Getbig.com: American Bodybuilding, Fitness and Figure
Getbig Main Boards => Gossip & Opinions => Topic started by: El Diablo Blanco on August 01, 2008, 08:59:41 AM
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I just did a five day fasting cleanse. All I got to eat was a fiber supp 3 times a day and some nasty cleansing pills. It is hard as shit not eating for five days. Surprisingly I only crapped twice. I usually shit once a day but on this diet I only crapped twice. last night I had my first mean since last Friday and an hour later I had the biggest crap of my life.
Overall I lost 20 pounds, probably all water weight but after struggling not eating for the first 3 days the last two were easy. I feel lighter and way more energetic.
Can't wait to get back to th gym next week.
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You forgot to mention the weather
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You forgot to mention the weather
and sports
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I've wanted to try this.
Were you still training during the fast? Do you work a job that is either physically or mentally demanding, and if so, were you able to sustain it?
Lastly, how did you look in the mirror when it was done? Were you noticably thinner? Did you lose fat or muscle or both?
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I just did a five day fasting cleanse. All I got to eat was a fiber supp 3 times a day and some nasty cleansing pills. It is hard as shit not eating for five days. Surprisingly I only crapped twice. I usually shit once a day but on this diet I only crapped twice. last night I had my first mean since last Friday and an hour later I had the biggest crap of my life.
Overall I lost 20 pounds, probably all water weight but after struggling not eating for the first 3 days the last two were easy. I feel lighter and way more energetic.
Can't wait to get back to th gym next week.
Rampage jackson tried some fasting to "cleanse" his issues.
Didn't work out too well :'(
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I've wanted to try this.
Were you still training during the fast? Do you work a job that is either physically or mentally demanding, and if so, were you able to sustain it?
Lastly, how did you look in the mirror when it was done? Were you noticably thinner? Did you lose fat or muscle or both?
I started on Friday so by Monday at work I would be used to it and also know the effects on my stomach.
I took a week off training. It recomends to limit physical work. It was nice being lazy for five days. After you get over the mental fucking that happens with food cravings you move on. I had presentations to do on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday that went perfect. So it didn't mess with my mental abilities. I actually felt real energetic as well. Only felt tired on day one and had a bit of a headache that went away.
Funny thing is my body looked flat. No muscle pumps, but I was thinner. My belt had to be tightened a lot more than usual. I probably didn't lose any muscle in 5 days since the body will burn fat for energy first then swtich to muscle. I'll know when I go back to the gym on Monday how my strength was affected.
I never had any killer craps until after I ate my first meal. You have to be mentally strong to get through 5 straight days with no foods. On day four I didn't even want to take the fiber supps anymore. I just wasn't hungry.
This was done not for fat loss but to kick start my digestive system as I am starting a cleaner diet now and needed to clean up my system.
Funny thing is I sweat a lot and this time I never sweat. I actually got cold where I normally would be hot and sweaty with 80 degree weather.
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I've done this as well. The one thing you notice is how much extra time you have. Eating takes a lot of time...even if you eat fast. During my fast I was cold all the time after the 3rd day. I was covering up with blankets and this was in July when I did my fast.
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I started on Friday so by Monday at work I would be used to it and also know the effects on my stomach.
I took a week off training. It recomends to limit physical work. It was nice being lazy for five days. After you get over the mental fucking that happens with food cravings you move on. I had presentations to do on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday that went perfect. So it didn't mess with my mental abilities. I actually felt real energetic as well. Only felt tired on day one and had a bit of a headache that went away.
Funny thing is my body looked flat. No muscle pumps, but I was thinner. My belt had to be tightened a lot more than usual. I probably didn't lose any muscle in 5 days since the body will burn fat for energy first then swtich to muscle. I'll know when I go back to the gym on Monday how my strength was affected.
I never had any killer craps until after I ate my first meal. You have to be mentally strong to get through 5 straight days with no foods. On day four I didn't even want to take the fiber supps anymore. I just wasn't hungry.
