The Calorie Myth

The smarter exercise program can be summed up in seven words (inspired by Michael Pollan):

The smarter exercise program takes at most twenty minutes per week, so it cannot be complex. All it takes is four eccentric exercises performed for ten minutes, once per week, along with ten minutes of smarter interval training once per week (this can be done at home or at a gym). Please read Appendix A: To Do before Exercising Smarter before starting this program.

After our discussion about needing a week to recover from eccentric exercise, you may be wondering why you would do both eccentric training and smarter interval training each week. Two smarter workouts per week make sense only for people new to smarter exercise because safety is most important and you need to ease your way into smarter exercise. Because of this it will take a while before you are able to safely use enough resistance to work your muscles completely. Since your most beneficial type 2b muscle fibers will not be getting exercised right from the start, two smarter workouts per week are fine. Once you are comfortable using the amount of resistance necessary to work all your muscle fibers, you can skip the smarter interval training.

1. Do eccentric training and write down the amount of resistance used. For example: “Did six eccentric shoulder presses with 20 pounds.”

If steps three and five are possible, you are not exercising your type 2b muscle fibers yet (that is, you are not using enough resistance for your eccentric shoulder press) and should stick with two smarter workouts per week until you are comfortable adding more resistance. If you were using enough resistance to activate your type 2b muscle fibers, your smarter interval training would have gone badly. Your still exhausted type 2b muscle fibers in your legs would not have worked well. If you somehow dragged your exhausted muscles through the smarter interval training, they would then be unable to meet the demands of eccentric training three days later.

If you are familiar with resistance training, you are familiar with sets and reps. If you are not familiar, you are better off because sets and reps are irrelevant. Muscle fibers do not care how many sets or reps we do. Dr. Ralph Carpinelli, of the Human Performance Laboratory at Adelphi University, tells us, “There are fifty-seven studies . . . that show no statistically significant difference in the magnitude of strength gains or muscular [development] as a result of performing a greater number of sets.”¹⁸¹

All our muscle fibers care about is how much force they need to generate. So let’s focus on making as many muscle fibers as possible generate as much force as possible, doing whichever set of the following exercises we would like, once per week.^*

More exercises provide little if any value. You can think about doing more exercises to make your set-point lower just as you’d think about heating boiling water to make it hotter. In both cases we are just wasting energy.

Specific instructions on how to do these eccentric exercises are coming up. Also, most gyms will give you one free personal-training session in which you can ask the trainer to show you how to do the traditional versions of these exercises. On your own you can then apply the Six Principles of Smarter Exercise and be all set without spending any money. Best of all, there’s no need to be intimidated. If you have ever sat down, opened a door, pushed something, or lifted anything above your head, you are most of the way to being an eccentric exercise expert.

Keep in mind that while the smarter workout is simple, it is not easy. We are trading quantity for quality and that is hard. For example, go back to the staircase you used earlier to see how much stronger you are eccentrically. Walk up it normally and note how you feel. Now wait a few minutes and walk up the same staircase two steps at a time. Notice how that is more tiring? In both cases you did the same quantity of exercise, but taking two steps at a time requires more force and works more muscle fibers.

Ten minutes of eccentric training should be like walking up a dozen stairs at a time. You will generate more force and work more muscle fibers than you ever did before. At the end of each exercise you will be exhausted. It will not be fun, but the results are incredible. Think of it as being like an immunization. You accept safe and short-term discomfort now to avoid life-threatening and long-term discomfort later. Plus, it is encouraging to know that you have to do it only once per week for ten minutes!

You do not need to do arm- and ab-specific exercises. If you enjoy doing them, that’s fine, but please do them after the four eccentric exercises just listed and be sure they do not compromise your ability to perform those primary exercises.

Our goal is to work as much muscle as possible and arm- and ab-specific exercises work a little muscle. Besides, our four exercises work our arms and abs along with a bunch of other muscles, and the hormonal impact of these “big” exercises benefits our arms and abs more than biceps curls or crunches ever could.

