Informal Experiments: Our New Research Program

The promise vs. the reality

The world of fitness, of nutrition, and especially of supplements is a firestorm of grandiose claims – even some downright myths.

You know the story. A new diet, a new supplement, a new training program – that’s the ticket to fat loss, to muscle gain and to lifelong happiness. Of course, the love and adulation of fitness models and that million-dollar house on the hill are both included.

But there’s a problem. This new diet, the new supplement, the new training program might not even be able to deliver the body composition outcome – let alone the lifetime of giddy grins. You see, more often than not, there’s little (and sometimes no) scientific evidence to suggest these claims are valid.

Now, let’s be clear: a lack of scientific evidence doesn’t necessarily mean that something doesn’t work. Sometimes it just means that no one has yet systematically measured whether it works.

What about self-experimentation?

So, what can someone who wants to lose fat, gain muscle and get healthier do when faced with this lack of information?

Well, you can do what I’ve done… and what I’m sure many of you have done: you can do a bunch of self-experiments. You know how it goes: you try out this new idea or product and after a while, you decide whether it worked.

Unfortunately, most often, at the end of my experiments, my answer is pretty much:

“Uh, I don’t know.”

I’m embarrassed to say this, but the problem with my self-experimentation is that I never change only one thing. It’s too hard. Usually, I change my training, add a couple supplements, and tweak my diet. After a month or two I can’t say what was responsible for what. And in the end, I haven’t the foggiest idea what worked and what didn’t.

Jeez, and I have a PhD. I know better. But this ain’t exactly the lab. In the lab, I run my experiments a bit differently. Heck, if I didn’t I would have never made it out of Chem 101. But real life isn’t the lab. Life’s less controlled.

Enter the informal experiment

One day I was on the phone with JB and was lamenting this sad reality. Then he asked the question…

What if there were another way? What if there were a way to test new theories, to answer new questions, to “myth bust”, if you will, without having to do a full-blown, time-intensive, cost-intensive university experiment? And without doing the always questionable self-experimentation?

It’s funny, when you ask the right questions, you get the right answers. And the answer to this question comes in the form of one simple phrase: the informal experiment.

Want to play in the PN lab?

Consider this our coming out party – the launch of the PN Informal Experiments Lab. What’s the deal?

Well, for starters, you can think of our PN Informal Experiments as a really bad 2-car collision between the Journal of The American Medical Association (JAMA) and the Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters show.

Basically, as part of this ongoing project, we’ll be asking you to play research volunteer and play lab tech as we test a bunch of exercise, nutrition and supplement theories in the real world.

Here are just a few examples of the types of questions we’ll answer with our PN Informal Experiments:

Supplement questions

• Question #1: Do greens supplements really help improve your body’s acid/base balance?
• Question #2: Can specific enzyme supplements really reduce muscle soreness after a hard workout?
• Question #3: Does creatine ethyl ester really promote better strength and size gains than creatine monohydrate?

Training questions

• Question #1: When you’ve already got a good strength training program in place, are intervals really better than steady state cardio for losing weight?
• Question #2: Do you really get a better workout after doing dynamic stretching vs. static stretching?
• Question #3: For a better max effort bench press or deadlift, should you warm up by moving light loads rapidly or heavy loads slowly?

Other questions

• Does your personality impact your ability to build muscle and gain fat?
• Does intermittent fasting lead to better body composition changes than simply eating less food?
• Does cooking your veggies lead to less GI distress than eating them raw?

We need your help!

The PN team, hard at work using the very latest 19th century technology

Ever wanted to be in a research study in which the results actually mattered to you?

Ever wanted to learn how to objectively test out the most controversial fitness and nutrition theories to find out what works for you and what doesn’t?

Ever wanted to know whether some of these fitness industry claims are legit or straight up BS?

If so, now’s the time. We’ve got over 50 Informal Experiments lined up and ready to go. And all we need is your help.

In the coming weeks, in this very column, we’ll put out a call for volunteers. We’ll describe the experimental protocol and participation criteria – in other words, what we plan to do and who we want. If you match the criteria and are interested in participating, we’ll tell you how to get involved.

It’s that simple.

So make sure you come back often to see which experiments are coming up.

Myths beware

In the end, we’re getting ready to inject the fitness industry with a big ol’ dose of truth serum.
Gone are the days of fitness “experts” making up a bunch of BS and then spreading it, uncontested, to the masses. In the coming months we’ll be taking the fitness industry to task.

Myths beware.