Build Lean Muscles and Lose Fats Permanently

The Roll of The Genetic Dice

The Roll of The Genetic Dice

There’s no question about it; some people have the genetic card deck stacked against them, while others were dealt a “royal flush.” You can’t deny that it’s much easier for some people to lose body fat and develop muscle than it is for others. Nor should you deny it. An intelligent person will realistically assess their body type to the best of their ability and then adjust their goal time frame and training protocol accordingly. To do otherwise would be counterproductive; it would also be denial.

The best approach is “realistic optimism.” Not everyone has the biological raw material to become a Mr. Universe or a fitness model. Nor does everyone have the physical gifts to become an Olympic sprinter, a marathon runner, or world-class swimmer. However, absolutely everyone can improve their physiques from where they are today. One of your primary goals should be to achieve your own personal best, while avoiding comparisons to others who may have totally different genetics than you.

The Genetic Bell Curve

The Genetic Bell Curve

Dr. Michael Colgan, author of “Optimum Sports Nutrition” said, “As a part of biochemical individuality, people differ widely in their inherited tendencies to accumulate body fat.” So true! In the world of bodybuilding and fitness, there are genetically gifted people who seem to just "touch" the weights and their muscles grow. (These are usually the same people who eat McDonalds every day and have ripped abs!)

When I was just a beginner in bodybuilding, seeing other people get results more easily than I did was always very frustrating. I was eating perfectly; pushing, working, struggling and straining with every bit of energy I could muster for every ounce of muscle I could get. Then one of these "genetic freaks" would come along and pass right by me, without even breaking a sweat. To add insult to injury, they were often training completely wrong and breaking every so-called “rule” in the book. When some of them took steroids on top of their hereditary gifts, their muscles literally exploded overnight! This goes to show just how widely people can differ in their ability to gain muscle and lose fat.

The law of averages dictates that the distribution of body types will always be statistically predictable. This phenomenon, called “the genetic bell curve,” is very similar to the distribution of grades among students. 60% of students will receive passing grades (B’s, C’s and D’s), 20% will fail, and 20% will get A's.

With body types, most people (about 60 % of the population by my estimate) are “genetically average.” If you fall into this middle category, you will respond well and predictably to a properly constructed nutrition and exercise regimen. All it takes is starting and sticking to an exercise program and mastering the fundamental laws of nutrition. This includes all basic principles such as proper caloric intake, high meal frequency, balanced nutrient ratios, and smart food choices.

The 20% of the population on the right side of the curve represents the genetically above average. This lucky group will lose fat very quickly and easily, even if their nutrition and training isn’t quite perfect. They seem to have more “leeway” (they can “get away with” fewer workouts and more cheat days). On the extreme right edge of the curve, you have the people who can eat chocolate and donuts all day long, they don't work out at all and they have "six-pack abs.” These are the “genetically gifted.”

The final 20%, located on the left side of the curve, are the genetically below average. These people have a more difficult time losing fat and will need to work much harder and be more patient than others. The further to the left side of the genetic bell curve you are, the more difficult it will be to lose body fat. At the farthest edge, you will find a tiny handful of people who have an immensely difficult time getting lean. This tiny group is the “genetically disadvantaged.”

8 Powerful Strategies to Stay Out of The Starvation Mode and Lose Fat Permanently

8 Powerful Strategies to Stay Out of The Starvation Mode and Lose Fat Permanently Without Dieting or Deprivation

You must give up the entire concept of dieting on very low calories to lose weight. You’ll never lose weight permanently with low calorie diets – it’s physiologically impossible. Temporary dieting can only produce temporary results. You must use other methods. Let’s look at the eight strategies you can use to lose fat permanently while staying out of the starvation mode.

1. Adopt the “habit” mindset instead of the “diet” mindset

The first step towards losing fat permanently has more to do with your mindset than it does with nutrition or exercise. You have to change your entire attitude about nutrition and exercise. Instead of adopting the mindset of short-term “diets,” you must adopt the mindset of lifelong “habits.” A habit is a behavior that you perform automatically without much conscious thought or effort. Once a habit is firmly established – good or bad - it takes enormous strength to break it. It’s like trying to swim upstream against the current.

The entire concept of “dieting” for fat loss is flawed. When you say you’re “going on a diet” the underlying implication is that it’s a temporary change and at some point you’re going to have to “go off” the diet. With this type of attitude, you’re setting yourself up for failure right from the start.

