“Treating obesity will come not from repetition of anachronistic preconceptions [outdated theories] but rather from the rigorous scientific approach.” – J.M. Friedman, Rockefeller University

You and I already know that we can eat more—smarter—by consuming more, higher-quality calories. But we first need to know what the highest-quality calories are, where we can get them, and why eating more of them helps us to burn body fat. Fortunately, we already know the answers to all of these questions.

We know that four factors determine calorie quality:

1. Satiety – How well calories prevent overeating
2. Aggression – How likely calories are to be stored as body fat
3. Nutrition – How many nutrients are provided per calorie
4. Efficiency – How many calories can be converted into body fat

We know SANE calories come from the water-, fiber-, and protein-packed foods found in nature. That makes sense. Why would anything or anyone “design” us to run on a low-fat-low-protein-high-starch diet which was not possible for 99.8% of our evolutionary history?

“An increase in dietary protein content comparable with that observed in popular low-carbohydrate diets, but [accompanied by] no reduction in dietary carbohydrate content, resulted in rapid losses of weight and body fat.”- D.S. Weigle, University of Washington

Finally, you and I know we want to eat more SANE natural food because that’s the easiest way to avoid inSANE unnatural starches and sweets. Now for the day-to-day details.

First and foremost: Do not diet.

Dieting is restricting yourself abnormally for a short period of time. As D.S. Weigle at the University of Washington tells us, “energy-restricted diets are a physiologically unsound means to achieve weight reduction.” You’re better off switching over to eating more of the right foods. As E.C. Westman of Duke University reminds us, “The persistence of an epidemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes suggests that new nutritional strategies are needed if the epidemic is to be overcome.” Your “new nutritional strategy” is neither abnormal nor short-term. You’ll simply eat the way our ancestors ate for 99.8% of our history. You’ll get back to normal eating so that your biological processes can get back to functioning normally.

“If you are sedentary and overweight, and want to get rid of body fat permanently, about the worst thing you can do is to keep on dieting.” – Geoffrey Cannon, author Dieting Makes You Fat

Still, when people see you dropping pounds of body fat while eating more, they will ask what diet you are on. Let’s cover how to answer in the next post.

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1. Cannon, Geoffrey, and Hetty Einzig. Dieting makes you fat. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. Print.
2. Friedman JM. Modern science versus the stigma of obesity. Nat Med. 2004 Jun;10(6):563-9. Review. PubMed PMID: 15170194.
3. Miller WC. Diet composition, energy intake, and nutritional status in relation to obesity in men and women. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1991 Mar;23(3):280-4. Review.  PubMed PMID: 2020264.
4. Rose, Geoffrey, and K. T. Khaw. Rose’s Strategy of Preventive Medicine the Complete Original Text. Oxford [etc.]: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.
5. Weigle DS. Human obesity. Exploding the myths. West J Med. 1990 Oct;153(4):421-8. Review. PubMed PMID: 2244378; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC1002573.
6. Weigle DS, Breen PA, Matthys CC, Callahan HS, Meeuws KE, Burden VR, Purnell JQ. A high-protein diet induces sustained reductions in appetite, ad libitum caloric intake, and body weight despite compensatory changes in diurnal plasma leptin and ghrelin concentrations. Am J Clin Nutr. 2005 Jul;82(1):41-8. PubMed PMID: 16002798.
7. Westman EC, Feinman RD, Mavropoulos JC, Vernon MC, Volek JS, Wortman JA, Yancy WS, Phinney SD. Low-carbohydrate nutrition and metabolism. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Aug;86(2):276-84. Review. PubMed PMID: 17684196

Eating less does not cause long-term fat loss. Exercising more does not cause long-term fat loss. Thinking in these terms won’t help you. The issue is not calorie quantity, but poor calorie quality causing a hormonal clog that removes your fat metabolism system’s need and ability to burn body fat. One more time, the issue is not calorie quantity, but poor calorie quality.

Unfortunately, the people teaching us about eating and exercise—the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)—have not seen the science. Take this excerpt from chapter 3 of the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans: “Since many adults gain weight slowly over time, even small decreases in calorie intake can help avoid weight gain.”

