SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

This is not a photo of the "ketogenic diet" meals the subjects were served in exactly 2 out of 24 months of the study... and the supple-ments they were taking to make up for nutrional deficits are also missin' There are two reasons why the number of studies on the long-term effects of ketogenic diets on health and body composition is still limited. The obvious reason is that it takes time to conduct these studies. This is yet not the full truth, though. After all, conducting a "low fat"-diet study will also take time and we have hundreds of long-term studies, here. Unfortunately, this is where reason #2 comes into play: Not too long ago you would probably have had problems to get funding and/or to even get past the ethics committee of your institution with a study in which overweight or obese subjects were supposed to be exposed to a "high fat" and or "high protein" diet that could "jeopardize their health". You know,  high...

Always remember: You want to control cortisol, not eradicate it if you want to melt away your belly fat , beat your personal bests and feel just great ! As a SuppVersity  reader, you belong to the chosen few who know that cortisol is not the villain as which it is stigmatized in the fitness industry (obviously to sell supplements | learn more ). Rather than being "bad" or "good", cortisol, a glucocorticoid, i.e. a hormone that keeps your blood glucose stable, and potent anti-inflammatory agent, is more vital than any "vitamin" - in spite of not having the magic "vita" in its name. Whether the effects of this vital adrenal hormone are going to be "bad" or "good" for you, depends mostly on whether it rises and falls according to its natural 24-h rhythm or is chronically low (often labeled adrenal insufficiency) or chronically high. If you want to mess with your cortisol rhythm overtraining is exactly what you "ne...

You have heard me argue based on theoretical considerations before that "intermittent fasting" is probably best used during cuts, not during "bulks" - the results of the study at hand, even though they may not show stat. sign. inter-group differences, support this suggestion. You will be surprised, but the latest article Tinsley et al. (2016) published in the  European Journal of Sport Science  is indeed the very first study to investigate the effects of time-restricted feeding (TRF) "on nutrient intake, body composition, and strength" when they are combined with a standardized resistance training regimen. That's too good to be true? Well, wait until you've learned more about the methodology and results, but it is indeed cool that someone finally studied the effects of what the majority of people think of if you talk about "intermittent fasting" (that's in contrast to scientists who often think of alternative day fasting when th...

Cycling and sprinting (running) are not your only options when doing HIIT. An intense plyometric  or other body-weight based workouts  can be done in an "80-95% for 10-60s" vs. "running on the spot for 20-120s" or with  kettle-bells workout, as well. Be creative... HIIT is "the hit" in the fitness world. And though it has been a hit for years, now, nobody seems to know how it is done "correctly", or, should I say, optimally!? How's that? Well, as in so many areas of this field, there's simply too little scientific data to make science-based recommendations that are "bulletproof" in the literal, not the new nutrition-and-fitness-craze sense of the word. With their latest paper, scientists from China are trying to change just that (Chia-Lun. 2016). They set out to compare the effects of a matched-volume HIIT protocols w/ 10s or 60s all-out exercise and identical work-to-rest ratios (1:2) on - a comparison that has, believe ...

Both, time and exercise order matter - at least when untrained subjects have trained for at least 12 weeks. The debate about whether you should (a) do cardio and weights together and (b) whether you shall do either or both in the AM or PM for maximal muscle anabolism is older than the SuppVersity  and has thus been addressed in many of the hitherto published approx. 2300 articles on suppversity.com. The reason you should still read today's article, however, is that the approach to the topic is a bit different than usual, so that the study, which certainly leaves much to be desired (more on that in the bottom line ), adds more practically relevant (which you cannot say about studies measuring the testosterone : cortisol ratio, for example) data. AM or PM, you got to make sure you slept / sleep enough & well before or after workouts Sunlight, Bluelight, Backlight and Your Clock Sunlight a La Carte: "Hack" Your Rhythm Breaking the Fast to Synchronize ...