Exercise and Nutrition Sites I Recommend
Trying to figure out the answer to any exercise or nutrition question can be really daunting for many people. The book store has hundreds of different books all recommending various things, sometimes at odds with each other. Social media is no different: there are legions of people who promise to give you their secrets to an amazing physique. For many, getting a straight, honest answer is challenging. It’s a complex subject, but the field of exercise and nutrition is rife with pseudo-science and anti-science. You’ll come across plenty of people who recommend stuff to you based on their own personal experience, which is a valid means of observation, but they then extrapolate that to mean that it works for everyone else. A study done on yourself does not always infer that others will get the same results that you did. This is a really important topic: just because you feel that something had an effect on you, does not necessarily mean it’s true or true for others. The best example of this is the placebo effect. If you administer an inert sugar pill to a subject and tell them that it’s a new, special muscle-building pill, don’t be surprised to find out that a month later they’re raving about how incredible that pill was. Not everyone is subject to the placebo effect, but many fall prey to it.
Here is an example: a young man, around the age of eighteen, starts to strength train for the first time in his life. One of his friends says, “Hey, if you’re going to lift weights, you should take some protein powder. I did and got amazing results.” Now this young man has the idea in his head that he needs to supplement with protein powder, otherwise he will get sub-par results. His friend got results with it, why wouldn’t it work for him? So this young man proceeds to work out really hard in the gym and after a couple of months notices that he’s significantly stronger and slightly more muscular. The likelihood that this man will attribute the protein powder to a lot of his progress is quite high. The most likely scenario is that this young man was brand new to strength training and, because it was a brand new stimulus, and he worked out hard, he obtained results. An eighteen year-old also has an optimal hormonal profile for gaining strength and muscle. So, combining a brand new stimulus, applied to the body for several weeks, and an optimal hormonal profile for gaining muscle and strength and it’s no wonder that he achieved positive results. This is not due to the protein powder or whatever supplement he was taking. It was due to good old-fashioned hard work.
I’ll say this about supplements: very, very few work and the few that do only work because the person had a pre-existing deficiency. For example, taking copious amounts of vitamin C does nothing to prevent disease or colds, but if you’re deficient in vitamin C, you’ll develop a condition know as scurvy. Essentially, you have a diseased state because you are deficient in a nutrient. Adding that nutrient back in will subside the diseased state, but nothing more after that. If a little bit is good, it does not follow that more is better. There indeed are compounds that do enact a beneficial effect on the body, but these can be counted on your fingers…they don’t number in the dozens or hundreds.
What does all of this have to do with exercise and nutrition sites that I recommend? The sites that I’m recommending look at the current body of science to infer what to do regarding nutrition and exercise. While they may not always be 100% correct in some cases, the authors take the existing body of evidence and extrapolate from that. We’re talking about academic papers here; peer reviewed studies. The people interpreting them have scientific backgrounds and also seek truth. Data can change, studies can be flawed, but a scientist changes their opinions based on the best science out there. Bodybuilding is an arm of science and clinging to outdated, dogmatic beliefs is the wrong path to follow.
Do we have all of the answers regarding exercise and nutrition? Nope. We sure don’t. But these sites help us get closer…
Clarence Bass - www.cbass.com
Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D, C.S.C.S. - www.lookgreatnaked.com
Examine.com (research-based nutrition and health information) - www.examine.com
*I am in no way associated with any of these websites or individuals. I make no money and receive no benefits by recommending them.