My Fat Loss Philosophy, Part 3

Okay, this has taken longer than I initially intended, but here’s what I believe will be my last post for now regarding my fat loss philosophy. In this installment, I’ll deal with what to eat.

Foods

As much as possible, I try to eat whole, real foods, and avoid anything processed. These are the things that I eat freely:

• Beef, pork, chicken, turkey, lamb, fish, etc.
• Eggs, including the yolks
• Vegetables, especially green leafy ones like broccoli and spinach, but not corn (which is a grain) or legumes. Most of the time I avoid starchy vegetables (like potatoes).
• Fruit, especially berries
• Nuts, except for peanuts
• Limited dairy (yogurt, cottage cheese, cheese)
• Green tea and water, with the occasional diet soda
• Coconut and olive oil, butter

The things I avoid:

• Everything grain-based, including breads and pastas
• Anything sugary
• Most vegetable oils
• Legumes
• Processed foods
• Almost everything soy-based

I don’t shy away from saturated fat or cholesterol at all, because the science shows that they are actually good for you, contrary to conventional wisdom.

All of this means that my diet is high in protein, high in fat, and (relatively) low in carbs. I don’t pay a ton of attention to calories. As you’ll recall from my first post on this, if you’re trying to lose fat, it’s essential that you eat fewer calories that you use. But I’ve found that eating this way, that just kind of happens naturally. I have tracked calories occasionally just to get an idea, and I am careful with fruit, limiting it mostly to training days, but that’s about it.

This works very well for me personally. I think that some people might do just fine with grains and legumes (and if you eat them, it’s probably going to require paying closer attention to calories), but for me, it’s easier to attain my goals if I avoid them as much as possible.

Supplements

In an ideal world, I’d be able to get ample supplies of all of my nutrients directly from food. But because of convenience and cost factors, I use some supplements as well:

• Protein powder: I try to get at least 150 g of protein a day, and this is much easier to do if I throw in a protein shake or two. There are a LOT of good protein powders on the market now, many of them quite tasty. I recommend something using whey or casein protein. Avoid soy.
• Multivitamin: I take one because I have a couple of huge bottles that I haven’t used up yet. Studies seem to show that our bodies don’t really absorb the nutrients in a multivitamin, though, so I’ll probably stop using them once my supply runs out.
• Vitamin D3: There is a lot of research lately showing the importance of Vitamin D, and most people are lacking. I try to spend some time outside every day to get some from the sun, but just to be safe, I also take 5000 IUs every day.
• Probiotic: I just started doing this. The idea is that antibiotics and the effects of the typical American diet have caused most people to be lacking in the healthy bacteria that make up our intestinal tract. Probiotics and fermented foods can help correct this.
• Fish oil: The benefits of fish oil cannot be overstated due to the fact that most of us are sorely lacking in Omega-3s. I typically pop 5-6 capsules a day.

Weight: 202
BF%: 23

Jan 1st starting weight: 232.5
Starting BF%: 31

The HCG Diet

Recently, I was on Amazon and noticed in their discussion forums a question about the HCG diet. I only became aware of this diet a few months ago, after someone on Facebook mentioned it.

If you’re unfamiliar with the diet, it is based on the work of a Dr. ATW Simeons, published in his book Pounds and Inches more than 50 years ago. The diet is based on eating 500 calories a day for several weeks, accompanied by daily shots of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), which he claimed would help mobilize stores of “abnormal” fat that is not normally available for your body’s energy needs. After several weeks, people on the diet transition to normal caloric intake with a diet based mostly on whole food (meats, fruits, vegetables, etc.). The cycle is repeated as many times as necessary to attain the desired weight loss.

Interest in the diet was revitalized in 2007 with the publication of informercial king Kevin Trudeau’s The Weight Loss Cure They Don’t Want You to Know About.

Now, anyone who knows me is aware of the fact that I am more than happy to deviate from the mainstream and embrace ideas that at first seem totally whacky, as long as there is solid reasoning and evidence to support the idea. So although I was skeptical when I first heard about this diet, I tried to keep an open mind when researching it. After reading from a lot of different sources, I came to the following conclusions:

1. If you limit yourself to 500 calories a day, you’re going to lose fat pretty quickly, but doing so can be dangerous, and if you’re not smart about it, you’re going to lose muscle too.
2. If you adopt a diet based on whole, natural foods, you’re probably going to have an easy time maintaining any fat loss, and may even be able to slowly lose weight.
3. Numerous independent studies have shown that HCG is no more effective than a placebo when used in conjunction with this diet’s eating plan. Injecting HCG also has some potentially very serious side effects, and of course, it’s not free.

