It Really Has Been A BIG, FAT Lie – The Real Science Behind Dietary Fat, Cholesterol and Your Health

I originally did this interview to help my clients maintain their fat-loss. On the nutrition side of things I use low-carb diets to help people drop a lot of body fat without being hungry. However, there is one huge problem with low-carb diets – other people’s ill-informed opinions.

Here’s a typical conversation:

Coworker: “WOW! You look fantastic – like you’ve dropped 40 pounds. You never even had a neck before. How did you do it?”

My client: “I’ve been eating low-carb and lifting weights and doing intervals.”

Coworker: “WTF!? Are you trying to kill yourself!? Low-carb diets are the most dangerous things ever – all that fat and cholesterol is going to make your heart explode!”

My client usually says nothing, and inside a very negative conversation begins. “Hmmm… What if they’re right? What if I am trading my health for a great body? What if all this steak and eggs really is going to kill me?”

The problem is that their coworker is sincere, BUT the information is sincerely wrong.

They literally have NO IDEA WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT whatsoever. They’ve probably never read and comprehended primary research on nutrition in their entire lives. (By the way, almost none of the students in my 400 level nutrition classes had ever read a single study on their own. They were just parroting what the food pyramid said.)

Very few people understand statistics, research design, biochemistry, or anything else that makes reviewing research worthwhile. As a nerd, I keep two different biochemistry textbooks in my office to read for fun.

Most people get their opinions from other people who get their opinions from other people who got their opinions from the media, and the people who report on health and exercise are not usually scientifically literate. They will write up whatever the spokesperson for the study has to say and will almost never critically evaluate the study. (For an example read this on red meat and this on a sham diet study.)

So what I did for my clients was arrange an interview with Gary Taubes. He’s one of the few people on planet Earth who has reviewed the entire field of literature on public health, nutrition and obesity.

He spent multiple full-time years with multiple assistants in multiple libraries – whose salaries he paid – and hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money to do this. If there is a study out there that was ever published ANYWHERE on diet and health he has read it and is great at helping people understand it.

So Gary, will the saturated fat and cholesterol in a low carb diet kill you?

This was actually my fear when I first started a low-carb diet 10 years ago as an experiment. I’d sit there eating scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast waiting for my heart to blow up, then I did some research.

I wanted to see how we came to believe this idea that saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for you, and whether or not our beliefs were justified. Believe it or not, I have actually read all of the field going back to the 1800’s. One of the things that I was looking for was the point when the idea that saturated fat and cholesterol were killers was still controversial. That was in the 1970’s.

The first thing I saw was… the rest of this interview is published at Primer Magazine.

OH, and please don’t forget to vote for me right here.  It only takes 2 clicks to vote and I would really appreciate your help.

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, The DC Fitness Advisor and the Fitness Expert for the PCOS Challenge TV Show. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

The Scales Can Lie – How You Can Be Normal Weight, Yet Obese

After 40 years, medical research has finally caught up with the fitness industry (well, the few competent folks in the fitness industry) when it comes to scale weight.  The “shocking” new news made it a big splash in The Wall Street Journal is that “you can be normal weight and fat at the same time.”  The “amazing” discovery is that, low and behold, scale weight is not the be all and end all after all.

However the people that did this study caution that “the findings [that body fat % is as important or more important than scale weight] need to be validated with additional research.”

Well, while they take 10 years and $100 million to do additional research here’s how you can apply this NOW for FREE.

#1.  Ignore traditional advice

It takes a lot of time to do and it sucks when it comes to results.  Case in point – the Women’s Health Initiative 2006:  The experimental group reduced their saturated fat and cholesterol intake and cut their overall caloric intake by an average of 360 calories per day for 8 whole years.

Let’s do the math on that to see how many pounds that they should have lost if the whole “calories in vs. calories out” thing worked in the human body:

360calories/day x 7days/week x 52 weeks/yr = 131,040 calories (food calories, so, technically, that’s kilocalories).

A pound of fat has 3,500 calories.  So, they should have lost 37.4 pounds per year.

However, on average they lost about 2 pounds.  BUT, and this is particularly apropos to the article, they GAINED in waist circumference!  In other words they got fatter at a slightly lower weight.

#2.  Measure what matters

What matters most is what your body is composed of – body composition.  How much of you is fat and how much of you is lean?  This determines how you look naked.