In my favorite study of all time, researchers at the University of Southern Denmark divided people into two groups. The first group trained only one of their arms. The second group trained only one arm exactly the same way as the first group, but also trained both legs. With this creative setup, researchers could see what affected people’s arm muscles more: direct arm training or the hormones triggered by all the muscle fibers worked using leg exercises. They could answer the following questions: How much stronger does an arm get if people

Clearly training legs along with arms is our best bet, but the fun part is the middle two bars. Resistance training only the legs increased arm strength more than resistance training only the arms. Why? Leg training worked more muscle and therefore triggered more whole-body-transforming hormones than arm training. All those hormones benefit seemingly unrelated muscles more than exercising those muscles directly. That is why we will work our biggest muscle groups (legs, back, chest, and shoulders) directly and our small muscle groups (arms, abs, etc.) indirectly. By focusing on the big things directly and the little things indirectly, we will take care of the little things better than we could any other way.

But seriously, what about our abdominal muscles? Don’t we want a flat, toned tummy? Absolutely. But doing abdominal-only exercises before we lower our body fat percentage to the midteens is like worrying about how shiny a ring looks while wearing a boxing glove over it. The fastest way to “get abs” has nothing to do with exercising our abdominal muscles. We have to uncover our abdominal muscles—that is, unclog and lower our set-point.

Important Note: Make sure that you eat one of your at-least-30-gram servings of protein as soon as possible after your workouts. This aids in recovery and magnifies many of the metabolic benefits of smarter exercise. If you enjoy protein shakes, there is no better time to enjoy one than immediately after your workouts.

• Pick a resistance you cannot lift with one arm or one leg—depending on the exercise—but can easily lift with both arms or both legs. Let’s say twenty pounds.

• Lift the resistance with both arms or both legs. Each arm or leg lifts half the weight—10 pounds in this example.

• Lower the resistance with only one arm or one leg for ten seconds. Each arm or leg lowers all the weight—twenty pounds in our example—slowly.

• Repeat until it is impossible to lower the resistance with only one arm or one leg for ten seconds. If this takes more than six repetitions, gradually add resistance until it takes only six repetitions.

With this technique, you can exercise eccentrically in the comfort of your own home and bend many resistance-training machines at your local gym to your every eccentric whim. But before we get eccentric, there are two important rules to keep in mind.

First, if we choose to exercise eccentrically on resistance-training machines, then we should use only machines that work both of our arms or both of our legs together. This is the only way to have less resistance on the way up and more on the way down. If we pick machines that work our arms and legs independently, we will lift and lower the same amount of resistance. That defeats the whole purpose. Think about it this way. Say you grab a gallon of milk in each hand, lift both jugs above your head, and then drop the one in your right hand to increase the resistance for your left hand. That does not work because lifting milk jugs works your arms independently. However, if you lifted one milk jug with each arm, but then lowered both jugs with only your left arm, you would lower more resistance with your left arm than you lifted with your left arm. Resistance training machines that work both of our arms or both of our legs together do the same thing.

Second, exercise eccentrically only when little, if any, balance is needed. Just as you would not pick up a giant flat-screen TV with two hands and then let go with one, you should exercise eccentrically only when minimal balance is needed.

Let’s put the two rules together. We could: Do a push-up with our knees on the floor (to reduce the resistance), and then lift our knees and lower ourselves (to increase the resistance). Our arms work together to lift a shared source of resistance (our body), and little if any balance is needed. Similarly, we could stand up and then do a body-weight squat down—while hanging on to something for balance—with one leg and then stand back up using both legs.

Remember two key points when you start exercising eccentrically. First and foremost, nothing is more important than safety. The quickest way to compromise clog-clearing is to get hurt. Eccentric training is designed specifically to minimize injury—it is slow and controlled, it requires minimal balance, and you can spot yourself—but you still need to ease into it and to keep perfect form.

Second, once you have the hang of safely executing these exercises, you have to push yourself as hard as you safely can. You are trading quantity for quality, so it is particularly important that you maximize the quality of these exercises. If you do not, you will have thrown quantity and quality out the window. That is not exercising less—smarter. That is just exercising less.

Please push yourself as hard as you safely can and then continue to push yourself more and more by gradually adding resistance at least every other workout. As you improve the quality of your health and fitness, you must improve the quality of your exercise to keep progressing. Think about training your body as you would think about training your mind. Once we’ve mastered our multiplication tables, we have to move on to something more challenging to maximize our mental capacity. Same thing goes with our body. We have to keep adding resistance and challenging ourselves to maximize our physical capacity.

