How Fast Should You Lose Weight?

If you are reading this, then consider yourself lucky. I’m about to solve all of the world’s problems with this simple article. World peace. A cure for AIDS. Global warming. Tupac’s whereabouts. Where Bin Laden got his growth hormone injections. It’s all here.


Well okay, maybe not. But I do find that sometimes the very simple things that I take for granted often have the strongest impact on 180D readers. Today, we go with the simple of the simple. How fast should you lose weight?

My mom and I have been talking about this recently. I’m visiting her for several weeks in Nashville and it’s been on my mind, as my mom is a 96.3-degree 40-year dieter wanting to lose weight (and she gets that look of hopelessness when I tell her how long it will take to get a substantial amount of fat off of her body). Hence me writing about it. My mom repeated the standard mantra that most people hear – that “healthy” weight loss is about 2 pounds a week.

2 pounds a week? Holy Schnikies! That’s insane!

I actually like math, and we’ll use some math to scrutinize this…

A pound of fat is a storage depot of approximately 3,500 calories. So, to lose 2 pounds of fat in a week, you would need to have an energy deficit of 7,000 calories – which is 1,000 calories per day!!! Yikes! I virtually can guarantee that if you are running at a 1,000 calorie-per-day deficit you are going to be in for some real trouble, and a fierce activation of your famine response – not to mention running into some severe hunger and cravings. You might get away with this for a few weeks but there will be hell to pay unless you are an extreme rarity.

To run a calorie deficit that large, you are going to have to pursue the time-tested failed strategy of “intentional” weight loss. It’s certainly not going to be something that your body regulates and achieves spontaneously without physiological revolt or noticeable discomfort – something that I argue is the only way to lose weight sustainably and permanently.

To lose weight eating to appetite and doing reasonable quantities of physical activity, you are not going to run a deficit of more than a few hundred calories per day without noticing. Let’s say an absolute maximum of 500 calories per day. At a deficit like this, you are only losing a maximum of 1 pound per week of actual body fat.

Let’s not forget though that a quart/liter of water weighs a buttload (a frequently-referenced unit of measurement used here – get to know it). A change in water levels in the body by 4-5 pounds can happen in a matter of hours. In high school wrestling we would often shed 10 pounds of weight overnight by sweating like crazy and not eating or drinking anything. Mmmm, healthy.

Let’s also not forget that a pound of muscle only contains 600 calories, so a deficit of 600 calories is plenty to make you lose a pound – but you are losing muscle, not fat. This is hypothetical of course. The relative amounts of fat and muscle that you lose in any energy deficit depends highly on your age, gender, metabolic rate, type and quantity of physical activity, and more.

I think what is most common is that people induce a daily calorie deficit of 1,000 calories per day or so through diet, exercise, or a combination of the two. During the first week when metabolic rate is its highest, they lose the most total weight and the highest ratio of fat to muscle tissue. They lose 2-3 pounds and most of that is fat. As the weeks continue and metabolic rate starts to come to a screeching halt they being losing less fat, a little more muscle by percentages, and less overall weight. Eventually they lose no weight at all or even gain weight from increased water retention (water retention increases as metabolic rate falls).

So speaking strictly about fat loss, not “weight loss,” the absolute maximum rate of sustainable fat loss one can achieve without doing more than a few hours of exercise per week is only about one pound weekly. Of course, there have been many times in my life where I lost a pound of fat per day doing rigorous backpacking – sometimes over 20 miles per day carrying 50 pounds on my back. But that is quite a different scenario, and came with quick weight rebound and an overall worse body composition in my collective experiences with it.

This rate of fat loss is so slow that, if you are monitoring your weight on a scale, you are almost guaranteed to feel like it is taking too long. You will also be thrown off by subtle changes in water levels and muscle mass – perhaps thinking that you are not losing fat when indeed you are, or vice versa. In fact, it’s not uncommon at all for a male or female with a long dieting history to gain tremendous amounts of fat-free body mass while gaining no fat at all or even losing fat.

