BUFFTITUDE LESSON #4 - WEIGHTLOSS VS. FATLOSS, THERE’S A DIFFERENCE?

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Okay... this is the mother of all reports.... this one is why i told you it is heavy reading.. as you can see... This is less to do with how junjun lost his weight, and more to do with the title below.... Just be prepared for a huge HUGE reading session here!

Let me start off this lesson with a little background. I knew for a long time that the topic for lesson #4 would be weight loss vs. fat loss, but I really didn’t know when ,or how to undertake its writing. What started out as a regular little lesson with me describing my journey, has turned into 21 pages. 6 pages of my experiences, 12 pages of hopefully insightful, understandable and incredibly important technical reading for anyone trying to become healthy, and with the last three pages of reviews and footnote references for the technical writings. First, let me define weight loss and fat loss as used in this writing.

Weight loss as used in this lesson refers to the status quo medical community’s answer of treating people they consider to be overweight, by putting them on a caloric restrictive starvation diet and also telling them to be more active(I have no idea where this program came about or the science or the many myths of nutritional eating and exercising habits that surrounds and engulfs north American society. Personally I have never seen any document/paper/article or any research that states/refers to the dreaded starvation restrictive caloric diets to show that they work permanently, have worked permanently, or will ever work permanently).

Fat loss, as used in this lesson, is a combination of Obesity Medicine(study of obesity as a disease, does lots of research on metabolism, setpoint, habits, and myths), Sports Medicine(proven over and over again to lower body fat %, build lean muscle mass, and optimize performance, and most importantly for us trying to lose weight, to keep the body out of the dreaded catabolic stages), Preventative Medicine(brings into equation of lifetime commitment, wellness, stress control and attitude), Nutrition(low-glycemic carbs, essential and non-essential proteins, EFA-good fats, fiber, vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants, CO-enzymes, need I say more), Kinesiology(the science of human kinetics, the mechanics of the body, the science of exercising), and Biology(self-explanatory). In my opinion, I believe the answers for anyone trying to lose weight properly, can be found with the good doctors/scientists/researchers at these university hospitals/clinics/sport centers/obesity centers etc. etc. etc.

Now Junior, why the need to be so gently with this lesson? The reason is, my recollection tells me that this is the 3rd or 4th time in a row now that my methodology has been scoffed at while I tried to explain to fellow dietwatchers on dietwatch chat what I have done to be successful at fat loss. Unfortunately, the myths and misinformation that permeates and surrounds weight loss immediately dismisses the literature, theories, proof of what I have read, researched, and now experienced for myself in the Fields of Obesity Medicine, Sports Medicine, Preventative Medicine, Biology, Nutrition and Kinesiology.

My program is no big mystery or secret in these medical and scientific fields, there is no secret potion here, it is just the normal everyday way of doing things in getting people healthy and fit in the above fields. I have not discovered anything new or extraordinary, the only thing I might have done differently, is combined what I have found in these 6 medical and scientific fields, and put them together to come up with what I perceive as the best combination for me. My program is an ever evolving and learning experience, as new information are discovered/researched/clinically proven and personally experienced. My program has changed almost every month. It is so different compared to what it was starting January ’98, and by next month, it will again change to adjust to my newer weight and newer goals. For example, after my session with my kinesiologist, my walking will be even more focused on hills, my leg resistance training has been completely revamped, so have my stretches, and so has my shoulder exercises. Plus I see the doc on Thursday, and who knows. One example is the uric acid blood test, this will show if I need more/less protein. Not to mention my vitamin/mineral status, cholesterol status, etc. etc. etc.

You my friends will formulate a different and specific program for yourself. It can be very different from mine or very similar, but for your own sake, please make the foundation rock solid with truths, not myths. I seem to always be repeating this statement over and over again, but I think it needs to be repeated, so here goes. " I do not expect anyone to follow my specific program, it is specific for me. All I ask people to do, is to read and know the difference between weight loss and fat loss, so you can make a more informed decision in making up your own personal program". To me weight loss is like driving into the night without headlights, and when one is tipping the scales at 400 pounds, I needed something more assuring, so I got myself one of those giant 4x4’s.

So I ask this question to everyone, how adventurous are you? For me being almost 37 and needing some stability in my life, I’m gonna choose the sciences, doctors, researchers, universities that are dealing specifically with the problem of becoming healthy and fit.

Anyway, back to the myth thing, just picturing the fat loss 4x4, heh heh heh. I recently confirmed to myself that to give unwarranted advice to strangers is extremely dumb and stupid especially if it goes against the traditional accepted myths of society. as a direct consequence of going up against society’s accepted norms(wrong or right), it appears that the Bufftitude Lessons is the prudent choice of sending out my opinions/advice. The myths are plentiful and extremely hard to dispel, and I will try my best to dispel the myths that pertain to weight loss and introduce everyone to the science of fat loss. There is one myth that I will tackle here and now. I must tackle this myth right now because I have come realize that it goes to the heart of most myths of weight loss, and its this myth that prevents many people from adopting, researching, and acquiring the knowledge to learn the difference between weight loss and fat loss.

