Monday, November 16, 2015
Monday, November 9, 2015
Exercise is Eating. Are you Eating Enough?
Have you ever thought about that before…I mean REALLY thought about it?
Exercise IS eating!
Every time you exercise, you are actually eating a meal—a meal of YOURSELF!! When a person “exercises,” in an effort to “lose weight,” what they are really trying to do is get their body to “eat up” stored energy (i.e. FAT) rather than “running on” exclusively the food they’ve put into their mouth. I’m not sure if you have ever thought about exercise this way before, but that’s exactly what it is. Every time you get done running on a treadmill or elliptical, the machine is essentially telling you the number of calories you just ate (burned)? If it says 200 calories, this means you just ate a 200 calorie meal (of yourself)! If you wear a device like a Fitbit as you go throughout your day, it’s actually telling you how many calories you are “eating up” as you move. The number of calories you burn in a typical 1-hour workout will largely depend on several key factors, such as: age, gender, the climate, weight, muscle mass-to-fat ratio, the length and intensity of your workout, etc. For example, a man weighing 160 pounds who runs at an 8-mile per-hour pace for a full hour may burn close to 861 calories. However, a man weighing 240 pounds who runs the same distance, at the same pace, would burn approximately 1,286 calories!! Running a 5K may potentially burn anywhere from 350-600 calories. Running a marathon, on the other hand, would be about 2,500! Ideally, the calories you are “burning/eating” would be coming from “internal” stores of energy in the form of: fat, protein, and carbohydrate that are stockpiled in the body (but ideally, mostly from stored fat). Unfortunately, as we’ll see in a minute, this is not always the case. For now, it’s important to understand that “Exercise IS Eating.” In fact, just for fun, the next time you’re headed out the door on your way to work-out and your significant other asks where you’re going, you can honestly say,
“I’m just going out to get a bite to eat.”
How often you exercise (Frequency), the effort you put in (Intensity), the length (Time), and kind (Type) will all largely influence how much of your own body fat you burn off. This is often referred to as the “FITT Principle”—Frequency, Intensity, Time, and Type. Our nutrition is equally important. Always remember that…
Weight loss (i.e. fat loss) only occurs when we “EAT UP” more of our own “internal” stores of energy (i.e. stored body fat) than we do “external” sources of calories (i.e. the food we put into our mouth). Conversely, if you eat more “external” food than “internal” food, you get fat!!
When it comes to the optimal diet and exercise prescription for fat loss, people are obviously still confused. For example, I’ve talked with hundreds of people over the years about their diet and lifestyle, and I can’t tell you how many people have told me that they skip meals on a regular basis. My reply almost always shocks them.
I say, “That’s not true! You’ve never skipped a meal a day in your life!”
They often get defensive and insist that they do—they skipped breakfast that very morning, they tell me. I then go on to explain to them the ridiculousness of such a claim:
The day you “skip a meal” is the day you die!
You see, your body, just like an automobile, only runs (stays alive) as long as there is always a steady stream of fuel available. We all know what happens when our car runs out of gas?
That’s right—it dies!! The same thing would happen to us if our body ever ran out of fuel. But the human body does not function the same way an automobile does (thank God). It is designed to make “meals” of itself whenever “external” sources of fuel (food) is not available (such as during a fast). The primary fuel the body uses when “external” sources of food are not available is FAT!!
Being able to eat anytime we want and snack between meals are relatively “recent” Tupperware. Our grandparents and great-grandparents simply did not have the ability to purchase, process, and store food in their homes to the degree we do today. Therefore, they could not just eat anything they wanted, any time they wanted. They had to go without from time-to-time. Eating only 3 square meals a day was common for them. It was the space between each meal (the post prandial “space”) where a large amount of their stored fat was burned—especially when they were physically active during this time! Giving your body a break from food for 3-4 hours AT LEAST between meals is very important to help reduce sugar levels and burn more fat. While it’s a subject I’ll write more in depth about another time, let me just say that I honestly believe that the whole “eat many small meals throughout the day” philosophy has done more to make us overweight than just sticking with the same 3 square meals a day that our ancestors consumed.
Eating incessantly all day long (i.e. SNACKING) is the worst thing you can do if you want to burn lots of body fat!
By constantly supplying our body with calories all day long, we give it no reason to burn stored fat, but to instead run almost exclusively on the calories we’ve just consumed!! As a result, our bodies have become trained to run on the fuel we get from “external” food sources instead of the “internal” food stores we have locked-up within. This means that the primary reason we cannot lose weight is because our body is happily burning up the food we are eating, rather than burning up US! This is also one of the primary reasons that those who exercise, but snack frequently, do not lose weight. In fact, I can almost GUARANTEE you that if you have been exercising a lot and are still seeing no significant improvement, I’ll bet with almost 100% certainty that:
You are burning off almost exclusively the food you eat rather than the food you wear!!!
This is either a result of too much eating, or too little exercise, or BOTH!!
A good example of someone potentially sabotaging their fat loss efforts is when someone is consuming sugary drinks before, during, or immediately after exercise. By doing so, the body will simply burn off the carbs rather than burning stored fat!! Unbeknownst to many, the body has the ability to alter what fuel it runs on largely based upon the kind of food we eat, in relationship to its proximity to exercise, and based upon the type and length of physical activity we engage in. By consuming carbs before a workout, for example, we shift oxidation rates (calorie burning) toward the burning of carbohydrates and away from body fat!
The only people that may need to be ingesting carbs during and immediately after exercise are those who:
- Did not fuel-up properly before 1-3 hours before exercising.
- Are doing especially lengthy exercise lasting 2 hours or more.
- Have a medical condition (like hypoglycemia or diabetes).
- Do not want to lose weight.
- Are eating them for “performance enhancement and/or recovery.”
- Over-exerted themselves to the point that blood sugar levels are dangerously low (hypoglycemia).
