JohnBarban.com

Doing what ‘most’ people do will only get you what ‘most’ people have. This is true for anything in your life.

Most people will never change

If you want to lose weight, you cannot use most people as a model to follow because most people aren’t losing weight. Same goes for financial success, satisfaction with your job or social life etc.

Most people don’t have the body they want, a career that excites them, or a social life that’s worth reading about. If you want any of these things, then you can’t do what most people do…you gotta do something different. And this is where it gets tricky.

Identifying what NOT to do is easy, figuring out what TO do isn’t so obvious. This is why supplements and weight loss products exist, and how to get rich quick products, as well as books about having successful relationships etc.

Simply reading about this stuff is never good enough. Eventually you’ve got to put something into action and test it out.

You have to become and experiment of one. And try things out until you find one that works. But until you give something…anything different a legitimate try you’ll never know if it works.

The first step to making a real change in any part of your life is accepting the fact that you’re probably going to have to do something that ‘most’ people aren’t doing. The second step is accepting some level of persecution for doing something different from everyone else. This will always happen because most people will feel threatened when someone steps out of the norm and tries something different.

This happens alot with Eat Stop Eat because it is so different from what most people are doing.

Even though ESE works, most people cannot accept something so different. They’ll continue doing what most people do and continue living the lives that most people live.

I guess  the ESE’ers like us will just have to talk amongst ourselves because ‘most’ people don’t want to hear it.

It’ll be our little secret.

John

A weird thing keeps happening to me and my friend (who also happens to pay attention to calories in vs out) at some of the local coffee shops that we frequent. I routinely get served MORE food than I order.

Love these things, about 60-80 calories each! Effin' awesome

As many of you know my only rule for weight loss is calories in vs calories out, and the way I lost all of my weight was to stick to this one rule (37 pounds lost so far).

Half of this rule requires me to have at least an educated guess at my calories in. So when I order a coffee with a milk and sugar I have a pretty good idea how many calories are in that coffee. And I like to have something sweet with coffee so I order 3-4 timbits to go with it (which are about 60-80 calories each). And this is where it gets weird.

Even though I’ll only order 3-4 timbits, the person at the counter will give me 4-5 and sometimes even 6. This doesn’t sound like a big deal and they probably think they’re doing me a favor, but in reality their effing up my weight loss progress (because I can’t resist eating them all…which is why I only order 3-4 in the first place)

Each one of these little balls of heaven are between 60-80 calories so I pay close attention to how many I have with a morning coffee so I know how many more calories I can consume at lunch/dinner or whenever I eat again.

Every time the server gives me an extra 2-3 timbits I end up eating an extra 100-150 calories I wasn’t planning on.

This brings up an interesting thought experiment about what is socially acceptable when it comes to eating and food.

So far you and I and most people would agree that it’s perfectly fine to serve someone MORE food than they’ve ordered or paid for (getting stuff for free is almost never a bad thing)…But imagine if someone did the reverse.

Picture this:

You walk up to the counter and place the following order: “I’ll have a large coffee with 2 creams and 2 sugars, and 5 timbits”

and the server looks at you and says: “how bout I give you a small coffee with no cream and a sweetener and 1 timbit”

This obviously would be completely unacceptable (even tho it might actually help you lose weight)

Ironically we live in a society where it is perfectly acceptable to help overfeed people who are overweight or trying to lose weight (and thus make their weight gain worse and crippling their chance to ever lose weight), but it would be completely unacceptable to deny serving food to people who clearly could afford to drop a few pounds.

Messed up.

John

The Claim: The only scientifically repeatable and proven way to lose body fat is to eat less calories than you burn

Answer: FACT

Eating less calories than you burn is the only proven way to lose bodyfat. It does not matter when you eat those calories, or what kind of calories they are, as long as you’re in a deficit you will lose body fat and bodyweight.

This is consistent with all of the known scientific literature in this field and with the laws of physics and thermodynamics.

There is absolutely no other way this can work. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying to you on purpose, or clueless enough that they don’t realize they are lying to you. In either case you should avoid listening to them because they’re out to lunch.

To review, here is a brief list of all the things that absolutely DON’T matter for weight loss:

1. Meal timing
2. # of meals per day
3. Nutrient ratios in each meal (protein, carb, fat ratios)
4. Blood type (probably the most ridiculous of all, if you believe this one you need to get your head checked to be sure your brain hasn’t fallen out)
5. Raw food, veggie, vegan whatever (cook your food or don’t cook it, eat meat or don’t eat meat, none of it matters for weight loss)
6. Saturated fat, trans fats, omega 6 fats or whatever fat you like to hate
7. Eating for the supposed purpose of manipulating hormone levels

I’m sure there are other strategies that I’ve missed, so please feel free to enlighten me on the magic weight loss bullets that I don’t have loaded in my fat blasting revolver! (if you can’t tell…I’m being sarcastic here and poking fun at typical weight loss marketing speak)

So if you’ve ever lost a significant amount of bodyfat and bodyweight you already know that none of this stuff matters, if you’ve never managed to lose weight you’ve got no grounds for making any argument…because, well you just don’t know.

If you want to lose weight, the only way to do it is to keep it simple. I suggest Eat Stop Eat as the best way to do this, but don’t take my word for it, test it out for yourself.

