Ang asks:

…I’ve started on a whole food diet. …very little processed crap- whole grains, fresh veggies, fresh fruit and low fat meat/soy/legume alternatives.. I feel great, my energy is higher, but I still can’t seem to lose the weight!!! What to you recommend to boost my metabolism?? Is there a secret that I just don’t know about?

Before I get to the “secret” that Ang alluded to, let’s first clear one thing up. Weight loss, and FAT LOSS, are two very different processes. They get interchange by the media and so called “medical professionals” very freely, but we must understand that WEIGHT is somewhat irrelevant when talking about health. I personally am considered clinically obese, even though I maintain 10% body fat, am healthy and energetic, and haven’t been sick -except for the odd minor cold- for years. We know that muscle weighs more than fat, so if you have increased your activity levels and are building muscle, you may actually see an INCREASE in weight before you start to come down. Don’t let the scale discourage you.

Health is a broad term. It encompasses many variables, so using a single measure such as cholesterol levels, or weight, or bone density -though providing good baseline information- doesn’t necessarily translate into telling you how healthy you are, only how you compare to the rest of the people your age.

Now that that’s cleared up… lets get to the secret:

But first, lets talk about 3 simple factors that influence our body composition…

1) Thermodynamics. It is a physical law that an energy system (like your body) can only shed stored energy (bodyfat) if there is a negative energy balance. Basically, Energy In < Energy Out. If you aren't burning more than you're eating, all the dieting in the world will not help you lose fat.

2) Insulin. First, read this article on the Insilin Response. Next, think about this notion: Our bodies have been on this earth, in one form or another, for about 2 million years. We have only discovered how to cook and processes foods that were previously inedible, or scarcely available (SUGAR, grains, starches, soy, flours, rice etc.) in the last 10,000 years. That’s less than 1% of our existence on Earth! It’s no wonder why our bodies have problems with refined carbohydrates (sugar).

To put it simply, our bodies just aren’t ready for the high sugar, high energy foods that are ever-present in our Westernized diet.

Our bodies are still cave-people. We still live in the same genes as our nomadic ancestors. As humans, we would generally walk all day, settle down for the night, and have 2-3 hours before the sun went down to hunt what we could, and gather the plants, nuts, seeds, and if we were lucky, fruit in our immediate surrounding. Notice, no grains, no starches, and no rice. Humans can not digest these foods in their raw form, and in the case of potatoes, can be mildly toxic if not cooked.

To keep our insulin levels low, we need to mimic our paleolithic forefathers and try to eat as close to their diet as possible.

Which is:

Meats
Vegetables
Nuts and Seeds
Some Fruit
Little Starch
NO SUGAR

As you can see, the list doesn’t get restrictive until we get into the sugar end of the spectrum. The reason for this? You guessed it… INSULIN CONTROL.

3) Ratio. To keep our insulin levels low, we must eat foods that don’t stimulate a large pancreatic response, or in other words, avoid the sugars. To put it into perspective, 2 slices of bread (common to most sandwiches) contains about the same amount of sugar as 12 cups of broccoli. That’s a lot of fiber… yikes.

So how do you get energy without eating sugar?

Fun fact: Of the three macronutrients your body needs you to eat protein and and fat to live. If you stopped eating one of these essential compounds, your body would begin to eat itself, and you would eventually die from malnutrition. Carbohydrates however can conveniently be made from the protein and fat that you eat. So, you could, in theory never eat another carb and stay alive… you may not thrive, but will stay alive.

To keep your body full of energy, we need to make sure we are feeding our muscle’s energy stores (with glycogen) only enough to fuel our day to day energy needs, and not more. Excess energy intake gets stored in our body as fat (see step 1).

Fat loss is as simple as figuring out how much energy YOUR body needs to maintain a high level of activity, but not eating a surplus of energy. We do this by figuring out personal food quantity. I recommend getting yourself a copy of The Zone: A Dietary Road Map to Lose Weight Permanently by Dr. Barry Sears.

I don’t usually like to advocate a so-called “fad” diet, but if you do your research, the way Dr. Sears has, you will realize that there is sound science behind the Zone.

