The 3 Forgotten Keys To Fat Loss

Transcription

1 The 3 Forgotten Keys To Fat Loss My Chart Said Obese. I Laughed. She Slapped Me In The Face It s not funny Sean, she said angrily. You re too young to let yourself go. Ok, so she didn t actually slap me, but it sure felt like one. I couldn t really be obese could I? Me? As a self-pronounced nutrition nut. How could that possibly happen? It was hard to believe, but it was the truth. And I had to face it, with my good friend patiently waiting for my response. She was a personal trainer, she knew her stuff. I knew there was no arguing with her at this point. You re too young to have a gut. She said. Yea, you re right, I ve gotta turn this around, this is ridiculous. I said with a newfound resolve. But how did I get a gut to begin with? Well, I ll tell you that having a pregnant wife makes that process really easy. It s very simple to get overwhelmed, stop paying attention to what you re eating, or convince yourself that it doesn t

2 matter. It s strangely common for guys to experience sympathy weight gain when your wife is pregnant. And I experienced that, big time. But I was grateful for the wakeup call. The good news is, I did know how to lose fat. And I knew how to do it in a relatively pain-free and healthy way. I knew I wasn t going to be sweating it out in the gym day after day (I don t have time for that.) And I knew I wasn t going to compromise good tasting food (I love to cook.) I also knew I wasn t going to go extreme and cut out sugar, saturated fat, or do anything drastic like cut out carbs completely. I knew the secrets to fat loss. And now I actually weirdly had an opportunity to put them to use on myself. Long story short, I am no longer obese. I can see my abs again. And it didn t take much more than a few months, and a little attention to my diet. I didn t change most of the way I ate in general. And no one around me knew that I was on a diet. I was eating chocolate, pizza, soda, drinking wine, and all the stuff you shouldn t do on a diet. All I was doing was paying close attention to the secrets of fat loss that I knew to be true. So what are these secrets to fat loss? Here s the biggies: 1.) When you eat fat it gets stored as fat on your body, almost 100% of it. 2.) You only lose fat when you burn more fat in a day than you eat. 3.) Calories matter, but what matters even more is how much fat you're burning, compared to how much fat you eat. How do you know how much fat you're burning in a day? Well you won't find an exact number unless you go to a super fancy lab and get hooked up to expensive equipment. But we can make some educated guesses based on knowledge about what makes your body burn more fat every day, or less fat every day. All we really need is a starting point.

3 And yes, everyone's body is different. Many factors influence your fat burning ability, but getting a starting point will at least get you going, and then we can adjust course later if you need to. So what influences how much fat you burn in a day? On average: 1.) The fewer carbohydrates you eat, the more fat you burn. 2.) The more exercise you do, the more fat you burn. 3.) The more muscle you have, the more fat you burn. 4.) Men tend to burn more fat than women, even at rest. 5.) The healthier your thyroid gland and hormone levels are, the more fat you burn. So based on this knowledge we should eat no carbohydrates, exercise all day, gain muscle, take massive doses of thyroid hormone, and become a man. Right? Wrong! :) In theory we could eat no carbohydrates and burn more fat. But careful, that's a trap. Because, unless you're starving yourself if you aren't eating carbohydrates then you're only left with protein and fat as options. And for most people that ends up meaning they're eating more nuts, seeds, bacon, avocados, and other fat rich foods. So even if you do technically increase your daily fat burning ability if you're adding more fat into your diet, that cancels out the fat burning benefit. For example, let's say you normally burn 80 grams of fat a day. And you also eat 80 grams of fat a day, so you're not losing or gaining fat. But then you decide to cut carbs, and your fat burning rate increases from 80 grams a day to 100 grams a day. Which is a pretty big boost, and that looks great on paper. But let's also say now you're not eating 80 grams of fat a day like you were before. You've cut carbohydrates and still need to eat something. So now you're eating more bacon, cheese, nuts, seeds, and avocados, and that 80 grams of fat that you used to eat is now 110 grams of fat. So technically, on paper, you increased your ability to burn fat by cutting down carbohydrates, and now you burn 100 grams of fat a day. But the catch is, you're eating 110 grams of fat. There's a 10 gram of