Here’s the bureaucrats’ basic misunderstanding: If “small decreases in calorie intake” lead to gradual weight loss, does that mean “small decreases in calorie intake” will eventually make us weigh nothing? Of course not. Why? Because our set-point automatically regulates our weight. But if that is true, then how can a small decrease in calorie intake help us avoid weight gain?

It can’t.

The issue is not that our body wants us to weigh less, but that too many calories per day are blocking it. The issue is that our body does not want us to weigh less thanks to our elevated set-point. The same mechanism preventing “small decreases in calorie intake” from making you weigh nothing also prevents it from effectively causing your body to burn off excess fat right now.

A more promising approach is to unclog and to lower your set-point. And you can do that easily by eating more high-quality calories. Remember, studies on 118,801 people show:

1. Eating more correlates with less body fat
2. Higher-quality food correlates with less body fat

If you can escape the trap of old calorie quantity myths, you will never have to worry about your weight again.

Coming up next on let’s explore how to increase the quality of your calories, lower your set-point, and get your body burning fat for you.

 

Next stop on The Biggest Loser’s Jennifer Jacobs and Jay Jacobs’ shift from short-term weight loss to long-term health and fat-loss: Q&A regarding exercising less–but smarter vs. exercising for literally six hours per day “on the ranch.” Enjoy the short, medium, and full versions of our chat below. I personally recommend the full version, but we want to provide something for everyone 🙂 – Jonathan Bailor

Short

Jay Jacobs & Jennifer Jacobs

Jonathan, you know we’re far from afraid to exercise, but mentally Jen and I feel that we get so much from exercising that we can’t envision only exercising eccentrically 10-15 minutes twice a week.

Jonathan Bailor

Simply add eccentric exercise to your existing routine. While you may not be able to use as much resistance as you otherwise could, you’ll still see great results as long as you can keep your routine up for the next 30 years, not just the next 30 days (more on safe and sustainable exercise).

 

Medium

Jay Jacobs & Jennifer Jacobs

Can’t we apply the principles and benefits of eccentric exercise to our Spinning classes by upping the resistance as we spin so we get a deep muscle tissue response? Couldn’t we say sprint vs. jog or run and get that benefit? And I gotta believe that CrossFit is pretty close to being eccentric as after we’ve finished exercising we’re all either laying on the floor trying to recover, or walking around like zombies. According to what you share, if we’re doing eccentric exercises right we shouldn’t be able to do anything else.

Jonathan Bailor

Yes. The more resistance you use, the more you will change your metabolism to work like the metabolism of a naturally thin person: burning rather than storing fat 24/7/365. What you mention is almost exactly the “high-quality brief interval training” covered in SANE. Think of eccentric training as another option that will let you use even more resistance even safer–and reduce your total time exercising if you’d like. This is why it’s been popular in physical therapy circles for decades…it’s uniquely safe and uniquely effective. Combine safe and effective with “not time consuming,” and a lot of people find that it’s a great long-term exercise approach for them. I get most excited about eccentric training when I think about how I will exercise for the next 30 years vs. the next 30 days.

Full

Jay Jacobs & Jennifer Jacobs

Jonathan, you know from our discussions and food journals that Jennifer and I do pretty well at eating SANEly. We get it, and as we’ve shared, it seems that the more and more SANE food we eat, the more and more our bodies are craving healthier, whole foods.

Now it’s not that we never have a craving, or we never go off the reservation and eat inSANEly, but that happens much less frequently than in the past.

The one area in your book that we keep resisting is exercising eccentrically. Truth be told we’ve resisted them so much that we haven’t even tried them. So, here’s our question… you know we’re far from afraid to exercise, but mentally we just feel that we get so much from exercising that we can’t envision only exercising 10-15 minutes twice a week. Now if we could do eccentric exercises in addition to running, Spinning and CrossFit, or at least work them into what we’re doing that would be fine. But according to what you share, if we’re doing the eccentric exercises right, we shouldn’t physically be able to do anything else.

