The Female Weight-Loss EDC: The Fat Burning, Waist Reducing Synergy of Exercise, Diet and Dark Chocolate

Image 1: Guess how she got in in shape? Right! The EDC Program ;-)

As a loyal reader of this blog you already know that the SuppVersity is the place to go if you want unique information from the world of exercise and nutrition science. It will thusly not surprise you that, instead of the regular weight-loss ABC, I am offering you a female (it will probably work just as well for men, though) weight-loss EDC: A program which takes advantage of the perfect synergy of exercise, diet and chocolate! As confusing as this may initially sound, I promise that after reading this post, you will realize that following the EDC to the T offers a practicable and sustainable solution to reduce your body fat levels, improve your metabolic health before the summer comes. And what's even more important it won't cause permanent metabolic damage and keep you psychologically sane ;-)

The E & D in EDC - or how dieting makes sense only if you "exercise"

Ever since I heard Gary Taubes on Dr. Oz say that exercise would "only make you hungry" and would thusly not help with weight loss, Taubes' otherwise certainly highly recommendable book "Good Calories Bad Calories" has disappeared from the list of potential Christmas presents for friends and family. While I do not doubt that you can lose weight simply by changing your diet, it is yet completely illusory to believe that someone who is leading an otherwise sedentary life-style could ever shed superfluous pounds and build and maintain a decent physique without the fat burning and muscle sparing effects even moderate exercise has to offer. This simple, yet willingly overlooked fact has been substantiated only recently, by a study that is soon going to be published in the Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism (Andreou. 2011).

Image 2: I am not sure about the "C" as in chocolate, as this is a typical "female comfort food", but as far as "E" and "D" are concerned, the protocol will work for men at least as well.

Note: Although the following studies were mostly conducted with female subjects the results should translate to men, as well. This is specifically true for the diet + exercise intervention, as I have mentioned in a previous blogposts on the differential effects of Re-HIIT on body composition that women are at greater "risk" to compensate for an increased energy expenditure during exercise by overeating. Judged by their attenuated orexogenic hormonal response to exercise (cf. Hagobian. 2009), obese / overweight men should thusly benefit even more from the addition of regular exercise to a diet focusing on food quality and a reasonable reduction in total caloric intake (at least for the obese this reduction is mandatory, not facultative - cf. "Stocktaking, Goal Setting, -Tracking & -Resetting to Achieve a Healthy Weight & Shed Excess Body Fat")

In their large scale trial Eleni Andreou, Christiana Philippou and Dimitrios Papandreou, three researchers from the Department of Life and Health Science at the University of Nicosia and the Ministry of Education in Cyprus, evaluated the effects of a long(er) term dietary intervention with and without exercise on body weight, waist circumference (WC), body mass index (BMI), body fat and lean body mass in 206 overweight and obese female subjects from Cyprus. In that, a particular strength of the study was that the scientists accessed the success of their protocol not only at the 18-week mark, i.e. when the supervised study period ended, but also another 18 weeks later. This allows them and us to draw inferences with respect to the sustainability of the weight loss - and I guess that I don't have to tell you that this, i.e. weight maintenance, not -loss, is where most dieters fail.

Exercise exponentiates and modulates the effects of reasonable dietary restriction

But before we address the important issue of sustainabilty, let's first take a look at the study design: The Cyprian scientists put all their subjects (age: 34y; weight: 81kg; waist: 93cm; body fat: 40%) on the same "energy restricted" diet (1,500kcal /day; 50% carbs, 30% fat, 20% protein). While half of the subjects just continued on their customary (supposedly sedentary) lifestyle the (un?)lucky other half had to complement their dietary efforts by performing a "moderate exercise" program that consisted of either

1. 3 or more days a week of vigorous-intensity activity of at least 20 min per day, or
2. 5 or more days a week of moderate-intensity activity and/or walking of at least 30 min per day, or
3. 5 or more days a week of any combination of walking, moderate-intensity, or
4. any desired  vigorous-intensity activities achieving a minimum of at least 600 MET-min/week

The latter is, as you as a physical culturist will probably say, in fact "moderate" - at least compared to the idiotic (over-)training protocols by which many desperate dieters overtax themselves. The flexibility and practicability of the exercise program and the effectively very moderate calorie restriction (their calculated basal metabolic rate is in fact only ~50kcal above their daily allowance) constitute the second major strength of a study, the results of which show that - as long as you are patient and consistent - it really does not take much to induce major changes to the way you look.

Figure 1: Lean body mass, body fat and body water (in kg) at baseline, post intervention (18 weeks) and on post-intervention follow up (36 weeks) (data calculated based on Andreou. 2011)

As you can see in figure 1, the moderate calorie restriction, alone, produced a (for obese subjects) highly desirable loss in body weight. These effects were not simply exaggerated, in the subjects who combined dieting with "exercise training" (option 2, i.e. walking 5x a week for 30min, for example, would rather be "daily activity"), they were potentiated and modulated, so that a simple weight loss intervention turned into an effective tool for body recomposition. This becomes particularly obvious if you look at the lean to fat mass ratio, I plotted in the small graph on the right (cf. figure 1). Contrary to the subjects in the "diet only" arm of the study, the women who "exercised" lost significantly more body fat, while maintaining about the same amount of lean mass.

