begin to dig

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Interview with Drop the Fat Act & Start Living Lean Author Ryan Andrews - how bout those Deadly Fattitudes?

Ryan Andrews - Vegan
Lean Living Coach
and Author

The following is an interview with Ryan Andrew’s about his latest book Drop the Fat Act and (original b2d interview with Ryan, Aug 18, 2010 here). As said in the Aug 16, 2012 b2d review of the book, Drop the Fat Act really really is a must read for anyone interested in what getting, being and staying lean is about. In Ryan’s portrayal, Being Fat is an Act – an act that is the result of a consistent and repeated set of Fattitudes: Fat people – people who carry excess body fat – consistently share these attitudes. Change the attitudes, change the act, change from the Fat Act to Lean Living.

Because I’d never actually heard anyone put Being Fat so succinctly as a set of consistent Fattitudes (discussed in the b2d review) I asked Ryan if he’d have a wee chat with me about how these ideas developed. The following represents those conversations.

Ryan Andrews Drop the Fat Act b2d Interview

One of the richest parts of Drop the Fat Act and Start Living Lean is the bibliography. You have references to a lot of great books and approaches in getting to a good place with food. The acknowledgement of all these influences and your notes around them is fabulous to see.

In light of all these other sources, what did you feel were some of the missing pieces in this space that you thought needed to be addressed or could be better addressed by "Drop the Fat Act"?

It’s a collection of all the wisdom and experience I have to share. The book hits on the emotional and physical aspects of eating. I thought the opposites approach demonstrating what ISN’T working would be a fresh perspective for some people. I wanted to remind people that we can learn from our mistakes.

Where did the title come from? Why do you call this an "act" - and is therefore "lean" an act too?

I wish I had a better story for this, but it was really just a brainstorming session with my publisher that generated the title. I do believe that fatness and leanness are acts. It’s like playing a role or a character. A fat person does certain things. A lean person does certain things. Choose your character.

Is Fattitude your term? If so what inspired that framing?

I was talking to a good friend a couple of years ago who has lost over 100 pounds and maintained it for over 20 years. He told me I should include the term “fattitude.” I loved it and contacted my publishers about it immediately.

Audience for Drop the Fat Act

You're an experienced coach and you design for lean eating; you've done the research; you've spent the time on wards. You know this stuff, and you know that there are different learning styles and approaches to hearing a message.

Who are you particularly trying to reach with this book?

Anyone who is ready to listen. At different points in our lives, things hit us a certain way. I hope this book will help someone improve their life. One of my favorite quotes is: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

Indeed, to push on that question a little more:

The tone of the book is a bit dunno - how would you characterise it? Impatient? Acerbic? I've read your writing, Ryan - tons of about articles, your text book and support materials for the PN Cert Course - and we've done interviews and interactions. You're a *nice* person - meant in the most positive way possible. What made you decide that this more confrontational tone would be the way to go?

Just to keep things fresh. Stepping back from the “nice guy/textbook” approach to nutrition can be useful. We all eat 3 times each day. So let’s get real about it.

You frame Fat Folk as the Fat Eater and look at attitudes from approach to calorie restriction to types of food eaten; with fat Exerciser, it's time put into movement; Fat Life it's lack of sleep to over-confidence around weight management. How did you go about honing attitudes down to the particular attributes you list?

I started keeping notes about my clients when I was about 15 years old. That’s when I started helping people with eating and exercise. After a few years, I realized that the people with extra body fat all had the same attributes. I knew how they were living before they told me how they were living. Why not identify these attributes, learn from them, and do something different?

Are there any others that you didn't put into the book, but that you think some folks may want to be aware of creeping in?

You know, the book really hits on all the biggies. Each chapter has something I see each day. No joke.

