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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

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine and she brought up the most interesting thought experiment for weight loss.

No weight gain for no weight loss?

Imagine you were granted the power right now to never gain another pound of fat for the rest of your life no matter what or how much you ate? Would you take it? <– I think the answer for most of us is a resounding YES…but then she threw a little twist into it…and it goes like this…

BUT, this same power also makes it impossible for you to ever lose another pound of fat for the rest of your life.

In other words, would give up your ability to ever lose fat again for the power to never gain fat again from this day forward no matter how much food you eat?

Do we have a deal?

Please answer in the comment section.

John

#3 – Cardio type training is better than weight training for helping with long term fat loss

Answer: FALSE

Exercise in general doesn’t really do much of helping weight loss. Recent research shows that adding cardio type exercise to a weight loss diet doesn’t increase the weight loss results.

Cardio or weight training doesn’t really affect weight loss. It’s essentially always comes back to diet, and calories in vs calories out.

John

I just read an article about a weight loss survey that showed doctors were no more educated about effective weight loss than the average person.

So this inspired me to make my own little True or False weight loss survey here.

Are you ready to test your weight loss knowledge?

Each question is a true/false type.

Answer each one on the comments section by putting the number of the question first and either a “T” for true, or an “F” For false. (so if you think the answer to question #1 is true you would just put the following in your comment: 1 – T)

We’ll tackle all of the answers next week.

So lets get started with the True of False fat loss quiz:

#1 - You can’t lose weight without doing some sort of exercise

#2 – Eating below your daily metabolic rate of calories will cause you to lose muscle

#3 – Cardio type training is better than weight training for helping with long term fat loss

#4 – Adding muscle mass through weight training helps accelerate fat loss/weight loss

#5 – You must eat “healthy” foods to lose weight (chocolate, donuts and pizza will ruin weight loss results)

#6 – High carb and low carb diets are equally effective for weight loss

#7 – Rapid weight loss from severe calorie restriction will ‘damage’ your metabolism and cause you to regain all the weight and possibly even more weight once you stop the diet and go back to eating for weight maintenance.

#8 – Weight loss works fundamentally different in men than women (in other words, a weight loss diet/exercise program that worked for a guy won’t necessarily work for a woman)

#9 – Effective weight loss is a result of an increased metabolism

#10 – Obese people have slower basal metabolic rates than non-obese people

Please put your answers in the comments section, and I’ll take up all the answers next week on monday.

John

The way you or I lose weight is very simple. We just need to eat less calories than we burn off.

How we go about doing this is where all the challenge comes in. Every new diet method and exercise program is just another means to the same end…and that is a calorie deficit.

So all that you need to do is choose how you would like to do this.

The first and most important step is social support <– call it your fat loss team. This is just a core group of people who will be on your side and help you stick to your plan.

Second step is the plan itself. It doesn’t matter at all what plan you choose as long as the end result is less food. You can do high protein, special meal timing, fasting, whatever…as long as you end up eating less and most importantly can stick to the plan. This is where strategies like Eat Stop Eat are very effective because it is so simple to follow (but you may want to try something else that has more structure and more rules)…the plan is really up to you to choose. The key is finding one that fits with your style of doing things. Do you want it free flowing like Eat Stop Eat, or more regimented with more rules and guidelines.

Third, set a goal and see it through to its end. Without a set goal there is a good chance you’ll just put your weight loss adventure off for another time in the not so distance future. But that just means you’ll never do it. Therefore you need to set a simple goal like: losing 10 pounds in the next 2 months.

It doesn’t even matter if you lose all 10 pounds, all that matters is that you try. If you only lose 5 pounds, that is still 5 pounds more than if you never tried at all!

The bottom line is weight loss isn’t rocket science, if anything it’s social science…and to make it work you need all the support you can get.

Get your weight loss team together, pick any weight loss program you like, set a goal and a deadline and go get it.

Once you get to the day of the deadline, assess your progress, take a break for a few weeks and decide where you want to go from there. This is how just about everyone who has ever lost a significant amount of weight has done it.

No magic, just effort.

John

I just got back from the gym this morning and I can’t help but feel a little sorry for all the people who are spending boat loads of cash on personal trainers, but look the same day in and day out.

I workout around 7:30am-8am most weekday mornings, and at this hour the gym is mostly populated by personal trainers with their clients. Me and my training partner are two of the only people there who aren’t accompanied by a trainer from the gym.

Between our sets I just scan the room and check out what each trainer is doing with their clients and this is when the problem with the ‘fitness’ industry becomes evident.

The people who are working with trainers are almost always overweight, and clearly their goal is to lose weight, so they hire a trainer hoping that they can exercise the weight away. But you and I both know this is highly unlikely. (there is good scientific evidence to back this up too, but thats for another day)

The trainers have these people doing all kinds of elaborate cross training routines and making them do workouts worthy of a football conditioning camp. But all of this is a vain attempt to force more calorie burning in their strictly defined one hour training session.

I don’t care how hard you work in that one hour, there is no chance these people are ever going to experience any real change in their body weight or body fat levels unless they make a big change in their eating habits as well.

