This week I did 2 videos. The first is on Jon Gabriel, a continuation of last week’s post on The Gabriel Method. The second is one in which I hammer home that famous Atkins quote once again – the warning he issues to all dieters that “Prolonged dieting tends to shut down thyroid function.” You know, the one that I abuse the crap out of.
Next up are a couple of inspiring videos by Jon Gabriel himself. Lisa Sargese turned me on to these bad boys with a recent blog post of hers. Thanks Lisa!
Last but not least is a very interesting video that I managed to get caught up watching at Ryan Koch’s excellent blog. I watched this whole thing from start to finish – all 7 segments. It’s very interesting for anyone out there interested in overfeeding. The video has some flaws though – obese people generally respond the same way to overfeeding as the thin. They frame it like this is some fundamental difference between thin and obese people. There are differences, but eating more than you desire affects nearly everyone the same way.
Consider this quote while watching the video, from Robert Pool’s excellent book, Fat: Fighting the Obesity Epidemic:
?When you gain weight, Leibel found, your body responds by burning more calories. After a 10 percent weight gain, his subjects? metabolisms had jumped an average of 16 percent more than expected, among both the obese and the non-obese subjects. Leibel knew that his patients? metabolisms should increase somewhat, since about a fourth of their weight gain was lean tissue, not fat, and the extra fat-free mass would demand extra calories to support it. But the 16-percent increase in energy expenditure was over and above the expected gain due to the extra lean tissue.
Leibel is featured in the video BTW…
Good summary on Gabriel. His transformation is certainly one of the most impressive I've ever seen, especially if he has maintained it effortlessly for 5 years without ever resorting to particular diet or feeling deprived, as he claims. Has he had some kind of skin removal surgery, or is it all natural?
He's got some interesting ideas for sure, particularly intrigued by his point about how stress seems to be orexigenic in some people, but anorexigenic in others, and that it depends mainly on whether you respond passively or actively to the source of stress. Seems to be at odds with people like Schwarzbein who claim that all stress basically works the same in the end.
It's well known that short and intense bursts of activity, like sprints or HIIT, is supposedly pretty effective for fat loss, but I've never heard it rationalized as "be lean, or get eaten", kinda makes sense though. I took a 40 second sprint the last 300 yards of my 1 mile walk today. Due to anxiety about my injured achilles tendon, I've never dared anything more than some cautious jogging in the past three years, but this was the first time I let it all go and just ran as fast as I could the way I used to do as a kid on the football pitch.
And it felt so fucking great. This seems like a nice way to reintroduce exercise.
Thanks Collden. Gabriel is definitely on the forefront of the obesity riddle in ways that few are. I love how I get ridiculed for putting more emphasis on diet books than "science." Funny, 'science' has no idea where obesity comes from or how to do it. Not a single obesity researcher has been able to guide an obese person to weight loss success to the degree Gabriel has experienced. Not one! Pardon moi for opening up to Gabriel's work to search for valuable insight.
He had no skin alteration or cosmetic work done supposedly – one of the most interesting elements of his weight loss no doubt.
As for the exercise, I think he's got good advice as well. I don't think he's even a fan of exhaustion either, just maximal effort – even if it is in such short duration as to hardly make you tired. On walks that I've gone on for the last several weeks, I've actually been throwing in just 5-7 second sprints. I hardly even get winded from them, but just enjoy them.
HED is soooooo difficult. I feel exactly like those contestants right now. I've been doing HED/RRARF for about 2 weeks now, and I don't even want to look at food. Problem is that my morning armpit temp is only 97.2 and I'm still always having freezing hands and feet!
Got to keep eating… -_-
Matt Stone said, "supposedly" 'Nuff said.
Anonymous I think your focus is on the wrong things. Even if he did have cosmetic work done he still has lost an unimaginable amount of weight.
When science fails you over and over what are you left with aside from experience and observation.
"When science fails you over and over what are you left with aside from experience and observation?"
My point exactly, and that's certainly all we have to rely on as a guide when it comes to weight loss.
Hey Matt-
I was curious if in your line up of topics you plan on researching, you could throw in PCOS since it's a metabolic disorder, and it's becoming more and more prevalent amongst us ladies (but I guess the question is, what isn't nowadays?!). I was diagnosed with it in December and have been on the road to recovery.
I guess my question is if it can be overcome like many other illness you speak of here, since it has to do with the metabolism?
