Tag Archives: weight-loss

Cope, or good sense?

As I wrote last time, I’ve been following Dr Mike Isratael’s youtube channel in my own quest to lose weight and (maybe) gain muscle. And as I said last time, Dr Mike says all the right words to make me think he knows what he’s talking about, but I’m afraid I only believe him because he knows the shibboleths, not because he’s actually right. What if he’s a charlatan like the rest, but his shibboleths are “basic biochemistry” instead of “pseudo-right wing culture,” and that’s why I believe him? What if what he’s saying isn’t correct, will I have the sense to know?

Well I’ve started… not disbelieving, but rather not following all the advice he gives. On the one hand, this could be proof that I’m a free-thinker, who takes all advice to heart and executes it not based on its source or shibboleths, but on its factual content. On the other hand, maybe that’s all cope and I’m not following it because I don’t want to.

The basic idea comes down to 1 thing: dieting. As I said, my primary goal is to lose weight, but I’m hitting the gym and I’d sure like to gain muscle on the way. Well Dr Mike has a video out about how that entire idea is a myth, and that the most productive way to do things is to eat a calorie surplus to gain weight (and go to the gym to make sure that’s muscle weight), while eating a calorie deficit in order to lose weight (and go to the gym to make sure that’s only fat weight). Trying to gain muscle on a calorie deficit, or lose fat on a surplus, is inefficient and possibly impossible.

Now Mike does caveat this with a few exceptions. If an exceptionally jacked individual was gravely injured and has lost muscle and gained fat while laid up in the hospital, then it’s much easier for them to gain back that fat and lose back that muscle once they get out of the hospital. It’s always easier to get *back* in shape than to get in shape *for the first time*.

Another caveat he talks about is “newbie gains,” where someone who is young and never went to the gym can start gaining muscle/losing fat together. But the caveat to the caveat is that this isn’t sustainable, eventually it will be one or the other.

So I’ve decided to believe that I’m in the “newbie gains” stage, the caveat to my own claim being that I did used to go to the gym a bit and I’m not actually that young. Regardless, I’m choosing to believe that Dr Mike is giving this advice to aspiring bodybuilders, people who are already fairly muscular and with a health amount of bodyfat, and therefore his advice doesn’t apply to me who is very unmuscular and with an unhealthy amount of bodyfat.

To reiterate, my goal is to lose weight and gain muscle. Dr Mike says that’s not usually possible and that I have to pick one and only one goal if I’m going to succeed, and I’ve decided to ignore that advice and believe that his advice is aimed at an audience that I’m not really a part of.

But maybe this is all wrong. Maybe for an obese person to become healthy, they need to lose a lot of weight, and during that time they simply won’t gain much of any muscle no matter how they try. And maybe that obese person is me.

If I were to take Dr Mike’s advice to heart, I would probably restructure my training with the understanding that I need to focus solely on the weight loss, probably by entering a more severe calorie deficit than I’m at now, in order to more quickly lose weight so I can then put on muscle. I’d probably spend a lot less time thinking about my gym technique and a lot more time working on my diet.

Am I ignoring Dr Mike’s advice because I’m a free-thinker making a rational conclusion about whether his advice is right for me? Or am I doing it because this is the first piece of advice I just don’t like?

I don’t know.

Exercise and shibboleths

I’ve been trying to lose weight and gain muscle for years. But despite being in the target Young Male demographic, I never listened to Joe Rogan, or Logan Paul, or any of the exercise/fitness influences. Part of that was that they just didn’t interest me. Part of that was that fitness is filled with a lot of pseudoscience, and as a scientist myself I could see that almost everything said online was tinged with nonsense and falsehood. Everyone is looking for “one weird trick” to get abs of steel and 4% body fat, which leads to a proliferation of voodoo practitioners giving terrible advice and selling you supplements.

I stayed away from online exercise discussions.

But while idly scrolling one day, I found a video by Dr Mike Israetel of Renaissance Periodization. And for the first time in my life, I’m hooked. I’m watching his videos, I’m trying to learn his techniques, I’m putting into practice what he say I should be doing.

I think a large part of this sudden switch is that Dr Mike seems to have legit credentials. A teaching record at Lehman College, a genuine publication history, this guy is clearly doing science, not voodoo. But I think even more than his credentials are his shibboleths.

Put simply, Mike Israetel says all the right words as a scientist to make me (a fellow scientist) believe he knows what he’s saying. There are certain words that started out in science but have reached the mainstream: anyone can talk about carbohydrates and calories. But few people know what a motor unit is, or can accurately talk about the immune system. Dr Mike is saying things that pass the smell test to me (I am a fellow biology but not an exercise scientist specifically), and that helps me believe him when he says things I might otherwise be skeptical of.

And those shibboleths… make me nervous. Because I know I’m not actually doing research, I’m not actually seeking out all sides of the debate and forming my own rational conclusions. There’s hundreds of hucksters selling you on “the best way” to do exercise, so am I trusting Dr Mike for all the wrong reasons? Maybe he knows his biochemistry, but his exercise science is dogshit. I’d never know.

And even if Dr Mike is truly giving me the most accurate, up-to-date information in the scientific literature, that information could be wrong, and I could spend my time following baseless advice and getting less fit than if I’d just trusted the gymbro with a 6-pack and pecs.

I haven’t looked for any advice outside of Dr Mike, because to be honest I don’t have the time or the background necessary to know if he’s *really* got the goods or is a huckster like all the others. I have the background to know he knows his biochemistry, but beyond that I’m lost. But as someone without much time to exercise anyway, I feel like latching on to a charismatic Youtube professor is at least better than latching on to any other charismatic Youtuber, and is hopefully better than flying blind like how I used to exercise.

Time will tell.