PDF By Rosemary Vernon, Editor of Dolfzine Online Fitness Inc.
Introduction and Background
Congratulations! If you’re reading this, then it’s obvious that you want to take your life in a positive direction by exercising and eating properly. No matter at what level you begin, or your current physical condition, time, patience and perseverance will accomplish wonders. Although the diet advice that will be presented in this series can be used by itself, it will produce much greater results if it’s accompanied by a well-designed exercise regimen. The food, or fuel, you provide your body can literally make or break your efforts. Many competitive iron athletes consider their diets contribute at least 50% to their success, and many consider the percentage to be even higher.
Before you begin developing your own personal food plan, you must realize that Nature prefers the status quo, or “homeostasis.” You can most definitely change your body, but no matter what some media guru tells you there are no 30-minute sit-com solutions or even 12-week total transformations!
What, how much, and when to eat can be very confusing because it takes time to get to know yourself. As an individual, your body will respond differently than anyone else’s to training, diet and supplements. View this as a long-term project and lifestyle change. Some things you try will work and others won’t, but along the way you will be amazed at what you discover about yourself that you never knew before.
I have no intentions of spoon-feeding you, i.e. I am not going to write out a diet plan for anyone, because there is no such thing, although I will offer suggestions. Besides, if I did all the work, you would learn nothing, and in a few weeks you’d be right back to square one. I want you to understand how to manipulate your diet within changing and varying conditions, because whatever your lifestyle is today is no guarantee it will be the same tomorrow.
The first part of this series will provide you with a few insights into the workings and responses of that wondrous chemical factory known as the human body. Some information, especially as relates to genetics, may sound discouraging. Don’t take it that way! The last thing you should be doing is harboring unrealistic expectations which will do nothing but create extra stress and eventually cause you to abandon all your good intentions.
Understanding the Homo Sapiens
First and foremost we have to appreciate that the human animal has not evolved in about 100,000 years, except for some very minor changes. Just because we sit in front of computers all day, enjoy the benefits of electricity and modern plumbing and buy our food in stores, doesn’t mean our brain perceives stimuli any differently than when we were hunting and gathering. We’re walking around with a lot of primeval baggage.
For example, we still retain a pack-rat mentality. As primitives, we had to gather and store for lean times in order to survive. Our primal brain views Costco and similar emporiums the same way it views a tree full of ripe nuts. It’s also the way we view a plateful of food which cause us to overeat if there is more than what we really require placed upon it. In many parts of the World, nourishment is still hard to come by, but we know full well that our next meal is only as far away as our refrigerator or the store or restaurant down the block. Yet our brains are unconvinced, despite the fact that we have never gone hungry a day in our lives. This is a difficult impulse to control mainly because we have very little control. We now have to exercise something Nature never heard of, willpower.
The top priority for all living things. is to stay alive, to preserve one’s life at all costs. To ensure you would move fast when confronted by danger, Nature provided the fight or flight response. When you become alarmed, glands secrete hormones, such as adrenalin. Your first response is to get out of the way; your second is to fight.
On the ancient savanna this helped you outrun stampeding herds or pick up a spear when you could feel the breath of the beasts on your back. You have the same reaction when someone cuts in front of you on the highway. You either screech on your brakes or try to maneuver your car out of the way. The primal human burned off these hormones by running as fast as she could and climbing the nearest tree. By the time she got to the top, the hormone rush that had saved her life was spent. On the modern roadway, you simply sit and stew in your juices with no outlet but waving your fist and hollering expletives. It’s not enough and consequently we pay the price even though we may not know it at the time; stress of this sort is cumulative. Even worse than the overly large portion of food, which you can walk away from, we have no control over our fight or flight responses. Our best offense is the defense of good health.
In the modern world, the majority of people sit on their gluteus maximi all day rather than using them to dash through the bush. Primitive humans spent their days hunting, digging in the ground to uncover edible roots, climbing to pick fruit off a tree, etc. After it was gathered, more energy was required to clean and prepare it. The nearest thing we come to this is hauling sacks of groceries up to our fourth floor flat when the elevator’s broken.