This is often welcomed by men, whose steroid-enhanced superstar physique idols weigh far more than an average male, but horrifying for women who may not understand that some of the world’s leanest women are, like very lean men – quite heavy for their height due to increased muscle mass. Take for instance Batty (left), who is a very lean and athletic real woman at 175 pounds who issues a formidable challenge to the currently idolized and out-of-reach-to-normal-women body image in her excellent WOMEN’S BODY IMAGE POST.

But know that men and women alike often gain weight while getting leaner as I did years ago with my first experiments with “ETF-ing” (eating the food). Most will find that their “ideal body weight,” from a health and metabolism perspective, is considerably higher than they’ve led themselves to believe. The good news I guess is that you may need to lose far less weight than you think to achieve your supposed ideal body composition.

So yeah, no major earth-shattering revelations here, but know that if you have more than 20 pounds of excess and unwanted fat on your body, plan on taking somewhere between 6-12 months or longer to get it off, with an absolute maximum rate of fat loss at about 50 pounds per year, if you hope to keep it off and not have your health and metabolism negatively impacted in the process. Throw away your scale. Scale weight is more or less irrelevant and the scale itself, if you weigh yourself more than once per month or so, can play some serious head games with you – such as getting irrationally emotional when you gain a pound one week, and drastically switching courses into the anorexic strategy for trimming off excess baggage.

All this equates to not realizing that you are dieting or losing weight because you experience no nagging hunger, no cravings, no freezing cold hands and feet and loss of sex drive, or any other negative symptoms. If you do, or if you catch yourself losing weight faster than 5 pounds per month, you need to eat more – perhaps even intentionally regain a couple pounds briefly before making even the slightest attempt at marching further, which is a strategy that has more or less become universal in the bodybuilding/fitness competitor world (and is gaining credibility amongst real obesity researchers as well, such as Amanda Sainsbury-Salis who I hope to write about soon).

With a process so comfortable and unnoticeable, it’s no different from living your normal life. You just happen to be losing fat as you do it at a pace that’s almost undetectable to anyone who sees you on a daily basis. Sure, dieting with hunger and lightheadedness and irritability and unwanted exercise is not something that you want to take a whole year. I can’t even make it for three weeks doing that. But when it’s unnoticeable, comfortable, and enjoyable – who cares how long it takes?

And as a last tidbit on the topic of the best rate of fat loss – as you approach a level that is very lean – lean enough to see your abdominal muscles for example, your ability to lose body fat without losing lean tissue and suffer adverse metabolic consequences becomes greatly diminished. Leanness gurus like Martin Berkhan and Clarence Bass both agree that the maximum rate of fat loss is no more than 2 pounds per month, and ideally even less than that, when trying to go from normal to freakishly lean. Something to keep in mind at least – that is, the less fat you carry the slower you need to lose it.

But in general, the harder you “try” to lose weight, the greater the magnitude of your failure to keep any fat that you lose off of your body. Sure, you can get some exercise, eat lots of low-calorie foods like fruits and vegetables, avoid intentionally overeating or eating when you are not hungry… but push too hard and you will experience an equal and opposite reaction from your body as a best case scenario.

More of this type of stuff to come over the summer, when losing fat is its easiest and most welcomed by your body.

TXNIP and Obesity Guest Post by Brock Cusick

Howdy folks, we interrupt Ray May for this highly-anticipated guest blog post by none other than Brock Cusick, frequent 180 commenter, follower since the dawn of http://www.180degreehealth.com/, and author of the blog http://cusickonnutrition.blogspot.com/.  While we can never expect any two people to have identical views, even when those two people grew up watching the movie Condorman on every single sick day, I have allowed Brock to share his views openly - discussing some new research he has come across that identifies yet another important link in the body weight regulation system of the human body.  I hope it triggers some great conversation.  I share some of the thoughts I exchanged with Brock about this in the comments section.  Anyway, thanks Brock - for the post and your inspiration.  Like the time you wrote me, "If do right, no can defense."      

The Body's Fatness Regulator Has Been Found
There are moments when a single piece of information falls into your lap and whole new vistas become clear. Many small pieces of information previously formless snap together into a working whole, and what was confusing just moments before, becomes discernible. I had one of those moments on Tuesday, the 26th of April, 2011 - and I would like to share it with you.

