Toning, Real or Marketing? Part One

This is going to be a two part series, part one I dig into the definition and semantics. Part two I dissect the programs that are usually associated with "toning". Please do not be so emotionally tied to this term that you automatically disregard everything I say, now break out the pink dumbbells and get the circuits started, its time to tone!

What is Tone?

You see it in on headlines all over, magazine covers, the internet and youtube, “toning”, what does it mean? Most people use the term "toning" in place of desired body composition, usually the image of a lightly defined body where the the major beach muscles are etched through body fat is what comes to most minds. When we say body composition we are usually talking about

“In physical fitness, body composition is used to describe the percentages of fat, bone, water and muscle in human bodies. Because muscular tissue takes up less space in our body than fat tissue, our body composition, as well as our weight, determines leanness”.

how much lean body mass and body fat you have on your person, someone who weighs 190 pounds at 15% BF (body fat) is going to look more "toned" than a gentleman who is 190 pounds at 20% BF, with muscle mass being the exact same. So we can argue that "toning" is mostly understood but it is vastly dependent on body fat where usually the focus is on the muscle itself. This part is more about semantics and some may think its a petty thing to argue about, but if the base of an idea is wrong even in the slightest it allows for other ideas that stem from it to be vastly deranged.

Here is the actual definition of tone, 

verb past tense: toned; past participle: toned

1.give greater strength or firmness to (the body or a part of it)."exercise tones up the muscles"

2.harmonize with (something) in terms of color."the rich orange color of the wood tones beautifully with the yellow roses"

Breaking it Down

So you see that tone only speaks of the actual firmness/strength of a muscle from exercise, a muscle can be as firm as it can be, but if you still carry enough body fat your body will not have that prefered sculpted look to it or your desired body composition. So now you may be thinking, “okay, yea so the term may not be 100% correct but people get what we are saying and I know what I mean”. Yes, you may know what you mean but how does that help anyone else? Why use a term if it changes per person (similar to the term clean eating), the term has no holding. Now remember that the definition of tone talks only of the strength/firmness of a muscle, but the whole idea of a “toned” body heavily relies on having a reduced body fat (in most cases, some people may need only to increase muscle size but both is more likely) and the definition makes no connection to body fat, very similar to how people think of toning the body.

As I stated earlier, “if the base of an idea is wrong even in the slightest it allows for other ideas that stem from it to be vastly deranged”, now we get to the deranged parts of using the term “toning”. People sell programs and devices of all sorts with the idea of “toning” behind them, but very rarely will the idea of losing body fat be the main focus, most of the time it will be some quick 20 min home workout circuit to tone the body (focusing on the muscle development not body fat). So from the start these programs are terrible because the idea they are based on is wrong (In part two I go into deeper inspection of “toning” programs). I saved the best for last (in this article), the bastardization of “toning” has become so bad that people (who usually are trying to sell you something, go figure) have used toning as an idea of changing the shape and length of an actual muscle/muscles. Human physiology would like to say other wise, the shape and length of a muscle is already pre determined by ones own genetics. We can not “tone” a muscle, the muscles insertion point, muscle belly, and genetics have decided that for us. A muscle can grow and shrink, holding a dumbbell semi lateral while doing tricep kickbacks while sanding on a bosu ball in hope to tone the tricep muscle to grow a certain way is futile. We can only hope to increase the muscle size (hypertrophy) and keep our body fat at a desired level to give us the body we are looking for.

Toning Real?

I hope this post has shown how a wrong use of a word can lead to such deranged branches of it, usually in the hope of selling something by appealing to the masses. So remember to tone is to strengthen or make more firm, if you are looking to change your body composition then usually a increase in muscle size and reduction in body fat (neither have to be to the extreme) will more than likely give you the body and “look” you desire. I might add that following those “toning” routines/workouts will usually have a very small effect that will not last long, but I dig deeper in part two.

Flexible Dieting

Low carb, low fat, Zone diet, fruit and veggie diet, liquid diet, South beach, Paleo...

some or all of these might sound familiar since they are popular dieting methods used today by people trying to lose those x amount of pounds and/or trying to live a healthier life. The thing all these fad diets have  in common is there arbitrary food restriction and rules that come along with them (for some people the restrictions might be good per individual reasons but for most these are firm rules that one must follow for no reason) and most of the rules are blanket statements that are so broad that they hinder most people in reaching their goals. If one is trying to lose weight they have to understand that you must be in a caloric deficit, some of the methods above might reach desired weight loss but its not because of some special magic it's usually because of restricting a food group or groups thus having the person cutting calories. For most people they will bounce back with the weight since fad diets really have no sustainability unless you're willing to be that person carrying 3 containers of food around and that person that gets water and celery sticks when you go out for lunch. The leaders and die hard sheep of fad diets will usually say that you have to sacrifice it all to win and you have to do what you don't like to be healthy, sounds kinda extreme to me and not needed.