The myth I believe has to do with the one word "Athlete". As soon as this word is mentioned, an immediate 50 foot wall barrier pops up out of nowhere, and automatically a defensive or offensive front is formed with this response "but I’m no athlete and I’m not trying to become an elite athlete". Well if you’re not an athlete, then my next question is, "are you sedentary?" Anyone trying to lose weight better not be sedentary, and I can certainly understand that we’re not elite athletes neither. So, what the heck are we ? We are all somewhere on that line between sedentary and Eliteness. As we progress reclaiming our health and fitness, we are also progressively becoming better athletes, and hence we move closer to the eliteness end, and therefore farther away from the sedentary end. Let me expand on this thought below.

Why is this important you ask? When you read the charts, diets, etc. etc. etc., they are what’s referred to as cookie cutters. Meaning one size fits all. Read the small prints on the RDA, the food pyramid, diet recommendations, please read what the recommendations are in reference to, and please, do not believe me, read them for yourselves. In other words, the charts/recommendations are not personalized, they are based on a standard. The standard the majority of times are based a person weighing approximately 170 lb. and is sedentary. Remember, in our pursuance of health, we are active people, and becoming healthier and fitter. We are also becoming better physical beings, and becoming better athletes and getting closer to the other spectrum of eliteness and very importantly, we are also getting farther and farther away from being a sedentary person.

Please remember that everything goes hand in hand, I believe the word is synergy. In other words, if we’re gonna become healthy, the combination of our exercising, eating, sleeping, stress controls, motivation, attitudes, etc. etc. etc. all fit together as one. In other words, the sum is greater than the parts, synergy. For example, we cannot do our exercises and not rest our bodies. And neither can we eat like elite athletes and have a sedentary lifestyle and expect proper results. Even when we look on one subject like exercising, we cannot just do one type of exercise and expect proper results, our exercises should include our personal balance of aerobics, resistance training, stretching, duration, abdominal, breathing and posture exercises. And our changes must be lifestyle changes that helps us balance our eating/resting/exercising/work/communication skills/stress control. So please, read and inform yourself, read everything you can and make sure they are literaturized and documented.

Also recall from bufftitude lesson #3, that 50 calories a day means 6 lb. a year. When I do my morning walk, I do 1000 calories/walk, when I do 1400 calories I keel over in cramps and I can’t walk for 3-4 days, not to mention the damage to my muscles. But if I only do 600 calories, that means 400 calories lost per day. Translation, by maximizing my walks without damaging my muscles at 1000 calories a day, means an extra 36.4 lb. of fat loss for the year compared to the 600 calories a day walk(I started out at 120 calories a walk and reached the 1000 calories in 10 months). But I can only perform this walk day in and day out if I keep my body in a catabolic-free state, feed my muscles the proper stretches/nutrients/rest to recover/recuperate/rebuild/transform my body. Note again, I am not saying everyone go out and walk themselves to death, just using as an example how I used the theories I learned, along with my experience, and my body for feedback, to formulate a personal program to maximize my fat loss. Each of us have different bodies/strengths/attitudes/reactions/mindsets/preferences/catabolic reactions to different foods/exercises/recovery abilities/attitudes and most importantly, different experiences. Only you can take the theories and formulate your own personal program just for you, and only you know your body well enough to process the feedback to know whether a particular theory works or doesn’t work for you.

And now after all that ranting and raving, lets get to the lesson, heh heh heh. Is it my imagination but as my lessons progress, so does the length of them? HHHMMMMM

I’m gonna start off this lesson with some personal experience of science. I attended the 3rd ANNUAL WORLD HYDROGEN CONFERENCE(or was it the 4th or even possibly the 5th, you all know my memory problems already, heh heh heh) in the summer of 1984. It was my first ever scientific conference and my perspective of the scientific community was to change forever.

On the first day, a virgin to these things, I checked out some of the lecture/research presentations hoping to get an insight as to what the future was gonna be like. I must admit that I didn’t understand any of the real hard-core scientific stuff, but enjoyed much of the general presentations. However, there were several scientific hard-core research presentations that I had to attend and by gee golly wow was one of them incredibly interesting. During the questioning period of this particular presentation, another scientist asked some very specific questions about the researcher’s methodology. The next thing I knew, all I heard was #$%^*#%#@, and $#*@, and $#*$*#.

What the Heck was going on here? All disillusioned, I ask my Professor for answers and explanations, I needed some re-assurance, but instead, these are the words he repeated "Neville, its science, you should see what occurs at other conferences, especially Electrochemical Conferences, where physical fights break out between these world renown scientists". Now I was completely disillusioned.

So I searched for some personal re-assurance, from someone in the scientific world that I personally knew, and there was only one person I knew that fitted that bill, Uncle Chun, a Biology Professor at the time. His answer/explanations showed me the light all right, and it wasn’t a bright gorgeous light, but the light of reality. His words went something like this, Junior, if fights occur at hard-core scientific conferences, can you imagine what do occur at conferences such as Biology or Psychology or Medical Conferences. Trust me Junior, brawls break out at the these conferences.