The internet research I've done is basically directed towards overweight people (I'm not- I'm fairly lean) and it makes it seem like I'm doomed to low carb living for the rest of my life, and that I just have to live with it. But I'm not very pleased with those prospects, so I'm asking you to do some digging :]
PCOS is highly correlated to insulin resistance, as is hypertension, gout, obesity, yada yada.
But just as low-carbing isn't exactly a salvation from insulin resistance – it's not salvation from PCOS either. Add PCOS to the list of health problems my girlfriend developed on a very low-carb diet.
One of the main points of overfeeding is to overcome insulin resistance at the core – instead of running from it by eating a restricted diet. Overfeeding can be very effective at overcoming insulin resistance, which is why it becomes increasinly difficult to gain fat, blood pressure drops, sugar cravings subside, hunger falls through the floor, etc. None of this is instant, but all can fall into place as insulin resistance is toppled at the upper reaches of the body weight set point.
So did overfeeding resolve your girlfriends PCOS? Or did it at least quiet the symptoms?
Matt, and the rest of you guys who are interested in metabolic damage and dieting. You should check out this article, it is one of the best I have read on the topic. I would like to hear what you think about it. Check it out here:
http://www.scottabel.com/2010-More-on-Metabolic-Damage.pdf
JT:
Good job mentioning that Scott Abel article. I just reading it the other day and was gonna ask others' opinions as well. I think most of his points are right on.
I was meaning to ask you. Do you own any of his diet or exercise programs/dvds? Have you ever consulted with him?
Thanks JT! That was a good summary of it. Now if only I could get my mother to stop riding the Medifast rollercoaster… (Hah. Like that'll ever happen.)
Scott Abel is charging almost $40 for one 2 hour lecture MP3 download! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. "Internet huckster" indeed!
Riles,
Yes, I have all of his DVDs and I have consulted with him. Best investments I have made concerning my physique enhancement goals. It has saved me a lot of money because I don't buy worthless supplements anymore.
Anonymous,
An internet huckster is someone who PRETENDS to be an expert when they are not. They are a huckster because they are selling something that is not really something of value. It has nothing to do with how much something costs. If something really does work, or if someone really is an expert, then it wouldn't be hucksterism.
I don' think Matt falls under the category of a huckster either, because he does not try to pretend that he is an expert. He freely admits that he is in the learning stages, and just has an interest in sharing his thoughts and research on these topics with others.
Happy Easter all!
JT,
Thanks for the Abel link. Just read it. What an eye opener, but should not be after what we have learned from Matt and Gabriel. I say eye opener, specifically referring to female figure competitors who just blow up after their competing days are done. Also explains why male bb'ers keep getting bigger and bigger each offseason. They are at least putting on some new muscle tissue as well. Makes me again think that those who do not diet as severely put on less fat in the offseason, and have an easier time leaning out later. HED more or less, when the appetite diminishes and the fat "falls off" as Jon Gabriel puts it.
My old manager at this the healthfood store i worked at in portland… she was a former competitive bodybuilder… She had gained a ton of fat from it she said. She said she hated dieting for shows… and couldn't do it anymore. Before i left she was following weight watchers… ugh… i asked here why she was dieting again if she hated it.
troy
Katerina, I was diagnosed with PCOS when I was 16. The doc put me on birth control pills and anti-androgens and 1000 calorie a day diet and sent me on my way.
The anti-androgens made me severely depressed so I quit those right away. The birth control pills made me regular, but I stopped taking them after a couple years and I returned back to how I was before them.
They say women with PCOS should really lose weight, but at the same time say it is extremely difficult to lose weight with PCOS even with diet and exercise. So, not much expert help I guess.
Since eating mostly HED I have actually gotten my period twice, 6 weeks apart…this is after not having it for a year and a half. My morning temps are now between 97 and 97.3 where they used to be between 95 and 96. I have lost only like 2 pounds, but have not gained anything, and this is eating as much as I want and I have even been eating fruit, sugar, and white flour past couple weeks.
I think this is definitely a step forward.
I had sort of an Easter epiphany this week-end (while "overfeeding" on lamb, roast potatoes and asparagus served in a boat of butter). I was trying to trace back and figure out when my metabolism started to slow down (which I attributed to age, which was hilarious since I was all of 28 when it happened!) It was right after I spent six months in Ireland, on a semi-starvation diet of my own that involved living off tea, sugar, white bread, butter and few potatoes and carrots. I lost twenty pounds, was cold all the time and when I returned home, I learned to cook for the first time in my life. It was four months or so after that that I noticed my weight in a negative way for the first.
