Tag: fat loss

The Best Way To Deal With Food Cravings

Post author By Remson
Post date December 7, 2020

Tribe By Noire

The Best Way To Deal With Food Cravings

In my 10+ years of coaching I’ve learned that excess weight gain is almost exclusively driven by food cravings. When you think of your food cravings, what comes to mind? Maybe it’s sweets like cakes, pies, or doughnuts. Maybe other times it’s heavier things like Mac n Cheese, pizza, or something simpler like chips and dip.

Whatever your cravings are, they all can be traced back to 3 main things.

The 3 Ingredients Of Food Cravings

Sugar | Salt | Fat

Every single one of the foods you crave has at least 2 of these 3 ingredients, I guarantee it.

Understand that this goes way deeper than just taste. These cravings are directly linked to your emotions, chemical reactions in the brain, and the messages that certain gut bacteria and parasites may be sending to your brain.

Let’s start with your emotions

Sugar cravings are driven by a low energy, or low vibrational state. This can be caused by lack of sleep or poor sleep quality, under eating and/or overworking, general feelings of sadness, and depression. Sugar acts on us in 2 main ways.

Sugar turns into glucose in the body which is our primary source of energy. when energy is low, sugar serves as a quick boost.
Sugar causes an endorphin release in the brain, which makes us feel good. This ends up turning into a sugar addiction over time.

Salt cravings are driven by anxiety and depression. Studies show that elevated levels of sodium inhibit stress hormones that are normally released in stressful situations. Add crunchy foods to the mix and you have something that is irresistible, like chips.

Fat cravings are a bit different because no one actually craves fat in and of itself. there’s a few different high fat food sources, nuts, avocado, and oil, but there’s one source in particular that ends up being super addictive, dairy.

Ice cream, cheese, and creamer are in almost every single food people typical crave and end up binging on. Dairy has a protein in it called casein which acts on the brain as mild opiate. When processed into cheese, this addictive property becomes heightened. Dr. Neal Bernard refers to it as “dairy crack“

Get Your Fix & Drop Body Fat

I’ve got all kinds of good news for you! To start, I just want to let you know that you don’t have to cut sugar, salt, or fat from your diet. You don’t even have to limit your food intake. No this is not an ad for a special supplement, or meal replacement shake.

All you have to do is find smarter replacement for your sugar, salt and fat and combine them in a way where you can enjoy great taste and eat until you’re full. Let’s talk about sources.

Sugar

A big mistake that people make is trying to cut all forms of sugar from their diet. This is a horrible idea for someone who battles with sugar cravings. The demonizing of sugar in my opinion can create a toxic relationship with food.

Our bodies, especially our brains primarily run on sugar, which is why we need plenty of it. The caveat here is that sugar needs to be packaged with other essential nutrients that regulate it.

Sugar needs to be accompanied with fiber, water, vitamin C, potassium, calcium, and magnesium. All of these nutrients are essential for regulating blood sugar and insulin levels.

It works similar to how car traffic works in terms of speed limits. If there’s nothing regulating the sugar you consume, it’ll all just spill into your blood stream at one time causing a massive spike in insulin levels, follow by a severe drop in blood sugar, ending in an energy crash.

Doing this repeatedly will put you on a chaotic roller coaster that not only shows up on the scale, but also manifests in your mood, and overall health.

Having a stable and gradual release of sugar (glucose) into your bloodstream allows to have more balance and sustained energy levels. In addition this will also inhibit cravings.

So what should your sugar sources be?

The short answer is fruit, sweet juicy fruit! Fruit is nature’s multivitamin and/or medication. A good template is 1 serving of 5 different types of fruit. This can be a mixture of fruits that have a variety of traits.

sweet (berries)
mildly sweet (watermelon)
citrus (orange)
bitter sweet (grapefruit)
non sweet (cucumber)

Try to have a variety of colors on your plate like a beautiful painting. The variety insures that you’re getting an abundance of all the nutrients you need while stimulating your taste buds to the fullest extent. Make love to your gut.

Salt

Unfortunately it’s a very common belief that salt is bad for you because it causes hypertension. Some people goes as far as to say you should avoid salt at all costs, but scientific research on this issue shows that this just simply isn’t the case.

When people refer to salt, they’re often talking about sodium, which is is an essential electrolyte that helps maintain the balance of water in and around your cells. It’s important for proper muscle and nerve function. It’s even important to maintain stable blood pressure.

Salt is good stuff, but the source is what makes the difference. Roasted salted nuts are my personal favorite for satisfying that salty and crunchy craving. Peanuts, almonds, cashews, pistachios, walnuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, brazil nuts are all great alternatives to things like potato and corn chips. The main reason for this is the fiber and nutrient content of the nuts. Potato and corn chips are mostly just empty calories that easily lead to over eating.

A second good option is to drizzle a sauce or dressing with a bit of added sea salt, or himalayan salt on to some raw or steamed greens like spinach, spring mix, bok choy, or kale. The sauce can be anything from tahini sauce, to a spicy curry sauce with a bit of lime juice.

Fat

This is probably the biggest struggle because in terms of weight management. You want to lose fat, but you also need to consume fat, so it’s a bit of a love hate relationship. I’m feeling a bit repetitive here, but once again, the source matters.

I almost put fat and salt in the same category because of how well they go together when it comes taste and food combination. For example, the roasted salted nuts I mentioned earlier, which are a great source of fat. Another example guacamole with some added sea salt, or himalayan salt, lime juice, diced onions, and bell pepper. Mixing this in with a few cups of raw or steamed greens is a phenomenal meal that will definitely satisfy the craving for fat and salt.

The Objective

Ultimately everything is about food choice. you want to be able to get all of the nutrients you need to reach your goals, and improve your gut health, while still being able to scratch that itch for whatever cravings you may have.