So you now ask me, Junior, why are you telling all this to me? I’m telling you all this because full agreement in any discipline is rare. In Macroeconomics, its the Keyneist versus the monetarist. In accounting, its the accrual basis(status quo) versus the cash basis(new camp). In the Toronto Star today, its Dentistry’s belief in fluoride as science or myth? Not too long ago, the world was flat and Galileo was imprisoned for life. Not too long ago, flying was left to the birds. Even in the most hard-core of sciences, chemistry and physics have gone major transformations, and will be going through one in the near future. The age of Newtonian based principles is being changed over to Einsteinian based principles, that apparently is the word, sooner or later, in my lifetime or not, it will occur.

That’s all good and dandy Junior, but what the heck does this have to do with weight loss?

It has everything to do with weight loss my friends. Uncle Chun put it all in perspective for me two weeks ago when he said "the status quo changes, when the guards change". In other words, all the old rules and myths of weight loss will remain in the traditional medical community for at least another generation(barring outside interference), until the guards are changed. Only when the status quo changes, will the myths of weight loss be dismissed and the new rules take over(today they are new rules, by the time they take over, they themselves will be old rules and myths). Remember, weight loss is not considered a disease or a sickness in the status quo, hence, no discussion or debate is required or needed to discuss how to treat obesity. Simply put, the attitude of just eat less and less and move more and more. There is one shiny side to this, the internet makes it possible to speed up the changeover, and for everyone’s sake including mine, I hope so.

As for outside interference. We all know about the influence of lobby groups/conglomerates. In university, I was told that during WW2, three water fueled engines were developed because getting fuel to the troops was not easy, compared to having engines that could run on water. Now two of them were developed in the USA, and one here in Canada(told by Professor Sandler who was on the team that developed the Canadian prototype). Where are these engines you asked, according to professor Sandler, they are locked, sealed, in their respective government vaults, do I suspect an ESSO/Mobil/Shell influence here. Here’s an experiment for you all to do, please check with the USA bureau of statistics and see the top 15 causes of death in America. Where do deaths associated with tobacco, unhealthy eating habits, and drugs(properly prescribed) fall into place. From my knowledge, all are in the top 5, but please don’t believe me, check it out for yourselves. Tobacco ads have finally been banned, and in the future so too will McDonalds, and Pepsi, and SaraLee. How many doctors when handing out prescriptions tell their patients how many people a year die from properly prescribed drugs. Yet this status quo medical community to this day, still say you don’t need to take a multi-vitamin and mineral supplement. By the way for all who wanted to know, the RDA last May finally agreed that it is now recommended that we all take a multi-vitamin and mineral supplement. Again, please don’t believe, check with the RDA itself. Check with the bureau of statistics on properly prescribed drugs(#5 I think), and hospitals too while you’re at it(#14 I think)

It is extremely important to realize that there are many forces involved here, and the science of losing weight properly is made that much more confusing when advice/opinions from the status quo medical community and many commercial diets are in direct conflict with the medical experts that deal with obesity/fat loss from a treatment/research/teaching level. Like I said from lesson #1, you will have to decide what to believe in, because the mental aspect of staying on the wagon when we fall off is gonna depend on your belief/faith in your program. And only you can believe, no one can do that for you. What to believe in is your choice. Most things that Dr. Colgan says is agree with, but there are quite a few that I do disagree with also. I will repeat what Dr. Colgan says in his book "don’t just believe what anybody tells you, I don’t even want you to believe me, what I want you to do is to take control of your life and research the truth". He also says that his opinion/advice also changes with the advance of science/research, and his own experiences also at times differs with the research. Dr. Colgan’s office is willing to forward more extensive literature to you, this is because each footnote you see listed here is really just one sample of the accumulated volume of research out there.

OK, Let’s get going with the meat of the lesson, here is Chapter 11- Battling The Bulge, from Dr. Colgan’s book(OSN, p126-p140, I skipped the specific athletic report at the beginning of the chapter).

The reason that athletes have so much trouble losing body fat is the wholesale misinformation on dieting that pervades the weight-loss industry in America. Most popular diet books and weight loss programs appear to be designed to distort people’s nutrition and disrupt their metabolism so as to make them fatter and sicker.

Most of the methods used are so opposed to what is known in nutrition science, that a cynic might conclude they are designed to keep people repeatedly coming back to a highly profitable and terribly unsuccessful diet programs for the rest of their lives. In 1992, Americans are slated to spend $36 billion on weight loss, and there are a lot of rich companies who want to keep it that way.

That’s putting the truth hot and heavy so I better review some of heavy evidence to support it. Studies by Dr. Paul La Chance and Michelle Fisher at the department of Food Science at Rutgers University analyzed a slew of the best diet books. They found that popular diets such as the Atkins, the Beverly Hills, the Carbohydrate Cravers, The California, the F-Plan, the I Love America, the Pritkin, the Richard Simmons, the Scardale, and the Stillman, were all seriously deficient in vitamins, minerals, and fiber.¹³ Combined with the food and caloric restrictions that these diets impose, such deficiencies are an invitation to illness.