This post is about weight loss and diabetes, why we get fat, and how we can lose it.

Researchers at Yeshiva University’s (go Macabees!) Albert Einstein School of Medicine have identified and characterized a curious little protein (link goes to synopsis; full paper costs $30) produced in the hypothalamus (long known to be involved in body fat regulation) called thioredoxin-interacting protein (TXNIP, which I pronounce “ticks-nip”). Unsurprisingly this TXNIP has an influence on “thioredoxins”, a class of proteins found in many tissues throughout the body.

The best way to think of TXNIP is as a graduated signal - like a light on a dimmer switch going from “off” to “barely on” and all the way up to “bright as possible.” The hypothalamus senses certain things about the body’s current condition and then produces the appropriate level of TXNIP so it may instruct all of the thioredoxin-producing tissues of the body how to behave. In this way the diverse tissues of the body (which have no way of communicating directly with each other) act in unison.

Just what TXNIP signals is absolutely incredible. High TXNIP levels cause white fat cells to retain fat, brown fat cells to reduce heat production, and all of the body’s tissues to become insulin and leptin resistant, while low TXNIP levels cause white fat cells to release lipids (lipolysis), brown fat cells to produce heat (thermogenesis), and all other tissues to become insulin and leptin sensitive. In one fell swoop one protein explains obesity, Type II Diabetes and cold feet. Moreover weight gain and diabetes occurred “in the absence of any effect on feeding behavior. Oxygen consumption, respiratory quotient, physical activity, and brown fat temperature were decreased in hTXNIP-expressing mice compared with controls, suggesting that lower energy expenditure in hTXNIP-expressing mice accounted for their higher rate of body weight gain.”

To translation the geek-speak: The mice that got fat didn’t eat any more than the lean mice; their bodies just became insulin resistant, partitioning calories over to the love handles and “paying” for the calorie deficit by throttling down various metabolic activities. If that doesn’t shut up the “calories in/calories out” and “Just eat less! Have discipline!” crowd, they can no longer lay claim to being in any reality-based community.

The paper then goes on to identify the three factors that regulate TXNIP expression, and they are blood sugar, insulin and leptin. High blood sugar, low insulin and low leptin all cause TXNIP expression to increase, while low blood sugar (or, “healthy levels of blood sugar”), high insulin and high leptin all cause TXNIP to fall.

(What’s that, you say? Insulin spikes cause TXNIP to fall, inducing lipolysis? Yessir! I bet those Glycemic Index folks are feeling pretty silly now.)

Of the three signals the paper does not identify which input (sugar, insulin or leptin) has the strongest effect on TXNIP, but I suspect it is blood sugar - diabetics often have high insulin and leptin levels without any reversal in their symptoms. Or perhaps any one input being “out of desired range” is enough to send TXNIP up. At this point it’s an unanswered question.

Despite the uncertainty I just mentioned, this is still fantastic science and quickly leads us to what we have to do if weight loss and diabetes reversal are our goals. Anything we can do to get blood sugar low and keep it there, and anything we can do to get insulin and leptin up and keep them there, is going to work in our favor and possibly lead to weight loss. Below are the strategies I believe will trigger immediate and “effortless” weight loss-

Carbohydrates. Fiber-rich, fresh carbohydrates are the “triple threat” for weight loss (emphasis on the fiber). The fiber will ferment into short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) in the hindgut, turbo-boosting insulin sensitivity and thus lowering blood sugar; the glucose will spike your insulin; and the calories will spike your leptin. Between these three factors TXNIP is toast. Instant leaning out. Make these the basis of your diet - fresh whole grains (brown rice, corn, oats, wheat - whatever) and potato variants with the skins on (the skin is where the fiber is). If you have the means to make fresh flour, chapati it up.

Keep protein and fat low. There’s nothing wrong with protein and fat, but they don’t boost insulin or tame blood sugar as well as carbs. Each calorie of fat or protein you eat is going to be a calorie of carbs you don’t eat before you’re stuffed for the day.

The proteins you do eat should be a mix of “normal” meat and gelatin. Fats should definitely be saturated - especially coconut oil.