And that is the trick to all of this. Losing weight is essentially free! Actually it’s better than free, you should end up saving more money because you’ll be consuming less food.

So as you lose weight your bank account should actually grow. <– this unfortunately doesn’t happen with the multitudes of people who waste money on personal trainers hoping to exercise away their excess body fat.

Instead these people end up spending hundreds or thousands of dollars and don’t lose a pound.

The bottom line is weight loss comes from a change in your eating habits, namely eating less food.

Exercise is obviously good for your overall health and you should be active every day, but don’t expect weight loss results from exercise alone.

Anyone who has experienced real weight loss can attest to this. I’m just wondering what all the personal trainers will do when more people figure this out.

John

This past weekend was thanksgiving for us folks up in Canada (I have no idea why we have a different date for this…actually, I don’t even know why we celebrate it…but whatever)

Anyway, needless to say there was lots of food and I ate a lot of food.

And then I got to thinking. How much food would I have to eat to gain 1 pound of fat this weekend?

The answer is ALOT.

Lets assume my basal metabolic rate burns approximately 1800 calories per day (this is probably pretty close)

So that means if I eat 1800 calories today I won’t gain weight or lose weight, I’ll just stay the same.

Lets also assume that 1 pound of fat has approximately 3500 calories in it. (based on the calculation of 9 calories per gram of fat)

Putting these two numbers together gives us 1800 + 3500 = 5300

That means I would have to consume 5300 calories this past sunday in order to gain 1 pound of fat. (the real number is probably slightly higher as there is a metabolic cost to actually laying down/building those fat cells)

I highly doubt I ate 5300 calories on sunday. But today my bodyweight is almost 4 pounds higher than it was before sunday dinner. (so it would appear as though I gained 4 pounds of fat)

Most of my weight gain is the food itself being in my gut, and a large amount of water that gets stored and retained along with the food.

Over the course of the day today I’ve been slowly losing weight and I’m down almost 2 pounds. I’ll bet by wednesday I’m back down to my pre-thanksgiving dinner weight.

It takes quite a bit of food to actually gain an extra pound of fat. But most of us gain fat slowly over time by overeating a few hundred calories every day.

Add in holidays, and a night or two out each week and it’s no wonder that most people seem to gain weight without noticing.

If you don’t purposefully take a day off of eating ala Eat Stop Eat, or at least take a day or two to eat very low calories to offset the overeating that happens on the weekends and at special events, there is almost no chance that you will ever be able to lose weight.

Just remember, for every day you overeat, you have to add in a day of under eating just to avoid gaining weight.

If you want to  LOSE weight you have to add in a second day of under eating.

This is the whole trick with weight loss and the reason fasting works so well.

John

P.S. Even though my bodyweight went up, my waist measurement stayed exactly the same.

I was just chatting with a client the other day about weight loss and the challenges he is facing with it.

It seemed that most of his issues with weight loss had to do with things like the social atmosphere at work, going out for lunch with his co-workers, eating dinner with his family and other people who are not interested in trying to lose weight, passing by his favorite coffee shop in the morning and stopping in for a coffee and a muffin. Social events on the weekend and going out for dinner and a few drinks.

Sounds pretty standard to me. These seem like the same issues most people would have with weight loss. They sure are the same hurdles I’ve had to overcome to ever cut down my body fat so I can certainly relate.

But when we started to talk about muscle building the story seemed to change direction.

When it came to muscle building he was doing everything he could to try and build up muscle. He was hitting the gym faithfully 3-4 times per week, lifting heavy weights, doing the ‘big lifts’, taking a post workout shake, eating plenty of protein, even timing his protein, shakes and creatine doses etc…

But none of this fancy stuff seemed to matter and did very little for helping him build muscle faster.

And then I realized there is a huge misconception with fat loss vs muscle building.

Fat loss (or fat gain) is largely controlled and influenced by your environment.

Building Muscle (or not) is largely controlled by your genetics.

Following a well designed weight training program is about all you can do for building muscle. The gains come slow, and are determined by your genetics and your age. There really is nothing else that can influence muscle gaining (besides steroids).

Arnold and the boys knew that the workout was king for muscle building

On the other hand fat gain or fat loss is hugely impacted by your surroundings, who you eat with on a day to day basis, the eating and food culture in your country, your city, your place of work, and especially your family and house.

I think many of us recognize how much our environment can influence our ability to gain or lose fat, and assume it also has the same ability to influence our ability to gain muscle. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

If you’ve ever tried to lose a significant amount of fat you’ll know exactly what I am talking about. The workout or your genetics plays an insignificant role in weight loss compared to your ability to avoid going to that coffee shop for the muffin, or out with your buddies for wings and beer, or have a second helping of food at dinner, or go out for lunch with your co workers etc.

To sum it up, successful weight loss seems to be a matter of controlling and overcoming the influences of your environment.

Building muscle successfully without gaining fat is a matter of accepting the limited control you have over this process and accepting that hard work in the gym is all you need to do, and have the patience to let the gains come over time.

John

P.S. I have found Eat Stop Eat to be the easiest way to lose body fat and get control over the food environment that I live in.