Permanent fat loss can’t be achieved by going on and off diets. It can only be achieved by adopting new exercise and nutrition habits that you can maintain for the rest of your life. Depending on your goal, you may need to make your diet more or less restrictive at certain times, but you always must maintain a baseline of healthy eating habits that never change. Usually you’ll eat the same foods all year round. When you want to lose body fat, all you need to do is simply eat a little bit less of those same foods and exercise a lot more.

Nature abhors a vacuum. The best way to get rid of undesirable habits such as poor nutrition or inactivity is by replacing them with new ones, not attempting to overcome them with sheer willpower. Achievement expert Brian Tracy likens this to covering up a bad paint job by layering over with a new paint that is thick enough so the old paint disappears. The new habit then takes over as the old one is filed away in the subconscious mind.

Good nutrition habits are not easy to form, but once you’ve formed them, they’re just as hard to break as the bad ones. Orison Swett Marden put it this way: "The beginning of a habit is like an invisible thread, but every time we repeat the act we strengthen the strand, add to it another filament, until it becomes a great cable and binds us irrevocably."

Initially, there will be a period where starting the new habit feels uncomfortable. Be patient – everything is difficult in the beginning. For a new behavior to become permanently entrenched into your nervous system, it could take months. However, the roots of nutrition and exercise habits can be formed in just 21 days. That’s why it’s so important to give 100% total effort and commitment for the first 21 days. Once those 21 days have gone by, you'll already be leaner and you'll be on your way to making your new habits as effortless and natural as brushing your teeth or taking a shower.

2. Keep your muscle at all costs

The critical factor in turning your body into a “fat-burning machine” is to build and maintain as much lean body mass as possible. Muscle is the bodybuilder’s fat-burning secret weapon! Muscle is your metabolic furnace. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, even at rest. With more muscle, you burn more calories even while you sleep.

With a higher lean body mass, you’ll also burn more calories during exercise. If you put two people side by side jogging on a treadmill, one of them with 180 pounds of lean body mass and the other with 150 pounds of lean body mass, the person with 180 pounds of lean body mass will burn more calories from the exact same workout.

The most efficient way to burn more calories and lose more body fat is to gain more muscle. That’s why weight training is an important part of the fat loss equation.

3. Use a small calorie deficit.

To lose body fat, you must be in negative calorie balance (a calorie deficit). You can create a calorie deficit by increasing activity, by decreasing calories or with a combination of both. The most efficient approach to fat loss is to decrease your calories a little and increase your activity a lot.

The most commonly recommended guideline is to reduce your calories by 500 to 1000 less than your maintenance level. For example, if you are female and your calorie maintenance level is 2100 calories per day, then a 500 calorie deficit would put you at 1600 calories per day. If you’re a male with a calorie maintenance level of 2900 calories per day, then a 500 calorie deficit would put you at 2400 calories per day.

A 500 calorie deficit over seven days is 3500 calories in one week. There are
3500 calories in a pound of fat, so (in theory), a 500 calorie per day deficit will result in a loss of one pound of body fat per week. It follows that a 750 calorie deficit would produce a loss of one and a half pounds per week and a 1000 calorie deficit would produce a two pound per week reduction.

Because of the way the weight regulating mechanism works, fat loss seldom follows these calculations precisely, so don’t get caught up in them. An emphasis on exercise with a small reduction in calories is the best approach. 500 to 750 calorie deficit below your maintenance level is usually plenty. Add weight training and aerobics into the mix and this will produce as close to 100% fat loss as possible.

An alternate (and preferred) method is to set your calorie deficit as a percentage of your maintenance level. 15-20% is the recommended starting calorie reduction for fat loss. This is considered a small calorie deficit and a small calorie deficit is the key to losing fat while maintaining muscle.

With a 2100 calorie maintenance level, 20% would be a 420 calorie deficit, which would put you at 1680 calories per day. With a 2900 calorie maintenance level, a 20% deficit would be 580 calories. That would put you at 2380 calories per day.

The reason the percentage method is better is because using an absolute number like 500, 750 or 1000 calories as a deficit instead of a percentage deficit might drop your calories into the danger zone. For example, if you are a male with a 3500 calorie maintenance level, a 750 calorie deficit to 2750 calories per day is only a 21% drop (a small, safe and acceptable deficit.) However, if you are a female with an 1800 calorie per day maintenance level and you cut your calories by 750 per day to 1050 calories, that is a 41% cut. Using the percentage method is more individualized.