Figure 2: Weight loss, fat loss, loss of fat-free mass and reduction in BMI after 36 weeks in the "diet only" and the "diet + exercise" arm of the study (data adapted from Andreou. 2011)

The potentiating effect exercise has on the diet-induced loss in body fat, in particular, becomes even more obvious if you take a look at the data in figure 2. As the figures above the bars indicate. The addition of a very moderate exercise regimen to an already moderate caloric restriction resulted in 2x more weight loss, 8x more fat loss and, what is of utmost importance in view of the sustainability of their dietary success, 9x better retention of lean mass (note: the exercise group also lost -15.5% of their waist circumference, my favorite, since easy to measure and reliable marker of obesity, while the "diet only" group lost only 8.4%)

Add the "C" to E & D to keep sane and lean out even faster

So now that we have justified the addition of "E" as in "exercising to lose fat" to the "D" as in "dieting your muscles away", the one thing that is still missing to make this the perfect female weight-loss EDC is the "C" from dark chocolate (60% cacao), of which Cathrine E. Piehowski and her colleagues from the Pennsylvenia State University found that it had, when added as a 90kcal snack two times a day, a beneficial effect on the outcomes of dietary intervention involving 26 overweight and obese (BMI >25 to <43) premenopausal women (Piehowski. 2011).

Figure 3: Reductions in waist circumference, hip circumference, body fat (%) and estimated mean daily calorie intake in women in the chocolate and the non-chocolate snack group (data adapted from Piehowski. 2011)

Not only did the inclusion of a snack (either chocolate or non-chocolate) help the ladies to adhere to 1,500-1,800 (depending on body weight) diets, the ingestion of a chocolate snack led to more pronounced reductions in waist circumference, hip circumference and body fat, despite a significantly smaller reduction in overall calorie intake in the chocolate snack group (cf. figure 3).

So, ladies and, as I explained in the red box, gentlemen, what are you waiting for? The EDC approach to a leaner year 2012 is already there! You better start now, if you want to to have 10% less body fat in the summer month of 2012! To wait for the New Year to make a change, by the way is about as idiotic as Taube's statement that "exercise would just make you more hungry"... with regards to carbohydrates, Taubes is yet totally right. If the diet of the subjects in the Andreou study had been higher in fat and protein and lower in carbs, the results would probably have been even more astonishing. And if you keep following the daily updates on exercise and nutrition science here, at the SuppVersity, and implement all the stuff you learn into your exercise and nutrition regimen, you will have lost the 10% body fat even before the beach season starts ;-)

Adelfo Cerame: Carbophobia a Thing of the Past - How a Love-and-Hate Affair Turned into a Productive Friendship

The very latest progress pictures from "Your's Truly"; Adelfo Cerame Jr. posted only a couple of hours ago on Facebook - I guess there is no doubt about the success he has with his old fiend and new friend - in "moderation" as he says ;-)

It's Thursday and about time for another update of "Your's Truly" Adelfo Cerame Jr. from the photo Adelfo posted on facebook earlier today (see image on the right), you can see already that he actually not approaching, but more or less already in contest shape, but before I hand the virtual microphone (actually I should type keyboard ;-) over to Adelfo, here is the brief primer on today's SuppVersity Science Round-Up on Super Human Radio.

As you should really know by now, you have three options (not listenting to it is not among them ;-)

1. listen live at 1PM EST,
2. download the show ~2h later either from the "Physical Culture for Your Ears" menu in the sidebar of the SuppVersity, or
3. download the podcast load it right over right over at www.superhumanradio.com

And just to make sure that you know that it will be well worth it, here's the sneak peak on the topics Carl Lanore and I have lined up for you, today:

• the real-world benefits of caloric restriction - what's that all about?
• intermittent fasting works - regardless of whether you do it w/ liquid or solid foods
• alpha lipoic acid (ALA) - still a potent supplement - but who benefits?
• the usual suspects - omega-3, omega-6 & vitamin D
• acidity, diabesity, muscularity and ... ahm, there is no "-ity" for chronic fatigue, I guess

As you should know by now, additional topics and things I mentioned that ended up not making it into the show due to time constraints will be part of tomorrow's SuppVersity Science Round-Up Seconds... that's it. Let's go Adelfo!

Fully and completely getting over my phobia of carbohydrates

It's plain to see and hard to deny: Me + Carbs a.k.a. Mrs. Jones = Got a Thang Goin’ On…

In light of some of the comments I’ve been getting on FB about my carbohydrate intake being very high, I thought it would be prudent to address the issue in my weekly blogpost. Firstly, this saves me hours of precious time, since I don't have to answer the same questions dozens of times, and secondly - my gut tells me I would have benefited, if someone had written a post like this in the past: an article that would have had me rethink my own nutritional regimen, which and this is something I want to point out before I even get into any details clearly isn't "high carb"! With 150-200g of carbohydrates and thus <800kcal of my daily energy intake from carbs this may be high for a "carbophob", as I've been one myself before, but it would still be considered "low carb" both, in the mainstream, as well as in the context of classic bodybuilding diets. Be that as it may, I personally feel a huge relief now that I have finally liberated myself from my personal fears of carbohydrates and have learned to embrace "carbs" in all its forms - my diet has become more flexible, I have a greater variety and - what's most important - I see nothing but benefits from it.

I’ll be the first to tell you that Mrs. Jones (I’ll refer to her as that because this is how I felt about carbs for a while) and I were not on the best terms. It was a 3-year love hate relationship. Just like cash, I thought she was the root of all evil. The first time I ever downloaded and read Dr. Mauro DiPasquale’s Anabolic Solution, I for sure thought I found the Holy Grail to dieting and bodybuilding (true story!), and that’s where my phobia and our tragic love-hate relationship actually began. I thought that I would be shredded year round if only I lived the low carb lifestyle. It worked for a while but then eventually the magic I thought I was experiencing, when I started out, didn’t work any longer. 

Even during my bulk I thought I would still manage to look ripped because I was on low carbs, but again I was wrong! Lol. But I still insisted that carbs were evil just because… honestly, I don't even know why!? Probably because for 2 years I had avoided my Mrs Jones like the plague and only devoured her on my refeeds, cheat days and special social events, which eventually turned into binge fests and late nights in my bed being in a fetal position because I would eat myself silly.