This was done not for fat loss but to kick start my digestive system as I am starting a cleaner diet now and needed to clean up my system.
Funny thing is I sweat a lot and this time I never sweat. I actually got cold where I normally would be hot and sweaty with 80 degree weather.
yea, you know your science, don't you? oh brother...
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I've done this as well. The one thing you notice is how much extra time you have. Eating takes a lot of time...even if you eat fast. During my fast I was cold all the time after the 3rd day. I was covering up with blankets and this was in July when I did my fast.
Haha, exactly. I needed a blanket as well. I never actually felt warm until I ate my first meal after the fast. I've come to the conclusion that I sweat from eating. 5 days seems like an eternity. You get past it though and it seems like nothing but at the time it seemed like forever
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yea, you know your science, don't you? oh brother...
explain then? How much muscle would you lose in 5 days? I didn't do any physical activites so my body was using enough calories to get through the day. From what I read the body uses a majority of your caloric intake for digestion and since I wasn't digesting anything that it wasn't needed.
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Then why do most bodybuilders feel the need to eat more than 50g's of protein EVERYDAY to keep from sacrificing that precious muscle?
you know the type that goes crazy if they dont get their 20 egg whites, 3 chicken breasts, 2 turkeys in everyday or catabolism will take effect. Im just fuckin with u really man, im sure u didnt "lose" any muscle..... but i just think that the "STAPLE" of bodybuilding dieting is never looked at beyond the pages of what they read in flex or bb.com.
Look at basketball, baseball, football players.. u cant tell me they eat more than what... maybe 60g's of protein a day? I mean the MAJORITY of them is what im talking about, im sure there is a minority that eats similar to a bb diet. But, i mean come on bro the muscle/conditioning of must of these guys is insane.. and that just goes from eating NORMAL GHETTO DIETS like they did in their childhood..
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Then why do most bodybuilders feel the need to eat more than 50g's of protein EVERYDAY to keep from sacrificing that precious muscle?
you know the type that goes crazy if they dont get their 20 egg whites, 3 chicken breasts, 2 turkeys in everyday or catabolism will take effect. Im just fuckin with u really man, im sure u didnt "lose" any muscle..... but i just think that the "STAPLE" of bodybuilding dieting is never looked at beyond the pages of what they read in flex or bb.com.
Look at basketball, baseball, football players.. u cant tell me they eat more than what... maybe 60g's of protein a day? I mean the MAJORITY of them is what im talking about, im sure there is a minority that eats similar to a bb diet. But, i mean come on bro the muscle/conditioning of must of these guys is insane.. and that just goes from eating NORMAL GHETTO DIETS like they did in their childhood..
That's because they're doing some crazy workouts and steroids are useless unless you're taking in a lot of protein. I wasn't working out. I took time off. I litterally rested all weekend and was a lazy ass.
I know some black guys that will eat like shit, lift and still get big and stay ripped. A friend of mine didn't eat breakfast and for lunch would eat a big mac and for dinner later at night would chow down two 1/4 pounders with fries. The guy was ripped.
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no offense, but fasting is stupid.
and please explain how steroids are useless without tons of protein ?
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no offense, but fasting is stupid.
and please explain how steroids are useless without tons of protein ?
What is the key basis for taking steroids fucktard? For optimum protein synthesis. It allows your body to recuperate better but to recuperate you need protein to rebuild. Why don't you google some more and cut and paste a post here acting like you're an expert even though you just plagarize.
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omg CANDIDIZZLE U DONT FUCKING GET IT!!!!!
"no offense, fasting is stupid" oh ok none taken..... geezus are u human? hahah u fuckin dipshit mother fucker god i want to hurt you.
Please provide relevant and logical resources that will support your claim that fasting has no benefits.
Fasting is the best thing any human being can do if they are healthy enough to do it. You eat EVERYDAY for 20-30+ years, u dont think it'd just be "ok" to give your digestive system a break?
