Can a new way of looking at diet plans and eating, a new fat loss formula, along with a new way of exercising make a chronic disease go away and restore health? For David Musikanth, the answer is a resounding yes.

The Ultimate Weight Loss Battle

A good plan is one where you eat what you like. It’s something you don’t see in most diet plans.

For most of his life, Musikanth had suffered from Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel disorder that brings on unpredictable spells of pain, diarrhea, bleeding, and constipation. It also causes fatigue and, in general, makes your life miserable.

“You can be at home and you want to go out and all of a sudden your stomach isn’t 100 percent and you can’t go out,” he says. “You absolutely can’t. You have to stay somewhere where you have facilities. Crohn’s ruled my life.”

Musikanth was medicated for the condition, and he did exercise, but even then he says it’s still difficult to control symptoms. Finally, a little over two years ago, at age 43 with a wife and two children, he reached a point where something had to change.

“You realize you’re not getting any younger,” he says. “Health is a bigger issue and it was hitting home much harder than it ever did. I wanted to do something for myself that didn’t involve doctors and treatment.”

His first stop, as it is for most of us, was the internet. What could he find? Who could help? He didn’t really have a set diet (“I didn’t think much about it at all”) and his workouts had never changed his body in any meaningful way.

Soon he stumbled on trainer Adam Bornstein’s Twitter feed. “I was intrigued by his posts,” Musikanth says. “So I just asked him some basic questions about nutrition and exercise.”

Bornstein engaged and suggested that Musikanth overhaul his approach to both eating and working out. The first change? Instead of eating the way he’d always had, Bornstein suggested intermittent fasting. It’s a simple concept: Between the hours of noon and 8 p.m., you eat all your normal meals. The rest of the time you consume nothing. “It sounded completely crazy,” Musikanth says.

Ditching Diets for Nutrition Plans

He and his wife decided to try it together – “It’s a lot easier if you have someone to do it with” – along with a change in what he was eating. “Before, there was no concept of diet. A typical meal would be like hot dogs or hamburgers and chips. And a Coke. I wouldn’t even think twice about it.”

Musikanth eliminated the garbage food, but also changed what he eat for the majority of his diet. He’ll eat chicken and vegetables. Fish. Eggs for breakfast. An occasional steak. “It was very strange at first, fitting all my meals into a set timeframe,” he says.

The biggest difference, though, was the flexibility. There was no talk of removing family favorites like pizza night and sushi. Instead, it was understanding how to build a eating style around a lifestyle, and then make sure the plan was doable.

The first three months were tough because of the adjustment of the “good foods” to eat, not because of what was restricted.

“What was amazing was where I initially struggled,” says Musikanth. “It’s not strict in terms of avoiding all foods. A good plan is one where you eat what you like. It’s something you don’t see in most diet plans.”

“But the bigger issue is how much you stay on plan versus having flexibility. In time, your body becomes trained for it. Now it’s second nature. More importantly, Adam set expectations so that when progress stalled, we knew that the plan didn’t stop working. Instead, we discovered how plateaus can be part of progress.”

Bornstein also gave Musikanth a new approach to fitness – a combination of strength and metabolic training that he’d never encountered before. “I did go to a gym, but what I did was very old fashioned, very boring kind of stuff,” he says.

“Now I walk into the gym and have to do all these strange movements. It was very weird at first. But in four months, my whole body changed. Even the people at the gym were asking me, ‘What kind of training is this?’ These were exercises that no one had ever seen.”

Reinventing The Fat Loss Formula

In those first months, Musikanth dropped 22 pounds, which took him from flabby to shredded – an unexpected side benefit. “I hadn’t been majorly fat. It wasn’t like I needed to lose this weight, but it was simply my body shedding fat. Now I look completely different.”

But again, to really appreciate Musikanth’s story, you have to look past the aesthetics. In those first months, along with the physical changes, all of his Crohn’s symptoms disappeared.

Musikanth has been on Bornstein’s plan for 2 years, is now 45, and is quite literally a changed man. “I changed everything. I did a complete change in what I ate, a complete change in how I train. I’m still on the Crohn’s medication, but I have no side effects. It’s in complete remission.”

There’s one more eye-opening bit of information you should know. Musikanth lives in South Africa. Bornstein splits his time between Denver and Los Angeles. This man managed to engage a trainer and successfully implement his plan from half a world away.

Think about that. Some people live 10 minutes from their gym and still can’t make it work with trainers.

Musikanth has thought about this. “I go to a beautiful gym,” he says. “But you look at the trainers and they’re very young. To me, what makes the relationship work is having commitment on both sides. When you see the results, obviously, you see the results. Then it doesn’t matter which side of the planet you’re on.”

The Born Fitness Family: David Musikanth

The Results

I went from 83 kgs to a constant 69-70 kgs. My body fat dropped from 20 percent to below 10 percent and my fitness level just improved like mad enabling me to do my 1st 10km run as well as complete 2 Impi challenges, which is a 12km trail run with 20 odd obstacles in between.