At times, an aggressive calorie deficit greater than 20% may be called for, but calorie cuts greater than 20% are much more likely to cause muscle loss and metabolic slowdown. If you do use a calorie deficit greater than 20%, then it’s wise to raise calories at regular intervals using the “zig-zag method” you’ll learn about in chapter six. This will “trick your body” and prevent your metabolism from slowing down when you have a large calorie deficit.

Always start with a small deficit. In other words, cut calories out slowly. It’s better to start with a small deficit and then progressively increase towards your maximal deficit than to make a sudden drop in calories all at once. The body cannot be forced to lose fat – you must coax it.

Based on what you now know about the body’s weight-regulating mechanism, the optimal amount to decrease your caloric intake for fat loss is as little as possible – as long as you’re still losing body fat.

4. Use exercise to burn the fat rather than diets to starve the fat

To lose body fat, there must be a calorie deficit. Such are the laws of thermodynamics and energy balance. However, there’s more than one way to create a calorie deficit. One way is to decrease your calorie intake from food. The other is to increase the amount of calories you burn though exercise.

Of the two ways to create a calorie deficit, burning the calories is the superior method. This is because large calorie deficits cause muscle loss and trigger the starvation response. Ironically, most people do the opposite: They slash their calories to starvation levels and exercise too little or not at all. This causes a decrease in lean body mass and invokes the starvation mechanism. Paradoxical as it seems, the most effective approach to fat loss is to eat more (keep the calorie reduction small) and let the exercise burn the fat. You don’t have to starve yourself – you just have to choose the right foods and make exercise a part of your lifestyle.

Why would anyone resort to starvation diets when they can burn fat more efficiently through exercise? Perhaps they believe that eating more food and working out at the same time will “cancel each other out. Maybe they shy away from the hard work involved in exercise. There’s also a trend these days towards avoiding too much aerobic exercise because of the false belief that it will make you lose muscle. Quite to the contrary, aerobic exercise –combined with weight training - is the only method of fat loss that allows you to create a calorie deficit and burn fat without slowing down the metabolism.

Here are the reasons why exercise - not dieting - is the superior method of losing body fat:
1. Exercise – aerobic and weight training - raises your metabolic rate.

2. Exercise creates a caloric deficit without triggering the starvation response.

3. Exercise is good for your health. Dieting is harmful to your health.

4. Exercise, especially weight training, signals your body to keep your muscle and not burn it for energy. Dieting without exercise can result in up to 50% of the weight loss to come from lean body mass.

5. Exercise increases fat-burning enzymes and hormones.

6. Exercise increases the cells sensitivity to insulin so that carbohydrates are burned for energy and stored as glycogen rather then being stored as fat.

5. Determine your minimal calorie requirements and never drop below them – ever!

One way to ensure that you never go into starvation mode is to determine the minimum amount of calories you can eat without slowing your metabolism. Then, use that as your rock bottom calorie number.

Because nutrition must be individualized, it’s difficult to set an absolute single figure for everyone as a minimal calorie requirement, but the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) has suggested some guidelines. In their position stand on healthy and unhealthy weight loss programs, the ACSM recommends 1200 calories as the minimal daily calorie level for women and 1800 as the minimum for men. They also suggest a maximum deficit of 1000 calories below maintenance.

The 1000 calorie maximum deficit is good advice, but it’s just a guideline. Sometimes a 1000 calorie per day deficit can be too much. People with low bodyweights and/or low activity levels will have relatively low daily calorie needs, so 1000 below maintenance could be too low.

For example, it’s not uncommon for a female to require only 1900 calories per day to maintain her weight. If she were to drop 1000 calories off this already low maintenance level, this would bring her to a dangerously low 900 calories per day. 1200 should be her rock bottom number, and a small 20% deficit of only 380 calories would be even better (1520 calories per day).

6. Eat more frequently and never skip meals

Grazing is better for you than gorging. Chapter seven will discuss the importance of small frequent meals in much more detail. For now, let it suffice to say that the body interprets missed meals as starvation. Let’s suppose you eat lunch at 12:00 noon and dinner at 7:00 pm. If you skip breakfast the next day, that’s 17 hours without food. This sends an unmistakable signal to your body that you are starving, even if your lunch and dinner are large meals.