I really do hope u dont raise your hand much in class
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um. protein synthesis. do you have any idea the milliuons of body processes that are all involved and intertwined with such a vague term as protein synthesis? shut your mouth. a steroid user can eat half the protein of a natural trainee and still build twice the muscle. and this is because of thousand s of diffferent actions of androgens, and all the direct and indirect effects they have on the body.
if you want to learn you can say sorry for calling me fucktard and i can point you in the right direction.
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omg CANDIDIZZLE U DONT FUCKING GET IT!!!!!
"no offense, fasting is stupid" oh ok none taken..... geezus are u human? hahah u fuckin dipshit mother fucker god i want to hurt you.
Please provide relevant and logical resources that will support your claim that fasting has no benefits.
Fasting is the best thing any human being can do if they are healthy enough to do it. You eat EVERYDAY for 20-30+ years, u dont think it'd just be "ok" to give your digestive system a break?
I really do hope u dont raise your hand much in class
:D oh yeah sure, deprive your body of all the essential and non essential nutrients and vital micro nutrients, phytochemicals and vitmins that are all so wonderfully healthy for the body.
that would be really healthy ! ::)
if you want to hurt me, id love for you too baby. hurt me real good :-* you know what i mean cutie
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Cand, I do wish to hear more about your expertise in which you are quoting from Dr. LLewellyn? Open that Anabolics 2006 book you have on your desk and please explain to me in detail the basis in which steroids work? Steroids are nothing without protein u fucking moron.
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Cand, I do wish to hear more about your expertise in which you are quoting from Dr. LLewellyn? Open that Anabolics 2006 book you have on your desk and please explain to me in detail the basis in which steroids work? Steroids are nothing without protein u fucking moron.
:D really ? you sure are smart. ;D
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Did you take any caffeine or energy supplements (or even diet pop?)
Is it necessary to take a fiber pill?
And you say the energy dip goes away after the first day or so?
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um. protein synthesis. do you have any idea the milliuons of body processes that are all involved and intertwined with such a vague term as protein synthesis? shut your mouth. a steroid user can eat half the protein of a natural trainee and still build twice the muscle. and this is because of thousand s of diffferent actions of androgens, and all the direct and indirect effects they have on the body.
if you want to learn you can say sorry for calling me fucktard and i can point you in the right direction.
on that note.......lighten up youngster.......let's dance
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:D oh yeah sure, deprive your body of all the essential and non essential nutrients and vital micro nutrients, phytochemicals and vitmins that are all so wonderfully healthy for the body.
that would be really healthy ! ::)
if you want to hurt me, id love for you too baby. hurt me real good :-* you know what i mean cutie
Do you REALLY THINK cultures/people that believe in fasting are any LESS HEALTHY than a typical american pudge such as yourself? I know you are on a "new thing" here and im gonna let you run with it because it makes you feel good inside. It is a GOOD THING to feel good, im happy for you. But, you must understand, their is more knowledge to be learned than the new "tip of the day" you read from bb.com and explaining it to your parents at dinner table so they make u feel proud.
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on that note.......lighten up youngster.......let's dance
oh shit son, fucking awesome song selection right there !
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boonstock, go ahead and fast. IMO its stupid. if you thnk its healthy, thats your opinion.
why do you take such offense? something wrong inside of you buddy ?
stop worry so much about me and other people. worry about yourself.
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cleansing........lose fat........lose water........lose muscle
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Did you take any caffeine or energy supplements (or even diet pop?)
Is it necessary to take a fiber pill?
And you say the energy dip goes away after the first day or so?
Just fiber, liver cleansing, some clorophyl and green algae pills and that's it. Nothing else. here's the kit.
No caffeine, nothing artificial, nothing other than water.
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cleansing........lose fat........lose water........lose muscle
How much muscle? remember. I didn't workout. I just rested. I'm pretty sure the years of working out were not destroyed by a five day fast
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How much muscle? remember. I didn't workout. I just rested. I'm pretty sure the years of working out were not destroyed by a five day fast
you "lost muscle", thats for sure. how much depends on hundreds of things. look in the mirror....you tell us.
