guys.. you can do workout for only 15 min a week (check out Body by Science)

> I really find no pleasure in exercise and would like to approach it in the most cost-effective way (i.e. maximum benefit for minimum time used).

"Body by Science", easily. No need to read the book, just the chapter on the protocol. The protocol is 12 minutes all-out effort, ONCE a week.

You are probably not giving your body enough time to recover the muscles damaged in your workouts.

For more details i can recommend "Body by Science" by John Little and Doug McGuff.

Or google "muscle recovery time" and read through

1. Body by Science - changed my view about exercising. HIIT for 12 minutes a week seems more doable and fun for a busy life. And it actually works.

2. Mini Habits - the only routine building method that worked for me.

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind — Shunryu Suzuki [1]

Body by Science — Doug McGuff, MD and John Little [2]

1. http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Mind-Beginners-Shunryu-Suzuki/dp/1...

2. http://www.amazon.com/Body-Science-Research-Strength-Trainin...

You should read "Body by Science" to prevent destroying your bones, cartilage and to waste time. There is such thing as the golden minimum.

Long time lurker, finally registered to answer this. What's your definition of "strong"? I've been weight training once a week since March, following Doug McGuff's "Body By Science" method, and I have doubled my weights in 4 of the "big 5" in the last 3 months. While I'm led to believe McGuff's methods will never make anyone look absolutely massive, I disagree with your premise that you have to train more than once a week to be strong or look strong. Incidentally, McGuff mentions in his book that the optimal gap between workouts is 8 days.

I do.
My routine is a strength day and fun days. Fun days I do whatever I want, but I must do a strength day where I lift "fairly" heavy in deadlifts and overhead presses.

I have no goals. I had, I succeeded and lost my appetite. Just lifting because I like to do so. Diet is a sustainable one. Not going for abs, just try to stay healthy with no gut sticking out.

The keyword in lifting and related stuff is sustainability. Just go for a routine and a diet which is sustainable so you can do it for a long, long time.

Btw,
for those who claim they don't have time to train; please read
1- http://baye.com
2- Doug McGuff's - Body by science

This is high intensity training!

I like your reference to catabolic/anabolic processes. Alas, you then made some incorrect claims.

>you can't lift weights and gain muscle (i.e. grow) without also gaining fat

Of course you can. I'd be happy to share my Google sheet of daily weight, losing about 0.06lb/day, and my BodPod measurements showing going from 28% to 20% body fat while gaining 2.5lbs of muscle mass. Sarcopenia would have taken another 0.5lbs of muscle in that one year period.

Drew Baye has several articles on losing fat while gaining muscle[0]. In the first few pages of Body by Science[1], Doug McGuff defines health as (1) the absence of disease and (2) a balance between anabolic and catabolic processes. Except McGuff makes it clear that almost the entire population in the developed world lives in a catabolic energy state, eating way more than we need, never flushing the stored glucose out of our muscles, the tank is always full[2]. But while that is happening, sarcopenia [catabolic] is removing muscle mass as we age.

[0] http://baye.com/building-muscle-losing-fat/

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Body-Science-Research-Strength-Traini...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PdJFbjWHEU

My amateur understanding is that excess glucose still leads to high blood sugar and so the resulting insulin spikes and fat storage. So it may be a lesser evil than fructose, but is not a panacea by any means.

FWIW, I'm basing my current understanding on the book Body by Science. It has an explanation of metabolism similar to the Lustig video linked to in the NYT article. However, Body by Science wasn't as specifically anti-fructose, but more generally anti-blood sugar spikes.

Very little was said about the type of exercise they were doing. I'd guess that most of it was "cardio." Would they have different results if they were involved in more specifically muscle building exercises, i.e, weight lifting (and with adequate rest)?

I've been following McGuff's Body By Science protocol for the past 6 months and I believe that with increased muscle my overall health is improving much more than would have resulted from typical long and slow cardio.

Has anybody else tried this?

Interesting. I read in Body By Science (McGuff) that drinking two liters of ice water a day will force your body to burn an additional 125 calories to maintain core temperature.

I know that since I've been following the weight-lifting protocol advocated by McGuff that my ability (and desire!) to sleep without covers, and skip wearing a coat in cooler weather, has increased.

If you check, you will find it is incredibly rare for health and fitness books and articles to define "health", "fitness" or "exercise". Body by Science[0][1] gets right to it on pages 2 and 3 to define all three:

Health: A physiological state in which there is an absence of disease or pathology and that maintains the necessary biologic balance between the catabolic and anabolic states.

Fitness: The bodily state of being physiologically capable of handling challenges that exist above a resting threshold of activity.

Exercise: A specific activity that stimulates a positive physiological adaptation that serves to enhance fitness and health and does not undermine the latter in the process of enhancing the former.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Body-Science-Research-Strength-Traini...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PdJFbjWHEU

> on top of the fact that the obese are already carrying extra muscle mass

Huh...I follow Lyle, but I've read the exact opposite in Body by Science: in cross-sectional views of obese people (CT scans), their muscles are small, weak, and atrophied.

IIRC, Body by Science makes the assertion that their muscles are essentially starved, because the metabolic system/insulin insensitivity/etc. are shunting energy primarily into fat cells.

And, with strength training, you can turn the metabolic tide back into energy getting into/being used by the muscles.

Disclaimer: It's been awhile since I read the book, and I might mistakenly being integrating ideas I'd read elsewhere.

Hrm, no pictures (which IIRC are convincing), but here's an article:

http://www.bodybyscience.net/home.html/?page_id=57

That's similar to the workout program outlined in the book Body By Science. They advocate short high intensity workouts over long low to mid intensity workouts; the reasoning being this: with high intensity exercise you fatigue all three muscle groups (Slow, Mid, and Fast twitch) rather than just the first two in low intensity exercise.

This style of exercising forces the body to have a much more acute adaptive response than the typical low intensity exercise.

I have developed an interest in health and longevity and I read this book.
Full of many interesting ideas, but I was left a bit lost.
I'm going to try his Occam mass gaining protocol, which is entirely taken from Doug McGuff 'Body by Science'.

I'm still a bit skeptical because I think that if something really works,sooner or later it will be adopted by the professional in the field.

But bodybuilder (even natural ones) are still trainig in the classical way...