Eat the Food. Never skip meals and always eat to appetite. This is about leptin, people! Leptin, leptin, leptin! This woman lost 232 lbs. over two years after switching to a regimen that never skipped meals while making no changes to the quality of her diet whatsoever. I think we can do better.

Also, if you're really craving something that's "off diet", just go for it. The stress of thinking about while you dutifully eat your potatoes just isn't worth it, and maybe you're craving it because your body knows you need some vitamin, mineral or other quality. Trust your instincts and just get back on the horse at the next meal. It's okay, I promise; I won't come over to your house and berate you for being a bad person.

No Milk. For reasons that aren’t clear to me, but many people have reported this, it is very easy to gain build muscle and lean tissues while drinking milk but damn near impossible to lose weight. Evolutionarily this makes sense - the last thing you want a nursing infant to do is lose weight. So this means that for the duration of your weight-loss effort, keep dairy to a minimum (or none at all, if you can manage). Butter (and especially ghee) is probably alright though since it lacks the proteins and sugars of milk that seem to be so anti-weight-loss.

Frequent Feeding. The TXNIP study found that any sort of fasting caused TXNIP to inexorably rise, while meals immediately quenched TXNIP production (the insulin and leptin signal). Meanwhile other studies on both humans and horses found that frequent meals kept leptin up and blood sugar low the whole day long, while infrequent meals produced wide swings in both. Don’t listen to those leangains guys - frequent little meals (FLM) is the way to go.

Anita Mills (who I linked to above in “Eat the Food”) also ate small frequent meals. Her Doctor’s advice was spot on (if incomplete) for keeping blood sugar lower and leptin higher.

Helpful note: In the last week I have already started making FLMs, and it’s quite convenient. I just make my breakfast as usual but double the amount I make and then divide it into four portions. I then eat one immediately and the other three portions go into tupperware for work. Dinner is eaten with the family normally. No sweat.

Correct Exercise. This is just as important as any dietary change. Lift weights, do bodyweight exercises, and/or Maxercise. Read Matt’s post at the previous link and his post on the PACE system by Al Sears to understand more fully the reasons why this is important, but the short version is - because it lowers cortisol and blood sugar.

Speaking of cortisol …

Lower Cortisol. Straight from Wikipedia, cortisol’s “primary function [is] to increase blood sugar”. Cortisol is bad for weight loss, mm’kay? So meditate, go for walks, do yoga - whatever. Almost anything that reduces cortisol is probably a good thing. Foods that lower cortisol, such as orange juice and ice cream, might also be helpful in moderation.

Ice Cream?? Heh heh. That’s been quite the topic du jour around here, eh? Well actually some amounts of ice cream might be good (or at least “mostly harmless”) for weight loss if you are already very insulin sensitive. Someone who is still diabetic will have increased blood sugar for hours from a bowl of ice cream (or a plate of pasta), but someone with an excellent blood sugar control should see their blood sugars return to normal fairly quickly - while also getting an insulin and leptin boost that quenches TXNIP expression. Until I hear evidence to the contrary, I’m putting this into the “Allowed in moderation” category. The basis for your diet should still be high-fiber starches though, 4 to 5 meals of the day.

Avoid Stimulants. Anything that boosts the adrenal glands is going to boost cortisol as well as adrenaline, causing high blood sugar. Sorry Mr. French-Press, you and I will just have to take a break.

Sleep. It does a body good. Sleep is so important I can’t even summarize it in one paragraph or two. Just get a much as you can. If at all possible, unplug your alarm clock and go to bed early.

And that’s it!

One last point. Let’s call this system something. In honor of the grain-based nature of this diet, the light amounts of protein and fat, the regular exercise and strict diurnal practice of sleeping a lot, I humbly suggest The Neolithic Diet. (Strictly speaking our species has been eating a carb-based diet for 500,000 years (No one tell Art De Vany!), so this diet is actually Paleo. But let’s not confuse people.)

This Neolithic Diet isn’t just theoretical. I put it into practice on April 27, 2011 and will be “live blogging” the results as they come in at my nutrition blog Chicken Soup for the Liver. If you're interested in how it works you can follow me there. Also, if you choose to try this experimental diet with me PLEASE do two things - (1) email me to let me know, and (2) take some “before” pictures. If this regimen is as successful as I hope some “before and after” shots from people other than just myself would go a long way towards convincing even more people to put this into practice. And then we’ll have really started something.