No, carbs just had to be bad,... otherwise I would have had to admit that I'd a mistake, yet not only once, but 365 days a year!

Suggested read: Adel's old post "Carbohydrate Shortage in Paleoland" The article explains pretty well why 150g CHO is something any not 100% sedentary diabetic can easily handle.

If you have a closer look at Not until last year did my opinion start to change towards carbohydrates. My relationship with Mr. Jones gradually improved ever since I started using Intermittent Fasting a la Leangains last year to prepare for my 2012 bodybuilding shows. But even then I still shied away from breads, oats, grains and even rice and just stuck to your typical sweet potatoes and yams. I guess you could say that she and I were at a truce, but not necessarily friends, like secret lovers we knew our boundaries and kept our distance… I stayed away for the majority of the week with the exception of 1-2 days of debauchery out of the week (refeeds).

During the last year, however, a revelation started to dawn on me. Finally, I began to understand the importance of carbohydrates, when it came to performance and the importance of performance, when it comes to making progress - regardless of whether we are talking, cutting, bulking or becoming stronger! More and more foods I had avoided or restricted, because I deemed them "bad" or "extremely detrimental" for my physique found their way back in my diet and not one of my fears about what would happen, when I consumed them more than maximally once per week materialized.

Me + Carbs = Best Friends

Though carbohydrates are not an essential nutrient like fats and amino acids; I’ve realized when it comes to performance and bringing in your best physique… carbs are necessary.

I really kept an open mind when approaching my 2012-2013 contest preparations. Just as I had an open mind with giving intermittent fasting a go last year for my prep, I’ve also had an open mind with giving IIFYM a try this year and combining the two, and needless to say I am very happy that I did. I thought that I enjoyed the perks of Intermittent fasting last year?... Well I’m really enjoying the perks of applying both IF & IIFYM this year! A

Admittedly, it certainly helped to have a coach I can trust. It gave me a lot of reassurance in keeping an open mind – especially when you’re still trying to grasp the fact that all foods are OK to eat in moderation - and yes this includes ice cream, beer and bacon (before some of you new readers out there go nuts and tell me how unhealthy my new protocol is, please refer to my last article and the follow up discussion, so you’ll understand what I’m taking about).

My Take Away: As I always say, balance, moderation & consistency are the keys to a long-term successful diet. Though carbohydrates and I are pals now, I still show the same amount of love to protein and fats as I did before; the only difference is that carbohydrates is treated as an equal now ;-)

Adelfo Cerame - Road to The Wheelchair Nationals '12: Back From Thanksgiving and in Better Shape Than Ever!

Image 1: Some people just know how to improve their physique even when pigging out on thanksgiving. Or can you see any collateral damage the turkey, the pie and the pie and the turkey from last week have done?

Assuming that all of you have eventually overcome the physical and psychological consequences of your thanksgiving festivities, you should be about as ready as can be to kickstart the last three serious training weeks of the year. It alway amazes me how long some days (especially those without lectures and tons of paper work in the office) appear to be, when weeks and months fly by like nothing. I remember back in the day, when I first contacted Adelfo on behalf of the Suppversity Student Spotlight and we came up with the idea for this series, I was thinking to myself: "Damn, 2012? That is a going to be a hell long series of blogposts! Let's hope people will like it..." And now? Well, the title of the email I just received from Adelfo is "2 months down! And 3 1/2 more months to go!" And the positive feedback we are receiving week by week is overwhelming (keep it coming ;-). So what more can I say? I guess I better say nothing and let just Adelfo tell you what he has been doing the last days to make sure to pocket his pro-card at the 2012 Wheelchair Nationals...

Time flies by! 16 weeks out and keepin' it rollin'!

I am 16 weeks out from my show. Man! Am I glad that I started my prep 2 months ago, because it feels like the next 16 weeks are going to fly by. Today is the first of December and, as I mentioned in my last blogpost,  I have cut back another 200kcals from my diet and am now at daily caloric intake of only 1600 kcal. I actually have already the first day with 1600kcal under my belt, and it felt.... it felt like this is going to be a walk in the park! Although my carb-, and with the latest cut, even my fat-intake are pretty low, now (160g protein/ 50g CHO/ 75g fat per day), I still manage to get my schoolwork done, help my clients throughout the early part of the day and still have tons of energy to burn when I train later in the afternoon. Two years ago I would’ve been dead tired by the time 4 o’clock pm came around and would have just gone through the motions at the gym.

Figure 1: Adelfo's current macronutrient breakdown. Since December 1st, he is at a 1600kcal/day level.

I feel that I have been able to perform efficiently throughout the day and train optimally in the gym ever since I realized that my body prefers fat as a better fuel source than carbohydrates. I also feel that my body has adapted to using fats more efficiently, the reason why I really don’t get affected when I have to drop my carbohydrate intake. Since my body is now adapted to being a fat burning machine, it does efficiently utilize its own body fat stores as a source of energy, when carbohydrate and dietary fat intakes are low. And while I have deliberately not gone all the way, now, i.e. I have not yet dropped my carbohydrate to zero and my fat intake to similarly low levels, this may still happen in the last week(s) of the prep and I am confident that, even than, I won't be the walking Zombie I have become in the course of classic high-carb preps, where your energy levels plummet when you eventually have to drop the carbs to get stage ready.