It is entirely possible for a woman to drop 2 sizes (i.e. 8 to a 4) but to only drop 5lbs on the scale.  If she were to just go by the scale, then the 3 months that it took to achieve this would seem like a waste – only 5 pounds in 3 months!  But, if she looked at herself in the mirror she would say, “wow!  No more cellulite!”  And if she looked at how her clothes fit, she’d notice that her pants don’t stay up.  (By that I mean that her pants are too big for her now.  What were you thinking?)

It’s possible for a man to gain weight while loses body-fat.  If you just went by the scale, you would say that he failed – he gained weight.  But if you looked at him in the mirror, you’d see exactly what most men want – more muscle and less fat at the same time.

Traditional weight loss programs emphasize the number on the scale, and have people on low-fat, low calorie diet doing lots of aerobic exercise.  On this type of program 25-50% of what you’ll lose will be lean body mass.  So, if you drop 10 pounds, up to 5 could be lean body mass.

In body composition, losing fat and gaining muscle are both positives.  On the scale the above person would be a success.  But, in terms of body composition, they made no progress at all – 5lbs of lean lost, and 5lbs of fat lost = 0lbs net progress.

The most practical way for most people to measure their body composition is with a tape measure.  It is simple, fast, reliable (if you get spring-loaded tape measure so you always use the same amount of tension) and does not require you to be dunked underwater with no air in your lungs or to be exposed to radiation.

Most health clubs offer skin fold caliper readings, BUT, these are neither accurate nor precise (reliable) unless you happen to get somebody who has done several thousand skin fold measurements in a research setting.  That is unlikely with the low pay and high turnover at health clubs.

The electric scales and hand held devices for measuring body fat (bioelectrical impedance) are horrible in my opinion.  I’ve measured myself twice in a day and been 9% mid day and 13% in the evening.  I don’t even think that they’re useful to measure change with.

If you really, really want a very accurate, direct reading of your body composition there are 3 options:

•    DEXA – a machine that uses x-rays to measure both bone density and body composition.  (The draw back is that you have to be exposed to radiation, so you can’t do this very often.)

•    Hydrostatic weighing – underwater weighing.  This is a way to get your density – body composition.  Just unpleasant, but no radiation.

•    Bod Pod – uses a chamber of pressurized air instead of water and a scale to get your density.  This seems to be less accurate the leaner you are.

If you’d like a fool-proof, time efficient program to optimize your body composition for life, check this out.

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, The DC Fitness Advisor and the Fitness Expert for the PCOS Challenge TV Show. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

New Research: Aerobic Exercise May Make You A Fat STORING Machine

New research suggests that doing exercise in your “fat burning zone” will actually reduce the amount of fat that your body burns for the rest of that day.  A new study in the Journal of Applied Physiology had participants do 1 hour of cycling at 55% of their aerobic capacity only to find that “24 h fat balance was significantly more positive on [the exercise day] compared to [the non-exercise day].”

Local fitness expert Josef Brandenburg says, “this is what I’ve been telling my clients for years – aerobic exercise makes you fatter.”  Brandenburg hypothesizes that the body responds to exercise based on the type of fuel it uses.

In high intensity exercise like sprinting and weight lifting the primary fuel is carbohydrate.  Your body responds to carb-dependent exercise by making it easier for your body to replace those carbs (increasing your insulin sensitivity), and increasing your capacity to store carbohydrates (called glycogen).

With low-intensity, aerobic exercise – like that done in the study and during most people’s workouts – the primary fuel is fat.  Brandenburg thinks that burning fat as the primary fuel during exercise is the signal to your body to become better at storing fat, hence the results of the study.

He says your body responds by doing the opposite.  At the end of a resistance workout you are smaller and weaker than when you started it, but your body responds by doing the opposite – building you up in preparation for the next time it is stressed.

“Research in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition shows that resistance training shifts your body to burn more fat for the 24 hours after your workout unlike with aerobics.  I think that since body-fat is fundamentally regulated by the hormone insulin, the intense, carb-dependent exercise like resistance training makes you burn fat all day long because it reduces your insulin levels and improves your carbohydrate metabolism,” says Brandenburg.

For free info about what to do with this click here

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, and author of “The Body You Want”. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here..

The Truth About Core Training: Why You Should NOT Be Doing Crunches

What does everyone who wants a better stomach do? Crunches, crunches and more crunches.

