Month: August 2015

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Fat Loss Supplements for Women

This is an excerpt from the now completed Women’s Book.  It is part of a longer chapter looking at general use supplements with sections on luteal phase specific supplements (including PMS), and supplements specifically for women entering menopause.  No joke.  So here’s an excerpt on fat loss supplements for women.

Fat Loss Supplements

Perhaps the single most popular, lucrative and marketed type of supplement is those aimed at fat and weight loss. It’s an industry filled mostly with nonsense and false claims with hundreds if not thousands of products having come and gone with little to no effect. This has led many to conclude, at least partially correctly, that there is no product that any impact on fat loss. But this is a little bit too extreme of a conclusion.

There are absolutely compounds that have been shown to have some effect on one or another component of fat loss.… Keep Reading

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Are Low Fat or Low Carb Diets Superior?

A long-standing debate in the field of dieting for fat loss is over the relative superiority of low fat and low carb diets in terms of which is superior.  Today I want to address the issue by examining the following research paper by Kevin Hall.

Hall, KD et. al. Calorie for Calorie, Dietary Fat Restriction Results in More Body Fat Loss than Carbohydrate Restriction in People with Obesity Cell Metabolism  Cell Metabolism (2015) 22: 1–10.

The Diet Debate: Low Fat or Low Carb

For years the debate over reduced fat or reduced carbohydrates has gone on and it shows no sign of stopping.  The pendulum has actually swung over the years.  In the 70’s, the Atkins diet drove interest in very low/reduced carbohydrate diets.

In the 80’s, reduced fat diets came into vogue as it looked like dietary fat was more easily stored as body fat and it looked like, so long as fat intake was kept low enough, weight and fat loss would happen (this was true until people went nuts and started overeating low fat foods in excess).… Keep Reading

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Insulin Resistance and Fat Loss

The topic of insulin resistance/insulin sensitivity  and body fat is one that is still rife with confusion and misinformation.  Specifically, it’s usually stated that insulin resistance causes fat gain or that insulin sensitivity improves fat loss.  However, in at least one of my books (The Ultimate Diet 2.0) I stated that insulin resistance is superior for fat loss, which seems to run against both common thought and common sense.  So let me address the topic again.

How Hormones Work

A hormone is any substance in the body that causes something to happen elsewhere. Technically you can divide up neurotransmitters (which work locally) and hormones (which work elsewhere/all over the body) but this is unnecessary detail.  So a hormone is released from some gland or another (i.e. thyroid from the thyroid gland, insulin from the pancreas), binds to a receptor somewhere and makes stuff happen (a technical term).

The almost universal analogy for how hormones work is the lock and key analogy. … Keep Reading

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The 3500 Calorie Rule

I’ve previously written about the concept of energy balance and why many people’s understanding of it are incorrect. Today I want to revisit that by providing an excerpt from The Women’s Book.  Specifically I want to address one of the oldest “Rules” of dieting, what I will call the 3500 calorie rule.  This is another place where, due to their misunderstanding of what it represents, many make some truly hilarious arguments against energy balance.  So let’s clear things up.

The 3500 Calorie Rule

I’m fairly certain that almost all readers of this book are familiar with the old rule that 3,500 calories equals one pound of bodyweight. Which leads to very simple mathematical approaches to weight loss via the energy balance equation. Presumably the simple act of decreasing food intake by 500 calories/day, or increasing energy expenditure by 500 calories/day, should result in exactly one pound of weight loss/week.

And whenever people do that, it never works out.… Keep Reading