Intermittent fasting gives me balance - physiologically and psychologically

In that, I am convinced that the high(er) fat approach aside, my decision to switch to an intermittent fasting protocol also has a lot to do with how smooth my prep and dieting has been going so far. I honestly can say, that I rarely feel hunger pangs, if any at all. I’m not pre-occupied with what I’m going to cook or eat next. My mind is not distracted with thoughts of food. I can even go a whole day without eating and I feel fine. When I take a look back, it’s amazing how much my diet controlled my everyday life. Don’t get me wrong, I love the science of nutrition, eating smart, making healthy food decisions and preparing for bodybuilding shows, but when you start getting OCD and letting the diet determine and control how you live your life. Dieting sometimes even goes so far that it starts to alter your personality! And this is, when you should now: It's time to make a change!

Natural hormone optimization - a new asset in my portfolio!?

Video 1: Mike Mahler's "Hormone Optimization" seminar on YouToube (click on the navigation on the right to see all parts). Big kudos to Mike for sharing so much great information for free!

So far everything from diet and training is going great. The one thing though that I’ve noticed that needs improvement in my prep is sleep. For some reason I’ve been having trouble sleeping…while searching for a solution to my issue and trying to find a reason why my sleeping patterns were so out of whack, I ran into a YouTube video by Mike Mahler, where he discusses hormone optimization in quite some detail. Leptin, insulin, adrenaline, cortisol, ... he covers them all and I thin that I may have found possible reasons for my suboptimal sleep patterns. In particular, I realized that my cortisol and adrenaline levels might be too high during the night. I try to get 7-8 hours of sleep but most of the night I’m tossing and turning. I don’t necessarily feel that it’s from stress, well nothing negative at least. I do think about a lot things at night though… like I said nothing negative, more like thoughts of future endeavors, excitement to compete, how I can make my business successful, ways I can improve training and nutrition… like thoughts of that nature.

Eventually I found myself digging deeper into this subject of hormones and hormone optimization trying to learn and educate myself on a topic I know nothing about, but yeah… anyway, I think I’ve found a subject that peaks my curiosity and will probably keep me busy for a couple of weeks trying to learn as much as I can and will most likely distract me from my school work ;-)

End of November: 4 weeks paying off...

A pros pos work, it's also time to evaluate where a hell lot of hard work in the gym has gotten me in the past couple of week. So here are some recent progress pictures that I took yesterday, as well as comparisons from the beginning of the month.

Image 2: Picture on the left hand side was taken on November 15, 2011, and the picture on the right hand side was taken yesterday on November 30, 2011 (photos by Adelfo Cerame, 2011).

As you can see with the most recent picture, the 2-day Thanksgiving holiday feasting I engaged in last week did nothing to hamper my forward progress.With the front pose, I definitely can see a difference especially my abdominals. Since I don’t have the luxury to weigh my self often, I always use my abdominals as marker to gauge and monitor my progress… and I advice that you should do so, too. Don’t get too pre-occupied on scale weight. The smaller your waist gets, the lower your body fat gets. Losing body fat and maintaining lean muscle mass is what’s important, not what the scale reads.

... yet a still not at my short-term goal of outperforming my friend Duong ;-)

To be honest from looking at the comparisons, I feel that I certainly could afford to stay at 1800 calories and still make some good progress by the end of December. In fact, I was tempted for about 5 minutes, but then I reminded myself of  the short-term goal that I set for myself, which is to achieve or better outperform Duong's already phenomenal physique by Christmas, which also happens to be the 12-week mark in my contest prep (sorry Duong, just my competitive nature ;-)

Supplement reviews: Since this past weekend there was a black Friday/Cyber Monday sale online @ TFSupplements (by the way, although I do not even get a discount there, I still want to mention that this is a very cheap place to shop for supps ;-) I picked up a bottle of Liquid Clenbutrx by VPX (yeah I know… the name sounded pretty sketchy to me also!), and a tub of Anadraulic State by LG Sciences. Both were at a very affordable price compared to retail.

Note: I just started on both supplements this week,
so you’ll have to wait until I finish them for a full review.

Image 3: VPX Clenbutrx, a solid product with a more than questionable name, which will yet have to showcase its fat burning magic in the weeks to come.

Liquid Clenbutrx: My initial thoughts were…  name and bottle alone of the VPX product (with the little injection dispenser) looked and sounded suspect to me. I mean look at the name… rhymes with clenbuterol right? And look how they make the bottle look all-pharmaceutical like with the injection dispenser to the side… "It looks like it can be illegal, so I guess it must work!" *rofl* Even with all the signs directing me to stay clear, the price was right, the majority of the reviews were positive (on a side note… when I read supp reviews I take into consideration the physique of the one making the review. You usually can find their profile picture on the left hand side of reviews), and even Mr super-critic Dr. Andro considers VPX among the most reputable companies in a business, where shady names of obviously have become part of the game...

• Taste: Tastes like shit and Nyquil mixed together! It’s gotta work if it tastes this bad right?
  
• Energy: So far for the past 3 days since I’ve been taking it… my energy is literally through the roof. In fact this elixir kept me up all night for the first day, because I took the 2nd dose to late in the afternoon… and I guess taking anadraulic state 30 minutes after does not help either - though this is actually a "non-stim" pre-workout product. I am, by the way, curious on how long these potent effects are going to last and whether they will have worn off before I will have gone through the whole bottle. Keep checking back for more info in the posts to come.
• Fat Loss: Don’t know yet, until I finish the bottle, but I get a good sweat in the gym.
• Side notes: So far no jitters throughout the day or while I workout. And so far it hasn’t ramped up my metabolism in the Ferrari-like way it claims to do. But hey - should I really have believed that? I guess no. So, not a bad product, so far.

Image 4: LG Sciences' Anadraulic State GT - for the 14$ I would hardly have gotten the 720g of ingredients in bulk.

Anadraulic State: My initial thoughts… Another pre- workout supplement that’s worth a try because 720g for $14 and a really sound ingredient profile, this was obviously a bargain!

