How to Lose Fat Successfully

The Human Food Diet Plate

I am in the process of finishing this paper to help my clients understand how to lose fat successfully without having to read a novel-sized diet book (which a lot of folks just won’t do). I thought it might make a nice blog post.

It is NOT grammar checked so be kind when you comment. It also doesn’t flow quite right. Regardless, I hope the info may help you or a loved one understand how the basic processes to lose fat successfully without losing lean mass at the same time. So, please take what you can from it and enjoy!

All comments pro and con are welcomed.

The Serious Strength Real Food, Fat loss Eating Plan

“You are not what you eat. You are what your body does with what you eat.” – Dr. Jeff Volek, PhD, RD

So, you want to maximize fat loss and, at the same time, take in all of the nutrients you need to live most healthfully, right? Right. So let’s get started.

Important note: Fat loss should be an outcome of healthful eating. It should not come about by counting calories or starving yourself. Though many people use these approaches with some degree of success, these approaches always fail in the long run. They also cause micronutrient (vitamins and mineral) deficiencies and result in lean tissue (muscle, bone, organs) loss. So please, abandon these approaches to fat loss. They are an unnatural, unhealthy and impermanent approach to becoming healthier and attaining a desirable level of body fat.

Blood Sugar is the Key
Eating healthfully normalizes your blood sugar which in turn allows stored body fat to be used as your primary source of fuel. It also promotes strength building. So again, the main idea of this plan is to reset your metabolism so that your body uses stored fat as its primary source of fuel by keeping blood sugar normal.

To lose fat successfully without losing lean tissue (muscle and bone), it’s best to eat in a manner that keeps your blood sugar levels normal and supplies you with adequate amount of quality proteins. The amount of glucose (blood sugar) that our adult body considers normal is about a teaspoon or, a few grams at most. To put this in perspective, your morning multi- grain muffin can have as much as 10 times this amount. Add this to the sugar in your coffee, your glass of juice, your banana and perhaps that “healthy” bowl of cereal in the morning and you have shoveled more sugar into your blood in the morning than you should eat in a week. Most people are completely unaware of this.

When you keep your blood sugar normalized, this keeps your level of a hormone called insulin normal. This in turn allows more fat to freely exit your fat cells and makes it much more difficult to store calories as fat.

According to the current edition of Lehninger’s Principles of Biochemistry, when blood insulin levels are high, fat is more readily stored in the adipocytes (fat cells) and is less available for usage:

“High blood glucose elicits the release of insulin, which speeds the uptake of glucose by tissues and favors the storage of fuels as glycogen (sugar) and triaglycerols (fat), while inhibiting fatty acid mobilization in adipose tissue.”

What this means is this: the more foods you eat that raise your blood sugar, the higher you will raise your insulin levels. When insulin is high, you will potentially store more body fat and less body fat will be burned as fuel.

Believe it or not, you now know more than what 95% of all registered dieticians know on how lipids (fat) are stored and used for fuel. What you need to know now is which foods cause the problems and which foods don’t.

What to Eat and What Not to Eat
The foods that skyrocket blood sugar and thus raise insulin levels the most are grain-based, refined, starchy/sugary carbohydrates. If you can avoid eating these foods, you will achieve your fat loss goals much faster. If you don’t, you probably will not be able to obtain your fat loss goals. For some people, perhaps for you, these sorts of foods can be an addiction. Carb addicition is real and if you feel that you are one so afflicted, please read the book Wheat Belly by Bill Davis M.D. (referenced below).

