Soon a whole explosion of this type of information flooded the internet. I wasn’t alone. Instead, I was just a small voice among many. I decided to switch over to covering other topics, ones where I could have a competitive advantage. I rebranded. Thus, the Renaissance Man Blog was born.

However, my fitness journey continued. I am a firm believer in the ancient adage of having a good brain in a healthy body. Of course, being a constant learner, I am always looking to soak up new (and old) information when it comes to fitness. There is so much contradictory information out there now, that it’s hard to tell apart what is good advice and what isn’t. However, there are a few fitness channels which for the most part put out good information. They are my go to source, when I need a bit of advice.

Here some of the main fitness channels I follow.

Athlean X

Juggernaut Training Systems

Shredded Sports Science

Jeff Nippard

Buff Dudes

Rob Riches

Jeremy Ethier

Overtime Athletes

PJP Performance

Calisthenic Movement

Tao Physique

Bob and Brad Physical Therapists

Knees over Toes Guy

Corexcell Sports Training

X Pollination Productions

The Prehab Guys

Lee Weiland

Conor Harris

If you read some nutrition “gurus”, insulin gets a bad rap. Especially guys who argue that carbohydrates are evil and push low-carb diets, try to point the finger at insulin as one of the main causes of people getting fat. They argue that carbs are bad and insulin is bad by association.

However if you look at their arguments more closely, you can see that they make pretty sketchy connections and their conclusions are pretty much BS.

In order to be able to analyze all the different diets that people are hyping-up and make an informed choice on which is the best for you, you need to know what insulin is and how it works.

Let’s start by listing the main roles of insulin in the body:

1) push glucose into cells, in order for it to be used as energy

2) push other types of nutrients (for example proteins), in order for them to be used by the cells

3) store excess glucose for later use (either as glycogen or fat)

Remember these roles when reading the rest of the article, as this is crucial for understanding the importance of insulin in different bodily processes, and especially in what role it plays in getting bigger muscles and losing fat.

Insulin is one of the most important hormones for your metabolism. The different cells in your body need glucose for energy and insulin promotes the absorption of glucose by them (either for energy or for storage – glycogen, fat).

It is a peptide hormone, which means that it’s a functional protein. It is produced in the pancreas by beta cells and serves many functions in your body. You can think of it as the main regulator of your body.

Insulin is released into the bloodstream when glucose is present, whether due to food getting ingested or due to different stress hormones flooding the body.

What happens is that when you are eating, the food is broken down into its more basic constituent parts, and the pancreas starts releasing insulin into your bloodstream. The insulin then directs the transport of these nutrients either into the cells or for storage. Once the level of these nutrients in the blood drops, then the amount of insulin drops as well.

Let’s use an analogy in order to illustrate how insulin works. Imagine that insulin is a small spaceship that travels through your blood and muscle cells are big space factories. These space factories have docking stations (insulin receptors) that the insulin spaceship periodically visits and docks at them.

In the process, the insulin acts as a sort of key, unlocking the doors to the cells. Once these doors are unlocked, nutrients such as glucose or amino acids can enter the cells, bringing energy and also different building blocks for their internal processes.

When insulin is released, the body gets a signal to stop burning fat for energy and instead use the new food that just came in. At that point, insulin also begins the process of energy storage.

Once again imagine insulin as a small spaceship and fat cells as big storage depots. The insulin spaceship docks at the fat cell and tells it to start the process of storing all the excess energy for later use. This thereby increases body fat.

This role of insulin is why it is often depicted as one of the main reasons that people get fat. However this argument is based on a very simplistic reading of the situation.

Insulin is just a hormone which has a certain role to perform in the body. The way it performs it is based on external factors and especially on the choices that people make with their habits and their food.

High vs. Low-Glycemic foods (fast vs. slow absorbing)

The type of carbs you eat, has an effect on how your body controls insulin. If most of the carbs you ingest are high on the Glycemic Index, then you might have a problem. High-GI foods pass through the blood quickly, which can cause insulin spikes. This can result in reduced insulin sensitivity and higher storage of the excess glucose as fat.