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Did you take any caffeine or energy supplements (or even diet pop?)
Is it necessary to take a fiber pill?
And you say the energy dip goes away after the first day or so?
What we consider "feeling energetic" comes form dependencies on outside sources such as caffeine and other drugs. We feel low when we don't have them because our bodies got used to having them for energy. I'm not a coffee person so for my I felt fine. I feele enrergetic when I slept well. No sleep and I feel like shit
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you "lost muscle", thats for sure. how much depends on hundreds of things. look in the mirror....you tell us.
I'm pretty sure my lifts will not feel any negative effects. When I'm back in the gym I should be back to normal after a couple of workouts.
That whole fear of losing muscles from dieting is pussy bullshit. Especially from these fucking druggies that are so jacked on juice and cry about doing cardio in fear of losing muscle
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well, not really. many very knowledgeable experts/gru's are in agreement that ANYTIME you lose fat, you lose SOME muscle as well. i personally dont believe thats true, in fact i think if you know how to diet correctly there is no reason why anyone, natural or not, cant put on a pound or so of muscle while dieting.
the way you lose muscle is not by insufficient calories, but insufficient protein. hormones also play a role. well, alot of things play a role. but the main one is protein in vs protein out (breakdown vs. synthesis).. you use more protein than just what you use to "build muscle".
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I'm pretty sure my lifts will not feel any negative effects. When I'm back in the gym I should be back to normal after a couple of workouts.
That whole fear of losing muscles from dieting is pussy bullshit. Especially from these fucking druggies that are so jacked on juice and cry about doing cardio in fear of losing muscle
i'm sure at least a some muscle was compromised......i wonder if you fasted for 5 days and took in 40 gms of protein powder every 3 hours with only water how it would effect you.......no carbs.......no fats......just a sponge for fuckin protein
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i'm sure at least a some muscle was compromised......i wonder if you fasted for 5 days and took in 40 gms of protein powder every 3 hours with only water how it would effect you.......no carbs.......no fats......just a sponge for fuckin protein
Then it wouldn't be a fast. My digestive system would be working hard to get the protein broken down and the point was to give it a rest.
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Then it wouldn't be a fast. My digestive system would be working hard to get the protein broken down and the point was to give it a rest.
just use a whey hydrosylate.
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Then it wouldn't be a fast. My digestive system would be working hard to get the protein broken down and the point was to give it a rest.
fasting sounds good on paper,however the body is made to weed out impurities.........not taking in the vitamins ,nutrients,carbs,fats and proteinsfor days on end isn't really logical.......in fact it may put more stress on the liver.......the liver function is to filter.......you're fucking with it's normal function......just like taking test slows down or stops the testes function
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well, not really. many very knowledgeable experts/gru's are in agreement that ANYTIME you lose fat, you lose SOME muscle as well. i personally dont believe thats true, in fact i think if you know how to diet correctly there is no reason why anyone, natural or not, cant put on a pound or so of muscle while dieting.
the way you lose muscle is not by insufficient calories, but insufficient protein. hormones also play a role. well, alot of things play a role. but the main one is protein in vs protein out (breakdown vs. synthesis).. you use more protein than just what you use to "build muscle".
settle down Lyle McDonald.
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Congrats. You have just lowered your metabolism.
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steele is spot on. in 5 days you will lose but a small amount- negligible, of muscle. Fat will be used first for energy.
the human body works by constantly changing to achieve homeostatis so over 5 days he probably got to a point where his physiological response was "thinking about" looking for alternative fuel reserves.
5 days is also not long enough to change his metabolism markedly. The thing is, the same responses can be gained without fasting- fasting is a bit extreme.
cycling nutrients is the best way to optimise the uptake of specific food groups as it goes through periods of restriction and then saturation. This is why creatine is cycled. In fact any diet for pro level competition is carefully laid out. (im talking not just BB).
same for training routines, the body needs time to first adapt, then put the mechanisms into place to make best use of the new situation.
