David Johnston was overweight for most of his life and wanted to make a change for himself and his family. See how he lost over 70 pounds and competed!

Bodybuilding.com is one of, if not the biggest bodybuilding sites on the internet. Each week they feature a Transformation of the Week. This week they have selected David to profile. Read it here…

In the article David talks about what led him to getting involved in bodybuilding and what he did to prepare for the 2010 Maryland competition. Learn the exact carb-cycle diet plan that his coach Dan Kelsey (www.lbs4lbs.com) laid out for him.

David gives some great advice to others who might be looking to make some serious changes in their lives…

My main advice to others is simply to prioritize, be serious about achieving your goals, and don’t hold back. So many people approach life at 50%, and that’s simply not going to get you there. I know, because I was a fat kid my entire life-I never played sports, and was always somewhat embarrassed by my body. I tried to get into fitness a few times during my teens and college years, but again, never went 100% at it.

Read the entire article at http://bodybuilding.com/fun/david-johnston-shed-over-70-lbs-competed-onstage.html

After years of being extremely active – a 3-sport athlete in high school, college intramural sports, and running 10Ks and half marathons as a graduate student – it seemed I had hit a wall when I moved to Baltimore to start my career. I enjoyed going to the gym nearly every day, but I was lacking motivation to push myself and work extremely hard. In years past, I had always incorporated weight training with cardio, but I found myself lifting lighter weights and idly churning on the elliptical machine. I had always been a relatively healthy eater, but I didn’t put a great deal of effort into planning meals and ensuring I was getting the right balance of carbs, fats, and protein for me.

I felt that I was very knowledgeable about health, fitness, and training. I was skeptical about the real value I would get out of a trainer; in fact I thought that all I really needed was a spotter to help me get through the last few reps.

David convinced me otherwise! He first helped me determine my specific goals and the underlying reasons why I found myself simply going through the motions. He provided me with the customized training plan and diet that were required for me to reach my goals. He recognized that it was important for me to understand the rationale for each exercise in the program as well as the kinesiology and science behind his recommendations, and he provided that expertise.

I enjoyed his “tough love” style of motivation – he really challenged me. He made me realize how strong I already was and how strong I could be if I worked hard. His requirement to keep a journal was essential for my progress.

At 26 years old, I feel that my fitness level and appearance is better than when I was in college, probably even high school. My back, arms, and shoulders are much more defined. I’m continuing to increase weight in all my lifts. I gained weight (muscle) but went from a size 6 to a size 2/4. I listened to David and didn’t worry about doing crunches but focused on diet and cardio, and my abs were chiseled in plenty of time for my vacation to St. Martin. Training with David was a great investment.

Erin Morrisey

Back to Client Testimonials

I can vividly remember what it felt like when I was under water, holding my breath. I have tried repeating the breath-holding contest in recent years and found that it is a somewhat miserable experience. It burns; it hurts; it starts to feel like you’re going to pass out. When we went to Pittsburgh this past spring I drove through several long tunnels, and I held my breath from one end to the next, just to see if I could do it. I had to speed up in order to make it– but I made it.

After much contemplation and soul searching, I have decided I will not compete again until spring and summer of 2012, because that is how much time it will take to make the necessary improvements to my physique to take it to the next level. I’m looking at about ninety weeks.

Ninety weeks. It sounds like forever. It sounds like holding your breath for an eternity. I can imagine my lungs burning over the next 90 weeks and wanting to explode from the pressure. Of course, I can come up for air whenever I want– take a break, loosen my focus, be a little saner. But doing so will reset the timer back to zero, and all records will have to be set again from scratch. I have a vision of a little kid fighting, staring up through the water, watching the clock, knowing there is an end, eventually.

Every year, I have gotten better at holding my breath– at taking the slow and conscious strides towards refinement, betterment, success. Every year, I have learned to endure the burning sensation a little bit longer, to fight it, to ignore it and not heed its call.