•  Taste: Strawberry lemonade, well at least that is what the label says. I guess it's a good thing that it does not taste as if it was mixed with battery acid, though ;-)
• Energy: I did not buy it for the energy factor. It's a non-stim and with the potent effects of the Clenbutrx I really can't tell if you would feel some kind of energy rush from Anadraulic State, as well.
• Pump/ vascularity: I can’t really tell either because my body gets a good pump or gets pretty vascular even when I don’t take pre-workout supplements.
• Strength/ performance: So far it’s all me. But given the fact that the ingredients are meant to do their magic over time, I did not expect to notice it until being on it for at least 2-3 weeks.
• Side notes: Nothing to really report or rave about yet.  

I will keep you updated on the impact these two have on the results I am seeing in the mirror, as well as the gym in the future installments of this series. Every Thursday, right here at the SuppVersity - remember that ;-)

Image 5: Not exactly hitting the macro ratio is an issue only OCD bodybuilders will worry about... and as Dr. Andro likes to say "The stress due to too much thinking about what to eat and what not to eat is much worse than the one wrong food choice you could make".

If you want to know how this little precontest-contest turns out, I suggest you come back next Thursday and see how far I've gotten already, because, for today, that is all, folks! And with the supplement feature being this week's special, I will skip the weekly recipe and just leave you with a picture of 2 big ass turkey legs from the last of my holiday leftovers that I’m about to eat before I begin my fast.

I usually like to track my macros and actually don’t mind doing it, but since my last meal before I start my fast and hit the sack are P+F meals. It’s usually pretty easy for me to eye it and guesstimate my macros. My macro meal split for my protein and fat are around 50g protein, and 25g fat. I’m guessing these 2 turkey legs are a bit under my protein and fat, but I’m not too worried about it... buon appetito!

Calorie Shifting (Refeeding) for Max. Fat Loss: Classic Body Building Principle Has Overweight Women Lose 8kg of Pure Fat in 42 Days - 2.6x More Than Calories In vs. Out Predicts

Want to lose that blubber in a minimal amount of time? Diet like a bodybuilder and don't forget to refeed, Ladies!

Calorie shifting? What's that? Don't worry. I have been asking myself the same question, when I first read the title of a recent paper from the Shaheed Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and Health Services and as it turned out, I was well aware of the principle, but didn't know scientists would call the classic diet - refeed cycles bodybuilders have been using for ages "calorie shifting".

The principle is as simple as effective. You're dieting for 11 days and "refeeding", i.e. eat ad-libitum for three days. The intention is to achieve a temporary deficit that's large enough to induce significant weight and fat loss in spite of the potential of temporary over-indulgence on the refeeding days.

Don't forget to building muscle & strength. Fat loss alone is not enough to look good naked

Tri- or Multi-Set Training for Body Recomp.?

Alternating Squat & Blood Pressure - Productive?

Pre-Exhaustion Exhausts Your Growth Potential

Exercise not Intensity Variation for Max. Gains

Battle the Rope to Get Ripped & Strong

Study Indicates Cut the Volume Make the Gains!

Common sense and years of practical experience inform us that this way of dieting works, but scientific evidence is yet scarce. The latter obviously cannot be said of the beneficial effects of using moderate amounts of caffeine on a diet to (a) increase the oxidation of fatty acids and (b) stabilize your energy levels. Against that background it appears smart that thirty of the sixty overweight or obese, but otherwise healthy women (aged between 26- 45 y) with sedentary life styles, who were selected to participate in the study at hand followed a calorie shifted diet (CSD) and supplemented with 5mg/kg of caffeine on both the calorie reduced and the ad-libitum days of their diet.

Figure 1: Overview of the three 4-week phases of the study and the respective energy intake.

As you can see in Figure 1 there was a hardcore dieting phase (phase 1 + 2 | day 1-14 + 15-28), in the course of which the subjects consumed ~800kcal less than on their regular diets and a 4-week normalization phase (phase 3 | day 29-42).

"All subjects were instructed to consume their meals (containing determined calorie) only at 4 set of meals every day and avoid any other intake at other times of day. The time for each of these meals was optional and they were free to consume in any hour, but the time interval between meals could not be less than 4 hours (e.g. 8-12-4-8)." (Davoodi. 2014a)

The subjects had to follow their 55% carbohydrate, 25% protein, 20% fat diets "to the T" for the previously mentioned 11 dieting days which were followed by 3 days of self-selecting food and energy intake. The 11-3 day-cycles were repeated 3 times (for 42 days) and followed by a whole follow-up period, in the course of which subjects received a diet containing 55% carbohydrates, 20% protein and 25% fat that was designed to match their individual energy requirements.

Calorie shifting beats the crap out of regular dieting by preserving the dieters' RMR (Davoodi. 2014b)

Is calorie shifting superior to regular calorie restriction? Yes, it does! As I've pointed out in the introduction, there are only few studies investigating the effects of diet / refeeding cycles, but a previous study by the authors of the study at hand (Davoodi. 2014b) shows overweight women lose significantly more body fat on a calorie shifting vs. regular diet; and, more importantly, kept the fat off during the weight maintenance phase - probably due to the conservation of their resting metabolic rate, which goes hand in hand with slightly reduced hunger scores and a higher rate of satisfaction with the diet.

The study design is not too difficult to understand, right? A significant reduction in calorie intake for 11 days that should suffice to strip 3.1kg of pure fat off the overweight physique of the study participants (assuming that you need a deficit of 7,000kcal to lose 1kg of body fat) if they didn't overeat on the ad-libitum days.

Figure 2: Body weight and body fat levels in % of baseline (Davoodi. 2014a)

And surprise! In this case the "optimistic" calories in vs. calories out calculation is actually not optimistic enough. Instead of the calculated 3.1kg of body fat, the ladies lost 8.04 kg of pure fat! That's 2.6x more fat than you would predict based on the stupid in vs. out calculation!

