Diet Archives - Page 5 of 11 - Lose Fat Gain Muscle

My 600 lb Life

A while back I started watching The Learning Channel’s My 600 lb. Life. This show documents the lives of the super obese as they reach out to Dr. Younan Nowzaradan, one of the few physicians who performs bariatric surgery on patients their size.

Watching this show is both fascinating and a horrifying–like seeing a bloody road accident and being unable to avert your eyes.

The extreme nature of these patients’ condition leaves them with very limited mobility (some of them can’t even get out of bed) or quality of life. It’s simply hard to fathom having a body that size or an addiction that is so crippling.

Here’s a theme I’ve noticed while watching this show: there tends to be a “perfect storm” of factors that combine to create a 600 lb. person.

1. A genetic predisposition for obesity: Needless to say, we don’t completely understand the role genetics plays in our body weight. But most of the people featured on this show tend to come from families where obesity is a major problem. This becomes painfully apparent when the patient’s parents, children or siblings are interviewed. The patient often reports being overweight as long as he/she can remember.

2. Enablers: Even bedridden patients are able to get an endless supply of high-calorie foods delivered within arm’s length. This is one of the most fascinating (and baffling) things to observe on the show. Family members (spouses in particular) will give in to the patient’s demands for certain foods. Family members, in fact, often sabotage the medical intervention designed to save their loved one.

3. Traumatic events: Many of the 600+ lb. patients have experienced some kind of trauma that escalated their weight gain (often it’s something that happened in childhood). Some of the women featured on the show were molested or raped. Others report gaining weight after losing a family member. I don’t remember this kind of thing being a part of every story, but it was quite common.

Combine these three things and you get people crushed under the weight of their own gargantuan bodies, seemingly unable to stop consuming the thousands of calories that are slowly but surely killing them.

Bariatric surgery is not a “quick fix” for people suffering from this disease (due to the factors I’ve mentioned). I remember one patient who made virtually no progress even after her stomach had been surgically reduced in size. But it can be an effective tool for weight loss in those who would otherwise not have any hope of a normal life.

Watching these patients get the surgery and (hopefully) transform their lives is compelling. I find this interesting as someone who studies both fitness and addiction.

There’s good news for those of us who watch this show: TLC will be doing a fourth season, to be shown in 2016.

Carb Cycling Diet for Weight Loss

Cycling Carbohydrates: An Introduction

One of the dietary strategies you may have heard about about from bodybuilders, fitness competitors, or those just wanting to lose weight is called carb cycling. This is a term for scheduling days of high carbohydrate consumption followed by days of successively lower carbohydrate consumption. This approach seems to be a very effective way to maximize fat loss while maintaining training intensity. I’ll explain the basics of why this works.

Why Lowering Carbs Works

Restricting carbohydrates (aka low carb or ketogenic diets) can be very effective for helping people lose weight. Going several days with low carbohydrate intake (lets say 50 grams or less) eventually causes glycogen levels (glucose in the liver and muscles) to get so low that the body has to switch to another fuel source. This metabolic shift is called ketosis, meaning the body is primarily using fat as its source of calories/fuel. I discovered ketogenic/low carb dieting years ago and have used it with good success.

Some have adopted adopted a low carbohydrate lifestyle and credit it with saving their health (if not their very lives). These individuals follow this diet year-around in order to stay at a healthy weight. More power to you if you are able to do this.

The Drawbacks of Restricting Carbohydrates

But eating this way all the time is not very practical for athletes or those who engage in intense exercise like weight training. Those of us who have trained while in ketosis can testify how sluggish the workouts are. Eating carbohydrates refills the before-mentioned glycogen so muscles can perform optimally.

Thus the dilemma: low carb eating is great for fat loss, but not so great for exercise performance.

Carb Cycling: Lose Fat, Maintain Training Intensely

One solution to this is carb cycling, which may be able to give you the best of both worlds. It really isn’t that complicated: you simply lower your carbohydrate over the course of a few days. The first day, for example, you can eat 200 grams of carbs, followed by 125 on the second and only 50 on the third. You could then repeat the cycle or just reverse it over the next two days (125 grams of carbs on day 4 and 200 again on day 5).

You may want to do your most intensive training on high carbohydrate days and try to consume most of your carbs after you work out. This will encourage the glucose to go to your muscles and liver instead of being stored as body fat.

Most of the plans I’ve seen also incorporate a “cheat day” where you just eat what you want. This shouldn’t hurt your fat loss in the long-term as long as you are consistent the rest of the time.

Just keep this in mind: all successful diets are based on a negative calorie balance–using more calories than you are consuming. Carb cycling is not a “secret formula” to get around this–it is simply one dietary strategy that you may find useful.