We gotta be honest–if what you’re sharing is really true why hasn’t anybody known about this before, and what are all of us doing signing up for all of these memberships and classes. You can’t say that other forms of exercise don’t work, obviously they do, we’ve experienced them for ourselves, and we’ve seen other amazing transformations as well.

Please help us better understand… we’re still confused.

Jonathan Bailor

Cutting edge exercise science can absolutely be a bit mind bending; especially when it’s so different from the marketing messages we’ve been bombarded with for the past couple of decades. Heck, it took me two years before I was able to let go of what I was taught as a personal trainer and enjoy the freedom and reduction in injuries that come from smarter exercise.

Let’s begin the gradual process of freeing our minds and healing our metabolisms by examining the way we think about our bodies. The now disproven theories that resulted in record breaking rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease led us to believe that our bodies work like balance scales. Supposedly, we need to consciously regulate calories in and calories out. Hundreds of clinical studies have proven that this is *not* how our bodies work. Do we have to manually regulate breaths in and breaths out? No. Do we have to regulate blood into our heart and blood out of our heart? No. Do we have to manually regulate calories in and calories out? No. Life sustaining functions are automatically regulated by the body. But—and this is a big but—if we destroy our body’s natural ability to keep us healthy, then that automatic regulation breaks down.

Consider a few examples:

• Diabetes: Our body is designed to automatically regulate insulin levels. However, if we lose that ability then we have to manually regulate insulin.
• Ventilators: Our body is designed to automatically regulate breaths in and breaths out. However, if we lose that ability then we have to manually regulate oxygen.
• Pacemakers: Our body is designed to automatically regulate blood in and blood out of the heart. However, if we lose that ability then we have to manually regulate heart beats.
• Metabolic Dysregulation (what I call a hormonal clog): Our body is designed to automatically regulate calories in and calories out. However, if we lose that ability then we have to manually regulate calories.

 

Think of Your Body Like a Sink Instead of a Balance

With this correct understanding of our bodies, instead of a balance scale, think about your body like a sink. When a sink is working properly, more water in means more water out. The water level my rise temporarily, but the sink takes care of that automatically. The only time water level stays elevated is when the sink becomes clogged and loses its automatic ability to regulate water levels appropriately. One way to deal with this abnormally high level of water is to spend an hour or two per day manually bailing the excess water out with a teaspoon. Another way would be to clear the clog and restore the sinks ability to keep the water level low automatically.

Map this back to your body. It is designed to automatically regulate calories in and out such that we automatically maintain a healthy level of body fat. However, when we put the wrong quality of food into our body it becomes hormonally clogged and the level of fat in our body rises. Manually increasing calories out via hours of traditional exercise is like manually bailing water out of the sink with the teaspoon. It yields short term results, but it doesn’t do anything about the root cause, and that’s why it doesn’t work for over 95% of us long term.

Manually increasing calories out via hours of traditional exercise “works” like manually decreasing calories in via starvation “works”…

The Two Ways to Maintain Healthy Body Fat Levels Long Term

Science shows that we have two options to maintain a healthy level of body fat long term:

• Manually Regulate Calories: Spend hours every day for the rest of our life manually “bailing” fat out of our body, or
• Automatically Regulate Calories: Spend minutes per week clearing the hormonal clog causing fat levels to rise in the first place.

Both are fine options. And we can pick the one that best suits us individually. The first works to mask the symptoms of a broken metabolism. The second works to fix the broken metabolism–to make our body work more like the body of a naturally thin person.

Let’s say we like the second option. How do we clear the clog?

How To Clear Your Hormonal Clog

Let’s go back to the sink. One great way is to use a tool to push the clog out. But, we need the right tool. For example, if we use a low-quality tool (this is a bit silly) such as a wet noodle, we won’t be able to generate enough force to push the clog out. We could sit at our sink and gently tap the clog over and over with our wet noodle, but no quantity of low quality will ever clear it out. We need a higher quality tool. Something that enables us to generate a lot of force. Maybe a sturdy plunger.