Learning to endure that burn, that sensation of explosion, like lactic acid building up in one’s bloodstream, in one’s veins, is all about conditioning, about practice, about setting a goal and surpassing it to simply move on to the next goal. It is about will and decision. It is like having fire and ice running through one’s body, sensations, as opposed to the numbness of resignation. It is painful. It is exhausting. It is wonderful.

I have learned to be hungry, and to enjoy hunger. Hunger allows a true appreciation for what it is to be full, to be sated, to be satisfied. I’m talking true physical hunger, not some metaphorical craving for betterment. True physical hunger is an unknown sensation for most Americans. It is an acquired taste– at first painful, but slowly accepted, a background sensation telling you to keep moving, to not sleep, to keep your muscles tensed and flexed and your teeth clenched down. How long you can endure that hunger is akin to how long you can hold your breath– a challenge, a test of will and endurance, fighting one’s instinctual inclinations and overriding the circuitry of the human body.

We all know that food and air are basic conditions for survival– but how much do you need? Can you get by on less? Can you condition yourself to run optimally in less-than-optimal conditions? Can you withstand the fire and ice that will flood your body when deprived of simple comforts?

The best way to describe that burn is the feeling of holding onto a weight when your grip begins to give out– when you can feel it slipping out of your hands, out of your fingers, but it hasn’t yet fully slipped; and you know if you squeeze just a little bit harder, you can hold onto the bar for just a little bit longer; but it hurts, so you want to stop; but you want to advance, so you continue to squeeze; and you feel yourself being pulled in different directions, how long you can ignore the sensation, how long you can fight the fire and the ice in your fingers and hands and forearms, versus how badly you want to get to number ten, to complete your set and get all of your repetitions. Pay attention to the feeling. See if you fight it, or if you embrace it. See if there is a way to squeeze harder, and what would make you want to squeeze harder.

Ninety weeks sounds like an eternity to hold one’s breath. It also sounds like just enough time to change everything.

-David A. Johnston

9-3-10

In previous parts of this series we talked about weight training and diet.  What about cardio and diet?

The rules for cardio and diet are the same as weight training– do everything you can to put the body into a caloric deficit, while simultaneously doing everything possible to keep the metabolism high. If you achieve this, you’ll achieve your health and fitness goals.

The body has two basic fuel sources, fat and carbohydrate (or sugars). Sugars come from the foods that we eat, and act as a short-term energy source in the body. If you do not use up your sugars within a certain amount of time, or you take in more than you can use, they will store as fat.

Whenever you are doing any activity, you are burning from a combination of your fat energy source and your sugar energy source. As a general rule, higher exertion levels are going to burn a higher percentage of sugar, while lower exertion levels are going to burn a higher percentage of fat. While doing your cardio, we want to find the rate where you are burning the highest possible amount of fat, so that you spend your time in the gym and on the treadmill being efficient at pursuing your weight-loss goals, rather than just spinning your wheels. Burn the fat, not the time.

Because of this, Lifetime Fitness promotes Heart Rate Zone Training. Everything we do in terms of our cardio programming is based on doing your cardio within the proper heart rate zone. Work too hard, and your burn nothing but sugars, or worse yet, muscle tissue. Work not hard enough, you waste your time and don’t burn enough fat. Work out just right, and see success.

Finally, there is the nutrition component. I already covered that you have to be in a caloric deficit in order to see your weight loss results. However, there are more rules than that. First of all, you want to do everything in your power to keep your metabolism high while in this caloric deficit. The first thing to mention here is switching from eating 1-2 large meals per day, to eating several small meals and snacks throughout the day. This alone will help to keep your metabolism high.

However, the main thing you’re going to find with the nutrition component is the same thing as the cardio component. If you overeat, you obviously won’t be in the caloric deficit that is needed to lose body fat. However, if you <em>undereat</em>, you will put your body into starvation mode. Again, remember, the body is efficient and will adapt to the circumstances you find it in. If you try to drop your calories too low and starve yourself to success, you will ultimately fail– you will slow your metabolism, you will lose muscle tissue in addition to the body fat you had hoped to lose, you will probably get sick, and the minute you start eating somewhat normal again, you will regain every pound you lost (because of the slowed metabolism), plus interest. Fun, right? So again, the thing to look for is the <em>proper</em> caloric level in order to achieve your goals.