Your final section is on the Fit Life, rather than the fat life, and it includes a 7 week plan. The plan is largely focused on doing more or the Lean stuff rather than less of the Fat stuff. Where we've grown acculturated to focusing on cutting out bad habits as the way to make progress, focusing on doing just more right stuff seems counter intuitive and just a little bit genius. Can you share some stories of how you've seen focusing on More of Right is better than Less of Bad?

Thanks. I’m tired of elimination. It’s been a major focus of nutrition for the past 20 years. Eliminate food X. Cut back on food Z. Before we occupy our mind space with food deductions, what are we actually consuming each day? Are we eating the nutritious stuff? The more we focus on something, the more likely it comes to fruition. Let’s focus on the positive.

The Precision Nutrition (PN) Connexion

One aside on practical: in the book, you shy away from the 6 meals a day notion, and yet PN still has
a real transformation this approach as part of the PN v3 system (pdf overview to PN here), though the current discussions on the forum seem to have toned that down - how reconcile that - and being a PN person - with your stance in the book?

We (PN) have chatted about this over the past couple of years. I think frequent meals (4-6 per day) can be useful for some people who panic when food is in short supply. Some people who eat 3 meals per day get in panic mode since the next meal is several hours away. This can lead to overeating. If having another meal in 2-3 hours prevents this overeating, then by all means, have another meal and eat frequently throughout the day.

With that being said, if someone is able to be reasonable with food intake while eating 3 meals per day, then I would stick with it. We shouldn’t all have to be preoccupied with food, food prep and carrying around coolers all day. Let’s eat a meal, get done with it, and then go live life.

Also, one more PN thing - oatmeal in the morning - you suggest it but don't seem to put caveats around it about having to workout first. With Precision Nutrition, one of the fundamental heuristics around starchy carbs, especially initially, is "carb timing" as in, don't eat 'em till you deserve 'em - eg, post workout. Could you go over your rationale around your "oatmeal is good" vs PN?

When someone eats a plant-based diet built around whole foods, carb timing isn’t quite as important. Why? Well, overall energy reduction is achieved with the general structure of the food choices and timing carbs is usually unnecessary to gain further benefits.

Goodness. That's an interesting leap. And an interesting place to get to. Perhaps a key thing to pull out here is the "plant based diet based around whole foods" as an assessment. Is someone's diet at that place yet?

Featured, with permission, in Drop the Fat Act, Chpt 15:
Fat People Put themselves in Fat-Inducing Situations

Fattitudes and Clients

Now to the content again:
Have you started talking with clients in terms of their fattitudes? has it helped to help people recognize what um, might be called having a fat head (or fat thinking)?

We always discuss fattitudes. I really like when they can come up with their own list (instead of me doing it for them).

Have you considered a cheat sheet for "lean attitudes" (may be like the pn heuristics )

Good idea.

Do you have any sense of how long it takes folks to operationalize the shift from fat head to lean head? Of any of the fattitudes you describe is there one that shows up more than any other?

The shift is different for everyone. The MOST common fattitudes are: Making dinner largest meal, eating fast, dieting, eating processed foods, using food to manage feelings.

Could you expand a little more on the "it's not all about you" and how you've seen that with folks help them get to the lean action?

Are you talking about thinking outside our ourselves? Looking at the big picture with eating?

Actually i was thinking the former but the latter is interesting - so how about both?

Yeah. Our ideas about eating often become pervasively selfish. We assume that our own nutrition preferences trump any obligations we have as people. Rarely do we ask, “is eating this the right thing to do?” “Does this food choice lead to the greater good?” “What are the repercussions of eating this food?”

Second point:

Certain foods make us feel good, especially in the short term. We eat sugar and fat and get pleasure. When we start turning to this burst of pleasure any time we experience an uncomfortable emotion in life, it can have negative consequences on our health/weight.

Interesting. Getting that sense of discipline, really. OR different attitude/focus. And thus, a wee look further ahead as folks make progress.