And Colleen, I love sprinting.
Oops sorry Collden.
Go, Vida. I know one person at my work who has PCOS. She had the stomach band surgery and is on her way to gaining back the 50 pounds or so she lost with that. Glad to hear 180 is helping you.
Thanks Vida. Bringing your temp. up 1.5 degrees, eating as much as you want, your period coming back after a 1.5 year hiatus – and actually losing weight in the process. It has only been a few months that you've been with us too. A step in the right direction? F yes it is. That is amazing. I'll probably always be marginalized for my ideas by others who don't have any idea why I support the ideas that I support – but find me advice or a drug in the universe that could have helped you get those results in that time frame.
JT- I'll check out the Abel article and get back to you. Odds are I've already read it when I perused Abel nearly a year ago – but I"ll check it out again.
Oh yeah, and on PCOS-
You should not assume that a health nerd's girlfriend eats the way that he does. While she never tried "overfeeding" per se, she did stop running marathons, ate more – more carbs in particular, dropped birth control, and quit most caffeine. Her PCOS was limited to one flare up, but that was years ago. Not fun I hear.
An Abel…
My eBook revision is Abel's article on steriods. However, he has made an error in thinking that the body doesn't have fat loss adaptations. Rudy Leibel repeatedly sees overfeeding leading to quick and effortless weight loss "within 6 months time." Watch the BBC special I put up on this video – segment 7. They lost all the weight, with minimal effort. Some lost what they put on in 4 weeks of over 5,000 calories, in just 2 weeks.
?force the body and it reacts; coax the body and it
responds.
Now that is a good Abel quote, and a stance that I've been supporting wholeheartedly since 2007.
Matt re: temperature taking. If I 'warm up' the thermometer in the morning by putting it in bed with me for a while (as you suggested somewhere else on this site) I get pretty good readings but if I just take my temp without 'warming it up' the temps are way off … is it cheating to 'warm up' the thermometer?
I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but the Whole Health Source blog had an interesting post about Omega-6 suppressing thyroid function.
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/search/label/thyroid
The post was from December 19, 2008 and is titled Omega-6 Linoleic Acid Suppresses Thyroid Signaling.
It took me till today to read this blog post of yours. I was looking forward to seeing which Gabriel vids you chose and intended to nab one for my blog today. Lo and behold there you are THANKING ME!! No wonder my blog hits spiked the other day! You rock. Thanks for the mention. Now I'll have to nab the video of YOU for my blog today! lol (P.S. My temp is up. That didn't take very long using the HED approach!)
i was reading a bit more about iodine and came across this bit about PCOS so i'll post it here
?Iodine deficiency may cause the ovaries to develop cysts, nodules and scar tissue. At its worse this ovarian pathology is very similar to that of polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). As of the writing of this article I have five PCOS patients. The patients have successfully been brought under control with the use of 50 mg of iodine per day. Control with these patients meaning cysts are gone, periods every 28 days and type 2 diabetes mellitus under control.
http://iodine4health.com/ortho/flechas_ortho.htm
First step… Bring body temp up! Go Lisa. We wish the best for ya. You've been through some serious weight loss hell. Prison in fact. Kcal-catraz.
So, if we destined to be thin or fat, we should just relax into our destinies? Certainly, there is no simple answer to weight. I must admit that my desperate attempts to lose weight in the past have worked for a blink of time. I always end up at the same weight in the end.
Relaxing into your destiny is a much better and healthier route than fighting against your own natural urges to eat and rest. But many believe the weight set point can be altered (it must be mutable, or we would never gain weight. Most people continuously gain, so we know it can be changed).
The key will be unlocking the secrets of changing the weight set point. I argue in my work that overfeeding allows you to basically lower your weight to new lows afterward without your body revolting. Your body allows the weight to come off without triggering the famine response.
Overfeeding is what causes obesity in the first place matt?
i'm lost..doesnt more calories = more weight gain; less calories = weight loss?
It's not that simple. If it were, we could all eat less and exercise more. That triggers the biological human famine response though, and causes the weight set point to rise – meaning that your body's metabolism and hunger drive your weight to increase after a bout of trying to force your weight down through calorie restriction.