There is yet another surprise: Caffeine does not promote fat loss!

Yes, you read me right. Take another look at the data in Figure 2. While the weight in the caffeine group dropped faster, the weight / body fat loss in the group who abstained from caffeine was significantly more favorable.

Figure 3: Ratio of fat to weight loss - higher values = more favorable changes in body composition.

While the extreme difference in the first week could still be an outlier, there is a non-negligible trend towards more favorable changes in body composition in the "non-caffeinated" dieters (see Figure 3).

It is important, thought, to point out that this advantage occurred only during the active weight loss study. During the one-month follow up the addition of caffeine during the dieting phase inhibited the minor body fat rebound of 0.78kg and may - according to Davoodi - be what triggered the additional 1.54kg body fat loss, they observed during the maintenance follow up (Davoodi. 2014b)

Figure 4: If the fat loss alone was not impressive enough for you, what about the absence of a fat rebound?

Bottom line: While the caffeine-disadvantage comes as a surprise and is difficult to explain (could be an increase in cortisol that blunts fat loss, specifically in the obese) the overall message of the study at hand is clear: the good old bodybuilding diet / refeed regimen works and it works extremely well in overweight and obese women...

I mean: Can you remember another study, where the subjects lost almost 30% of their body fat and did not experience a weight rebound (in the caffeine arm, they even kept losing fat, see Figure 4) after a 42 day weight loss intervention? I can't and I have read my share of scientific papers | Comment on Facebook!

References:

• Davoodi, Sayyed Hossein, et al. "Caffeine Treatment Prevented from Weight Regain after Calorie Shifting Diet Induced Weight Loss." Iranian Journal of Pharmaceutical Research 13.2 (2014a): 707-718.
• Davoodi, Sayed Hossein, et al. "Calorie Shifting Diet Versus Calorie Restriction Diet: A Comparative Clinical Trial Study." International journal of preventive medicine 5.4 (2014b): 447.

High Energy Flux, A New Determinant of Successful Weight Loss? Eat More, Train More, Lose More? Increased Resting Metabolic Rate & Satiety, Decreased Hunger While Dieting!

Always hungry? Can't lose weight? "Train more and eat more" (not less!) could be the solution.

A recent thesis from Rebecca Foright, highlights that a high energy flux state characterized by high daily energy expenditure (resulting from increased physical activity) with matching high energy intake (high calorie throughput) may attenuate the weight loss-induced energy gap by reducing hunger and ameliorate the otherwise diet-related reduction in resting metabolic rate.

Foright recruited recruited eleven obese study participants from the Colorado State University community and surrounding areas to test her "exercise more, eat more, lose more (easily)" hypothesis.

The enrollment criteria included: BMI between 30-43 kg/m², age 18-55 years, weight stable over the prior 12 months, desire to lose weight, and ability to exercise as assessed by electrocardiogram (ECG), resting blood pressure and a normal incremental exercise test to exhaustion with simultaneous ECG. Exclusionary criteria included: pregnancy or breastfeeding, smoking, use of medication known to affect appetite or metabolism (including but not limited to antidepressants and statins), or prior surgery for weight loss. In short, most of the participants were what we today call "healthy obese."
"The approach used in this study was a within-subjects cross-over experimental design to test the effect of high and low flux states following weight loss on resting metabolic rate and perceptions of hunger and satiety."

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The study protocol was divided into four distinct phases: (1) baseline testing phase prior to weight loss; (2) weight loss phase induced by a hypocaloric diet over the course of several months; (3) weight maintenance phase in which subjects were maintained at the reduced weight for 3 weeks; and (4) experimental phase in which measures were obtained of subjects’ resting metabolic rates, fasting and post-prandial perceived hunger and satiety, fasting and post-prandial circulating glucose, insulin, and PYY concentrations, and ad libitum food intake on the 5th day following low flux and high flux phase conditions, respectively, completed in random order with a three-day washout period in between (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Experimental Timeline | #Order of Low Flux and High Flux were randomly assigned (Foright. 2014).

During the low flux condition subjects remained sedentary for four consecutive days. All food was provided so that energy intakes were adjusted to maintain energy balance.

• resting metabolic rate (RMR) measurements on day 1-4 of the low flux phase
• caloric intake was adjusted according to RMR everyday
• subjects were fed standardized meals with a macro composition of 50/35/15 (carbohydrate/fat/protein) and an energy intake that was 1.3x the RMR
• subjects had to refrain from physical activity (>3,000 steps per day)
• at the end of day 5 the subjects completed a hunger/satiety questionnaire used to assess general feelings of hunger/satiety over the prior four days of the low flux condition

During the high flux condition subjects exercised on four consecutive days (approximately 500 net exercise kcal expenditure at 60% V02 max) and were fed additional food necessary to maintain energy balance.

• resting metabolic rate (RMR) measurements on day 1-4 of the low flux phase
• caloric intake was adjusted according to RMR everyday
• subjects were fed standardized meals with a macro composition of 50/35/15 (carbohydrate/fat/protein) and an energy intake that was 1.7x the RMR
• subjects were given pedometers and had to achieve at least 7,500 steps per day
• subjects exercised at 60% of their VO2max to burn 500kcal
• at the end of day 5 the subjects completed a hunger/satiety questionnaire used to assess general feelings of hunger/satiety over the prior four days of the low flux condition

Overall, a testing week consisted of two baseline days and 5 high/low energy flux days. In that, three identical experimental days were used to examine possible differences in perceptions of hunger and satiety, blood glucose, insulin, and PYY in response to breakfast preload, and ad libitum intake from a meal buffet.