As you see folks shifting into the lean act from the fat act, it seems many of us start asking quesitons about how to improve the process - or perhaps this is a fatitude in itself? Questions start to come up about supplements - whether its omega threes, or protein drinks or vitamin d on the sort of top level down to magnesium, zinc, b or i'm starting to see more on coq10 of late - - do you have guidance around this one, too?

Overthinking can be a fattitude.

My advice is to keep it simple. There are certain areas worthy of improving. Some areas don’t really matter. I like discussing the idea of triage with clients.

Right - figuring out where the Important Bits are where a person is at right now. Related on the tuning - invariably folks experience some type of plateua in their practice - do you encourage folks to revisit their fatitudes to see which one might need more action, or what happens at this point for you?

Yes. Definitely revisit limiting factors.

Ryan World, Next Steps

How did you and your publisher find each other?

I submitted my book to 10 publishers. They were one of them.

Do you see a volume two?

No. (smiles)

OK then! Thanks very much for the time and extra insight into the Making Of - Drop the Fat Act and Start Living Lean.

What's coming up in Ryan World now that you have a popular press book in the bag?

Actually, I am now focusing more on my personal life.

Cool - good luck on your mission. As super self-less lean guy, that seems really cool.

As a reminder, besides now being an author of a book b2d is recommending as the Lean Living book to Share with All the Folks You Love, Ryan is also the co-author of the Precision Nutrition Certification text (and slides and voice overs for lessons) - you can engage with him on the PN Cert Forum if you're registered in this course. He's also one of the listed Lean Eating Coaches, so you can find him there. He also has been known to frequent the vegetarian questions on the general Precision Nutrition forum.

And once again, for those contemplating a purchase of this book, hesitate no more: you're doing good!

I also like to mention that 50% of all author proceeds from the sales of my book are donated to hunger relief efforts and improving school lunch programs.

You may also want to see the b2d review of Drop the Fat Act and Start Living Lean. Again, highly recommended.

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Thursday, August 16, 2012

Being Fat: It's an attidude? Review of Ryan Andrews's Drop the Fat Act and Start Living Lean

Follow @mcphoo What if being fat was not primarily about how much of we eat or how little we work out?

What if being fat were, first and foremost, an attitude? Not a physical state, but a state of mind? And what if being fat (or lean) is simply a direct consequence of those attitudes?

This idea - that fat is an attitude - is the premise of Ryan D. Andrews's new book, Drop the Fat Act and Start Living Lean: that being fat or being lean is very much first and foremost a state of mind, and those states will lead, inevitably to being fat or to being lean.

To make his case, Ryan looks at the perspectives of the Fat Eater, the Fat Exerciser and the Fat Life. He looks at, effectively, the approaches to living that people with Fat Attitudes (or "fattitudes" ) have around everything from meals (fattitude: skip breakie; make dinner the largest meal), food preparation (no time for it), processed foods (refined foods form a large part of the fat diet) calorie counting (fat people count calories), recovery (fat people don't get enough sleep), exercise (fat people are lazy). to approaches to life (fat folk focus on short term gains, and put themselves in fat-inducing situations).

Does this sound like a bit of tough love? Simply to use the term "fat people" seems rather strong, doesn't it? "Fat people are lazy" sounds down right abrupt. But that's what this book is about and what makes it so refreshing. Pulling very few punches to get real about the reality of fat-ness it cuts to the chase on the fattitudes that keep us being "fat people" living a fat act, rather than living lean - and being healthy and healthful.

The book, to be clear, is a wake up call to put the diet down and take a look at ourselves - not our diets - to assess whether leanness and health is really in our future. Do we need to drop the fat act to start living lean?

This is a fabulous book *because* it focuses not on the lean practices first but on the attitdues that keep us Fat, that keep us from DOING those lean practices like finding time to exercise, to prepare food, to get enough sleep, to think about others (yes, fattitudes are selfish).

