losing weight is easy if you can separate signal from the noise
When you’re searching for information for solutions to your health or weight loss problems you’re going to be constantly faced with a lot of useless information.
Buried deep under the mess is where you’ll find the answer, but you have to learn to separate the useful true information from useless marketing fluff.
In other words you’ve got to separate the signal from the noise.
When it comes to weight loss there is a fundamental law that cannot be broken.
That law states: In order to lose weight you must eat less calories than you burn off.
This law stands no matter what story you’re being told about food or nutrition.
So the ‘signal’ that you’re looking for in weight loss is always “eat less”, the noise is all of the useless marketing angles about carbs, or fat, or meal timing, or blood types, or fancy workouts, or special hormones and on and on.
All of this other stuff is the noise.
For any diet program to work it must get you to eat less. And marketers know this, but that isn’t much of a story to tell. So they wrap the signal is a bunch of noise to make their program seem much more complex and important.
All of this noise can quickly become overwhelming, and you can easily become caught up and lose sight of the signal in the noise.
It’s kinda like listening to a radio that isn’t quite tuned properly to the station. The noise just gets in the way of the real message.
When you’re searching for any information, look for the consistent signal, in most cases it is the same fundamental principle.
The ‘noise’ is just the marketing angle the signal gets wrapped in to make it seem special or different.
For weight loss, the signal is clear.
Eating less will be the only way to lose weight. The only thing that will ever change is the noise of marketing around this fundamental and unchangable law.
Instead of focusing on the useless noise in the weight loss industry like broken metabolisms, special low carb foods, blood type diets, carb cycling, fat burning workouts, and meal timing, you should focus on the signal of EATING LESS, and find the simplest and most painless way to do it. So far for me and most people that I know that solutions is Eat Stop Eat.
John
9 Responses to “losing weight is easy if you can separate signal from the noise”
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August 19th, 2009 at 12:42 am
That’s just what it is too John. Noise. I think it’s that way because a lot of marketing is based on telling people what they want to hear, even if it’s a bunch of lies. Nobody who’s used to eating any and everything how they want, when they want, is gonna wanna hear that losing weight requires things like work, dedication and sacrifice. Sacrifice meaning that they have to eat less, and dedication meaning that they have to stick to it.
August 23rd, 2009 at 5:46 am
Hey John, I had a quick question. Let’s say someone is underweight, for example, 6’0 and 160 pounds. Would you contend that nutrition would not be the way to work their way up to say approximately 175-180 pounds with more muscle and that rather through working out while eating maintenance calories would be the way to add this muscle. Is it different for someone who is inexperienced lifting and still could benefit from the initial muscle growth that comes with increasing calories? I noted that on Fitness Black Book you mentioned that most of this increase in calories ends up as bodyfat. Just a little confused how someone smaller could add some weight via muscle without adding bodyfat. Thanks a lot and keep up your groundbreaking work.
August 23rd, 2009 at 9:57 pm
@David Smith
Hi David,
Thanks for the kind words, I’m not sure I’m doing anything ‘groundbreaking’ I’m mostly just trying to give people some realistic information about how exercise and the body really works. There is so much mis-information out there in cyberspace it is difficult to know who to trust.
So about your question. Depending on your age you may still have juvenile muscle growth potential on your side (if you’re in your late 20′s or younger)
If not then there is mechanical aka Exercise induced muscle growth potential.
If you’ve never worked out before you will notice a big jump in muscle mass when you first start working out.
Beyond that, there is a pretty strict genetic limit to the amount of muscle you or I (or anyone) can build…without drugs.
There is no scientific research to prove that overeating calories or protein helps build any more muscle than weight training alone without extra calories or protein.
so bottom line is both scientifically and anecdotally I cannot find any reason for you to overeat any amount of calories or protein above maintenance.
Even if you put on 5 pounds of real new muscles mass per year, that only translates into a few grams of extra protein per day. <– this is hardly a reason to mega dose protein.
Also, weight is a relative issue. 160 pounds at 6’0 tall is not a bad weight, you are most likely very lean and could easily build your body up to 175-180 pounds without adding much fat if any at all.
Keep your eating habits consistent and hit the gym diligently, the muscle gains will come.
JB
August 24th, 2009 at 6:14 am
Thanks very much for your response John. My only other question would be if it is possible to burn fat (from 12% bf to under 10) while adding this muscle. Possibly by using ESE while following a lifting program for example. Look forward to your response. Cheers.
August 24th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
John, I found your website quite accidently. I am not 100% sold on fasting as a diet, although I sometimes have semi-fasts built into my diet (eat a steak and nothing else for one day). I’ll admit I am afraid of burning muscle — it is really hard to add muscle back on!
Part of the problem is the ground we are standing on. We really don’t know what a “calorie” is. Burning a piece of food to generate heat (what we do now) isn’t how our bodies work. And I think determining how we use a “calorie” isn’t very clear either. So we say, eat less than you burn, I think even coming up with those numbers is close to impossible.
August 24th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
@David Smith
David,
There is no reason to believe that it’s not possible. Scientifically I think it is entirely possible. And yes ESE is a good method to use.
JB
August 24th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
@charlie
Charlie,
Muscle is not the primary fuel source for your body, it is glucose and free fatty acids.
Even if you followed a starvation diet like christian bale in the movie ‘the machinist” (he went down to 121 pounds) you can easily put the muscle back as bale did in batman begins when he weighed close to 200 pounds.
As for calories. They aren’t things we can pick up or grab. It is just a unit of energy measurement. Calories can be defined as the amount of energy needed to raise 1 gram of water 1 degree celcius, or expressed as joules, which is a measure of the force exerted by 1 newton acting to move an object the distance of one meter.
So in fact we have multiple definitions of a calorie and they are all measurable with high precision and accuracy.
so yes we do know what a calorie is. And most of the cellular processes of the body have already been measured and calculated down to their exact caloric expenditure.
So really it is reducible to exact numbers. The only issue is we would need to study a group of guys working out for 20 years straight to get a good set of data. And that is most likely never going to happen.
JB
August 24th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
JB; thanks. While I’m sure Christian Bale can recover his lost muscle, I’m not sure I can
.
And yes, I agree about the definition of a calorie — but we don’t burn food in our intensities. We chemically deconstruct them and then absorb certain elements. So when we say a certain food has 100 calories, we have no real idea what that means for our bodies. We do know if we burn it it would raise 1 gram of water by 100 degrees. I find this the best argument for semi-starvation: you are very sure of your calories when you are not eating anything!
August 8th, 2011 at 11:34 pm
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