Note: The caloric deficit that was designed to produce a 7% weight loss over the course of the 12-16 week long weight loss phase was identical in the undulating high and low energy flux phases of the study. The results are thus not a consequence of the increase in energy intake during the high flux phase (in fact the opposite was the case in some subjects, anway). The extra calories were after all burned again during the four exercise days.

"Now what is particularly interesting about the study is that the researchers did not content themselves with measuring the acute effects of high vs. low energy fluxes. They also investigated what happened after the 12-16 week weight loss phase.

To minimize the acute effects attributable to the dynamic phase of weight loss on metabolic rate and on hunger and circulating appetitive hormone concentrations, subjects were maintained at the seven percent lower body weight for a three-week period prior to the start of the low and high flux conditions. During these three weeks subjects reported to the KANC every three days to monitor weight and minimize weight fluctuations. Subjects were instructed to consume a slightly increased kcalorie intake compared to the weight loss phase to maintain weight" (Foright. 2014).

Put simply, the scientists wanted to know, whether the effects of high vs. low energy flux dieting would influence a dieters ability to lose weight and maintain the newly achieved weight.

Figure 2: Weight loss and energy flux where exactly as the scientists had planned (Foright. 2014)

As you can see, the average weight loss was almost identical to the targeted 7% (de facto "only" 6.9%). Similarly,

[...a]s designed, the energy intake for high flux (x±SD: 3,191±587 kcal/d) was significantly greater (p < 0.001) than for low flux (x±SD: 2,449±406 kcal/d) (Figure 2, right). In accord with the study design, there was no difference in macronutrient composition between the two conditions (data not shown)" (Foright. 2014).

Now all that would be pointless if both groups lost weight similarly effortlessly. In reality, though, On the subjects were significantly more hungry and felt less satiated at the end of each of the days during low flux.

Figure 3: As you see, the mean difference was already huge. It was more than huge in in
the subject who saw the greatest benefit (Foright. 2014).

On the other hand, they were significantly more full at the end of each of the days during high flux (p=0.015). There was a strong trend for the subjects to exhibit greater hunger throughout the day during low compared to high flux (p=0.09).

RMR increases sign. in trained but not untrained subjects in a high energy flux state - no training, no difference between the two groups - the energy balance was identical in both conditions (Bullough. 1995)

No, this is not an outlier study: In 1995 Bullough et al. were already able to show that the resting metabolic rate on diet + exercise regimen that established an identical energy balance was greater in trained than in untrained subjects only when trained subjects were in HF. As Bullough et al. point out "[t]hese data indicate that RMR is influenced by exercise, energy intake, and their interaction and suggest that higher RMR in trained vs untrained individuals results from acute effects of HF rather than from a chronic adaptation to exercise training." (Bullough. 1995) Bell et al. on the other hand found that "[m]aintenance of high energy flux via regular exercise may be an effective strategy for maintaining energy expenditure and preventing age-associated obesity" (Bell. 2013).

And Goran et al. (1994) found that "RMR can be elevated during a state of energy balance when energy flux is increased," and that the "magnitude of adaptive change in RMR is similar in response to increased EI [energy intake] and/or PA [physical activity]." 

Figure 4: The subject who saw the greatest satiety benefit in the high flux phase was also the one that consumed the most energy on the low flux condition - even more than on the high flux condition (Foright. 2014)

Interestingly, the subject who saw the largest benefit (see Figure 3) was also the guy or gal who consumed the most energy in the low flux condition (orange line in Figure 4).

So what about the health markers?

The  fasting insulin decreased following weight loss and was significantly lower on the LF (8.3±1.1 µU/ml) and HF (6.4±0.8 µU/ml) experimental days compared to the pre-weight loss baseline (11.8±0.6 µU/ml). In other words, while both groups saw significant increases in insulin sensitivity due to dieting, the effects were (unsurprisingly) significantly more pronounced during the high energy flux (=exercise phase).

In contrast to what the significant differences in hunger ratings would suggest, there were no general differences in fasting PYY (the satiety hormone) concentrations among pre-weight loss, low and high flux conditions respectively.

Figure 5: Insulin and PYY levels of the subjects in the high and low flux phases over the course of the day (2014).

If you look at the data in Figure 5, it's obvious that the PYY levels were in fact lower in the high flux condition - from 180-360 minutes in the high flux condition compared to the baseline (pre-weight loss) and low flux, to be precise.

Figure 6: Average resting metabolic rate at baseline and across 5 days of low and high flux (Foright. 2014)

So what? Beneficial, not beneficial, or not sure? In spite of the absence of significant differences in PYY, the post-diet response of the subjects clearly indicates that the energy deficit was easier to tolerate in the high flux phases.

The slightly, but significantly higher resting metabolic rate during the high flux phases further underlines that there is a benefit of eating more and training more and the absence of corresponding evidence from any of the hormonal markers measured may simply be related to a "bad" choice of markers. If the researchers had determined the level of the hunger hormone ghrelin, instes, it may well have been that we would have had a physiological explanation for the "hunger difference".

The way it is, we still have the decreased subjective hunger, increased subjective satiety and increased RMR which speak in favor of the high flux state dieting. What we do not know, though, is whether the effects will be the same in athletic (vs. sedentary) subjects [based on my personal experience we will!] and whether they can be maintained for say 4 weeks instead of four days | Comment on Facebook!