Tribe By Noire

I’ve created this platform to help you become the most powerful version of yourself through fitness, plant based nutrition, and mindset coaching.

Tags binge eating, diet, fat loss, food cravings, meal plan, plant based diet, vegan diet, vegan diet plan, weight loss, whole foods

Fitness & Training

The Most Important Factor In Training For Fat Loss

Post author By Remson
Post date May 14, 2019

Tribe By Noire

The Most Important Factor Of Fat Loss Training

Tribe By Noire

I’ve created this platform to help you become the most powerful version of yourself through fitness, plant based nutrition, and mindset coaching.

Tags fat loss, HIIT, training strategies

Fitness & Training

3 Body Transformation Training Strategies You Need To Be Using

Post author By Remson
Post date October 17, 2018

Tribe By Noire

3 Body Transformation Training Strategies You Need To Be Using

I’m sure you’ve seen some really drastic before and after pictures floating around, especially on instagram. On the left would be a guy or gal, flabby, bad posture, and an unenthusiastic facial expression to match. Then on the right is the same person, lean, tanned, and standing tall with a smile from ear to ear. You may look at images like that and think WOW I wonder how they did it!?

As a coach myself with over a decade of experience, I’ve figured it out. We know the diet has to be on point, but no matter how good your diet is, you won’t be able to make that transformation without the right type of training. There’s many different ways to train, but to make a real physique transformation there are 3 strategies you need to be using in order to see consistent results.

1- Rep Goals

The rep goal strategy is where you set a specific amount of reps with a set amount of weight. An example of this would be setting a goal of 24 reps at 185lbs within 3 sets on the bench press. That comes out to 3 sets of 8 reps if you were to do the same amount of reps on each set. Reaching your rep goal serves as an indication that you can go up in weight. You’re not ready to go up in weight if you don’t reach the rep goal.

Using this strategy is one of the best ways I’ve found to track your strength progress without doing 1 rep max tests. This is particularly a good idea for anyone in there first few years of training. You may not care too much about strength, but you will not build muscle without gaining strength.

2- AMRAP (As many reps as possible)

Doing AMRAP sets is how you get the absolute most out of a workout. Not only does this stimulate crazy muscle growth, but it also puts you in serious fat burning mode. There’s 2 main ways to use this strategy and its important to know when and with what type of exercise.

Last set AMRAP

This is ideal for the strength training portion of your workout, especially in combination with the rep goal strategy. Get as many reps as possible on that last set and see how far beyond your rep goal you can get. There’s no reason to stop short.

Body weight training

When using body weight exercises to build muscle, the most important factor is reps. The amount of muscle you build with body weight training is directly correlated to how many reps you can do. As a bonus, this also has a cardio training effect which will result in improved stamina and fat loss.

3- Super Sets

A super set is when you do 2 exercises back to back with little to no rest time between them. This is a smart way to improve time efficiency in your workout, train lagging muscles,, and increase the frequency of how many times you train a muscle group in a week. Here’s a few super set examples.

Lower body Training

Squats & Calve Raises
Stiff Leg Deadlift & Leg Curls
Lunges & Single Leg Hip Bridges
Banded Crab Walks & Hip Bridges

Upper Body Training

Chest Press & Bicep Curls
Rows & Tricep Extensions
Overhead Press & Reverse Flies
Lat Pull Down & Side Delt Raises

Plug in 1-2 super sets towards the end portion of your workouts to maximize muscle growth. Using all 3 of these strategies in each workout is a real game changer, trust me.

Tribe By Noire

I’ve created this platform to help you become the most powerful version of yourself through fitness, plant based nutrition, and mindset coaching.

Tags bodybuilding, fat loss, muscle growth, power building

Nutrition & Supplements

Successfully Overhaul Your Diet In 3 Simple Steps

Post author By Remson
Post date October 13, 2018

Tribe By Noire

Successfully Overhaul Your Diet In 3 Simple Steps

I’m writing this because in the fitness and wellness industry, we put way too much emphasis on DIETS. Every time you turn around someone’s pitching a keto diet, a paleo diet, a blood type diet, juice cleanse, etc. Let’s back up a second, get real, and ask ourselves one simple question, “What about just adopting simple eating HABITS?”

The only way your diet works for you is if it’s comprised of practical eating habits that you can sustain. This means not being a slave to your food, not going to bed hungry, and not being crushed by cravings. Let’s talk about these 3 simple steps that will allow you to get your diet on track successfully.

Step 1 - The Observation Phase

Before you start making any changes you first have to identify exactly what you need to change. You may think you’re eating too much when in fact you’re eating too little. You may be eating the right amount of calories, but just making the wrong food choices.

Take a week to track your current eating habits and develop some self awareness. Doing this is a real wake up call. You can start this process by downloading an app on your phone called My Fitness Pal, or chronometer. My fitness pal is a bit easier to use, but chronometer gives you way more information on what you’re eating.

At this point you don’t need to worry about making any changes, just log what you’re eating. By the end of the week you’ll have plenty of data to look at to see where your problems are. Here’s a few things to look out for.

Does your calorie intake fluctuate up and down drastically?
Is your saturated fat, sugar, and cholesterol intake really high?
Is your fiber, vitamin, and mineral intake really low?

Step 2 - The Mapping Phase

Once you can clearly see where the holes are in your diet, you can start mapping out how you would ultimately want your diet to look. Make a simple list of nutrition goals like this.

Set a reasonable calorie goal that you can stay within 5% of.
Set a reasonable balance in your macros according to your fitness goals.
Have a list of at least 5 categories of food that you target daily.

