Looking back at 2011, it has been a very fun, exciting, and busy year for BuiltLean.com. From the start of the year, traffic to BuiltLean.com has grown 10x from 300-400 visitors/day to 3-4K visitors/day (See: BuiltLean.com Surpasses 100K Unique Visitors Per Month). Some more notable items: I did my first live TV appearance for the NBC Philadelphia 10! Show, the BuiltLean Program launched in March to rave reviews, 29 new videos were uploaded to the BuiltLean Youtube Channel, which now has over 150K views from around the world, and 3 amazing contributors came on board to write articles for BuiltLean.com (Christy, Max, and John).

Out of 75 articles written this year, only 5 can make it to the Best of BuiltLean 2011 list. The articles that were chosen were based on a combination of the following:

1) # of Pageviews
2) # of Comments
3) # of shares

So here they are:

1) How Many Calories Should You Eat To Lose Weight?

There are some articles I find myself sharing all the time and this is one of them. Eating less calories than you burn is fundamentally the most important guideline for successfully losing body fat. In this article, which attracted 35k views and 31 comments breaks down how many calories you should eat to lose weight into 3 simple steps.

2) Full Body Workouts vs. Split Routines: Which is Better?

There is a lot of confusion over whether full body workouts or split routines help you lose fat, build muscle, and improve performance most effectively. The short answer is that either strategy can work very well when combined with proper nutrition. For a detailed look at the pros and cons of each exercise strategy, check out the full article which has attracted 10K views, 41 comments, 42 Facebook Likes, and has an average time on page of 3 minutes and 45 seconds.

3) How To Get Ripped & Cut: Definitive Guide

Getting “ripped” is an elusive state of fitness only experienced by very few people. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not about some fitness product, or even fitness program that gets you ripped. In this article, which attracted 33K views, 55 comments, and 48 Facebook Likes, I tell the truth about how to ensure you get a ripped body…and it has little to do with the strength training program you choose.

4) Proper Push Up Form: How To Do A Push Up

Breaking down the push up into 7 distinct tips, this video attracted 23K views and 33 comments on Youtube and 18k views on BuiltLean.com with 35 comments in 2011. In the video, we used B-roll to show the proper push up form and also improper push up form to highlight the differences.

5) Jack Lalanne Tribute: Facts About Fitness Icon

With 13K views, 38 Facebook Likes, and 10 Comments, this article tribute to Jack Lalanne was not the most viewed, or shared, but it was a very important tribute to a fallen comrade in the fight against obesity. He has some of the best quotes I’ve ever come across on fitness and his passion for fitness lives on.

In December, I came across news items and articles ranging from the FDA warning companies to stop marketing HCG products to exercise labels showing promise as an effective deterrent of sugary drink consumption. For more, check out the articles below:

1) HCG Diet Products Illegal, FDA Warns Seven Companies

The HCG Diet, which requires eating only 500 calories per day and injections of HCG hormone to help speed up metabolism and improve hormonal balance has spread like wildfire in the last couple of years. The success of HCG may come to a screeching halt as the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission issued warning letters to seven companies that market HCG, calling for these companies to stop selling and marketing these unapproved drugs. First, HCG is unapproved as a drug and second, only trace amounts are typically found in these products.

2) Blood Sugar Lowered By Brief, High-Intensity Workouts In Diabetics

I’ve written numerous articles about the benefits of short, high intensity workouts to aid in fat loss and improve cardiovascular health. Research is now showing brief, high intensity workouts can help lower blood pressure in Diabetics.

3) Our Attitude to Food and Fitness ‘is Fixed at Ten Years old’?

A study out of Newcastly University found that a person’s attitude towards food and exercise is largely set by the tender age of ten. The results revealed that the diet and exercise habits we pick up in childhood stay with us throughout life.

4) Nestlé Expands U.S. Nutrition Programs To Combat Obesity

“Nestlé has introduced and expanded new Nutrition, Health and Wellness (NHW) initiatives, announced several partnerships with leading industry organizations, and launched multiple campaigns to increase nutrition awareness and help combat epidemic rates of obesity.” While I’m sure most of the folks who work at Nestle are good, hard working people, I find it difficult to take wellness initiatives seriously from a company that is certainly not helping the obesity epidemic. What do you think?

5) ACE’s 2012 Fitness Trends

Each year the American Council on Exercise (ACE) creates their Fitness Trends report. In 2012, 9 fitness trends are listed. The first three are (1) Obesity Awareness, (2) Whole Life Training, and (3) Behavior Modification. For the rest, follow the link above.