You can increase the effectiveness of your eccentric exercise in five safe ways, once you get the hang of it:

When you first start with eccentrics, you should consciously lower moderate resistance for ten seconds to get the hang of the movement. This will seem challenging, but not too bad. Once you feel that you have mastered the movement, add resistance and you will be surprised to see that you can still lower it for ten seconds. When you are completely comfortable with the movement, continue to add resistance until you no longer have to “try” to lower the resistance. You will do all that you can to stay still, but the correct level of resistance will force you down over the course of ten seconds.

Squatting down four inches will not get us where we want to go, but we need to start somewhere. As we get stronger and more confident with the leg exercises we should increase our range of motion. For squats and leg presses, we gradually work our way to bending at the knee until our thighs are parallel with the ground (for squats) and platform (for leg presses) or a few inches lower.

For squats and leg presses, we squat down at a modest speed until our thighs are at least parallel with the ground/platform. We then hold that most challenging part of the movement for ten seconds rather than holding the top of the movement (the least challenging part of the movement) for most of the time.

These are inexpensive substitutes for dumbbells and barbells at home. Put the weight vest on during your squats, pull-ups, and push-ups to increase resistance. Wrap the resistance bands around something sturdy and use them to increase the resistance of your shoulder presses.

At some point you will get into such great shape that your body weight, resistance bands, and weight vests no longer provide enough resistance to work all your muscle fibers. At this point, if you want to improve your fitness, you’ll need to use the machines at a gym.

Keep in mind that the most basic and inexpensive gym will do the trick. You need only the four machines outlined in the next section. Unless you are an elite athlete, protect yourself from the complexity that many gyms try to sell you. The more complex a gym tries to make exercise sound, the faster you should run in the other direction. Actual fitness experts know that 99 percent of the population can achieve all their goals using a leg-press type of movement, a pull-up or row movement, and chest- and shoulder-press movements. Everything else should be seen as “extended warranties.” The person selling it to you will make it sound wondrous, but it is generally useless for everyone except the salesperson.

“How hard do I need to push myself to get the best results?” Think of effort as a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is sleeping and 10 is giving birth. If your goals are ambitious, your effort needs to be ambitious. Aim for ten minutes per week of effort as close to level 10 as possible, always putting safety first. If your goal is more modest, your effort can be more modest too.

• Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart in front of something sturdy that you can hold on to with both hands. I use a railing or a doorknob. Put a chair behind you.

• Grab the sturdy thing in front of you and lean back until your arms are fully extended. Stand with all your weight on one of your heels. Make sure to keep your head and shoulders back while sticking your chest and butt out.

• Keeping all your weight on one of your heels, and keeping yourself balanced by holding on to that sturdy thing in front of you, sit down using only the one leg you put all your weight on. Use your non-weight-bearing leg to keep your balance and to ensure that you can lower yourself slowly and safely for ten seconds. If you can lower yourself for longer than ten seconds, then you are using your other leg too much. If you cannot lower yourself for ten seconds, then you are not using your other leg enough.

• Make sure that your knees never stick out farther than your toes while you are lowering yourself.

• Stop lowering yourself with one leg once your butt touches the chair. Keep holding on to the sturdy thing in front of you. Stand back up using both legs.

• As you get stronger, remove the chair and try to squat down as far as you comfortably can without your heel lifting off the ground or your knees sticking out farther than your toes.

• Find something sturdy to hang from. It should be no lower than your chin if you are standing on the ground and no higher than your chin if you are standing on a chair. Common options include: jungle gyms/swing-sets, tree branches, or an inexpensive pull-up bar you’ve installed in your home.

• Stand on the ground or on a chair so that your chin is slightly above the thing you are going to hang from.

• With your arms slightly wider than shoulder-width apart, put your hands on top of the thing you are going to hang from. Grip it as tightly as you can. Stick your chest out and squeeze your shoulder blades together.

• With a firm grip, start to bend your legs so that you begin to hang from whatever it is you are holding on to. The more you bend your legs, the more challenging it will be to hang on.

• Bend your legs enough that you cannot hang on for longer than ten seconds. If you can hang on for longer than ten seconds, bend your legs more. If you cannot hang on for ten seconds, bend your legs less. Depending on your strength level, you may not need to use your legs at all.