Special thanks Mark A., a 180 reader and friend, for first alerting me to this research. Super-special thanks to Matt Stone, for letting me contribute to the discussion here.
-Brock Cusick; bmcusick@gmail.com

Weight Loss Summit

Heads up everyone.  I'll be speaking along with over a dozen others at a big online weight loss summit that you can sign up to listen to by clicking HERE

It starts in just a few days so get signed up soon.  It only takes a few seconds.  Should be a great interview.  I'll be talking about weight set point and the most likely ways it can be altered downward for the only type of fat loss that counts, lasts, and doesn't come with tons of collateral damage.

Eat the Food!   

180 Degree Metabolism: 2011 Edition

Kicking the New Year off right, I've added an additional 20% to 180 Degree Metabolism: The Smart Strategy for Fat Loss.  The addendum covers topics such as the role of stress in body fat accumulation, a discussion on types of exercise that encourage fat storage vs. the types that discourage fat storage, and more - including going over what I believe to be some mistakes made in the first version and what I now feel is more accurate.

If you've already purchased 180 Degree Metabolism or the full 180 Collection which includes all 180 materials, the link you were sent will take you to the new version, which was updated earlier today.  Send me an e-mail at sacredself@gmail.com if you have misplaced this link and I'll get it to you within a day or two (I'm traveling the rest of the day today).   

To purchase 180 Metabolism, go HERE and get the book along with the 6-hourweight loss audio seminar that accompanies it - by itself or as part of the full 180 Collection which includes all 180DegreeHealth materials (180 Degree Digestion, 180 Degree Diabetes, 180 Kitchen, 180 Degree Metabolism, the audio seminar, and the back issues of the 180DegreeHealth Report). 

Simply put, there is no better collection of health information materials on earth for establishing the right relationship with food, health, and healthy practices that you may be looking for as you get ready to set those dreadful "New Year's Resolutions."   

If you are new to 180 and would like to find out more about the book before taking the plunge, please take the time to listen to the short audio introduction I've put together at www.180metabolism.com

Happy New Year everyone.  May we all have a wonderful year full of fulfilling experiences - supported by a relaxed, enjoyable, and low maintenance attitude towards food and a healthy lifestyle.

Clarence Bass

In an ongoing conversation about what the best of the fitness and physique industry has to offer someone trying to lose body fat without sacrificing metabolic health, room needs to be made for Clarence Bass.

Bass is a famous ripped old dude, known for his multiple Over-40 Mr. America titles and maintenance of a very impressive physique all the way into his 70's as shown in the photo (age 70).

Bass is an excellent example of someone who truly has achieved great leanness and has maintained that leanness his entire life - and done so without excessive strain, hunger, and so on.  His secret - a coarse, low-calorie density whole foods diet of "coarse," and more or less allowing the weight to come off naturally by eating to appetite of a whole foods diet (high-carb/low-fat relatively speaking) while doing a lot of exercise (but nothing absurd - his exercise routine includes a couple of 20-minute aerobic intervals per week, a couple of leisurely hikes, and two full-body weightlifting sessions). 

Although Bass should not be worshipped for his appearance of health - he has had many health problems recently including hip replacement, osteoarthritis, and hypertriglyceridemia (I probably would too if I consumed soy milk, skim milk, and a peanut butter sandwich every day and fruit with every meal), clearly he has some secrets to share.  His main secret, as you can read about in this online article, is simply eating a nutritious whole foods diet and being very patient with the weight loss - losing no more than a couple of pounds per month. 

But as you can see from the compilation of quotes below, his philosophy is very much in line with that promoted by 180 and other 180 favorites like Jon Gabriel.  In short, if you are hungry and deprived, impatient, and you don't eat real, whole, nutritious food most of the time - you will fail. 

These are all themes of healing the metabolism, regaining lost health, and pursuing any health and physical appearance goal as lined out in THIS FREE EBOOK.    