These would never even have been contemplated before Born Fitness online coaching. More importantly to me is that in the now 3 years of Born Fitness I have not had one incident of  Crohn’s disease throughout this period which is quite astonishing!! Even my doctors are at a loss. For me this has been the real success of Born Fitness, helping me get my life back.

Why Born Fitness

I grew up in a home where diet certainly wasn’t an issue, so I was always overweight even though as a kid I went to the gym and did routine weights. In my 20s I was diagnosed with the chronic disease Crohn’s which affected me really badly both from a diet perspective and a training perspective, it all went flat from there on.

Even though I still trained I just had no plan and I ate pretty freely as well as being on chronic medication daily. This went on until I discovered Born Fitness when I was 44! Once I had joined Born fitness my life did a complete u-turn even at this late age. I got a managed, educated, designed and completely different training and eating plan that delivered the results I so desperately craved in its 1st month!!

Certainly a plan designed just for me and diet constructed around what I eat just made it easier and much more simple to negotiate. I would definitely say that a new world of exercises in a structured plan was what instantaneously made a difference. A mix of functional cardio and focused weight training just breathed new life into my system.

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The post The Fat Loss Formula for Any Age: The David Musikanth Story appeared first on Born Fitness.

In reality there are many (many) other fitness goals, and lots of other reasons to workout and eat healthy foods; but this is what interests—and confuses—most people. While losing the extra pounds can be the most frustrating process, building muscle is harder for most people to understand.

After all, if you go to the gym and lift weights consistently you should pack on slabs of new muscle, right? And yet, most gym goers would respond with a resounding, “NO!” Instead, more people are more familiar with training…and then training some more, and never seeing gains that are quite as good as they want.

Your muscles are greedy, so to keep them happy you must give them what they want: variety.

To dig a little deeper and find the answers to the your muscle gaining struggles, I reached out to Brad Schoenfeld, MS, CSCS, author of The MAX Muscle Plan: Blast Through Training Plateaus for Your Best Body Ever, educator, and trainer. 

Brad literally spends each and every day researching muscle gain, so I asked him to share his thoughts on why so many people struggle to add size. Here are 5 common muscle-building mistakes he’s identified, and the fixes that can help you upgrade your body.

5 Muscle-Building Mistakes (And How To Make Gains)

By Brad Schoenfeld

1) You Always Train in the Same Rep Range

The claim that muscle growth is maximized in a moderate rep range (6-12 reps per set) continues to be a source of debate in the fitness field. Although this theory is backed by some research, evidence on the topic remains far from conclusive. But for arguments sake let’s say that moderate reps are in fact best for gaining size. Does that mean that you should train exclusively in this narrow rep range? The answer is an unqualified, “No!”

Training in a lower rep range (1-5 per set) maximizes strength increases, thereby facilitating your ability to use heavier weights during moderate rep training. In this way, you create greater tension in the muscles, spurring better growth. High reps (15-20 per set), on the other hand, help to increase your lactate threshold.

By delaying the buildup of lactic acid, you stave off fatigue when training in the “hypertrophy range,” (the muscle building range) thus increasing time under tension—another important aspect of the growth process. Bottom line is that optimum muscle development is best achieved by using the full spectrum of rep ranges.

Your fix: Periodize your program so that it is built around a moderate repetition protocol, but you make sure to include training in both the lower and higher rep ranges.

Although a number of different periodization models work, I recommend a modified linear approach beginning with a strength phase (lower reps), followed by a fairly short metabolic phase (high reps) and then culminating with a hypertrophy phase (the typical 6 to 12 range).

Depending on your goals and body, this might mean sticking with a particular rep range for a longer period of time. (Such as not changing every 4 weeks.) When properly implemented, this produces a “supercompensation effect” so that you maximize muscular gains and see a peak at the end of the training cycle.

With time, you might then want to shift to a non-linear approach, where you shift rep ranges more frequently to hit all phases.

2) You Use the Same Exercises Every Day

Most people have a limited number of favorite exercises that are staples in their routine. That’s human nature. While it’s okay to have your old stand-bys, they shouldn’t be performed at the exclusion of other movements.

Changing up your exercise selection has a couple of important benefits from a mass-building standpoint. For one, it helps to prevent the so-called “repeated-bout effect” whereby muscles become accustomed to the continual use of the same movements, making them increasingly resistant to trauma.

Staving off such accommodation allows for greater structural perturbations to muscle fibers. That might sound like a bunch of confusing science to some of you, but what it all means is that changing exercises can facilitate increased growth.

What’s more, muscle fibers don’t necessarily span the entire length of a fiber and are often innervated by different nerve branches. Thus, exercise variety alters recruitment patterns in the musculature, ensuring optimal stimulation of all fibers.

Think of it this way: Some people like blonds, other prefers brunettes, and you have those that love redheads. Your muscles are greedy, so to keep them happy you must give them what they want: variety.

That’s why exercise variety provides your muscles with the variety it literally needs for optimal growth. Even slight variations in the exercises you employ will work the muscles somewhat differently, enhancing results.