This is also why regular "mixing up" of reps and training methods does not work. in fact its counter productive.
With respect to steele and candid...its impossible to split the loss/gain of muscle/fat, so by first principles if you are doing fat burning activities you will lose some muscle. It's more an argument about how much youll lose. Conversely youll lose some fat whilst gaining muscle...or even gain some fat. Theres no scientific phenom that means you cant gain muscle whilst shredding and vice versa.
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you "lost muscle", thats for sure. how much depends on hundreds of things. look in the mirror....you tell us.
so you really think he has less muscle cells now than he did before his fast?
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no offense, but fasting is stupid.
None taken because you have no idea what you're talking about.
Again.
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well, not really. many very knowledgeable experts/gru's are in agreement that ANYTIME you lose fat, you lose SOME muscle as well. i personally dont believe thats true, in fact i think if you know how to diet correctly there is no reason why anyone, natural or not, cant put on a pound or so of muscle while dieting.
the way you lose muscle is not by insufficient calories, but insufficient protein. hormones also play a role. well, alot of things play a role. but the main one is protein in vs protein out (breakdown vs. synthesis).. you use more protein than just what you use to "build muscle".
There is a big factor here that everybody seems not to be taking into consideration, how much bodyfat someone has. A lot of people have put on muscle while dieting, but only until you reach low bodyfat levels, may 6-7% it varies per individual, after this you are garunteed to lose muscle no matter what, basically dieting from 15% down to 7% can be done with no muscle loss, but dieting from 15% down to 2% cannot be done without muscle loss.
Man of steal said he lost 20 pounds fasting, if his bodyfat levels are high then he probably didn`t lose much muscle, but if they are under 8-9% fasting he would loss some muscle.
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I just did a five day fasting cleanse. All I got to eat was a fiber supp 3 times a day and some nasty cleansing pills. It is hard as shit not eating for five days.
five days is a warm-up
Ramadan would bury you
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so you really think he has less muscle cells now than he did before his fast?
he didnt eat for 5 days. you tell me.
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Next time you do it just get yourself some skin calipers and measure your bf before and after.That will tell you whether you lost muscle or not.
If you were not very low in bf, your body probably would not start attacking the muscles till about day 5 or 6.. even if it takes an ounce or so a day of muscle tissue,you will gain it back within a few days of over feeding.
If you lost any muscle tissue , we are talking a few ounces!
for fat loss just eat 1.5 to 2lbs of ultra lean meat a day(nothing else) and you will preserve the muscle while losing nearly as much fat as a water fast, if your goal is to just lose fat..
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i think HOW MUCH muscle he has kinda matters too. if he is kinda average muscle mass..im sure the loss in amino acids would be fairly insignificant. if he is unnaturaly muscular, i bet it would be quite a bit more muscle loss (considering he is not on any kind of exogenous support system)
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i think HOW MUCH muscle he has kinda matters too. if he is kinda average muscle mass..im sure the loss in amino acids would be fairly insignificant. if he is unnaturaly muscular, i bet it would be quite a bit more muscle loss (considering he is not on any kind of exogenous support system)
Absolutaly, fasting is one thing where the results will vary considerably based on bodyfat, muscle mass, matabolism, bone structure, daily activities, and of course genetics. Even the amount of sodium you have consumed before fasting will come into play.
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five days is a warm-up
Ramadan would bury you
Wrong.
Ramadan allows you to eat before sunrise and after sunset.
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Fasting is pointless for the result you are trying to achieve. However, if you like self-torture and a false sense of "spiritualism", go ahead and indulge in the pointless pleasure less pastime of nutrient depriving.
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um. protein synthesis. do you have any idea the millions of body processes that are all involved and intertwined with such a vague term as protein synthesis? shut your mouth. A steroid user can eat half the protein of a natural trainee and still build twice the muscle. and this is because of thousand s of different actions of androgen's, and all the direct and indirect effects they have on the body.
if you want to learn you can say sorry for calling me fucktard and i can point you in the right direction.
