Think about it for a second. What’s most likely to lead to excess calorie consumption, “dirty” foods like pizza, cheeseburgers, candy, and ice cream, or “clean” ones like chicken breast, broccoli, brown rice, and apples?
This is why getting the majority of your daily calories from “diet-friendly” foods makes for easier and more enjoyable weight loss and maintenance.
Claim #4
“The human body isn’t an inorganic machine. You can’t apply the same rules.”
Some people say that the first law of thermodynamics doesn’t apply to the human metabolism. They say our bodies are far more complicated than the simple engines that power our refrigerators and cars.
Their arguments can be convincing, too, chock-full of weasel words like entropy, chaos theory, and metabolic advantage, and tangents on the more esoteric aspects of our endocrine system.
This is all smoke and mirrors.
It’s true that the human body is far more complex than a combustion engine, but as I mentioned earlier, there’s a reason why every single controlled weight loss study conducted in the last century has concluded that meaningful weight loss requires “calories in” to be lower than “calories out.” It works the same in the lean and obese, and even in the healthy and diseased.9
Energy balance is a first principle of the human metabolism, the “master key” to your body weight, and it simply can’t be circumvented or ignored.
Rule #2
Macronutrient Balance Is Queen
You’ve heard me say that as important as energy balance is, it’s not the whole story, especially not when the goal is to improve your body composition.
Well, it’s time to hear the rest of the weight loss tale, and this is the final act.
Macronutrient balance refers to how the calories you eat break down into protein, carbohydrate, and dietary fat.
If you want to lose fat and not muscle, or gain muscle and not fat, then you need to pay close attention to both your energy and macronutrient balances.
In this context, a calorie is no longer a calorie because a calorie of protein does very different things in your body than a calorie of carbohydrate or dietary fat.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these “macros” and discover how they fit into the fat loss puzzle.
Macronutrient #1
Protein
While the scientific search for the “One True Diet” continues, there’s one thing we know for certain: it’s going to be high in protein.
Study after study has already confirmed that high-protein dieting is superior to low-protein dieting in just about every meaningful way.10 Specifically, research shows that people who eat more protein:
Lose fat faster11
Gain more muscle12
Burn more calories13
Experience less hunger14
Have stronger bones15
Generally enjoy better moods16
Protein intake is even more important when you exercise regularly because this increases your body’s demand for protein.17
It’s also important when you restrict your calories to lose fat, because eating adequate protein plays a major role in preserving lean mass while dieting.18
Protein intake is important among sedentary folk as well. Studies show that such people lose muscle faster as they age if they don’t eat enough protein, and the faster they lose muscle, the more likely they are to die from all causes.19
Macronutrient #2
Carbohydrate
To really understand why carbs aren’t your enemy, let’s briefly discuss their chemical structure and what happens when you eat them.
There are four primary forms of carbohydrate that you need to know about:
Monosaccharides
Disaccharides
Oligosaccharides
Polysaccharides
Monosaccharides are often called simple sugars because they have a very simple structure. Mono means “one” and saccharide means “sugar,” so “one sugar.”
There are three monosaccharides: glucose, fructose, and galactose. You learned these words earlier in this book, but let’s brush up on them quickly here.
Glucose is a sugar that occurs widely in nature and is an important energy source in organisms, as well as a component of many carbohydrates.
Fructose is a sugar found in many fruits and honey, as well as processed products like table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup.Fructose is converted into glucose by the liver and then released into the blood for use.
Galactose is a sugar found in dairy products that’s metabolized similarly to fructose.
Disaccharides, meaning “two sugars,” are commonly found in nature as sucrose, lactose, and maltose. Again, a quick review of the two terms you’re familiar with, and then the new, third term:
Sucrose is a sugar that occurs naturally in most plants and is obtained commercially especially from sugarcane or sugar beets.It’s commonly known as table sugar.
Lactose is a sugar present in milk that contains glucose and galactose.
Maltose is a sugar that consists of two glucose molecules linked together.It’s uncommon in nature and is used in alcohol production.
Oligosaccharides are molecules that contain several monosaccharides linked together in chain-like structures. Oligos is Greek for “a few,” so a “few sugars.”
The fiber found in plants is partially made of oligosaccharides, and many vegetables also contain fructooligosaccharides, which are short chains of fructose molecules.
Another common form of oligosaccharide that we eat is raffinose, a chain of galactose, glucose, and fructose. This is found in a variety of foods like whole grains, beans, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, asparagus, and other vegetables.
Galactooligosaccharides round out this list, and they’re short chains of galactose molecules found in many of the same foods as raffinose. They’re indigestible but play a role in stimulating healthy bacteria growth in the gut.