The popular weight loss programs hyped on television are little better. Although many of them do include vitamin supplements to make up for their deficiencies, the most they achieve is quick, nasty, and very temporary weight loss. According to Marketdate Enterprises, the smart market-tracking company in Valley Stream, NY, more than 8 million Americans sign up for weight loss programs every year. Almost all of them fail miserably.

In April 1992, the National Institutes of Health convened a panel of thirteen of the country’s leading medical specialists on the weight loss headed by Dr. Suzanne Flecther, editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine. Dr. Walter Glinsman and colleagues from the Food and Drug Administration analyzed 75 lb. of documents provided by weight loss centers. The report concluded, there is no good evidence that any popular weight loss program has much chance for long-term success. The public is being presented with anecdotal reports of individual successes and not being told that most who try the various programs either drop out before completing them or regain most or all of the weight lost.¹⁴

One of the studies presented at the conference from Dr. Thomas Wadden of Syracuse University, is typical of one of the results from the diet programs. In 1983, 3 groups of overweight were put on the best on the best form of weight loss programs used by commercial diet centers. One group was put on an 800 calorie diet. The second and third group were put on 800 or 1200 calorie diets and also given the much touted behavior therapy, the popular counseling support, and other razz-ma-tazz used by many centers.

All groups rapidly lost weight. The second group, on 800 calories plus behavior therapy, was the best. Over 90% of them lost over 20 lb.. Within a year however, almost half of the women in all three groups had gained it all back. Within five years, 81% had gained it all back, and more. Incidentally, the behavior therapy groups were less successful at keeping off the pudge than the simple calorie restriction group.¹⁴

If that’s not enough to convince you that dieting doesn’t work, then look at the record of the prestigious and expensive medically supervised programs such as Optifast and Medifast, often run by hospitals and medical clinics. The Colgan Institute tracked 13 people who rapidly lost weight on these programs. Eight of them regained most of it back within 12-18 months. Today, four years later, only three have remained slim and two of those have been on continuing programs from us.

A larger study confirms our findings. In 1988, San Diego State University reported on 200 people who lost an average of 84% of their excess weight on these medically supervised diets. Incidentally, the diets cost at least $1,500 and include an extended course of behavior therapy sessions on how to keep the weight off. Didn’t work! Within three years, they regained 60-80% of the pudge.¹⁵ Recently, the Federal Trade Commission commanded these companies to stop using the cloak of medical legitimacy to make overblown claims.

There are three main problems with popular diet programs, all of which occur because they do not follow the findings of nutrition science:

1) They are concerned with losing weight rather than the correct approach of reducing body fat.

2) They strip off vital muscle which is the major body component that burns the muscle in the first place.

3) They take the weight of way too fast, thereby throwing the body into a defensive, fat-preserving condition.

The true purpose of weight reduction is to dispose of excess body fat while retaining your muscle and body water. Yet virtually one of the current commercial programs make any attempt to differentiate between these three weight components. Some programs are even designed to partially dehydrate participants so as to show quick success. Any high school wrestler can tell you how to lose 5 lb. in two days, by stop drinking, sitting in a sauna, or taking diuretic drugs or diuretic foods, such as melon and black coffee. But such tactics stimulate the body to produce more anti-diuretic hormone, which causes it to grab back every drop of water and more, as soon as you take a hearty drink. Meanwhile as we saw in Chapter 2, the dehydration decimates health and performance.

Muscle loss is even worse. Nutrition scientist have known for decades that, on low calorie diets of 800-1200 calories per day, up to 45% of the weight loss comes from the body cannibalizing its own muscle tissue.¹⁶ Since the mid ‘80s, we have had a lot of models coming to the Colgan Institute for programs because the new look is toned muscles. In vain attempts to look toned and thin without doing the necessary resistance exercise, many of these women exists on 500-800 calories a day, and have lost most of their muscle. They look slim, but measure up to 30% body fat. Technically, they are obese! Muscle is hard won and easily lost. No athlete can afford to lose an ounce of it.

Retaining muscle is also essential to losing fat. Body fat itself has a very low metabolic activity. It burns few calories.¹⁷ Muscle is the furnace in which body fat is burned. The less muscle you have, the lower your basal metabolic rate, and the harder it is to lose fat.¹⁸ Any diet program that reduces muscle is a recipe for failure.

The next big problem with commercial diets is that they stimulate the body to accumulate the fat again once you stop. It happens like this. Because of the public patronage for programs claiming quick results, in order to compete in the marketplace, companies set calorie levels far too low(800-1200 calories). Under eating to this extent causes rapid fat loss( and muscle loss). the body recognizes the fat loss as an attack on its energy reserves and immediately takes all sorts of defensive actions. First, your body increases the quantity and activity of an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase, the main enzyme it uses to collect and store fat.¹⁹ Second, it slows your basal metabolic rate, further reducing your ability to burn fat.²⁰

The lipoprotein lipase activity and reduced metabolic rate continues for weeks after you stop dieting, because the body has a memory of exactly how much fat it had and wants it all back. So it grabs and stores every molecule of fat you eat, even at the expense of bodily need for energy. The net result is a the familiar post-diet fatigue and ravenous appetite that quickly returns every ounce of the flab, plus a little bit more for "insurance". Please do not follow commercial diets or popular diet books. If you do, your athletic career is likely to be nasty, rehabilitating, and short.