Low-GI foods release their nutrients more slowly, meaning that insulin is released slower as well. Most of these nutrients then go into being used as immediate energy or to replenish glycogen stores, instead of for fat storage.

One problem that can occur through living a bad lifestyle and having bad eating habits is insulin resistance. If insulin is released in large quantities very often, the cells lose their sensitivity to it. This means that more and more insulin is always required to perform its function. At the extreme level, it can lead to a total loss of response and diabetes.

The loss of insulin sensitivity is one of the main culprits of obesity. One way this happens is because your liver loses insulin sensitivity as well.

One important function of insulin is that it tells the liver to increase production of glycogen. It also suppresses the liver’s capacity to produce new sugar. This process is called gluconeogenesis in fancy scientific language.

If the liver loses its ability to respond to insulin, the result is too much glucose (sugar) in the blood. This excess sugar then gets stored as fat and makes people put on more body fat.

Another important factor in reducing insulin sensitivity is the modern lifestyle. A bad lifestyle can cause several problems, including insulin resistance.

What many people don’t know, is that insulin can also be released without a person having to eat anything. This takes place when an outside stimuli causes the body to go into reflex mode. When this happens, the body starts releasing stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol.

These hormones then command the body to produce more sugars. In evolutionary terms, this was very beneficial, since stress hormones were released due to some dangerous outside stimuli. For example, a lion could be attacking or an enemy force could be heading your way.

In a moment like this you needed to be able to react quickly and with as much power as possible. So that’s why the body developed a mechanism to supply energy to its cells fast. Stress hormones gave a signal to the body, which then quickly released sugars in order to have more energy available to respond to these threats.

However in the modern world, stress is usually due to BS things like pressure at work, which puts the entire system out of whack. The body is constantly releasing sugars, causing the system to become more insulin resistant. The end result is that all that excess glucose gets stored as fat in the body, and people end up looking like Humpty Dumpty.

The Role of Insulin in Muscle Building

Insulin is needed for getting bigger and building muscles. Insulin is anti-catabolic. When it is present in the blood, it slows down the break-down of muscles proteins. Without insulin, muscle protein would start breaking down (in a process called proteolysis).

Insulin is also anabolic in that it aids the building up of muscles. It promotes protein synthesis and helps different nutrients (including amino acids) to get into the cells. In this way, they get different building blocks that they can then use to build bigger and stronger muscles.

Remember glucose is the basic source of energy for your body as well. Insulin helps in getting this energy-source to the right destination. When the different cells get the energy that they need, they can also work harder and longer, further enhancing the effect.

Also let’s not forget one little side-benefit, which has an impact on external aesthetics. Insulin saturates the muscles with amino acids and glycogen, which then gives them a fuller look.

So you see, insulin is incredibly important to how your physique will look like. Another important element that often gets forgotten, but is crucial for any budding Renaissance Man, is the fact that your brain is the biggest user of carbs and so insulin is needed for transporting glucose to the brain, not only to strengthen your willpower, but also to help you do all that thinking.

Read more:
What are carbohydrates?

Which nutrients are needed for your brain to function well?

In a future article, we will explore what types of strategies you can adopt to heighten insulin sensitivity and get a lean body. Stay tuned!

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Many people go to the gym, but end up seeing very little results. The reason for that is not the routine they are doing. The problem is often much more basic, especially for beginners, office jockeys and weekend warriors. So if you fit in one of these categories, then try to examine what you are doing and what things you are doing wrong.

If you thought that this post was going to be about progressive overload, compound exercises and deadlifts, then you are in for a surprise. The main mistakes of most people are much more basic than that. If you are a more advanced lifter than this is most likely “well, duh” for you, but unfortunately most people keep on repeating these mistakes, sabotaging their own progress.

Here is a list:

1) You don’t go regularly to the gym

You might go to the gym one time one week, three times the second week, skip the third week and go back the fourth week. Your gym schedule is irregular and you do things haphazardly. No wonder you are not seeing results.

If you want to see results, then you need to go regularly. Pick a number of days a week (whether 2 or 4 or whatever) and stick to that number.

