The Female Guide to Getting Lean

So many times women ask me, "How can I lose this?" while they're pinching whatever area they want gone. While no one is exactly the same, there are a few general tips that I can throw out there for you that do the trick whether you're leaning up for aesthetic or performance reason.

Calorie Intake

If you weigh 200lbs and are only eating 1,200 calories, you are not eating enough. That doesn't mean break out the donuts, that means increase your protein consumption – to start. A general guide for calorie intake is your bodyweight times ten to twelve. Example: 200lbs x 10 = 2000 cal.

You may be thinking this is a lot of food, but it is not. Women have been taught that starving themselves will make them lose weight. In reality, we don't just want to be smaller do we? Don't we want to be leaner, too? I'm not saying bodybuilding lean, but enough to see a little definition in your arms and/or abs. Most women would answer me with a very loud, “Yes!”

Calorie intake is just one component of many that go into this machine we call our body. The body is much smarter than the average person. You may trick it once or twice, but it will learn how to overcome what you are trying to do to it. The body will combat under eating by hording everything you feed it. Then you jump on a piece of cardio equipment and pedal your little heart out for extensive amounts of time, and still - nothing. Why is that? Keep reading!

Drop the Carbs Down

You don't have to completely eliminate them; doing so would only set you up for failure. Do you even know how many you get in a day? Do you have a food log? Are you logging on a site like Fitday.com or MyFitnessPal.com? Do you know what foods are considered high in carbohydrates?
          
The foods to reduce in this category would be sugar, which includes candy, cakes, pies, etc. But it also includes fruit. I hear so many people say how healthy they eat and then proceed to tell me they load up on fruit. Fruit is mostly sugar. Natural sugar is still sugar, and it still makes you fat if you eat too much of it. Okay, so we have sugar clarified. More foods that are sugary: pasta, potatoes, some other veggies - research those. Don’t forget rice and bread are sugary, too.

Another misconception is that brown rice and pasta and whole grain breads don't do the same thing as their regular white counterparts. Truth is - they do. They just have a little more fiber and digest more slowly, so you don't get quite the same insulin spike, but they are still a carb and they can still cause fat gain if you overeat them.

So what we have learned is to drop carbs down. In general, I start people out at 25-30% carbohydrates in their diet and assess from there. How are you going to do that if you don't know how many sugars and carbohydrates are in what you're eating? Start logging your food on one of the sites I mentioned above. Take responsibility for what goes in your mouth.

Increase Your Protein and Don’t Fear Fat

Beef, chicken, turkey, fish, etc. There are studies out now that are proving our governments “lean meat only” consumption isn't necessary.

For example:

• CLA is a substance that accumulates in the fat of grass-fed ruminant animals-fats like butter and tallow-that has anti-cancer effects.
• Industry apologists have now done an about-face and are campaigning against the trans in favor of the liquid oils - while using this opportunity of heightened public interest to continue demonizing the fats we should all be using, the natural saturated animal fats in animal foods and tropical oils.

Increased protein helps maintain the lean mass (muscle) you already have. You want to keep this, as it increases your metabolism. Adding a little more lean mass is usually a good thing. As a general starting point, I think 40% of daily food intake should be protein. I have seen great results with this.

Resistance Training

Ladies, listen very closely: you will not bulk up from resistance training. If you start getting bigger, it is most likely because you are also eating more. You may put on a little lean mass, but it should not cause you to outgrow your pants. In fact, if you clearly know what foods are acceptable, watching your nutrition, and doing resistance training, you should be getting smaller and leaner.

Just because you workout doesn't mean it's time to go get a pizza because you “just worked off the calories.” It's simple, if you have a high body fat percentage, you are eating too much, unless there are medical reasons surrounding your weight in which case you should be even more attentive to your food intake.

Resistance training has some proven benefits:

• Improved muscle strength and tone
• Weight management
• Prevention and control of health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and arthritis
• Pain management
• Improved mobility and balance
• Improved posture
• Decreased risk of injury
• Increased bone density and strength
• Reduced body fat
• Boosted metabolism
• Improved sleep patterns
• Increased self-esteem
• Enhanced performance of everyday tasks

A Little Cardio Goes a Long Way

Women today go way overboard with cardio. I have a simple explanation for what this does to your body. It is well known to those of us in the industry that excessive cardio (meaning more than 45 minutes steady state or 30 minutes of high intensity interval training) is too much for the average person. After this amount of time, your body will start to become catabolic, which means it starts to eat muscle for fuel instead of food recently eaten and fat stores. All those ladies you see on the cardio equipment day after day, who always look the same, are actually eating up their muscle.

