He's not going to lose too much weight this way!

Fat loss is just a matter of having a caloric deficit, this isn’t news (or at least it shouldn’t be news to you). You can create the caloric deficit 3 ways.

1. Caloric restriction

2. Increasing activity/exercise (without conscious attention to calories)

3. A combination of the previous points

Regardless how you create the deficit the fat loss with be the same. It’s probably easiest to focus primarily on restricting food intake and consider any extra exercise induced fat loss as a bonus.

Cutting 500-700 calories in a day is much easier than trying to do 500-700 calories worth of exercise.

So even though theoretically you could try to create a deficit with exercise alone, it is only as effective as your ability to maintain a consistent calorie intake close to BMR.

In other words, you can easily out eat a workout session, but you can never out workout an big eating session (but I think this is what so many people in the gym are trying to do)

The actual pattern of fat loss will be the same no matter what you do to get there, so it’s just up to you to find the best solution that fits with your life. I suggest Eat Stop eat and my soon to be coming out book (shameless plug!

John

I only believe what the read button says

We ended up with a pretty good list of weight loss diets yesterday, thanks for your contribution. So can all of the diets listed work? (of course as long as they get you to eat less calories than you burn). Are all of these complex strategies necessary?…of course not.

But what about the specific mechanism of how they work? Isn’t there an advantage to one style over the other?…nope.

The one that is easiest for you to follow is the one that will work the best for you. For me it comes down to simplicity, the simpler the diet the more effective it is likely to be. (by the way this is also shown in the research to be true)

Most of the diet books you ever come across will be based on a marketing gimmick to sell a new concept, but in the end the only way any diet can actually work is by getting you to consume less total calories.

Think about how impossible it would be to combine some of the diets listed on yesterdays post.

How could you eat for your blood type, as well as eat low carb, and then cycle your carbs (which contradicts the theory of low carb), and then eat low fat (which contradicts low carb and carb cycling and blood type dieting),  and then try to eat ‘zone’ style with a 30/30/40 nutrient ratio split (which contradicts low carb low fat carb cycling and blood type diets), then fast (contradicts all diets), then try to avoid cooking your food, then try Mediterranean dieting (whatever the hell that means), point counting systems like weight watchers (contradict all of these diets) etc…

How could the rules of any of these diets fit together?…They can’t.

The truth is that you can eat whatever you like and lose weight, as long as you eat less than you burn.

And if you’re getting ready to drop me a comment and say (but what about_______ diet)…stop for a moment and look at the diets listed above and how they all contradict each other and yet each one has a list of people who will swear by them as the best way to lose weight. The only way this can be possible is if all of these diets share a common theme, and that is less total calories.

Calories in vs out is not a sexy marketing angle so it has to be hidden behind crazy stories about blood types, specific times of day to eat, evil nutrients and bad foods to avoid, fat burning foods to consume, romanticism about other countries and ways of eating from the distant past etc.

It’s all nonsense. When they’re put to the scientific test the only way any diet produces weight loss is a caloric deficit, the food choices and eating patterns are up to you.

John

P.S. my new diet book is actually going to be about calories in vs calories out. I know that doesn’t sound very interesting but I think you’ll be surprised to see how much more there is to the calorie story…It’s not as simple to count calories as you think.

For many people, a day of eating is either feast or famine

When it comes to dieting I’ve noticed an odd trend with some people. It seems to be a mentality of feast or famine, let me explain.

Do you or someone you know approach the day from the standpoint that if you’re going to eat ‘good’ or on your diet for the day then you can’t have even 1 indulgent food item that day, it’s got to be 100% strictly on the diet program.

And on the flip side, the minute you have 1 ‘bad’ item like a slice of pizza, well the flood gates are open and you might as well finish the pizza and follow it up with a pint of ice cream too.

It seems that some people view eating this way. It’s the idea that if you’re going to eat one ‘bad’ thing today then you might as well just crush a bunch more ‘bad’ things for the whole day. On the flip side if you’ve managed to start the day off eating ‘good’ food or the right foods for your diet then you’re having a good diet day and you try to keep that day going with more good food choices. Making it to the gym for a workout also contributes to this. If you make it to your workout that keeps you on track, but if you skip the workout then all bets are off and you’re heading to McDonalds for a double big mac.

The choice seems to be one of two extremes. It’s either salads and a workout, or no workout and pizza and ice cream.

This of course is a false way of looking at it, but it seems to be a trap many people fall into.Combining the two is the only way to make weight loss manageable for the long term.

John

What are the Weight Loss Rules?

I’m in the middle of writing my new diet book and I need your help with one of the sections. I want to review the validity and research of the most common diet ‘rules’ that you hear about it in the popular diet and weight loss media including magazines, television and online.

I’ve got a short list of rules I want to tackle but I need your input to round out the list and make sure I hit all of the big ones that you’ve heard but aren’t sure about and want the truth about (ex: these are rules like “you must eat breakfast every day to get your metabolism going”)

So please give me your list of the ‘rules’ you’ve heard or read about that you’d like to know the truth about and I’ll include them in the top 10 list in the new book

John

Is this just 'cheating', or is it just a quicker way to get rid of fat?

I heard a story the other day about a bodybuilder who allegedly (I cannot confirm this) gets a bit of liposuction done before a bodybuilding show just to make sure he’s as ripped as possible. The other bodybuilders consider this ‘cheating’ because it’s ‘not fair’.

Now I don’t know if this is just a story or truth, but the reaction of it being considered ‘cheating’ certainly sounds reasonable, but totally hypocritical from bodybuilders who are using testosterone, GH, insulin, T3, clenbuterol, ephedrine and diuretics to get in shape.

Does this mean that bodybuilders consider drugs fair game to get big and ripped, but machines (lipo) not fair?

I’ve also been informed that playboy models get lipo done before a photoshoot just to ‘tighten up’, and that the same model will have the procedure done multiple times before each shoot.

I cannot confirm the bodybuilding story although it sounds feasible, I’ve got a pretty good source to know that the playboy story is true.

Regardless, I would guess most people would feel like liposuction is some form of ‘cheating’.

If it’s just another means to the same end what does it matter?

What do you think?

John