| The Calorie-Burn Myth
By Dr. Al Sears, MD |
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| One of the worst myths I hear is that if you want to drop weight, you have to first cut calories. Actually, if you want to lose weight and one of the first thing you do is restrict calories, your body will fight you every step of the way, and you'll never see results.
Your body is an intelligent system which is why I like to think of changing my body as a coaching job. Don't try to force it. Try to get it to cooperate.
This means that the first thing is your body needs to lose weight is to be in a safe and plentiful environment. Not to be deprived. Then, the natural metabolism we evolved with for thousands of years will begin rebuilding the naturally lean body you were designed to enjoy.
I've spent over 25 years researching this topic, studying the science and history behind metabolism and weight gain and have been able to apply what I've learned at my clinic on both myself and thousands of my patients.
I feel fortunate that my books and videos have helped thousands of people in the real world. Yet, I've been able to have a kind of success working individually with clients that I haven't always been able to get through books and DVDs.
You see, the order you do things matters if you want to coach your body to make the changes you need to maintain your ideal body weight and shape.
Doing things in order lets what you do first have its effect, and sets up the environment so that what you do next can benefit you more. Over time working with my clients in my clinic, teaching people what to do first, second, third and so on, has reinforced my theory about the benefit or sequencing. And, it turns out that sequencing is what addresses the underlying environmental issue very effectively.
Go back to the "cutting calories first" myth as an example (this is the first time I've revealed this sequence to anyone but my clinic patients).
Remember, I think of my approach as coaching my body? Now consider what effects the modern, Western diet has on your body. The modern diet mimics starvation, and teaches your body it needs to store fat.
Up until now, you've been warned that you have to stick to this diet that mimics starvation. And the harder you try to follow this, the more your body is convinced that it needs to slow down metabolism, shut down repair, and store body fat.
Every choice you were given in our Western diet has come from misinformation.
Your entire life you've heard that steak and eggs are bad, and bread and cereal are good.
That's a radical departure from thousands of years of humans eating.
What's worse is that the newest directives from nutritionists and dieticians want you to depart even further from our native way of eating.
Today, you're told that the healthiest things you can eat are nutritionally worthless and processed grains, corn and soy.
The problem is, your body is designed to treat these foods as more evidence that you're starving.
And when you're starving, your body thinks it has to store fat.
To reverse this process, you have to show your body that its environment is stable and plentiful. (You see how this brings up the issue of doing things in the right sequence?) Then, your body will cooperate in your effort to become lean. In fact, it will take over, and you'll see how easy it becomes. Because your body is simply rebuilding its naturally lean and fit state.
Notice how this has nothing to do with counting calories. If you take the typical American diet and you restrict calories, you convince your body that the problem has worsened.
It then puts everything you have into storing fat. You'll direct all systems toward building fat at the expense of everything else.
That's why restricting calories from the beginning will make you feel tired, and shut down repair functions, your antioxidant system, your immune system, and long term maintenance.
You need to precede eating fewer calories by telling your body that the environment is good - that the hunting is good and that it doesn't need to store fat.
So how do you convince your body that the environment is good?
It's simple. Your body knows how to interpret macronutrient intake so it knows whether there is famine or feasting because of thousands of years of past evolutionary experience.
 So the most important thing you can do is increase your protein first. Because eating excess protein helps throw that metabolic switch and tell your body times are good.
If you restrict calories after you've given your body excess protein, it interprets it differently because your body now knows that the environment is good.
Remember the coaching analogy: You're leading your body to make the right "decision." Why would your body need fat if you're going to eat well tomorrow?
Your body will then melt stored fat instead, so you can accomplish things like repair, long-term maintenance and immune surveillance.
The second thing you need to do in order to return your body to the strong, lean-muscled state you were designed for is to change the way you exert yourself.
Most people will do your typical boring "cardio" exercise routines, throw in a little weight training focusing on individual body parts, and grunt away with some crunches to help their "core."
They think this does something useful for their body. Then they become frustrated because they're getting no results, and wonder where they went wrong.
The problem here is the long-duration workouts like "aerobics" and cardiovascular endurance exercise. Your body was not designed to plod away slowly for hours at a time. In your native environment, that kind of exercise would have been the exception.
It would send the signal that there's trouble... that you have to go very far from home because the environment isn't good. Long duration exercise sends the same signal to your body as the unnatural modern diet does: "Store more fat."
Long periods of exercise like aerobics also make your body use fat as fuel. This reinforces that same message to store fat. And you can be sure that your body is going to store plenty so you have it for the next grueling "cardio" workout.
What you need is the opposite. You have to get your body the message that what you need is not stored body fat.
 By working in sequence, you progressively increase the intensity of the challenge you give your body in small steps, teaching your body to rebuild itself. And, when you accelerate, or shorten the time it takes to reach that challenge, you coach your body to store energy in your muscles not fat.
This is where the sequence of not only what you do, but when you do it makes all the difference. That's why, at the same time you're signaling your body to dump fat by eating protein, you start to apply the concepts of progressivity and acceleration to your workouts. |
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