Anyway, here's some words of wisdom from this largemouth Bass (the dude writes almost as much as I do) from his most recent book, Great Expectations... Emphasis on certain lines by me:

pp. 36-37
“…it’s not a good idea to limit the quantity of food you eat. Forcing yourself to stop eating before you’re full and satisfied doesn’t work very well. My observation is that few people can do it for long, and it’s not necessary anyway. As explained in my earlier books, eating a balanced diet of mostly whole foods will usually put your weight on a downward path. You don’t have to worry about restricting the amount you eat, because you become full before exceeding your calorie needs.”

p. 87
“Some of you, especially new readers, may be wondering why a guy interested in lifetime leanness would eat calorie-dense nut butter. The answer is simple and lies at the very core of my diet philosophy. I like nut butter, and it’s a bad idea to deprive yourself of foods you enjoy… Diets based on denial are psychologically flawed… It’s human nature to crave what you can’t have, and craving usually spells doom for dieters. I don’t have cravings – because I don’t deny myself foods such as nut butter.”

p. 98
“My dieting philosophy is that I don’t believe in dieting. I don’t diet in the normal sense of the word, ever, even when peaking… Dieting conjures up thoughts of hunger and deprivation. Dieting doesn’t work, because it makes people uncomfortable and unhappy. I believe the key to permanent body fat control is eating satisfaction. There’s no need to eat foods you don’t like – even when peaking – and there’s no need to ever leave the table feeling hungry.”

p. 104
“Severe dieting (or starvation) causes the body to produce more of the enzymes responsible for depositing fat. These fat-depositing enzymes create a tendency to get fat. Severe dieting also causes a slowdown in metabolism. This isn’t just a theory. It has happened to me on several occasions. Cutting calories too severely caused me to lose weight but gain fat. On one occasion, I lost 5.6 pounds, and my body fat went up. I lost a little over 6 pounds of muscle and gained a pound of fat. Not good!”

p. 141
“… if you want to stay motivated for a lifetime, develop your own health and fitness program. Own it.”

Resistant Starch

Not trying to promote resistant starch as the next Acai berry or something like that, but the studies done on resistant starch show that, like fiber - and perhaps to an ever greater degree, resistant starch is something that sets refined carbohydrates apart from unrefined carbohydrates - and that sets starch apart from sugar, particularly refined sugar.   

For losing weight, there's no question that the studies on it reveal a rise in metabolism and a spontaneous decrease in food consumption that is patterned by drops in triglycerides, insulin resistance, and other facets of metabolic syndrome as would be expected with big improvements in insulin sensitivity.  This is most likely due to the increase in production of butyric and propionic acids in the digestive tract, known to exert tremendous metabolic enhancement. 

For more on butyric acid, the importance of a healthy metabolism, and a lengthy discussion on the difference between refined and unrefined carbohydrates in terms of how they influence weight, appetite, digestion, insulin sensitivty, and so on - please READ THIS FREE EBOOK.





Side tangent, sharing some local culture, and attempt at humor:

Resistant starch, the ultimate "prebiotic" also likely plays a role in the microbial environment of the GI tract as well, changing the microbial environment towards one that fosters colonization by the very type of bacteria associated with leanness, heightened immunity, protection from colon cancer, and so on. 

If I had to choose between taking probiotics or consuming more resistant starch for improving gut flora, I'd go all in on resistant starch as being a more effective route.

A good analogy might be that of trying to attract white people to an area, something I'm very familiar with as I live near Aspen, CO where virtually all marketing and business efforts are geared up towards attracting affluent white people and their money to the area. 

Taking probiotics is akin to kidnapping affluent white people and bringing them in by bus to an Aspen filled with Pawn shops, tattoo parlors, Swap meets, discount liquor stores, a Bass pro shop, and an RV Superstore - all things a truly offensively-wealthy white person is terribly fearful of, or being associated with.

Consuming resistant starch is like building golf courses, constructing massive timeshare developments adorned with the name Ritz Carlton, building ski areas, hosting a Classical Music Festival, a Food and Wine Festival, and most genius of all - a Jazz Festival with no Jazz (affluent white people think Jazz is really cool, but don't want to admit that they don't actually like it and would rather see Wilco, the Black Crowes, Skynard, the Dixie Chicks, and Glenn Frey). 