Weight regulation is not a conscious effort. Instead, all we can do is try to increase metabolism, decrease hunger, and lower the set point. That's what I believe overfeeding allows. The result of overfeeding is having a higher metabolism, more energy, and less hunger. The result of underfeeding is the opposite. The body always has an equal and opposite reaction to whatever you try to force it to do through discipline and willpower.
But if there's no food there's no obesity, so there has to be a calorie excess to create obesity.
what do you think?
ALL obesity researchers agree that our bodies' energy regulation systems cannot be consciously controlled to within the parameters needed to keep from storing excess body fat. For example, gaining 40 pounds of body fat during adulthood is the equivalent of the number of calories burned in 40 seconds of cycling, or the number of calories in a single peanut.
The difference between fat burned and fat stored is but a tiny microfraction of calories. What causes a person to store 10 or 20 calories extra per day while another doesn't is really what the conversation is all about.
What I explore is why someone's body tries to store extra calories in the fat tissue while another person's does not. The most significant way to raise body fat levels that I've discovered so far is the aftereffects of calorie deficit – consciously keeping calorie levels so low that weight is forced off. In a semi-starvation study for example, the subjects increased body fat stores by 40% eating to appetite after the period of semi-starvation.
Another example of the "equal and opposite reaction" of the body was the famine in Leningrad. With "no food" there was no hypertension. After the famine, there was a huge hypertension epidemic, affecting over 60% of the population.
Blood sugars are similarly affected by calorie restriction. Down, then up above starting levels.
The question is what makes the body want to consume more calories than it burns? It's been shown in overfeeding studies that, after a certain point weight can no longer be gained even eating 10,000 calories per day while sedentary. The body has all kinds of ways it can get rid of excess energy and keep from storing body fat on huge amounts of calories.
But no one should blame obesity on overfeeding anymore than blaming high blood oxygen levels on overbreathing. Weight is not consciously regulated anymore than breathing is. There are numerous homeostatic feedback mechanisms in the body that regulate weight – out of our conscious control.
ok thank you matt, this is really starting to make sense now… i think your on to something.
Real obesity researchers and biochemists have been on this trail for decades. However, it rarely makes it through the gauntlet of diet authors and what not, as they consume 95% of the media attention on the topic – upholding the status quo on cutting calories and getting more exercise to control weight – when every obesity researcher on earth knows that doing so triggers the physiological human famine response in 95% of obese subjects or more.
But matt. What about the studies showing that calorie restriction increases longevity?
Calorie restriction for longevity has only been shown in laboratory animals when calories were restricted from birth. This basically allows them to become underdeveloped and live longer – just like a small dog outliving a big dog. Because of it they can still have a normal metabolism on a small caloric intake. In humans, generally the smaller the person the longer the life expectancy.
Lab animals also show all kinds of emtional disturbances when calorie restricted, so the best case scenario is that you live a long, crappy life while calorie restricted. Yes, people want longevity – but lowering our calorie intake during adulthood has a totally different impact, causing extreme neurosis and a shut down of the immune system.
Ancel Keys, who studied human calorie restriction more thoroughly than any researcher before or since, pondered the same question:
p. 579
?In some animal forms, at least, chronic undernutrition prolongs the natural life span. It has been suggested that the natural life span is fixed, not in time, but in terms of total metabolism or some function of the rate of living. But in man severe undernutrition makes him look, feel, and act prematurely old. There are also changes in basal metabolism and in sexual function which resemble those produced by age. What is the long-range effect on physiological age and on longevity of the individual??
p. 581
?’the starving man is weak and cold, both physiologically and subjectively, and his behavior bears this out. On the other hand, his behavior is often misleading. He acts dull and insensitive; he looks and behaves as though he were unaware of or incapable of feeling many of the ordinary stimuli of sound, sight, or touch.
what do you think of Lyle McDonald?
"the starving man is weak and cold"
not starving but what about just reducing calorie intake a day for health
HOw do you keep metabolism high into old age?
Wouldnt eating a surplus of calories increase weight as one ages?
These guys ate over 1700 calories per day while sedentary – more than Barry Sears or Konstantin Monastyrsky recommend for health and longevity. Personally, I think trying to constantly battle your own hunger urges by trying to "eat less" is a dangerous mindset. I was stuck in it for a long time and ended up hungrier and hungrier as each year passed.