How do wet noodles and plungers map to our biology? Think of the various types of exercise as the various types of tools we can use to clear our hormonal clog. There are “wet-noodle” exercises that generate a little force (jogging), and “plunger” exercises that generate a lot of force (sprinting). If our goal is to clear our hormonal clog and restore our body’s natural ability to keep us healthy and fit, which would we be better off doing? The high-quality option. And because it’s so high quality, we don’t need a lot of it.

The specific smarter exercises my research recommends are like super plungers. They are exercise tools that enable us to generate as much force as possible as safely as possible (sprinting up stadium steps, while high-quality, can lead to injury). You can also think of them like version 2.0 of many mainstream smarter exercise approaches such as interval training and resistance training. They enable us to generate even more force even more safely.

Eccentric exercise gives us the benefits of high-intensity training techniques such as CrossFit, Spinning, and intervals, while minimizing our risk of injury.

 

Summary

The scientific community has discovered that there is an alternative to doing a lot of low-quality exercise: Do a little high-quality exercise. Exercise less—but smarter.

What gets me so excited is how sustainable, safe, and cost-effective this alternate approach is. I’m also so happy to see how quickly it is catching on in the mainstream. Look at the exponential increase in popularity of higher-quality exercise techniques such as interval training, CrossFit, and resistance training. Just imagine what kind of practical and permanent results we could see if we took this to next level with version 2.0 interval training and resistance training; what I call high-quality brief interval training and eccentric training.

“Bailor’s concept of high-quality exercise is rapidly gaining support in the medical community and has repeatedly delivered clinical results which seem almost too good to be true.” – Dr. John J. Ratey, Harvard Medical School

Science has provided two paths. Which we travel is up to us. And I love options 🙂

In the last post reviewed a small sampling of the mass of research showing that getting a balanced amount of protein (about third of our calories) from natural sources is healthy and helpful for long-term fat loss. So how did the myth that protein is bad for us get started in the first place?

The Protein is Bad for You Myth Debunked

The myth came out of studies where animals that were fed extreme amounts of protein experienced problems. However, rather than proving more protein is harmful, these studies prove that until we exceed two grams of protein per pound of body weight per day, we will get only healthier and slimmer by upping our protein intake.

“The Nurses’ Health Study is the only large prospective study to have examined the link between dietary protein and cardiovascular disease….The group of women who ate the most protein…were 25% less likely to have had a heart attack or to have died of heart disease…eating a lot of protein doesn’t harm the heart.” – W.C. Willett, Harvard University

To put two grams of protein per pound of body weight into perspective, an inactive 150-pound person would not enter the protein danger zone until they ate eleven chicken breasts per day, every day. That would total two grams of protein per pound of body weight, and would mean that 60% of their total calories were coming from protein. That is a terribly imbalanced diet and an unnatural amount of protein.

Bad things happen if we eat too much of anything. Luckily, it is nearly impossible to eat too much high-Satietyprotein. Additionally, a natural increase in our protein intake will improve our cholesterol, triglycerides, and insulin regulation, while lowering our risk of cardiovascular disease. And it does not matter if the protein comes from lean meat. In fact, low levels of animal protein have been associated with an increased risk of strokes.

But The China Study Says Meat Is Deadly

Let’s focus on meat for a moment. There is nothing wrong with eating high-quality meat. Besides the fact that meat was a cornerstone of our diet for most of our evolutionary history, there is no clinical data showing that meat is unhealthy. TheJournal of the American Medical Association reviewed 147 studies on the impact of diet on health. They found zero correlation between meat consumption and cardiovascular disease. Separately, researchers found that people in England have eaten about the same amount of animal fat—the source of most of the concern with meat—since 1910. Meanwhile, the number of heart attacks increased 1,000% between 1930 and 1970. It looks like animal fat is not causing the climb.

Similarly, during basically the same period of time in the U.S., a similar increase in heart attacks occurred while the amount of animal fats being consumed dropped. Meat is not unhealthy. It is a fantastic source of protein and therefore a key part of a natural balanced diet.

But Doesn’t Protein Weaken Our Bones?