• While you are hanging on, your back and arms will get tired and you will slowly lower down until your arms are fully extended. If your arms fully extend in less than ten seconds, you are using your legs too little. If your arms fully extend in more than ten seconds, you are using your legs too much.

• While your arms are extending and you are lowering down, keep your shoulders back, keep your chest out, look up, and keep your arms as even with your torso as possible—that is, do not let your arms creep out in front of you.

• After your arms have fully extended, keep hanging on and stand up to get your chin back above the bar.

• Lie facedown on a clean floor and put your arms out to your sides so that your hands are even with your upper chest and slightly wider than shoulder-width apart.

• Keeping your knees on the floor, push yourself up through the palms of your hands until just before your elbows lock. You will now have only your knees and your hands touching the floor.

• Lift your knees off the floor and shift your weight to your toes. You will now have only your toes and hands touching the floor.

• With your shoulders back and your chest out, slowly lower yourself until just before any other part of your body touches the ground. Hold that position for ten seconds. Make sure you keep your body in a straight line throughout the movement. Do not let your chest or hips bow down.

• After ten seconds, put your knees back on the floor and push yourself back up as you did originally. Once you have lowered yourself six times—for ten seconds each time, without resting in between times—you are done.

• If you cannot lower yourself six times—for ten seconds each time—put your knees back on the floor until you can.

• If you can lower yourself more than six times—for ten seconds each time—do not ever let your knees touch the floor. Always have just your hands and toes touching the floor. If that is still too easy, put your toes on something six to twelve inches off the ground. If that is still too easy, put your toes on something six to twelve inches off the ground and put something heavy on your back.

• Find something that you can safely lift above your head using both arms. You should also be able to safely hold it above your head with one arm. This means it should be small. Ideally you would use a dumbbell. Hold it in both hands.

• Lift it above your head using both hands. You should now be standing with your shoulders back and your chest out, holding something above your head with both arms extended as much as they can be without locking at the elbows.

• Very carefully release one hand but keep it close to whatever you are holding above your head to help lower it if needed.

• Keep the arm supporting the resistance to your side—that is, do not let it creep in front of you—and slowly lower the resistance for ten seconds, always keeping your other hand close by.

• If you can lower the resistance for more than ten seconds, you need something heavier. If you cannot lower the resistance for ten seconds, you need something lighter.

• Repeat this five more times—without resting—and then do the same thing with your other arm.

Before you get eccentric at your local gym, keep in mind that every brand of exercise machine is slightly different. Read the instructions on the machines you will be using to learn specifically how to lower the resistance, raise the resistance, position the seat, and position the handles.

• Sit on the leg press machine with your back against the pad. Make sure to keep your head and shoulders back, while sticking your chest out. Think about how military personnel stand at attention. Do that with your head, shoulders, and back while sitting on the machine. This protects your back from injury. Never, ever, round your back forward during any exercise.

• Put your feet on the platform. Space your feet slightly wider than shoulder-width apart—whatever is most comfortable for you. Make sure your feet are high enough on the platform that your toes stay higher than your knees when you lower the resistance.

• When you lower and raise the resistance, make sure your knees stay lined up with your feet. Do not bow your legs in or out. Make sure your knees never stick out farther than your toes.

• Always push on the platform through your heels, while keeping your abs tight and your back against the pad, with your shoulders, back, and chest out.

• Lower the resistance for ten seconds with one leg, as low as you comfortably can without your back coming off the pad or your heels lifting off the platform.

• When you lift the resistance—with both legs—avoid locking your knees at the top of the movement. Right before you begin to lock your knees, start lowering the resistance with one leg again.

• Repeat this five more times—without resting—and then do the same thing with your other leg.

• Sit on the row machine and put your chest against the pad, if there is one. Either way, make sure to keep your back perpendicular to the floor with your head and shoulders back, while sticking your chest out. Imagine trying to pinch a playing card between your shoulder blades. Do that with your back and shoulders while you lift and lower the resistance.

• Put your feet flat on the floor or flat on the machine’s platform. Keep them there.