The book is also an fun, fast read. Drop the Fat Act is something i have enjoyed reading in an evening myself and have had some rather profound "hmm" moments with it. I've also returned to it frequently to check up on a fattitude. The book is also something one can share easily - with love - with anyone we know who may be looking (possibly for the nth time) for a path of getting lean. It's certainly informed how i've been chatting with clients of late, putting copies into their hands.

This book is so atypical of other tomes around body comp change (losing weight/losing fat - whatever we call it) - if not the least because of its rather straight talking stype - but also because it cuts to the chase-ness about attitudes.

There are a bunch of great books on how to build better strategies towards eating. I've recommended the Four Day Win as an example. Some folks like the Beck Diet Solution - each of these get at building up new behaviours to succeed with food - and i really dig the four day win in particular. It's fun and effective - "your way to thinner peace" - that's a trip.

Where Ryan's book is delightfully different is that, based on clinical training as an RD, graduate

Ryan D. Andrews: Lean Attitude-inist

degrees in nutrition, work developing nutrition textbooks and coaching programs, and especially, practical experience with 1000's of clients, he summarizes this knowledge into a handful of well tested, inescapable general traits that mean "fat person."
Rather than focus on the individual (though in the book he does talk to "you") he says, basically, if you're fat it's because you've got these attitudes.

The great asset of the book, too, is it makes getting lean pretty simple: address the attitudes, and leanness is inevitable. Ryan gives the rationalizations for why having a fattitude is doomed to, well, a slow and painful death, and he also does have suggestions for getting to lean attidudes and what the lean life is like. But he's not trying to be a cognitive behavioural therapist: he's telling it like it is. Drop the fat act; start living lean.

He does have a great chapter on the Fit Life and Fit People ("surprise! fit people think like fit people") and he even has a plan that one can just plug and play: progressive additions. Yes, that's right: additions. One of the miracles of joy in Ryan's approach is that he ADDS stuff in rather than takes stuff away. For instance, in his plan he suggests in week one to just focus on ADDING more vegetables. Every week a little some more of something good is added. And it's grand.

To model the attitude of Ryan's book, let me just say this is a great book. Buy it; you will like it. You can read it right now on kindle and nook, or order a hard copy via your favorite supplier. And Ryan does walk the walk. One of his lean attitudes is around focusing on others rather than one's self. So please note, buying this book is not only good for you, it's good for others too: "50% of all author proceeds from the sales of my book are donated to hunger relief efforts and improving school lunch programs."

Because i just can't say enough good things about this wee most excellent book, i've asked Ryan if he'd tell me a little more about the inspiration for the book and what inspired this novel approach to Fat as and Act and Living Lean as an attitude. I'll be posting that interview soon. In the meantime, do yourself a favour, and grab a copy of Ryan Andrew's Drop the Fat Act and Start Living Lean. Let me know what you think.

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Monday, July 23, 2012

Getting leaner with Brown Fat, Thermogenisis and Chilli Sauce?

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Is hot sauce hot enough to burn fat? Maybe - if we have "active" brown fat.

A lot of us look for ways to boost fat burning or to stop fat from being created in the first place on our quest for getting lean and staying lean. Alpha lipoic acid from 800mg [1] to 1800mg a day [2], alpha lipoic acid with CoQ10 even [3] looks at interrupting fat creation. Then there's thermogenisis, getting some heat up in the system to burn fat mobilized for use as energy. There are a number of foods and supplements that seem to contribute to thermogenisis, and chilli sauce - or the stuff that makes chilli sauce - may be one of those. The degree to which it may work, however, seems correlated to how well we might burn fuel when we're cold.

Into the (Fat Burning) Fire - with Food

When we hear about thermogenisis in weight loss, we are looking for stuff that increases the fuel burn - that puts the furnace on a higher setting. In us, that means getting our base metabolic rate up. Intriguingly and ironically food itself is thermogenic, with protein being more thermogenic than carbs or fat. Exercise does this, too. There are also supplements that aid in fat mobilization and fat burning, common things like green tea, caffeine, fish oil, yohimbine.