Your goal should be to eat approximately every three hours. Establish scheduled meal times and stick to them. Regularity in your eating habits is critical. By eating smaller portions more frequently, you’ll be able to eat more food than you’ve ever eaten before without being deprived or starving yourself. Most people say they eat more on this program than they’ve ever eaten yet they get leaner than they’ve ever been before.

7. Don’t stay in a negative calorie balance long

The chances are good that you know at least one person who always seems to be on a diet. The odds are also good that although these habitual dieters may achieve some small weight losses, they are among the 95% that always gain it back. Then, discouraged with the failure of their last diet, they quickly embark on the latest “diet of the month” and repeat the cycle.

When fat loss stops or begins to slow down after being in a substantial calorie deficit, most people panic and cut their calories even further. Sometimes this works and it breaks the plateau. More often than not, it digs you into an even deeper metabolic rut. The best thing you can do is to raise your calories for a few days or sometimes even for a few weeks. Your body’s weight regulating mechanism works both ways: It can decrease your rate of energy expenditure when there is a calorie deficit, or it can also increase its rate of energy expenditure when there is a calorie surplus. When you eat more, your body burns more. A temporary increase in calories when you have hit a plateau will “spike” your metabolic rate. It sends a signal to your body that you are not starving and that it’s ok to keep burning calories.

This practice of raising your caloric intake up and down is known as “cycling” your calories (also known as the “zig-zag” method). In general, the lower you go with your calories, the more important it is to take periodic high calorie days. We’ll take a much closer look at “cycling” your calorie and macronutrient intakes in later chapters.

8. Make your goal to lose weight slowly at a rate of 1-2 lbs. per week. Be patient.

The best way to lose fat permanently without muscle loss is to lose weight slowly with a focus on exercise rather than severe calorie cutting. In the chapter on goal setting, we already made the suggestion to lose no more than two pounds per week. Let’s take a closer look at the logic behind that recommendation.

In the ACSM’s position statement on “Healthy and unhealthy weight loss programs,” The ACSM recommends losing weight at a maximum rate of two pounds per week. This two pound figure has become almost universally accepted as the standard guideline for safe weight loss.

Why? Because you can lose more than two pounds of weight per week, but you’re highly unlikely to lose more than two pounds of fat per week. Even at two pounds per week, it’s difficult to lose 100% body fat with no loss of lean body mass.

Over the years that I’ve been doing personal coaching programs, I’ve kept progress charts for every client that meticulously document skinfolds, body fat, body weight, lbs. of fat and lbs. of lean mass. I have literally hundreds of these charts in my files. Analyzing these real-life case studies has proven to me without a shadow of a doubt that when you lose more than two pounds per week, you almost always lose muscle along with the fat. I’ve seen fat loss greater than two pounds per week on numerous occasions, but this is the exception rather than the rule. Usually this only happens when someone has a large amount of weight to lose.

The more slowly you lose weight, the easier it is to maintain your lean muscle mass and keep the fat off. It’s better to lose only one pound of pure fat per week than it is to lose two pounds per week with one pound from muscle and one pound from fat.

Bodybuilders usually set their goal to lose weight at a rate one to one and a half pounds per week. Losing only a single pound a week may seem like an excruciatingly slow process, however, this is one of the best-kept secrets of bodybuilders and fitness models and one of the most important keys to permanent fat loss. Why would you want to lose weight faster if you know you’re going to lose muscle and there’s a 95% chance that you’re going to put the fat back on?

What should you do if you lose more than two pounds per week? It depends; everything is relative to the individual. If you have a large amount of fat to lose, then losing three pounds a week is safe and acceptable during the early stages (as long as you’re measuring your body composition and the weight you’re losing is fat and not muscle). However, as you get closer to your long-term goal, expect the weight loss to slow to one or two pounds per week.

For most people, losing more than two pounds per week means that you should actually eat more! This may be difficult for you to accept, but if you lose more than the recommended amount, you’re not just losing fat – you’re losing muscle. Don’t let the temporary ego boost from a large drop in scale weight sabotage your efforts in the long run. Be patient. Don’t ever confuse weight loss with fat loss.

Why Dieting can Actually Make You Fatter

Why Dieting can Actually Make You Fatter

Let’s take a look at how these physiological and psychological responses to low calories affect the real world results of a typical dieter.

Suppose our “typical” dieter is a male who weights 200 pounds and has 18% body fat. His goal is to lose 20-25 lbs.