Why? Because that’s what he or she sees everyone else doing. The funny thing is that rarely if ever do those other people doing all those crunches actually have midsections worth emulating. Somehow our minds filter out all of the people crunching until the cows come home with no results, and only pay attention to the 3% of people in the lucky sperm club that look good.

I’m not really pointing any fingers here because I did the same thing for at least a decade myself.

Why You Should Not Be Doing Crunches (and most, if not all traditional ab work for that matter)

#1.  It will not make you look any better: Everyone that I have ever met who was dissatisfied with their midsection only ever has ONE problem – there’s too much fat over top of their ab muscles.

You were born with your abs in a 4, 6 or 8 pack and when you die, they’re going to be that way too.  The only issue is that the layer of fat on top of them is too thick for you to be able to see them.

The solution to a better stomach is a good fat-loss program.  (I’ve written about the hierarchy of fat-loss before.)  In 3 or 4 hours per week you can slash your body-fat in half (or more) with a good fat-loss program.

If you slash your body-fat in half, but do no direct ab work whatsoever your abs will look better than they have in years (or possibly ever). But if you waste those same 3 or 4 hours per week just working your abs directly, your stomach will look no better AND you posture will probably get worse and your back will probably hurt more.

#2.  Crunches make your posture worse:

When you crunch you bring your head, shoulders and chest down towards your pelvis.

What is bad posture?  A forward head, shoulders and a dropped chest.  Or, to put that another way, your head is forward, and your rib cage and shoulders are pulled down towards your pelvis.

If you already spend all day at your desk hunched over looking at your computer, why would you want to spend any more time hunching yourself over and over and over again with crunches?

#3.  They won’t help your back feel better:

Contrary to popular “wisdom” doing a bunch of “ab” work will NOT help to protect your back at all.

A little anatomy – when people talk about their “abs” they’re talking about the long flat muscle that sits on top of everything called you “rectus abdominus.”  It runs from the bottom of your rib cage to the bottom of your pelvis.  Its fibers are vertical.

If you think about the physics of that, you will realize that there is no possible way that a vertical muscle on the front of your body can provide any support to a vertical structure on the back of your body (your spine).

Think about it.  If it contracts concentrically (gets shorter), then it just lowers your rib cage which actually rounds your lower back and puts it in a position that it is MORE vulnerable to injury in.

If it contracts eccentrically (resists getting longer), it keeps the rib cage from moving backward.  How does that support your lower back when lifting or twisting?

Your Own Weight Belt

The reason why people where weight belts is that if you synch them up tightly enough the squeezing of your midsection provides support for your lower back when you are trying to move something heavy.  You actually have your own internal weight lifting belt of muscles that is built into your body.  It’s made up of muscles that tighten inwards to support your lower back during movement, lifting, etc.  These are the muscles that are weak when you have  “pooch.”

The natural question is “how do I isolate those muscles?”  That misses the point for a whole bunch of reasons that I don’t have the space to get into.

In people with a properly functioning core (and no back pain) your internal weight belt turns on automatically right before any kind of movement.  By the time you think about “bracing” your core it’s already too late.

What you want is the kind of training that puts your body into positions that force it to fire the right muscles at the right time automatically (without you having to think about it).

You will never throw out your back when you are all braced up and prepared for a movement.  It’s going to be when you don’t expect and your body failed to automatically and unconsciously prepare that you will hurt your back.  There is no kind of crunch that will help with this.

2 Core Exercises You Should be Doing Instead

P.S.  Don’t the FREE fat-loss bootcamp that I’m doing this Saturday (8-29).  This will be a very fun, fast and effective fat burning workout, and I will make a donation to the Capitol Food Bank on your behalf if you show up.  More details right here.  This will be the kind of training that will actually help your midsection look better.

Josef Brandenburg is Washington, DC’s top personal trainer for busy people. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

I’m worried because I’ve got too much energy!

That’s not something that you hear every day (or every life time – it makes most people happy), but the other week a client named Alyssa came in rather concerned because:

#1.  She was dropping fat too fast (she had dropped 2.5 inches off her waist in the first 2 weeks).

#2.  She had too much energy.

She was worried that maybe there was some kind of stimulant in the Atkins protein shakes that she had been drinking as mid morning and mid afternoon snacks.  I assured her that other than the coffee flavored ones, they have no caffeine whatsoever.

Low Energy & High Body Fat Are Actually Two Sides Of The Same Coin

Accumulating extra body-fat and having less energy are actually two sides of the same coin – insulin resistance.