Its still a common myth that a calorie is a calorie, whether it comes from carbohydrate, fat, or protein. Not so. Fat calories are fatter. That is numerous studies show that you put on more body fat by eating fat than by eating the same number of calories from carbohydrate or protein.^21,22,2322

Dr. Wayne Miller and colleagues at the University of Illinios did a convincing series of studies with rats. They gave one group of rats containing 42% fats not too different from the standard American diet or SAD(so aptly initialed). They gave another group a low-fat diet of Ralston Purina animal chow. Both groups ate as much as desired.

Over 60 weeks, both groups ate almost exactly the same amount of calories(36,000 per rat). Common belief in the weight loss industry about caloric intake and body fat, would predict that both groups of rats would be equally fat. No way Jose! The high-fat group were very plump with an average body fat % of 51%. The low-fat group were lean(for a rat) with an average body fat of 30%.²⁴ There is no longer any doubt that fat calories pack on body fat.

Two reasons fat calories are fatter. First, evolution programmed mankind to store fat against times of food shortage that were frequent in earlier centuries. Consequently, fat oxidation(use of body fat for fuel) is not related to food intake.²⁵ We are designed to be able to store far more fat then we use. Second, although the body can convert excess carbohydrate and protein to fat, it takes more than two grams of either to make one gram of fat. Add to that the metabolic cost of conversion, which uses about a quarter of the calories contained in the excess,²⁶ and it becomes obvious that you have to stuff yourself with carbs and protein before you grow much fat.

One last wrinkle. how much fat you gain also depends on the type of fat you eat. recent studies show that unsaturated fats are oxidized for fuel by the body more easily than saturated fats. That is, much of the saturated fat eaten is directly stored.²⁷ So avoid animal fats like the plague.

Few people realize that the calorie counts on food labels and calorie charts have little to do with the caloric value of foods to any particular human being. Calorie counts for foods are obtained by burning the food in a bomb calorimeter and measuring the heat produced. The values of four calories per gram of carbohydrates and proteins, and nine calories per gram of fats, are rough approximation made up almost a hundred years ago. They have become entrenched and prevailing myth of the diet industry.

The caloric values of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats vary not only with the particular foods that contain them and your dietary composition. They vary also with each person’s biochemical individuality which affects the digestibility and efficiency of the use of food by the body. Just an example of dietary composition should be enough to convince you of the nonsense of calorie charts. Table sugar mixed with water, for example, provides more energy and puts on more body fat than table sugar eaten by the spoonful.²⁸ One good reason to avoid sugared sodas.

We did one study at the Colgan Institute with four men and two women aged 23-40 whose weight and body fat were stable, that is, did not vary week to week by more than 2%. For six weeks, they reduced their usual lunch by 250-400 calories every day, and kept all other meals strictly at their usual levels. According to the American diet industry, that’s a sure fire prescription for losing weight.

Over the six weeks, subjects reduced their so-called "caloric intake" by a total of 8,400-18,900 calories. According to the calories in - calories out myth that dominates American dieting, they should have lost substantial weight. At approximately 3,600 calories per pound, they should have lost between 2,25 and 5.25 pounds. In fact, only one man lost and one woman lost any weight, the man 1.5 lb., and the woman .75 lb.. The other four lost nothing at all.²⁹ Counting calories just doesn’t add up.

Actually I’m skipping this part, because basically he says they are all scams, so don’t use them. Two footnotes appear in this section.

1) In reference to cellulite and cellulite creams. You cannot remove a molecule with creams or lotions unless they contain a beta-adrenergic agonist drug that can penetrate the skin and enter the fat beneath.³⁰

2) He also makes one reference to PPA. PPA is a stimulant that does appear to suppress appetite a bit. But it also tends to raise blood pressure and cause nausea even in healthy young people.³¹

There are drugs that will strip of body fat. We discuss the most effective in Part VII of this book. But the side effects are horrendous. Don’t use them. The following program will enable you to take off all the body fat you want---and keep it off for life.

As part of the biochemical individuality, people differ widely in their inherited tendencies to accumulate body fat. That’s obvious. But some theories have extrapolated the obvious to claim that each person is designed to be comfortable and healthy only at a certain level of fat, and that the body will always revert to that level.³² They are dead wrong.

The habitual amount of fat that you carry is not ordained by genes. It is caused by what you eat and what you do. We know now that neither the number of fat cells nor their size is genetically fixed.³³ Fatness is much more dependent on your lifestyle.

from the principle of physiological dynamics, your body has no internal reference system for a fixed level of fat, only for an habitual level. When you remain at a particular level of fat for a year or two, the body develop all the adipose cells, capillaries, enzyme counts, peripheral nerves, hormone levels, and connective tissue to support it. It comes to recognize that as your level of fat as self and will defend it vigorously. That is your fatpoint.