You truly do believe way to much a magazine tells ya...I guy i knew(ifbb pro) of the 80's eat one can of tuna 21 days out from a show...Then he eat 20 pounds of potatoes over a 2 1/2 day period leading up to the show...When he give your digestive system a break, everything else steps up a notch...There a chemist in think tanks that deprive themselves from food and take mushrooms or LSD to try to come up with cures for things we don't even though exist...
Dizzle...You were a fat kid who started working out and got alittle attention and you believe your whole life is the truth...Bro I'm telling ya...Its not...Your reality tunnel is built on what you see or hear...Your poisoning yourself with muscle mags...
You believe high protein doesn't effect you...You believe massive amounts of steak and hamburg will not hurt your heart...You believe steroids don't really effect your liver...You believe a person can snort sweet n low like it's coke for dozen's of years it it will not have any effect on the body...
Your so young that you do not have real life experiences to tell you otherwise...You read stuff that lets you believe that what your doing is fine...Bro I'm telling you right here and now, you are going to go down...You don't have the genetics to handle anything close to what Jay Cutler can handle...Jay won't live to be 50...And that may be OK with him...And it may be OK with you...But don't sit here and ask people to show you written proof that this will kill you or that will kill you...You sound like a tobacco salesman...Your the fat kid who drinks a case of beers every other day for 10 years after college and has no problems and believes that the whole world is exactly like you...Your the same douche bag who may be lucky to live to 50 who now has to tell everyone how bad something is because your sitting with a colostomy bag or worse...Truth is, you can't step outside your body and look at yourself and realise that your just a regular schmo who is trying to find info that makes your life seem right...But it is yours...So to you, it seems like the end all be all...The quicker you can step out of your body and look down at yourself, the better society will be...
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thanks for your attempt at a psych evaluation. ::)
go pop another e-tab and fast for days on end while you go around dancing like a fairy. it has certainly made you a beast up to this point. :D
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You truly do believe way to much a magazine tells ya...I guy i knew(ifbb pro) of the 80's eat one can of tuna 21 days out from a show...Then he eat 20 pounds of potatoes over a 2 1/2 day period leading up to the show...When he give your digestive system a break, everything else steps up a notch...There a chemist in think tanks that deprive themselves from food and take mushrooms or LSD to try to come up with cures for things we don't even though exist...
Dizzle...You were a fat kid who started working out and got alittle attention and you believe your whole life is the truth...Bro I'm telling ya...Its not...Your reality tunnel is built on what you see or hear...Your poisoning yourself with muscle mags...
You believe high protein doesn't effect you...You believe massive amounts of steak and hamburg will not hurt your heart...You believe steroids don't really effect your liver...You believe a person can snort sweet n low like it's coke for dozen's of years it it will not have any effect on the body...
Your so young that you do not have real life experiences to tell you otherwise...You read stuff that lets you believe that what your doing is fine...Bro I'm telling you right here and now, you are going to go down...You don't have the genetics to handle anything close to what Jay Cutler can handle...Jay won't live to be 50...And that may be OK with him...And it may be OK with you...But don't sit here and ask people to show you written proof that this will kill you or that will kill you...You sound like a tobacco salesman...Your the fat kid who drinks a case of beers every other day for 10 years after college and has no problems and believes that the whole world is exactly like you...Your the same douche bag who may be lucky to live to 50 who now has to tell everyone how bad something is because your sitting with a colostomy bag or worse...Truth is, you can't step outside your body and look at yourself and realise that your just a regular schmo who is trying to find info that makes your life seem right...But it is yours...So to you, it seems like the end all be all...The quicker you can step out of your body and look down at yourself, the better society will be...
Actually, the link to Heart Disease via Saturated Fats and Cholesterol is VERY Tentative. Over Consumption of total calories is the real culprit.
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Actually, the link to Heart Disease via Saturated Fats and Cholesterol is VERY Tentative. Over Consumption of total calories is the real culprit.
yes.
exactly.
overeating and not moving enough.