In other words, any successes of the HCG diet can be attributed to the first two points, and there are many other diets that use these principles, especially the second (and if you want to go with a very-low calorie diet for rapid fat loss, there are alternatives that are much more attractive). But because this diet includes injecting something that is not only unnecessary, but potentially dangerous, I’d steer clear of it.

Sifting Through the Garbage

In researching this diet, I noticed a couple of disturbing things.

The first is that, no matter what combination of search terms I used in conjunction with HCG, Google’s first several pages of results were dominated by sites that are owned and operated by companies or individuals selling HCG. To me, that suggests that there is a lot of money being made selling HCG to people who are desperate to lose weight, and the people making that money have a vested interest in people believing that HCG is an essential part of the process. In order to find more objective information on HCG, I had to go directly to sources like WebMD, Pubmed, Wikipedia, and the personal websites of weight-loss professionals that I trust.

The second is that any time I found any information critical of the HCG diet, the comments section would be inundated with people attacking the article, generally not by rebutting the facts but by sharing their own testimonials, usually along the lines of “I’ve been on this diet for 4 days and I’ve already lost 10 pounds.” This happened to me when I posted on Amazon, which caused me to want to write this blog. These people display almost cult-like characteristics, a phenomenon that has been commented on at a few of the fitness forums I visit. My theory is that these people are either being paid by companies that sell HCG, or they are people who have genuinely lost weight on the diet but suffer from confirmation bias preventing them from recognizing that the HCG itself has nothing to do with their success.

Further Reading

If you or someone you know is seriously considering the HCG diet, I strongly recommend that you thoroughly read some of the following articles and come to your own conclusions:

• Wikipedia
• The HCG Diet – Just Another Scam
• HCG Diet BS?
• WebMD – HCG Side Effects
• HCG Diet Dangers: Is Using HCG Worth The Risks?
• Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) in the Treatment of Obesity: A Critical Assessment of the Simeons Method
• HCG Worthless as a Weight-loss Aid
• http://www.hcgbullshit.com/

Fitness log, 8/8/10

Lately, other than brief interruptions when I travel (and even on my trip to China, I made mostly responsible food choices and hit the gym a couple of times), I’ve been very consistent with both my diet and exercise. About a month ago, I started Jim Wendler’s 5-3-1 program, and I’ve been very pleased with the results so far. In addition to that, I’ve increased my overall activity level: taking the (7 flights of) stairs at work, walking more (a half hour each way to the gym yesterday), with the occasional bike ride, jumping rope, and sprinting. My weight is dropping consistently, and I think I’m on track to hit 200 by the end of August.

I noticed something disturbing today. According to my Tanita scale, I currently weigh 207.5 with 27% body fat. I’ve said before that I think that’s considerably higher than what I’m really at, but taken at face value, that means I have about 150 pounds of lean body mass. Back in January when I first started this, I was 232.5 at 31% body fat. That’s a bit over 160 pounds of lean body mass. So assuming that the scale is at least relatively accurate, that means I’ve lost 10 pounds of muscle and 15 pounds of fat.

I’d like to write off the muscle loss as inaccuracy of the scale, but the truth is, my training logs show that I AM moving less weight than I used to at the gym, and my muscles seem to be a bit smaller. Really, this is no surprise. I went through a period where I was horribly inconsistent with my weight training, and then in April, I suspended it completely to focus on preparing for Ragnar. As I said a few posts ago, I think that running is terrible for fat loss precisely because it does nothing to preserve muscle, and my experience seems to confirm this.

Based on my current numbers, to get to my ultimate goal of 10% body fat, assuming that I can hold onto the lean body mass I have now, I’ll have to drop down to under 170 pounds. Ugh. However, I estimate that my scale reports at least 5% higher than what it really is, and if I stay on track I’ll probably be adding some muscle back on, so it may be more like 180-190. That’s not so far off.

Weight: 207.5
BF%: 27

Jan 1st starting weight: 232.5
Starting BF%: 31