2) You are not consistent with your routine (you don’t stick to your routine)

Many people try to look for the perfect routine. In reality, it doesn’t really matter what routine you do, as long as it encompasses a few basic principles and most importantly you stick to it.

Many people go the gym, do cardio one week, then work on some chest presses the next week and do something totally different the third week. You need to pick a routine and stick to it. The key to anything is staying consistent.

Also don’t forget to work all your major muscle groups, a lot of guys go to the gym and keep on working their chest and biceps over and over again. Yes, they are being consistent, but it is a stupid type of consistency which can only lead to muscle imbalances and injuries.

3) You think some magic supplement will solve all your problems

I have a friend who I noticed had not being going to the gym for a while. I asked him why that is and he replied:

“I can’t train if I don’t buy protein powder first.”

He is obviously under the impression that some magic bullet (especially in the form of supplements) will make the difference. However his problems are much more fundamental: he is not consistent and his routine does not follow the basic principles of lifting. No wonder he never sees any progress. Yet, he still doesn’t listen.

4) You spend too much time fiddling with your smartphone

Seriously you don’t need to check your cell phone in between sets or play with it when you are on cardio machines. In fact, leave it in the locker room or at home.

5) You train through injuries and don’t give your body time to rest and heal

Contrary to popular belief, your muscles don’t grow in the gym doing exercises, but after that during the time you are at home and at rest. If you are not resting, then you are not giving your body time to recover and grow.

Also when you train through your injuries, you are settign yourself up for bigger problems later on. If you have a major injury, then take a break and give your body time to heal. That way you can continue on training for a long time.

6) You don’t pay attention to your diet

Whether you are fat or skinny depends on what you do in the kitchen: what you eat. If you want to see results, you need to fuel your body up with nutrients.

7) You can’t take a hint

If what you are doing isn’t producing results, then you are doing something wrong and need to change what you are doing. This is pretty obvious, but it’s amazing how many people can’t take a hint and continue on doing things in the wrong way.

Read More:
Top 12 exercises that must be a part of your routine

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The problems is that many guys spend most of their time working on their show muscles, and totally neglect the legs. If you are one of those guys, then you should remind yourself of the fact that legs make up half of your body. If you don’t work them, then you will never see the total gains you want.

With that said, I will assume that you do spend a considerable time working your legs with such staples as deadlifts, squats and a variety of other exercises. However your calves have not attained the size that you want.

For many people, the calves are their most stubborn muscles and even if you spend considerable time working them, they still refuse to grow. If you have that problem, then you should consider changing your approach.

The calves support and stabilize your legs and the rest of your body. So having big and strong calves, isn’t just a matter of having good looking legs, but also results in many functional advantages. With stronger calves your performance in many sports will improve, you will be able to jump higher, run faster and perform many activities in a more explosive manner.

In order for you to better understand how the calves work and what types of things you need to do to train them, you should have a basic understanding of what the calf muscles actually are. The back side of the lower leg (the calf) is made of two main muscles, the gastrocnemius and the soleus. The entire system of calf muscles is sometimes called the triceps surae muscle, or the three-headed calf.

The gastrocnemius is the externally visible muscle and has two heads with attachments above the knee and running all the way to the heel.

Running under the gastrocnemius is the soleus muscle. It also starts a bit above the knee and runs all the way to the heel.

Both muscles join together to form a tendon at the heel, which is known as the Achilles tendon.

While both of these muscles are located right next to each other, their internal make up is totally different. The size of the calves is largely dependent on that make-up.

The soleus muscle is made up mostly of slow-twitch muscle fibers, while the gastrocnemius is made up of mostly fast-twitch muscles. However it’s not so simple, since the percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibers in the gastrocnemius varies greatly from person to person. This amount of fast-twitch fibers is the main determinant of the initial size of the overall calf.

The people who have a higher percentage of slow-twitch muscle fibers in the gastrocnemius will find it harder to add size. On the other hand, people who have a higher percentage of fast-twitch muscle will find it much easier to add size.

That’s because slow-twitch muscles are smaller than fast-twitch muscles and their potential to grow is also rather limited. So don’t despair if your buddy starts doing calf exercises and suddenly his calves get huge, while your calves grow only a little. Most likely his calves have a different make up than yours. Persistence is key here.