Have you ever seen someone who is no more than five minutes into their workout and they are already chugging down a sugary drink like Gatorade or a Red Bull? What about the person who gets up in the morning and is eating before or during their morning cardio? These individuals may not realize that instead of burning body fat, their use of dietary carbs during exercise (or just prior to) is shifting their body out of “fat-burning mode” and into “sugar-burning mode.” The carbs may help them get through their workout and even increase their performance, but as a result, they hardly burned any body fat at all!!
The same thing can happen when someone eats a whole bunch of carbs right after their workout. Their body had just got into “prime” fat burning mode and they unknowingly shut it right off by ingesting a whole bunch of carbs post-workout! While it’s certainly important to get some healthy carbs at some point post-workout, and they can certainly speed recovery and promote anabolism, consuming them IMMEDIATELY upon ceasing exercise or DURING exercise may not always be your best strategy… at least not if maximum fat-burning is your primary goal!
Athletes and those who are already lean may have good reasons to consume carbs immediately before, during, or after exercise such as for “maximizing their performance,” “enhancing recovery,” and “building muscle,” but these things are not necessarily synonymous or necessary for those seeking to maximize “fat loss.” A far-more effective strategy to maximize fat loss would be to consume a meal rich in complex carbohydrates an hour or two before the workout and only drink water during the exercise session. After the workout, rather than ingesting carbs right away, they could take some BCAA’s (Branched Chain Amino Acids) or HMB and then go for a walk or easy jog (a “workout after the workout”) to increase the oxidation of fat in their blood. After your walk, you could then have a healthy meal that contains some protein, veggies, and some starchy carbs (if you like). For example, this could be a meal of baked fish, a sweet potato, and a side of steamed broccoli. If you can’t go for a walk after your workout, even just giving yourself an hour or two to relax with no food can be helpful at increasing the amount of fat burned.
For those of you who dispute carbs interfering with fat burning, I’d encourage you to do some research. Now don’t get me wrong: I AM NOT saying that you should avoid carbs or eat a low-carb diet—NOT AT ALL. In fact, I think a rather high-to-moderate carb diet is ideal. I am specifically referring to meal timing and frequency. Because our body finds carbs to be much easier to burn than fat, whenever carbs are present, the body will burn almost always exclusively burn carbohydrates and simultaneously reduce its oxidation (burning) of stored body fat. In fact, some pretty fascinating experiments (such as this one here) have demonstrated that when carb intake goes up, carb burning (oxidation) goes up as well. In fact, fat oxidation rates are suppressed in almost direct proportion to the number of carb calories consumed. In other words, the more carbs you eat, the more carbs you burn and subsequently less fat.
Knowing this has led many people to mistakenly assume that the only way to maximize fat loss is to therefore adopt a low-carb diet. But the truth is that you can still burn a ton of fat on a high-carb diet, especially when your dietary fat intake is low and you use proper timing of carb intake!
But our ancestors not only ate less often, they also exercised FAR MORE than we do today!
Our ancestors not only ate fewer meals per day, they were also far more active during this time between meals. far less exercise than our great-grandparents did. This isn’t too difficult to prove either! A recent study, published by the American College of Sports Medicine, examined the activity level of the traditional Amish people. The Amish are not only known to have far lower rates of obesity than the average American (despite not eating the healthiest of diets), but they still live and practice a lifestyle that is very similar to, (and as demanding as) our great-grandparents’. In order to determine exactly how much physical activity Amish farmers get each day in comparison to the average American, Amish men and women were asked to wear pedometers each day for an entire week so that their activity levels could be established. By the end of the study, the Amish men logged an average of 18,425 steps a day, whereas the Amish women logged 14,196. Just to put this into perspective, most experts believe that we should get at least 10,000 steps a day in order to consider ourselves an “active person.” But the study did not stop there:
“Other forms of physical activity were also measured and the findings were that the Amish performed 6 times more physical activity per day than a study of 2,000 participants in 12 modernized nations. Only 4% of the Amish population are obese as defined by a Body Mass Index above 30, whereas 31% of the US adult population is obese. For women, energy expenditure was 2,610 and 3,590 kcal/d whereas for men energy expenditure was 3,130 and 3,990 kcal/d. That means women expended around 860 calories a day and men around 980 in physical activity (exercise)!!”
“The Amish were able to show us just how far we’ve fallen in the last 150 years or so in terms of the amount of physical activity we typically perform,” said David R. Bassett, Ph.D., FACSM, a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and lead researcher for the study. “Their lifestyle indicates that physical activity played a critical role in keeping our ancestors fit and healthy.”
The problem for most of trying to lose weight today is that it is not as simple as just eating less, but that we get no-where near the physical activity we need to lose weight! We mistakenly assume that if we exercise 1-3 times per week that we should expect to see amazing results. But this low level of physical activity is a mere pittance compared to that of our ancestors—and they were eating far less food than we are!! Data released from a 2,000 USDA report revealed that the average American is now consuming almost 800 calories per day than the average American living in 1950. That’s pretty amazing when you consider that obesity rates in 1950 were only around 9%; today, they are 35%!
Our low rates of physical activity are not just my personal opinion; most health organizations are telling us the same thing:
The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), for example, tells us that exercising 1-3 times per week does not even meet the basic exercise needs for normal weight adults… let alone overweight people trying to lose body fat! In fact, the CDC recommends that ALL ADULTS should be getting AT LEAST 270 minutes per week of physical activity. They even tell us what “kind” of exercise:
“…2 hours and 30 minutes (150 minutes) of moderate-intensity aerobic activity (i.e., brisk walking) every week….along with muscle-strengthening activities on 2 or more days a week that work all major muscle groups (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders, and arms).”
If you do the math, 270 minutes of exercise per week is 4.5 hours a week…and this is what the CDC says EVERYBODY should be doing! This number is for “basic health” and “disease prevention,” NOT for weight loss!! In fact, the CDC goes on to say that, “Clearly, overweight individuals have different exercise needs than the general public when it comes to increasing their energy expenditure. To maximize weight loss and minimize weight regain, it appears that overweight individuals should supplement dietary changes with approximately…twice the amount recommended for health in the general public.”