References:

• Bell, Christopher, et al. "High energy flux mediates the tonically augmented β-adrenergic support of resting metabolic rate in habitually exercising older adults." The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism 89.7 (2004): 3573-3578.
• Bullough, Richard C., et al. "Interaction of acute changes in exercise energy expenditure and energy intake on resting metabolic rate." The American journal of clinical nutrition 61.3 (1995): 473-481.
• Foright, Rebecca. A high energy flux state attenuates the weight loss-induced energy gap by acutely decreasing hunger and increasing satiety and resting metabolic rate. Diss. Colorado State University, 2014.
• Goran, Miachel I., et al. "Effects of increased energy intake and/or physical activity on energy expenditure in young healthy men." Journal of Applied Physiology 77.1 (1994): 366-372.
• Rarick, Kevin R., et al. "Energy flux, more so than energy balance, protein intake, or fitness level, influences insulin-like growth factor-I system responses during 7 days of increased physical activity." Journal of Applied Physiology 103.5 (2007): 1613-1621.

"Keto" Diet in Taekwando Athletes: Good for Performance, Less Beneficial for Body Composition - Non-Sign. Higher Muscle & Lower Fat Loss in 25% Deficit vs. Balanced Diet

Ketogenic dieting will help to preserve performance, but in contrast to what the hype on the Internet says, it won't help already lean taekwondo athletes to improve their body composition.

Only recently Volek et al. have published an article in the European Journal of Sport Science discussing role as "fat as a fuel for endurance exercise" in which they highlight that ketones do not simply provide "a stable source of fuel for the brain", but may also "act as a signalling molecule capable of altering gene expression [...] that could extend human physical and mental performance beyond current expectation" (Volek. 2014).

If you look at the outcomes of a recent study from the Jungwon University and the Seoul Women’s University in Korea it would appear as if Volek, Noakes and Phinney were actually up to something.

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The purpose of said study was to investigate the effects of the weight loss through 3 weeks of ketogenic diet on performance-related physical fitness and inflammatory cytokines in Taekwondo athletes.

Figure 1: Macronutrient composition of the two 25% energy reduced test diets (Rhyu. 2014)

"The subjects selected for this research were 20 Taekwondo athletes of the high schools who participated in a summer camp training program. The subjects were randomly assigned to 2 groups, 10 subjects to each group: the ketogenic diet (KD) group and the non-ketogenic diet (NKD) group. Body composition, performance-related physical fitness factors (2,000 m sprint, Wingate test, grip force, back muscle strength, sit-up, 100 m sprint, standing broad jump, single leg standing) and cytokines (Iinterleukin-6, Interferon-γ, tumor necrosis factor-α) were analyzed before and after 3 weeks of ketogenic diet." (Rhyu. 2014)

In contrast to what you'd expect based on the hype around ketogenic dieting in the bodybuilding and fitness community,  the ketogenic diet that contained 55.0%, 40.7%, and 4.3% of the daily energy intake in form of fat, protein and carbohydrates respectively did not experience greater improvements in body composition than their peers on a 30%, 30%, and 40% fat, protein, carbohydrate diet.

If you want to do a keto diet, say goodbuy to tons of protein: What may not be obvious to all of you is the fact that the diet at hand is low in carbs, but not high enough in fat to be truly ketogenic. With 40% protein you are not going to go into ketosis. That's simply too much protein to be converted to glucose in the liver - specifically if you get some of the protein from fast digesting protein sources like whey, which will spike the blood amino acid levels and kickstart hepatic gluconeogenesis. Unfortunately, the study does not list the absolute protein intake, but if we assume a baseline intake of 2800kcal per day for the subjects, they would have consumed 210g of protein per day - that's 3.2g/kg for these lean guys - and still lost muscle.

What is particularly interesting in this context is that the diet is as Jacob Wilson pointed out in a comment on my facebook page, probably not even "ketogenic". As he says, they found in their studies that "subjects generally need to have fat near 70 % or above to reach nutritional ketosis". The diet in the study at hand is thus too high in protein - just like the diets of 90%+ of the people in the fitness world who believe they were following a ketogenic diet, when they are in fact only eating a high protein diet with some fat and low carbohydrates in it.

Figure 2: Effects of ketogenic vs. non-ketogenic diet w/ 25% reduced energy intake on body composition (left) and performance marker, i.e. 2,000m sprint times and wingate peak & mean power, as well as anaerobic fatique during wingate test (Rhyu. 2014)

Rather than at an advantage, the athletes on the keto diet appear to be at a visible, albeit statistically non-significant disadvantage, when it comes to the effects of the -25% calorie-reduced diet on their lean and fat mass. Against that background it is all the more surprising that the scientists found significant decreases in 2,000 m sprint time in the ketogenic diet group that were not present in the non-ketogenic dieters. In addition, the "high carbers" felt significantly more fatigue after a standardized Wingate test and had higher levels of tumor necrosis factor-α - an indicator of increased inflammation compared to the "no-carb" keto-genic diet.

The surprising data from a 2011 study by Mendes-Netto et al. shows that an almost fat-free diet yields leaner gains than a low(ish) fat diet | learn more.

Bottom line: Overall, the results of the study at hand suggests that ketogenic diets can have significant performance conserving effects in taekwondo athletes and others who have to cut weight periodically.

The commonly heard claim that ketogenic dieting would lead to significantly more beneficial improvements in body composition in dieting athletes, on the other hand, is clearly falsified by the results of the study at hand. If anything, the loss of muscle mass is more and the loss of fat mass less pronounced than it would be with a balanced medium-to-high carbohydrate diet | Comment on Facebook.

References:

• Rhyu, Hyun-seung, and Su-Youn Cho. "The effect of weight loss by ketogenic diet on the body composition, performance-related physical fitness factors and cytokines of Taekwondo athletes." Journal of Exercise Rehabilitation 10.5 (2014): 326-331.
• Volek, Jeff S., Timothy Noakes, and Stephen D. Phinney. "Rethinking fat as a fuel for endurance exercise." European journal of sport science ahead-of-print (2014): 1-8.