Primitive man ate food as Nature made it. We now eat a great deal of food as large corporations make it. And even some of what we consider straight off the farm has been engineered, sprayed to keep bugs from getting it first, or picked green. In a primitive state, man did not willingly choose unripe fruit and vegetables. If it contained a few worms, they provided a welcome source of protein. And when hunters did catch prey, it hadn’t been fattened in a feed lot and given hormones to make it grow faster.
Although hidden inside of us is a wondrous chemical factory that can deal with a myriad of substances, it was not designed to assimilate the huge amounts of sugar and processed foods we ingest each day. However, we can still make choices and need to learn to do so for the sake of our personal health and quality of life.
But no matter what we do, or wish to do, there is no way we can eat as did our ancestors. We live in a much different continuum. Most people would be quite unwilling to give up their modern conveniences to live in a cave. So we make tradeoffs. We must do the best with what we have. That’s all anyone has ever been able to do whether they roamed the Earth 100,000 years ago, 20,000 years ago, or yesterday.
What it Takes to be a Greek Goddess
Okay, you start to exercise, or exercise properly (you trade 7 days a week on the stair stepper for 2 to 3 days a week of intense weight training) and adjust your diet (you give up a lot of junk food and don’t overeat) but after six months of patient, persistent effort, you’re still not looking quite like a magazine cover model. There are many variables that cause people to resemble Greek statues — or not. Even though we might wish to be different, an understanding of the why’s and wherefores will help us stop berating ourselves about something over which we have no control.
Persistence and determination play large roles in your success but you will only be able to reach the top of your particular genetic tree. Some people are in simply in the right place in line when God hands out bodies – and every other attribute. So don’t compare yourself to others. Do the very best with what you’ve been given. Pete Sisco and John Little, in their book Static Contraction Training (1996, pages 10-14), provide some answers about what factors contribute to what you will be able to accomplish.
First on the list is skeletal formation. If you’re possessed of long bones that are small in circumference, you’re not going to be able to carry or develop the same amount of muscle as someone with a larger, heavier bone structure. For example, you may desire to add more muscle to your shoulders to balance out the size of your hips, but you may never be able to accomplish it. If you have a large bone structure, you will never resemble a Victoria’s Secret model. Case closed.
Skeletal formation also contributes to aesthetic proportions. Compare yourself to that nice photo of Corey Everson in my article, “The Fountain Of Youth Is In The Gym.” Corey, who was a Ms. Olympia for several years in a row, has perfect symmetry, no matter whether she is very muscular (as she was when she was competing in bodybuilding) or now, when she has “softened” down. You don’t look like Corey? Well, neither do I, even on a good day! Tough luck.
The next genetic trait not apparent by looking at someone is muscle fiber density, i.e. the number of fibers packed within a given volume of muscle. The more fibers you have the larger you can make the muscle. This is a born, not made, situation although there have been some hints that this is possible (termed “hyperplasia”), but the ability to do so has not been proven. So even if you’d like to have nice full calves, your genetics may not allow it. Do they get you from Point A to Point B? Count your blessings. Some folks can’t walk.
Although the size of one’s skeleton enables an individual to support a certain amount of muscle, the ultimate size the muscle can become is dictated primarily by its length. The longer a muscle, the greater its potential for acquiring extra size. This has nothing to do with the length of the bone (sorry all you tall folks out there), but rather with tendon attachments. Again, you can do nothing about this but gracefully accept the hand you’ve been dealt.
Also helpful is having ideal physical proportions for a particular sport. Compare a football player to marathon runner. You’re looking at a very differently proportioned and constructed body. Once in a while someone will be exceptional in two or more sports, but they are usually sports that require the same body type, such as someone who plays football and competes in powerlifting (a form of organized competitive weight lifting open to both men and women). It’s extremely rare to find someone who is both an elite level marathon runner and an elite level powerlifter, although these genetic wonders do exist.
Last but not least is metabolism. Some people’s metabolisms just aren’t geared to allow them to pack on huge slabs of muscle, while others seem to be able to eat very little to maintain their body composition. In order to more easily identify body types, they have been classified into three categories.
Determining Your Somatotype
Say what?! Don’t be put off by this long word. Somatotype refers to your basic body structure. There are three types: Ectomorph, Mesomorph and Endomorph. Most people are a combination of two, and sometimes all three. Getting an idea of where you fall in these categories will help you determine how your body will respond to exercise and diet.
