Backyard Secret to Building Muscle, Losing Fat & Living Longer

<< Read Part One

There is a handy little trick to be learned from your backyard swimming pool that can help you with building muscle, losing fat, and it can actually help you live longer. In fact, there's a cheap supplement you can take to keep your body as calm and balanced as the water in your pool on a nice, sunny day.

But as promised, I have typed out the second portion of the interview I had with former Master Fitness Trainer and bodybuilding consultant Jeff Anderson. You can go back and read the first part of the interview if you like, but I asked him if there were any supplements that most people don't use, but really should be using, and here's what he said...

You know, there's one thing I've found, especially with a lot of people that are struggling to either build muscle or burn fat. One thing I tell them... if they're really struggling, they've really hit a plateau, and they've tried everything and it's not really working... I tell them to go ahead and take their pH testing. It's kind of like you're testing your pool to find out whether it's acidic or if it's alkaline. The thing is, our bodies are also either in an acidic state or an alkaline state and, just like your pool, you don't want it to be too acidic and you don't want it to be too alkaline either. Either end of the spectrum throws your body out of whack.

And so, people raise an eyebrow when I tell them to test the pH level of their body, but the fact is is that most people, especially if they're training in the gym, have a very acidic system. And, just like if you think in terms of battery acid... what does it do? It eats away at stuff. Well, if your body is acidic as well, there are a lot of damaging properties, like if there's acid in your muscles it can eat away at tissue, so you want it to be more alkaline. A lot of degenerative diseases are caused by too acidic of a system as well. It literally just kind of eats you from the inside out, very very slowly.

So, your body is trying to stay at an equilibrium, where it's not too acidic and it's not too alkaline. It's trying to have a balance there, but most people increase the acidity in the body because of the way they train and eat.

So, as far as if there were one supplement that I think people don't really know about, that they should be using, it'd be some sort of like alkaline supplement. Again, I would have people first test themselves, but I'm 95% sure that almost everyone out there that is reading this is going to have an acidic body, and they need to be more alkaline.

Now, one way to do that is to eat more alkaline foods. More fresh vegetables... more fresh fruits... things like that. But even with that, more foods that people eat (a lot of the grains and seafood) are really acidic, so we tend to kind of eat counter to what we should be doing. So, one way you can counter that with supplementing is to use a couple of different alkaline supplements.

One of them is very very popular in the bodybuilding world, and it's called glutamine. And glutamine is really known as more of a muscle sparer, and it's the most common amino acid you have in your muscles. It's very common in your body, you can find it in other foods as well, but when supplementing with glutamine there's a couple other things you gain other than holding onto your muscle.

It increases the amount of growth hormone in your body as well; it's actually a growth hormone inducer. But the other thing that's beneficial that most people don't know about is that glutamine actually is very alkaline. So, by adding about 5 grams of glutamine to about 3 of your meals... like when you're having a meal, just add 5 grams of glutamine to whatever you're drinking. It'll actually help restore the alkaline balance there; it helps restore you back to a neutral pH level. So, that's one way...

Another thing that I used for the same purpose is potassium bicarbonate. Now, you're not going to really find that in your local drug store, but where you do find it is if you go online and look up a wine making website, like for people that want to make wine at home. Potassium bicarbonate is used to take the acidity out of wine, and is very very inexpensive.

And all you do is add about one gram of it to whatever you're going to drink during your workout. Because, when you workout, every time you contract a muscle it creates a little bit of an acidic response. That's why you get that burn; if you do like high-volume sets, your muscles start burning... well, that's a build up of lactic acid. And by adding just one gram potassium bicarbonate (no more than that) to the drink you're going to have, it allows you to buffer that acid, and keep it from being more catabolic. It puts you in more of an anabolic state from your training, before and after. You should only use about one gram a day, because that's kind of like the crack cocaine version of bringing your pH levels back down.

So, if you're going to do one, I would say either use glutamine, because it has multiple purposes, or choose potassium bicarbonate to add to your workout drink.

Aren't you glad that it's so cheap to bring balance back to your body? So, go ahead and test your pH to see how acidic your body is, and then decide which alkaline supplement you want to pick up with your spare change.

But hey, I have even more supplement advice for you in part 3 of this interview with Jeff Anderson... Find out how to blast the fat off your body!