Essential Random Gym Thoughts Revisited...

[The ADD]

Damn, its like this article was written specifically to make my blood pressure rise

 

[Adam3000]

**only posting this for casual lurkers and beginners, I'm past ranting to the regular Gym posters here. I've done it enough**

Having spent a couple years now at a decently low BF% and going through a few cut/bulk sessions after my initial extended weight loss journey, and reading a shyt load of literature, even an anti-low carb guy like myself will admit that ketosis has an advantage when trying to get shredded (and maintain muscle mass). I'm talking dumb-shredded like 8% BF or lower. Hormonal issues can't be ignored once you drop down to 10% BF and I have had problems going lower (not that I want to go lower any more....maintaining that low requires lifestyle changes I'm not willing to make).

That being said, for 99% of people, lets look at what the guy who wrote the be-all-end-all book on ketosis has to say about it:

Q. One topic that almost always seems to cause debate and controversy is the issue of calories. Some claim that there is some kind of 'metabolic advantage' associated with low-carbohydrate diets?

A. Okay, this is going to be a very long-winded answer since there's a lot to cover. I want to point out that more detailed discussions of most of this (everything except the more recent studies) are in my first book The Ketogenic Diet.

The metabolic advantage of low-carbohydrate diets is an idea that has cropped up again and again since the late 60's, first popularized by Dr. Atkins in his best selling book.

The idea then was based on a series of very short (4-9) day studies looking at weight loss for high- and low-carbohydrate diets at either the same or different calorie levels. Many found that weight loss was higher in the low-carbohydrate condition. Some found that even at maintenance calories, weight was lost.

Aha, a metabolic advantage.

Here's the basic problem: low-carbohydrate diets cause a significant amount of water weight loss through a variety of mechanisms (including the relationship of glycogen and water, a reduction in insulin which leads to greater fluid and electrolyte excretion via the kidneys, and a direct diuretic effect of ketones).

I'm a fairly little guy and I can drop 5-7 pounds (about 2.5 kilograms) in about 2 days just from water loss. Bigger folks can drop more. Powerlifters often drop 10-15 pounds (nearly 7 kilograms) or more by cutting out carbohydrates the day before a meet.

By the same token, I'll gain that same 5-7 pounds back when I carbohydrate-load. It's just a shift in water balance. And those shifts tend to predominate in the short-term.

So when you're just looking at weight loss, the water loss becomes a very significant issue as it often more than exceeds the reported difference between the two different diets. When the difference in total weight loss is only a few kilograms, and you have several kilograms of water being lost, that hardly makes a good case for a metabolic advantage.

The idea has been recently re-advanced in a couple of papers with two different mechanisms being thrown out. As well, a lot of people have been using the results of a series of recent studies that found greater weight and/or fat loss for low- versus high-carbohydrate diets as evidence for this. I'll address those as well.

The first is the easiest to deal with so I'll get that out of the way, it rests on the thermic effect of protein. As your readers probably know, processing of dietary protein burns more calories than processing of carbohydrate or fat.

So diets that vary in protein quite often find differences in fat loss (and muscle mass retention). But here's the thing, now we're not talking about carbohydrates are we? No, we're talking about protein, comparing high and low protein intakes.

In addition to the thermic effect, studies also show that protein is the most filling nutrient; in one study, folks on a higher protein intake spontaneously ate significantly less and lost fat. Because they ate less. I'm going to come back to this point.

Now, if you're looking at ad libitum food intake, which means that people eat as much as they want, typically you do see higher protein intakes on low-carbohydrate versus high-carbohydrate diets. Which is great and all. But it's still not a carbohydrate issue directly. And, of course, when I set up a fat loss diet for someone, after setting calories, the first thing I do is set protein at adequate amounts: 1-1.5 grams per pound of lean body mass.

.

 

[Adam3000]

Basically, I consider this protein thing
a. a non-sequitur
b. irrelevant to the issue of carbohydrate intake. You can eat 1-1.5 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass on a carbohydrate-based diet just as easily as on a low-carbohydrate diet. Quite in fact, you should.

Fine, if you want to argue that high-protein is better than low-protein, I'm with you. One researcher (Westerterp-Plantenga) has argued that the higher protein intake, rather than the low-carbohydrate intake itself, is the cause of the differences in the first place.

But don't pretend that it has anything to do with low- versus high-carbohydrate. Frankly, that I should have to make such a mickey mouse point to a couple of PhD's (or their lapdog, Anssi Manninen) is beyond me. But apparently, they can't understand that differences in protein intake have zero to do with differences in carbohydrate intake per se.

The next theoretical explanation for a metabolic advantage has to do with gluconeogenesis. This is just an unwieldy word for the production of new glucose from other stuff. The other stuff in this situation is amino acids, glycerol (the fatty acid backbone) and lactate.

