JohnBarban.com

The Claim: Eating late at night causes you to gain fat.

Answer: FACTOID

Gaining weight is simply a matter of eating excess calories. WHEN you eat those calories is irrelevant. But there is a persistent myth that eating late at night somehow causes you to store more fat that eating earlier in the day. There is no scientific evidence to support this idea.

If you just eat the amount of calories you burn off, then it doesn’t matter at all if you eat all of those calories at night, or in the morning or spread throughout the day.

Total calories is all that matters. So if your BMR is 1600 calories, that means you could eat all 1600 of them at midnight and not gain an ounce of fat.

John

On yesterdays post James mentioned that he might want to go to college to study nutrition because he enjoys learning about it.

No need to go back to school to learn how to lose weight

The important thing James said was that he “enjoys learning about it”. This is probably the only reason to ever study nutrition.

As of 2010 north american (and most industrialized countries) are experiencing the highest rates of overweight and obesity in recorded history…and yet we’ve never ‘known’ more about nutrition and metabolism than we currently do. In other words researching and learning more about nutrition isn’t doing us any good at all with our ability to lose weight. If anything an overall increase in knowledge about nutrition can only be correlated to weight GAIN.

On the other hand studying nutrition isn’t going to help you lose weight if that is your goal. I’ve had many professors in nutrition who were overweight. Knowing about biology and food doesn’t make it any easier to apply even the most basic concept of calories in vs out. In fact a degree in nutrition might actually confuse you more than anything.

Weight loss is just a matter of calories and some degree of self discipline, planning and personal responsibility…none of this is taught in a nutrition degree.

Just to be  clear, here is a list of all the things you DON’T need to know about to successfully lose weight:

You don’t need to know:

what insulin is or what it does

anything about blood glucose

what the glycemic index is or the “gi’ of any food

what a carbohydrate is

what a protein is

what fat is

what paleolithic people ate

what your blood type is

the difference between vegetarian and vegan

where the egg whites are in the grocery store

the ratio of fat/carbs/protein in any food

anything at all about your ‘metabolism’

any superfoods you’ve might have heard of

what anyone else eats

…and I’m sure there are dozens of other useless pieces of information that just get in the way of your weight loss success…

As of 2010 north american (and most industrialized countries) are experiencing the highest rates of overweight and obesity in recorded history…and yet we’ve never ‘known’ more about nutrition and metabolism than we currently do. In other words researching and learning more about nutrition isn’t doing us any good at all with our desire to lose weight. If anything an overall increase in knowledge about nutrition can only be correlated to weight GAIN.

All you need to know is how many calories you’re eating and how it makes you look. If you’re not losing weight then you need to eat less total calories…that’s it.

If your stalled in your weight loss progress I suggest you unsubscribe from any email newsletter lists that preach about the importance anything in the above list.

Get a handle on your total calories and you’ll be on your way.

John

Food is one thing all people have in common…let me re-phrase that…EATING food is one thing we all have in common…and the similarities seem to end right there.

What Are You Eating Over There?

It’s very hard to find two people who eat exactly the same diet. These are all the factors that make up your diet:

1. # of Meal per day (meals, snacks…feedings whatever)

2. Beverages

3. Alcohol or not

4. Cooking style and habits

5. Food selection (limitless combinations of food)

6. Time of each feeding

7. Location (country, city, region)

8. Social events

9. The company you choose to eat with

10. How Much Food You Eat

As you can see there are many factors that go into your daily eating pattern and it’s impossible for a nutrition ‘expert’ to tell you how to structure all of this.

One of the major shortcomings in most popular diets is a set of unrealistic rules that usually ask you to control all of these variables (and probably more that I haven’t listed)

It is simply impossible for most people to change all of these things, and you shouldn’t have to. It is entirely possible for you to lose weight and reach your body shaping goals without radically changing this entire list, except for item #10.

In fact, #10 is the only one you’ll ever have to pay attention to for weight loss. And for muscle building you don’t have to pay attention to any of them.

This is why I find it odd that people are so curious as to what other people are eating. I’ve had many people ask me what I eat. And the answer is pretty boring. There just isn’t any magic to food…it’s just food. It tastes great, it’s great to share with friends and family at social events…but after that, there isn’t much it can ‘do’ for you.

Just remember it’s not what everyone else is eating that matters, it only matters what you are eating and if you’re happy with it.

In the spirit of the title of this post I will throw it out there….”What are you eating?” Please answer in the comment section, and be honest.