6) Exercise labels, not calorie information, are more likely to deter sales of high sugar fizzy drinks

Showing the high calorie content of sugary drinks to teenagers makes little difference in dissuading them from consuming these drinks. Showing how much physical exercise would be needed to burn off those calories on the other hand does make a big difference. Should this concept of showing exercise labels on food products be expanded? The ethical challenge is that it may be considered misleading.

7) Most Parents Not Told By Doctors Their Child Is Overweight, USA

“Only 29.1% of parents in America whose children are overweight say their doctor mentioned this problem to them, the rest do not recall ever being asked about their child’s bodyweight by a physician or any health care professional, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine reported in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine…”. Should Doctor’s be incentivized to say something? Parents may get defensive if a doctor says a child’s weight is a problem, so it’s a tough situation.

Check out the chart below from my Google Analytics account:

At the start of 2011, BuiltLean.com was attracting around 400-500 visitors per day, which has swelled to roughly 4K per day. This growth was almost 99% organic, with very little money spent on advertising. Here’s some more information on traffic stats:

Top 5 Countries (traffic)

1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. Canada
4. Australia
5. India

Bottom 5 Countries (traffic)

186. Niger
187. Solomon Islands
188. Somalia
189. Swaziland
190. Tonga

I want to send my sincere thanks to YOU for sharing the message that we can get lean and stay lean naturally with short, effective workouts and sensible nutrition. Crash diets are out. Lifelong fitness is in.

I’m honored that you are part of the BuiltLean community and I look forward to your continued participation!

As Thanksgiving approaches, the media starts kicking into high gear with fitness and nutrition tips like:

“5 Tips to Eat Healthy on Thanksgiving”

“How to Lose Fat On Thanksgiving Day”

…and the list goes on.

Instead of offering you some tips on how to eat less on Thanksgiving, I’m hoping to share with you something deeper, more fundamental to your life.

I have a lot to be thankful for on Thanksgiving day and one person in particular is my Dad. My dad taught me one of my most valuable fitness lessons years ago, but I only started to fully understand this lesson in the last few months. I want to share this valuable lesson with you today.

My dad grew up in a lower-middle class household to immigrant parents in Brooklyn, NY, then later moved to Long Island. He was naturally a very smart guy (a lot smarter than I am) who skipped a grade when he was young. At the same time, he was a total jock who excelled at sports from baseball, to wrestling, to swimming. He was the quintessential scholar athlete who I tried to emulate.

After college, my father became a Medical Doctor focusing on Ophthalmology (eye surgery). After 40+ years of hard work, he now presides over one of the most successful ophthalmology practices in the country and is flown around the world to give lectures and discuss his experience and research.

My dad is very “old school” if you know the type. He works very, very hard and doesn’t have much sympathy (i.e. none) if you are not willing to work hard either. He can be a bit rough around the edges and can be very stern, but also has a big heart as well. A contradiction of sorts.

One day when I was 13 years old, I walked up to my Dad’s study where he spent a lot of time looking at slides, reading, and writing papers. As he saw me coming up the stairs he motioned for me to sit down on the couch that faced his chair. He seemed pretty excited about something.

He swiveled his chair behind him and pointed at two framed posters on the wall, which he had just purchased. He began to speak to me about the poster on the left, which had an image of a canoe on a deep, expansive river. Underneath this image were the words:

When I left my corporate career behind me to focus on my passion for fitness, every once in a while I would think about this phrase. When I look back at the last few years of my life, my biggest mistake was not being more patient, not fully heeding the wisdom of the simple phrase “Success is a journey, not a destination.” I was always scrambling to have a certain number of clients, to make a certain amount of money, which negatively affected my lifestyle and my happiness.

Here's my fitness reading for the next couple of weeks.

So what does all this have to do with fitness? What’s the important fitness lesson I learned?

Similar to success, fitness is a journey, not a destination.

Success is striving to make the necessary changes in your life, the persistence toward reaching your goals, not the specific number of pounds you lose, or muscle you gain. Over time with consistent effort and patience, you will reach your goals and create new goals in their place.

No matter where you are on your fitness journey, whether you are just starting out, or have been traveling on the fitness path for years, I applaud you for a worthwhile pursuit. All of us who are on this journey together share a very important belief – taking care of our bodies is important. The methods may change over time, we may debate which path is better, or worse, but the core belief still remains.

