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Bodyrecomposition Mailbag 4

Here’s another mailbag.

Heart Rate Monitoring and Metabolic Rate

Heart Rate Monitoring and Metabolic Rate

Hey Lyle, Huge fan of your work, it really has changed my life… just wish I’d stumbled upon you a decade ago, I’d be a machine by now! Anyhow, I was just curious about your opinion on heart rate monitors and wether they can be an accurate way of monitoring your metabolism during a cut. I have a Fitbit charge hr which seems to do a pretty solid job. I.e. When I use it to cut I lose weight, bulk I gain weight and my weight is pretty damn stable when I use it to maintain. I’ve noticed that when I cut my resting pulse rate progressively gets lower over the course of the cut and also that I start to burn less and less calories during my workouts.

Answer

In at least a general sense, a drop in heart rate is pretty normal with dieting to lower levels.  … Keep Reading

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What are Calories?

There are a lot of crazy people on the Internet.  Sometimes I have even been one of them.  But this article is about a different kind of crazy person.  I won’t name him since I don’t believe in giving crazy publicity or even acknowledging them by name but he sends myself and others in the field relentless numbers of all caps insane emails.  He’s a complete nutjob.

In the most general sense, he’s one of the deniers of energy balance and Calories In Calories Out (CICO) as it pertains to body weight and body composition.  It’s the typical bs although his newest insanity is how calories not an actual thing that exists and, by some sort of extension I guess, that the calorie model of changes in body weight is incorrect for that reason.  That is, since calories doesn’t exist, they can’t explain the changes that occur in terms of bodyweight or body fat.… Keep Reading