Andrew Ginsburg - Pumping Irony: How to Build Muscle, Lose Weight, and Have the Last Laugh

Copyright 2017 by Andrew Ginsburg

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover illustration credit Mark Collins

ISBN: 978-1-5107-1612-4

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1613-1

Printed in the United States of America

Disclaimer: The author and publisher present this book strictly for information purposes. Be sure to consult a physician before beginning any exercise routine or dietary regimen.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

In Pumping Irony , my goal is to provide you with all of the information necessary to live a healthy lifestyle that is fun, sustainable, and maximizes your physical development. This book is broken up into two partsthe first part focuses on dispelling all of the diet and training myths that corrupt the fitness world and mapping out an easy to follow lifestyle strategy that will save you time and money, and improve your overall health. The second part of the book is prescriptive and provides you with diet strategies, workout routines, and the correct way to train your body. These tried-and-true methods have worked for over a hundred years and will be around long after the battle ropes, beach balls, and gluten-free organic kale chips have lost their appeal. The routines are designed to build lean muscle tissue that will help you burn fat by speeding up your metabolism. They are also tailored to develop proportion and symmetry so that your body is both muscular and aesthetic. Each physique is approached as an art project except that the body is the canvas, the weights the paint brush, and the food the paint. For your diet, I present you with the healthiest foods to eat, and then it is up to you to pick the ones that you enjoy most and that work for your body. Remember, you are the lab, scientist, and experiment all rolled up into one. Anybody who claims to know the perfect workout and diet for you without ever having met you is full of crap.

PART I

CHAPTER 1

Caveman Craze

If a caveman didnt eat it, neither should you, says the motto of the hugely popular (CrossFit recommended) Paleo Diet. The only problem is that a caveman never had freshly baked bread placed in front of him or a pint of Hagen-Dazs waiting for him in the freezer. Nor did a caveman ever live past thirty.

It is important to note that none of these fad diets with catchy names are the least bit original. In the early 1900s, long before Dr. Atkins had even been born, bodybuilders and strongmen ate a high-protein, low-carb diet to facilitate muscle growth. Like a Batman movie remake, the names and faces keep changing, but the story remains the samesome diets tell you to cut out dairy, a few instruct you to go vegan, and a handful command you to starve yourself like its Ramadan. Which one actually works best for your body? Even Nostradamus couldnt tell you.

For a nutrition plan to work for the long term, every individual must create his or her own specific diet to suit his or her own unique lifestyle. Feel free to name it after you because thats who its going to work for. The idea of a total stranger creating and commanding your every meal is pure insanity. It would be like me telling you which TV shows to watch in what orderTomorrow, you are going to watch Family Feud, Law and Order, and Wheel of Fortune. Suppose you dont like Wheel of Fortune? Too bad, youre watching it! If the plethora of diet books has proven anything, its that no one diet fits all. Some people can eat carbs and lose weight while others are forced to restrict them. Some flourish on a high-fat, low-carb diet while others feel horrible and require carbs just to function. My book aims at providing an individualized plan for you. Like learning to play the guitar, I will present you with basic chords and a few simple songs, and then you get to decide whether you want to play like Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, or Willie Nelson. Before we get into the prescriptive elements of the book, though, Id like to show you that some commonly held beliefs on eating and diet are pure myth.

SIX-MEAL FALLACY

Pick up any fitness magazine, and you will be instructed to eat six small meals a day every three hours, rather than three times a day every five. The rationale is that by consuming smaller meals more frequently, nutrients are absorbed more efficiently, and your metabolism will burn like a furnace.

Two legends of fitness past, Jack LaLanne and Bill Pearl, did not eat six meals a day but preferred a third as many, ingesting two large meals in a 24-hour cycle. They would eat their first meal after their morning workout and then have dinner in the early evening. They appeared as Greek gods, and both held the coveted Mr. America title. How is it possible that they could attain such physical perfection by eating so infrequently?

The answer can be found deep in the thirty-seven-billion-dollars-a-year supplement industry. In the very same magazines that command you to eat six times a day, supplement ads with flashy neon colors sell protein powders on virtually every other page. Now, consider the challenge of consuming six meals a day. You must eat and eat and eat, which leaves you little room to do much else. That is, of course, unless you supplement with protein shakes. So you buy the magazine, read the diet plan, buy the supplements, and everyone wins! Well, everybody except you, since you dont need six meals a day! Rather than follow a set timetable for your meals, just eat when youre hungry. Some days that may mean three meals, and others it may mean five. The key is listening and responding to your natural body rhythm. If youre not hungry for meal four of the day, dont eat it just because a magazine said you should. Instead, wait for your stomach and brain to cue you. They wont drop the ball, trust me; your head and stomach have your best intentions in mind. There is no reason to share the breastfeeding schedule of a newborn every two hours unless you are truly so hungry that you are going to cry.

I once had a friend tell me about the time she went out with a bodybuilder, and an hour into their first date, he took out a can of tuna fish and a can opener and just went to town. Can you think of anything more disgusting? Apparently, it was feeding time, and protein was his top priority. For the record, he did not get a second date.

EAT UNTIL YOU SAY SO

You have heard it from doctors, nutritionists, and life coaches, and youve read the highbrow weight loss tip in books: Eat until youre full. Thats it! Thats the remedy for losing weight and then maintaining it at a healthy level. Well, it sounds easy enough, right? When your stomach no longer cries out for food, put down the fork. One concern that I have with the adage Eat until youre full is that it is nearly impossible to do, since it defies nature, acting as a form of sensory deprivation. That quark-sized threshold of perfectly full comes and goes faster than a lottery winners earnings and ultimately leaves you too full.