The body constantly monitors its fat point with hormonal messengers, such as glycerol, which warn the brain to take defensive action even if a single ounce is suddenly used for fuel. So the usual forms of dieting(one popular program claims 10 pounds in 6 weeks) can’t possibly work. As we have seen earlier in this chapter, by slowing metabolism, increasing fat storage, and increasing appetite, your body’s fatpoint defenses will defeat you every time.

But it’s far from hopeless to change your body fat level. In fact it is easy. Reliable studies show that it takes years of overeating to grow fat.³⁴ In other words, the body shifts its fat-point up very slowly. To shift it down, you have to operate the same way, very slowly.

Studying athletes for the last 18 years, we have found that the most you can reduce your food intake to reset the fatpoint is 10% per day. Any weight loss of more than half-a-pound a week is a warning that you are reducing too much. You will see a little change for the first two months, but over a year, your fat point will edge downward by 3-6%. Meanwhile, your body is re-modeling its adipose cells, hormones, enzymes, capillaries and other tissues to suit. In a year to eighteen months, you have to reset the fatpoint without arousing a single bodily defense.

To ensure you are losing fat and not muscle, it is essential to get your body composition measured each two months. After testing dozens of systems, the Colgan institute recommends only two, underwater weighing and near infra-red inductance using the futrex 5000 device. Go to the same facility each time, because systems are all calibrated differently.

The only type of food you need to cut out from your diet is saturated fats. As we saw earlier, this food puts on more body fat than any other. When excess carbohydrate and protein is eaten, the body makes complex metabolic adjustments to promote glycogen or sugar for fuel.³⁵ Hence you have to eat a big excess of these food for before they are converted to body fat. But when excess fats are eaten, metabolism remains unchanged. Virtually all the excess is promptly layered onto belly, hips, and thighs.³⁶

These includes the fat in all meats and most dairy foods and the high levels of saturated fats in some vegetable oils detailed in chapter 8. If you focus on eliminating all saturated fats, then given our fat-loaded food supply, you might be able to keep intake down to 10% of total calories.

Don’t use popular diets or weight loss centers to help you. As we saw of the programs are deficient in vitamins and minerals. It is no use to athletes to reduce body fat if they also deplete the body of essential nutrients.

The same goes for lotions, potions, and over the counter drugs touted for weight control. The lotions and potions don’t work at all. The drugs are temporary at best, and saddled with side-effects that crucify performance.³¹

There are a few nutrients that can help. The first is l-carnitine. Fats are burned for energy inside muscle cells at structures called mitochondria. But the fats are stored in adipose cells and cannot pass through the mitochondria membranes unless they are transported by l-carnitine(a non-essential protein).

The amount of fat burned depends a lot on the level of l-carnitine in the muscle. The higher the level, the greater the amount of body fat used for fuel. Although the body makes l-carnitine, it may not make an optimum amount for athletes, because muscle carnitine levels are rapidly depleted even in during moderate exercises.³⁷ There is reasonable evidence that oral supplements of this amino acid raise muscle carnitine levels.³⁸ And a recent study with athletes show that a supplementation with two grams a day of l-carnitine significantly increased their use of fat during exercise.³⁹

The second nutrient that helps with fat loss is the essential element chromium. In 1970s, Dr. Walter Mertz of the US Department of Agriculture established that chromium is essential for normal insulin metabolism. As such, it is important for the growth of muscle and control of bodyfat.⁴⁰ The RDA handbook recommends 50-200mcg per day.⁴¹ Other studies show that some sedentary subjects require 290mcg per day to remain in chromium balance.⁴² From these figures, the range of daily chromium needs for sedentary people is at least 50-290mcg. The most recent study by the US Department of Agriculture indicates that 90% of US diets contain less than 50mcg chromium per day.⁴⁰ So chromium deficiency is widespread.

Athletes use about twice as much chromium as sedentary people, even on moderate exercise days.⁴³ So they are likely to be doubly deficient, with all its detrimental effects on maintenance of muscle and use of body fat for fuel. To overcome these problems, at the Colgan Institute, we supplement athletes with 200-600mcg of chromium picolinate daily.

There is more to controlling insulin than chromium. Except for during and immediately after intense exercise, every time you eat simple sugars, especially sugared drinks, blood sugar rises precipitously and causes an insulin burst. The liver then balances the insulin see-saw by turning excess into triglycerides(fats) which are promptly deposited as bodyfat.⁴⁴

So you should do everything possible to keep insulin production stable. An obvious strategy is to avoid most simple sugars. Athletes need to base their diets on complex carbohydrates that are slowly absorbed and do not disturb insulin metabolism. The right carbohydrates are detailed in Chapter 9.

Another nutrient or rather non-nutrient that helps regulate insulin metabolism is fiber. It retards the digestion of sugars and fats so that less quick sugar and less high calorie fat bombard the system.⁴⁵ High fiber diets(30-50 grams per day) create a slow, and even uptake of energy that favors use of food for energy rather than deposit as bodyfat.⁴⁶ And insulin also remains stable. The right fiber to use is detailed in Chapter 4.