If you missed Part 2 you can find it here…

As we discussed in Part 2 of this series, diet alone will typically not lead to success for individuals looking to lose and keep off weight.

You need to positively try to raise your metabolism while simultaneously being in the caloric deficit necessary for weight loss. This is only possible by watching both your nutrition program and by exercising properly!

So you’re convinced now that you need the right diet and you need to exercise. Given that we’re looking to lose weight, what type of exercise should we do? Well, cardio is what burns fat, right? To some degree, yes. But if done the wrong way, it’s only going to slow your metabolism down and set you up for failure in the long run. Let’s look at why.

Let’s say you’re trying to lose weight and you go on a reduced-calorie diet. You also know that exercise will help, so you add in some cardio. What’s going to happen? Well, remember, your body is getting the signal that it’s not getting enough external fuel from food, so it’s going to turn to its own body tissues as a fuel source. We’re hoping that the body will turn to stored fat as a fuel source, right? And to some degree, it will. However, it will also start to burn up its own muscle stores as a fuel source.

You may have heard that muscle mass burns a lot of calories, and this is true. Muscle is what we call metabolically active. A lot of muscle on a body is like a big engine in a car– it burns a lot of gas, or food. Fat, on the other hand, is metabolically passive. It’s like a real efficient 4-cylinder– great gas mileage. So what happens when you put the body into a caloric deficit for an extended period of time? It gets the signal that its not getting enough food, and thus turns to its own body tissues for fuel; and given that the muscle mass of the body is putting such a big demand on its system for calories, it will get rid of what it considers needless fat stores.

In other words, if you’re in a caloric deficit over time and just doing cardio, you are probably going to burn up a decent amount of muscle mass. When this happens, your metabolism will drop, because you no longer have as much muscle as you once did. Thus, in order to keep losing the rest of the fat, you need to reduce your calories ever more and do even more cardio. This leads to more muscle loss, and thus a slower metabolism, etc., etc., etc. It’s a downward spiral. Where are you in 6 months? You’ve hit a “plateau,” where you can’t lose the last ten pounds, and you can’t figure out why.

This is precisely why you need to weight train if you’re looking to lose fat. Don’t think of the weight training so much as a means of building muscle mass, as much as a means of retaining current levels of muscle mass while in a reduced caloric state. You need to give a certain stimulus to your body in order to force it to preserve muscle stores while in a reduced caloric state. This is why you weight-train for fat loss. Don’t worry about getting “excessively bulky”– you don’t have the calories to do so! Worrying about building huge muscles without taking in enough calories is like worrying about building a ten-story building without having enough bricks for a one-bedroom house. The bricks– and the calories– are the physical materials that allow for the building, or the body, to be built in the first place. Granted, you might be able to build a little amount of muscle while in a reduced caloric state, but you’re not going to look like a bodybuilder.

So now you understand why you need to weight train in order to lose, and keep off, body fat. What about cardio and diet?      Continue on to part 4 of our series for the answer… (look for it tomorrow)

If you missed Part 1 you can find it here…

Let’s look specifically at an individual trying to lose weight, or better yet, looking to lose body fat. How do the three aspects mentioned above– nutrition, cardio and weights– tie together in order to help the individual lose body fat?

Well, the only way to truly lose any kind of weight and/or body tissue is by being in a caloric deficit. This is a fancy way of saying that you are burning more calories throughout the day than you’re eating, or conversely, you’re eating less calories throughout the day than you are burning.

If you do this for an extended period of time– put yourself into a caloric deficit– you will notice that you start to lose weight. Clothes will start to fit more loosely. However, how you go about losing that weight will dictate the end product of what you look like, what you feel like, and whether you are successful in keeping the weight off.