The two types of muscle fibers respond to different types of training. The fast-twitch muscles respond better to heavy loads, while the slow-twitch muscles respond better to more reps and longer types of training for endurance.

In order to get your calves to be as big as possible, you need to combine trainings for both the soleus and gastrocnemius muscles, using several varied strategies in order to hit all parts of the calves and force them to grow.

There are two main ways of doing calf workouts: straight leg exercises mostly hit the gastrocnemius, while bent leg exercises mostly hit the soleus.

Your lower leg routine should however not be all about these two muscles.

Not many people know this or pay attention to it, but the front side of the lower leg contains the tibialis anterior muscle. This muscle is rarely paid attention to by most gym-goers, but if you want to have more powerful and functional legs, you should not neglect it.

Here are the exercises:
First off, you can do 100 bodyweight calf raises every day in the morning after you wake up. You can change up the positioning of your toes, sometimes doing them with your toes pointing straight, sometimes out and sometimes in.

The exercises to do in the gym:

Standing calf raises (either with barbell, or on machine)

Seated calf raises

Calf raises on seated leg-press

Tibialis raises (for front of leg)

Principles to remember when training calves:

• Train them as often as you can
• Change it up – with one workout go for lower reps and higher weights, while another workout go for higher reps and lower weights
• Form – raise your heels up as high as possible, stay there for a bit, don’t bounce
• Don’t forget to stretch your calves
• Since the make-ups of the calves of different people are different, you will need to experiment a bit with what works for you
• Calves usually respond well to higher amounts of reps (I usually do 3 or 4 sets of 20 reps for each type of calf exercise)
• Calves are functional muscles – you need to use them for them to grow – all my brother does is cycle to work every day and go on hikes in the mountains on the weekends, and he has big calves

Calf training is something that I will try to incorporate more of in this year’s routine. While I don’t have chicken legs, I admit I could use some work on my calves.
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Today I got to my parent’s house. I live far away from them, so visit just a few times a year. The scale at my house is broken, so I wasn’t really aware of my weight. I thought I had actually lost weight, as I had not really been eating right and my working out routine has been severely limited due to the fact that I am still trying to strengthen up my knee after the ACL operation I had in the fall of last year. My focus this year has been recovering from my ACL injury and not gaining weight and muscle.

So today for the first time I had access to a functioning scale. Imagine my surprise when the scale showed 86 kilograms! That basically equals my all time high weight ever. And I had actually thought I had lost weight and was probably howering somewhere around 80 kilograms.

That’s great news, since not only am I close to my biggest weight ever, my abs are showing as well, and all this after not even trying to eat properly.

What can I thank this to? I think it’s due to my routine now heavily relying on pullups and deadlifts.

This is what my routine consisted of:

I would go to the gym after work and started off with some light stretching, usually of the chest. Then I would do 5 to 10 riding on a stationary bike (sometimes stretched out to 20 minutes). After that I would go over to the pullup bar and do 4 sets of 10 reps of pullups. My most frequent grip was the wide grip, but sometimes I would vary the grip.

Then I would go down and do stuff focused on the legs (with some back work thrown in). Since my gym has no squat rack, I can’t really go too heavy on the squats, so I would always squat with 10 kilogram weights on each side of the barbell (so 20kg in total). I would usually do 4 sets of either 10 or 20 squats. Sometimes I would do the full squat, but sometimes a 1/4 squat, depending on how my left knee felt. I am recovering from an ACL injury and I still don’t feel really secure with my knee and sometimes feel things moving around in there. That’s why I am a bit afraid of doing squats.

After the squats would come the deadlifts. I started off with using the same weight as for the squats for 4 series of 10 repetitions. I should also add that these are stiff-legged deadlifts that I was doing. However over time, I started putting on more and more weight and at the end I was doing 4 series of about 8 repetitions of 80 kilogram deadlifts. After the deadlifts, I would do 3 series of barbell bend over rows. Sometimes I would finish off this part of the routine with very light-weight overhead squats.