And it's true that
a. this process requires energy
b. this process is up regulated on a ketogenic (very low-carbohydrate diet)

Unfortunately, the theorists advancing this idea didn't really quantify the effect that well in their paper (as I recall) in terms of how many extra calories per day it should amount to.

As well, it has to be weighed against the loss of thermic effect for replacing carbohydrate with fat (the effect is mild but contributes). One study I recall found that the higher-carbohydrate diet (compared to higher fat but not ketogenic) had about a 100 calories per day advantage (due to the differences in the thermic effect of carbohydrate versus fat) and you lose this when you stop eating all carbohydrates, any effect of gluconeogenesis has to be weighed against that.

Perhaps more importantly, one of the primary adaptations to ketosis (a state where blood ketone levels go above a certain concentration) is to decrease gluconeogenesis.

That is, over the first 2-3 weeks of being in ketosis, the body switches to using ketones for fuel instead of glucose, which decreases the need for gluconeogenesis. A metabolic advantage that becomes almost insignificant after 2-3 weeks seems hardly worth pinning the success of a diet on.

On this note, I would like to mention that, empirically (and realize that I've been getting feedback on ketogenic diets for nearly a decade now, man that makes me feel old), folks do seem to report somewhat more fat loss in the first 2 weeks on a ketogenic diet than you'd expect based on the deficit.

Of course, it could just be the extra water loss throwing off the calipers too. In any event, after those 2 weeks, the effect is gone.

Again, for the typical person, the average overweight individual who may be dieting for weeks or months (or longer) to achieve their goals, an effect that disappears after a couple of weeks seems hardly worth pinning the success of the diet on.

And now we come to the final data point, the recent studies suggesting greater weight and/or fat loss. There have been at least a half dozen (perhaps more, I lose count) over the past several years, usually finding slightly greater weight loss (the average difference is usually on a few kilograms) and some have noted greater fat loss (using DEXA or other accurate methods to measure body fat).

Now, I mentioned that the difference in weight loss could probably be attributed to water loss anyhow. But what about the fat loss?

Well, in the first place, many of them reported protein intake being higher in the low-carbohydrate group. See my comments above. We're not just talking about the carbohydrate content of the diet here when 4 different nutrients (protein, carbohydrate, fat and fiber) may all be changing. Drawing conclusions about only the carbohydrate content of the diet and ignoring the rest seems a bit myopic to me.

Beyond that, here's the bigger issue: without exception, all of the studies done have relied on self-reporting of food intake. And this is not a trivial issue. We've known for many years now that people on a mixed diet tend to underestimate their food intake by up to 50%. That is, someone eating a carbohydrate-based diet who says they are eating 1500 (6300 kilojoules) calories may really be eating 3000 calories (12,600 kilojoules).

But what about on low-carbohydrate diets?

Well, nobody has really looked to see whether people under- or over-report their food intake but we have other data. Studies done decades ago often reported spontaneous food intakes of 1600-1800 calories on low-carbohydrate diets. A recent study in diabetics found a 1000 calorie per day reduction in food intake with the shift to a low-carbohydrate diet.

Basically, people on high carbohydrate diets tend to underreport their food intake (they are eating more than they say) while people on low-carbohydrate diets tend to spontaneously eat less (for a number of reasons).

So when you have the low-carbohydrate group saying they ate 1600 calories and the mixed diet group saying they ate 1500 calories, yet the low-carbohydrate group lost more weight/fat, you tend to question it. The carbohydrate-based group could be eating 3000 calories, based on previous studies of underreporting.

Quite in fact, a recent study, by Brehm (who had done an early metabolic advantage study) directly measured a couple aspects of metabolic rate for high and low-carbohydrate diets. Finding no difference in anything (if anything, the high-carbohydrate group was slightly superior, as the thermic effect of food in response to a meal was higher).

The researchers concluded that the difference in weight/fat loss is probably due to under-reporting of food intake in the carbohydrate-based group.

Along with this, there are several key studies (which the metabolic advantage people like to ignore) where calories were rigidly controlled.

In one, a group of patients in a hospital was placed on a variety of experimental diets for 2 weeks. Protein was kept static and carbohydrate was varied from 0 to 70% of total calories, while fat varied in the opposite direction. Activity was controlled since they were bedridden. Calories were controlled with liquid diets. They found no difference in the number of calories needed to maintain bodyweight.

And this is really my big issue with the whole idea: if low-carbohydrate diets generate a metabolic advantage, it should be measurable with current technology. If it's not measurable, it either doesn't exist is far too small to worry about. And all of the theoretical calculations for what should occur don't change that. Especially when we have much more likely mechanisms for the effect.