There’s a very fancy buzz word that you hear all of the time nowadays– metabolism. Everybody talks about how important it is to have a high metabolism, but nobody seems to really know exactly what the metabolism is.

What Is Metabolism

Structure of the coenzyme adenosine triphosphate, a central intermediate in energy metabolism

Your metabolism is basically the total rate at which your body burns calories throughout the day, simply due to your body composition, your eating and exercise habits, and your genetics. Your resting metabolism accounts for anywhere from 60-75% of your total daily caloric needs (excluding exercise).

Think about that number for a minute. All the stuff that you do throughout the day– waking up, taking a shower, walking to the car, walking around throughout the day, picking up the kids at school, preparing and eating your food, etc., etc., etc.– really only accounts for about 25-40% of your caloric needs. The vast majority of your caloric needs are represented by your resting metabolism, which, again, is going to be a reflection of your eating and training habits, along with your body composition. Looking at it this way, it should be obvious why it is so important to have a high metabolism.

If you have a sluggish metabolism, that hour of cardio per day– where you might burn 500 calories if you are lucky– is not going to make up for that extra slice of pizza here and there. When it comes to successfully managing body composition, metabolism is everything!!!

How To Slow Down Your Metabolism

So let’s go back for a moment to the individual looking to lose weight. They are going to have to be in a caloric deficit. However, the human body is very efficient and will find a way to adjust to almost any circumstances. The human body has built-in mechanisms that strive to keep everything on an even keel. Think about it– if you are in a caloric deficit for an extended period of time, what you are literally doing is not giving your body the calories it needs to sustain its current state. In other words, if you are in a caloric deficit over an extended period of time, you are literally starving yourself, just at a very slow pace. As such, your body will find a way to preserve itself and survive. How? Well, the main way it’s going to achieve this– it will slow down its metabolism!

Stay Tuned For Part 3 in the Series tomorrow…

I. TIMING NUTRIENTS PRE-WORKOUT
Most of the information that has been written on “nutrient timing” has to do with pre and post workout nutrition. The reasoning behind this stems from serious gym-goers and bodybuilders that are most concerned with optimizing performance and nutrient intake. The same would hold true, of course, for more serious athletes—pro football players, Olympians, etc.
As part of your pre-workout routine, we want to make sure we have a readily available fuel source, so that carbohydrates metabolize into sugars and sit in the blood stream as glucose. Therefore, as a pre-workout snack/meal we want to make sure we get in a certain amount of carbohydrates.

The carbohydrate source should be low-glycemic and fairly slow digesting. If you eat a rapidly digesting carbohydrate, 30 minutes before you weight train, your blood sugar levels will spike and your pancreas will release insulin to pull the sugar out of the blood stream. Once you start exercising, your body will rapidly become hypoglycemic, and you will feel dizzy, nauseas, and have to end early. The goal is to eat the right amount of pre workout carbohydrates that will digest at the perfect rate – not too fast, and not too slow.

You will still want to include a protein source (albeit a smaller serving) pre-workout; as this will still help to slow the digestion of the carbohydrate, and allow a steadier release of nutrients, thus helping to maintain fairly stable blood sugar levels throughout the workout.

This is much more important when dealing with weight training, which is anaerobic in nature. Cardio, by contrast, is aerobic. If I have a client whose main goal is fat loss, and they are simply doing a cardio session, then I would not want them to consume carbohydrates prior to coming to the gym. If they have high glucose levels actively floating throughout the blood stream when they begin their cardio, it’s going to take the body that much longer to burn through it before their body starts tapping into fat stores. This explains why most bodybuilders, when performing cardio for fat-loss purposes, try to get it in either first thing in the morning, or post-weight-training. Those are the two times of day when blood sugar levels are at their lowest, and thus the body is going to preferentially burn more fat than it would at other times throughout the day.