Your fix: Employ a diverse selection of exercises over the course of your training cycle. This can be accomplished by switching around modalities, training angles, planes of movement, and even your hand and foot spacing. (For instance, on dumbbell curls, think about holding the handle with your pinky against one end of the bell, and on the next set perform with your thumb against the bell.

That slight shift will work your biceps in different ways.) The possibilities are almost endless if you think outside the box. There is no hard rule as to how frequently exercises should be changed, but a general guideline is to do so at least on a monthly basis.

3) You Over- or Under-Isolate Your Muscles

When it comes to exercise selection, there are two basic camps. On one end of the spectrum are those who preach that the only way to get big is by performing the “big lifts” such as squats, presses, and rows. On the other end of the spectrum are those who claim that key to muscle-building is “isolating” muscles with flys, curls, extensions, and the like. Who’s right?

Both camps!

Realize that this isn’t an either-or debate; the two types of movements are in fact complementary. Multi-joint exercises involve large amounts of muscle and therefore are highly efficient for packing on mass.

Alternatively, single-joint exercises allow for greater targeting of individual muscles (or even portions of muscles), enhancing overall growth and symmetry. Integrating a mix of both types of movements into your routine can have a synergistic effect that improves both muscle size and symmetry.

Your fix: Structure your routine so that it is comprised of a combination of multi- and single-joint exercises. As a general rule, every workout should contain at least one or two “big lifts” and a single-joint move.

Oh, and realize that for all practical purposes you can’t “isolate” muscles. The body is designed so that multiple muscles will always be active during exercise performance. Thus, you can only target a given muscle so that it is more active in a given movement.

4) You Always Follow the Straight and Narrow (Sets)

Typical resistance training routines involve performing “straight” sets where you do a set, rest, perform another set of the same exercise, rest, and then continue in this fashion throughout each exercise in your workout.

There’s nothing “wrong” with the basic approach; straight sets can and perhaps even should form the foundation of your routine. But it’s also good to mix things up a bit with some specialized techniques.

Supersets (performing one exercise followed immediate by another exercise without rest), drop sets (performing a set to muscular failure with a given load and then immediately reducing the load and continuing to train until subsequent failure) and heavy negatives (performing eccentric actions—the lowering of a weight—at a weight greater than concentric 1-repetition maximum) can be excellent additions to a mass-building routine. They help to induce greater metabolic stress and structural perturbations that can take your muscle growth to new heights. These strategies are particularly effective for advanced lifters who need to “shock” their body to spur greater growth.

Your fix: Selectively add specialized techniques such as supersets, drop sets, and heavy negatives into your routine. A word of caution: these techniques should be considered advanced training strategies. Their fatiguing nature increases the risk for overtraining, and it is therefore wise to limit their use to no more than a few microcycles over the course of a periodized program.

5) You Do Too Much Cardio

A goal of many lifters is to increase muscle development while simultaneously reducing body fat levels. In an attempt to accelerate fat loss, cardio is frequently ramped up while performing intense resistance training. Adding some aerobic training a muscle-building routine isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Overdoing it, however, certainly is.

You see, the signaling pathways for resistance training and aerobic training are contradictory. Some researchers have coined the term “AMPK-PKB switch” whereby aerobic training promotes catabolic processes (AMPK is involved in pathways associated with protein breakdown, which for your sake can be considered “muscle wasting”) and resistance training promotes anabolic processes (PKB is involved in pathways associated with protein synthesis, or for you, “muscle gaining”).

While the concept of a “switch” is a bit overly simplistic (most of the evidence points to anabolism and catabolism taking place along a continuum), there is little doubt that concurrent training has the potential to interfere with anabolism and thereby undermine your ability to build muscle. What’s more, adding extensive cardio to an already demanding resistance-training program can hasten the onset of overtraining, which brings muscle growth to crashing halt.

Your fix: If your goal is to maximize muscle, keep cardio at moderate levels. How much is too much? It ultimately depends on the individual, as some can tolerate more than others. A general guideline is to limit steady state cardio to no more than about 3 or 4 weekly bouts lasting 30 to 40 minutes.

Alternatively, 2 to 3 high-intensity interval training workouts a week should be fine for most lifters. Just make sure that you stay in tune with your body and be aware of any signs of overtraining.

You also should be aware that unless you’re a newbie to lifting with a fair amount of weight to lose, it becomes increasingly difficult trying to simultaneously gain lean mass while losing body fat. Once you’ve been training for a number of years, it’s best to focus on one goal or the other.

Looking for Muscle Building Guidance?

If you want help building muscle, losing fat–or both–join me in the Born Fitness online coaching program. You’ll receive professionally designed workouts, have access to me and some of the best strength and nutrition coaches to ask your questions, and receive exclusive access to an exercise library, personalized workouts, and 24/7 support.

Learn More About Born Fitness online coaching.

READ MORE: 

The Tension Weightlifting Technique: How to Make Every Exercise More Effective

Are Planks Overrated?

Why Creatine is Even Better Than You Thought

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post 5 Muscle Building Mistakes (And How to Make Gains) appeared first on Born Fitness.