Choosing a calorie goal – First you’d want to find out what your maintenance caloric intake is. Finding out your basal metabolic rate (BMR) will give you that number. You can download a mobile app on your phone for that or google “basal metabolic rate calculator” for the easiest way to do it.

If you want to lose weight, targeting 15% below maintenance calories would be a good idea. However, if you’ve been already under eating habitually and not losing weight, a calorie deficit is not going to be of much use.

If you want to gain weight, targeting 10% above maintenance calories would be ideal. Typically going further above that would cause you to gain unwanted body fat.

Setting macro goals – Typically the best macros are the ones that give you the most variety in your diet, while still getting you to your goals. For example, this is what that may look like.

Carbs – 50-55%
Protein – 20-25%
Fat – 30-20%

Carbohydrate and fat intake will vary from person to person, but in regards to protein calculation, 1 – 1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of lean mass would be the range to stay within. Getting above or below will result in a pretty unbalanced diet.

Targeting food categories – This would more than likely be the simplest place to start because its the least technical. All you’d really need to do is pick 5 food categories that are the most beneficial and make sure you eat foods from each of them daily. Here are the categories I suggest.

Veggies
Fruit
Nuts/Seeds
Legumes
Grains

Ideally each meal should incorporate at least 3 of these.

Step 3 - The Implementation Phase

Finally, implementation is done best when its done gradually. Too much at one time becomes overwhelming and food cravings will likely get the better of you. My advice is that you make 1-2 changes a week and see how you do. If you can stay consistent with those changes for the week, add more improvements. Here’s what some of those changes may look like.

WEEK 1

Eat 2-4 cups of fresh greens daily
Track each meal daily

Week 2

Eat 3.5 servings of legumes daily
Reach but do not exceed calorie goal by more than 10%

Week 3

Eat at least 3 servings of fruit daily
Drink at least 64oz of water daily

Week 4

Eat at least 1-2 servings of nuts and seeds daily
Reach your macros daily

Its easy to focus on getting rid of all the bad stuff from your diet, but that requires a focus on all the negative stuff in your diet. That focus on the negative is not good if you’re trying to take a more positive approach to life.

A good alternative is the process of elimination through addition. Focus on adding the good stuff first. You don’t have to deny yourself some of that cake right now, just save it for the end of the day AFTER you’ve eaten all the most beneficial meals first. That way its like a reward for good behavior.

Eventually the food cravings will die out and you’ll have more self discipline.

Tribe By Noire

I’ve created this platform to help you become the most powerful version of yourself through fitness, plant based nutrition, and mindset coaching.

Tags diet strategies, fat loss, muscle growth, nutrition plans, plant based diet, weight loss

Nutrition & Supplements

5 Major Tips To Stop Bad Eating Habits Permanently

Post author By Remson
Post date January 31, 2018

Tribe By Noire

5 Major Tips To Stop Bad Eating Habits Permanently

Diet is a big struggle for most people, especially those trying to lose weight. We all at least have some what of an idea of what a good food choice is and what a bad food choice is, but there’s one obvious element to diet that no one really talks about. That element is the psychology behind your food choices.

There are 5 major tips to stop bad eating habits and if you do them long enough, you can get rid of these habits permanently.

Prioritize the right foods
Make good food choices more available
Time your meals in your favor
Setup a reward system
Study what is motivating your eating habits

Prioritize The Right Foods

Just simply cutting out the bad food from your diet doesn’t work so well for most people, and even if it works, it doesn’t work for very long. The reason this fails is because just removing things creates this empty void which eventually leads to intense food cravings. To avoid this pitfall, try eating in order of priority.

Eat the most beneficial foods first and the least beneficial foods after. An example of this could be having a meal packed with fruit, veggies, raw nuts, seeds, high fiber grains, and legumes. Afterwards if you’re still having a craving for the not so beneficial food craving, indulge…a little.

Keep Good Choices On Deck

People tend to make bad food choices simply out of convenience. Stopping off at a fast food spot is way more convenient than cooking your ideal meal. Those of us with busy exhausting schedules are at the highest risk for this, but there is a simple solution to this. Keep good food choices handy wherever you go, this is even more important for people following a vegan plant based, or at least trying to.

Ideally you should be packing your food daily, but for the times that you might have dropped the ball on that, bring filling snack foods that you can just grab and go. These snacks can be simple foods like cashews, almond butter, a bag of apples, dried fruit like dates, some pre-packed carrots and celery with hummus on the side. These are just a few things that you can keep on hand to hold you over until you can get to your ideal meal.

Time Your Meals In Your Favor

One of the worse things you can do is wait until you’re starving to decide what to eat. Get into the habit of planning your meals at least a day in advance. This premeditated approach to diet is going to give you a new level of control over your eating habits that you’ve never had before. I’ve put together an article on meal prep. Check that out here!

Setup A Reward System

Developing all this discipline over your diet and can feel like a real chore at times, and can even be a bit discouraging. You need a way to keep your morale up and stay in the game, so you may want to start thinking about setting some sort of reward system for yourself. The most typical method to this is the “cheat meal”. Basically a cheat meal is that one weekly meal where you allow yourself to eat the things you’ve been cutting out. The problem with the cheat meal is that it can end up becoming a cheat weekend and even the cheat week!

I’ve found a better approach to be a daily reward at the end of the day after you’ve stuck to your meal plan. Have those 4-5 cookies, or that donut at the end of the day, but only after you’ve eaten all the good stuff first. Doing this will make the challenge of impulse control easier because you’ll have something exciting to look forward to.

Study What Is Motivating Your Eating Habits

Its all about self awareness here. What eating habits are you trying to overcome? Now study and identify the mindset that is driving those habits. What is happening in your life when you follow these habits? A lot of us are emotional eaters, but you don’t have to beat yourself up about it. You just need to first practice awareness deliberately and then make the lifestyle changes that are going to help you develop the emotional discipline you need.

