Canelo Alvarez Vs Amir Khan - How much difference will the weight make?

It's fair to say that not many people saw this fight coming, but like many it is definitely one i am excited about. Having become, like many other boxing fans, quite despondent over the direction of Khan's career especially in light of his refusal to grant the UK fight fans the fight we all really wanted to see against Kell Brook, i can now say that i am firmly back on the Khan fan train and i would love to see an upset against Canelo.

However, there are some real issues and concerns regarding this fight as boxing can be quite a brutal sport. The key questions relate to the weight difference and what the affect of that could be with Canelo known for coming in up to 20lbs heavier than what he officially weighs in at. There's also the power difference too, Canelo showed against James Kirkland he can really bang and that was against a natural middleweight too. Can Khan really stand up to that power? Well with his questionable chin many believe this will be an easy night for Canelo and will be over as soon as he connects with any real venom.

Compare this to Khan who's power is questionable as well as the fact he is really coming up from light welterweight having only ever fought at 147lbs against Collazo the only true welterweight and then Alexander who was really a light welterweight and Algieri who again was really a light welterweight. This shows how big a step up this is for Khan and whilst there were concerns about him making light welterweight himself and growing in to the 147b division the question remains as to whether he can really hang with a powerful big hitting guy at the heavier weight, so far that has been left unanswered and what a fight for him to have to answer all of these questions!

Some will argue that Mayweathers speed and agility/reflexes made Canelo look flat footed, even lacking ideas and at times easy to hit but Khan is not Mayweather and he's also not shown the consistent discipline needed to strategically beat an opponent with many advantages over him. Khan's speed will no doubt be his key advantage but as with any boxer moving up in weight and going from 147b to 155b is a big jump then Khan will lose some of his speed.

From a nutritionist point of view Khan will not have to endure the lengthy dieting which can seriously affect a boxers performance, with his nutrition being more focussed on performance aspect such as strength, fitness and recovery it's fair to assume Khan will enjoy this training camp a lot more. It would be expected though that his nutritionist and S&C team have monitored him enough to be able plan out and measure progress to ensure he's not slowing down with the extra weight, the blueprint of speed being key against Canelo is there from Mayweather, Angulo and Lara. Khan's team need to ensure that he carrie more power but his speed remains. You would also expect that Khan will come in at the weight easy without the drying out process. Whilst many boxers with a good drying out protocol under the guidance of a nutritionist should not feel any negative affects from dropping up to 8% of their body weight to make the weight those who struggle or think once they've made the weight they can eat what they want are the one's who will suffer come the second half of a fight. The weight draining undertaken by Canelo has been questioned as a reason for him sometimes labouring through the final rounds of a fight.

Having worked with many boxers and understanding the key aspects of making weight the safe way as well as knowing of many who make it the wrong way my belief is that if there is a check weigh in requested from the Khan camp for the next day then Canelo may in fact slow down in the latter rounds. If Khan can keep on the move in the early rounds, make Canelo miss and catch him with counters then take control with his superior speed and conditioning in the latter rounds then he may just be able to win.

So from a nutritionist point of view this fight makes for very interesting viewing, with 13 weeks to go i'm sure their nutrition and S&C teams already have their plans in place. Ideally Canelo will make the weight comfortably and regain the weight sensibly from drying out and Khan's speed and conditioning will be improved through a less restrictive diet and we, the fans will see 2 of the best fighters around at their peaks come May 7th.

We are either going to see Canelo steamroll and KO Khan who struggled to adapt with the extra weight early or Khan will make it interesting and take Canelo in to the late rounds to see if he can hang with real speed and counters for 12 rounds.

For British fight fans i'd love to see Khan take this one and set up the fight against Brook, someone who surely only has a handful of fights left at 147lb himself.

Nobody ever got fat from eating too much fruit

Recently there has been a spate of negativity surrounding fruit, fat loss and obesity with the majority of it being negative, this article especially from the daily mail insinuated that fruit, is in fact 'fuelling the obesity' epidemic. daily mail article i wouldn't bother reading

The studies often cited in such articles are actually discussing fructose syrup which is found in soft drinks and processed foods, which you just have to ask yourself why are you even eating these foods in the first place, cut these foods out and you cut out the dangers of eating too much fructose in it's syrup form. Common sense really.

There's also been a 'hate' campaign against fruit in the performance nutrition field as well as from the physique consultant aspect of the market recently with some of the more vocal twitter guru's insisting fruit should be banned from the diet as you cannot lose fat with fruit in the diet.