Before the diet
18% body fat
36 lbs. fat
164 lbs. lean body mass

Like most people, our hapless dieter assumes that the best way to lose the body fat is to starve, so he goes on a 1500 calorie per day diet. In the 1st week he loses 5 lbs. and is very happy with himself.

The second week he loses 4 lbs. Weeks three through six he loses three pounds per week for a grand total of twenty-one pounds lost.

Our dieter now weighs 179 lbs. and he continued to lose weight steadily without hitting a plateau (although the weight loss did slow down). Judging by the scale alone, he has succeeded in his goal. On closer examination, however, we find that he has not been so successful after all.

After the diet
179 lbs.
14.8% body fat
26.5 lbs. fat
Lean body mass 152.5 lbs.
Weight loss: 21 lbs.
Fat lost 9.5 lbs.
Lean body mass lost: 11.5

By judging his success in terms of body composition instead of scale weight, it becomes clear that he has failed. Fifty five percent of his weight loss came from lean body mass. The drop in lean body mass has decreased his basal metabolic rate so he is now burning fewer calories each day than when he started. This has set him up for a relapse.

Now that the (temporary) diet is “over, “ he goes off his diet. Few people have the desire or willpower to stay on low calories for long. On a strict calorie and or food restricted diet, almost everyone “falls of the wagon” sooner or later. After a long period of low calories, his body “tricks him” into binge eating by triggering severe cravings and hunger.

Even if he doesn’t binge and he simply goes back to “normal” eating again, his body isn’t burning calories as efficiently as before. Therefore, the number of calories that used to maintain his weight now causes him to gain weight. As the weeks pass, the weight gradually creeps back on until he finally gains back all the fat he lost (plus a little extra for interest)

6 weeks after the diet ends:
200 lbs.
20.5% body fat
41.1 lbs. fat
Lean body mass 158.9 lbs.

Now he is right back at 200 pounds where he started, with only one difference: He has less muscle, more fat, and a slower metabolism than when he began. He has damaged his metabolism and it will now be harder than ever to lose weight.

7 Reasons why you should stay away from very low calorie diets

7 Reasons why you should stay away from very low calorie diets

The consequences of low calorie dieting are automatic and unavoidable. The responses are metabolic, hormonal, and psychological in nature, and include: Decreased metabolism, loss of muscle, increased activity of fat-storing enzymes and hormones, decreased activity of fat-burning enzymes and hormones, decreased thyroid output, increased appetite, increased chance of regaining weight, and decreased energy and work capacity. Let’s take a quick look at each.

1. Very low calorie diets slow down your metabolic rate

The first thing that occurs during a severe calorie shortage is a decrease in your metabolic rate. The lower your calories, the slower your metabolism becomes. Simply put; when you eat less, your body burns less. When you eat more, your body burns more.

In the book, “Everything you need to know about fat loss,” Bodybuilding nutritionist Chris Aceto uses a great analogy to describe the way this mechanism works: He wrote, “If you’re earning $4000 a month, but your boss suddenly cuts your pay to $2500 a month, you will try to live the same lifestyle on $2500 a month as you did on $4000 a month. After a while, you have to adjust and save money, and change your lifestyle. The same is true with a calorie intake that is simply too low. When calories are cut below basal metabolic needs, the body will accommodate and slow its metabolism, so it becomes difficult to lose fat even on low calories.”

This metabolic slowdown is well documented. When calories are restricted, your metabolism decreases by at least 20-30%. With severe calorie restriction, some studies have shown that resting metabolism can become depressed by as much as 45%! That’s the equivalent of having your daily energy expenditure drop from 3000 calories per day to only 1650 calories per day! This is why, after prolonged low calorie dieting, you can eat very little food and still not lose weight. This also explains why it is so difficult to lose those last 10 or 20 pounds.


2. Very low calorie diets make you lose muscle

The most devastating effect of the low calorie diet is the loss of muscle tissue. Once the starvation alarm is triggered, your body begins looking for ways to conserve energy. Muscle is metabolically active tissue. Getting rid of it is the body’s way of decreasing energy expenditure. It’s easy for your body to use muscle for energy. This process is known Gluconeogenesis – converting muscle into glucose. This includes skeletal muscles, and internal organs, even your heart muscle!

Study after study has shown that very low calorie diets without exercise will always cause 40 - 50% of the weight loss to come from lean tissue. Many diets, especially those that are low in carbohydrates, cause large losses in water weight. Between the loss of water, glycogen and muscle, fully 75% of the weight you lose on such plans is not fat!