The acceptable foods on the Serious Strength Real Food Diet are as follows:

All animal matter (e.g., all poultry, all beef, all lamb, all pork including bacon, whole eggs, venison, all fish, shellfish, organ meats, etc.)
All non-starchy plant matter (e.g., leafy greens like kale, chard, spinach, lettuces, cabbage, asparagus, artichokes, Brussels sprouts, celery, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, peppers, rhubarb, etc.)
Fibrous fruits (e.g., strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, tomatoes, avocados, etc.)
Fruit Oils/animal fats (e.g., butter, coconut oil, lard, tallow, olive oil, macadamia oil, avocado oil)
All herbs and spices

The non-acceptable foods that you would do best to avoid are as follows:
All grain-based foods (e.g., rice, bagels, muffins, breads, oatmeal, pasta, etc.)
Legumes (e.g., peanuts, soy, beans of all kinds)
Starchy/sugary fruits/gourds (e.g., bananas, plantains, papaya, mango, figs, dates, grapes, squash, etc.)
Tubers (e.g., potatoes, yams, taro, cassava, yucca)
Nuts
All dairy (e.g., milk, cream, cheeses, etc.)

Fatty Protein Intake
If you don’t eat adequate fatty proteins (e.g., salmon, lamb, beef, whole eggs, etc.) on a daily basis, you won’t be able to maximize the benefits of resistance training. You also will not enjoy robust health. All human beings require adequate amounts of amino acids derived from fatty protein sources to build cells of all kinds including muscle and bone cells.
You should strive to take in at least 1 gram of quality protein per pound of lean body weight. We will help you determine what your lean body mass is with our computerized body composition device and then will give you an amount of protein to shoot for. You don’t have to count protein grams. It’s actually very simple to eat the right amount of protein.

For example, if you’re lean body weight is 100 pounds, you want to take in about 100 grams of fatty protein per day.

So you could eat:
Breakfast: 3 eggs, 2 slices bacon = ~30gms.
Lunch: Order of sashimi = ~40 gms
Dinner: 4 oz. hamburger, other cuts of beef, pork or lamb = ~27gms.
You could also drink a protein shake of your choice – preferably one that is low in carbohydrates. To provide some fat to the shake, you can add a raw egg or two (if you trust your eggs) or a tablespoon of coconut, olive, flax or MCT oil which stands for “medium chain triglycerides.” A company called NOW makes high quality MCT oil. A quick Google search and it will come up right away. But do not use vegetable oils because they are unhealthy.

So remember, eating refined carbs like bread, pasta, bagels, cakes, cookies and other starch-based carbs like rice, potatoes, oatmeal, beans, etc. increases blood sugar higher than normal which as we’ve discussed, raises insulin and this tells your body to store fat and to keep it locked in the fat cells.

Replacing these foods with high quality fatty proteins like lamb, salmon, beef, eggs, chicken, turkey, pork, etc., and leafy greens and other vegetables tells your body to release fat from your fat cells to be used as fuel and build muscle, bone and other vital tissues. Eating in this manner not only promotes speedy fat loss, but will improve your overall health to a marked degree. Your doctor will be pleased indeed.

Use this knowledge to your advantage!

Strongly suggested readings:
The Protein Power LifePlan by Drs. Michael and MaryDan Eades
The New Atkins for a New You by Drs. Volek, Phinney, Westman
Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes
Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis

Health Magazines are Full of S**t

Uh yeah, right...

Don’t even dream about losing fat this fast. It’s horse-hockey my friends.

When approached correctly, fat loss is a slow process. Very slow. At best you can lose about a pound, maybe two per week.

This is especially important to understand when you’re not that over fat to begin with. Patience is a virtue.

Try to purge your mind of what you believe is possible and instead, realize what is actually possible. I hear clients say all too often “Well Fred, it’s just that I thought I’d lose a lot more weight by now.” “Four pounds of fat loss in 4 weeks is excellent Susan. What did you expect to lose?” “I dunno – just more.”

But when politely and patiently pressed, the typical unrealistic client will say something like “Well, I was hoping to lose 15-20 pounds this month.”

Where, oh where, did they get this idea from?

You guessed it – the ragazines.

Photo shopped and air brushed to the max!

Not one statement on the cover of this magazine is true – save for one that I happen to agree with.