John

The Claim: Certain foods cause you to burn more calories digesting them than others

Answer: FACT

Protein actually has a slightly higher thermic effect than carbs or fat. In other words it takes a bit more energy to digest and metabolize protein. But this effect is minimal and will never help you actually lose body fat.

The thermic effect of protein might add up to at most 10% of the food eaten. In other words, it would be eating 1000 calories in order to burn 100. This is a pointless road to travel if your goal is fat loss.

Just eat less total calories to burn fat, and don’t bother concerning yourself with the composition of those calories.

John

The Claim: Working out your abs will give you a flat stomach

Answer: FACTOID

Your ab muscles are just like every other muscle in your body…that means training them can only make them bigger and stronger.

Working on your abdominal muscles doesn’t flatten your stomach or help reduce the fat in that area, it just makes your abs bigger and stronger.

If you want to see your abs you gotta get rid of the fat on top of them…and the only way to do that is by a caloric restriction.

John

The Claim: Low insulin levels are correlated with a shift to a high percentage of fat burning

Answer: FACT

Although insulin level is correlated to fat loss, it’s not the only hormone responsible for controlling fat storage and burning.

Growth hormone is also essential to cause fat to be released from stores and burned.

In other words, the COMBINATION of low insulin and high growth hormone is the key to releasing and burning fat. Low insulin alone cannot do this by itself.

But none of this is anything you have to worry about because growth hormone will naturally be high when insulin is low (assuming you’re a healthy adult without any diagnosed insulin or growth hormone disorder)

So although this is technically a fact, it’s irrelevant and useless information and focusing on manipulating insulin through weird diets like low carb has caused more harm than good for most people.

John

The Claim: Cardio on an empty stomach in the morning causes you to burn more fat than glycogen

Answer: FACTOID

After an overnight fast (sleeping) you will be burning a higher percentage of fact vs glycogen simply because you haven’t eaten in a while. By the time you wake up your body will have burned a significant amount of the glycogen stored in your liver and will be relying on an increasing amount of fat for fuel.

Doing cardio first thing in the morning on an empty stomach doesn’t make your body burn any more calories than it would have at any other point of the day. Also it doesn’t really change the amount of fat that would be used for that particular exercise.

The time of day is not what determines the fuel used for an activity, the intensity does.

For example, while you are asleep your body burns a high percentage of fat. On the other hand a sprint intervals require predominantly glycogen for fuel.

The time of day of your cardio workout is irrelevant to fat burning as your total calories in vs out will determine if you can reduce your fat stores.

John

The Claim: High Intensity Interval Training causes you to burn more calories than steady state cardio (given the same amount of work)

Answer: FACTOID

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is marketed as the being superior to steady state cardio for calorie burning and fat loss. From a time and efficiency stand point it might work better simply because you can get more work done in the same amount of time. But as far as the total amount of work done there is no difference.

HIIT is useful if you want to get a cardio workout done in a short period of time, but you and I both know most people are doing it for fat loss and not for the cardiovascular health benefit. In which case it’s just a matter of total work done.

The people who market HIIT demonize steady state cardio as if it is something bad for you but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Slower paced steady state cardio is a great way to clear your mind, relax and unwind. There is definitely a place for lower intensity activity like walking or jogging. Anyone who tries to tell you that it’s not good for you is just trying to sell you a HIIT program.

For general health walking at least 30 minutes per day is one of the best things you can do.

And HIIT is just fine too if you like doing it, but if you don’t like it there is no reason to you have to do it.

And a final note, neither of them are any good for fat loss.

John

The Claim: Adding an extra pound of muscle to your body causes you to burn about 50 more calories per day

Answer: FACTOID

Muscle tissue only burns about 5 calories per day. This is a well established scientific fact that you can easily verify with a quick browse through the scientific literature. The most metabolically active tissues are your internal organs (heart, liver, kidneys, brain etc).

There is a persistent factoid that 1 pound of muscle burns all kinds of extra calories and a common number cited is around 50 calories per pound of muscle. I’m not sure where this number comes from because there isn’t any scientific evidence to back this up.

If weight loss is your goal then adding muscle isn’t going to help. You gotta eat less calories.

John

The Claim: Your metabolic rate is determined by your fat free mass

Answer: FACT

Your metabolic rate is most closely correlated with your fat free mass (lean body mass). Your fat free mass is all the parts of your body that aren’t fat (rather obvious explanation)…this includes organs, bones, skeletal muscles and extracellular water.

The most metabolically active tissue of your lean body mass is your internal organs which account for approx 80% of your BMR.

The metabolic activity of your organs is tightly regulated and predictable and there isn’t much you can do to change it. Don’t bother comparing yourself to others (as someone else’s ability to burn calories will never help you burn them)

There are some pretty good metabolic rate calculators online that do a decent job of estimating metabolic rate.

I’m 6′0 tall and about 183lbs and my BMR comes out to around 1900 calories per day which is pretty accurate.

If you use a metabolic rate calculator online don’t bother with the activity factor calculation because they tend to waaay overestimate calories burned from activity. If anything just use the BMR calculated as a general guideline if what you need…oh, and probably go with the lowest estimate you can find as some of the calculators also overestimate quite a bit.

John