If you are prone to gain extra fat, then you have at least some degree of insulin resistance.  Insulin resistance is when your cells can’t “hear” or don’t respond very well to insulin.  Usually this is only in your lean (non-fat) tissue.

Lets say that you had a healthy breakfast of bacon, eggs and spinach.  Your body will be running off of fat afterwards.  Then lunch rolls around and you have a sandwich.  The bread from the sandwich will unleash a flood of carbs into your bloodstream that must be dealt with.

In response your body will secrete insulin.  The insulin sends the fat that you were using for fuel before back to your fat cells for storage in an attempt to force your body to burn off the carbs because blood sugar is toxic if it gets too high.

The problem is that if your lean tissue (non-fat) has any level of insulin resistance then it doesn’t respond very well to the insulin and can’t do a very good job of taking in the carbs, so blood sugar remains elevated.

In this scenario your lean tissue is actually being starved by the act of eating carbs:  the fat that your lean tissue was burning is unavailable, and they can’t really do a very good job of taking in the carbs, so the lean tissue doesn’t have enough fuel.  Hunger is determined by how well your energy needs are being met.  So you are both tired and hungry.

Since your blood sugar levels remain elevated (because your lean tissue couldn’t handle the carbs), your body releases more insulin.  At this point the carbs (energy) gets sequestered away in the only tissue that can take them in – your fat.

Carbs make susceptible people fat, hungry and tired.

Josef Brandenburg is Washington, DC’s top personal trainer for busy people. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

Making Fast Food Your Friend – My New Favorite Fast Food Meal

So, my last post on this topic was about Five Guys, and while I still love The Five, there is a new love in my life – Chipotle.  The love of my life – Tillie, my fiancé was the one who turned me on to the no rice, no beans bowl and Chipotle.  Its super yummy, super easy (no work involved – I only have to pay for it!), and doesn’t have any fattening (or fatigue inducing) starchy carbs.  And its soon to be even more convenient as they’re opening one right up the street from my condo!

Did you know you can place your order online before you go so that you don’t have to wait online?

The Josef Bowl:

*Double barbacoa beef
*Guacamole
*Sour cream
*Cheese
*Medium salsa
*Lettuce

Interesting side note:  I told one client about the no beans or rice bowl and she said, “but then you’ll need more food [as the rice and beans make up a lot of the bulk in the bowl].”  That’s not actually true.

For folks that have a tendency to pack on extra body-fat the act of eating carbs makes you hungry (insulin makes you both tired and hungry as its busy making new body-fat).  So, eliminating the starchy/refined carbs from a meal makes it energizing and satiating.  You’ll be more satisfied without the beans and rice than with!  (Satisfied with how your pants fit and satisfied with the amount of food you ate.)

Happy 4th of July!

Oh, and if you live in the States, spare a moment to reflect on how fortunate you are to live here vs. all of the other places on Earth that could never offer you the same opportunities to prosper and do with your life as you see fit.  I have one client that just spent 6 months in Afghanistan, and, well, you get the point… count your blessings.

Josef Brandenburg is Washington, DC’s top personal trainer for busy people. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

What If Low Carb Is Wrong? Does ASP Prove That Insulin Doesn’t Matter and That Its Calories That Really Count?

So there I was on the forums of t-nation.com answering questions about my recent interview piece with Gary Taubes when I started to wonder if this low-carb thing was legitimate after all.  “Have I been giving bad advice the whole time?  Should I just be telling people to ‘eat less and exercise more?’  But that’s never worked…  What I do now works like clock work… But all these posts keep telling me how ‘retarded’ me and Gary are…’”, I worried to myself.

What’s not authoritative and intimidating about being insulted over and over again by anonymous people on a forum?  If they can type it on a forum it must be well researched and true!  Right?

I did come to my thin-skinned senses eventually, BUT the folks on the t-nation forums did leave me with one question that I wasn’t entirely sure about:  Is ASP the overlooked flaw in low-carb dieting?

There were a lot of posts saying in effect: “What Tuabes and the rest of the low-carb community don’t like talking about is a little compound called acylation stimulating protein (ASP) which stores dietary fat in the fat cell with ZERO rise in insulin levels.”