The zone is not a diet in the traditional sense. It is more of a rationing system. A way of quantifying how much food, and in what ratio, you need to function optimally, and to stave off disease. I will be writing a post in the future dissecting the zone a bit more, but I would strongly recommend picking up a copy of this book and trying out “zoning” for at least 3 weeks (usually how long it takes your body to adapt to a dietary change). Figure out your block prescription and weigh and measure your meals for at least a week so that your eye can develop a sense for what your personal macronutrient ratios are.

A key step to success with this eating system is getting over your fear of FAT. As I stated before, fat is essential to our survival, and is required for many vital bodily processes. (Fun fact: You brain is made up of 70% fat, and the fatty myelin sheath is what facilitates fast neuro-processing… so eating fat may make you smarter?) Fat is what makes you feel full, and satiated, which is the reason most “diets” fail… you feel hungry all the time (re-read my post on the insulin response for why this happens in high carb, low fat diets).

Are you ready for the secret to fat loss?

The truth is, you already know it, and you learned it in kindergarten: You are what you eat.
So eat REAL food, the way your caveman ancestors did, which coincidentally, keeps your insulin response low, and trains your body to begin using stored body fat for energy… and once that is used up, dietary fat in a process called ketosis (more on this in a future post).
You will get a long way toward your goal of fat loss by just cleaning up what you are eating, eliminating the grains, rice, pastas, breads etc., that require processing for us to digest, and cause an insulin spike. If you want to fast track these results, you will start figuring out your ”zone blocks” so that you’re only feeding your body enough to stay active, and lastly, make sure you keep your activity up, and continually try new things like CrossFit to keep that pesky law of thermo dynamics in check.

Related Topics

• How to eat healthy on the road.
• The Insulin Response
• Diet: Another Four Letter Word

Related Topics

• The Secret(s) to Fat Loss
• Diet: Another Four Letter Word
• The Insulin Response

Popular media is filled with reports on “the newest health study”, and ” the latest health product”, and the sad truth is that we eat it up. We have become lazy as a society, and are always looking for the next magic pill that will make us look better, or feel more healthy. The hard to swallow (no pun intended) reality is that there is no magic pill, and healthy eating can be achieved only through smart choices and hard work.

The general vibe I get from people when talking about nutrition and their diet is a feeling of being overwhelmed, and understandably so. It is hard not to feel overwhelmed by today’s health crazed media constantly feeding us study after study after study all based loose correlations and bad science.

I am here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be so difficult. You may not know it, but your body knows exactly what is and isn’t good for you. Acne, allergies, diabetes, heart disease, cancer… the list is long on human ailments that have been linked to a Western diet that is high on carbohydrates and refined sugar. A short search on Google Scholar reveals study after study showning that cultures with diets that have remained relatively unchanged for hundreds if not thousands of years show little to no signs of most common Western diseases. Could it be that perhaps our brains have gotten too smart, and left our bodies in the evolutionary dust? I would argue yes.

If we look at the time line of human existence on Earth (roughly 2 million years), modern agriculture, cooking, and food production practices have only been around for about 10 000 years. That’s less than 1% of out time on this planet. Taking this into consideration, it should come as no surprise then when our radically changed diet causes all kinds of diseases to pop up. Our bodies simply haven’t had time to adjust. Though we may be sending people into space with our brains, we are still living in caveman bodies, and it is for this reason of slow digestive evolution that I advocate a Paleolithic way of eating.

Meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and NO SUGAR!

Pretty simple.

Don’t be fooled by the four letter word, this is not a diet in the modern definition of the word. This is the way your body wants to eat. It is the way we have evolved to eat. It requires no special foods, no book you must follow, has no late night infomercials, and no easy payments of $49.99. All it requires is a choice. A decision to choose not to eat products that aren’t food. Everything you really need to know about diet, nutrition, and food is summed up in these simple words:
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT.

Feed your body crap, feel like crap. Simple.

Eat real food.

Related Topics

• Paleo Diet in a Nutshell.
• Supplementation. Macronutrients vs. Micronutrients.
• Which diet is the best?