Very honestly, women need to try to pack on as much muscle as possible. Okay, okay there are ladies out there who have only to look at a barbell to add mass, but don’t want to be quite so buffed. They are, however, the RARE EXCEPTION. Most women would have an extremely difficult time adding the kind of muscle mass they think will make them look like a man simply because their estrogen to testosterone ratio won’t allow it. Gaining too much muscle is rarely a problem. Don’t even think about it.
Anyway you look at it, muscle is your best friend because it’s what gives you shape; fat just billows and jiggles. Muscle also burns more calories; in fact, every pound of muscle burns 40 calories per day (Mass Builders Newsletter, June 1998)! So it’s this wonderful combination of shape and a hot metabolism that we’re all trying to achieve which is in direct contrast to what Mother Nature really wants. Mother loves fat because she knows famine is just around the corner. Adequate fat stores will insure your survival as well as that of the fetus you may be carrying. More muscle than you require to go about your daily business, on the other hand, is a calorie hog. Thus we might form the hypothesis that those of you who are over fat in the modern world would have been survivors in Jurassic Park.
Read the following descriptions and try to place yourself in one or two categories. Keep in mind that descriptions are of true somatotypes and all of us are a combination of varying percentages.
Ectomorph - These people are the ones we know who can eat anything anytime in any amount and never gain a pound. Of fat. Unfortunately, they also cannot gain a pound of muscle. They are tall for their bone structures, and are the current media ideals (A woman can be neither too rich nor too thin says Vogue Magazine – not!) Some operate on a lot of nervous energy, but this is not true of all of them. They vary from bags of bones to folks who are almost a bit too thin. Some have tremendous appetites, yet others hardly eat at all.
Mesomorph - These are the beautiful people and great athletes. They are perfectly shaped; all the fat is in the right places and there’s not very much of it at that. The majority can eat just about what they wish whenever they wish. The elite of this category are the ones who win contests for having great bodies, appear on magazine covers and have the kind of shape and symmetry everyone else wants.
Endomorph - These folks tend to gain fat easily. Often they have large bone structures and are heavily muscled, but this is not necessarily the case. There are people who, because they are over fat just look big. If you x-rayed them, you’d find they had medium to small frames. There are also those who appear slender yet have a much higher percentage of body fat to muscle ratio.
Lots of people are “Ecto-Meso’s.” They tend to be slender, somewhat athletically inclined and usually fairly well proportioned, although not perfect as we think of a Greek statue. Others are “Ecto-Endo’s.” Although slender, they gain fat easily. These are the real puff balls of the human race — fat thin people. Many strength athletes, are “Endo-Meso’s.” They are naturally extremely strong and powerful with aesthetic body shapes, but may gain fat easily.
Genetics are everything here. If your parents are both large framed and over fat, you inherited this same body type, unless you got the recessive genes of your little, tiny, skinny aunt. Since we never seem content with the body type we are born with, most people spend their lives wishing for what they don’t have. Learn to live with it. Once you accept yourself with all your perceived shortcomings — in this case, your physical appearance — you will remove a great deal of stress from your life and can get on with the project — that of redoing what Mother messed up.
As time passes and your exercise and diet regimen continue, you may discover that you have enough Mesomorph thrown into your mix that you responded much better than you originally thought possible.
Basically Ectomorphs need to eat more, not overtrain with weights and lay off high level cardio. Endomorphs need to be cognizant of calorie intake and stay active; they can often handle and recover from heavy resistance training done 3 to 4 times a week. Mesomorphs fall in the middle, but a good diet and a smart training plan will maintain their God-given attributes.
As was stated previously, some of the above descriptions may sound discouraging, but they are not meant to be that way. They are provided to keep you from berating yourself about genetic conditions over which you have no control, like the color of your eyes or how tall you are. You don’t need to accept excess fat, low strength levels or living an unhealthy lifestyle, because those are things over which you have control. Do something positive about the things you can change, and forget the other stuff.
Even though the majority of us weren’t created with what we consider to be the perfect body, most could do extremely well if they adopted a proper training program and diet. In fact, they could transform themselves beyond their wildest dreams. You might not end up on the cover of a magazine but you will look damn good!