I started doing some digging and found statements like these in peer reviewed research (I’m paraphrasing to make them readable and concise):

#1.  “ASP is far more powerful than insulin in stimulating the creation of new body-fat.” (1)

#2.  “ASP is released in response to an oral fat load.” (2)

Did I Get Served On A Forum?

I started really getting into ASP research at about 10pm on a Saturday night, and by the time I found the above statements in peer reviewed research I started sweating and my stomach was twisted up in knots.  I tried to let it go and hang out with my fiancé, but I just had to know – “What’s the deal with ASP!?  Is this something the debunks low-carb?”

So I spent the next 6 hours combing everything that I could get my hands on about ASP, and every time a paper made on of the above statements (#1 & 2 above) I noted the paper they cited.  (By the way, my biochemistry textbooks were no help at all.)  Pretty soon it became clear that those two statements were pretty much built off of two papers published in 1989:

•    Statement #1 above was pretty much built off of a paper titled “Purification and characterization of acylation stimulating protein”, but let’s call it “ASP trumps insulin” for this article.

•    Statement #2 above was built off of a paper titled “Metabolic response of acylation stimulating protein to an oral fat load,” but let’s call it “ASP is released in response to fat, not carbs.”

Does ASP Trump Insulin?

For the “ASP trumps insulin paper” the researchers grew fat cells in cultures (outside the body).  It is true the addition of ASP REALLY accelerated the creation of new fat (triglyceride) – it was faster than insulin.

HOWEVER, both the ASP and the no-ASP cultures had insulin and carbs added to them.  So the water is very muddy:

Could the ASP be a way in which insulin accelerates its activity?  Maybe the super deadly combo a high-fat and high sugar meal?  Maybe the only thing to learn from this study is that frosting is more fattening than candy?  Why not test ASP without insulin and carbs if your goal is to see what the difference between them is?

Or, for that matter, why not just test ASP in actual people instead of cultures? (1)

Is ASP Released In Response to Fat, Not Carbs?

For the “ASP is released in response to fat, not carbs.” The “lipid meal” or “oral fat load” that was used to induce the ASP response was cream + one tbsp table sugar (sucrose) + one tbsp nonfat dry milk.

That mixture is 25% carbs by weight!  So, that really doesn’t tell us anything at all.

Why not just have people drink olive oil or melted butter instead of cream plus a bunch of sugary stuff?

Take It Home Gary

I shared my research with Gary Taubes and he had this to say:

“Nice to know you’re suitably obsessed Josef.

“One thing to keep in mind in all this is the need to explain the observations, not just work with possible mechanisms that can’t explain anything. So one of the observations is weight loss on a high fat diet — the Atkins diet.

“So if ASP was good at sequestering dietary fat away in the fat tissue without carbs being needed, why would people lose weight when they ate an Atkins diet?

“Another observation we’re trying to understand, as I point out in lectures, is the obesity in poor populations eating low-fat, high carb diets. So there ASP would be irrelevant. Now if we had obesity in populations eating low-carb, high-fat diets, that would be telling and a reason to invoke ASP, but, as far as I know, no such populations exist.

“So maybe ASP plays a role in obesity in rats that are fed high fat diets, but we’re not all that interested in rats.”

Epilogue – Falling Asleep At A Wedding

My obsessive researching kept me up ‘till 4am, but I had to be up at 8am to workout, shower and be at a friend’s wedding the next day.  I couldn’t put off my workout and sleep in because I had deadlines to meet that night.  So, while everyone else was watching the cake cutting and dancing, I passed out, face down on the table.  Even though I woke with drool on my cheek I felt a lot better.

Josef Brandenburg is an award winning Washington, DC weight loss expert and author of The Body You Want.  He specializes in helping normal, busy people create the bodies they want in the time they actually have.  You can pick up a FREE copy of his new CD “Why ‘Eat Less and Exercise More’ is The Worst Advice Ever” right here.

References

#1.  J Biol Chem vol. 264, Jan 5, 1989, p.426-430

#2. J lipid res vol 30, 1989 p. 1727-1733

Getting buzzed while getting buff: How to drink without ruining your progress

Over the past few years I have noticed something profound – most people like to drink.  (Well, it is profound to me since I think alcohol tastes like cat pee.  I was very young when I got my first cat.)  Even when people have hired me to help them drop a ton of body fat quickly they still really want to be able to drink.

Since I pride myself on being able to help normal people (vs. bodybuilders) get results in the real world I decided to figure this one out.  (By figure it out, I mean steal ideas from my clients.)