Do you realize what this means? They are lowering their metabolism because now they have less lean mass. Basically, if you would give them a body composition test, they would be fatter.

Becoming catabolic also happens when we don't eat enough. Starving yourself will only make you carry more fat. When you can't stand starving yourself anymore and go back to “normal” eating, don't expect a positive result. All the scam diets that tell you to drink nothing but shakes or eat only five hundred calories a day, they make you catabolic and set you up for failure. Don't be lazy. Take control of your body.

All of it comes back to being balanced and approaching your health and fitness from a variety of angles. While these guidelines are general, they work and they are a great place to start whether your goals are athletic or aesthetic. Cardio, strength, and nutrition are all important and all build upon each other. Focusing too much on any one aspect while leaving others at the wayside won’t have you be the best athlete you can be

Don't Count Calories to Lose Weight: The Body Fat Set Point Theory

We have all been told that 3,500 calories equals a pound of fat. This idea is taught widely in schools and published in many nutrition textbooks. We know if we follow this rule, then we can lose a total of one pound per week by cutting approximately 500 calories per day. We take this as a fact and apply without ever questioning it.

 

The Research on Calories and Fat

But can anyone reading this article tell me where this research came from? I could not, so I took to PubMed. I searched for “3500 calories equals one pound of fat” and got a message telling me, “No items found.” I narrowed my search to “3500 calories and fat” and received six results, none of which were related to the research in determining this magic number.

 

 

So, why do we keep promoting unsuccessful weight loss ideals that are not even backed up by science? Most of us will use calorie counters found on the Internet to help us establish our daily caloric needs. The most popular equation is the Harris Benedict equation. This equation was established in 1918 after looking at extremely small control groups of 136 men, 103 women, and 94 newborn infants. This research is almost one hundred years old. 

 

Really? Science hasn’t made any new discoveries since then to alter this equation and help us fight the obesity epidemic?

 

The Body Fat Set Point Theory

Fortunately, there is good research out there to help us. But for some unknown reason it’s not as well known as the whole 3,500-calories-equals-a-pound-of-fat thing. What we need to look to instead is the body fat set point theory. This theory explains that we have a group of hormones that regulates appetite and body fat storage. These hormones communicate with one another and need to be in balance in order for us to achieve and maintain a healthy weight.

 

 

"All of these hormones must be doing their jobs and working in sync in order for us to achieve an optimal weight."

The important hormones are leptin, insulin, glucagon, ghrelin, and adrenaline:

 

• Leptin was discovered in 1992 and has been found to control how much body fat we store, as well as when we are satiated. 
• Insulin is our main fat storage hormone. 
• Glucagon is the opposite of insulin. It stimulates the liver to release stored glycogen and works with adrenaline to free up our stored fats to use as energy. 
• Ghrelin tells us when we are hungry. 

 

All of these hormones must be doing their jobs and working in sync in order for us to achieve an optimal weight. Other important factors include other peptides and even certain brain regions. 

 

Leptin, Ghrelin, and Insulin

Leptin may just be the ringleader of this circus, though. Leptin is primarily secreted by our fat cells, and when levels are high, then our hunger is decreased. Ghrelin was discovered almost a decade after leptin and it controls our short-term hunger response. Ghrelin is released from the stomach lining, and when levels are high, we increase our hunger response. Both of these hormones are found to be in dysregulation during obesity.

 

LEARN MORE: Leptin: The Secret Key to Getting Shredded

 

 

Insulin has been a big focus of obesity research for quite some time. It is one reason why some people swear low-carbohydrate diets are the way to go. Insulin has a direct effect on leptin. As insulin levels rise, so do leptin levels. In fact, leptin receptors have been found on the beta cells of the pancreas, where insulin is produced. The problem is we can develop resistance to these hormones and this can cause a number of issues for us. 

 

RELATED: 60 Minutes of Exercise Can Improve Insulin Resistance 25%

 

Developing Resistance to the Hunger Hormones

When we develop resistance to these hunger-controlling hormones, it is like our body is making a phone call, but we’re not picking up on the other end. As a result, our body needs to yell louder. It does this by releasing more and more of the hormones in question. 