The more likely explanation in my mind is that any 'metabolic advantage' inherent to low-carbohydrate diets come from the fact that they tend to blunt hunger (and this is especially true in people who are overweight and hyperinsulinemic, people with insulin resistance) and make people eat less.

And even that isn't guaranteed, people who don't have their hunger blunted, or who fall into the "I can eat whatever I want as long as it's low carb" camp and end up overeating calories don't lose weight or fat at all.

The bottom line in my mind: even if low-carbohydrate diets turn out to have a small metabolic advantage (I remain open to the idea but skeptical based on the data to date), it still comes down to caloric intake.

Q. Some claim that that your body will go into 'starvation mode' if you eat too few calories, preventing you from losing weight and that trying to lose weight by eating fewer calories doesn't work. What do you think?

A. Well there is no doubt that the body slows metabolic rate when you reduce calories or lose weight/fat. There are at least two mechanisms for this.

One is simply the loss in body mass. A smaller body burns fewer calories at rest and during activity. There's not much you can do about that except maybe wear a weighted vest to offset the weight loss, this would help you burn more calories during activity.

However, there's an additional effect sometimes referred to as the adaptive component of metabolic rate. Roughly, that means that your metabolic rate has dropped more than predicted by the change in weight.

So if the change in body mass predicts a drop in metabolic rate of 100 calories and the measured drop is 150 calories, the extra 50 is the adaptive component. The mechanisms behind the drop are complex involving changes in leptin, thyroid, insulin and nervous system output (this system is discussed to some degree in all of my books except my first one).

In general, it's true that metabolic rate tends to drop more with more excessive caloric deficits (and this is true whether the effect is from eating less or exercising more); as well, people vary in how hard or fast their bodies shut down. Women's bodies tend to shut down harder and faster.

But here's the thing: in no study I've ever seen has the drop in metabolic rate been sufficient to completely offset the caloric deficit. That is, say that cutting your calories by 50% per day leads to a reduction in the metabolic rate of 10%. Starvation mode you say. Well, yes. But you still have a 40% daily deficit.

In one of the all-time classic studies (the Minnesota semi-starvation study), men were put on 50% of their maintenance calories for 6 months. It measured the largest reduction in metabolic rate I've ever seen, something like 40% below baseline. Yet at no point did the men stop losing fat until they hit 5% body fat at the end of the study.

Other studies, where people are put on strictly controlled diets have never, to my knowledge, failed to acknowledge weight or fat loss.

This goes back to the under-reporting intake issue mentioned above. I suspect that the people who say, "I'm eating 800 calories per day and not losing weight; it must be a starvation response" are actually eating far more than that and misreporting or underestimating it. Because no controlled study that I'm aware of has ever found such an occurrence.

So I think the starvation response (a drop in metabolic rate) is certainly real but somewhat overblown. At the same time, I have often seen things like re-feeds or even taking a week off a diet do some interesting things when people are stalled. One big problem is that, quite often, weekly weight or fat loss is simply obscured by the error margin in our measurements.

Losing between 0.5 and 1 pound of fat per week won't show up on the scale or calipers unless someone is very lean, and changes in water weight, etc. can easily obscure that. Women are far more sensitive to this. Their weight can swing drastically across a month's span depending on their menstrual cycle.

Thing is this, at the end of the day, to lose weight or fat, you have to create a caloric deficit, there's no magical way to make it happen without affecting energy balance. You either have to reduce food intake, increase activity, or a combination of both.

 

[Adam3000]

Today is going to be for me. Going all out, only 3 more days on this cut and I might bump up the calories to maintenance tomorrow so this might be my last deficit day

I'm about to do some morning fasted cardio, Lyle's Stubborn Fat Protocol 2.0 which without going into detail is basically HIIT followed by Steady State followed by another bout of HIIT, totaling about an hour long. That alone is gonna be

Then I'm gonna eat some breakfast and watch some flicks and rest for 4 hours or so before I go back to the gym for a full body strength weight session Not sure how much energy I'm gonna have but when I step up to that squat rack to start it out I'm gonna find out quick

After that I'm gonna binge eat, probably do a full carb load at like 1000-1500 calories since I won't have ate barely anything yet and it will be probably 4 o'clock by then

Training like an athlete

Do your first of 2 HIIT sessions doing hill sprints in 90 degree heat, brehs

Squats are gonna have to wait until tomorrow. Still gonna do upper body later though

 

[The ADD]

@Adam3000

Part of the issue is the lack of content for what low carb is for Lebron. That could be 200 grams based on his level of activity where as for someone else that would equate to 75-100 grams.

Also none of this is coming from his nutrition people so who knows what he is truly doing.

 

[Adam3000]

@Adam3000

Part of the issue is the lack of content for what low carb is for Lebron. That could be 200 grams based on his level of activity where as for someone else that would equate to 75-100 grams.

Also none of this is coming from his nutrition people so who knows what he is truly doing.