The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) has made similar findings. As a result, they “recommend that adults participate in at least 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity physical activity to prevent significant weight gain. Overweight and obese adults, however, are more likely to reach their goals with at least 250 minutes. The report also recommends strength training as part of the exercise regimen, in order to increase fat-free mass and further reduce health risks. The recommendations are published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. They are in line with the recent recommendations published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.”
Research from other studies and health organization have demonstrated that high physical activity levels can help with maintenance of weight loss. In one study, subjects who exercised enough to expend 1000 calories per week (about 2 hours per week) regained most of their weight, but subjects who expended 2500 calories per week (about 4.5 hours a week) maintained most of their weight loss. Similar results have been observed in other studies. Subjects in the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR), a database of individuals who have maintained at least a 30 pound weight loss for over a year, expend an average of 2,620 calories per week in physical activity.
Great question! I’m glad you understand how important it is to get sufficient exercise.
To really be able to accurately answer your question (How much exercise for rapid fat loss?) let’s consider the following facts:
Scientists have been able to establish that there are approximately 3,500 calories worth of stored energy in just 1-pound of fat. Another way to think about this is to realize that 1-pound of fat contains the equivalent of…
12 McDonald’s cheeseburgers worth of energy!
If weight loss worked like basic mathematics, and we wanted to lose 1-pound of fat over the course of seven days, then this would mean that we simply need to “burn off” 3,500 calories above our current caloric needs. If the average calorie burn for a 1-hour, high-intensity workout was 500 calories, then seven of these workouts (7 X 500 = 3,500) should burn off 3,500 calories and—BOOM!—one pound of fat is gone in a flash!!
While this way of thinking certainly makes sense from a mathematical perspective (and is still being taught by many health and fitness professionals, today) unfortunately IT’S COMPLETELY WRONG and does not accurately portray all the facts!!!
Firstly, we must understand that…
WE DO NOT BURN EXCLUSIVELY FAT DURING EXERCISE.
Some forms of exercise derive almost ALL of their energy from carbohydrate stored within the muscles, bloodstream, and liver, and very little fat. This isn’t necessarily a “bad” thing (In fact it’s GOOD—you get to eat more carbs), but it is important to realize that the calorie numbers you see on your treadmill or Fitbit at the end of an exercise session do not reflect the number of FAT CALORIES you burned, but simply “calories burned overall.”
In most cases, it is relatively safe to assume that close to ½ of the calories you burned during an hour of exercise may have come from stored fat; whereas the other ½ came from stored carbohydrate. So let’s say that you do a 1-hour workout and burn a total of 500 calories, you’d be pretty safe to assume that you only burnt around 250 calories from stored fat.
So now if we recalculate our math from above, we realize that far more work-outs would be necessary in order to burn off 3,500 calories of pure fat. Rather than seven 1-hour work-outs a week, it comes out to be much closer to around FOURTEEN! How many people do you know who do that much exercise in a week? Interestingly, this is almost EXACTLY the number of hours a week of physical activity that the scientists from above calculated the Amish men and women were completing in week to stay so slim! Incidentally, this is the exact same amount of exercise that the legendary Jack LaLanne (The Father of Exercise) did each day. His daily routine consisted of:
- Waking up at 4 am to do 90 minutes of vigorous weight training and calisthenics.
- He followed that with a jog or swim for 30 minutes.
- Afterwards, he’d eat a late breakfast made up of mostly raw vegetables (often in fresh juice form) sometimes along with some egg whites.
- And Jack made it a point to only eat 2-3 times a day (NO MORE). HMMMMM….
Legendary singer song-writer, Tim McGraw, apparently decided that the key to ripped six-pack abs was not only a big change his diet (he dramatically reduced his sugar and alcohol intake as well as “beefed-up” his protein intake), but to get his physical activity level MUCH higher than it had been before. He began working out over 4 hours a day to get his dramatic results!!! That’s about the same number of hours each day that the Biggest Loser contestants were exercising! Check out Tim’s transformation and exercise here.
“People have plenty of time to devote to working out, if they want to cure diseases like diabetes, live longer, and improve their quality of life. Those who cannot find the time need consider the alternative…. Everyone has time for essential daily activities—when your tooth has a painful infection, you cancel the day’s meetings and go to the dentist. If you are diagnosed with cancer, believe me, you’ll change your entire life to accommodate doctors’ appointments, cancer treatment, and prevention of relapse. Why then wouldn’t everyone…carry on at home with 60 to 90 minutes a day of exercise given these health stakes? If you have overflowing abdominal fat, you’re facing a choice not terribly dissimilar from [these] examples. Your excess fat is a deliberate poison. It’s not easy, but two hours a day of exercise with calorie counting and moderate caloric restriction for six months is a small price to pay to remove the poison.”
Dr. Huizenga himself claims to work out at least 90 to 100 minutes PER DAY, not PER WEEK!! He goes on to say, “It’s about setting priorities. Time is not the issue; priorities are the issue.”
I can personally attest to this strategy for maintaining weight loss because I too exercise approximately 14 hours (give or take) a week to maintain my weight loss. I usually do seven weight training sessions a week along with seven or more cardio sessions a week (some high intensity and others low intensity). Part of the reason I like to work out more often is because I can also eat more while staying lean. If I exercised less, I’d have to eat far less.To summarize what we’ve learned so far, we now know that:
- Allowing some space between meals may help us lose more body fat than eating round the clock.
- 3 square meals a day is how our ancestors ate and obesity levels were only 9% in 1950; today they are at 35%.
- Not all calories burned during exercise come exclusively from fat.
- Getting a high level of physical activity is super important for the overweight to reduce risk of disease and to elicit rapid fat loss.