The last form of carbohydrate that we need to discuss is the polysaccharide, which is a long chain of monosaccharides, usually containing 10 or more of these sugars.
Starch (the energy stores of plants) and cellulose (a natural fiber found in many plants) are two examples of polysaccharides that we often eat. Our bodies easily break starches down into glucose, but cellulose passes through our digestive system intact.
Except for those that aren’t digested, all these types of carbs have something very important in common: they all end up as glucose in the body.
Whether we’re talking about the natural sugars found in fruit, the processed ones found in a candy bar, or the “healthy” ones found in green vegetables, they’re all digested into glucose and shipped off in the blood for use.
The key difference between these forms of carbohydrate is the rate at which this conversion happens.
The candy bar turns into glucose rather quickly because it contains a large number of quickly digested monosaccharides, whereas the broccoli takes longer because it contains slower-burning oligosaccharides.
Some people say that makes all the difference—that the speed with which carbs are converted into glucose determines whether they’re “healthy.” These people are mostly wrong.
For instance, baked potato is rather high on the glycemic index (85) but packed with vital nutrients. Watermelon is up there on the index as well (72), and even oatmeal (58) is higher than a Snickers Bar (55).
Does that mean you can eat all the simple sugars you want, then? That so long as you keep your energy and macronutrients balanced, you can replace potato and oatmeal with soda and candy as often as you’d like?
Well, you could, but it would eventually catch up with you because our bodies need to get a lot more than calories and macros from the food we eat. They also need a long lis
t of nutrients, like vitamins, minerals, and fiber, that simply aren’t in Coca-Cola and Twizzlers.
This is one of the reasons why research shows there’s an association between high added sugar intake—sugars like sucrose and fructose added to foods to sweeten them—and several metabolic abnormalities and health conditions, including obesity, as well as varying degrees of nutritional deficiency.20
There’s simply no denying that eating too much added sugar can harm our health and that reducing intake is generally a good idea.
That doesn’t mean we need to reduce or limit our consumption of all forms of carbohydrate, however. In fact, if you’re healthy and physically active, particularly if you lift weights regularly, chances are that you’ll do better with more carbs in your diet, not less.
You’ll find out why in the next chapter.
Macronutrient #3
Dietary Fat
Dietary fat doesn’t deserve all the attention it’s getting these days.
You should eat enough to stay healthy, but have no reason to follow a high-fat diet unless you really enjoy it. And even then you need to do so with caution.
To understand why, let’s start at the top. There are two different types of fat found in food:
Triglycerides
Cholesterol
Triglycerides make up the bulk of our daily fat intake and are found in a wide variety of foods ranging from dairy to nuts, seeds, meat, and more.
They can be liquid (unsaturated) or solid (saturated), and they support health in many ways. They help absorb vitamins, they’re used to create various hormones, they keep the skin and hair healthy, and much more.
We recall that saturated fat is a form of fat that’s solid at room temperature and found in foods like meat, dairy, and eggs.
The long-held belief that saturated fat increases the risk of heart disease has been challenged by recent research, which claims “that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD [heart disease].”21
The fad diet industry has exploited this “revelation” marvelously with runaway hits like the paleo and ketogenic diets.
The problem, however, is that much of the scientific literature used to promote these diets has also been severely criticized by prominent nutrition and cardiology researchers for various flaws and omissions.22
These scientists maintain that there is a strong association between high intake of saturated fat and heart disease, and that we should follow the generally accepted dietary guidelines for saturated fat intake (less than 10 percent of daily calories) until we know more.
Given the current weight of the evidence, nobody can honestly claim that we can eat as much saturated fat as we want without any chance of negative consequences.
This is why I think it’s much smarter to “play it safe” and wait for further research before joining in the mainstream saturated fat orgy.
Earlier in this book, you learned that unsaturated fat is a form of fat that’s liquid at room temperature and found in foods like olive oil, avocado, and nuts. There are two distinct types of unsaturated fats:
Monounsaturated fat
Polyunsaturated fat
Monounsaturated fat is liquid at room temperature and starts to solidify when cooled. Foods high in monounsaturated fat include nuts, olive and peanut oil, and avocado.
Polyunsaturated fat is liquid at room temperature and remains so when cooled. Foods high in polyunsaturated fat include safflower, sesame, and sunflower seeds, corn, and many nuts and their oils.
Unlike saturated fat, there’s no controversy over monounsaturated fat. Research shows that it can reduce the risk of heart disease, and it’s also believed to be responsible for some of the health benefits associated with the Mediterranean diet, which involves eating a lot of olive oil.23
Polyunsaturated fat, on the other hand, isn’t as cut-and-dried. The two primary polyunsaturated fats are alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) and linolenic acid (LA). ALA is what’s known as an omega-3 fatty acid while LA is an omega-6 fatty acid. These designations refer to the structure of the molecules.