Hot Sauce Thermogenisis

According to research starting in about 2008, another member of the fat burning squad is supposed to be capsaicin - the hot part of chilli peppers [4]. Goody! something to add to food for flavour.

I am thrilled to report that i was recently introduced to a beautiful hot sauce, made in mexico. It's called Chohula hot sauce - unlike stuff made with the habenaro peppers, this is made with piquin and arbol. The taste is flavourful, fruity - i love it. Apparently this is a pretty common brand in the US, but i'd never encountered it.

Let me say right up front i have nothing to do with this company. It's just great tasting. I've not had this experience with a hot sauce before. Awesome with eggs, with veggies, with black beans - well - everything. Awesome, flavourful kick that sustains the taste of the food longer. So personally, i think one eats less because of enjoying the mouthful of flavour more. mmm. And to think that this stuff improves fat burning? Wow. What could be better. Bring it on!

Hot Sauce Stirs Up with Active Brown Fat Only?

But one moment, fat burning and food fans: it's not so clear that capsaicin, or more particularly, capsinoids, the bits of capsaicin that give it its omph, actually have an unequivocal, universal thermogenic effect.

Not long after the work about the thermogenic effect of hot stuff came out, another study showed just about zero effect of the stuff [5]. What could possibly be going on? A more recent and interesting papers come out [6] to suggest that the reason for the different findings may be brown fat (touched on in b2d here), but not just any kind of brown fat: active brown fat.

Brown Fat as Active Fat

Brown fat, or Brown Adipose Tissue (BAT) is pretty cool: it uses fat to make heat. That means it burns (oxidises) fat [7], usually, to keep us warm.

Brown fat: rich in mitochondria - what cells use to oxidize, well, fat

Brown fat also gets going (literally, activated) when our fight or flight chemicals get going. And finally, recent rodent research suggests that play also has a role. Helen Kollias over at Precision Nutrition did a lovely overview of some cool mice research with BAT that showed that BAT gets active when mice had rich environments (here's the paper [10]). Take away, as Kollias puts it

An enriched environment increases a specific protein in the brain (BDNF) that activates the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) that increases brown fat in visceral fat. The increase in brown fat means a higher metabolism with less visceral white fat.

The mentally and physically stimulated mice had higher brown fat, less visceral white fat. They ate more and were leaner.

Active Fat

Guess what? Despite the wonderfulness of brown fat, some folks' brown fat isn't as thermogenic as other folks' [8]. How do we know? Well, researchers generally make people cold. Not super cold. We're talking 16-19 degrees C, depending on the study. Right now, in Seattle, it's 17 C outside, and i'm walking around in shorts and a long sleeve shirt. So cold? not much. Living in the UK, 19 verges on what we'd call a summer day. Seems that when made "cold," not everyone's brown fat shows that it's burning fuel (there are interesting tracers in a process called "fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET)" that can monitor BAT fuel burning).

Why might some people's brown fat be less thermogenically active than others? Not clear, though these experimenters seemed to see this non-response in about half their participant populations over repeated studies. Can we make our brown fat more effective? Don't know - but if we look at the happy mice story, maybe it would be useful to ask BAT participants about how much mental and physical stimulation they have?

Back to Brown Fat and Hot Sauce

Anyway, turns out that the researchers who showed that some folks have active BAT and others do not also took a look at capsinoids and active/not active brown fat [9]. First, they checked who of the participants had active and non-active brown fat. Then, they gave the groups capsinoids and placebo. Big result:

EE increased by 15.2 ± 2.6 kJ/h in 1 h in the BAT-positive group and by 1.7 ± 3.8 kJ/h in the BAT-negative group after oral ingestion of capsinoids (P < 0.01). Placebo ingestion produced no significant change in either group.

So, folks with active brown fat get a significant thermogenic hit from the stuff in chillies. Cool.