The initial weight loss on most diets is very deceiving, giving you only the illusion of success. Even with exercise, if a diet is too restrictive, much of the weight loss will still be lean tissue.

3. Very low calorie diets increase activity of fat-storing enzymes and decrease the activity of fat burning enzymes

The chief fat storing enzyme is called Lipoprotein Lipase (LPL). When you drop your calories too low, your body will produce more LPL and less fat burning enzymes. In other words, when you don’t eat enough, your body changes its chemistry to make it easier to store fat in the future.

4. Very low calorie diets decrease output of thyroid hormone.

The Thyroid gland is largely responsible for the regulation of your basal metabolic rate (the rate at which you burn calories at rest). When your body senses a severe reduction in calories, there is a corresponding reduction in the output of active thyroid hormone (T3). The result is a decrease in your metabolic rate and fewer calories burned.

5. Very Low calorie dieting increases the chance of rebound weight gain

Almost everyone loses weight initially on a very low calorie diet, but it never takes long before the body catches on and starts conserving energy. That’s when you hit a plateau. Once you hit the plateau, it becomes much harder to keep losing weight even if your calories are extremely low.

This lack of continued results, combined with gnawing hunger pangs and insatiable craving, usually causes people to give up out of sheer frustration. They go off their diet, the weight creeps back on and their body fat ends up back where they started - only now they have less muscle and a slower metabolism.

With a slower metabolism, what used to be a maintenance level now becomes a surplus, and the weight comes right back on. Most people gain back all the weight they lost– and some gain back even more, leaving them fatter than when they started. This up and down pattern of weight loss and weight re-gain is commonly known as the “yo-yo cycle”, and it often continues for years or even for an entire lifetime.

With each repeated bout of dieting, your metabolism becomes less and less efficient and you can actually become progressively fatter while eating less food.

6. Very low calorie diets increase appetite and cravings.

When your body goes into starvation mode, this triggers increased appetite and cravings in an attempt to get you to eat more food. The hunger and cravings can be so strong that you become ravenous. It’s virtually impossible stay on a diet when you are voraciously hungry and all you can think about is food. Few people have that much willpower.

7. Very low calorie diets decrease your energy and work capacity

Low calorie diets leave you tired, lethargic and unable to sustain high levels of activity or intense workouts. Dr. Lawrence Lamb, author of “The Weighting Game: The truth about weight control” points out that “The first sign of under nutrition is the loss of energy and the inability to sustain prolonged physical work. There is a direct relationship between calories consumed and the physical work a person can do.”

If you have no energy to work out, you’re going to feel lousy and seriously compromise your results. The ability to train hard aerobically and with weights is critical for your long-term success at fat loss.

The Starvation Response

The Starvation Response

You can survive for months without food. You’ve probably heard stories about people getting lost in the mountains or wilderness for months with no food at all (only water), or being confined in a prisoner of war camp for years with only tiny amounts of food. What makes surviving under these conditions possible is your body’s remarkable ability to slow down its rate of calorie burning.

When your body senses calorie deprivation it says to itself, “It looks like this is all the food we’re going to be getting for a while, so we’d better stop burning so many calories and start saving our energy. This way we’ll be able to survive longer on the little amount of food we have.”

The starvation response developed largely from exposure to adverse environmental conditions like droughts, natural disasters and food shortages. Furthermore, there were no supermarkets ten thousand years ago - if people wanted to eat, they had to either grow their food or kill it. It’s likely that at times, ancient man didn’t know when the next meal was coming and may have only eaten once or twice a week. The starvation response evolved in humans to ensure the survival of the species.

Your body can’t tell the difference between dieting and starvation

This wonderful feature of human evolution is a blessing if you’re stranded out in the wilderness with no food. During periods of starvation, the body slowly begins to feed off itself, burning fat stores, muscle and even internal organs for energy. If you continued to burn calories at your normal rate, your limited reserves of stored energy would be exhausted quickly and you would die very soon after you food supply was cut off. The starvation response keeps you alive longer.

Unfortunately, this same life-preserving mechanism can work against you when you’re trying to lose weight because your body can’t tell the difference between dieting and starvation!

Severe calorie cutting always sends your body into “starvation mode.” There’s nothing you can do to stop this from happening other than to avoid severe calorie shortages!

