most – but still, how ironic that this myth were allowed to live on for so long).
Click here to see my review of the study mentioned in New York Times. You can also click the meal frequency tag if you want to read my other posts related to meal frequency, fasting and metabolism. There’s all kinds of goodies here…
And if you love me, make sure you tweet the shit […]

Original post by noreply@blogger.com (Martin Berkhan)

Life Extension.
My personal opinion from reviewing the fasting/caloric restriction (a term I hate) research is that there really isn’t anything non-medical we can do to greatly extend our lifespan.
On the other hand, there is a LOT of things we can do to keep from ending our lives prematurely…which sadly I believe is the fate of most people living in North America.
Live to 150? Probably not yet.
Live to 100 and spend as much of those years ‘with it’ as possible…not a completely unreasonable goal.
So what can you do to avoid being like everyone else? (IE NOT cutting 15 years off your life and dying of a preventable disease)
Simple:
1. Eat Less
2. Stress Less
3. Weigh Less
Numbers 1 and 2 are easy (ESE) and pretty self explanatory.
Number 3 is where I think my next couple paragraphs may start an on-line fist fight.
So here it goes.
Most people reading this really want me to say that […]

Original post by Brad Pilon

I ranted a little about diet approach, leptin and the set-point theory on bodybuilding.com. Figured it could make for a decent post here. I added some extras in the form of a short review on the effects of intermittent fasting on leptin.
—
Short background on leptin and set-pointLeptin is a master-hormone with downstream effects on other hormones related to metabolism (T3/T4, neuropeptide-Y, epinephrine, among many others).
In the short term leptin is regulated by under-and overfeeding. More to the point, anything that causes fat mobilization from adipose tissues will drop leptin; this is basically unavoidable.
In the long-term, leptin is regulated by total amount of fat mass. A drop in leptin affects the other hormones negatively and vice versa. Low leptin equals an increase in hunger and metabolic rate, much like high leptin equals a decrease in hunger and increase in metabolic rate.
Generally speaking, lean people have low levels of leptin while obese […]

Original post by noreply@blogger.com (Martin Berkhan)

Hey there, it’s Darrin Walton from http://www.FitWarriors.com and I have a couple interesting stories to tell you… well I will tell one and Certified Nutrition Specialist Mike Geary will tell you one.

I may not have said anything about this but the similarities were so close its funny.

First I will let Mike tell you about his experience and at the end I will tell you mine. Enjoy and think about what is in your cart at the store… you will see what I mean.

Here’s Mike Geary’s story.
============================================================================

I was at the grocery store today picking up some ingredients for a black bean & brown rice with seasoned venison strips dish I was planning to make, when an interesting thing happened…

I had gone straight to the grocery store after training a couple clients at the gym. Well, as I was grabbing some frozen veggies, a friendly lady (who must have seen that I was a fitness coach from my shirt), asked me my advice on a couple frozen prepared box meals she was picking out (by the way, those prepared frozen meals are usually highly processed crap loaded with sodium and other chemicals).

Now I will say that this woman was VERY overweight, and she mentioned that she has “tried everything” to get rid of all of the excess body fat and always failed.

Keep in mind I hear about 50 people a day tell me they’ve “tried everything” to get in shape. The problem that they don’t realize is that they’re trying all of the wrong things…they’re trying all of the gimmicks and fads that are out there instead of just adopting a TRUE healthy active lifestyle.

Back to the woman in the store…

So we started chatting about her struggles with getting in shape, and I began scanning her grocery cart. If I can remember, these were some of the contents she thought were healthy:

*Slim fast shakes (far from healthy…they’re actually loaded with high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and a bunch of other chemicals)

*Fat Free Rice Cakes (ok…despite so many people believing these pieces of crap are healthy…they really are nothing but pure refined starch with zero fiber, which basically breaks down immediately into sugar in your body, spiking insulin and promoting fat storage…doesn’t sound so good anymore, huh)

*Protein bars “Scientifically Slim Body Engineered” or some BS statement like that (I took a gander at the ingredient list of these so called “healthy” protein bars and sure enough… hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, and enough sugar alcohols to give you diarrhea for a week!)

*Canned fruit in syrup (I guess she could do worse here…but still, why not just eat fresh whole fruit which still contains the skins, fiber, active enzymes, etc, instead of resorting to processed, canned fruit that’s been cooked and loaded with syrup)

*Reduced Sugar Dessert Cakes (ok, so these are loaded with artificial sweeteners, sugar alcohols, preservatives, and a chemical ingredient list about 15 lines long)

Do you see what’s going on here? This is the same scenario that I see all the time.

Most people are fooled by what the FRONT OF THE BOX says, leading them to believe what they are buying is healthy. On all of these items, the FRONT of the packages had all kinds of great sounding things like “fat free”, “reduced sugar”, “high protein”, “low cholesterol”, “low carb”, etc.