Get that going and you won't need to kidnap any rich white people.  The skies will darken with private planes within minutes, and you will be surrounded by popped collars, sweatered chihuahas, George Hamilton, and rumors of Johnny Depp building a house up Castle Creek. 

"If you build it, they will come."   

Read more about resistant starch at http://www.resistantstarch.com/

For an even more extreme abuse of stereotypes of my semi-hometown (I did graduate from Aspen High School), please enjoy this quality All-American television programming trailer.  I'm so proud.

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Joel Marion

Joel Marion is a likeable dude. What I like about Joel is that he understands and can relate to the common person. While the fringes of alternative nutrition blogs like this one attract a certain nutrition and health geekazoid crowd, Marion’s target audience are people like him – people that live in the real world, socialize in the real world, and do dearly love slamming pepperoni pizzas and Double Stuff Oreos – on occasion.

The question is, can you lose weight doing that intelligently, and can you actually improve your health in the process? I believe you can, and that Joel Marion has captured what could very well be the most important concept when it comes to losing weight intelligently – the “cheat” day.

Bodybuilders have been practicing “cheat days” for ages, but Marion has put the cheat day into context of the discovery of the hormone leptin – the master regulator of energy balance in the human body.

In his book, Cheat to Lose (interesting, but probably not enough to impress anyone here), he points out what is the dieter’s dilemma. That is that calorie restriction in some shape, form, or fashion is required to lose body fat. You have to eat less than you burn, burn more than you eat via exercise, etc. to lose fat. And when you do that, your metabolism slows down, your appetite goes up, you lose muscle mass, and the body does anything and everything it can to protect itself from further weight losses.

While my emphasis is, and will continue to be finding how to make that happen automatically within the body instead of relying solely on behavioral changes – the reality is unchanged. You must burn more fat than you store to lose fat, and this, in general, necessitates at least a slight deficit in calories ingested vs. calories burned through total metabolic and physical activity.

What I’m more interested in, is whether one could do any type of dieting that they want to create a calorie deficit and get away with it (metabolically-speaking) by doing an aggressive “cheat day” once every seven days. Marion certainly thinks so, and I’d like to believe him.

The premise of Marion’s program, both his old program and his new, even more radical approach, is that leptin levels are not solely linked to body fat levels but to calorie intake also.

I would agree with this. While leptin levels tend to rise as body fat rises (increased metabolism, decreased appetite, inhibited fat storage) and fall as body fat falls (decreased metabolism, increased appetite, inhibited fat burning), the peaks and valleys in leptin are way out of proportion to body fat when it comes to altering calorie intakes.

For example, an often cited quote by Russ Farris that I often throw out, is that during an overfeeding study leptin levels increased by 68% during the study, while body fat levels didn’t even come close to increasing by 68% (it was probably more like a 10% increase).

Likewise, Marion repeatedly refers to a study in which calories were restricted in dieters, and by the end of just 1 week, leptin levels fell by 50% despite a drop in body fat by only a few pounds.

This is precisely why trying to cut calories – and even perhaps the act of cutting calories automatically (which often happens with a new exercise regimen, on a low-carb diet, uber low-fat diet, or a whole foods diet), works short-term, but continued over several weeks and months often stalls and results in accompanying health problems (no matter how “clean” or nutritious your food may have been).

This is exactly why a smarter and more sophisticated approach is needed, and, in the context of leptin, Marion has created just that. The good news is this… (p. 21)

“…while leptin levels drop around 50 percent after one week of dieting, it only takes one DAY of overfeeding or ‘cheating’ to bring levels back up to baseline. So the solution to our dilemma and the very premise of this diet is: CHEAT... It all makes perfect physiological and psychological sense. By periodically cheating on your diet, you circumvent the negative physiological side effects of calorie restriction. Each week you start fresh with baseline levels of leptin and a hormonal environment primed for burning fat, not muscle. The metabolic crash that occurs with prolonged dieting is no longer an issue, so keeping lost weight lost as you enter the maintenance phase of the diet won’t be a problem.”

