Monday, March 30, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Why and How You Should Implement Intermittent Fasting Into Your Workout Regime
By Brad Pilon, MS
Click Here to see Brad’s WEB-site
You may not even have heard yet about intermittent fasting and the benefits thereof. In fairness it is a relatively new way of looking at fasting and it's possible uses, so let's take a few moments and examine why intermittent fasting is quickly becoming a valuable element in your weight loss/fat loss arsenal.
Many of us know fasting as something that has religious and/or spiritual applications, or perhaps as a political statement or tool. (Almost always a bad idea!) However you've thought of fasting in the past, it may be time to look at it in a new way. Intermittent fasting has evolved into a useful way to cut your caloric intake and still maintain energy and strength enough to workout and get stronger, and in general become more fit.
An intermittent fast can be defined as one in which the person fasting abstains from everything but water for a period of 24 hours, one to two times per week. This definition serves those who would use this as a tool in their weight loss routine, and still be able to workout. Think of the benefits of exercising a full two days worth of calories from your diet, and still be burning them up at a high rate simultaneously. Sounds attractive, eh?
Now, employing a fast once or twice a week and then using the remaining days to practice for eating contests won't cut it. You need to practice restraint and employ a sensible eating plan for those days, but all in all, most people report that the urge to pig out isn't as strong as they thought it would be.
One of the biggest benefits of doing intermittent fasting as a part of your workout program is that studies have shown that not only is your energy NOT diminished, but it actually seems to be enhanced, and your metabolism isn't reduced but clearly further stoked up. This is the primary complaint among people who would use a traditional fast. They would no longer have the gas left in their tank to work out, and while they'd lose weight, often it would be muscle mass, which sort of defeats the purpose.
When starting out with intermittent fasting, make sure you start out easy, getting your body used to skipping a day once a week, then perhaps two. Also take it slow when working out during this transition time, until you start to feel as though you're able to take a full load in your workout program. This won't take long, and in fact will leave you hungering for more, and I don't mean food!
If you're seeking a way to accelerate your fat loss and still keep working out, then you need to take a good look at intermittent fasting. You may be pleased at just how effective it can be at painlessly reducing your caloric intake while at the same time allowing you sufficient energy to complete your workouts!
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Brad Pilon is a nutrition professional with over eight years experience working in the nutritional supplement industry specializing in clinical research management and new product development. Brad has completed graduate studies in nutritional sciences specializing in the use of short term fasting for weight loss.
His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, Click Here
Monday, March 23, 2009
Starvation Mode Doesn’t Exist
By Brad Pilon, MS
Click Here to see Brad’s WEB-site
The theory of Starvation Mode is something that fuels Obsessive Compulsive Eating in North America and throughout the world.
To use a very basic definition, Starvation mode is when your metabolism supposedly slows down when you don’t eat enough calories. More often than not this definition is used to support very complex diet programs.
These diets will tell you that not eating enough food will cause you to store more fat. Right after delivering this pseudo-science message of fear they then tell you the only solution is to keep eating, and here is the catch, you must eat the special foods they recommend.
This is just another example of fear mongering and confusion created by the food, diet and supplement industry that ultimately leads to obsessive compulsive eating.
They are actually trying to tell you that eating less food won’t help you lose weight, and in fact might actually cause you to gain weight - Fear mongering at its best.
The truth is a large body of scientific research shows you can eat very low calories for extended periods of time with no change in your metabolism and, no decrease in muscle mass, as long as you do some form of resistance training (I cover a large part of this research in Eat Stop Eat).
This is one of the major reasons why so many people are afraid that eating too much food or too little food will have a negative effect on their metabolism.
In my opinion the scientific research is clear, you can eat very low calorie for an extended period of time. As long as you do some weight training the only thing that is going to happen is an impressive amount of fat loss.
And if the existing body of research wasn’t enough to convince you, here is more proof that you can lose significant amounts of weight without losing muscle mass or damaging your metabolism as long as you are using resistance training as part of your weight loss plan.
In a study just published in the Journal of Obesity, researchers examined the effects of losing 25 pounds on 94 women who either
A) Followed a resistance training workout program
B) Followed an aerobic training program
C) Did not workout at all
These women were asked to follow a diet consisting of 800 Calories until they reduced their BMI down to less than 25 (The average 25 pounds of weight loss). The women continued this diet for as long as 5 months straight (not something I would personally recommend without being medically monitored).
The researchers found that the women who were following the resistance training workout program maintained their Fat Free Mass during the time they were on the diet. This means that even though they lost 25 pounds they were able to preserve their muscle mass. Therefore all 25 pounds that these women lost was fat!
They also found the group of women who were following the resistance training workout program preserved their metabolic rate. In other words they did not see any metabolic “slow down” as a result of losing 25 pounds, or from being on a 800 Calorie per day diet for 5 months!