If a certain environment is triggering bad eating habits, get out of that environment, or develop a way to protect yourself in it. If a certain person, or people are triggering bad habits, get some distance. At the end of the day you need to develop a solid mindset and protect it. I’ve saved this solution for last because it is the best, but the catch is that it can be the most challenging one.

Tribe By Noire

I’ve created this platform to help you become the most powerful version of yourself through fitness, plant based nutrition, and mindset coaching.

Tags diet strategies, fat loss, mindset, plant based diet, vegan, weight loss

Fitness & Training

3 Steps To Build Your Ideal Body In The Gym

Post author By Remson
Post date January 20, 2018

Tribe By Noire

3 Steps To Build Your Ideal Body In The Gym

When I say “build your ideal body” I’m referring to a natural, athletic, healthy, human form. Its up to you how lean or muscular you want to look, and how large you want certain muscles to be, but achieving that look in an efficient time frame all boils down to these 3 steps.

For the specifics on how to do this, keep reading below.

Step 1 - The Cutting Phase

The cutting phase is just a simple and sexy way of saying body recomposition phase. I have to make it clear that I am not advocating for cutting in the traditional sense of weight loss. The goal is specifically to reduce BODY FAT not just any ol’ weight loss. You don’t want to lose a lot of weight, but not really lose much body fat because that’s how you end up in the skinny fat category. If you already are in the skinny fat category, give this article a look here.

The cutting phase should be a hypertrophy specific style of training. This style of training will get you to build muscle as you reduce body fat. This is important for building that ideal body you want, fast! In my experience, clients have been able to drop 4-6% body fat in 4 weeks in this phase. Clients who need to lose a lot of weight, lose and average 6-8 lbs a week. Here’s some examples of what that would look like.

4 Week Routine

Day 1

Goblet Squat

3 sets x 10 rep min – 20 rep max

Stiff Leg Deadlift

3 sets x 10 rep min – 20 rep max

Walking Lunges

1 set x 100 reps

Open To Close Hollow

3 sets x AMRAP

Day 2

Barbell Row

3 sets x 10 rep min – 20 rep max

Lat Pull Down

3 sets x 10 rep min – 20 rep max

Chest Press

3 sets x 10 rep min – 20 rep max

Shoulder Press

3 sets x 10 rep min – 20 rep max

Day 3

Goblet Squat

3 sets x 10 rep min – 20 rep max

Stiff Leg Deadlift

3 sets x 10 rep min – 20 rep max

Walking Lunges

1 set x 100 reps

Open To Close Hollow

3 sets x AMRAP

Day 4

Barbell Row

3 sets x 10 rep min – 20 rep max

Lat Pull Down

3 sets x 10 rep min – 20 rep max

Chest Press

3 sets x 10 rep min – 20 rep max

Shoulder Press

3 sets x 10 rep min – 20 rep max

Start with a weight you can do a maximum of 20 reps with
Increase the weight by 5-10% each set
Do as many reps as possible (AMRAP) on each set, with a minimum of 10 reps each set
Rest for 60-90 seconds in between each set

Step 2 - The Strength Phase

After you’ve completed the cutting phase and have dropped a considerable amount of body fat, you should start a strength training program. Even if your goal may not necessarily be to get as strong as possible, this is still a key phase in reaching your ideal body. There are 3 main things that your strength phase should achieve.

Develop a good foundation of strength
Improve your strength capabilities
Accurately quantify your strength

This style of training focuses on a much lower amount of reps, but the weight will be considerably higher. Each training day should revolve around the main compound lifts such as the barbell squat, deadlift, bench, overhead press, and row. This type of training will also get you to increase muscle mass and drop body fat as well even though those are not the primary focuses here.

Here’s an example of what this type of training routine would look like.

4 Week Routine

Day 1

Barbell Deadlift

4 sets x 8 reps (last set AMRAP)

Barbell Back Squat

4 sets x 8 reps (last set AMRAP)

Dumbbell Bulgarian Split Squat

3 sets x 12 reps per side (last set AMRAP)

Supine Leg Raise Arc

4 sets x AMRAP

Day 2

Barbell Row

4 sets x 8 reps (last set AMRAP)

Barbell Bench Press

4 sets x 8 reps (last set AMRAP)

Dumbbell Incline Press

3 sets x 12 reps (last set AMRAP)

Barbell Bicep Curl

4 sets x 12 reps (last set AMRAP)

Day 3

Barbell Overhead Press

4 sets x 8 reps (last set AMRAP)

Pull Up

4 sets x AMRAP

Dumbbell S. Arm Row

4 sets x 12 reps per side (last set AMRAP)

Prone External Knee Tuck

4 sets x AMRAP

Start with a weight you can only do 12 reps with
Increase the weight by 5-10% each set
Do as many reps as possible on the last set
rest for 2 minutes in between each set
Increase the weight each week by 5-10% each week
Decrease the amount of default reps each week by 2 reps
Cut the amount you lift by 30-50% on week 4 to deload

Document all sets and reps and weight you used throughout this process. Week 3 will be the toughest week where you lift the most weight. To calculate your new one rep maxes, download an app called 1 Rep Max on your phone. Input the heaviest weight you did and how many reps you completed. The app will do the calculations for you.

Step 3 - The Mass Phase

The key focus in this phase is filling out your frame by building new lean muscle mass. For guys this would be a concentration on developing the back, chest, shoulders, arms, and thighs. For women the concentration would be on developing the lower body with an emphasis on glutes and hamstrings.