One of the key studies cited when discussing fructose in the diet is one which compared 2 groups, one eating a high carb diet with a large portion from fructose and the other group eating a large portion of their carbohydrates from glucose. The fructose group gained predominantly visceral stomach fat (intra-abdominal fat) whereas the glucose group gained mostly subcutaneous fat which is just below the skin and easier to lose. Point of note: Visceral fat is associated with a greater risk of heart disease and diabetes. As well as the fat deposition the study also showed that during exercise when ingesting more fructose in the diet the body burns more carbohydrates initially during training than fat. Then there's the issue of insulin intensity which fructose has been shown to negatively affect. Insulin sensitivity is important as it is a key factor in how efficiently the body deals with carbohydrates.

So how and why does this happen?

Well fructose is processed in the liver and when there's an excess it is converted to fat which is then sent in to the blood stream, elevating blood triglyceride levels and it is this which causes an increase in LDL levels (bad cholesterol) and the decrease in insulin sensitivity, which as outlined above is not a good thing, it's important to note that high visceral fat (again outlined above) is linked to low insulin sensitivity too.

As you can see there is fair evidence to show that fructose specifically can have adverse effects if too much is consumed in an environment where too many calories are also consumed and that if eating it before training it can impair fat oxidisation.

However as with all things nutrition it is very much about context. It has become increasingly obvious to me that my job is simply about matching up the dots within clients diets, ironing out the consistent bad habits and replacing with consistently good dietary habits.

So is eating fruit really a bad habit? Of course it is not but add to the fact that not all fruits have the same nutritional profile and it's hard to understand why some feel a need to class 'all fruits as bad' anyway. It's actually a great habit to be eating a variety of fruit regularly. The problem arises when guru's, quacks and shit newspapers/magazines (i'd rather take advice on inter-racial gay marriage from the daily mail than their health advice) hand out advice based on research they don't really understand and are unable to present the context properly to improve the education of their audience. I will never understand why some people feel a need to speak on matter of which they do not understand, neither will i understand why some magazines and newspapers wish to lower their credibility by publishing sensationalist stories on nutrition, surely they should all be considering their social responsibility, however that's another article in itself.

The very simple fact is that people who are overweight did not get there by eating too much fruit, it is more than likely they got there by not eating enough fruit, simply because if they had eaten more fruit they would have more than likely had a much healthier set of dietary principles all round.

Fruit has many benefits, including being rich in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants; rich in fibre, a quick and easy snack and it can help satisfy any sweet cravings. It also tastes great and is very versatile so i don't know why everyone wouldn't want the variety and benefits from fruits in their diet.

So how should you approach fruit?

If you're overweight and have no intention of changing your diet apart from adding fruit to your diet, then apart from being extremely stupid, don't, obviously as you're just adding more calories, if however you are looking for healthy snacks to replace the cans of fizzy drink, bag of crisps and chocolate bar then yes, choose fruit as a replacement.

If you're looking to get in to single digit body fat and your metabolism is shot due to months of dieting then you're unlikely to be able to cope with fruit and achieve your goal, this is from my experience of working with fitness models and bodybuilders who eliminate carbs as soon as they start a diet for a show/shoot, sometimes months out!

If you're a performance athlete then fruit can easily be accommodated in your diet as it is likely and should be the case that your overall calorific turnover is high anyway. Should you be a performance athlete that has to make weight then you'll have to be conscious of your overall calorie intake and you may wish to choose to limit fruit in your diet in order help you cut the calories.

If however you want to eat a healthy varied diet, high in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants then include fruit in your diet when you fancy it, however if you're changing your diet to lose weight then simply opt for fruits with lower fructose content such as avocado, berries, grapefruit, pineapple, lemons and limes and limit the amount of high fructose fruits which include; bananas, apples, pears, grapes, melons, cherries and prunes. Most other fruits have a moderate fructose content, so only eat a moderate amount. If you simply opt for the lower fructose options for the bulk of your fruit intake you'll never have a problem anyway.

Take home message:
Fruit is not just pure fructose, it is also high in water content and fibre, most fruits per piece will still have a relatively small amount of fructose and carbohydrates, therefore use common sense, fruit is not bad, too much of anything is bad when you're overeating anyway and there are many other foods you should be eliminating from your diet before you vilify fruit.

