A Quick Look at the Fitness & Bodybuilding Pseudo/Bro-Science, Week 45

If you’re new to me and my website, I worked daily in the Fitness-, Bodybuilding-, Gym-, and Competitive Sports industry for almost 22-years with nutrition, supplementation, and training — and was involved in it for a total of more than 26 years. Most of that time, I too was trapped in the pseudo-science of “nutrition science” and was fooled by the synthetic toxic crap of the pharmaceutical and supplement industry. My outlook and understanding took a sharp turn as I became severely ill in late 2017 with several tumors, liver and kidney damage and my thyroid shutting down. In a last effort I turned it around in a matter of a few weeks by adopting our natural species appropriate diet of the raw flesh and fat of animals and by following up with regular water-fasting combined with days of dry fasting. You can read more about that here:

My Journey – Why I do what I do…
https://bartoll.se/2021/03/my-journey-and-battle-with-death/

This week we visit the oldest ‘fitness and bodybuilding’ magazine still going – the more mainstream ‘Muscle & Fitness,’ founded back in 1935 by Joe Weider. As I grew up in the 80’s, I didn’t really read it as I was more into Flex, MuscleMag International, Iron Man, and later on Muscle Media 2000.

So, looking at their nutrition section the first article is about ‘how to eat during a vacation.” Well, that’s simple, you eat as you always do. Why would you go out of your way and poison and hurt yourself on a vacation by consuming crappy plant-based kibble? Simply get the best possible meat and animal-based foods you can get. And that’s it. Let’s move on. I just saved you 10 minutes of scrambled words typed by some monkey.

Among the featured articles we have a culinary piece on how to prepare you next fish dish. Well, that’s mainstream for sure. While cooking can be an interesting subject (although I consume most food raw,) let’s stick with nutrition.

Next up is an article about “caffeine and performance.” Well, no. Caffeine is a poison. Although it stimulates your central nervous system in an unnatural manner, it also invokes a great stress response and your body will have to detoxify from that poison. That is not healthy. That is very damaging to the body in the long run. So, no. Do not touch caffeine. You will do much better without it. And if you currently consume caffeine, you will be amazed how much better you feel once you have detoxified from it!

I covered caffeine and fake “energy drinks” in this article:

The third featured article seems a bit more interesting as the headline reads as, “When and how long should you fast for?”
Well, an article on fasting. A subject I first came across in 1997 with the ‘Animal Diet,’ the first real intermittent fasting protocol of one small pre-workout meal and one big post-workout meal, and that was it.

This article, by ‘Scott Felstead,’ starts off with a quick introduction mentioning that the author is 52-years old and that he discovered fasting in his 30’s, mainly as a tool to lose and control body weight. Well, I’m 48 and discovered it in my mid-20’s, but I didn’t really start to use fasting as a tool until 2006, a bit similar to his story, I guess. He mentions that he felt fasting was better because traditional diets of energy restriction made him hungry. Well, that’s one drawback. Another is that ‘energy restriction’ will quickly lower your metabolism and not getting enough nutrients will impair muscle growth and hormone production. That is why it is so much better to eat as you always do for 4 or 5 days a week, and fast for 2 or 3 days to shed body fat, if that is the goal. I covered that simple approach here:

He then mentions that extended fasts of four to 21 days are beneficial, and that adults should do a kind of maintenance fast of one or more weeks every year. And yes, I agree, very much so. Unfortunately, the theme of the article then changes to Intermittent fasting – and that is not really fasting. Yes, you do allow your body to detoxify a little and speed up repairs if you do not consume any food at all for a period longer than 12 hours, as in Intermittent fasting. But real fasting is anything that extend beyond 36 hours. Until then, the benefits are small, and it’s not until the 36-hour mark or so that autophagy really kicks in.

While Intermittent fasting is a great way to maintain health and let your body do its daily detox as intended, however, if you need to heal or really detoxify, you need to fast for 4-days or longer. It’s important to make that distinction. Fasting is going without any sustenance, as in food, for longer than 36-hours. Intermittent fasting is simply having a daily feeding window of less than 12 hours, usually 6 hours and then “fasting” the rest of the day. It’s a restricted eating window. And it is how we should be eating.

And, as the author of this article, I do agree that limiting your feeding window to anything less than 6 hours is most likely counterproductive. Doing the “One Meal a Day” (OMAD) or only eating during two or four hours put a lot of stress on your digestive system considering all the food and nutrients you need to get within that time frame. Actually, consuming all your daily food within a time frame of 6 to 8 hours is pretty ideal. That is, two or three meals for example between 7am and 1- or 3pm. And on top of that, for rebuilding cells and reverse the aging process, you can fast for 5 to 10 days once or twice a year.

Scott also recommends to have your feeding window early in the day, and not to eat anything in the evenings. I agree to some extent, or at least, do not consume anything closer than 3 to 4 hours before bedtime as digestion will interfere with your sleep. So, if you go to bed at 9pm, you could have your first meal at 11am and your last at 5pm, for example.

And, this goes without saying, you should of course be following our species appropriate, species-specific diet of consuming the flesh and fat of animals, as in being fully animal-based, or carnivore.

All in all, this was actually one of the better articles I’ve reviewed thus far. For those interested in extended fasting, in healing, detoxification, and repair, check out my Dry Fasting series below. Actually, ‘dry fasting’ is superior for kicking your caffeine addiction – without any withdrawal symptoms! You can do it in a few days and then you’ll feel like a young kid again!