However, the TRUTH is on the BACK OF THE BOX! Ah yes, the ingredient list and nutrition info is where the real truth is. However, I’ve realized that most of the general public doesn’t know how to fully understand the ingredient list and nutrition info, so they rely on the advertising claims on the front of the package to guide them.

BIG MISTAKE!

If you notice, this woman thought she was doing great with her grocery shopping and buying all kinds of healthy stuff for her and her family.

In reality, EVERYTHING she was buying was highly processed and full of chemicals and industrially refined ingredients. No wonder “nothing has worked” for her to get in shape and lose the body fat… she actually hasn’t been doing anything right. She’s been mislead by all of the confusing marketing, labeling and conflicting nutrition info in the mass media.

Have fun and choose wisely on your next grocery store trip!

Stay lean,

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist

See what I mean? You CAN NOT go by what the ads or the front of the box says flip it over and read what you are putting in your body.

So anyway here is my story:

My son is going on a school outing up snow shoeing at our local ski resort Bogus Basin and had this wild idea he needed a foot long sub for yeah you guessed it $5 (that jingle going off in your head? … Yeah that is the power of mass advertising)

As we are in there building his sub a group of people come in and you could tell they had just come from working out at the big corporate gym down the road. They were talking about how good a workout they had just completed and how hungry they were now and really needed to replenish their bodies.

I nearly busted out laughing when one woman says to the other “ I worked really hard so I am going to have the foot long chicken special, chips a pop and two cookies.”

Now grant it you can eat healthy in these places, think of Jared… but you absolutely can not over eat and you still have to skip the specialty sub’s that are loaded with sugars and chemicals that is not to mention the cookies. Her meal was in the nationhood of double what she realistically burned at the gym. So unless they were there just for the social aspect it was a wasted trip for sure.

Unfortunately this sort of thing is happens way to often and it leaves people frustrated that they are not losing the body fat so they quite going to the gym thinking … oh its just my genetics. Well … I say no way José to that because all you need is a bit of guidance and accountability and I am great at telling people what to do…ha haaa.

But seriously now.

If you want to discover the TRUTH about what it really takes to eat a truly healthy diet that maximizes your metabolism, brings your hormonal balance back to normal, reduces cravings, and strips off body fat faster than you’d believe is possible… it’s all found in my Warrior Fit Body Solution program at http://fitwarriors.com/wfbs/membership.html

Here’s what some of my students are saying about their experiences with this program:

http://www.boisefitnessbootcamp.com/success-stories/

Those are just a few examples. Come by a experience it for yourself!

Live lean, strong and happy,

-Darrin Walton
http://www.fitwarriors.com

I arrived home from my family trip to see my newly finished kitchen floor.
It was beautiful.

I remember thinking to myself..I’m finally getting this fixer-upper to somewhere approaching respectability.
I wasn’t planning on doing the floor, but the old tiles were splintering, and with Ro Wilder crawling, they were becoming a safety hazard.
So I felt really good that everything was finished and was done really well.
Of course that was Friday Night…And this is Sunday Morning.
And this Morning this was the scene in my basement:

I’ll spare you the picture of the pool of water on the ground, but needless to say, I’m not a happy camper.
I’m also not fasting.
I WAS fasting..
In fact when I found the pool in the basement I was about 17 hours into a fast
By 20 hours into my fast I was eating.
Why?
Simple: Stress….horrible, illogical stress.
Eating will not change the fact that water seems to be flowing from somewhere (I’m […]

Original post by Brad Pilon

Matt McClain – Rocky Mountain News

Gluttonicide

Main Entry: glut·toni·cide
Pronunciation: ?gl?-t?n-?s?d
Function: noun
Date: 2010
.
1 [Latin gluttonicidium, from glutton- + -cidium -cide] : the act or an instance of taking one’s own life voluntarily and intentionally by means of habitual eating to excess
.
2 : one that commits or attempts gluttonicide
.
I discovered this amazing new word while skimming some new studies online.
You are not going to believe the research I am going to share with you tomorrow.

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If you like what you see here, click here for updates

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Despite growing insight into neuroscience and the physical limitations of our consciousness, we have the tendency to ascribe a limitlessness to our minds. We readily accept the existence of certain boundaries in the material world, like fences, social stations, rules, laws (of physics and of states), or physical characteristics (”You must be this tall to ride the roller-coaster”), but when it comes to the inner world – the mind, our memories, our imagination, our cognition, and our social skills – we have trouble conceiving of real mechanical limits. When a word eludes us, playing about the periphery of our cognition (“tip of the tongue”), do we complain about faulty hardware? When we forget that cute girl’s name we just met at the party, do we blame the lack of available short-term memory data “chunks”? It’s only through neurological research that we’re even “aware” of the bioelectric interplay that is our […]

Original post by Mark Sisson