Last but not least, at some point one of your more annoying coworkers will bring up some misguided magazine article arguing that protein promotes osteoporosis. This myth comes from the fact that digesting protein requires more calcium than the digestion of fat or carbohydrates. Certain individuals claim this finding shows that eating a lot of protein will suck calcium from our bones. That is inaccurate.

“Controlled human studies show that commonly used complex dietary proteins, which have a high phosphorus content, do not cause calcium loss in adult humans.” –H. Spencer, Edward Hines Jr. Veterans Affairs Hospital

First, you will not be eating a lot of protein. You will be eating the amount humans evolved to eat. Second, you will have no need to grab calcium from your bones since a natural balanced diet provides at least 150% more calcium than the typical U.S. diet (for example, leafy green vegetables are excellent sources of calcium. Calorie for calorie, spinach provides nearly twice the calcium as reduced-fat milk.). Third, protein digestion does not negatively impact bones if intake of the mineral phosphorus is increased, and a natural balanced diet does that.  Finally, while more protein increases the need for calcium, it also increases the body’s ability to absorb calcium. When more protein is taken in, the body automatically makes better use of calcium. Studies show that a natural level of protein increases bone density by raising levels of the protein IGF-1.

With respect to adverse effects, no protein-induced effects are observed on net bone balance or on calcium balance in young adults and elderly persons. Dietary protein even increases bone mineral mass and reduces incidence of osteoporotic fracture. – M.S. Westerterp-Plantenga, Maastricht University

The only drawback with protein is the misinformation about concentrated sources of protein. Let’s cover that in the next post.

 

“Simply lowering the percentage of energy from total fat in the diet is unlikely to…reduce coronary heart disease incidence.” –  F.B. Hu, Harvard University

Overcoming the fear of fat is critical to eating a natural, balanced ratio of nutrients. We should never again skip SANE sirloin steak and non-starchy vegetables in favor of inSANE whole wheat spaghetti with whole wheat garlic bread. Fat is delicious, Satisfying, unAggressive, and almost impossible to overeat unless combined with starch or sweeteners. That is why most people end up losing weight on low-carbohydrate, high-fat diets like Atkins. Basically, any diet discouraging fat encourages weight gain.

You and I have already reviewed research disproving that foods containing fat are fattening, but let’s quickly recap: If we set aside the myths we’ve been told for the past forty years, there is no reason to think fat is bad for us. Natural foods contain fat. Natural foods were the only thing our ancestors ate for 99.8% of our evolution. How could the only foods available to us for 99.8% of our evolution harm us? If anything, we must have evolved to thrive on foods containing fats. Furthermore, the theory that fat is fattening has never been proven, despite over a billion dollars’ worth of research attempting to do so. Finally, a decline in fat in our diet has been accompanied by the largest spike in obesity and disease rates in history.

A great many scientific studies show that worrying about fat is at best a distraction, and at worst, harmful and fattening. Consider the research done just at the Harvard Medical School:

• “Among European countries, no association was observed between the national percentage of energy from fat and median body mass index in men…a clear inverse relation was observed in women.”
• “Limiting unsaturated fats, which is usually done by increasing carbohydrate…is detrimental. This is consistent with metabolic studies indicating that replacing unsaturated fats with carbohydrate increases triacylglycerol and decreases HDL cholesterol. Furthermore, low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets provide a higher glycemic load, aggravate hyperinsulinemia [clogging], and may thus increase the risk of diabetes and coronary artery disease.”
• “Studies and…trials have provided strong evidence that a higher intake of [omega-3] fatty acids from fish or plant sources lowers risk of coronary heart disease.”

Next, let’s cover specifically how to eat SANE, natural, not necessarily fat-free foods, while easily avoiding inSANE foods that facilitate fat gain and feeling more satisfied and energized than ever.

Fat FAQs
1. The Smarter Science of Slim cites dozens of international research studies that show natural fats aren’t bad, but then goes on to recommend lean meats, a blend of egg whites with whole eggs, and low-fat or fat-free plain Greek yogurt and cottage cheese. Is this a contradiction?

2. Why should I eat egg whites vs. whole eggs? Why should I eat low-fat cottage cheese and low-fat plain Greek yogurt vs. the full fat variants?