 

Let’s look at this scenario in terms of letpin. If we develop leptin resistance, it means more fat being stored and more food being eaten. Due to the relationship with insulin, if we have leptin resistance, then we have insulin resistance, too.

 

So, we get ourselves into this mess and then decide we need to get our weight in check. We count out our calories and subtract 500 calories per day, just as we have been taught. But in response to this low-calorie eating our body causes our leptin levels to fall. This, again, will increase our eating and fat storage. 

 

 "Due to the relationship with insulin, if we have leptin resistance, then we have insulin resistance, too."

On top of that, calorie counting does not take into effect how certain foods react with these hormones. We are told to approach everything in moderation, including our eating, but does this strategy work? Highly palatable foods have been shown to blunt both leptin and ghrelin. This is why it is easy to overeat foods such as ice cream and pizza. This can cause you to take in more calories than you even realize.

 

 

 

What We Can Do to Lose Weight

So what can we do to lose weight if low-calorie eating does not work? We can eat a diet high in nutrient-rich fruits, vegetables, and quality protein, such as grass-fed meat, fish, and eggs. Making sure that protein makes up at least 30% of your daily calories can decrease caloric intake and may increase systemic leptin sensitivity. 

 

I recommend nine to twelve servings of fruits and vegetables per day. If you are attempting to lose weight, then limit your fruits to one to three servings per day. Vegetables are high in nutrients and low in calories. They are almost impossible to overeat. Just be careful how much added sugar, salt, and fat there is in your diet, as these increase the palatability of foods and can lead to overeating.

10 Mistakes Women Make In The Gym

Here's what you need to know...

•  Too many women, because of poor exercise choices or practices, end up building a body that's "skinny fat," a condition where they appear thin in clothes, but actually have a higher body fat percentage than they did before they started exercising.

•  Women generally need to use heavier weights. Stop with the delicate little flower thing. Your muscles won't grow – won't get curvy – if you're pressing, squatting, or curling with weights that have roughly the same heft as your iPhone.

•  The one exception to working with heavy weights is the waist. The waist is comprised of muscles and muscles respond to heavy weights by getting bigger.

•  It's virtually impossible – no matter what you eat – to gain any fat in the post-workout period. While gaining fat during this period is highly improbable, it's highly probable that you will build some muscle during this same timeframe, provided you give your body the protein (and calories) it requires.

For anyone knowledgeable about exercise, walking into a public gym is kind of like stumbling into a nudist camp – you quickly just want to slap on some horse blinders because there's so much that you don't want to see. In the case of the nudist camp, it's usually a lot of flabby, pasty-white guys that should never be naked, even when they're alone in a secluded cabin on a mountaintop. In the case of the gym, you want to restrict your view because people are often doing the lamest, silliest, most illogical exercises and practices imaginable and it hurts your sensibilities as a fitness expert.

Guys are probably the biggest tools in the gym because they're driven by ego instead of logic, but women make their own share of mistakes that are unique to their sex. Women are torn between what they read in Shape or on some insane aerobic queen's blog, their unqualified husband's or boyfriend's pontifications on diet and exercise, or society's conflicting and confounding expectations of what a woman should look like. It's no wonder women can't decide between lifting weights, becoming a Crossfit wind-up toy, doing aerobics until they're thin as a waif from Oliver Twist, or practicing so much yoga that their seven angry and overworked chakras pack up their things and go to Cabo for a weekend of volleyball, sun, and suds.

Too often women end up blending elements of all those practices and as often happens when you combine too many recipes, that dish won't cook. Women make little progress and often end up looking worse than when they began, sometimes developing a body that's "skinny fat," a cruel, paradoxical condition where they appear thin in clothes, but actually have a higher body fat percentage than they did before they started to exercise because they lost muscle instead of body fat.

I'm going to assume that one of the reasons women go to the gym is to look better, and looking better usually means becoming leaner and/or acquiring more curves. Bodies, at least the most aesthetically pleasing ones, are a combination of convex and concave curves instead of straight lines. You're a delectable and enticing mammal, not a tree. As such, you want to build muscle to build or accentuate convex curves. If you're already blessed with convex curves, you want to createconcave curves by losing fat. You accomplish either or both by smart weight lifting. Plenty of women have accepted this wonderful reality, but I still see stuff that makes me want to wear blinders. Here are some of the regrettable practices I see women making all the time.