This training phase requires a hypertrophy specific program where the amount of sets and/or reps increase over time. The weight should be around 65% of your 1 rep max (1RM). You should be able to calculate your 1RM and percentages using the data from your strength phase. Ideally, you’d target each muscle group 2-4 times per week in order to fully maximize results. An effective training split for this could be full body, or an upper lower training split.

Here’s some examples.

4 Week Routine (Men's)

Day 1 (Lower body)

Barbell Squat

5 sets x 8 reps

Barbell Deadlift

4 sets x 8 reps

Dumbbell Reverse Lunge

4 sets x 8 reps

Alternating Crossbody Jack Knife

3 sets x AMRAP

Day 2 (Upper body)

Barbell Row

5 sets x 8 reps

Barbell Incline Bench Press

5 sets x 8 reps

Pull Up

4 sets x AMRAP

Barbell Curl

4 sets x 8 reps

Day 3 (Lower body)

Barbell Squat

5 sets x 8 reps

Barbell Deadlift

4 sets x 8 reps

Dumbbell Reverse Lunge

4 sets x 8 reps

Alternating Crossbody Jack Knife

3 sets x AMRAP

Day 4 (Upper body)

Barbell Row

5 sets x 8 reps

Barbell Incline Bench Press

5 sets x 8 reps

Pull Up

4 sets x AMRAP

Barbell Curl

4 sets x 8 reps

4 Week Routine (Women's)

Day 1

Barbell Squat

5 sets x 8 reps

Barbell Hip Bridge

4 sets x 12 reps

Dumbbell Reverse Lunge

4 sets x 8 reps per side

Alternating Crossbody Jack Knife

3 sets x AMRAP

Day 2

Barbell Deadlift

5 sets x 8 reps

Barbell Hip Bridge

4 sets x 12 reps

Close Grip Pull Up

4 sets x AMRAP

Dumbbell Chest Press

4 sets x 8 reps

Day 3

Barbell Squat

5 sets x 8 reps

Barbell Hip Bridge

4 sets x 12 reps

Dumbbell Reverse Lunge

4 sets x 8 reps per side

Crossbody Jack Knife

3 sets x AMRAP

Day 4

Barbell Deadlift

5 sets x 8 reps

Barbell Hip Bridge

4 sets x 12 reps

Close Grip Pull Up

4 sets x AMRAP

Dumbbell Chest Press

4 sets x 8 reps

Start with 65% of your 1 rep max
Add 1-2 reps to each set every week for 3 weeks
rest for 90 seconds – 2 minutes
Cut the amount of reps down by 30% on week 4 to deload

Phase Duration

The length of each phase depends on what your goals are, and what your level of fitness is. Typically the cutting phase could take anywhere from 8-12 weeks. The strength phase can be done 4-8 weeks at a time and the mass phase can be run continuously over a period of 3-6 months. Do your best to maintain a low body fat percentage throughout the mass phase in order to avoid frequent cutting phases.

Tribe By Noire

I’ve created this platform to help you become the most powerful version of yourself through fitness, plant based nutrition, and mindset coaching.

Tags bodybuilding, fat loss, muscle growth, training strategies

Fitness & Training

Sets & Reps Guide To Physique Building

Post author By Remson
Post date November 21, 2017

Tribe By Noire

Sets & Reps Guide To Physique Building

With each exercise, you’d do a given amount of repetitions (reps) and you do that amount of reps for a given amount of sets. For example if you’re doing bicep curls, you could be doing 3 sets of 10 reps, or 3×10. If that sounds confusing for you, think of it as 30 reps divided into 3 sets.

When considering how many sets and reps to do in your training routine you have to consider a variety of different aspects.

What is your training goal?
What muscle fibers are you targeting?
How much time do you have to train?
How much training volume do I need?

Sets & Reps For Muscle Building

In order to effectively increase muscle mass, you need to maximize tension and muscle fiber recruitment during each exercise. There are a few options for getting this done, but in regards to sets and reps there’s 2 options.

Use a heavy load with less reps.
Use a moderate to light load with more reps.

The heavier loads will increase your strength and target your type 2 muscle fibers, which have the greatest potential for size development. Ideally the heavy lifting should come at the beginning of your training session. Lifting heavy after already being fatigued will limit training performance in these big lifts, thus limiting the results.

The moderate to lighter loads will target your type 1 muscle fibers. Training these muscle fibers will increase muscular endurance, blood flow, and improve stability. These lifts are secondary to your heavier lifts being that they perform better under sustained fatigue. An added bonus to training these muscle fibers is the drastically increased blood flow to the muscle that creates “the pump”.

Effectively training both muscle fiber types in the most strategic way will really maximize muscle growth as well as improve strength and performance. Here’s a quick example of what this looks like.

PRIMARY EXERCISES

8 Reps

6 Reps

4 Reps

SECONDARY EXERCISES

20 Reps

16 Reps

12 Reps

Optimal Rep Ranges For Muscle Building

The most common method used for building muscle is choosing a specific number of reps for each set. An example of this would be 1st set for 10 reps, 2nd for set 8 reps, 3rd set for 6 reps. This can work, but a major problem here is that rigidly sticking to the amount reps can cause you to leave a lot of training intensity on the table. Let’s say the goal is 8 reps, but you’re able to squeeze out 12 reps, did you maximize training intensity on that set if you stopped at 8? Did you maximize muscle tension?

If training intensity and maximal muscle tension is what creates the results we want, then the reps should facilitate the focus, not BE the focus. This is why rep ranges are ideal. An example of this would be 3 sets where each set has a rep range of 10-6. Start with a weight that you know you can get a maximum of 10 reps with. Increase the weight on each set and do as many reps as possible (AMRAP) in each set.

Both increasing the weight on each set and striving for the maximum amount of reps each set will allow you to get the most out of every workout. When you put everything together in a full training routine, this is what it look like.