I look forward to continuing to educate myself for many years to come. I sincerely hope the effort I put into learning more about fitness will be to your benefit, which was one of my motivations for starting BuiltLean. BuiltLean.com reflects our journey together to learn more about fitness and apply what’s useful to help improve how we look, feel, and function.

Gary Taubes is an award winning science writer who is best known for his 640-page tome Good Calories, Bad Calories, which challenges conventional wisdom about nutrition, weight loss, and disease. His more recently published Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It is billed as shorter, but more reader friendly version of Good Calories, Bad Calories. I reasoned it would be a good idea to first read Why We Get Fat so I could share it with you.

Why We Get Fat is split into 2 sections:

1. Biology, Not Physics – Gary goes into detail about some scientific flaws of the calories in/calories out model of weight loss and how conventional nutrition wisdom has changed over time.  This section is about 1/3 of the book.
2. Adoposity 101 – In this section, Gary takes a closer looks at the “Laws of Adiposity” and how hormones and carbohydrate intake play specific roles in how our bodies gain and lose fat.  He also explores genetic and behavioral implications of fat loss, along with briefly discussing the paleo diet, which is how he suggests you should eat.

Here’s what I think are the pros and cons of the book:

Pros

History of academic nutrition research -  I have to give Gary a lot of credit for doing a ton of research to introduce many intriguing studies about how conventional nutrition wisdom has changed over time, along with some serious flaws of current conventional wisdom.  Tons of studies are mentioned along with the major pioneers of the different schools of thought.  You come away believing that conventional wisdom is flawed and reducing carb intake (especially processed carbs and sugar) could be a very helpful strategy to maximize fat loss.  In addition, Gary also introduces some important concepts such as we dramatically changed our eating habits at the start of the agricultural revolution some 10,000 years ago, which only represents 0.5% of the history of our species.  Why not explore how we ate previous to this deviation in our eating habits (this isn’t easy of course, but still interesting)?

Interesting & relevant facts – How can women who are starving still be obese?  Why does a camel have a hump filled with fat?   Why are we the only animals in the animal kingdom that have bodies which do not regulate weight and fatness?  Here are some other interesting tidbits that Gary shares, “We don’t get fat because we overeat, but we overeat because we are getting fat” and “the foods that make us fat also make us crave precisely the foods that make us fat”.  These are just a few of the interesting facts related to fat loss that are explored.

Scientific analysis of fat loss – I’ve only come across descriptions of how fat gain and fat loss work at the hormonal level in research journals, or more esoteric bodybuilding books like Everything You Need To Know About Fat Loss, but to see it in a more mainstream diet book was great.  Discussion of insulin and other hormones and their role in fat loss and fat gain makes the process more tangible.  In addition, Gary explores how genetics can effect fat loss in the chapter “Why I Get Fat and You Don’t”.

Cons

Overly Biased/Not Convincing – Yes, we know Gary believes the “calories in/calories out” and “eat less/move more” model of weight loss is baseless and carbs are solely responsible for weight gain, but do you agree after you read the book?  Probably not.  The first 1/3 of the book, Gary goes into painstaking detail about how the energy balance model of weight loss came about (i.e. as long as you eat less calories than you burn, you will lose weight).  But yet I felt he didn’t answer some fundamentally important questions that challenged his assertions such as (1) if only carbs are important, can I eat as many calories as I want of fat and protein and never get fat, like 10,000 per day? and (2) What about the people on the Twinkie and Banana diets comprised almost purely of carbs, but yet they restrict their calories and lose weight?  I think Gary makes a lot of interesting points about carbs, but to say the amount of calories eaten has no impact and doesn’t matter at all is anathema to both research and experience. 

Pepperoni and String cheese?  No fruit?  Really? – Frankly I took this book a little less seriously when the one and only menu (at the very end of the book) listed pepperoni slices and string cheese as a healthy snack.  To feature high sodium and highly processed food seems odd to me and took away from some of the credibility the book offered.  In addition, fruit is not allowed because of the purported effects of fructose on fat loss.  I find it hard to believe eating a handful of berries (like 7g of sugar) packed with vitamins and minerals is going to prevent fat loss.  Certainly, some fruit can be like candy from modern farming practices etc., but to cast all fruit as fattening and recommend they be avoided without sufficient evidence to the contrary seems extreme and unnecessary.