Why Eating Less Doesn’t Always Work

Why Eating Less Doesn’t Always Work

If you eat more calories than you burn, you will store the excess as body fat. If you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose fat. Simple mathematics, right? Well, not exactly.

If fat loss were as black and white as calories in vs. calories out, then how do you explain why some overweight people eat less than lean people, yet they still can’t lose an ounce? And how is it possible for someone with a 2200-calorie maintenance level to eat only 800 to 1000 calories a day without losing any weight?

Using the strictly mathematical model, if you cut out 1000 calories per day from your maintenance level, that will add up to a 7000-calorie deficit in one week. There are 3500 calories in a pound of stored body fat, so cutting out 1000 calories a day should – in theory – produce a weight loss of two pounds per week. Actual real world fat loss rarely works out with such mathematical precision.

Rob Faigin, writing in the book “Natural Hormonal Enhancement,” makes a humorous, but true observation about calorie balance and weight loss. Faigin says, “If there existed an airtight mathematical relationship between caloric intake and weight loss, cutting caloric intake from 3000 to 1000 would result in a 60,000 calorie per year deficit – and would result in a 200 pound weight loss after a year. What if the person began the diet weighing 200 pounds, would he disappear?”

When a calorie deficit is first introduced, weight loss generally occurs rapidly, just as the numbers would dictate, but it never takes long before weight loss slows, and then eventually stops completely. Why does this happen? Why is it that you don’t lose 50 pounds in 25 weeks or 100 pounds in 50 weeks with a 1000-calorie deficit?

The explanation is quite simple: Over thousands of years, humans have developed a weight-regulating mechanism that recognizes when there’s a food shortage and decreases energy expenditure to “protect you.” This survival mechanism is known as the “starvation response.”

Diets Never Work

Diets Never Work

Let’s begin by defining the word “diet.” A “diet” is any severe restriction of food or calories that’s temporary. Most conventional diet programs call for extremely low calories: 800-1200 or less for women and 1500-1800 or less for men. Any time you restrict calories drastically like this, you will lose weight. So if your only criteria for success is weight loss, and you don’t care where the weight comes from, or how long it stays off, then you could say that “all diets work.”

There are two major problems with this approach: First, the weight loss from very low calorie dieting almost never lasts; 95% of the people who lose weight on conventional diet programs can’t keep it off. The second problem is that most of the weight you lose from low calorie dieting is muscle, not fat. If permanent fat loss without losing muscle is your goal (it should be), then it would be closer to the truth to say “diets never work.”

Statistics prove that diets never work in the long term. If they did work, then how do you explain the huge obesity problem today? And why is it getting worse? According to the National Institute of Health, there are over 100 million overweight people in the United States. That’s 55% of the adult population! Over 20% of U.S. adults are clinically obese, which means they are at risk for one or more of over 30 health problems that are associated with excess body fat.

Despite the fact that there are more diet programs and weight loss products available than ever before, obesity has continued to rise. The Center for Disease Control recently announced that the number of people in the United States who are clinically obese (at least 30% over their ideal body weight) increased from one in eight in 1991 to nearly one in five in 1999.

There’s a valid scientific reason why most diets fail dismally. Most people make the classic mistake of trying to “starve” the fat with strict diets. However, because the human body has a complex and infallible series of defense mechanisms to protect you from starvation, it’s physiologically impossible to permanently lose fat with very low calorie diets. As soon as your body senses a food shortage, these defense mechanisms start to kick in. The human body is simply too “smart” for the restrictive very low calorie diet approach to ever work.

Conclusion: Let Your Results Dictate Your Approach

Conclusion: Let Your Results Dictate Your Approach

I always suggest letting your results dictate your strategy. If you can eat bagels and pasta all day long and get ripped, that’s great - keep eating them. If you can eat 70% of your calories from carbohydrates and 20% from protein and you get leaner - great, keep eating all those carbohydrates. If you can eat heavy meals late at night and you still get leaner great - keep doing it. If you can get lean with just diet and almost no cardio at all – fine, don’t do any cardio. The results you produce each week are the only true measure of whether you’ve made the right choices or not. If you’re getting lean while breaking every rule in the program, then there’s no reason to change. The ends justify the means, provided of course, that everything you’re doing is good for your health.