II. TIMING NUTRIENTS POST-WORKOUT
While carbohydrates are important pre-workout, they are even more important post workout. I would make the claim that if you only were ‘allowed’ one carbohydrate meal throughout the day; it should be after a hard workout session. When you workout hard, you tend to burn off all of the sugar available in your blood stream (glucose), and also burn through a good amount of the stored sugar in your body (glycogen). You also tend to beat up your body, tearing down muscle tissue, elevating adrenaline and cortisol levels, and a host of other processes that are catabolic.

Catabolism – promoting the wasting of muscle tissue
Anabolic – promoting the healing or growing of muscle tissue

Post-workout, the body’s first concern is to get out of the catabolic state you have just created. Basically, you just beat the living crap out of your body, and it is freaked out. Its first concern is to make sure everything is going to be okay, therefore, until you have replenished baseline levels of nutrients, such as replenishing glycogen, it is certainly not going to be concerned with synthesizing new tissues (new muscle). Hence, the most important nutrient post-workout is carbohydrates. Another way of putting it, insofar as, if you’re going to eat carbohydrates, you should be eating most of them around your workout, pre and post, with post workout being even more important than pre workout on average.

Of course, this is all still relative to the goals that you have set for yourself. As a bodybuilder, if I am in a phase where I am actively trying to pack on as much muscle mass as possible in a short time frame, and I am not overly concerned with gaining a little body fat, then I am going to err on the side of consuming more carbohydrates and intentionally spiking my insulin levels. This is going to help drive amino acids and glycogen into the muscle cells and optimize recovery and growth. If, by contrast, I’m in a “cutting phase”, where I am actively focused on losing body fat and doing everything in my power to get ‘ripped,’ then I am going to restrict my carbs more (and nutrients/calories in general). Therefore, I’m going to err on the side of caution when it comes to how many carbs I ingest both pre and post workout. I am also going to limit them a lot more, insofar as, I’m still eating carbs, and I’m going to try to make sure I get in a good amount of them pre- and post-workout; but overall levels will definitely be lower, because my goal is different.

This often explains the promotion going on at the Lifetime Fitness Café, “Optimize in 45.” It’s basically the idea that you have a 45-minute window post workout to optimize recovery and growth, and therefore, you should get in a recovery meal with the proper ratio of nutrients. The general recommendation by most nutritionists is that your recovery meal or shake should consist of either a 3:1 or a 4:1 ratio of carbs to protein. With clients that are trying to lose weight, I usually err on the side of a 2:1 ratio of carbs to protein.

Above all else, I should also point out the irony of how most people think about nutrients: most people consider protein to be the most important nutrient to consume pre and post workout. Protein is your most important nutrient throughout the rest of the day, not an energy source, but a building block. While working out, your body is not building, it is tearing itself down, and therefore, you need energy around your workout. Don’t get me wrong, you still want to get in the appropriate amount of protein pre and post workout, but it’s simply not as important as your carbohydrate intake, as long as you are aware of the levels.

III. CARB INTAKE THROUGHOUT THE REST OF THE DAY
There is a lot of debate in the exercise and nutrition world as to whether timing of carbohydrates matter for fat loss or muscle gain throughout the rest of the day. Because nutrient timing is generally accepted as gospel amongst most bodybuilders and physique athletes, I would like to subject others want to get fit to the theories. From a scientific standpoint, it makes sense to try to time your carbohydrate intake throughout the day. We’ve already seen that the a good chunk of your carbohydrates should be ingested pre and post workout – especially during harder resistance training sessions. This is due to the fact that carbohydrates are a fast energy source, meaning they metabolize into sugars that sit in the bloodstream, available for immediate use.

What we can deduce from this, is, that carbohydrate intake, in general, should reflect activity levels. In other words, if you eat a lot of carbohydrates and are sedentary, chances are you are not going to immediately burn them off, and if you don’t immediately burn them off, you are going to store them. The body will first store those carbs in muscle tissue and the liver, provided there is room. Once there is no more room (i.e., you’ve eaten too many carbs throughout the day, or over a certain period of time, without enough activity), then the body is forced to store the carbs in adipose tissue. Therefore, you have a lesser likelihood of storing carbohydrates as body fat if you eat them during times when you are more active. In other words, you want to try to get your carbs in earlier in the day, and taper them off as the day progresses.