Here's the research i refer to in this article:  Cox, C., Stanhope, K., et al. Consumption of Fructose-Sweetened Beverages for 10 Weeks Reduces Net Fat Oxidation and Energy Expenditure in Overweight/Obese Men and Women. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. September 2011

Book review - Mike Dolce 'Living Lean'

Book review – The Dolce diet – Living Lean

Mike Dolce is arguably the go to guy when it comes to nutrition and making weight for mma fighters and as I have worked with quite a few mma fighters in prep for their fights I admired how he had positioned himself and his client base. However what put me off buying the book was what I’d read on forums about it, that it was nothing of note and that many of Dolce’s claims in the book about what he’d achieved were actually massively overblown and it was mainly an ego flexing book and not a worthy nutrition book. Still, following Dolce on twitter and Facebook I thought while away on a training camp I’d be able to sit down and give it a good read (it took me a mere 2 hours!) and for only £6.23 on Kindle I chanced it wouldn’t be a great loss and I’d maybe pick a few nuggets of advice I could use or try myself, after all I’d read 3 weeks to shredded and liked some of the principles such as mindfully goal setting and writing goals down to encourage progress, both of which are good tools everyone dieting can utilise to good effect.

First of all it should be made clear that this book is not specifically aimed at fighters at all, if anything it is merely a book for the average person to who needs a nudge in the right direction or needs some fresh diet ideas to kick processed foods out of their diet and just wants to lose weight, nothing wrong with that right? Well it wouldn’t make a good book review if I wasn’t slightly honest about just how I felt about it, would it.

So the book starts with Mike Dolce’s life story, from his childhood and how he was inspired by the magazines featuring arnie, frank zane et al and his family’s poor health to hit the gym. It’s here that the tone is set, Mike Dolce reminds me of the kid who wanted to be liked by everyone, some things may have happened but all stories you take with a rock of salt because nobody is that awesome, but this book is about ‘Living Lean’ right so let’s not dwell on my opinion of the author too much.

The book’s first 6 chapters are all about Dolce, I’ll save you the time of reading them, he’s fricken awesome bro….  as he’d have you believe. As the book gets to the real important bits of educating you on diet and helping you plan meals around your daily activities, the paragraphs and chapters become smaller and the content a little less catchy. All of a sudden it seems Mike Dolce ran out of things to say.

The diet principles Dolce preaches are great though, however they are nothing more than Paleo principles and we all know that cutting out processed foods is a very positive step to losing weight and you must be creative with food if you’re to ‘live lean’ as boredom easily overrides good health in nutrition these days, hence we reach for a high fat/high sugar snack all too often. Eating clean is a huge part of controlling calories BUT Dolce like many others states calories don’t count. This is where it becomes obvious this book is not aimed at anyone competing in sports at all, calories really do count if you’ve got to make a specific weight (that’s for another article though). Switching from eating what is now a standard diet for most people to the principles Dolce instils will help you lose weight, it will make you feel better physically and mentally too because you’ll be taking control back of your diet and eating much better foods. But that’s a no brainer surely, this is nothing new. Stop eating crap and prepare your meals, cook them yourself and eat a wide variety and you will function better than if you ate highly processed foods.

The meal plans outlined in the book are scarce, there’s just the 1. So that’s one meal plan for every person reading it, the same meal plan for those 100lbs overweight and the one’s 10lbs overweight. That ignores so many variables you need to consider when dieting, added to the fact he gives you no inclination on how to manipulate these factors and again it shows the real information needed is a little light. It’s the same with the recipes, although it’s now apparent why this is so as Dolce has released a new book titled ‘Living Lean – Cookbook’ with all of his recipes in them, which you're expected to buy, the recipes however will be easy to find on the many Paleo blogs.

So on to the training section, which is quite comprehensive, however for anyone that trains skip to the dumbbell deadlift photo demonstration for a quick look at what’s in store!

The routine’s look simple enough, there’s reference to an mma HIIT training sessions which must have been thrown in there to add some credibility. It doesn’t though. The training plans are nothing new, easy to follow and will get results to a certain extent as most readers will be sedentary and any sort of training os better than no training, just ask the P90X fans about that. in Living Lean however there’s no overall training plan or advice on how to structure your week. There’s also zero mention of pre or post workout nutrition which I find really odd considering the proven scientific research out there on these hotly debated areas of performance nutrition and Dolce’s positioning in MMA.

