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The Fat-Loss Tightrope, Part 1 by Mark Hatmaker

 



[Excerpted from the upcoming Unleaded: Whole Hog-- The Support Manual.

See Unleaded Whole Hog Conditioning for the “What to Do” side of the ledger & The Unleaded Diet Budget for How to Chow—in other words, eat well, not feel hungry and still hit your goals.

The Two Roads to Fat Loss

Why They Lead Back to Where You Started or, a Wee Bit in Retreat

ROAD 1

“If you wanna lose bodyfat, cut your calories big time.”

This Road follows the Calories In/Calories Out Model.

Consume less chow and your metabolism will get to work on that body-fat—Hurray!

Does this work?

Yes, definitely—but…in only two instances.

Instance #1

In the beginning all diets ALL diets see an initial success of a few pounds down.

This is due to two factors.

Factor #1

·        All diets limit some foods [no carbs, or no fats, or no blue foods, etc.]

·        The mere act of limitation acts as an arbitrary caloric restriction and at the onset of the new diet this restriction acts as the caloric deficit mechanism and leads us to that initial temporary weight loss.

Factor #2

·        All diets [ALL] see initial success, no matter the name of the diet or the listed no-no foods because of attention.

·        The mere act of declaring “I’m on a diet” moves one from blindly eating food to examining the food you eat.

·        This initial period of diligence creates more mindfulness of what goes into the mouth and can lead to an initial weight loss whether the principles surrounding the diet are sound or not.

In the end all caloric restriction diets stall, fail or paradoxically wind up adding pounds to the scale.

The Question: Why is this so?

If the Calories In/Calories Out Model is correct [and it is] why does what works for 2-3 weeks seem to stall out?

And why is it when we hit this stall out and we make what seems to be the wise decision of doubling down on our discipline and cutting a few more calories out of the daily intake to get ‘er goin’ again, only to see less happiness at meals, ruminations on hunger all day long and still little to no progress, or worse, more pounds ticking up on the scales?

The Answer: Fuel Efficiency

Our bodies are astonishingly calibrated.

In the face of caloric deficit, the body becomes more fuel efficient, that is, parceling out energy in “wiser” dollops to keep the organism humming despite our intentional stinginess on fuel.

The body adjusts to less fuel by burning less and conserving more.

This was manna in our species’ distant past for survival in famine times—it would be manna to us now if we faced such feeding-uncertainties but…anyone reading this is not and will not [hopefully] face such insecurities so our survival mechanism is also there to keep us a bit porky despite our misplaced efforts.

“So, caloric restriction is hopeless as a weight-loss strategy?”

Not at all. Any photograph of a concentration camp will tell you the horrible facts of caloric restriction.

But we, obviously, never want to experience such restrictions where the survival mechanism is so horribly subjugated.

The calories in/calories out model can indeed work but…we’ve got to find a sweet spot where we tweak calories just enough to not trigger the fuel-efficiency that kills 90+% of all diets [GLP-1 assisted diets included.]

We’ve got to find a diet that keeps the perception of a small restriction further in the cognitive background where we eat happily and not feel hungry all the time, so we don’t experience “diet fatigue” which is the other big killer of consumption discipline.

We’ve got to find a diet that alters some aspect of our food consumption where we keep the stomach filled but the caliber of the fuel intake changes so that energy output stays of high quality, the survival tripwire of fuel efficiency is switched to a different mechanism, so the body burns bodyfat over prioritizing fat-storing.

And…we’ve got to walk that balance where the weight-loss all comes from the fat stores and preserves and builds lean muscle tissue.

Strict caloric restriction diets and GLP-1 assisted diets are non-discriminatory, they will burn fat and lean tissue alike.

Bad news for anyone looking for pleasing body-composition.

“So, is there a way to walk the dietary balance of a wee caloric tweak without trigging discomfort or fat-sparing fuel efficiency?”

Yep, there is.

But, first, recall I mentioned there were two main roads assumed useful for fat-loss.

Caloric restriction being one, the other being exercise.

It seems, just like the dead-end of caloric restriction, exercise itself is not all it’s cracked up to be for fat loss either.

That is, the way exercise is commonly approached.

We’ll hit that in Part 2.

You can wait and read about it, or…you can get going and training it with 5 sub-30-minute workouts per week, hit your body-recomposition goals and skip all the readin’ and wonderin’ does this really work or not?

It does. More info or to get goin’ here. 

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