Most important of all, once you discover an approach that works for you, DON’T FIX IT IF IT’S NOT BROKEN! Don’t get locked into a single unbending approach like so many diet programs prescribe. You are a unique individual and no single approach could possibly work for everyone. If you find something that works for you, I’d suggest you disregard the comments of other people who disagree with what you’re doing and that you judge your success only by your weekly progress.

By following this system – taking continuous action, getting constant feedback, being flexible, having an open mind and being willing to experiment, you will, through an evolutionary learning process, figure out your body type and develop your own personal formula very quickly. Once you’ve discovered your personal formula by using body composition measurement, performance feedback and progress charting, it will always be there for you for the rest of your life whenever you want to go back to it.

Interpreting Your Progress Chart

Interpreting Your Progress Chart

The following section lists every possible outcome you may encounter and the actions you should take when each occurs.

Lean mass stays the same and body fat decreases Fantastic! Your diet and exercise program is working as planned and you’re on your way to reaching your goal. Don’t change anything. Keep up the good work!

Lean Mass Remains Same and Body Fat Remains Same

Nothing is happening either way; you’re at a standstill or you need to make some adjustments to get yourself moving again. First, increase your cardiovascular activity level. You can increase the number of days per week as well as how long you are exercising at each session. If you don’t lose body fat within the next week, then you can reduce your caloric intake systematically by 100-200 calories at a time, provided you do not drop below your maximum allowable calorie deficit. Keep your nutrient ratios the same unless you’ve been stuck for more than two weeks. If you’ve been stuck more than two weeks, you might want to experiment with a moderate or low carbohydrate diet and or zig-zag carbohydrate cycling (Will be discussed later with details).

Lean Mass Stays the Same and Body Fat Increases

You’re in a calorie surplus. You’re eating more calories than you’re burning and storing it as fat. First increase the frequency and duration of cardiovascular exercise. Then recheck your body fat in one week. If it hasn’t decreased, reduce your caloric intake by 100-200 calories at a time, provided you do not drop below your maximum allowable calorie deficit. Keep your nutrient ratios the same.

Lean Mass Decreases and Body Fat Decreases

You are losing body fat which is good, but you’ve also lost some lean mass, which is not good. A small loss in lean mass (a few tenths of a pound) is nothing to worry about. If this is the first time you’ve lost LBM, don’t panic because some of the LBM is water weight. If this is a recurring pattern and you’ve been losing LBM every week for more than two weeks straight, you’re losing muscle tissue. You need to eat more, at least temporarily. Increase your caloric intake by 100-200 calories to stimulate your metabolism, while continuing with your current exercise program. Keep your nutrient ratios the same.

Lean Mass Decreases and Body Fat Stays the Same or Increases

When you lose LBM and your body fat does not decrease at all, this usually means your metabolism has slowed down and you are burning up muscle for energy; you are not in fat burning mode. This often occurs when you skip meals. Losing lean mass means that you need to eat more to stimulate your metabolism. Don’t be afraid to eat, and keep up your meal frequency to five or six times per day. Remember that it’s better to burn the fat off rather than starve it off. Keep your calories as high as possible while using exercise to burn off the fat. Severely restricting your calories below the recommended levels will always result in a loss of muscle mass. Increase your caloric intake by 100-200 calories and maintain or slightly increase the amount of cardiovascular exercise you are doing. Make sure you’re consistent with your weight training as well.

Lean Mass Increases and Body Fat Decreases

This is very unlikely to happen, except for genetically gifted individuals (the pure mesomorph) and sometimes for ectomorphs who have highly efficient metabolisms. If it does happen, terrific! You are leaner and more muscular! Don’t change anything. Keep up the good work, you’re on your way to reaching your goal.

Lean Mass Increases and Body Fat Stays the Same

Good job, you’ve gained muscle without gaining fat! This is the ideal outcome for a muscle-gaining program. If you also want to reduce your body fat percentage, you’ll need a greater calorie deficit, which you can accomplish by increasing your cardio while remaining at your current caloric intake.

Lean Mass Increases and Body Fat Increases

You gained muscle, which is good, but you also gained fat, which is not good. You are in a substantial calorie surplus. Some bodybuilders do this habitually in their off season – it’s called “bulking up,” If you want to stay lean and avoid the “bulked up” look, you need to increase the amount of cardiovascular exercise you are doing. You should also make sure you’re being strict enough on your diet. Keep your diet “clean” and free of high fat or high sugar junk foods. Recheck your body fat in one week. If you still continue to gain fat, then you need to decrease your caloric intake.