- 1-2 hours per day of physical activity is necessary to lose weight for those who want to be able to eat a fair amount of calories and still lose weight.
Finally, if “Exercise IS Eating,” are YOU eating enough?!
Sunday, October 18, 2015
The Top Ten Diet and Exercise Myths Your Trainer Will Try To Get You to Believe
Unfortunately, many trainers and health “professionals” practicing today, are still teaching and promoting ideas and strategies that are not only outdated and fallacious, but may even be HARMFUL to our bodies and health.
If your trainer tends to spout “facts” that they cannot support with sound scientific principles, it’s highly likely that they are getting their information from non-credible sources—like muscle magazines, internet sites, their friends, or the buff guy or gal in the gym! Some health “experts” probably just make some of this nonsense up!!
It’s important that your trainer not only be certified by an accredited personal training agency, but that they stay up to date on the latest and cutting edge research. Many trainers are just not interested in spending this kind of time. They feel that whatever worked for them in the past should work just as well today. While this is partially true, it is also half false. Many of the diet and training strategies utilized in the past have been proven to not only be highly ineffective, but even unsafe. In other cases, the practices they endorse are not harmful or ineffective—it’s just that NEW METHODS HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED THAT ARE EVEN BETTER!!!! Why not utilize new information for improving fat loss and health that is faster, safer, and more effective?!!
If your trainer or health professional wants you to believe what they are saying, they should be willing to support it with proof—modern, up to date proof! Not some outdated study done in 1923. If you ask for such proof and they do not comply, I think you could safely assume that they may be one (or more) of at least three kinds of persons:
- An UNWILLING person (they can give you the proof, but for some reason they don’t want to)…or
- An UNKNOWING person (they simply do not know what they are talking about)…or
- An UNCARING person (they don’t consider you important enough to reveal these details to)…or
- All of the above
This does not necessarily make them a “bad” person. The fact of the matter is that trainers are fallible too, make mistakes, and do not know everything. If they do claim to “know everything” then I think you have another problem on your hands—LOL! But hubris and pride aside, hopefully your trainer is open to opposing views and respects your right to disagree—(just be sure you are also prepared to back up your viewpoint with solid evidence and facts).
If your trainer is teaching you one or more of the following “Ten Diet and Exercise Myths,” you may want to confront them…either that or find a new trainer!!
Rather than write fifty pages of evidence to support the following myths, I’ve decided to point you to the resources you can check out to view this evidence for yourself. Some of the resources I’ve attached are video links…others are articles or studies. I encourage you to explore these issues further. If you’d ever like to discuss these issues with me in person or via e-mail or blog, I’d me more than happy to oblige.
Before I get on to the explanation for each myth, I’ll start by listing all ten for you here. If you’d like to learn more about a particular myth, just scroll down to the one you find most applicable:
- Myth #1: “You have to eat ‘less” if you want to lose weight. Therefore you need to count calories and/or exercise more if you want to lose weight.”
- Myth #2: “Because breakfast is the most important meal of the day you need to start off with a BIG breakfast to get lots of energy and to ‘start-up’ your metabolism…otherwise you’ll eat more, later in the evening, and turn into a fat slob.”
- Myth #3:
“You have to eat small meals every 2-3 hours to keep your metabolism burning hot and fast. Long gaps in-between meals (or ‘skipping meals’) will slow down your metabolism and put you into ‘starvation mode’—where your body eats up your muscles and slows down your metabolism.”
- Myth #4:
“If you want to lose weight you need to eat more protein—especially if you’re lifting weights and doing endurance exercise.”
- Myth #5:
“You can’t lose weight because you eat too many carbs and all those carbs are just converting into body fat.”
- Myth #6:
“You gotta’ eat more fat in your diet because fat makes you feel full and satiated and helps you eat less during the day.”
- Myth #7:
“Americans are eating less fat than ever before, but people are just getting fatter because of all the carbs in their diet. Therefore, the fat you eat is not the problem but all the carbohydrates.”
- Myth #8:
“If you want to lose weight you have to ‘eat less’ and ‘exercise more’. And by the way—only OUR exercise program will get you results!”
- Myth #9:
“You can eat whatever you want as long as you don’t eat too much—everything in moderation, you know.”
- Myth #10:
“If you exercise more and lose weight you’ll speed up your metabolism.”
Ok, now let’s look more carefully at why each one of these claims is actually a myth…starting with #1:
- Myth #1: “You have to eat ‘less” if you want to lose weight. Therefore you need to count calories and/or exercise more if you want to lose weight.”
This one is ABSOLUTELY FALSE!!! And to be honest, it’s not difficult to disprove. Consider the past: In 1950 nobody was counting calories and only 9% of Americans were obese. Today, in 2015, we have more technology at our fingertips than ever before to count and measure our food intake and yet 69% of us are overweight while 35% are obese!! The real reason we are overweight is not because people are eating too much, but may in fact be because they are eating too little…and of all the “wrong” food. Let me explain:
That’s a picture of me doing a nutrition lesson in one of our group classes. This is one of the most important lessons I share. I bring two bags of groceries into class and ask a few volunteers to come up to the front of the room and choose just one of the two bags of food. Before choosing, however, I explain the following facts and rules:
- They can only choose one bag.
- They have to make their choice without looking in the bags.
- They can eat the entire contents of the bag over the course of the day, but nothing else.
- Both bags contain similar amounts of calories, so either one should theoretically be equally effective at helping them to lose weight.
- They’d have to eat only what was in the bag they choose every day for a whole month!
They are not allowed to look in the bag, but I do allow them to hold each bag in their hand before choosing. Most are amazed at the difference in the weight of the two bags. The green bag is very heavy, while the purple bag feels almost like there’s nothing in it! The purple bag weighs about the same as your cell phone. Invariably, everyone chooses the heavy green bag. Why?