So there you have it, my view on Mike Dolce’s Living Lean book. There are some great principles for the average person in there but that’s it, there’s not much you can actually take from the book. Eat healthy non-processed foods and get creative in the kitchen, that’s about it.

The rest is about Mike himself, who obviously likes himself and is proud of what he’s done, maybe if he didn’t choose this path he would be selling second hand cars, that’s the impression I get of him.

I would recommend ‘The Paleo diet for athletes: a nutritional formula for peak athletic performance’ for fighters or athletes who are looking to drop weight and get in shape. This is a much better resource than the dolce diet.

For anyone else looking to eat well based on the same principles as Mike Dolce then look no further than the 1000’s of blogs out there on the Paleo principles of eating.  Rob Wolff would be a great start point.

As always I welcome your comments.

Next up will be The Renegade Diet by Jason Ferruggia 

5 Week weight loss programme - Free trial

I have put together a 5 week weight loss programme that i am looking to run with a small group of up to 8 people. I will be running this from the end of January. This will be a free programme in exchange for a few things from particiapnts to help me measure the success for the future promotion of the programme.

I have put this together using my experience of working with over 200 clients ranging from regular gym users who want to lose weight and also the higher end techniques of working with elite athletes who have to make weight. You will in effect a personalised diet and training routine to follow for FREE!

if this is something that interest you then click on the send me a message to my Facebook account. Facebook Profile

Alli/Orlistat - weight loss drug - By David Stache

By David Stache

Gassy discharge, oily discharge, inability to control bowel movements and oily or fatty stools, doesn’t sound too appealing does it? Well that’s the side effects of Alli, previously a prescription only medicine under the name of Orlistat which is to be released for over the counter sale this week in the UK. A drug which inhibits fat digestion therefore the fat in the meal you’ve just eaten doesn’t get digested by the body thus passing straight through and giving you the aforementioned side effects. So is this a Good move? A Needed move? Irresponsible move? Or bad a move by the government?

At this stage it’s hard to say what the effect this will have on the industry, one thing is for sure though, this drug completely ignores the real underlying issues of growing obesity which are carbs and sugars. Comparative credible studies of current diets show that a low GI diet is more effective not only for weight loss but also health when compared to low fat diets.

For so long it has been fats that are evil, dropping fats = losing the lbs, but as a nation we are not big fat eaters now, in fact we are becoming increasingly deficient in essential fats and a drug that inhibits digestion of fats doesn’t seem to be the answer to the problem at all.

Further to this some Vitamins are actually fat soluble such as Vitamins D and E, so in effect this drug cuts the absorption of these vital vitamins down and stops the body using them, so there’s little essential fats and minimal vitamins D and E in the diet and what little there is… this drug inhibits their absorption. Add to that the fact this drug is now available over the counter which puts the responsibility on the user to assess whether there any implications of prolonged use and it seems this may not have been the smartest move by the government.

The main worry is that this product will be aggressively marketed with little in terms of correct guidelines and education given to users and even if the guidelines are as they should be, we now find ourselves living in a ‘quick fix’ mentality bubble so will people who strive to look like the airbrushed models actually stick to the guidelines? If they don’t there will be few immediate signals that something is wrong, vitamin deficiencies build up over time and when coupled with a low calories diet starving the body of even more vitamins it becomes quite an irresponsible way to lose weight.

In terms of it’s effectiveness I feel I can comment on this with a fair bit of conviction and when I say there are much better alternatives out there I truly mean it, having witnessed first hand someone remove a fat laden sanitary towel which was not a pleasant experience I can honestly say this drug left me asking why? (The person in question was male too, and yes he was wearing a sanitary towel to catch the leaking fat). I’ve seen many boundaries pushed when it comes to people and their body image but this one bemuses me, why take a tablet then eat an unhealthy meal? It’s like going for a run and rewarding yourself with a fry up!

As a prescription drug Orlistat wasn’t even found to be that effective either, maybe this is why the government have let it be sold over the counter; either way a drug that has the potential to be harmful and doesn’t give guaranteed results is one that should be avoided.

As said there are better options out there when it comes to weight loss, starting with a different approach to food and diets, shifting to a healthier diet is not always easy but it gives guaranteed prolonged results, something Alli cannot do.

If you must use this drug, use it properly and make sure you speak to your doctor first, look at alternative options and decide if you want a quick fix that lets you eat what you want or to switch to a diet that wont have you ballooning back up to what you once were once you’ve stopped using it.

Written by David Stache