What does this mean in the context of 180 and what is the answer that I lean (no pun intended) towards giving to people asking me what I personally recommend for losing pure body fat with no lean losses these days?

It means this…

1) For restoring a severely damaged metabolism, it requires prolonged rest and overfeeding – a calorie surplus, as outlined in the FREE EBOOK available HERE. Fortunately, given the new insights covered in the MNP post, there now appears to be a way to minimize fat gain and maximize muscle gain and increased body heat and metabolism while overfeeding – maximizing starch intake and minimizing fat intake (easier said than done as many have crippling problems with hypoglycemia and impaired glucose metabolism that must be overcome first, which may mean eating more fat and gaining more fat before body composition is addressed).

2) Once metabolism is restored, body fat can be lost any way you desire.  There is probably no "better" or "best" way to do it.  For me, that means cutting way down on fats (most days). I feel great doing it, and it happens to be the perfect counter to some imbalances I developed on a prolonged low-carb, high-protein, high-fat diet. It is very satiating, makes fat storage virtually impossible, and I enjoy being able to lose fat eating up to 10 pounds of food a day. But any method theoretically could be used – such as carb cycling, intermittent fasting, eating very small portions of all your favorite foods, or exercising your brains out.

3) To keep from developing health problems doing these practices, and to also limit the amount of weight you need to lose to look lean and attractive (by protecting lean body mass), overfeeding once every 7 days is absolutely mandatory. High-glycemic carbs like grains, corn, potatoes, etc. raise leptin the most. In addition, the higher the starch to fat ratio while overfeeding, the greater the ratio between muscle gained to fat gained during the overfeeding day. The main objective, however, is overfeeding. If you cannot do it with low-fat rice, oats, potatoes, pasta, bread, etc. (at least 1,000 calories above your maintenance calorie levels for the day), then you should be eating pizza, cheesecake, and whatever you are most likely to be able to overfeed on just as Martin Berkhan practices.

4) For greater muscle gains, overfeeding on high-starch, low-fat more than one day per week should be very effective. For each day with a 1,000 calorie surplus, assuming you maintain an 8:1 ratio of starch to fat by percentage of calories, you should be able to add at least .5 pounds of lean body mass with no fat gain at all. Resistance exercise also helps, but is not mandatory for lean mass gains – even for middle-aged women.

5) Once your metabolism is great, your health is good, and your body composition is good – it’s time to switch to a satisfying, nutritious, well-rounded maintenance diet consisting of anything you want to eat as long as most of your diet is wholesome, and you can eat to appetite without fat gain, health problems, or a decrease in body temperature. The “high-everything-diet” would be great – a mixed diet with all the fats, protein, and carbohydrates you care to eat. This can include sugar, alcohol, caffeine, or whatever you want to try to get away with. The healthier you are, the more dietary liberty you will have to relax and enjoy along with the rest of society.

But the basic message of Joel Marion is very simple and potentially one of the greatest “tricks” for losing body fat known. The basic concept is that you cannot lose weight 7 days per week. If you do, you will run into a brick wall because of low-calorie intake’s effect on leptin. To sidestep that problem, you overeat – really overeat, one day per week. The more starch-centered this overfeeding is, the more you will raise insulin, and the more you raise insulin the more you raise leptin back to baseline, which negates the negative impact of low-calorie intakes all week long – not to mention gives you pronounced muscle growth.

Note, for fat loss, the “cheat” day concept only works if you lose 1-2 pounds of bodyfat during the week prior to the cheat day. This cannot really be monitored with a scale, as 2-pound weight loss doesn’t mean a 2-pound fat loss, so you will have to judge it based on how your clothes fit, muscle definition changes, appearance, etc. With the lean body mass gains that can come with it, the scale becomes even more useless, so don’t use it. You will know within a month whether you are getting leaner or not.

P.S. – The 180 Kitchen revision is still not quite wrapped up, and I’ve got a busy week this week so you may not see it released until next weekend.

P.S.S. – I will be appearing on the Underground Wellness Blogtalk radio show with Sean Croxton this Wednesday evening at around 6pm Pacific time if you’d like to listen. Should be a good one.