So remember – fat loss is a slow, gradual process. If you’re losing a half-pound to a pound a week on the scale, you’re doing fantastic! Relish in your efforts and discontinue your magazine subscriptions. The pages inside of these ragazines aren’t fit to pick up your dogs poop with. Slow and steady wins the fat loss race.

A man who is a master of patience is master of everything else.
– George Savile

A Calorie Isn’t a Calorie. But Colpo Remains Colpo.

See! A calorie IS a calorie – NOT.

The above chart is taken from the infamous 1956 study by Keckwick and Pawan. Their paper is just one of the many papers that does a very good job of showing that calories in is not, by any stretch, the total story of how we gain fat.

A recent study by Ludwig and colleagues supports these findings via a different experiment. It is a never before tried experiment according to Gary Taubes and many are singing it’s praises.

However, the verbally colorful personal trainer Anthony Colpo doesn’t agree. He blogged on it and, according to him, the paper doesn’t add to the growing body of evidence that low-carb diets offer a metabolic advantage to fat loss. Or by inference, the ingestion of different types of calories (protein, fat and carbohydrates) do not affect our hormones differently. In other words, to Colpo, there is no advantage to fat loss by eating a low sugar/carb diet over say a low fat high carb/sugar diet. To him, fat loss or gain is essentially a matter of calories in/out and that there is no metabolic advantage to low-carb diets at all.

Talk about living in the stone age.

In the blog, Colpo (referred to as AC from now on) was alerted by a fan of his that Dr. Eades applauded this study by tweeting about it. He poked fun at Dr. Eades by saying that “real men don’t tweet.” I noticed that for some time now, AC hasn’t allowed comments on his blog. I’d like to state for the record that real men allow blog comments.

I won’t get too into how wrong AC is on the entire subject. I do want to point out how incorrect he is with respect to the cortisol/CRP issue in the study which he believes were raised to heart attack, muscle wasting levels in the low carb group. An epic fail in thinking if you ask me.

He states:

If heightened catabolism and inflammation constitute an ‘advantage’, then I’ll give it a miss, thank you. I’ll stick to my highly disadvantageous regimen of intelligent nutrition and regular exercise that sees me maintain with minimal fuss the kind of single-digit bodyfat levels most low-carb devotees will only ever be able to dream about.

How humble. The logical fallacies he commits here boggle the mind. So you’re lean – so what? I have friends who eat crap all day and are lean. It’s entirely beside the point.

And sorry AC, none of the groups experienced any abnormal increases in CRP levels including the low-carb group. CRP is a measure of systemic inflammation. As for cortisol, a stress-related hormone, all levels in all groups were well within the norms.

The researchers state in their discussion (the bolding is my doing):

Although the very low-carbohydrate diet produced the greatest improvements in most metabolic syndrome components examined herein, we identified 2 potentially deleterious effects of this diet. Twenty-four hour urinary cortisol excretion, a hormonal measure of stress, was highest with the very low-carbohydrate diet.

Highest yes, but high? Heck no.

What they don’t say, for whatever reason, is that none of the levels measured for CRP or cortisol reached abnormally high levels. Not even close. The levels in ALL groups were well within the norms. Heightened catabolism AC? Poppycock. In fact, all groups saw a significant improvement in their CRP levels, with all groups falling into the normal range, which neatly tucks them into the low risk category for CRP / cortisol measures.

It’s literally insane for the researchers to say “We identified 2 potentially deleterious effects of this diet…” especially considering the statement that I bolded above. As I see it, the researchers, as well as AC, want to make something big out of absolutely nothing. You can almost smell their disdain for the low-carb hypothesis.

Here are the CRP facts:

Baseline average = 1.75 (slightly elevated)
After:
Low-fat average = 0.78 (normal)
Low-glycemic average = 0.76 (normal)
Low-carb average = 0.87 (normal)

Cortisol (below 100 is considered normal):

Baseline average = 58
After:
Low-fat average = 50
Low-glycemic average = 60
Low-carb average = 71

Frightening eh?