My diet is low in calories now because I am not hungry – a natural result of shutting off the famine response in the body. I think if you want to cut calories, it has to be done by strategically following a set of steps to turn off the appetite. As I've said in the past, my overfeeding regimen ends up incidentally being a low-calorie diet in the long-run.
Lyle McDonald is okay. Pretty typical advice on getting lean with the typical metabolic damage done. I feel much more comfortable steering those looking for uber-leanness in the direction of Scott Abel, Jay Robb, or Martin Berkhan, who all seem to possess greater knowledge about how to avoid negative dieting consequences.
Overfeeding brings the metabolism up. Once it is up, it does not require excess calories to keep it up, nor are excess calories typically taken because the body is no longer in famine mode and desires less food. Ideally, the healthiest person would maintain a high metabolism on a low amount of calories, but it's a step-by-step process to get there.
I'm going for a really LEAN 6pack look result, what do you recommend for that?
It's difficult to get lean without optimizing your metabolism and getting completely out of hibernation mode first. But once you get to that point, the body is more prone to allow you to get very lean without going into famine mode – and you gain lean mass as your metabolism (body temperature) rises to its optimal level.
Once there, any number of techniques can help take you to leanness. Like I said, I feel more confident that you can reach leanness without negative consequences typical of dieting by following the approaches of Abel, Jay Robb, or Martin Berkhan – who all take leptin and the famine response very seriously, and they try very hard to avoid the counterproductive leptin response to leanness.
But in general, I tend to think that for extreme leanness, a combination of cycling, re-feeds, etc. with low meal frequency (my greatest leanness was obtained on 2 large meals per day with lots of low-intensity exercise) would probably be most productive. Just don't battle against your hunger and energy levels. Don't force it, or you'll be sorry.
Thanx matt…
I know you mentioned this before but whats the kind of thermometer you use for under the arm temp?
what do you think about 3day low carb,1 day high carb , etc?
I just use a Vicks digital thermometer.
I think 3 days lc and 1 day hc is better than 4 days lc, if you know what I mean.
I don't know about this Gabriel dude. You don't end up with a 6-pack and a chin like that after losing that much fat. You end up with massive skin bags hanging off your arms and belly. I'm suspicious that the photos are of two different people.
By the way, I thought you might be interested in an upcoming paper my mentor is publishing. He looked at the contribution of lean body mass and fat mass to metabolic rate. Fat tissue itself has a very low metabolism, yet a rat with lots of fat but the same amount of lean tissue as a lean rat has a higher metabolic rate. It turns out it's due to the metabolic effect of leptin on the lean tissue. If you look in rats that lack leptin, metabolic rate correlates only with lean tissue with no contribution from fat tissue, no matter the amount of fat.
That gives additional support to the idea that leptin is the dominant feedback signal going from fat mass to the systems determining the metabolic rate.
Yes, I'm aware that the higher the body weight the higher the metabolism. I assume that this overall rise in excess energy output and caloric requirement for maintenance had a lot to do with high resting pulse rates, heavy breathing, hypertension, etc. in many overweight people – along with generally faster aging.
However, as you probably know, dieting them down results in a much lower total metabolic expenditure per square meter of lean body mass.
?Leibel found that the non-obese group, which consisted of 12 men and 14 women who weighed an average of 138 pounds, needed an average of 2,280 calories per day to maintain weight. By contrast, the obese group, an identical number of men and women who weighed an average of 335 pounds, needed 3,651 calories a day. This wasn’t surprising ? the obese subjects weighed nearly two and half times as much as the control group, so it seemed reasonable that they might need an extra 1,400 calories a day to maintain that weight. What was surprising, though, was the comparison after the weight loss. After the 26 obese patients had lost an average of 115 pounds apiece, they weighed an average of 220, and at this reduced weight their bodies demanded just 2,171 calories a day. In other words, these reduced-obese patients, who still weighed an average of 80 pounds apiece more than the lean subjects, had to eat 100 calories a day less to maintain their weight.
-from Robert Pool's FAT
What I find to be a more appropriate measure is the body temperature, as I believe this reveals whether the body is actively trying to conserve calories as it might during famine mode, regardless of overall calorie burn or oxygen expenditure. Many long-time dieters that are very overweight have reported here that their body temperatures run very low, even in the 95's. But those temps are rising without weight gain, and even slight weight loss, which is very promising.