I’ll start:

Last night I had 12 chicken wings with half bbq/half suicide sauce, after that a friend of mine brought over some home made pizza (awesome) and I had a few slices of that (mini slices)…I had a hot chocolate and italian wedding soup as well (for lunch)…this morning I’ve had a coffee with milk and sugar and 4 sprinkled timebits (so effin’ good)

John

I was standing in line at the grocery store the other day scanning the magazines at the check out counter and I kept seeing headlines with the words ‘nutrition rules’ or ‘rules of nutrition’.

Follow the Rules or Else!

This is disturbing because people tend to believe things that are written in magazines (I have no idea why)…and when something is presented as a ‘rule’ some people will blindly believe it. I guess some people think that if it’s printed it must be true!?

Fitness and lifestyle magazines use the word ‘rule’ in headlines because it’s powerful and people are always curious to see if they know about the rules or if they can follow them. It just goes to show you how well trained we all are at following instructions and not thinking for ourselves.

It seems that most people however will not investigate the validity of the claimed rule and whether or not it’s worth following at all.

If you go to your local newsstand you can find hundreds of ‘rules’ of nutrition. But are any of them valid or worth following?

Here are a few questions you should ask yourself the next time you see a list of nutrition rules:

1. Who is telling you about these rules and are they a credible source?

2. Are the rules backed by science?

3. What is the consequence if you don’t follow the rule?

4. What is the supposed benefit if you do follow the rule?

5. What is the proof that following the rule will actually produce a benefit?

6. Is it possible to get the benefit without following the rule?

Unless you have a graduate degree in nutrition you will not be capable of answering question #2 but the rest of them are pretty easy to follow up on.

A good example would be any, and I mean ANY weight loss ‘rule’ of nutrition that is any more complicated than calories in vs calories out.

The simplest way to test this rule would be the answer to questions #6 from above.

For example: Can you lose weight without following any of these weight loss nutrition rules:

low carb

low fat

glycemic index control

meal timing

nutrient ratio mixing

raw foods

carb cycling

calorie cycling

blood type dieting

…and on and on…(I think you get the picture)

If you can get the desired result ie: weight loss, without following the rules ie: any of the garbage rules I just wrote above…then you know the rule is bogus.

Apply these simple questions to any ‘rule of nutrition’ and you’ll quickly find out if it’s bogus or worth a second look.

John

The fitness and nutrition “industry” sells supplements, workouts, workout equipment, diet programs, functional food items, magazines and just about anything else they can pin a weight loss, health or muscle building claim on. They are trying to sell you complex systems to believe in.

The industry is selling you dozens if not 100’s of rules and systems you need to follow to lose weight.

But if you go to a scientific conference about exercise or nutrition you’ll see a much different story being told. This is because there is a massive divide between the information that you see and hear on the news stands and websites compared to the real scientific information coming out of academic labs.

The scientific answer to weight loss is simply less calories in vs calories out.

No matter what you hear anywhere on the interweb or anywhere else the answer for weight loss has been and always will be the same. LESS calories.

But how often do you hear this as the answer in the mainstream media? Probably not much.

Or at least you’ll hear it in a convoluted way that involves special ingredients, and special metabolic issues, and meal timing, and carb cycling and protein percentages and timing, and elaborate workout systems and devices and on and on.

This is where the disconnect comes in between science and industry. Sometimes science comes up with an answer that is sufficiently complex enough to build an elaborate product around so marketers can sell you an expensive item.

Other times (as with the case of weight loss) science proves a very simple answer (less calories) which leaves marketers with virtually nothing to latch on to for a good sales pitch. <– really how can anyone make money selling you the answer “less calories”?

This is the current state of affairs of the nutrition and fitness industry divide, and I can’t see an end in sight. Some of you will figure it out and accept the answer, and some of you will refuse to believe it’s this simple and constantly search for more complex solutions to your weight loss question. <– and most likely waste a lot of money along the way trying these things out.

Believing in something doesn’t make it real or true (Just as a child’s belief in santa claus doesn’t make him real)

So believe what you want for weight loss, but that belief doesn’t change the truth which is always the same; and that is less calories in than out.

John

So a friend of mine that was on campus at the university here today sent me a text message that perfectly sum’s up how screwed up and hypocritical our society is when it comes to nutrition  ’education’ vs ‘application’

This is the message she sent me:

“The student nutrition awareness program is giving away candy treat bags for correctly answering nutrition trivia questions…Oh the irony”

This is a perfect example of the big problem with ‘nutrition’ and ‘nutritionism’ information/education.