Maybe AC and the researchers should read the study before talking about it.

AC also points to a study by Miyashita and colleagues which he calls the “knock-out punch” to the low carb metabolic advantage hypothesis. Really – the knock-out punch?

Considered by many to be a flawed metabolic study, it actually shows a bunch of metabolic advantages to a low-carb diet. It’s true that it didn’t show significant differences in weight loss. And this is interesting. But in just over four weeks, it’s certainly nothing close to a knock-out punch.

The researchers conclude:

These results suggest that, when restrict diet was made isocaloric, a low calorie/low carbohydrate diet might be more effective treatment for a reduction of visceral fat, improved insulin sensitivity and increased in HDL-C levels than low calorie/high carbohydrate diet in obese subjects with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Hmm. If this paper is what he considers a knock-out punch to the low-carb metabolic advantage, AC must have a glass jaw.

Getting back to the cals in/cals out issue, last I checked our stomachs don’t “burn” food the way calories are burned and calculated by burning food in a calorimeter. The digestion of foods is a complex process. How our bodies manage all that is mind-boggling. But don’t be fooled – it is not nearly as simple as “eat 500 calories less per day than what you need to stay at your current weight and you’ll lose a pound of fat in a week.” No siree.

I’ll use the same pic that AC did:

Enzymes and hormones regulate/control how we gain fat, lose fat, gain muscle, lose muscle, on and on and on.

In this paper, if you look to table 4A, you’ll see excess calories but with low rice protein in the diet as the source of protein. Of the 10 subjects fed excess calories, yet low rice protein, five of them lost weight, two had no change in weight and only three gained weight but the gain was piddly.

In the group fed the amount of calories but less protein than they required, they all LOST weight.

In table 4B, protein was once again lower than what the subjects required, but this time from eggs. Lo and behold, the group fed the amount of calories that was supposed to be a maintenance level, all LOST weight. The group fed excess calories did gain weight as did the subjects in the rice protein group but the gain was not statistically significant. One of the six lost weight with excess calories with low egg protein.

But hey – there must be something wrong with all these papers because, like Anthony Colpo keeps screaming from down under, there is no metabolic advantage to low-carb. All calories regardless of the type will make you fatter or leaner only due to the total amount that you eat or burn off.

Right. Sure. Uh-huh.

In this paper, It demonstrates that as long as carbs are restricted, overfeeding fires up the machinery to burn/use fat in basically the same way caloric restriction does.

Perhaps Colpo would enjoy reading and hopefully understand this blog by Dr. Richard Feinman, a man that Colpo lumps into what he calls the MAD men (metabolic advantage dogma) believers. But it’s not a matter of belief as you can see from the above evidence. It’s a matter of fact.

When ingested, a calorie isn’t just a calorie. Or perhaps it was best said by Dr. Jeff Volek:

You are not what you eat. You are what your body does with what you eat.

Your thoughts?

Statin Attack

Statin side effects are listed on the far right hand column

One of our clients, we’ll call him Bob, said to me today during his training session “Hey Fred. I’m a perfect case study for you.” Not knowing what he meant exactly, I said “Cool Bob. Tell me after your training session is over.”

So after his sesison I said, “So Bob – what’s this case study thing all about?” I thought he was going to tell me that he finally adopted a full-blown ketogenic diet and was losing more fat now than ever before. But no. He told me his doctor put him on statins.

Frednuttyface

As my face began to twist and disfigure, he said “Hold on now Fred don’t have a kanipshin, let me explain.”

Before I go on, in case you’re interested, I have blogged on the issue of statins before here and here. It’s all bad. And I truly believe that statins will go down in history as one of the biggest pharmaceutical health blunders of all time. Profitable? Hell yeah. Healthful? Hell no.

Back to Bob. Bob said that just a few days after taking the statins – just a few days mind you – he began to feel aches and pains in his hips and back. He thought it might be due to the new lumbar support pad we installed on the MedX leg press machine but this is highly unlikely. The pad is specifically designed to ease the discomfort some people experience in the hip and back area, which it has for many. In fact, the only other person who has complained of pain while using it is also on statins.