After observing client behavior and measuring client results over the past few years I’ve come up with these 3 simple rules that make everyone happy:

#1.  Beer makes you fat: Beer and fruity drinks like margaritas and daiquiris kill all progress, and can often reverse a week of hard work in the gym and kitchen.  The short explanation is that your body fat is fundamentally regulated by the hormone insulin.  And your insulin levels are fundamentally regulated by the quantity and quality of carbs in your diet.

In fruity drinks and beer the quantity is huge and the quality is horrible.  Drinking beer seems to be like drinking bread – it can actually help you gain fat while losing muscle.  The worst of both worlds.

Solution:  read tip #2, switch to light beer or something like Michelob Ultra, or use a sugar-free mixer like Crystal Light, seltzer or diet soda.

#2.  Hard liquor and wine are fine: Within reason (around 6 drinks per week) hard liquor and wine don’t seem to slow people down very much at all.  It seems like it’s the carbs in the drinks (tip #1), not the alcohol itself that is the big villain.

#3.  Get buzzed, not hammered: This should be common sense right?  If you get really drunk on a regular basis your progress will suffer if not disappear.  This is always worse if done with beer or fruity drinks.

Josef Brandenburg is Washington, DC’s top personal trainer for busy people. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

Why Does Interval Training Really Work?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should be pretty well aware that aerobic exercise is next to worthless for fat-loss.  You can put a woman on an 18month marathon training program and she won’t lose a pound! (1)  (If that sounds weird to you, then please read my piece from last week as the Washington, DC Weight Loss Examiner.)

While the most important part of a fat-loss exercise program is the metabolic resistance training, there isn’t a very good consensus on WHY metabolic resistance training and interval training work so well for fat-loss.

I used to think that it was because of this thing called EPOC – excess postexercise oxygen consumption, or the metabolic boost (elevation) that you get after intense exercise.  But, it turns out that EPOC probably isn’t big enough to account for the amount of fat-loss, and fat-loss doesn’t really work that way (calories in vs. calories out).

I have a new theory of why it works that I am reprinting here from my Monday post as the DC Weight Loss Examiner:

Interval training only consumes your stored carbs for fuel.  Body-fat is fundamentally regulated by the hormone insulin.  More insulin = more body fat and vice versa.  When you deplete your muscles carbohydrate stores (glycogen) you improve your sensitivity to insulin.  The more sensitive you are to insulin the less insulin you need to make to handle the same amount of food and/or carbohydrates.  The increased sensitivity to insulin is temporary, but if you do high intensity exercise like interval and resistance training you will appear to be someone with better insulin sensitivity (have less body-fat). (2-5)

That is the primary way that I think interval training creates superior fat-loss.

The secondary way is that intense exercise releases stuff called catecholamines.  These are chemicals like epinephrine and norepinephrine that stimulate the release of fat from your fat cells to be burned off.  The calories consumed by the workout are probably irrelevant.

I could be totally wrong, but that doesn’t matter.  it still works far better, in far less time and is more fun.

For more free info on how to do intervals click here.

Josef Brandenburg is Washington, DC’s top personal trainer for busy people. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

References:

1. Janssen, G. M., et al.  Food intake and body composition in novice athletes during a training period to run a marathon. International journal of sports medicine, May 1989; 10(1 suppl.):s17-21
2. Joslin. Elliot. Et al. Joslin’s Diabetes Mellitus. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. 13th edition, 1994
3. Nussey, Stephen. et al. Endocrinology: An Integrated Approach. Informa HealthCare, 1st edition, 2001
4. Kronenberg MD, Henry M. et al. Williams Textbook of Endocrinology. Saunders. 11th edition, 2008
5. Lehninger, Albert. Et al. Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry. W. H. Freeman. 5th edition. 2008

Local Trainer To Unveil The “20min Fat-Loss Solution” For Free

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) – May 20, 2009 – Do you think that you need to jog for hours on end to start dropping body fat?  Think again.  Washington, DC based personal trainer, Josef Brandenburg will be sharing a unique 20min fat-burning program with the public for free at the upcoming “Saturdays In August”.

Saturdays in August is a new program designed to encourage physical activity, pedestrian transportation, and business development in DC.  It’s being coordinated by Darren Laing of the DC Department of Transportation (DDOT).  Brandenburg was selected as the DC Fitness Advisor for this event and says… click here to keep reading the press release.

Next Page »