In a just published report, Gilbert Kaats of Health and Medical Services of San Antonio, Texas and his colleagues at the University of Texas, combined Rules 5, 6, and 8 in a study that emphasizes their effectiveness.⁴⁷ First, they gave groups of give overweight men and women simply low-calorie, low-fat, diets of 1250 calories per day for women, and 1650 calories for men. Over eight weeks, subjects lost little weight. Then for another eight weeks, they supplemented the diets daily with:

At the end of the second period, subjects showed an average weight loss of 15.1 lb., including an average fat loss of 11.8 lb. Spectacular. The body fat reduction was far too fast to last, but it does underline the importance of chromium, l-carnitine, and fiber status if you want to achieve permanent fat loss.

Two other nutrients that help regulate insulin metabolism are omega-3 fatty acids, the eiosapentanoic acid(EPA) and docosahexanoic acid(DHA) found in fish oils. Dr. Leonard Storlein and colleagues at Garvin Institute of Medical Research in New South Wales, Australia have shown that animals supplemented with fish oils do not develop disorders of insulin metabolism, even when given a diet that normally causes diabetes.⁴⁸ That’s the sort of protection an athlete needs.

Two more strategies for losing body fat concern exercise. The usual advise is aerobic exercise and more aerobic exercise, and the more intense the better. It is dead wrong! Except at low intensity such as brisk walking or slow jogging, aerobic exercise including running, rowing, cycling, swimming, and aerobics all strip off muscle almost as much as they strip off fat. That’s why most long distance runners and cyclists are skinny and weak. They have great endurance but no power. Running guru George Sheehan once admitted to me that he couldn’t do a single sit-up. A dozen chins or 30 push-ups are beyond many of the elite runners that we test.

Remember what we said earlier about muscle. Its the engine in which body fat is burned. Do everything to preserve it. The correct exercise for fat loss is low-intensity, high repetition, high variety resistance exercise training. The minimum is four sessions of 30 minutes weekly. We have used our body shape program now with hundreds of cases, and compared them to aerobic exercise. The resistance training is definitely superior. The secret is that, while burning fat, weight training preserves or even increases the muscle mass, make it progressively easier every week for the body to burn more fat.

Also train in the mornings. Numerous studies show that exercise raises the resting metabolic rate(RMR), not only while you’re doing it, but for up to 18 hours afterwards. You burn more calories all day,⁴⁹ ⁵⁰ But if you workout in the evening and then go to sleep, RMR drops like a stone, and you lose the major fat loss effect.

The final rule is so important, not only for losing fat, but also for gaining muscle, that I gave it a separate chapter. Probably the single greatest influence on your body fat is your anabolic drive. This complex of hormonal influences is fully described in Chapter 32.

COMPLEX CARBS, CHROMIUM PICOLINATE, AND 25% OF YOUR TOTAL DAILY PROTEIN AS WHEY PROTEIN OR EGG PROTEIN HYDROLYSATE.

Please remember that all sciences have their disagreements. Do you know that there are like 69 ways to do a bench press, which way is the best? So can you imagine questions like what’s the best protein? best carbs? when to consume them and how much? intensity versus duration for aerobic/strength/anaerobic/flexibility/abdominal/duration exercises, and what balance of these exercises is best for each of us? and since we are losing weight, how to keep the body from a catabolic(losing muscle) stage while exercising, while losing weight, while sleeping? and what about set-point and metabolism, how’s does that fit into the scheme of things, what are we to do?

I’m gonna go through my program by going down each one of Dr. Colgan’s rules.

As you all know I’m at a 2.5 pounds per week for 12 months now. I followed almost all of the rules laid out by Dr. Colgan, and my rapid weight loss does bother me somewhat. As a result, I keep a very close eye on 4 things.

2)my immune system is top notch at this moment, haven’t been sick in 14 months.

4)the amount of food I’m eating have doubled(bulk) compared to before my program.

So because of these four feedback’s from my body, I think Dr. Colgan .5 pound max. is too conservative for me, his program is just too good for me. Actually most sources does say that up to 2.5 pounds is O.K., but because of Dr. Colgan’s advice, I use my muscle strength and mass as a gauge to make sure its fat loss, and follow his anabolic drive advice to make sure I am always in positive nitrogen retention stages at all times(keep out of catabolic stage).

I’m doing that now because I’m at the stage where my muscle growth could be relatively close to my fat loss. Also because my performance levels in my workouts are approaching the level that I need to know if I am getting in enough calories to feed my muscles.

Especially if you close to your ideal weight, please get a body fat % done, it may be the only way to tell if you are improving. This is standard in obesity medicine, sports medicine, rehab, etc. etc. etc. Why the prevailing myth of judging health especially by the status quo only by weigh scales is totally beyond my comprehension.

What can I say, other than my meats after my weight workouts, almost none. Everybody I know agrees with this one, even the status quo medical community. Except for one thing, the status quo does not distinguish between EFA-essential fatty acids, omega,3,6,9 with regular unsaturated (poly or mono), much less saturated animal fats. Please educate yourselves and know the difference. I wonder if the traditional medical community really knows the difference. One would think they would, but who knows, their literature rarely ever distinguishes the difference.