Not very useful – This book may be informative, but it’s definitely not useful, which was a major frustration as I read the book.  Let’s say you agree you should decrease carb intake, how do you do it?  How do you incorporate more veggies into your diet in a way that’s manageable?  If you experience carbohydrate withdrawal, what should you do?  Any symptoms that should be concerning?  Where are the menu, or snack guides?  I think you’re catching the drift.  The chapter, “What We Can Do” is only 6 pages!  The parts of the book I was hoping would have more detail had less.  Taking into account Gary is himself a journalist, it seems like the book was intended for journalists (even though it wasn’t) who want to write reports on morbidly obese individuals who are insulin resistant, not someone interested in changing their eating habits and losing fat.  Finally, exercise is discussed only briefly in the “Elusive Benefits of Exercise” chapter with some impressive cherry picking of research studies.  To describe exercise as having no benefit from a body composition perspective despite innumerable research studies that have proved the opposite is just disappointing.  Does Gary have a six pack?  Nope, he doesn’t (but he’ll blame it on genetics).

Final Thoughts

If you are looking for useful information on the paleo diet, how to reduce carb intake, and improve your overall health and well being, this is definitely not the book for you.  But if you would like to learn more about the history of academic nutrition research, explore some fat loss conundrums, and have the phrase “carbs make you fat” inculcated into your brain, than you will enjoy the book!

As a professional web surfer, I come across tons of fitness related articles and videos each month. So I thought to myself, why not share some of these articles in a monthly column? Well, that’s exactly what I plan to do moving forward!

Each month I will include links to articles and videos that I find during the month that are informative, useful, entertaining, or a combination of all three. If you ever come across an article or video that is worthy of being added to this column, let me know!

1) Can A Multivitmain Be Deadly?

A study published this month concluded the daily use of a multivitamin (and other nutrient supplements) was associated with a higher rate of death. Alarmist headlines spread around the media, but should you be concerned? Are multi-vitamins really deadly? Do you even need a multi-vitamin? Dr. Katz who is the Founding Director at the Yale University Prevention Research Center takes on these questions and offers insights into analyzing research studies.

2) Experiments With Intermittent Fasting

Who says you have to eat every 3-4 hours to get lean and fit? Well the truth is, you don’t. Intermittent fasting is a burgeoning trend that uses “intermittent” periods of fasting to help improve digestion, energy, and even improve fat loss. While this nutrition method certainly isn’t for everyone, Men’s Health contributor Dr. John Berardi completed 6 months of self-experimentation using intermittent fasting. He created a free resource that goes into depth about his experimentation.

3) 2011 Hottest Celebrity Bodies

The 2011 Hottest Celebrity bodies published by Fitness Magazine and omg! Yahoo has been spreading all around the web. Can you guess the top female body? What about the top male body? What about who has the best abs? What does it say about our culture and the body types that are revered?

4) 10% of Shoppers Look At Label Study Says

A new study found shoppers lack the attention span to read the labels, even though many people claim to read them while shopping. Total shocker, huh? A summary of the study by BYU reveals how shoppers really shop and what percentage shoppers read the entire nutrition label (if you are thinking it’s less than 10%, well you are on the right track my friend!).

5) 600 Million Pounds of Halloween Candy?

A press release from Nielson reveals some pretty scary statistics about U.S. Halloween candy purchases. Americans purchase 600 million pounds of candy the week of Halloween, which is difficult to fathom. Assuming each pound of candy is 9,000 calories, 600 million pounds of candy equates to 1.2 million pounds of fat (3500 calories in 1lb of fat)! To learn how much of this candy is chocolate and the total amount of of dollars sold, check out the article.

We all have seen bogus fitness claims and many of us have considered buying products that make these types of claims.

I compiled a list and analyzed the Top 10 Bogus Fitness Claims that are used to appeal to our emotions and woo us into a state of fixation on a product that can solve our deepest, most personal, most challenging problems.

The following claims are (1) factually incorrect, (2) blatantly misleading, (3) involve the notion that fitness goals can be reached without diet, or exercise modifications and/or (4) claim body change in a way that does not make physiological sense.

1. Build Muscle and Lose Fat at the Same Time!

Building muscle is an anabolic process and losing fat is a catabolic process, so it’s not possible for both processes to work simultaneously. It is possible to gain muscle and lose fat over a given time period, but these results are atypical. It’s far more effective to focus on muscle gain, or fat loss, not both at the same time. For more detail, check out this post: Can You Lose Fat & Build Muscle at the Same Time?