Then I would move upstairs and do some work on a bosu ball or with some other types of exercise balls. Remember I am still trying to rehab from my ACL injury, so I am doing these exercises as well. After this when I still had power, I would go do some dumbbell bendover rows. I would finish off the routine by doing anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour on those stationary skiing elliptical machines.

Even with all this cardio work, I still blew up to my biggest weight ever without even trying. Remember that all this what I am telling you is bro science, meaning my observations after having followed a certain workout routine. All fitness advice is basically bro science and so you might or might not get the same results.

Even my eating routine wasn’t really something that I was paying attention to. I would usually eat a sandwich and an orange juice for breakfast. Then have a big lunch of whatever was being served in the cafeteria. A few hours before training, I would eat a chocolate bar. After coming back home after training, I would eat some yoghurts. Sometimes I would skip dinner, but sometimes I would have a steak with some vegetables, and sometimes I would just have hard-boiled eggs.

My explanation of this phenomenon is that I was probably getting enough nutrients in order to have proper muscle growth. My breakfast and lunch were big enough to sustain my body and the chocolate bar a few hours before training provided some
needed sugars in order to train hard. The Greek yoghurts after training, then gave me some good protein. Whatever I ate for dinner after just added to this. Also a lot of times, I had steak, which includes things which are precursors to testosterone.

Also a big role in all this played the fact that big compound lifts are good at releasing things like testosterone, HGH and other good things in large numbers, leading to your body swolling up and getting huge.

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Here is a video that can serve as inspiration:

Lazar Angelov Transformation and Inspiration

In order to gain weight, you need to eat more than your maintenance calories. This is the most important advice that anyone can give you. Most people always want to know what kind of a routine they should do, how many reps, what exercises and stuff like that. It doesn’t matter what type of a routine you are doing, if you are not eating enought. Eating above your maintenance level is the basic prerequisite for any routine to work.

For most beginner and even intermediate lifters, basically any type of routine will help them pack on weight and muscle. Of course some might be better at it than others, however if your routine meets some basic principles, then it will help you. It’s the eating part that will be the main difference maker.

The importance of eating cannot be understated. Most of the time when people failed to gain weight, it is because of the fact that they were not eating enough. If you are lifting hard and still fail to make progress on gaining weight, then you need to reexamine your diet. Track it for a week and see what you are eating and how many calories per day in total it is.

Based on this tracking, you can then prepare your diet plan. Calculate your maintenance calories and try to eat anywhere from 500 to 1000 calories above that one. Start off slow, the first week, maybe add just 250 calories above maintenance and consistently keep adding more, until you reach an optimum level, where you are adding weight, but not too much fat. When packing on weight, you are bound to gain fat as well, however by eating clean, you can minimize this fat gain. You can always lose a lot of this fat in a fat-cutting phase later.

It is amazing how much of a difference your diet makes. I had an ACL surgery back in September of last year and during that month I lost almost 8 kilograms, a lot of it being muscle.

I basically stopped eating the usual amounts and just lay in bed. For some people, the lack of activity causes them to eat more and gain weight. For me, it had the opposite effect. Since I am still in rehabilitation mode, I am concentrating on getting my knee stronger and so am not really watching what I eat. This means I am way below the weight I was before my injury.

During this period I lost a lot of weight, but unfortunately, the fat that I had on my stomach stayed.

Even a lot of skinny (skinny-fat) people, have this layer of fat around their stomach. Some of them even go on cutting diets to try to lose it, which just ends up making them look even thinner, but the fat stays. If you are skinny fat, don’t worry, just go on a gaining routine (with the same nutrition, workout, lifestyle components as a skinny person).

You will gain weight and then can go on a cutting phase where you will lose that extra fat. This cutting routine will have you lift heavy as before, however now you can also incorporate HIIT elements, such as short intense sprints, or hill sprints. This way you will get bigger and lose fat at the end too!

However before any fat-cutting phase can occur, you need to have added a good solid amount of weight and muscle. This means that you have to eat, eat and eat. This is the hardest part for most people.