..............people believe whatever the insurance companies and government agencies tell them to believe.
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Let me also add that another culprit is the Ratio of Omega 3s and 6s and not the amount.
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Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus
Viktor Koen
Published: October 9, 2007
In 1988, the surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, proclaimed ice cream to a be public-health menace right up there with cigarettes. Alluding to his office’s famous 1964 report on the perils of smoking, Dr. Koop announced that the American diet was a problem of “comparable” magnitude, chiefly because of the high-fat foods that were causing coronary heart disease and other deadly ailments.
He introduced his report with these words: “The depth of the science base underlying its findings is even more impressive than that for tobacco and health in 1964.”
That was a ludicrous statement, as Gary Taubes demonstrates in his new book meticulously debunking diet myths, “Good Calories, Bad Calories” (Knopf, 2007). The notion that fatty foods shorten your life began as a hypothesis based on dubious assumptions and data; when scientists tried to confirm it they failed repeatedly. The evidence against Häagen-Dazs was nothing like the evidence against Marlboros.
It may seem bizarre that a surgeon general could go so wrong. After all, wasn’t it his job to express the scientific consensus? But that was the problem. Dr. Koop was expressing the consensus. He, like the architects of the federal “food pyramid” telling Americans what to eat, went wrong by listening to everyone else. He was caught in what social scientists call a cascade.
We like to think that people improve their judgment by putting their minds together, and sometimes they do. The studio audience at “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” usually votes for the right answer. But suppose, instead of the audience members voting silently in unison, they voted out loud one after another. And suppose the first person gets it wrong.
If the second person isn’t sure of the answer, he’s liable to go along with the first person’s guess. By then, even if the third person suspects another answer is right, she’s more liable to go along just because she assumes the first two together know more than she does. Thus begins an “informational cascade” as one person after another assumes that the rest can’t all be wrong.
Because of this effect, groups are surprisingly prone to reach mistaken conclusions even when most of the people started out knowing better, according to the economists Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer and Ivo Welch. If, say, 60 percent of a group’s members have been given information pointing them to the right answer (while the rest have information pointing to the wrong answer), there is still about a one-in-three chance that the group will cascade to a mistaken consensus.
Cascades are especially common in medicine as doctors take their cues from others, leading them to overdiagnose some faddish ailments (called bandwagon diseases) and overprescribe certain treatments (like the tonsillectomies once popular for children). Unable to keep up with the volume of research, doctors look for guidance from an expert — or at least someone who sounds confident.
In the case of fatty foods, that confident voice belonged to Ancel Keys, a prominent diet researcher a half-century ago (the K-rations in World War II were said to be named after him). He became convinced in the 1950s that Americans were suffering from a new epidemic of heart disease because they were eating more fat than their ancestors.
There were two glaring problems with this theory, as Mr. Taubes, a correspondent for Science magazine, explains in his book. First, it wasn’t clear that traditional diets were especially lean. Nineteenth-century Americans consumed huge amounts of meat; the percentage of fat in the diet of ancient hunter-gatherers, according to the best estimate today, was as high or higher than the ratio in the modern Western diet.
Second, there wasn’t really a new epidemic of heart disease. Yes, more cases were being reported, but not because people were in worse health. It was mainly because they were living longer and were more likely to see a doctor who diagnosed the symptoms.
To bolster his theory, Dr. Keys in 1953 compared diets and heart disease rates in the United States, Japan and four other countries. Sure enough, more fat correlated with more disease (America topped the list). But critics at the time noted that if Dr. Keys had analyzed all 22 countries for which data were available, he would not have found a correlation. (And, as Mr. Taubes notes, no one would have puzzled over the so-called French Paradox of foie-gras connoisseurs with healthy hearts.)
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The evidence that dietary fat correlates with heart disease “does not stand up to critical examination,” the American Heart Association concluded in 1957. But three years later the association changed position — not because of new data, Mr. Taubes writes, but because Dr. Keys and an ally were on the committee issuing the new report. It asserted that “the best scientific evidence of the time” warranted a lower-fat diet for people at high risk of heart disease.
