On Saturday Nick (my lover) Erin (our bussines partner) and I spent the day with Alan Aragon.

Alan is the worlds leading nutritionist when it comes to body composition and the interplay between nutrition and exercise. He is doing some of the best research and research reviews in the world today and he is working in the lab with the worlds best researchers on the effects of training on the body

Over the next few weeks I will fill you in on what we learned (minus some of the mundane bits).

But for today a quick summary of the top 10 things we learned:

1. Protein is the king macro nutrient. Getting 4 serves of protein a day is the most important task of your diet. A serve is between 20-40g depending on your body weight. Every time you get this serving size your body hits the “leucine threshold” and sends a message to hold onto lean tissue.You can overeat on protein calories and still lose weight
2. It makes zero difference what time of the day you eat. As long as you have some protein within 3 hours on either side of your training sessions you are good there.
3. Carbs are not the enemy. They are really important in helping you exercise and get the body you want.
4. The change in your body shape does not occur in a straight line. A Plateau is a good thing, in the end we are aiming to plateau for good and hold our ideal body comp. As you get closer to this state your plateaus will become longer and longer. There is no need to change our macros until we plateau.
5. Supplements don’t work. Caffine, creatine and beta-alanine are the only one’s that do work but you are best off saving them until you hit a really tough plateau.
6. You don’t have to track macros forever. If you decide your sick of my fitness pal you do need to track how much protein you are eating and see what i happening with your clothes/measurements. 4 palm sized serves of protein is key.
7. Resist paying attention to the media. The messages you hear about fitness and about health are all related to marketing
8. Diets which either have no basis in science or are counter productive and you can stop worrying about.
   1. Ketogenic/no carb diet
   2. Alternate fasting
   3. Paleo
   4. Alkaline diet (no evidence of anti-cancer properties)
   5. No Sugar (Gary Taubes)
   6. Diets which do have a basis in science
      1. Vegetarian/Vegan
      2. Mediterranean
      3. Macro calculated diets

The biggest take away? You can relax, almost all of the things people are stressing about make zero practical difference. Just focus on hitting your protein most importantly and then your other macros after that.

Training hard makes a huge difference.

We had a great day and are still digesting heaps of what we learned. We re-analysed all the macros we give to clients and they we were pretty much bang on with the results we got using Alan’s formulas.