You don't have to sacrifice to win...

This post is all about a scientific and common sense approach to dieting that allows you to live a normal social life being able to eat out with friends and eat foods you enjoy. This method is Flexible Dieting, there are no food restrictions, no special foods, no specific meal timing, none of that. Flexible Dieting is based on reaching 2+ serving of fruit and vegetables a day along with reaching a minimum fiber intake (this is based on how many calories you eat around 10-13 grams of fiber per 1000 kcals eaten) along with adequate protein intake and getting 80% of food from whole foods and 20% to eat foods that may seem unorthodox to eat while trying to be healthy or lose weight (this usually is food with a very low micronutrient values).

Now I will say that if your goal is to lose weight then counting calories is the most fool proof way to make sure you're in a deficit and combine that with flexible dieting you have the perfect match to reach your goals with no unnecessary side effects (eating disorders or arbitrary food avoidance) or loss of life. Once you learn that a serving of Entiments cookies with a half cup of milk isn't going to go straight to your things or midsection (your within your caloric limit) you can live a realistic healthy life and still reach your fitness goals. That is what flexible dieting is, it is realistic way to live healthy and reach your own goals without hindering your life and staying sane. Below I have links to better articles on flexible dieting please take some time to read them, so remember choose the foods you eat with hitting the simple criteria and live your life.

Continue Reading:

Lyle McDonald “Is a calorie a calorie?”
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/is-a-calorie-a-calorie.html

Alan Aragon “clean eating”
http://www.wannabebig.com/diet-and-nutrition/the-dirt-on-clean-eating/

Syatt fitness “Flexible Dieting for Long Term Success”

http://syattfitness.com/fat-loss/flexible-dieting-for-long-term-success/

Layne Norton “Clean eating vs Flexible Dieting (IIFYM)”

http://www.biolayne.com/nutrition/biolayne-video-log-12-clean-eating-vs-iifym-if-it-fits-your-macros/

Study on rigid dieting vs flexible dieting (I know its only the abstract but i don't have the full text)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10336790

Sources:
http://doyoueven.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/food-temptation.jpg

Clean Eating, Is it False?

How much windex do I need to make ice cream "clean"...

If you were to ask different followers of fad diets, different cultures or even a handful of people at your local gym for the definition of “clean” eating” or “clean foods” it would be different across the board. This is because there is no designated term for clean foods in nutritional science, because to use those terms are absurd and it 100% demonizes the “dirty” foods.

Foods are broken into high micronutrient value and low to none micronutrient value...

Even with that being said food with calories are still calories, a unit of energy that the body uses to live, but just because one group is higher than the other does not mean that the other is worse or inferior. To put things simply, a healthy diet is constructed of moderation and variety of all types of food to meet caloric and micronutrient goals by the end of the day that allows the person to eat foods they still enjoy to alloy them to live life. The idea that "x is good for me so I need to take x 1000 times" is what fuels the falsehoods of clean eating.

You can have some pizza or cake and eat it too...

Like I stated above placing foods into these two categories leads to people to demonizing certain food groups or specific foods all together. The process a person goes through when demonizing food that they enjoy can lead to harsh disorder eating down the road. Some of these disorders or unhealthy eating habits are binge eating, orthorexia, yo yo dieting, and anorexia (none of those seem fun to me). This is the outcome of the main stream nutrition though, separate foods into good and bad, Best or worst, any arbitrary hierarchy that pushes a groups agenda that has no basis on what the science shows us.

Here is the article that I based most of what  I wrote here, read it, it has stronger writing and goes into greater detail. 

http://www.wannabebig.com/diet-and-nutrition/the-dirt-on-clean-eating/

Sources:

http://www.wannabebig.com/diet-and-nutrition/the-dirt-on-clean-eating/
http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/orthorexia-nervosa

http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/general-information
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11883916

Images:

http://doyoueven.com/2013/01/iifympart1/