• When you lift and lower the resistance, keep your torso still. Use only your back and arm muscles to lift the resistance. Do not move your torso to generate momentum to help your back and arms.

• Lift with both arms, then lower the resistance for ten seconds with one arm until your arm extends as far as it can, without causing you to round your back or to lock your elbow. Repeat “shoulders back, chest out” in your mind during this and all other exercises.

• Just before your elbow begins to lock, use both arms to lift the resistance again.

• Repeat this five more times—without resting—and then do the same thing with your other arm.

• Sit on the chest press machine with your back against the pad, as you did with the leg press machine. Make sure to keep your head and shoulders back, while sticking your chest out.

• Put your feet flat on the floor or flat on the machine’s platform. Keep them there.

• When you lower and lift the resistance, make sure you keep your shoulders and head back, abs tight, and chest out. Do not lift your lower back off the pad.

• When you lift the resistance with both arms, extend your arms as far as they will go without locking your elbows or moving your shoulders forward. Just before your elbows begin to lock, start slowly lowering the resistance.

• Lower the resistance for ten seconds with one arm until your hand is about even with your rib cage.

• Repeat this five more times—without resting—and then do the same thing with your other arm.

• Sit on the shoulder press machine with your back against the pad as you did with the chest press machine. Make sure to keep your head and shoulders back, while sticking your chest out.

• Put your feet flat on the floor or flat on the machine’s platform. Keep them there.

• When you lower and lift the resistance, make sure you keep your shoulders and head back, abs tight, and chest out. Do not lift your lower back off the pad.

• When you lift the resistance with both arms, extend your arms as far as they will go without locking your elbows or moving your shoulders up. Just before your elbows begin to lock, start slowly lowering the resistance.

• Lower the resistance for ten seconds with one arm until your hand is about even with your shoulders.

• Repeat this five more times—without resting—and then do the same thing with your other arm.

The efficacy of a high intensity exercise protocol, involving only ~250 kcal [calories] of work each week, to substantially improve insulin action [unclog] in young sedentary subjects is remarkable.

Since you already know how to pedal on an upright stationary bike you are ready for smarter interval training:

1. Hop onto an upright stationary bike. This is the type that looks more like a regular bike and less like a recliner.

3. Increase the bike’s resistance so that you can pedal only by standing up on the pedals and pushing down on them as hard as you can.

4. Pedal like that for thirty seconds. If you can pedal for longer than thirty seconds, increase the resistance until you cannot.

We’re not doing smarter interval training if we get on an upright stationary bike and flail around uncontrollably for thirty seconds. Sounds silly, but that is exactly what will happen if we don’t add a lot of resistance. Assuming you are not a highly trained athlete—moving your body very quickly will eventually lead to an injury. However, after you add resistance, you can move at a normal, controllable, and safe rate, while working as forcefully as you possibly can. As a general rule of thumb, smarter interval training is not about moving faster. It’s about moving more resistance.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to use an upright stationary bike, but you do need to use a low-impact machine that will provide you with enough resistance to exhaust yourself in thirty seconds without having to move quickly. This means you cannot do smarter cardio on a treadmill, as that would be extremely high impact and there is no way to safely add sufficient resistance.

Remember, for eccentric training, start slow and add resistance once you can lower the resistance you have now for ten seconds more than six times. As a general rule, you will know you have arrived at the right resistance and intensity levels when you stop questioning how this one workout per week leads to lasting fat loss and start questioning how you will walk upstairs for the rest of the week given how sore you are.

For smarter interval training, add resistance once you can pedal against the resistance level for more than thirty seconds at a time.

Finally, if someone tells you that you must do different exercises to see results, that person does not have all the facts. It is 100 percent true that we must continue to challenge our muscles if we want to continue to improve. However, this is most effectively done by adding resistance, not by adding complexity.

Home Exercises	Gym Exercises
Eccentric Squats	Eccentric Leg Presses
Eccentric Pull-Ups	Eccentric Pull-Ups
Eccentric Push-Ups	Eccentric Chest Press
Eccentric Shoulder Press	Eccentric Shoulder Press

Do not train it?	[untrained arm + untrained legs]
Train only it?	[trained arm + untrained legs]
Do not train it, but do train their legs?	[untrained arm + trained legs]
Train it and train their legs?	[trained arm + trained legs]