Many so-called hardgainers are not used to eating that much food. So that’s why when they start eating more, they might feel full quickly and think that they are stuffing themselves. In reality, it’s just their perception that makes them think that they are eating a lot. One strategy that you can adopt to overcome this problem is to eat more smaller meals spaced out evenly throughout the day, instead of 3 big meals as tradition dictates.

So remember, if you are not gaining weight, the most likely problem is your diet!

Learn more about nutrition:
What are carbohydrates?
What is protein?
What is fat?

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It’s here! If you want to get all the essential information that you need in order to gain weight and lean muscle, then you are in luck! I wrote a big post on all the basic principles for gaining lean weight. You can use it to start your own journey to have the body that you always wanted.

Read it here:
How to gain weight

It’s still a bit of a work in progress, however it should give you all that you need to know to get started.

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Nutrition:

There is a lot of controversy in the field of nutrition on what type of a diet you should have and what you should eat. Recently there has been a rise in many types of fad diets promoted by different gurus. You do not need to follow any of these diets to be healthy, but should be mindful of what you eat. There are a few basic principles to keep in mind when choosing what to eat. The keyword behind all these principles is balance.

I did 3 articles on the three main macronutrient types that you need to eat and several other articles looking into related topics. These articles summarize all the basic things that you should know about your diet and can help you in forming your own eating strategy. This strategy will depend heavily on what your goals are.

What are carbohydrates?
For most people, carbohydrates form the largest part of their diet. Their primary role is to deliver energy to the body. This energy is delivered primarily in the form of glucose, which is the basic fuel for the human body. It can come in its simple form, delivered as a simple sugar and thereby getting released into the bloodstream really quickly, or it can come in its more complex form, for example as a starch (chains of glucose branched together). This glucose is either used up by the body to fuel its functioning or it is stored as glycogen. Glycogen storage is rather limited however, and so excess glucose often gets stored as fat. Carbohydrates have recently become a bogeyman, and have replaced fats as supposedly the main culprit behind the obesity epidemic in the Western world. This has given rise to a number of low-carb diets such as Paleo or Atkins. However, these types of diets have often been criticized by different people, stating that they are based on bad premises and carbohydrates are not the bogeyman that it is often portrayed as.

Key Lessons: Carbohydrates are an essential part of the diet and should be eaten. The amount of carbohydrates and when they should be eaten depends on what your goals are (lose weight, gain weight) and your activity levels (for example long exercise and long-distance running). So if you are trying to gain weight, having a large number of carbohydrates in your diet may help you. Good sources of carbohydrates for someone trying to gain weight are brown rice and sweet potatoes. On the other hand, for someone trying to lose weight, you might try to cut down on the amount of carbohydrates. The strategy once again is different for active people. Carbohydrates are basically the fuel for the body and so for active people who do long and demanding exercise or activities (such as long distance running), they might need to also take in more carbohydrates, before, during and after exercise.

What is protein?
Proteins serve as the building blocks for your body. The amino acids that they contain are recomposed and then incorporated in many bodily structures, for example muscles are made of protein. That’s why if you want to build muscle, you need to ingest protein. Some of the amino acids that make up different types of proteins are called essential amino acids. This means that your body can’t manufacture them and needs to ingest them from the outside through food.

Key Lessons: As proteins are the building blocks of muscles, your diet needs to have a significant amount of protein in it, in order to be able to make muscles grow. You especially need to make sure to provide your body with the essential amino acids, because it can’t manufacture them by itself.

The different types of protein supplements
While the majority of the proteins you ingest should come in the form of normal foods, there are some supplements that can be used to supplement your protein intake. This is to make sure that you have enough protein in order to build muscle, especially after a workout. There are different types of protein supplements, for example egg protein or soy protein, however the most important protein supplements come from cow’s milk. The two main types are whey protein and casein protein. These are sold in powder form and can be mixed with milk or water to create a liquid which you can drink. Whey protein is absorbed by the body fast, while casein protein is absorbed slowly.

Key Lessons: Since whey protein is a fast absorbing protein, you should take it straight after working out. That way you supply your body with building blocks needed to build muscles. Casein protein is a slow absorbing protein and the best time to take it is before going to bed. That way it can release those amino acids during the night and help you grow bigger.