4 fat excess that is not getting burned. Now you're storing 10 grams of fat on your body every day, because that fat didn't get burned. 10 grams of fat may not sound like a lot. However, over time, 10 grams of fat a day stored will add about a pound of pure fat to your body every single month. Don t get me wrong, cutting carbohydrates can result in successful weight loss. But usually the root cause is from a spontaneous calorie reduction. Why? Because it s hard to find enough to eat when you don t include carbohydrates. So, a low carb diet can result in fat loss despite itself, instead of because of itself. And it is not a healthy option for most people. Plus, eating enough carbohydrates can: Help keep your thyroid hormones active and working strong. (Which can keep your metabolism running fast.) Give you more energy to exercise. (Exercise helps burn more fat.) Preserve muscle. (The more muscle you have, the more fat you burn.) So we seem to have a bit of a paradox going on here. Eating carbohydrates can decrease your fat burning ability, but eating carbohydrates helps increase fat burning ability by keeping your metabolism strong, thyroid hormones working, and preserving muscle mass. The short answer to this paradox is: Cutting carbohydrates does technically increase your fat burning ability, but that fat burning advantage is usually canceled out by people eating more fat when they cut carbohydrates. And then to complicate matters, low carb diets run the risk of losing muscle mass, decreasing thyroid hormones, and losing energy to exercise. So while it is technically a correct statement to say that eliminating carbohydrates increases your ability to burn fat. The reality of the situation is that it doesn't always work out in the long term. What is a better solution? Simply give your body the carbohydrates it needs to keep your metabolism running strong, hold on to muscle, and give you energy. But not so much that you slow down your fat loss too much. It's a balancing act. You have to preserve your body while you're literally using your own body fat for fuel.

5 Most diets are unhealthy because they are so extreme in one way or another. Extremely low calories, extremely low carbohydrates, extremely high exercise, extremely limited food options, or some extreme variation. But one of the diet industries dirty little secrets is that it's often less effort to design an extreme diet, because it's easier to slam the see-saw to one side or the other. It's much more difficult to create balance and make both sides of the see-saw stay suspended in air. That's what we are trying to do here. Keep both sides of the see-saw balanced, and in the air as much as possible. No "brute force slamming" on either side. How are we going to do that? By giving your body: Enough carbohydrates to run smoothly on, but not so much that it slows down fat loss. Enough protein to help maintain your fat burning muscle. Enough fat, but not so much that you eat as much or more than you burn. So how do we figure out what those numbers are? How much carbohydrates to eat? Most people can run on about 200 grams of carbohydrates and fulfill their basic metabolic requirements. Some people need more carbohydrates if they are highly active, or if that's just their personal preference. And no it doesn t matter if you get these carbohydrates from sugar or starch. However, remember, fruit sugar comes with more vitamins and minerals than white sugar. In the case of fat loss, we are not working with an optimal situation. You will be working with less than you may be used to. That is unfortunately the nature of a fat loss diet, and very few people enjoy this process. But we have to go on the lower side of the numbers here to create space for fat to be burned. But once you hit your fat loss goal, you can bring carbohydrates back up to higher levels to maintain your weight. Why wouldn t you gain weight when you increase calories again? Well, although you ll be eating more fat and carbohydrates then when you were losing fat. You re probably not going to be eating in the same unaware way that caused you to gain your unwanted fat to begin

6 with. And hopefully you incorporate some of this daily light exercise into your lifestyle even beyond the fat loss phase. So, as long as you continue to pay at least slight attention to the composition of what you re eating going forward, and adjust as needed. You should be able to find the point where you almost effortlessly maintain your desired weight. And if you get off course, you ll know how to get back to where you want a lot easier especially if you catch it early. Carbohydrate per day recap: Eat about 200 grams a day to keep your metabolism moving while still allowing a good rate of fat burning potential. How much protein to eat? For the majority of people, it is unnecessary to go over 100 grams of protein a day. Unless you are extremely muscular, or highly active with intense exercise like sprinting, weight lifting, or other activities that tear down muscle fiber. The lowest most people should go is 80 grams a day for overall metabolic function, and for retaining muscle. And the highest should be somewhere around 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. So if you weigh 170 pounds, then 170 grams of protein max. Protein per day recap: Eat a minimum of 80 grams, and maximum of 1 gram per pound of your bodyweight. Optimum is around 100 grams. How much fat to eat? If you are eating 200 grams of carbohydrates a day, then your ability to burn fat at rest will be somewhere around 75 grams a day if you are a woman, and 85 grams a day if you are a man. (1,2) We will want to eat about 20 grams under that to make your body burn more fat from your body than you eat in your diet. Therefore slowly burning fat off your body. So for a woman, eating around 55 grams of fat a day would be a good starting point. For a man, eating around 65 grams of fat a day would be a good start. That's actually around 30% of your calories coming from fat, and which is not technically a low fat diet. So you could decrease this a bit if you would like to lose fat at a faster rate. However, going below 20% can get uncomfortable for some and is not usually a great idea.