1. Fear of Appearing Butch

You've heard this one before, but it doesn't look like it's sinking in. You need to evolve beyond using rubber-coated dumbbells that have a clump of iron the size of a baby's fist on either side. In other words, you need to use heavier weights. Stop with the delicate little flower thing. Your muscles won't grow – won't get curvy – if you're pressing, squatting, or curling with weights that have roughly the same heft as your iPhone. Say hello to the 20 and 30-pound dumbbells, aspire to the 40 and 50-pound ones. Use weights that allow you to do between 8 and 15 repetitions.

And don't play the age-old, "I don't want to get too big" card. Unless you're the one woman in a million that has such high Testosterone levels that female horses start to whinny nervously when you walk by, you're not going to suddenly sprout muscle from your ears and everywhere else. Neither will your muscles grow beyond your aesthetic ideal unless you start feeding them a lot more. Muscles don't grow out of thin air; you've got to supply them with protein and carbs. That's why men who lift weights eat barnyards of fowl, ranches of cattle, rivers of fish, barrels of protein powder, and vats of Cocoa Puffs. If you don't eat that way, you won't get "too big." (See mistake #9 for advice on when you should eat big.)

2. Fear of Making an Ugly Face

We just discussed using heavier weights, but we didn't discussintensity. When you're lifting weights, you shouldn't be able to maintain the same facial expression as when you're getting a mani-pedi. Too many women just don't get down and dirty. There's rarely even a grimace or a bit of semi-feminine grunting. Look, building muscle requires some discomfort; it requires some pain. You might be able to look all pretty and composed for the first few reps, even while using an appropriately heavy weight, but you're ultimately going to have to make an ugly she-wolverine face on the last few highly-productive "money" reps where you coerce muscle into growing. No ugly face, no curvy muscle. No ugly face, no increased strength. Tank your outdated views of femininity. Screw how it looks or what anyone thinks.

3. Absession

Absession is not a new scent from Calvin Klein. Rather, it's being obsessed with working the abs or the waistline in general. Here's a shocker: everyone has a six-pack; you just have to whittle away enough fat so that it shows. Granted, you may want to build the abdominals so they're more pronounced, but stop thinking that you need to dedicate half your workout or more to working abs. Three or four hard sets of 15 to 20 – using resistance or using more challenging angles as necessary – a few times a week is all you need. Spend the rest of the time building overall muscle and doing activities that burn fat in general.

4. Working the Abs Like a Powerlifter

I know mistake #1 said to use heavier weights, but ab work is the one exception. For some reason, a lot of women already use heavy weights when working the midsection. Oddly, they think that working the waist with heavy weights is somehow going to make it smaller. Maybe... if we all lived in the Bizarro world. The waist is comprised of muscles and muscles respond to heavy weights by getting bigger. If you want a waist that's as broad as a tree stump, then have at it. If, however, you want the mythical wasp waist, stop working your abs with heavy weights. As mentioned in the previous tip, stick with weight or resistance that allows you to do roughly 15 to 20 reps. Most importantly, don't use weights while working your "side muscles," otherwise known as the obliques. The surest way to build a blocky waist is to do side bends while hanging onto dumbbells. Instead, work your obliques by doing a few sets of side planks a couple of times a week.

5. Balancing on the BOSU

I'll grudgingly admit that the BOSU ball probably has some merit in developing balance. As such, it might be useful for Cirque du Soleil performers. It also makes for a lovely post-modernist style chair. Beyond those functions, I see little use for it.

Okay, I'm being overly snarky. Yes, the BOSU has some application for abdominal work or rehab work for people with hinky ankles and it can probably help with balance issues, but somewhere along the line, exercisers, most often women or their enabler-slash-trainers started using the BOSU as a weight-training accessory. They either put one foot on it to use with lunges or they put both feet on it while doing any number of traditional weight training exercises like dumbbell curls, lateral raises, overhead presses, or squats. Some morons have even taken this a step further by doing these same movements on a Swiss ball. (If you see someone doing the latter, feel free to hip check the ball and send them crashing to the ground.)

The thinking is that lifting weights on an unstable surface makes the muscles work harder to keep you from doing a face plant, but balancing isn't the type of muscular effort that builds muscle. And, in order to keep your balance, you have to use lighter weights than you would otherwise.