1ST TRAINING DAY

Barbell Squat

3 Sets x 8-4 Reps (AMRAP)

Barbell Deadlift

3 Sets x 8-4 Reps (AMRAP)

Barbell Hip Bridge

3 Sets x 8-4 Reps (AMRAP)

Dumbbell Walking Lunge

3 Sets x 20-12 Reps (AMRAP)

2nd Training Day

Barbell Overhead Press

3 Sets x 8-4 Reps (AMRAP)

Barbell Bench Press

3 Sets x 8-4 Reps (AMRAP)

Dumbbell Incline Press

3 Sets x 20-12 Reps (AMRAP)

Dumbbell Lateral Raise

3 Sets x 20-12 Reps (AMRAP)

3rd Training Day

Barbell Row

3 Sets x 8-4 (AMRAP)

Weighted Pull Up

3 Sets x 8-4 (AMRAP)

Barbell Pull Over

3 Sets x 20-12 Reps (AMRAP)

Dumbbell Reverse Fly

3 Sets x 20-12 Reps (AMRAP)

*NOTE

This just serves as one example of this rep scheme idea just to give you a visual of what it looks like. This is a great setup to follow, but there are many others that also work really.

Tribe By Noire

I’ve created this platform to help you become the most powerful version of yourself through fitness, plant based nutrition, and mindset coaching.

Tags bodybuilding, fat loss, muscle growth, training strategies

Nutrition & Supplements

7 Simple Diet Tips To Improve Insulin Sensitivity

Post author By Remson
Post date October 23, 2017

Tribe By Noire

7 SIMPLE DIET TIPS TO IMPROVE INSULIN SENSITIVITY

Its really important to understand how insulin works in the body and why insulin sensitivity is so important in relation to your fitness goals. To put it all simply, insulin is a hormone that your pancreas secretes to shuttle blood sugar into cells like your muscle and fat cells.

Being insulin sensitive means your body uses less insulin to transport blood sugar. Being insulin resistant means your body needs to use a lot more insulin for the same amount, which leads to fat gain, fatigue, and type 2 diabetes.

Increasing insulin sensitivity helps to cut body fat and use sugar for energy a lot more efficiently. This is also a good idea in the fight against type 2 diabetes.

Here are the 7 simple diet tips to improve insulin sensitivity.

1- Start Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent fasting is 1st on my list because it is the quickest and most effective way to increase insulin sensitivity and normalize blood sugar levels. This is why intermittent fasting is one of the most powerful ways to cut body fat and do it in a timeline fashion.

To start with intermittent fasting, set up a 6-8 hour eating window that works well with your schedule. This will leave you with 18-16 hour fasting window. After that you’ll want to plan out your meals for that eating window and preferably prep your meals, so they’re ready to go.

2- Add A Teaspoon Of Ceylon Cinnamon

Cinnamon improves insulin sensitivity and lowers fasting blood sugar levels. The 2 compounds in cinnamon that help with this are chromium and polyphenols.

The two types of cinnamon are cassia and ceylon. Cassia is alot more common and known for its strong flavor. Ceylon, also known as true cinnamon, is a lot harder to find, but one of the perks of it is that its taste is not as strong, which may make it easier on the liver.

A teaspoon a day of cinnamon with your first meal over time can help a great deal especially with fat loss. I personally add it to the smoothie that breaks my fast.

3- Add Apple Cider Vinegar

Apple cider works very well with improving insulin sensitivity after high carb meals by 19-34%. It also lowers blood sugar levels by slowing down the emptying of the stomach.

Finishing your last meal with 1-2 table spoons of apple cider vinegar is a great strategy for improving insulin sensitivity while you sleep.

You really have to earn the benefits of this stuff because it tastes terrible to most people. Try mixing it in with a salad, or a green juice smoothie.

4- Add Turmeric

Turmeric is one of the most powerful things you can add to your diet because of all the benefits that come with it. A few of those benefits are anti-inflammation, which helps to fix gut health issues, and arthritis. It also protects brain function, and fights depression, Alzheimer’s, and other brain related illnesses.

More specific to this topic, turmeric improves insulin sensitivity, and regulates blood glucose levels. A few of the ways it does this is by improving beta cell function of the pancreas, improving fatty acid oxidation and utilization, and improving insulin receptor function.

The benefits of turmeric come from anti-oxidant called curcumin. Checkout this study on curcumin for the details.

5- Add Ginger

Ginger is very similar to turmeric being that they are both from the Zingiberaceae family and have a lot of the same benefits. Unique to ginger, it can help reduce muscle soreness, chronic indigestion, LDL cholesterol levels, and menstrual pain.

Like turmeric, you can use it as a spice to cook with daily, and it works basically the same way over time. For the details on how this works, checkout this study here.

You can also get it in the form of of an essential oil and mix it with tea. If you don’t like the taste of ginger, you can also take it as a supplement in capsule form.

6- Add Spirulina

Spirulina is an amazing heavily nutrient dense food created from algae. In fact, gram for gram, it holds the reputation of being the most nutrient dense food in the world. It is heavily loaded with protein, B vitamins, iron, calcium, iron, calcium, anti-oxidants, and omega 3 fatty acids.

Spirulina improves insulin sensitivity by regulating blood lipid levels and cholesterol, and the anti-oxidants reduce oxidative stress and inflammation. All of this combined improves pancreas function and reduces lipotoxicity.

You can take it in a capsule, or powder form. It doesn’t taste too good by its self, so I’d advise mixing in with juiced vegetables, and a fruit like apples and pears.

7- Add More Magnesium

Magnesium is a key micro-nutrient that is responsible for improving and correcting insulin sensitivity. In fact, magnesium deficiency is the fundamental defect found in people who experience pre-diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and even diabetes. There is a huge variety of tasty foods that you can add to your daily diet. Here’s a few of those foods.