7 And for fat loss, it doesn t matter if this is saturated fat, or monounsaturated fat, or polyunsaturated fat. For health reasons I would attempt to avoid too many omega-6 fats and rely more on the monounsaturated and saturated fats. But that s another topic all together. Fat per day recap: Men should start at 65 grams of fat per day, and women at 55 grams of fat per day. Total carbohydrate, protein and fat per day summary: Carbohydrate (men and women): 200 grams. Protein (men and women): Minimum of 80 grams. Maximum of 1 gram of your bodyweight. Optimum, 100 grams. Fat: Women 55 grams. Men 65 grams. That s a grand total of about 1,700 calories. Side note: Because 1,700 is not a great deal of calories, it can be important to your health to attempt to find nutrient dense foods to get to your goals. The fewer calories you eat, the less opportunities there are for getting enough vitamins and minerals. Ultimately, this doesn t matter much for weight loss, but it does matter for overall health and vitality. In order to accelerate your fat burning potential, it would be a good idea to add in a bit of exercise. This does not need to be intense exercise, or exercise that leaves you feeling exhausted afterwards. It doesn't even need to be exercise that you change your clothes for. You can literally walk at a moderate pace for an hour. That by itself should burn about 200 calories of pure fat. Or you could do two 30 minute walks. Whatever works for your schedule is the best. If you combine that with doing time tested strategies like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, parking further away than you normally would, using a yoga ball instead of a chair, or adding other low

8 intensity movements. That can add up to a significant amount of extra fat burned. In fact, low intensity activity has been shown to target fat burning more than carbohydrate burning. If you prefer higher intensity exercise like running, or biking, that can fit in just as well. Usually you'll end up doing less time, like half an hour of running, vs. an hour of walking. In the end the higher intensity exercises seem to have a slight calorie burning edge. But most people can't sustain them as long. So just pick the activity that fits your lifestyle the best. If you're doing a low intensity activity like walking, you'll want to do it for an hour or more a day. If you're doing a higher intensity activity, you might find yourself at closer to half an hour a day. However, many people find it more difficult to run every day than walk every day, even if it is technically less time spent when you run. If you would like to retain your muscles as best as possible and burn more calories at the same time doing a basic strength training program at least once a week is a smart idea. If you're only looking to retain muscle, it doesn't need to be more than half an hour, once a week. OK, so how much fat will I burn? This plan is designed to help you target mainly fat loss while retaining muscle, and additionally retaining the carbohydrates in your muscle, which help give you energy. These carbohydrates in your muscles are combined with water, and if you lose those carbohydrates, you also flush that water. Many diets rely on flushing that water out of your muscles, which leads to a lot of weight lost on the scale. However, in reality it's not really fat, and that water weight comes back just as fast as it left. As you may know, fat weighs less than muscle, and water weighs the most per unit of measurement. So even if you lose less weight on the scale, if it's fat that you're losing, you'll probably look better in the mirror quicker. Bottom line, this plan will show much less results on the scale as compared to diets which destroy muscle and dump the water in your muscle as part of their tricks to make the scale weight go down. Some people say just "ditch the scale." I however, think the scale can be a good tool to use to see an overall trend. While it may be discouraging to see your weight go up and down every day, because no

9 one s weight stays the same every day. You should see the overall trend go downward over time. There is a strange thing that happens when people are losing weight. At some point they stall out, or "plateau." The scale stops going down, and they feel like they aren't burning fat any longer. While this may be true, it often is a result of hormones like cortisol building up. Cortisol is a fairly unavoidable hormone if you are losing fat, it just comes with the territory. And cortisol starts to make you retain water. Not water in your muscles, but water inside your skin, and possibly even in your fat cells, which can make your skin puffier, and fat cells look bigger than they really are. Because water weighs a lot, even if you are losing fat, it may not look, or feel, or show up on the scale like you are. And that's probably due to water retention from hormones like cortisol. The good news is there is a way to help prevent that from happening. Good news: Preventing or flushing under-skin water weight is actually fun. The reason why cortisol may be higher than normal is because cortisol is released when your body isn't getting quite enough energy to stay the same size as it was before. That's good news because that means you're losing fat. But how do you flush that cortisol and water weight under your skin? Simply eat a lot more carbohydrates one day a week, to give your body a break, and to let it stop producing so much cortisol. So one day a week you should probably eat at least double your normal carbohydrate intake. From 200 to 400, or maybe even 500. You'll have to play with this and see what works best. The trick is to not increase your fat at all, or by very little. So if you are normally eating 55 grams of fat, even if you go up to 500 grams of carbohydrates, try keeping your fat at the same level. This will avoid storing any extra fat and offsetting your efforts from earlier in the week. With this method you can have some fun with carbohydrates, and also help prevent too much water weight from making you look fatter than you are. It also helps keep water and carbohydrates inside your

