Muscle Talk

It’s not a joke—eat more yolk!

Trying to lose weight can be hard, tedious, and relatively unenjoyable (read: downright awful!). Would it be awesome if there were a natural supplement out there that could speed up the process? It would! And there is! Scientists in Milan gave either vitamin D or a placebo to overweight individuals who were on a calorie-reduced diet. The subjects who got a vitamin D supplement (3,300 IU/day) lost more weight than the subjects receiving the placebo, and they also lost more centimetres from their waist. There aren’t a lot of foods out there with high levels of vitamin D, but there are some! Include fish (which has about 500 IU/serving) and egg yolk (40 IU/serving) in your diet, along with beverages such as milk and orange juice that have vitamin D added to them.

Eat like a hunter/gatherer to look like a boss

There’s a theory out there that eating five or six times a day, as most bodybuilders do, is unnatural. Our ancestors didn’t eat unless they killed, and often, they’d go half a day until an animal of substance crossed their path. This is the basis for intermittent fasting, a type of diet that encourages cycling between a period of fasting and non-fasting. That is, there are times you can eat, and there are times you can’t; it could be 24 hours of not eating, or 16. In a study done by the Salk Institute of Biological studies, they had mice that either ate whenever they wanted or ate only during an eight- to nine-hour period per 24-hour day. The mice in the latter group improved their endurance capacity on the treadmill, lost more weight, and held on to lean muscle while dieting. This doesn’t just work for mice! It worked for Hugh Jackman in Wolverine and the Rock, so maybe it’s worth trying!

Lifting heavy gets you lean and keeps you lean

Often, when people reach a low level of body fat after dieting, they think that more cardio will help them maintain that super-shredded and ripped look. That’s true! But researchers have shown that weight training can offer similar benefits in terms of keeping you lean! They took men with 14 percent and 38 percent body fat, and had them run through a full-body weight-training workout. Both groups burned the same amount of calories immediately after the workout, After testing them, it was found that the lean burned fatty acids from their subcutaneous fat stores (versus the 38 percent group, who burned them from elsewhere) and had higher growth hormone peaks. Therefore, to get lean and stay lean, train, train, train!