Dark Chocolate

Dark Chocolate is a great source of magnesium, but is also a great source of anti-oxidants. Its prebiotic fiber also feeds your good gut flora, which is a major asset in improving gut health.

Avocado

Avocado is one of the easiest ways to get magnesium in your diet because its versatile and delicious. Its also a great source of potassium as well which helps purge toxins from the blood.

Nuts

Nuts like almonds, cashews, and brazil nuts make for 20% of your RDI with just 1 serving.

Legumes

Legumes like black beans account for 30% of your RDI with just 1 cup. This is also a great source of protein, and iron.

Seeds

Seeds like pumpkin seeds account for 37% of your RDI with just 1 ounce. This is also another great source of protein that you can add to your smoothies and use as a topping.

Tribe By Noire

I’ve created this platform to help you become the most powerful version of yourself through fitness, plant based nutrition, and mindset coaching.

Tags diabetes, fat loss, insulin sensitivity, vegan diet tips, weight loss

Nutrition & Supplements

The 2 Diet Traps Of Skinny Fat

Post author By Remson
Post date October 12, 2017

Tribe By Noire

The 2 Diet Traps Of Skinny Fat

Being skinny fat is this frustrating paradox where you’re both skinny and fat at the same time. Its having skinny arms and legs, while having a high concentration of body fat wrapping around your torso. If this describes your situation, you’ll definitely want to take this info in.

The skinny fat dilemma
The body recomposition solution
The quality over quantity diet
Intermittent fasting & fat cutting

The Skinny Fat Dilemma

Here’s the dilemma in a nutshell. Do you focus on losing weight, or do you focus on gaining muscle? Here’s the problem with this mode of thinking. When you focus on losing weight, you do things like cut calories and increase how much cardio you do. This leads to you being even MORE skinny fat, because you end up losing muscle and retaining fat from under fueling the body. You can go the other way and focus on gaining muscle. This is not a bad idea outright but most people do this wrong. People typically take the approach of bulking where they focus on increasing calories and training hard. This often results in muscle gain, but even more fat gain. This leads to you being a heavier version of your skinny fat self.

The Body Re-composition Solution

The one and only true solution to the skinny fat trap is not cutting or bulking, but total body re-composition. Following the law of exchange you’d build muscle and drop body fat at the same time. Body fat is just stored energy, so you’d use that energy to fuel the training that leads to the muscle building. Instead of focusing on food quantity, you’d focus on food quality.

As far as training goes, you need a training program that is geared toward increasing muscle size. This program should focus on resistance training where the volume is high and the training load is moderately heavy. This leads to maximizing your muscle’s time under tension.

Think of your body as a pie. A certain ratio of your body is lean mass and the rest is fat mass. When you’re skinny fat, your body fat mass percentage is high, and your lean mass percentage is low, too low. As you gain more muscle, your lean mass ratio will increase, thus decreasing your fat mass ratio. You’re basically gradually inverting the fat mass to lean mass ratio.

Quality Over Quantity

Retaining all of your body fat around your torso is an indication of poor gut health. Its important to understand that everything you put in your mouth is either improving your gut health or destroying your gut health. With this understanding it becomes pretty clear that your diet should be centered around quality rather than quantity.

Everywhere you look there’s some fitness expert telling you to make better food choice, but not many of them actually explain what qualifies as a “better” food choice. The most you’ll get is “avoid processed foods”. That’s a good start, but lets take it a step further. Quite simply put, you want to target plant based whole foods.

Think about this. If you had a chronic illness, or just plain ol obesity, what would a qualified doctor tell you to eat? I guarantee they’d tell you to eat more fruits and vegetables. To be specific, you want to target plant based whole foods. These types of foods all possess 3 key things.

Antioxidants

antioxidants protect cells from damage and or slow down deterioration. A few examples of antioxidants are beta-carotene, lycopene, and vitamin C. The only foods that have antioxidants in them are plant based. A few foods that possess the highest levels of anitoxidants are, goji berries, artichoke, dark chocolate, pecans, kidney beans, and cilantro.

micro-nutrients

micro-nutrients consists of all vitamins and minerals. These nutrients are absolutely essential for overall health including digestive health. Vitamin B is essential to the absorption and utilization of carbs, protein, and fat for energy. Vitamin C is needed for the production of collagen. This is especially important for maintaining the tissue quality of the digestive tract. Vitamin A maintains a healthy gut lining. Copper facilitates protein absorption. Potassium eliminates waste from the body. Selenium is needed for pancreas function. All of this is abundant in plant based foods.

Fiber

There are 2 main types of fiber found in food called soluble and insoluble fiber. Soluble fiber dissolves in water and regulates blood sugar levels, cholesterol levels, helps to create stomach acid for digestion, and protects stomach lining. Insoluble fiber does not dissolve in water, but instead helps to clean the intestinal walls, add bulk to your doodoo for an easy time in the bathroom, and feeds your good gut bacteria.

Plant Based Whole Foods Are The Key

When choosing foods for your diet remember this check list. Antioxidants | Micro-nutrients | Fiber. This doesn’t have to be 100% of your diet, but it should be at least 70% of it. There are 5 categories of food to target here.

fruits
vegetables
nuts & seeds
grains
Legumes

As long as you target these 5 categories daily, you’ll have a balanced and exciting diet that is easy to stick to. Finally to close on this topic, TRACK YOUR FOOD!! My top two picks are a couple of mobile apps called My Fitness Pal & Cronometer. This is key to knowing exactly how much of all the nutrients your getting and what you’re missing.