Remember, I told them that either bag would be effective at helping them to lose weight. So no matter which one they chose, they have no choice but to lose weight. So they are not making their food choice based upon weight loss. They also cannot see what is in the bags, so they cannot be making their selection based upon hedonistic value (pleasure). So if they are not making their choice based upon weight loss or pleasure, what ARE they basing their selection on???? Why is everyone choosing the same bag?!
Here’s why: Whether we realize it or not, we humans are instinctively hardwired to eat more whenever we can. Eating “more,” however, does not always mean the same thing for everybody (as we’ll see in a minute). Just because you eat more food, does not mean you ate more calories! Here is where I prove it!
Truth be told, the “weight” and “volume” of specific foods may be one of the most crucial components of weight loss that exists!! It’s highly likely that if you do not eat high-volume, low-calorie food on a regular basis, this may be one of the primary reasons you are not losing any weight (more specifically—body fat)!
Let’s take a peek at the weight of each bag and the calories they contain. I weighed and measured each item on my food scale in grams. The purple bag contains 1,890 calories while the green bag holds 1,805. However, there is one major difference between the two bags. The purple bag (the one containing 1,890 calories) weighs only a mere 1.2 pounds. The green bag, however, weighs a whopping 12 pounds!!!! Even more surprising is the fact that the bag weighing 12 pounds is actually the bag that has fewer calories in it—(85 calories less). I’ve replicated this experiment on other occasions where the heavy bag weighs almost twenty times the weight of the lighter bag while calories remained almost the same!! If you were to look inside the two bags, you’d find that the purple bag (the light bag) holds: 3 protein bars, two slices of thinly-sliced prepackaged cheese, a small handful of walnuts (52 grams), and a handful of dried apricots (79 grams). These are not even foods that most people consider “bad.” Imagine what it would have been if I had filled it with M&M’s and ice cream! Altogether the whole amount came out at 1.2 pounds and a whopping 1,890 calories!! The 12 pound bag, however, was loaded with raw plant-based foods (mostly veggies) and raw fruits—only 1,805 calories!!
Many of my first time clients report eating “barely anything at all and not losing a pound.” I usually tell them that this is their BIGGEST PROBLEM!! “IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW LITTLE YOU EAT, IF YOU EAT THE WRONG KINDS OF FOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Conversely: “IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW MUCH YOU EAT, IF YOU EAT THE RIGHT KINDS OF FOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
You simply cannot get fat eating nothing but fruits and veggies!! I’ve heard trainers say (and I know that I have been guilty in the past of saying this myself) that “it doesn’t matter how healthy you eat if you eat too much. You can still get fat on celery and broccoli if you eat too many calories.” I know now that this is complete and utter nonsense! No-one is EVER going to get fat eating exclusively broccoli and celery!!!! It’s impossible!!! It’s not the broccoli and celery that is making us fat; it’s the peanut butter on our celery and the cheese melted all over the top of our broccoli!!! It is not potatoes and rice that is making us fat; it is the sour cream, bacon bits, melted cheese, oil, and fatty sauces we put on top!! The fact of the matter, folks, is that the leanest and healthiest populations in the world eat HIGH CARB diets! Cultures that eat predominately starch-based diets (like potatoes and rice) and veggies are the leanest and healthiest, despite what the high protein gurus may say.
Most dieters that count calories simply try to eat less of the wrong foods. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!! When you try to eat less of high calorie foods, you’re left with only a very small quantity of food you can eat each day. No-one can stick to that kind of diet for very long!! However, if I told you that you could eat 12-20 pounds of food EVERY DAY, most people would find that practically impossible!! That’s part of the reason why eating a mostly whole food, plant-based diet is so effective at helping people lost weight without having to count calories or points. Consider several examples: In order to get the same number of calories from raw spinach as one large bag of tortilla chips (approximately 1,400 calories), you’d have to eat not 2 boxes, not 5, not 10, or even 15, but 20 BOXES OF SPINACH!!! Who could ever eat that much spinach?! Not even me! Someone may respond with, “Yeah, but aren’t tortilla chips carbs?” Firstly, NO! If you look at the percentage of fat that is found in most commercially available chips, it is largely fat from processed vegetable oils (almost 56%). Secondly, tortilla chips are an example of a processed food—precisely the kinds of food we are trying to avoid! Eating a “vegetarian” or “vegan” diet is no guarantee of health or weight loss if the majority of foods come from processed, high-fat, plant foods. We are talking about a diet high in whole, lots of raw, plant-based carbohydrates that are low in fat (around 10-20%) and moderate in protein (10-25%).
Concerning protein and weight loss, let’s consider the calorie content of a small, lean, grilled chicken breast (140 grams) and compare it to a similar weight (140 grams) of plant-based food. A 140 gram chicken breast contains about 229 calories. 140 grams of broccoli contains only 39 calories!! In order to get the same number of calories from broccoli as one small chicken breast, we’d have to consume 11 ½ cups of broccoli!! In that 229 calories of broccoli there are 24 grams of protein. I bet you didn’t know that veggies were high in protein, did you? To get the same number of calories from the following foods as one small chicken breast we’d have to eat:
- 3.75 small apples (525 grams), or...