What is fat?
Fats are the third major macronutrient needed by your body. It is a much maligned nutrient, however it plays very vital roles in many bodily functions. Fats are very important, especially because of the fact that they contain some essential fatty acids, which your body cannot produce and which need to be obtained from the outside. Some very well-known fatty acids are omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. Fats can be divided into saturated fats and unsaturated fats. Traditionally saturated fat has been considered an unhealthy fat, while unsaturated fat is considered healthy, but recently more and more people are stating that saturated fat should be an important part of your diet. There are some fats that are considered very unhealthy and those are trans-fats.

Key Lessons: Fats are an important part of any diet. They are especially important if you want to gain weight. They should compose around 20-30% of your diet. However don’t gobble down any type of fat. Try to eat “healthy” fats from natural sources such as fish oil or avocados. These are sources of essential fats and have positive benefits for your body and health.

The omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids imbalance in our diets
Omega-6 and omega-3 are a types of fatty acids, the building blocks of fats. They are both very important for our bodies and are considered essential. However due to the rise of the modern diet, there is a huge imbalance between the amount of omega-6 fatty acids and omega-3 fatty acids. Sometimes the ratio is 10:1 or even 20:1 in favor of omega-6. This can have a lot of negative effects on our bodies. There is a bit of a controversy on how important this ratio is, with some arguing that it is very important and needs to be addressed, while others don’t give the ratio much importance. What everyone does agree on is the fact that omega-3 fatty acids are very important and need to be eaten. The main sources are seafood, fish and marine algae. You can also supplement it by taking fish oil supplements.

Key Lessons: You need to make sure to include a lot of omega-3 fatty acids in your diet in order to be more healthy. You should also cut down on eating too many processed foods.

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The articles on hydration and electrolytes are related, and the key message here that your body needs to keep a balance between fluids and electrolytes.

The importance of staying hydrated
Drinking water is one of the basic things that you need to do every day. Your body needs water in order to function. That’s why it is very important to stay hydrated and to keep constantly replenishing your fluids. This is especially important if you want to gain weight and muscle and generally if you do any type of exercise. When exercising, your body raises its temperature and so in order to cool down, it starts releasing sweat, which is primarily composed of fluids. So in this way your body is losing fluids fast and needs them to be replenished.

Key Lessons: Remember to take in fluids throughout the day, especially by drinking water. When you are exercising, your fluid intake should increase.

It’s got electrolytes!
Many bodily functions require electrolytes to function. Since electrolytes are electrically charged, they are used by the cells to maintain voltages and to carry electrical impulses. The carrying of electrical impulses is what is behind for example muscle contraction and also nerve impulses. Electrolytes are also important in the distribution of fluids throughout the body.

Electrolytes go hand in hand with hydration. The amount of water and electrolytes in the body needs to be in balance. If there is too much water and too little electrolytes, then problems will arise. If there are too many electrolytes and too little water, then other types of problems will arise.

Key Lessons: If your exercise is long and intense, then you should be replenishing your electrolytes (during and after the exercise). If your exercise is short and easy, then you do not really need to replenish electrolytes, as at this point you should concentrate only on staying hydrated. The standard to guide yourself by is that exercises that last longer than an hour require a replenishment of electrolytes, while those that last less do not. However a lot also depends on the intensity of the exercise and also whether you are training at altitude or not. Let your body guide you, if you are getting cramps, then it might be time to get some quality electrolytes in.

The official introduction of beer time!
This is a bit of a light hearted article on drinking beer. Here I introduce the concept of “beer time”. I noticed that every time I am on those elliptical sliding machines, I burn 150 calories every 15 minutes. The average beer is around 150 calories. So every time you spend 15 minutes on one of those machines, you burn the equivalent of just one beer! So think about that when you are going out boozing.

Key Lessons: When going out boozing, try to count the amount of beers you drink in beer time. Remember that beers are mostly empty calories and will only help you gain fat, especially in the belly. So for each beer you drink, you need to spend 15 minutes doing cardio on an elliptical sliding machine. Hopefully that will keep your boozing in check.

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