True.

And my problem with it all is not what Lebron is doing. Whatever works, works

My problem is that the media only latches onto the superficial headline (basically what you are saying above).

This then leads to more media piggybacking, the spread of info that confuses and complicates dieting for uneducated readers, and then the profit-seeking of diet writers latching onto hype and continuing the cycle.

If low carb diet crazes solved Americas obesity issue then I would be the biggest low carb advocate on the block. But it doesnt. Only thorough education and psychological approaches will make a real dent in the problem and its impossible to get good info out without being manipulated by the next diet-salesman technique

 

[EA]

Did 2 hours on the elliptical trainer and 30 minutes on the stationary bike today as my cardio day. I feel drained

 

[Adam3000]

Did 2 hours on the elliptical trainer and 30 minutes on the stationary bike today as my cardio day. I feel drained

You do what you do man but at spending 2 1/2 hours on the two most boring cardio machines on the planet

Does your gym have one of these?:

This shyt is . Has the elliptical type of motion, but allows free movement rather than sticking to a fixed plane. You can move up and down like a stair climber or in large swoops like an elliptical.

I like to flip flop between that machine, a mountain climber, and incline walking on the treadmill (with a TV monitor) to keep it from getting stale.


Side Note:
I wish my gym had one of these, I would be

 

[EA]

You do what you do man but at spending 2 1/2 hours on the two most boring cardio machines on the planet

Does your gym have one of these?:

This shyt is . Has the elliptical type of motion, but allows free movement rather than sticking to a fixed plane. You can move up and down like a stair climber or in large swoops like an elliptical.

I like to flip flop between that machine, a mountain climber, and incline walking on the treadmill (with a TV monitor) to keep it from getting stale.


Side Note:
I wish my gym had one of these, I would be

My gym's just got a shyt load of machines but they've only got the basic ones. That looks good though

Do you still get a good arm workout from it? 'cause those handlebars look low.

If my gym had the machines with TV's built into them, I'd think they'd do more harm than good. The flabby people tend not to stay on them long because they get too tired but I could imagine them stretching their workouts and bullshytting it at 3MPH just so they can watch something.

 

[Adam3000]

My gym's just got a shyt load of machines but they've only got the basic ones. That looks good though

I wouldn't say that you get a good arm workout, unless you are doing it at higher resistances. Sometimes I force myself to push and pull rather than swoop with my legs, just to get a good full body warmup

But honestly, I don't see where any benefit would be gained from getting an arm workout during cardio. The purpose of cardio is to get your heart rate up for extended periods, and leg work is far more efficient than arm work at doing that since the legs require much more energy.

I rarely use the machine at higher resistances, because even on resistance setting of 3 or 4 my heart rate gets up into the 130-150 range depending on how fast I'm going. That is plenty high for an extended cardio session. I did move it up to resistance 9 once and my heart rate very quickly shot up into the 160s which is ideal for a 20-40 minutes session.

shyt is so dope because of the lack of fixed plane, and it makes you work harder at the same "perceived" effort

 

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

@Adam3000 I need to put u on to some links, if u are into nutritional science and just a generally scientific look at fitness/lifting overall. Biggie is gregknuckols.com

And yea, like a lot of things in life, fat loss is simple, but not easy. People beast for shortcuts to try and avoid the obvious. shyt's

When I cut I'm def gonna keep water intake the same (1-2 quarts a day). Water weight is a MF.

 

[The ADD]

I

@Adam3000 I need to put u on to some links, if u are into nutritional science and just a generally scientific look at fitness/lifting overall. Biggie is gregknuckols.com

And yea, like a lot of things in life, fat loss is simple, but not easy. People beast for shortcuts to try and avoid the obvious. shyt's

When I cut I'm def gonna keep water intake the same (1-2 quarts a day). Water weight is a MF.

1-2 quarts?

It's amazing how that need varies between people.

 

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

A quart is not that much. Its a shaker bottle and an extra cup

Plus I have always been a thirsty dude (word to the tea party), and my diet is highish in sodium. So it works. I ran through a quart already today

 

[Spliff]

Enjoyed the summer not counting shyt and just hovering around 195, but a coworker inspired me to get right again. Tried to stunt on me with diet knowledge that would get yawned at on here. I almost busted some shredded pics. He just don't kno

Got the Bodymedia Fit armbad goin to see what my daily expenditure lookin like. Come to find out I'm clocking ~3000 a day Atleast I can have some hefty meals this cut.

Time to show these nikkas at work how to do this

 

[unit321]

I have a heavy leg workout yesterday, it's been a long time. My power level is definitely down since pre-surgery.
I jogged 2 miles. Still need to get cardio and stretching in first.
Then, I warmed up with 135 lbs.
Then I did 9 sets of 5 reps at 225 lbs.