- 3.13 cups of cooked, sliced beets (532 grams), or…
- 3 Slices of watermelon (712 grams), or…
- 1.6 cups of cooked oatmeal (374 grams), or…
- 5.25 cups of strawberries (756 grams), or…
- 1 large head of raw cauliflower (900 grams), or…
- 35 cups of raw spinach (1,050 grams)
In her research, Barbara Rolls discovered that “weight” and “volume” of food was more important than “calories” when it came to losing weight. Barbara understood that some foods are very small when it comes to “volume” while still packing a caloric punch!! Take Brazil nuts, for example, like all nuts, they are very small but contain many, many more calories per gram than most other plant foods. Brazil nuts clock in at 6.6 calories per gram. That means to consume 100 calories of Brazil nuts would only be about 15 grams of food. If, however, we wanted to get 100 calories from fresh, raw blueberries we’d have to consume 175 grams of food!! That’s 15 grams of food compared to 175!! This means that Brazil nuts have almost 12 times more calories per gram than blueberries!! Or, another way to look at it is that you could EAT 12 TIMES AS MANY BLUEBERRIES AS BRAZIL NUTS to reach the same number of calories!! Eating blueberries will never make you fat, but a small handful of nuts can add up quickly!!! Barbara theorized that it was the “volume” of food that was determining how much you were eating more so than the number of calories contained in those foods. She reached this conclusion because her research found that even when you radically change someone’s diet, they still tended to average out around the same weight of food consumed each day. So, for example, let’s say that right now you average about 5 pounds of food each day. If the entire five pounds of food you ate came from exclusively blueberries that would only be 1,294 calories. If, however, the same volume of food was eaten from Brazil nuts alone, that would come out to 14,982 calories!!!!!!!!!
If you ate five pounds of raw spinach, on the other hand, it would only come out to 522 calories!!! So you can see that if Barbara is correct, WHAT kind of food you eat is far more important than HOW MUCH! Many people eating “healthy” salads load up their greens with oil-based dressings, cheese, nuts, bacon, croutons, and dried fruit—all very calorie dense foods. Just one tablespoon of olive oil, for example, has 120 calories. Per gram, refined oils come out at 9 calories per gram!! That little dabble of oil on your salad may be where more than 85% of your calories are coming from!!
An interesting study published in the Journal of Clinical Biochemistry & Nutrition in May of 2010; 46(3): 212–223. Published online Apr 10, 2010. doi: 10.3164/jcbn.09-83 by Julio C. Fraulob, Rebeca Ogg-Diamantino, [...], and Carlos A. Mandarim-de-Lacerda
…was entitled “A Mouse Model of Metabolic Syndrome: Insulin Resistance, Fatty Liver and Non-Alcoholic Fatty Pancreas Disease (NAFPD) in C57BL/6 Mice Fed a High Fat Diet.” The study took two groups of mice and fed them entirely different diets for 16 weeks to see what impact “THE KIND OF FOOD” they ate would have on their health. Both groups were allowed to eat as much as they wanted, but the “QUALITY” of the food in each group was very different!! One group was fed a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet of 60% fat, 14% protein, and 26% carbohydrate respectively. The second group was fed a high-carbohydrate diet, low-fat diet (normal rat chow) of 76% carbohydrate, 10% fat, and 14% protein. So both groups received identical amounts of protein; only carbohydrate and fat were altered. The vitamin and mineral content of both diets was identical. At the end of the 16 weeks, the mice eating the high-fat diet were in bad shape. They were metabolically displaying the same health concerns seen in most obese humans. What’s interesting is that the scientists actually wrote in the study that “Food intake was not different between the groups, but both the energy (+38%, p<0.05) and fat intake per animal (+729%, p<0.001) were greater in HFC (high fat chow) mice than in SC (standard chow) (Table 2). Feed efficiency (body mass gain in grams per kilocalories consumed) was therefore greater in HFC mice than in SC mice (Fig. 3).” So basically the researchers found that the mice eating the high-fat diet ate about the same “VOLUME” of food as they had on the low-fat diet. The only thing was that the calories in the high-fat chow were much higher than they were accustomed to and they subsequently got very fat—very quickly!!
Eating a large volume of food is really how we are designed. It is the way our natural ancestors have been eating for thousands of years. However, we are designed to eat foods very low in “calorie-density.” Fruits and veggies are the least calorie-dense foods on the planet! Animals that are plant eaters (especially those designed to eat fruit like us) are known to eat many pounds of food in a day. Adult chimpanzees typically weigh somewhere between 57-120 pounds. By some estimates they regularly consume about 9-13 pounds of food a day. An adult gorilla (about 2 1/2 times the size of a man at close to 400 pounds) eats around 45 pounds of food a day. If we wanted to eat like a gorilla or chimpanzee, we could roughly estimate how many pounds of food they eat per pound of body weight and come up with a close approximation for ourselves. If we average the chimpanzee diet, it comes out to around .075 pounds of food per pound of body weight. The gorilla eats about .113 pounds of food per day per pound of body weight. Averaged together, these come up to around .094 pounds of food per pound of body weight per day. Based upon this number, an adult male weighing 170 pounds would need to eat approximately 16 pounds of low-calorie, high-volume, plant-based food a day to maintain his weight! This lines up with many of the plant-based diets that I have entered into our nutritional tracking software to provide sufficient macro and micro nutrients. Some days I came up with over 18 pounds of food I could eat!!! We don’t get fat because we eat too much; we get fat because we eat too little—but too little of the “wrong kind” of food! Our digestive systems and biochemistry are optimized to run on fresh raw fruits and leafy green veggies (primarily). Other food stuffs, like nuts, seeds, legumes, grains, starches, meat, and dairy should only be consumed in sparing quantities or not at all. Heaven forbid we are consuming processed junk food filled with fat and sugar!!!! The “kind” of food we eat is very important as well as the volume, but we still must go deeper!!
Another reason counting calories is not as important as the quality of your food has to do with the thermic effect of digesting food…
Consider a 360 calorie piece of baked tilapia (fish) versus a 360 calorie doughnut. If calories are really all that matter, then it really shouldn’t matter which food you pick as long as you don’t eat more than you need of either one. However, is this really true? If we look at the effects of each food on our health and weight, I think most people would admit that common sense would say NO! The baked tilapia is low in fat and high in protein, whereas the doughnut is high in fat and sugar, but low in protein. Aside from fiber, protein is one of the most difficult macronutrients to digest. In fact, close to 30% of all calories consumed from whole food proteins (not protein powders) are lost as “heat energy” (dietary thermogenesis) just trying to break the protein-rich food down. This means that a 360 calorie piece of tilapia actually only equates to approximately 252 calories that are actually absorbed by the body. The doughnut, on the other hand, is very efficiently broken down and stored with little-to-no dietary thermogenesis. This means that almost 100% of the calories consumed from the donut will be absorbed—the whole 360 calories!! Who do you think will lose more weight—the person who eats the 360 calories from fish, or the person eating the doughnut? They both “ate” the same number of calories, right? However, “eating” and “absorbing” are two different things! It doesn’t matter how much you eat; it matters how much you absorb! So who loses more? That’s right—the fish!! So you tell me—does “quantity” (how much you eat) really matter more than the “quality” of the food you eat? I don’t think so!