He told his doctor about his aches and pains and his doctor told him to give it a month. Give what another month? The doctor said nothing to Bob about the possible and likely side effects from statin treatment. Since what Bob was experiencing were common side effects, I find it completely unacceptable that he recommended Bob wait, in pain, for 30 days!

The pain continued. But not just the pain.

At Serious Strength we keep extremely accurate records of people progress. Here is an example of a typical progress card:

Typical client progress chart

As the month went on, we could easily see Bob’s strength begin to plateau and then plummet. After the 30 days ended, Bob told the doc all about this and the doctor replied: “Give it another 30 days.”

And like a good patient, he did. And Bob’s condition continued to worsen.

He said to me that he felt like he was 80 years old. He said that he had great trouble walking up and down stairs or exerting himself. He said he felt like he was 80 years old. He said that he felt like he was 80 years old. (Yes I said this three times on purpose.) So, what did his doctor tell him after the second month of pain and suffering?

He told him had the flu. The flu. The flu. (Said three times on purpose again.)

“A virus?” Bob said quizzically (I’m expressing it like this from the way Bob told me the story – I was not at any of his doctor visits of course.) He asked the doc to check his temperature (yes he had to ask the doc to do this) since if you have a virus you’ll have a fever. Lo and behold, no fever. But the doctor offered no alternative explanation.

Bob went home and tossed the meds in the trash can where they belong.

After just a few days, Bob began to feel better and better. His strength is on the rise. He is now almost back to where he was. Hopefully, his short stint on statins has not caused any permanent neurological damage.

He’s firing his doctor this week he said. I applaud this action. As I see it, he should pour a bottle of statins down the doctors gullet and make him wait 60 days to see how he feels.

The saddest part of all is how many thousands if not millions of other people are suffering from these effects as I write this and don’t have people who understand what is going on to help them. You certainly can’t rely on your doctor to tell you, that’s for sure.

Might you be one of these people or know someone who is? Forewarned is forearmed.

Your thoughts?

Weight Lift to Lose Weight

(Hat tip to How Stuff Works for this photo.)

But brothers and sisters, you have to be careful not to trust the scale too much. Here’s why.

When you lift weights, you build strength, muscle and bone.

When you build muscle and bone, you become denser and heavier.

When you become denser and heavier, you weigh more. But your body composition, meaning, the ratio of lean mass to fat mass changes for the better. So just because your body mass index goes up, you are better off. (See the above pic.) In other words, if your fat mass doesn’t change, it’s always better to have more muscle and bone.

If you manage to add five pounds of muscle and bone to your person (which is a fairly easy thing to achieve after a few months or even less of weight lifting), all without losing fat, the scale will rise. But it is my experience after many years of training people that even though you might not alter your diet to maximize fat loss, you will still shed a few unwanted pounds by weight lifting.

The reasons are pretty clear – more muscle increases metabolic rate a bit and it also allows your body to regulate blood sugar better. A lot better in fact. And the better you regulate blood sugar, the more fat will be used for fuel.

Now, the combo of weight lifting and low sugar/carb eating is the very best way to lose fat and build a physique/figure. If you don’t think so, than you had better get thee to Amazon and pick up a copy of Dr. Jeff Volek and Dr. Stephen Phinney’s new book The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance It’s fantastic.

As I see it, private personal training conducted by a qualified personal trainer, is well worth the money spent. Training three times a week in your own home will not equal a single session with a good personal trainer on professional equipment. Spend the money you normally wood on junk and such on one weekly private personal training session. That’s what money is for – for making you a better you. Here is a list of quality gyms that I will vouch for. (I get absolutely NADA for referring you to any of these facilities so you know.)

So nope, there’s no devil living in your scale if it goes up after a few weeks of weight lifting. I have armed you with knowledge. Go forth and use it to your advantage!