This book was written in 1993, I know that many of the current commercial programs have changed. Have they changed over to permanent fat loss? I do not know, so please, anyone following any of these programs, or following a doctor prescribed weight loss program, make sure its principles are for permanent fat loss, and not weight loss.

Again, there really isn’t any argument here. Anyone on prescribed medication to lose weight, actually for any medication at all, please make sure the side-effects are fully told and explained to you O.K..

Never heard of it you say. The science is there, so yes I do take it, along with the above chromium. Whether it helps me or not, I have no idea, but because of my intense exercise routine, I think that its in my interest to supplement with it, I’m putting my faith in the doctor and the science. Please note the word maintenance, this means its specific based on your needs, and if you do need it. This is one where your needs increases based on your exercise routine.

Again, yes I supplement, and please note the word maintain. For anyone interested, the patent of Chromium Picolinate belongs solely to the United States Government. There’s been a lot of bad things being said about this essential mineral, and a lot of press about the inventor trying to cash in and to make lots of money. That might be true is he did have the patent, but it patent belongs to your government. I can guarantee the status quo will be against this one, simply because their friends in the prescription drug world won’t make a cent of this US Government discovery.

There’s really no argument here neither, except the constant (purposely in my opinion) saying that refined flour is somehow grains or complex carbs. Please know the difference. The book goes into details between high glycemic and low glycemic carbs. Basically, one should also avoid high glycemic carbs.

There’s really no argument here. Everyone please eat you unprocessed whole grains, your fruits, your vegetables, your peas and beans. With one exception, again, how did refined flour products end being categorized as grain products? hhhmmmm.

I think the good Dr. made a booboo here. The assumption is that we can get our omega6 and omega9 and to some extent omega12 from our diets, but I doubt it. Especially in US where corn oil is the popular choice. I think it should say maintain your omega3, omega6, and omega9 oils. I take an EFA complex to ensure this, as you all know my fat intake is already low, I take it to ensure I am getting enough fats.

As for the status quo medical community - US Heart Association(is that the name or is it Foundation) - 30-35% of calories by fat, no reference to saturated or unsaturated, much less EFA. Canadian Heart says (25-30%). Nutritional experts and I believe many obesity clinics say to lose weight to eat around 20%. Dr. Colgan says to lose weight, you can go as low as 10% but no saturated fats. Well my friends, who to believe.

Every single word from obesity medicine, sports medicine, kinesiology, even rehab medicine I have read encourages it. Its degree of necessity can be debated, because a lot depends on your current exercises and how much of it builds muscles. Lets not even ask the status quo medical community for there opinion because they have no clue.

Just like weight training. Consensus from the communities. Again let’s not embarass the traditional medical community for their opinion because they have absolutely no idea.

Just like weight training, except this one is very much debatable. Not the theory itself, but numbers involved. Don’t even bother looking to the status quo for an opinion.

The key words here are eat "eat 6 times a day". Remember I keep telling you all to eat every 2-3 hours. From my recollection, this comes from the work of 3 doctors from the Brigham Young University Obesity Research Clinic. This is where the pioneering work in setpoint and many metabolism theories were born. Again, please don’t believe me, call the University and ask to see their pioneering research.

These are the basic rules that I am currently following. They are not set in stone, but it is generally followed. The specifics of my program is very much based on me, my body, and what works for me. And the rules above is very much general rules, and when applied, must be applied specifically to meet your needs, requirements, and your goals.

I hope this lesson helped all that wanted to know the difference, or didn’t even realize that there was a difference between weight loss and fat loss. And if it didn’t help, then please read more and learn more, but please make sure the book/article is footnoted and based on science.

Since the inception of the human species, we were dependent on our ability to hunt/gather foods, we are physical beings. In the future we may evolve to depend on mostly on our mental capabilities, but at this moment we are physical beings, twenty years of becoming a working-behind-a-desk society has not changed millions of years of God’s creation/evolution. So as we change from a sedentary obese person to a more efficient/leaner/healthier/fitter person/athlete, and we continue to put forth the effort as we are all doing now, since we are putting in the time and the effort into our workouts, let’s get all we can out of our workouts and let’s get all we can out of our nutrients. In other words, let’s take advantage of the information and the science that’s out there. Remember fat loss is based on science. I have no idea what a restrictive caloric starvation diet or its myths are based on except some justifying (Bufftitude lesson #3) statement of a calorie is a calorie hogwash, and that could never be what its based on, could it? hhhmmmmmm?

Dr. Colgan was a senior member of the Science Faculty of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, founder of the Colgan Institute, and visiting scholar at the Rockefeller University in New York. He is on the Council of the International and American Association of Clinical Nutritionists, and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Applied Nutrition.

okay.... you made it to the end... I hope that this has been of some use to you.. Whilst I may not have followed his advice yet, everything he says does seem to make sense to me. like I said, its heavy reading, but I think it is definitely worth reading.