Foods high in fiber are another example of how the calories in a food do not really tell us the whole picture and why quality matters more than quantity:
Many studies demonstrate that fiber is not only very inefficiently absorbed, but that it also has the ability to bind to calories you’ve already eaten from other foods (fat, protein, and carbohydrates) and cause them to be excreted in your stool. The technical term for this is “Fecal Energy Excretion.” Here’s an example of one such study here:
Fiber is so effective at preventing the absorption of calories that many animals that eat high fiber diets must eat enormous quantities of food in order to survive. If we consider the diet of an elephant, for example, we can see how astounding this is. An adult elephant can weigh anywhere between 5,000 to 14,000 pounds. They are known to eat between 300-500 pounds of food a day and drink close to 50 gallons of water. However, of the 300-500 pounds of food they regularly consume, they are only able to absorb around 40%! That’s interesting. This means that if an elephant were to eat 15,000 calories in a day, their body would only be able to absorb around 6,000 calories!! If that’s true (and it is), where in the heck did the remaining 9,000 calories go?!!!!! You guessed it—in their poo!! The elephant was unable to absorb many of the calories it ingested largely because of the fiber content of the meal. Because the elephant eats exclusively RAW food, the thermic effect of breaking down the food was also much greater (meaning it was more difficult to digest). Researchers, Rachel Carmody and Richard Wrangham, from Harvard University have demonstrated that even if calories remain EQUAL between two groups of animals, those eating exclusively raw food will lose far more weight than those eating cooked food. Eating more raw food that is high in fiber is an excellent strategy for losing weight! While we certainly would not want to try and eat as much fiber and raw food as an elephant, we can still acquire many of the same benefits by even small changes. Animals that are very much like us (most primates) eat diets that are exclusively raw foods and high in fiber. The take away: Eat more fibrous fruits and veggies, small amounts of protein and reduce sugar and fat in the diet.
For a more insightful look at why “calories in” (quantity) is not as important as the “quality” of your food, please check out the following links:
- Myth #2:
“Because breakfast is the most important meal of the day you need to start off with a BIG breakfast to get lots of energy and to ‘start-up’ your metabolism…otherwise you’ll eat more, later in the evening, and turn into a fat slob.”
This one is absolutely poppy-cock and makes no sense whatsoever!!! It doesn’t matter what time of the day you eat a LARGE (over one-third to one-half of the day’s total calories) meal: you’ll always get the same result—fatigue!!! In fact, eating a large breakfast may be the very thing that makes you gain weight!! The sooner in the day you overeat, the less room you have for eating later in the day! Eating large meals does not increase energy; it actually reduces it!! Why? Well, it’s pretty basic: When you overeat, you divert blood flow to the digestive track. It’s often referred to as “Postprandial Somnolence.” Check out this quote from Wikipedia:
“In response to the arrival of food in the stomach and small intestine, the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system increases and the activity of the sympathetic nervous system decreases. [1][2] This shift in the balance of autonomic tone towards the parasympathetic system results in a subjective state of low energy and a desire to be at rest….”
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postprandial_somnolence
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK53094/
- http://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/eating-can-cause-low-blood-pressure
When you eat, blood flow to the digestive tract reduces oxygen to the rest of the cells in your body. The immediate response of the brain is to try and get you to slow down—i.e. take a nap—so that it can focus its energy on digesting your meal!! How many of you feel like running a marathon after eating a large Thanksgiving meal? Yeah, I didn’t think so! A “small” breakfast is ideal. Don’t overdo it.
While it’s true that your trainer may show you a study like this one… http://www.shape.com/blogs/weight-loss-coach/big-breakfast-and-small-dinner-secret-weight-loss
…and by all appearances it certainly appears that eating a big breakfast is ideal (at least for these women), but BE CAREFUL—appearances are often deceiving!! You really must pay attention to the details. Notice a few things:
- All the women in the group were on a calorie restricted diet.
- All the women in the group ate the SAME NUMBER OF CALORIES (1,400) regardless of their metabolic rate or whether they ate a large or small breakfast.
- The study was only 12 weeks in length—it never went on to prove that the women in the study were able to stick to their calorie reduction plan or large breakfasts.
If we go ahead and compare this study with a larger more comprehensive study like this one:
We see that the size of breakfast had nothing to do with whether or not you lost weight—UNLESS YOU WERE COUNTING CALORIES!!!!
The TRUTH is that some of the leanest and fittest people on the planet do not even eat breakfast!!! It’s true!! Check out this website and the testimonials. All the science is posted as well. The author, Martin Berkhan, is a strong proponent of “intermittent fasting” as a fat loss strategy that often involves skipping breakfast. I’ve used intermittent fasting myself to drop almost 10 pounds of fat in one week!! It works incredibly well if you do it smart and safely! Check it out here!
- Myth #3:
“You have to eat small meals every 2-3 hours to keep your metabolism burning hot and fast. Long gaps in-between meals (or ‘skipping meals’) will slow down your metabolism and put you into ‘starvation mode’—where your body eats up your muscles and slows down your metabolism.”
For this one, I’m just going to default to Martin again. Check out his “Top Ten Fasting Myths” page on the website. The fact of the matter is that the body will increase metabolism proportionate to whatever size meal you eat, not because you eat more often!
- Myth #4:
“If you want to lose weight you need to eat more protein—especially if you’re lifting weights and doing endurance exercise.”
