The New Book Is Now On Amazon.com

I wanted to let you know that the new book “The Body You Want from A to Z” is now available on Amazon.com

It’s got chapters by me, Jimmy Moore, Gary Taubes and Dr. Bryan Walsh.

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.

Why Butter, Beef & Egg Yolks Are NOT Bad For You

I’ve been noticing a problem with my clients recently:  While on the one hand they are thrilled with how much fat they lose, how much muscle they gain and how much better their energy levels are; on the other hand in the back of their mind they are thinking, “I’m eating all of these egg yolks, all this beef and cheese, am I going to give myself a heart attack?”

This lingering doubt is so deep that even one of my clients who got OFF of cholesterol and high blood pressure meds by eating a TON of saturated fat and high cholesterol food, still has trouble believing his own results! Read more

There’s A Brand New Book From The Body You Want

Hopefully this is a welcome break from the news coverage about Michael Jackson’s death last week.

Exciting news: I just finished up the draft of my new book “The Body You Want From A to Z”, and its being edited as we speak!

I won’t even have the cover design until later on this week.

Basically this book will have 26 entries all on getting and keeping the body you want.  Some of it will be nutrition, some cooking, some exercise, some myth busting, and some on the mindset of success.

For example:

A is for Answer, as in The Answer To Why You Don’t Have The Body You Want Right Now

There are also 3 guest authors:

Gary Taubes (plutonic man love!) is chipping chapter Z:

Z is for Zucker Rats, as in Dieting To Death With Your Fat Intact:  What Zucker Rats Can Teach Us About Why Eating Less Does NOT Work and What Really Controls Your Body Fat

Dr. Bryan P. Walsh is doing chapter N:

N is for Not, as is Fat is Not Your Fault:  The Four Foes That Will Freeze Your Fat-Loss

Jimmy Moore is doing chapter K:

K is for Keys, as in The 4 Keys To Healthy and Lasting Weight Loss:  How I Lost & Kept Off 180lbs Without Hunger or Surgery

I don’t have any pre-order stuff up yet (that would have been smart from a marketing stand point).  It should be edited, laid out and ready to start printing on July 30th, so the 1st copies should be printing within 3-5 business days!

Do any of you all have ideas about what you’d like to see as part of promotional offer/package when the new book is released?

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

Do Fat People Really Eat More?

I can remember at summer camp at Georgetown University (right here in DC) when my “friends” took it upon themselves to inform me that I was the fattest kid at the camp.  I protested!  I said that this other kid (whose name I forget) was fatter than me and that I was only the 2nd fattest kid at camp.  They called that kid over in the locker room, looked at us both and said, “its close, but Josef is definitely the fattest.”

Shit!

That was not exactly my best day at camp.

It always seemed ridiculously unfair that I would get made fun of because I was not some gluttonous monster who went around eating everything in site.  I really did eat the same or less vs. my skinny friends.

It turns out that I was right.

“The energy intake of the obese boys was significantly less than that of the non-obese controls. Little difference was noted in the amount of time scheduled for light, moderate, and very active exercise.” (my emphasis)

STEFANIK, P.A., et al. Caloric Intake in Relation to Energy Output of Obese and Non-Obese Adolescent Boys. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol 7, 55-62, 1959

One study does not make anything so.  However there are LOTS and LOTS of studies that find the same thing over and over again.  Gary Taubes called it “one of the most consistently reproducible findings in obesity research.”

If it was just a matter of eating less no fat child on Earth would remain fat.  It’s such a horrible experience that no one would do it voluntarily.  The only people that say such absurd nonsense are people who have never experienced it themselves and simply cannot fathom what it is like to live a different kind of body.  If you have not been called “blubber thing” at summer camp then you cannot possibly understand.  You cannot have any more motivation to eat less and exercise more.

This is like saying that someone would choose to be black in the American South at the turn of the 20th century.  Or that someone would choose to be gay.

There is a very good reason why 98% of all people on weight loss programs regain everything they lose within a few years – because they’re relying on the “eat less and exercise more” theory.  It really doesn’t seem to work, especially not over the long haul.  Of course the people running these kinds of programs blame the participants.  The message goes, “98% of you are fat, lazy slobs without an once of self control!”

The opposite idea – that if something fails 98% of the time, maybe it’s a horrible plan – never occurs to any of these so called experts.

What I am NOT Saying

This is not at all to remove personal responsibility from the equation.  If you are overweight, then you’ve got to do something about or nothing will change.  This is just to point out that the premise upon which ALL of you past failures were based on is utter BS.  You’ve got to get a better plan.

Josef Brandenburg is Washington, DC’s #1 fat-loss expert 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 click here.

Good Calories, Bad Calories

Gary Taubes probably knows more about the science of nutrition and fat-loss than almost anyone on planet earth.  He spent 5 years reading almost EVERY piece of research on the topics of diet and weight loss from the past 125 years and he distilled it into his masterpiece (in my opinion) Good Calories, Bad Calories.

I was so impressed with Gary that I said to myself, “I gotta interview that guy!”

Gary has the honor of being the very first person that I interviewed for my brand new Body Club Monthly Membership program.  Where he destroys almost every single sacred cow that there is in nutrition and public health such as:
•    Saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease
•    Weight loss is just calories in vs. calories out
•    Eating more fiber will prevent colon cancer
•    Aerobic exercise helps people lose weight
•    And a whole lot more!

By the way, you can go here for the best deal that I will ever be making on The Body Club.  There’s nothing to buy right now, its just raising your hand to say you’d be interested in being the first to find out about it and to save yourself a spot for the best deal ever on The Body Club.  There is an expiration date.

Oh, and clients, you will get ALL of the content of The Body Club absolutely FREE as part of your membership.  It will be going up in the member’s only section of thebodyyouwant.com. which is coming soon.

We’ve always known this

What I found really interesting about Gary’s work is the one of the fundamental facts of obesity – that starchy and sugary foods make people fat – used to be common knowledge, but is not somehow controversial.

For example in the novel Anna Karenina that was written by Tolstoy WAY back in the 1870’s make explicit reference to the power of low-carb diets.  Anna’s lover, Count Vronsky “avoided starchy foods and dessert” to lean out for a horse race he was going to participate.

I know, Tolstoy is not hard science, but there’s more.

In 1951 seven British clinicians published a text book called The Practice of Endocrinology where they give this advice for dealing with obesity:

“Foods to be avoided:

1.  Bread, and everything else made with flour…
2.  Cereals, including breakfast cereals and milk puddings
3.  Potatoes and all other white root vegetables
4.  Foods containing much sugar
5.  All sweets…

“You can eat as much as you like of the following foods:

1.  Meat, fish, birds
2.  All green vegetables
3.  Eggs, dried or fresh
4.  Cheese
5.  Fruit, if unsweetened… except bananas and grapes”

Gary has some 25 pages of references like this from the very early 1800’s to the early 1980’s.   To date, there are NO studies that show that a low fat diet beats a low carb diet for weight loss (or fat loss).  The low fat group is always hungrier, less successful and has a higher drop out rate.  Where is the controversy?

Josef Brandenburg is also the author of The Body You Want, and an award winning personal trainer in Washington DC.  Visit www.thebodyyouwant.com to find out about our 7-Day Free Trial.  Space is limited so act quickly.