Interestingly, the researchers found decreases in Fat Free Mass in the women who did not workout AND in the women who performed aerobic training.
More evidence that resistance training while following a weight reducing diet program can preserve lean mass and metabolic rate.
This is yet another example of why the Eat Stop Eat combination of flexible intermittent fasting and resistance training can help you lose fat without losing muscle or lowering your metabolism.
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Brad Pilon is a nutrition professional with over eight years experience working in the nutritional supplement industry specializing in clinical research management and new product development. Brad has completed graduate studies in nutritional sciences specializing in the use of short term fasting for weight loss.
His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, Click Here
Saturday, March 21, 2009
10 Signs that your Diet Promotes Obsessive Compulsive Eating
By Brad Pilon, MS
Click Here to visit Brad's WEB-site
It was back on March 12 of 2007 that I first wrote about the now famous A to Z weight loss trial (you can see my original blog post here http://nutritionhelp.blogspot.com/2007/03/newest-diet-study-what-does-it-really.html).
In this ground breaking study, 311 overweight women were recruited to follow one of the following popular diet programs: The Atkins Diet, The Zone Diet, the LEARN diet or the Ornish Diet.
To start the study, each woman was given a copy of the popular diet book that she was randomly assigned to follow.
Then, to make sure she was an “expert” on her program before she started dieting, each woman attended a series of 8 classes (each lasting an hour) explaining exactly how to follow her assigned diet.
(Side note- This just shows how OCE these diets are considering that it takes EIGHT classes for these women to know how to properly follow each diet!)
After the courses were completed the women then set off to follow their assigned diet plan for a total of 1 year.
The results were pretty much exactly what I expected – everybody lost a lot of weight in the first two months, after that the diets tended to even out and by the end of the trial the weight loss was far from impressive – none of the groups averaged more than 10 pounds of weight loss after an entire year of dieting.
And while many people used this study to ‘prove’ that diets simply didn’t work, or that the body somehow adapted to dieting, my take was much simpler – Firstly, this trial is in agreement with most research that shows it is very hard to accurately measure how many calories a person eats in a day, and secondly I thought that these results showed that the number one reason diets fail is compliance.
In other words, the more complicated and the more rigid the diet is (or the more OCE it is), the more likely it is going to fail in the long term. – People just can’t stick to these types of diets for long periods of time.
Apparently I wasn’t alone with my analysis.
In a study published in the International Journal of Obesity titled “Dietary adherence and weight loss success among overweight women: results from the A to Z weight loss study” researchers re-examined the A to Z weight loss trial to see if there was an association between the level of compliance and the amount of weight that was lost.
Guess what they found?
Astonishingly only ONE subject in the ENTIRE study followed the diet as directed for the whole 12 months. This means that every other subject was not following her assigned diet properly at some point during the research trial!
The researchers also found that adherence was significantly correlated with 12-month weight change for all three-diet groups. So the better a woman was at following her diet, the more weight she lost.
The fact that adherence was so low is very interesting considering that these women spent eight class sessions reviewing their assigned diets with a registered dietitian before they even started the diet…you can imagine what adherence must be like for someone who simply bought one of those books, read it cover to cover and then gave it a try!
The findings from this follow-up analysis also suggest that the difference in dietary macronutrients had only negligible effects on the participants weight loss success.
The bottom line is that you can generally figure out how successful a diet will be by looking at how complicated it is.
More rules = more complicated = low chance of success
Less rules = less complicated = high chance of success
In my opinion weight loss can be incredibly simple if you let it.
Find the easiest, most comfortable way to reduce the total amount of calories that you eat. The less intrusive a diet is on your lifestyle the greater chance you have of sticking to it long term.
For me, this is flexible intermittent fasting. After all if you can fast for 24 hours once, you know you will always be able to do it. Some fasts maybe harder or easier than others, but you know you can do it!
Obsessive Compulsive Eating habits that make diets complicated and difficult spell doom for long term weight loss.
10 Signs a diet suffers from OCE:
1. It contains a list of foods you can and cannot eat
2. It lists specific times of every day that you are allowed or not allowed to eat
3. It contains specific diet plans that do not take into consideration your own personal food preferences
4. It lacks flexibility
5. It focuses on macronutrients and micronutrients excessively
6. If fails to point out the importance of long term compliance
7. It requires you to pre-pack and carry certain foods with you while you travel
8. It promotes certain foods because they PROMOTE weight loss
9. Over reliance of food Journal
10. Metabolic Typing
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Brad Pilon is a nutrition professional with over eight years experience working in the nutritional supplement industry specializing in clinical research management and new product development. Brad has completed graduate studies in nutritional sciences specializing in the use of short term fasting for weight loss.
His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, visit Click Here
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