While I certainly agree that protein is an important food to include in our diet, most Americans should not be eating MORE PROTEIN, but LESS. Especially if we want to:
- Trim our waistlines,
- Live longer,
- http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/03/low-protein-diet-may-extend-lifespan
- http://www.elsevier.com/connect/controlling-protein-intake-may-be-key-to-longevity
- Reduce cancer risk,
- Diabetes,
- Stroke, http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/GettingHealthy/NutritionCenter/High-Protein-Diets_UCM_305989_Article.jsp
- Heart Disease,
- Osteoporosis,
- And lower bad cholesterol
The fact is that most of us are EATING FAR MORE PROTEIN THAN WE NEED!! So much so, in fact, that it is causing us tremendous harm and possibly an early and painful death!
Protein needs for endurance athletes and weightlifters is somewhat higher than non-exercisers, but even this intake should be far lower than what most athletes are consuming. To establish your protein needs for the day, check here:
- Myth #5:
“You can’t lose weight because you eat too many carbs and all those carbs are just converting into body fat.”
Once again, another big fat lie!! Carbohydrates are rarely ever converted to any significant quantity of fat in the body (unlike the fat we eat) unless in very extreme eating situations that most humans would not subject themselves to daily. The same goes for dietary protein. The fat we eat, however, is very efficiently stored as fat in our bodies!!
- http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2013/05/do-carbohydrates-turn-into-fat.html
- http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/61/4/952S.full.pdf
and…
Oh yeah…one more thing: The most successful long-term weight loss maintainers (participating in the National Weight Control Registry) eat a low fat diet (less than 25%)!!
- Myth #6:
“You gotta’ eat more fat in your diet because fat makes you feel full and satiated and helps you eat less during the day.”
Sorry Folks! This one is false as well! Eating fat does not increase satiety. In fact, many studies demonstrate that it does just the OPPOSITE—especially certain “KINDS” of fat!!! Your trainer was wrong again; what can I say?!!!
- http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lard-lesson-why-fat-lubri/
- http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/57/5/772S.short
- http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/8395476
- http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/9225171
- http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.nu.16.070196.001441
- http://ajpendo.physiology.org/content/290/2/E258.abstract
The thing about fat is that it’s also a myth to treat all fat as good or bad. There are actually many different kinds of fat. Some fats are very good for us…in fact they are ESSENTIAL. That’s why they are called “Essential Fatty Acids.” We need plenty of these in our diet. It’s the other kinds of fat that we really want to reduce. If you ever get a chance to read the book: “The End of Overeating” by Dr. David Kessler, or the “Pleasure Trap” by Dr. Doug Lisle, you’ll get some even deeper insights into why adopting a low-fat diet is ideal for weight loss and why fatty foods actually increase your desire to overeat.
- Myth #7:
“Americans are eating less fat than ever before, but people are just getting fatter because of all the carbs in their diet. Therefore, the fat you eat is not the problem but all the carbohydrates.”
WRONGO!!! FAT INTAKE HAS NOT GONE DOWN in America. It has actually GONE UP! Caloric intake has increased as well—significantly!!! This is largely where the confusion lies. While the “percentage” of fat consumed has gone down a little, IT IS A SMALLER PERCENTAGE OF A MUCH BIGGER NUMBER!!! This means that the actual fat intake in GRAMS has actually GONE UP—NOT DOWN. Check it out:
- Myth #8:
“If you want to lose weight you have to ‘eat less’ and ‘exercise more’. And by the way—only OUR exercise program will get you results!”
Hopefully by now you know that this one is false too. We’ve already looked at why counting calories is not necessary nor ideal to lose weight. We’ve seen that Leptin is more responsible for controlling body fat percentage, weight, and physical activity than “willpower,” “structured exercise,” and/or “calorie counting.” You do not need to “eat less” to lose weight…in fact you should do just the opposite by eating more low-fat, low-calorie fruits and vegetables.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAdqLB6bTuQ
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gTLpTq1nQk
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2aHAq_uGL0
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMQDPXDtLh8
As far as exercise, progressive weight training is the most effective fat loss training you can do!!!
- Myth #9:
“You can eat whatever you want as long as you don’t eat too much—everything in moderation, you know.”
LIE, LIE, LIE!!! Tell that to a heroin, alcohol, or crack addict!!! “Just consume a little less.” That’s crazy!! The addict knows that “avoidance” or “abstinence” is what they need to do—not “portion control” or “moderation!” Certain “kinds” of food are not only addictive but makes us feel hungrier. We have to implement strategies effectively reduce or eliminate these kinds of foods—not portion control!!!
The most successful weight loss maintainers in the NWCR limit variety and high fat-high sugar foods! For more evidence, check these out:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cpdb78pWl4
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmdY-uutkkw
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7prLRgbOjZg
- Myth #10:
“If you exercise more and lose weight you’ll speed up your metabolism.”
Sorry folks, it’s actually just the opposite! Weight loss and exercise do not permanently increase metabolism—they actually LOWER IT!!! Yes, it’s true that metabolism is increased as you are exercising, but the minute you stop, metabolism quickly returns to a much lower, more efficient rate. The more fit you are and the more weight you lose, the less calories you burn each workout and each day. The only way to increase metabolism permanently is to INCREASE YOUR WEIGHT by building lean muscle. That’s why so many people hit the “plateau” when they are trying to lose weight. They just focus on trying to get scale weight down rather than increasing their strength and improving the quality of their food. Check it out:
- http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/dieting-increase-decrease-metabolic-rate-9905.html
- http://fampra.oxfordjournals.org/content/16/2/196.full
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2204100
- http://www.opposingviews.com/i/can-too-much-cardio-exercise-decrease-my-metabolism
Whew!!! We’re finally at the end!! Hope you found these tips helpful. If you would like any additional help or have any burning questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at:
Attention of: Bo, CPT
bo@botafitness.com
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