You and I can read all we want about nutrition, but putting it into practice is a whole different ball of wax. Most people don’t even follow their own advice when it comes to nutrition.

As if the “Student Nutrition Awareness Program” was giving away bags of candy to reward students for knowing something about nutrition. Am I the only person that finds this wholly ironic and completely hypocritical?

As far as I can tell they are missing the whole point of their purpose by doing this.

The only lesson they are teaching here is that an indulgent overly processed lump of sugar and fat is a great tool for a reward mechanism.

This also reminds me of how backwards it is when parents use dessert as a reward mechanism to force their children to eat their whole dinner plate of food first. In this case the parent is reinforcing overeating with overeating.

In other words, the parent is telling the kid to eat more of the food they don’t like and then they will be rewarded with even more food that tastes better…no wonder there is a childhood obesity epidemic.

[I swear some people should need to pass a licensing exam to raise children...but that's for another post...or dozen]

Anyway, this is your friendly and ironic pre-halloween reminder about our messed up societal relationship with food is. If you’re gonna eat Halloween candy, go for it and enjoy it. Then get back to sensible eating on Monday.

Enjoy Halloween, and I’ll be back on Monday.

John

Competitive Eater "Badlands" Booker is never embarrassed about Eating big! Love the helmet, he's gonna need it for that burger!

A friend of mine related a rather embarrassing but revealing story about eating habits the other day.

She was telling us about a barbecue she has just attended, the host was a large woman (around 300 pounds), we’ll call her “Tracey”

Anyway, Tracey wouldn’t eat much at dinner and weighed all of her food, and avoided salad dressing and seemed to have a very strict almost obsessive diet.

This would make anyone wonder how she could be pushing a 300 pound bodyweight if this is really how she eats.

No big deal so far. So here is where the embarrassing part comes in.

Just after the barbecue ended and everyone left my friend realized she had forgot her purse and went back to pick it up. When she walked into the backyard she found Tracey 4/5th’s of the way through an entire apple pie!

Now that is an awkward moment to say the least!

So, the moral of the story is this. If you feel like you need to hide the way you eat from other people, you probably need to make a change.

Secondly, there is no hiding your eating habits from anyone anyway. Did Tracey really think everyone around her believed that she was as strict of a dieters as she was playing up during the barbecue?

People aren’t that dumb, you can’t pull a fast one on everyone around you like that.

The saddest part is that Tracey obviously doesn’t believe anyone will support her or is embarrassed to ask for support with her eating issues.

In reality most people will support you if you ask for it.

Hiding it from everyone is never going to workout and just makes it an even worse and depressing experience when you do in fact eat.

Eating shouldn’t be something you’re ashamed of, it should be something that is fun, social, and celebrated with friends and family.

This is probably the single greatest benefit of Eat Stop Eat. You never have to give up any of the social events that go hand and hand with eating (and you can still lose weight!)

Anyway, I hope people like Tracey can be comfortable eating in front of other people one day soon. It really just doesn’t have to be that way.

John

As you can see from my last post I just finished a 24 hour fast.

Fasting might sound like a contradiction especially considering I am writing about “Balance” today. But it’s quite the opposite.

From all the research I’ve looked at over the years and coming back from the SENS conference on anti aging I’ve come to realize that most of us in the industrialized countries are far out of balance on the ‘too much’ side of things.

Too much food, too much drink, too much alcohol, too much leisure, too much fitness and nutrition information, too much tv etc.

At first glance a 24 hour fast sounds drastic, but when you look at it from the perspective that we all struggle with eating too much, and too often, and are exposed to food marketing and food choices far too much and too often…well then a 24 hour fast doesn’t even sound long enough!

Fasting is just as much a mental as it is physical step towards balancing your body. It provides a sense of control and accomplishment that you can control food instead of food controlling you. That is the mental benefit. The physical benefits are too numerous to list here, but suffice to say it will cause you to burn fat, allow your system a chance to clear out, reduces inflammation, and reduce water retention (to name a few).

So from the standpoint of ‘Balance’. Fasting is something that most people in modern industrialize countries could benefit from.

Even if you’re not interested in weight loss it can provide a new perspective on your relationship with food and how you respond and control your feelings of hunger/appetite and need/desire for food.

If you’ve never tried, it I suggest picking up Brad Pilon’s book Eat Stop Eat and learn how to incorporate short breaks from food into your life.

John