Intermittent Fasting

Aside from how you train and what you eat, when you eat can maximize your progress. This leads into one of the best strategies you can possibly use for cutting body fat, FASTING! There’s several different types of fasting for different reasons, but for anyone new to fasting for fat loss, intermittent fasting is the type I recommend.

Intermittent fasting is where you have a daily eating window 6-8 hours and a fasting window of 18-16 hours. Basically the goal is to get all of your eating done for the day in a shorter time frame and then not eat for the other 16 to 18 hours. You won’t be eating during the fasting window, so you’re body will be mostly using your body fat as energy.

The before and after picture of me at the top of this article is where I went from 15% body fat to 7% bodyfat. I made the largest body fat cut I’ve ever made in my entire life while gaining muscle, using this strategy. Not only has this worked for me, but it is currently working for my clients as well.

Tribe By Noire

I’ve created this platform to help you become the most powerful version of yourself through fitness, plant based nutrition, and mindset coaching.

Tags bodybuilding, fat loss, muscle building, plant based diet, vegan

Nutrition & Supplements

Carbs Weight Loss And Insulin Resistance Explained

Post author By Remson
Post date August 18, 2017

Tribe By Noire

Carbs Weight Loss & Insulin Resistance Explained

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Its a popular belief that carbs and sugar cause weight gain, insulin resistance, and diabetes, but according to peer reviewed scientific studies, it turns out that’s not really the case. I’ve put together this article to clear things up on this topic and explain what actually causes insulin resistance, and the steps you can take to fix this issue. Here’s the breakdown.

What is insulin resistance
What causes insulin resistance
Possible signs of insulin resistance
How to fix insulin resistance

What Is Insulin Resistance

Insulin resistance is directly associated with type 2 diabetes, but being insulin resistant doesn’t always mean you’re diabetic. There are varying degrees of insulin resistance and as this condition worsens, diabetes occurs. So here how it works.

There are certain types of cells that operate primarily on glucose from carbs and sugar. These types of cells are muscle, liver, and brain cells. When glucose enters the blood stream, insulin is released from the pancreas. That insulin then carries the glucose to these cells. The cells have insulin receptors that are responsible for opening up the cell and allowing the glucose to enter. The problem with insulin resistance is that the cell’s insulin receptors stop working, which in turn doesn’t allow the glucose to enter.

What Causes Insulin Resistance

If these cells primarily rely on carbs and sugar for energy, then how can carbs and sugar be the thing causing insulin resistance? Doesn’t make much sense does it? Now if we take a look at the dysfunction in the insulin receptors of these cells, things start to make more sense. It turns out that when the cell is full, the insulin receptors will not respond. Upon further study, scientists have discovered lipotoxicity to be the issue with these cells. Lipotoxicity is a metabolic syndrome that results from the accumulation of fat in tissue cells that are not meant to store fat.

The next question of course would be, how does fat get stored in muscle cells. The short answer is that a diet high in saturated fat causes lipotoxicity. Take a look at the standard American diet. Typically its high in fatty foods like meat dairy and eggs, which are loaded with saturated fat and cholesterol. Even the foods that people consider to be high carb like pizza, and donuts are high fat foods. Its because of this misunderstanding that people find it easy to demonize carbs.

Fat takes much longer for us to use as energy which makes it so much easier for our body’s to store as fat. As a response people go to extremes like high fat low carb diets like the keto diet. The problem with this is that the worlds most nutrient dense foods are fruit, vegetables, grains, legumes, and seeds, which are high in carbs. The subject of diet has become so warped that people believe that taking the bun off of a cheeseburger is a great weight loss strategy.

Possible Signs Of Insulin Resistance

In my 11 years of experience as a coach and from the research I’ve done, I’ve noticed commonalities with insulin resistant people. See if you experience any of these issues when you eat carb heavy foods.

Sluggishness
Bloating
headaches

Also frequent light headedness and urination can also be an indication of insulin resistance.

How To Fix Insulin Resistance

Intermittent Fasting

Fasting is known to be one of the best methods of healing the body. Of course raw fasting can be really tough for most people and unsustainable overall. However there is a way to make fasting much more practical and sustainable. That method is intermittent fasting. This is where you have a 6-8 hour eating window and a 16-18 hour fasting window. This change to your eating schedule can be maintained on a daily basis. The reason why the fasting works so well for improving insulin sensitivity is that the fasting window allows you to use fat for energy at a much higher rate. This is how you can start draining that lipotoxicity out of your cells.

Whole Food Plant Based Diet

Cutting the saturated fat and cholesterol out of your diet and replacing them with nutrient dense plant based whole foods will allow your digestive tract to heal and drain the lipotoxicity out of your cells. I specified whole foods because these are the most ideal foods for the human species. These foods contain the essentials to the human diet in the ideal ratios. Plant based foods also contain fiber which regulate blood glucose and cholesterol levels. This goes a long way towards protecting against insulin resistance, obesity, and diabetes.

10-15% Fat

Most people don’t have a clear understanding of what a low fat diet actually is. An ideal low fat diet is where your fat intake makes up for 10-15% of your total macros. This method combined with a whole food plant based diet high in starchy foods has actually reversed type 2 diabetes.

Citations

SATURATED FAT PRODUCES INSULIN RESISTANCE

SATURATED FAT & CHOLESTEROL ARE HARMFUL TO INSULIN PRODUCING BETA CELLS

KETOGENIC DIETS DO NOT HAVE A METABOLIC ADVANTAGE

https://www.medpagetoday.com/cardiology/prevention/59018

Tribe By Noire

I’ve created this platform to help you become the most powerful version of yourself through fitness, plant based nutrition, and mindset coaching.

Tags diabetes, diet strategies, fat loss, insulin sensitivity, muscle growth, plant based diet, vegan diet tips