The association’s report was big news and put Dr. Keys, who died in 2004, on the cover of Time magazine. The magazine devoted four pages to the topic — and just one paragraph noting that Dr. Keys’s diet advice was “still questioned by some researchers.” That set the tone for decades of news media coverage. Journalists and their audiences were looking for clear guidance, not scientific ambiguity.
After the fat-is-bad theory became popular wisdom, the cascade accelerated in the 1970s when a committee led by Senator George McGovern issued a report advising Americans to lower their risk of heart disease by eating less fat. “McGovern’s staff were virtually unaware of the existence of any scientific controversy,” Mr. Taubes writes, and the committee’s report was written by a nonscientist “relying almost exclusively on a single Harvard nutritionist, Mark Hegsted.”
That report impressed another nonscientist, Carol Tucker Foreman, an assistant agriculture secretary, who hired Dr. Hegsted to draw up a set of national dietary guidelines. The Department of Agriculture’s advice against eating too much fat was issued in 1980 and would later be incorporated in its “food pyramid.”
Meanwhile, there still wasn’t good evidence to warrant recommending a low-fat diet for all Americans, as the National Academy of Sciences noted in a report shortly after the U.S.D.A. guidelines were issued. But the report’s authors were promptly excoriated on Capitol Hill and in the news media for denying a danger that had already been proclaimed by the American Heart Association, the McGovern committee and the U.S.D.A.
The scientists, despite their impressive credentials, were accused of bias because some of them had done research financed by the food industry. And so the informational cascade morphed into what the economist Timur Kuran calls a reputational cascade, in which it becomes a career risk for dissidents to question the popular wisdom.
With skeptical scientists ostracized, the public debate and research agenda became dominated by the fat-is-bad school. Later the National Institutes of Health would hold a “consensus conference” that concluded there was “no doubt” that low-fat diets “will afford significant protection against coronary heart disease” for every American over the age of 2. The American Cancer Society and the surgeon general recommended a low-fat diet to prevent cancer.
But when the theories were tested in clinical trials, the evidence kept turning up negative. As Mr. Taubes notes, the most rigorous meta-analysis of the clinical trials of low-fat diets, published in 2001 by the Cochrane Collaboration, concluded that they had no significant effect on mortality.
Mr. Taubes argues that the low-fat recommendations, besides being unjustified, may well have harmed Americans by encouraging them to switch to carbohydrates, which he believes cause obesity and disease. He acknowledges that that hypothesis is unproved, and that the low-carb diet fad could turn out to be another mistaken cascade. The problem, he says, is that the low-carb hypothesis hasn’t been seriously studied because it couldn’t be reconciled with the low-fat dogma.
Mr. Taubes told me he especially admired the iconoclasm of Dr. Edward H. Ahrens Jr., a lipids researcher who spoke out against the McGovern committee’s report. Mr. McGovern subsequently asked him at a hearing to reconcile his skepticism with a survey showing that the low-fat recommendations were endorsed by 92 percent of “the world’s leading doctors.”
“Senator McGovern, I recognize the disadvantage of being in the minority,” Dr. Ahrens replied. Then he pointed out that most of the doctors in the survey were relying on secondhand knowledge because they didn’t work in this field themselves.
“This is a matter,” he continued, “of such enormous social, economic and medical importance that it must be evaluated with our eyes completely open. Thus I would hate to see this issue settled by anything that smacks of a Gallup poll.” Or a cascade.
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Any pro BB,mag cover fitness BB
or in good shape Athlete ever talk about fasting???
Fasting is for old people, Muslims, confused girls, and FAT people
who think fasting will make them "slim".
The body can get rid of toxins within hours anyway.
Fasting for BB purpose iis crap.
So mos you are that fat ?
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Fasting can be dangerous. Worst case scenario your kidneys fail. :D
(serious)