Lifting weights – even light ones – while standing on a BOSU will make your muscles fatigue much faster, forcing you to abort the set earlier than you normally would. You end up missing out on the "money reps," those reps at the end of a set where you activate the muscle fibers most responsible for growth. If all of that falls on deaf ears, consider that none of the major studies conducted on the BOSU have found it to build muscle any faster than doing the same exercises on solid ground.

6. Too Much Aerobics

I've got a question for you: Have you ever see a marathoner or even an accomplished jogger with a really good body? Probably not. They're either slightly emaciated, have a body with very few curves, or are plagued with the skinny-fat condition I talked about in the intro. They also have really ugly feet.

Without going into all the hormonal or evolutionary permutations, let's just accept the scientific fact that the body would generally, during caloric deficits, rather sacrifice muscle than fat, and what is excessive endurance exercise but an artificially induced caloric deficit? Regardless, women especially are saddled with the myth that the more aerobic exercise they do, the better they'll look.

Remember, you want muscle, and excessive aerobic exercise is death to muscle. There are far more effective ways to burn fat. Going for a brisk walk first thing in the morning is incredibly effective and it saves muscle. Similarly, brief bouts of high-intensity exercise in the form of sprinting or Tabata-style exercise-bicycling or weight training build muscle and burn fat simultaneously. In case you're not familiar with Tabata, it's a simple but brutal protocol where you do an activity as fast and hard as you can for 20 seconds, rest 10 seconds, and then do another exercise/rest cycle of 20 and 10 seconds. You do this for 4 minutes straight and then collapse into a spent but proud heap. You can do Tabata workouts with kettlebell swings, dumbbell squats, stationary bicycle sprints, or any number of other exercises.

7. Workout Monogamy

Mating for life, as swans, wolves, turtledoves, and Catholics are wont to do, has some biological advantages. Mating to your workout for life, however, has none. Too bad so many women ignore this fact. Whether it's from a lack of imagination or a misguided belief that "exercise is exercise" or that "there's only one way to lift a weight," some women keep doing the same routine year-in and year-out. They may have torn it out of a Shape or Cosmo that was lying in the doctor's office and since they've been healthy and haven't gone back to the doc's office and read some new magazines, they're still doing the same routine a year or two later.

That's unfortunate because the body adapts to workouts whether they be weight workouts or aerobic workouts. That's why there are so many fat aerobics instructors. They've done the same routine for years and their neurological system is so accustomed to it that it costs them little in calories or effort to complete the workout. You need to cycle your workouts every four to six weeks. Emphasize legs in one cycle, shoulders or arms the next. Get new routines from articles right here on T Nation.

8. Workout Promiscuity

The opposite of the workout monogamist is of course the workout slut. While much more common among males, there are plenty of women who can't stick with a workout for very long. They try out a workout a few days, see that it hasn't yet given them an NFL cheerleader body, and then try something else. One manifestation of this is "CrossFit Fever." These women, not entirely sure of what constitutes CrossFit training, do a bastardized version where they perform non-stop, often non-sensical, semi-aerobic, semi-anaerobic conditioning work for 1 to 2 hours for no apparent reason, save to exorcise or exercise some professional or personal demons.

In either case, their workouts are chaotic and ultimately produce rotten results. Find a logical, progressive workout that addresses your particular needs, builds muscle, burns fat, and makes you the queen of curves and give it 4 to 6 weeks to work. Then and only then should you change it up, even if it worked well (see step #7).

9. Fear of Food

Ready to have your dietary beliefs shaken, Jell-O like, to their core? Okay, here goes: It's virtually impossible – no matter what you eat – to gain any fat in the post-workout period, which is roughly defined as the hour-long timeframe after you finish lifting weights. While gaining fat during this period is highly improbable, it's highly probable that you will build some muscle during this same timeframe, provided you give your body the protein (and calories) it requires.

It all has to do with insulin, the hormone that carries glucose and amino acids to muscle cells. Broadly speaking, insulin has two choices, it can either shuttle glucose and protein to storage in fatty tissue and the liver, or it can deliver those nutrients directly to muscle cells where they're used to fuel, repair, and grow muscle. The path it takes is determined by exercise – if you're lifting weights or just finished lifting weights, insulin will take the nutrients directly to muscle instead of storing it.