A lot has been made about the idea that “you shouldn’t eat past 6pm” (or fill in whatever magical time you adhere to). Oprah has made a big deal out of this principle. In general, I’m sure there is a correlation between limiting feeding times (i.e., stopping food intake a few hours before bed) and weight-loss. After all, most people get the hungriest for ‘bad’ (high sugar, high fat) food when they are winding down, trying to relax and getting ready for sleep. Therefore, if you consciously abide by a rule that prohibits you from eating the wrong foods at times when your body will wreak the most havoc with the nutrients, then chances are good that you will be more successful with your weight loss.

However, it all comes down to what you eat late at night. Personally – and every other bodybuilder and physique athlete that I know – eats right up until bed time. It’s that last meal or two consist almost exclusively of lean proteins, vegetables, and maybe some healthy fats. We tend to taper carbs off later in the day or early evening, often following a “carb-cutoff” rule that is implemented, which should reflect your schedule. For example, so if you tend to go to bed around 11pm, your “carb-cutoff” time might be 6pm – that is the time of day when you allow yourself your last meal with carbs, and any food you eat beyond that is going to be simply protein and veggies.

Eating protein meals before bed might not sound super glamorous or appealing, but it serves specific purposes that can be very advantageous to weight loss. First, protein digests into amino acids, which cannot be stored in the body for future use. If you want to have the necessary nutrients (amino acids) available to help repair tissues (i.e., muscle tissue, damaged from weight training), then you need to eat protein sources within fairly small windows (more frequently, the better). Therefore, if you have your last meal at, 6pm, go to bed at 11pm, wake up at 6am, and eat breakfast at 7am, you have now gone 13 hours without a protein source, which means there are NO amino acids available in your bloodstream to help with muscle repair. If you are actively trying to build muscle (which, will help immensely with fat loss and help you lose the weight you want to lose), you have just starved your body of the nutrient it needs for repair (amino acids, or protein) during the hours when it wanted to do most of its repairing. I think it always makes sense to try to get in a late-night protein meal or snack (cottage cheese, yogurt, whey protein shake, salad with chicken in it, etc).

Second, having that late-night meal, even if it’s not the tastiest or most appealing option in the universe, will help to keep you full, so you are not hungry and craving other less-nutritious foods. It is better to eat something, and give your body the nutrients it can actually use for positive benefits, than to starve it of those nutrients. Moral of the story: try to make your earlier meals in the day protein-carb based, and your later meals in the day either protein-veggie, or protein-healthy fat-veggie based.

IV. TIMING CARB AND DIETARY FAT INTAKE
Another hotly-debated topic, within the nutrition world, and worth discussing – many people think you should try to separate the ingestion of carbohydrates and dietary fats. Carbohydrates, especially in larger portions, tend to elevate blood sugar levels, which leads to the release of insulin. Insulin works as a “shuttle” nutrient. Think of it as the bus-driver that drops off everybody where he or she is supposed to go. Higher insulin levels help to drive carbs into the muscle cells as glycogen, amino acids into the muscle cells to help build new muscle, and creatine into the muscle cells. Many think, that insulin will also help to drive dietary fat, in the form of triglycerides, into adipose (fat) tissue. Therefore, many advise against consuming meals that are both high in fat and carbs.

Also, remember that both fat and carbs are energy sources. The body only needs so much energy at once. If you provide it with too much, and it simply can’t use it all, therefore, you generally don’t want to be consuming a lot of fats along with your carbs all at once. It’s no coincidence, in my opinion, that the foods that tend to be the worst for you tend to be highest in both fats AND carbs – pizza (cheese and bread), ice cream (dairy and sugar), desserts in general (butter and oil, along with tons of sugar and starch), etc. For these reasons, start thinking of your meals as partitioned into either protein-carb meals, or protein-healthy fat meals, or protein-veggies meals.