10 muscles. Which not only makes you look more toned and strong, but it can help give you more energy as well. So, with this basic plan you should be losing fat at a fairly steady pace. I mentioned drinking wine earlier, how do you do that and still lose fat? Without going into too much of the mechanics behind it (cause frankly it s kind of boring.) If you simply drink alcohol on your carb-up day, or replace grams of alcohol for grams of carbohydrates in your normal day it should work out where you still are able to lose fat. I wouldn t recommend doing this more than once or twice a week. But it s nice to have as an option. If you feel the need to speed things up First determine if you're storing water weight or if you really aren't losing fat fast enough. But if you have decided you want to accelerate things. Increasing exercise is the best option. But be careful, too much exercise can leave you feeling tired and burnt out. The second best option is to slightly decrease carbohydrates by maybe 20 grams, and decrease fat by 10 grams. That should give a decent fat burning bump without compromising much of your metabolic health. Usually it's better to start out higher and as you get closer to your goal maybe start taking out a little carbs here, and a little fat there. And maybe increase exercise gradually. But as you do this, you may feel yourself getting a bit worn down. So this should only be a short term strategy you use once you're very close to your goal. Once you do reach your goal how do you maintain your weight? Well, everyone is different, and you'll have to watch the scale, and your body. But generally speaking you can try to: Increase your fat slightly, maybe 20 to 30 grams higher. Raise your carbohydrates to 300 or more if you're active. Keep your protein the same as it was before. How do you put all this together into a daily plan?

11 The truth is that diets that demonize specific foods, or cut out entire categories of foods can work because they naturally just reduce calories to a point where you are bound to lose weight. Whether or not that compromises your health, they don t care. They re almost always going to make it look healthy. But it s easier to just avoid foods than it is to create balance. Creating balance takes practice. Just like learning to ride a bike. You re going to need to take some time in the seat and just pedal and fall a bit. But the end result is much more gratifying, and freeing. If you can start to look up the nutrients in your food, and see how many grams of carbohydrate, fat, and protein it has, then you can start putting the pieces together. For example, if for breakfast I have a pack of instant oatmeal, and a low fat greek yogurt. If there s nutritional information on the back then that s all you need. Otherwise, just do a web search for the info. But in the case of oatmeal and low fat greek yogurt for breakfast. That s a total of: Fat: 5 grams Carbs: 38 grams Protein: 21 grams Then let s say you have a turkey sandwich from the deli for lunch. Fat: 12 grams Carbs: 42 grams Protein: 25 grams So now you add the breakfast and lunch together for a total of: Fat: 17 grams Carbs: 80 grams Protein: 46 grams Then just keep adding those numbers together until you hit your goal of 200 carbs, 100 grams of protein, and grams of fat.

12 That means that for the rest of the day you still can eat 38 grams of fat, 120 grams of carbohydrates, and 54 grams of protein. So you could have a big dinner, a snack, and then a medium sized dinner. Or tomorrow you could have a bigger breakfast or lunch. Or however you want to play with it. It s your choice. But you ve got to practice. I spent time doing this, and after some practice I intuitively know how many grams of fat, protein and carbs are generally in a food. Based on that knowledge I can adjust to meet my goals fairly easily. You ll get to that point eventually as well if you spend some time with it. Using an online calorie tracker can be very helpful as well, because they almost always also track protein, carbohydrate, and fat in grams. And as a bonus you can see how you re doing on vitamins and minerals. If you need help, I am available for consultations. I can help you tweak your diet to get even better results with some more complicated strategies. Or we can work together and come up with some meal plans that fit what you already like to eat and can help you hit your goals. I love spending time in the kitchen and I can usually modify any recipe to change around the carbs, protein, and fat. And still taste great. Click here to chat with Sean. Or visit: SeanBisell.com/consultation References: 1. Nagy TR1, Goran MI, Weinsier RL, Toth MJ, Schutz Y, Poehlman ET. Determinants of basal fat oxidation in healthy Caucasians. J Appl Physiol (1985) May;80(5):

13 2. Melanson EL, Maclean PS, Hill JO. Exercise improves fat metabolism in muscle but does not increase 24-h fat oxidation. Exerc Sport Sci Rev. 2009;37: The information in this report is not intended to be used for the diagnosis or treatment of a health problem or as a substitute for consulting a licensed medical professional. Health information should always be carefully reviewed with your health care provider. Sean Bissell will not be held responsible for misuse of information or any adverse effects of recommendations stated in this report.