Muscle is particularly sensitive to insulin during this workout/post workout period, so if you want to build muscle/curves, it's imperative that you eat during what we call the "peri-workout" period, which is comprised of the period just before, during, and after a resistance workout. So temporarily forget your calorie fears. Temporarily forget your carb fears, too, because this is when you definitely need to provide your muscles with the material it needs to build those curves. In general, have a protein/carbohydrate drink about 45 minutes to an hour before a workout and a substantial amount of protein and carbohydrates after a workout. In an ideal world, you'd also sip a protein/carb drink during the workout, too, but at the very least, make sure you don't skimp on that post-workout meal.

10. Juicing

No, not juicing as in steroids. I'm talking about the plastic cups of pulverized, Osterized, barely palatable concoctions of kale, seaweed, wheat grass, and whatever other obscure vegetables or fruits the juicer is able to buy at a discount that so many women have permanently affixed to their hands when they walk into the gym.

I know it seems contrary, even heretical, to suggest you stop or limit your consumption of these drinks, but hear me out. Vegetables and fruits contain simple sugars and more complex, harder-to-digest carbs. No problem there. However, when you blend up fruits and vegetables, you're breaking down all those normally hard-to-digest carbs into infinitesimally small pieces. Drink that stuff down and you're virtually bypassing much of the digestive process. All those sugars are presented to your bloodstream like flowers to your momma on Mother's Day. They get absorbed super quick, and your pancreas releases a surge of insulin to counteract all that sugar. It's virtually the same effect you'd get from shot-gunning a 24-ounce 7-11 Slurpie.

Insulin shuttles off some of the sugar to muscle cells and the rest are stored (in the liver or as body fat), but then insulin levels dip below baseline and you get hungry again pretty fast. If you give in to that hunger, you're ingesting more calories than you might normally have and extra, unnecessary calories get stored as fat. What's more, if you do the juice thing often enough, you may actually develop some insulin resistance, which is the first step down the path to Type II diabetes.

There's one more thing to consider, too. You probably wouldn't be able to eat all the fruits and vegetables that are in a typical fruit or vegetable smoothie if they were sitting there on a plate. They'd take up too much room in your stomach and even all that Spandex in your Lululemon pants wouldn't be able to flatten out your belly. However, pulverize all those fruits and vegetables down into primordial ooze and they, and all the calories they contain, fit in your stomach just fine. Juicing allows you to eat more than you normally could, which is never really good if you're trying to keep tabs on your body fat levels. 

The Right Way to Lose Fat: What to Eat

Let’s set the record straight from the outset: the goal of any weight loss, pound-shedding, “trimming,” or whatever-you-label-it program is body FAT loss, not necessarily scale-weight loss. So, bubble-wrap your weight scale and put it in the basement or attic and focus on your body composition: the fat to muscle ratio.

I am not a Registered Dietician so I cannot offer you specific advice on what you should be consuming. I will, however, lay out bits and pieces of some of the most recent issues and arguments in the fat loss world, such as:

• Is it simply creating a calorie deficit, so your body is forced to tap into adipose fat?

• Is a calorie a calorie regardless if it comes from protein, carbohydrate, or fat?

• Regarding the last question, what is better: a high carb/low fat or a low carb/high protein diet?

• What about the glycemic content of carbs and blood sugar levels?

Calorie Deficit

There is no question that a reduction of calorie intake coupled with high-level energy expenditure results in weight loss (all other factors being equal). But what guarantees the weight loss to be fat only? Consider these facts:

• It is a long-standing fact that a pound of fat equals 3,500 calories.

• A pound of muscle renders around 600 calories.

• People with a higher percent of body fat will lose more fat and retain more muscle with a significant calorie deficit.

• People with a lower percent of body fat will lose more muscle and retain more fat with a significant calorie deficit.

Let’s do some maths. A 500 calorie deficit per day over one week could result in two outcomes: a loss of one pound of fat (3,500/3,500 calories = 1) or a loss of nearly six pounds of muscle (3,500/600 calories = 5.8).

Obviously, the loss of muscle is not desirable. This is why attention must be paid to the correct calorie deficit based on your existing percentage of fat and your activity level. If you possess a significant amount of body fat, you can probably get away with a larger deficit in the early stages. As you become leaner – or if you are relatively lean to begin with – the calorie deficit needs to be adjusted to preserve lean tissue. This also explains why it is so difficult to shed those elusive few pounds to get completely “ripped".

Calories from Proteins, Carbs, and Fats: Is There a Difference?

Regarding the first law of thermodynamics, a calorie is a calorie. That is, no matter what source it is from, one calorie is the energy required to increase the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. It can only be transformed.