2. Lose 30 Pounds in 30 Days!

The top natural bodybuilders and fitness models whose livelihood depends on their ability to lose fat never try to lose more than 1% of their body weight in fat per week. Why? Because if they lose much more than 1% of their body weight, they are most likely losing muscle. Needless to say, it’s not healthy, nor desirable to lose 30 pounds in 30 days, or attempt to lose weight very quickly which even if successful will be mostly water weight, a lot of muscle, and some fat.

3. This Product Makes Losing Weight Easy!

If there was a product, exercise, or nutrition method that made losing weight “easy”, would 60% of Americans be overweight and 30% be obese? Enough said! Our bodies are homeostatic organisms that are resistant to change. In combination with environmental, social, technological, political, and economic factors that encourage us to eat more calories and exercise less, the cards are stacked against us. The good news is that if you are following the advice on BuiltLean.com, the cards will be stacked in your favor!

4. The Best Way to Lose Weight!

We are all unique; we have unique genetics, tastes, interests, challenges, and desires. There is no “best” way to lose weight. There may be exercise methods that are more efficient than others at losing fat, or that are more challenging. The best way to lose weight, as I described in The Best Workout Routine for You is the one that motivates you to exercise and is sustainable for the long haul.

5. Lengthen Your Muscles!

This claim is used all the time to lure women as if a certain exercise method will magically “lengthen” a woman’s muscles so she can finally look like a ballerina. The reason why ballerinas look like they do is (1) genetics, and (2) they are very lean. Our muscle length is genetic and once we stop growing in height, so does the length of our muscles. In addition, the length of our muscle and the place of insertion onto the bone impacts how much weight we can lift. For example, a man with short biceps will have more leverage to lift a weight than a man of equal size that has a longer biceps muscle.

6. Get Lean, Not Bulky!

This claim is used to lure women and men all the time. Should we fear that one day we’ll wake up as the incredible hulk after lifting heavy weights for a few workouts? I’ve never seen someone who was bulky and lean, unless he or she (1) trained for 5+ years to build a lot of muscle, (2) took steroids, or (3) had 1 in a 1000 genetics. Bulky = Excess Fat. There is little chance of a bulky appearance on a naturally lean physique. Even natural bodybuilders who try to gain as much muscle as possible aren’t that bulky (See: How Much Muscle Can You Gain Naturally?). Finally, it is very unlikely for someone who is in a calorie deficit to add “bulk” no matter how heavy, or how much that person lifts weights.

7. This is a Great Toning Exercise!

In short, there is no such thing as a “toning” exercise. There are exercises that stimulate muscle fibers more than others, but “toning” implies the removal of fat off a particular body part. “Spot reduction” as this concept is called is a myth. We can’t take fat off just one body part unless by undergoing liposuction, which obviously is not very healthy.

8. Get Rock Hard Abs With No Sweat!

This exact claim is used by marketers of electronic abdominal exercise belts…you know, those vibrating belts worn by fitness models on infomercials who themselves have never used the product before? My guess is 95% of people who have a six pack put at a lot of effort into their exercise and nutrition regimen.

9. Eat Your Favorite Foods & Watch The Pounds Melt Away!

This is the typical pitch used for fat burning, or appetite suppressant supplements that promise fast weight loss without any diet modification. The pitch will continue something like, “Just take 2 capsules before each meal. The safe, all natural ingredients bind with food to block absorption of fat, carbs, AND calories. Lose up to 10lb per week, no sweat. No starvation!”

10. Target the Stubborn Fat on Your Belly, Hips, & Thighs!

Similar to the claim that a certain exercise is great for “toning”, the idea that we can target fat on a particular body part with a certain exercise, nutrition, or supplement strategy is factually incorrect (rare exceptions exist for hormonal imbalances). In fact, where and how we lose fat (or gain fat) is genetically predetermined. Typically, where we want to lose fat the most is the last place where it comes off, but the good news is that the “stubborn” fat can be burned off eventually by eating better and exercising with a focus on losing fat without losing muscle.

Unfortunately, these types of claims will probably be successful at attracting attention and selling products until the end of time. I’m trying to do my part to make you aware that they are not only misleading, but just plain factually incorrect. If you ever see a fitness claim on this website that you think is misleading, please let me know.

Next time you’re watching that late night infomercial (come on, I know you watch them everyone once in a while), you’ll now be able to pick apart some of the bogus claims you hear.

If I missed any bogus fitness claims, or you have anything else to add, leave a comment below!