Fill the syringe with a stress, stab the syringe into your leg. Let the liquid seep into your spirit. The stress will take its toll. You want the stress to take its toll. You’ll be better off for it; you’ll come back stronger than ever afterwards. This is stimulation. This is being antifragile. This is training. [...]
Fill the syringe with a stress, stab the syringe into your leg. Let the liquid seep into your spirit. The stress will take its toll.
You want the stress to take its toll. You’ll be better off for it; you’ll come back stronger than ever afterwards.
This is stimulation. This is being antifragile. This is training.
What we subject ourselves to—assuming it respects the body’s finite ability to recover—we not only recover from, but recover beyond. So the question to ask yourself: what are you forcing your body to overcome?
What’s in the syringe? Are you sure its the right stuff?
This essay takes a look at stimulation for someone that wants to get lean and gain muscle, but currently fights with body fat and struggles to gain muscle.
The difference between skinny and skinny-fat
A true skinny guy has stimulation easy: fill the syringe with the stuff that’s going to signal for muscle building. That’s the only goal; supply and soul follow—they facilitate the stimulation. (Where most skinny guys go wrong here is that they don’t use the good and powerful stuff that actually builds muscle.)
For a skinny-fat guy, this gets sticky. It’s not just about stimulating for muscle because there’s another variable: fat cells.
Now, let’s assume the body created the fat cells for a reason — it thinks they’re useful things to have around. After all, having energy at our fingertips 24/7 is still a relatively novel idea in the history of human evolution (or so it would seem with a simple look through dollar store paleo goggles — let’s also remember that fat cells might be more than a simple energy storage site).
So if the body thinks they have purpose, you have to figure that squishing them of their contents is only further justification that what was going on was a good thing.
I put all of this stuff into storage and look what happened! It’s all gone now! Wow, I’m so smart. I better fill them back up again to prepare for the next shindig!
Of course, I could be wrong here. But I think I’m right. (Negative feedback loop regulation is probably giving me more confidence than I should have.)
Now, to the punchline.
How body fat changes the story
If you’re dealing with body fat, you’re body already has a go-to for excess energy and nutrients. It’s almost as if you’ve unconsciously stimulated them into being.
Below is how I see fat gain. It’s not the physiologist approved explanation — it’s my own hunch (as is everything here; I’m just stupid enough to throw ideas into the wild).
You’re burning calories reading this right now. There’s a good chance that, unless you just ate a big meal not too long ago, you’re using fat as your primary fuel source, too. That’s because fat is the primary fuel substrate for low(er) intensity things. And yes, breathing and living is one of those low(er) intensity things.
So let’s play a little hypothetical here. Say you’re sedentary, which means you live primarily in a low(er) intensity aerobic fat burning zone 99% of the day. That means you use a lot of fat for fuel. In fact, it’s your primary source of fuel. Your body is smart enough to know this, so it wants to keep you prepared.
Why would the body go anywhere else with excess nutrients and energy it has that can be used to ensure future survival? Lo and behold, when eat candy and cookies to pack you full of backup fuel, where do you think it puts it?
Respecting the body for everything but a number
Instead of seeing the body as a dynamic and ever changing being, we see it as a number. This usually brings people of the mentality that they’re either (-) and losing weight or (+) in a quest to build muscle, and that both of these things are mutually exclusive. You’re either training to lose fat, or training to build muscle.
This is the problem that our calorie based culture has created. Study after study shows that weight loss can be as simple as lowering calorie intake.
But what does that say, exactly? What’s the long term implications of lowering calorie intake? Being a calorie martyr forever?
Nevertheless, for those that want to lose fat, it usually leads to filling up the syringe with the kind of stimulation that’s all about burning calories and fat loss. This usually equates to cardio, cardio, and more cardio.
Not only is cardio perhaps the worst word in existence, but it’s the wrong way are to focus on for stimulation . . . even for fat loss.
Here we return to the flinch. You can burn calories up, but as long as you maintain same function you’ll get fat all the same again. This is why most progress for a bit . . . and then regress in the long run.
Supply might fix body fat, but it doesn’t fix the flinch.
So even though a skinny-fat guy should be all about fat loss, they primary point of stimulation shouldn’t be about burning calories or losing fat.
The primary point of stimulation should be to get the body thinking that fat cells may not be the primary point of energy concern.
Your body will always err to store excess nutrients as fat, as that’s your most valuable resource . . . unless told otherwise.
And so, I ask: are you telling otherwise?
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Photo Credit: syringe