Here’s a little bit of historical science behind the accepted caloric value of protein, carb, and fat in the diet. The past work of Rubner and Atwater is the standard used today. Using a bomb calorimeter to measure the heat of combustion of various proteins, carbs, and fats, they determined the energy density of dietary protein = 4.1 calories/gram, carbs = 4.1 calories/gram, and fat = 9.3 calories. Rounded off, it is 4 calories/gram of protein, 4 calories/grams of carbs, and 9 calories/gram of fat that we currently use (and why many panic when they see fat is more than double in potency).

Past thinking was to eat .7 to 1.0 grams of protein per pound of body weight, load up on the carbs for energy, and minimize the fat. After all, 15 grams of fat has 135 calories and 15 grams of carbs has only 60, so to help shed the pounds, back off on the fat intake. But it’s not that simple. The type of protein, carb, and fat must be considered as well as how the body processes them.

High Carb/Low Fat or Low Carb/High Protein?

A review was conducted that evaluated studies comparing weight loss and energy expenditure in adults consuming high protein and/or low carbohydrate with low fat diets. I believe this is where all the support for low carb diets got its momentum.

The review analyzed nine studies where diets composed of high protein and/or low carbs resulted in a 5.5 pound greater weight loss after twelve weeks as compared to diets of high carbs and/or low fat. However, neither macronutrient-specific differences in the availability of food energy nor changes in energy output could explain these differences in weight loss.If a calorie is a calorie, then what other factors could account for the differences in weight loss between the two diets?

Low carb diets facilitate the loss of glycogen stores and associated water, which can be as great as 4.4 pounds.

Because the Rubner and Atwater factors used to calculate metabolizable energy are not exact, the standard macronutrient values are not perfect, and small errors can occur. The substitution of one macronutrient for another has been shown in some studies to be statistically significant regarding the effect on the expenditure half of the energy balance equation, especially in high-protein diets. Because the energy expenditure is minimal, however, it may account for less than one-third of the differences in the weight losses reported between high-protein or low-carb diets and high-carb or low-fat diets.

Carb Glycemic Level and Blood Sugar Stabilization

In general, high glycemic carbs create a large, temporary rise in blood sugar (glucose) because they are quickly digested. Low glycemic carbs take longer to digest, thus produce a smaller and slower rise. A rapid rise in blood sugar means:

•More insulin is released. A high insulin level promotes a quick storage of sugar in muscle and the liver. It also inhibits the hormone glucagon, which normally tells the body to burn stored fat. Obese people tend to be “sugar burners”– they mainly burn stored glycogen. Their forthcoming meals restore glycogen (especially if high glycemic) and the cycle keeps repeating. Thus, fat stores do not get touched and usually grow larger.

•Blood sugar levels then drop quickly, leaving you hungry sooner. Suddenly, the body needs more fuel. But because glucagon is still in short supply, the body does not tap into its fat supply for energy. The inevitable result? Hunger. You will eat again, needlessly, which can lead to increased fat gain over time.

Facts to consider:

 • Highly processed foods that contain refined sugars (cookies, crackers and corn syrup) usually have a higher glycemic level.

• Other factors affecting the glycemic level is whether the food is liquid or solid, raw or cooked, and the amount of fiber it contains.

• The more grams of carbohydrate consumed the higher the glycemic response because there is an increased glycemic load. So, one can over-consume even low glycemic foods.

• Most people usually eat foods in combination. The fat and protein also consumed at feedings can help lower the overall glycemic level.

• Not all simple sugars are high glycemic. Fruit, for instance, contains the simple sugar fructose. Fructose has a slow rate of digestion and absorption and thus a lower glycemic response.

Moderate and high glycemic foods are recommended during and after exercise. Consuming a high glycemic food within 45 minutes after exercise elevates plasma glucose concentrations and facilitates muscle glycogen replenishment. Post-exercise insulin secretion increases protein synthesis by increasing amino acid uptake in the muscles. Insulin also enhances blood flow into muscle, thus facilitating the removal of lactate and carbon dioxide.

Final Thoughts

Information abounds on all aspects of fat loss. Who and what can you believe? My advice would be to consult a registered dietician or a nutrition specialist for specific diet recommendations based on your fat loss goals. Even if your goal is to gain weight (muscle), there are certain dos and don’ts the dietician can address.