ALA and LA are the only types of fat that our bodies can’t produce and that we must obtain from our diets. This is why they’re referred to as essential fatty acids.
These two substances cause an enormous number of effects in the body. The chemistry is complex, but here’s what you need to know for the purpose of our current discussion:
LA is converted into several compounds in the body, including the anti-inflammatory gamma-linolenic acid, as well as the pro-inflammatory arachidonic acid.
ALA can be converted into an omega-3 fatty acid known as eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), which can be converted into another called docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).
A large amount of research has been done on EPA and DHA, and it appears that they bestow many, if not all, of the health benefits generally associated with ALA, including:
Decreased inflammation24
Improved mood25
Faster muscle growth26
Increased cognitive performance27
Faster fat loss28
It’s an oversimplification to say that the effects of LA (omega-6) are generally “bad,” and the effects of ALA (omega-3) are generally “good,” but it’s more accurate than inaccurate.
That’s why it has been hypothesized that a diet too high in omega-6 and too low in omega-3 fatty acids can cause a whole host of health problems.
Research conducted by scientists at the University of Illinois casts doubt on this, though.29 There’s no question that inadequate omega-3 intake is bad for your health, but ironically, studies have found that increasing omega-6 intake can decrease the risk of heart disease, not increase it.30
Thus, scientists suspect that the absolute amount of omega-3 fatty acids in the diet is more important than the ratio between omega-3 and omega-6 intakes. Hence the considerable amount of work that has been done to boost the omega-3 content of various foods like eggs and meat.
The key takeaway here is if you’re like most people, you’re getting enough omega-6 fatty acids in your diet, but probably not enough omega-3s (and EPA and DHA in particular). An easy way to fix this is with an omega-3 supplement, which we’ll discuss later in this book.
Cholesterol is the other type of fat found in food. It’s a waxy substance present in all cells in the body, and it’s used to make hormones, vitamin D, and substances that help you digest your food.
Several decades ago, it was believed that foods that contained cholesterol, like eggs and meat, increased the risk of heart disease. We now know it’s not that simple. Eggs, for instance, have been more or less exonerated, and studies show that processed meat is associated with high incidence of heart disease but red meat per se is not.31
One of the reasons the relationship between cholesterol and heart health is tricky is foods that contain cholesterol also often contain saturated fat, which can indeed increase the risk of heart disease.
Another reason has to do with how cholesterol travels throughout your body. It’s delivered to cells by molecules known as lipoproteins, which are made out of fat and proteins. There are two kinds of lipoproteins:
Low-density lipoproteins (LDL)
High-density lipoproteins (HDL)
When people talk of “bad” cholesterol, they’re referring to LDL because research shows that high levels of LDL in your blood can lead to an accumulation in your arteries, and increase the risk of heart disease.32
This is why foods that can raise LDL levels, such as fried and processed foods and foods high in saturated fat, are generally considered bad for your heart.33
HDL is often thought of as the “good” cholesterol because it carries cholesterol to your liver, where it’s processed for various uses.
Ru
le #3
Adjust Your Food Intake Based on How Your Body Is Responding
Tweaking your calories and macros up and down based on what’s actually happening with your body is vitally important for two reasons:
Formulas for calculating your calories and macros may not work perfectly for you right out of the box.
What has been working can stop producing results.
To the first point, your metabolism may be naturally faster or slower than the formulas assume. You may engage in a lot of spontaneous activity throughout the day without realizing it, like walking around while on the phone, hopping to the bathroom, drumming your fingers while you read, or bobbing your legs while you think. Your job or hobbies may burn more energy than you realize (causing you to underestimate your energy expenditure), and you may burn more (or less) energy than average during exercise.
And to the second point, we recall that the body responds to calorie restriction with countermeasures meant to stall weight loss, including metabolic slowdown. This is the primary reason why a calorie intake that initially results in weight loss can eventually stop working.
Similarly, the body responds to a calorie surplus with countermeasures meant to stall weight gain, including metabolic speedup. This is mostly why a calorie intake that initially results in weight gain can also eventually stop working.
The good news is you don’t have to try to account for all this before beginning your fat loss diet. Instead, you can start simple and adjust your calories and macros based on how your body is actually responding.
Here’s the basic rule of thumb:
If you’re trying to lose weight but aren’t, you probably need to eat less or move more.
(And if you’re trying to gain weight but aren’t, you probably just need to eat more.)
We’ll talk more about this, including what you should do when you stop losing weight, later in this book.
•••
Phew, you made it.
Bigger Leaner Stronger Page 10