Take Away: pepping up our food with hot sauce (or -boring - ingesting capsinoids) may be a way to improve thermogenic effect and so burn a bit more fat than without the hot stuff BUT remember - we're complex systems, so no single factor is a solution. We might be of the population whose brown fat isn't particularly thermogenically robust. What this difference *seems* to suggest when coupled with the enriched, engaged mice is that, diverse activities - social and physical and cognitive - does good things for us that simply AMPLIFY the effects of other factors, LIKE capsinoids. Perhaps heating up more than our food with interest, innovation, delight and movement - as well as good nutrition - all make us thermogenically zoomed up, leaner livers?

Citations

Carbonelli MG, Di Renzo L, Bigioni M, Di Daniele N, De Lorenzo A, & Fusco MA (2010). Alpha-lipoic acid supplementation: a tool for obesity therapy? Current pharmaceutical design, 16 (7), 840-6 PMID: 20388095
Koh EH, Lee WJ, Lee SA, Kim EH, Cho EH, Jeong E, Kim DW, Kim MS, Park JY, Park KG, Lee HJ, Lee IK, Lim S, Jang HC, Lee KH, & Lee KU (2011). Effects of alpha-lipoic Acid on body weight in obese subjects. The American journal of medicine, 124 (1), 850-8 PMID: 21187189
Wagner AE, Ernst IM, Birringer M, Sancak O, Barella L, & Rimbach G (2012). A Combination of Lipoic Acid Plus Coenzyme Q10 Induces PGC1α, a Master Switch of Energy Metabolism, Improves Stress Response, and Increases Cellular Glutathione Levels in Cultured C2C12 Skeletal Muscle Cells. Oxidative medicine and cellular longevity, 2012 PMID: 22655115
Snitker S, Fujishima Y, Shen H, Ott S, Pi-Sunyer X, Furuhata Y, Sato H, & Takahashi M (2009). Effects of novel capsinoid treatment on fatness and energy metabolism in humans: possible pharmacogenetic implications. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 89 (1), 45-50 PMID: 19056576
Galgani JE, Ryan DH, & Ravussin E (2010). Effect of capsinoids on energy metabolism in human subjects. The British journal of nutrition, 103 (1), 38-42 PMID: 19671203
Yoneshiro T, Aita S, Kawai Y, Iwanaga T, & Saito M (2012). Nonpungent capsaicin analogs (capsinoids) increase energy expenditure through the activation of brown adipose tissue in humans. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 95 (4), 845-50 PMID: 22378725
Ouellet V, Labbé SM, Blondin DP, Phoenix S, Guérin B, Haman F, Turcotte EE, Richard D, & Carpentier AC (2012). Brown adipose tissue oxidative metabolism contributes to energy expenditure during acute cold exposure in humans. The Journal of clinical investigation, 122 (2), 545-52 PMID: 22269323
Yoneshiro T, Aita S, Matsushita M, Kameya T, Nakada K, Kawai Y, & Saito M (2011). Brown adipose tissue, whole-body energy expenditure, and thermogenesis in healthy adult men. Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.), 19 (1), 13-6 PMID: 20448535
Yoneshiro T, Aita S, Kawai Y, Iwanaga T, & Saito M (2012). Nonpungent capsaicin analogs (capsinoids) increase energy expenditure through the activation of brown adipose tissue in humans. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 95 (4), 845-50 PMID: 22378725
Cao L, Choi EY, Liu X, Martin A, Wang C, Xu X, & During MJ (2011). White to brown fat phenotypic switch induced by genetic and environmental activation of a hypothalamic-adipocyte axis. Cell metabolism, 14 (3), 324-38 PMID: 21907139

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Friday, May 25, 2012

no more excuses movement practice no. 1

Follow @mcphoo If you know folks who are potentially not moving because they feel they don't have any of the right stuff - not enough weights, not enough bands, not enough time - here's one thing that is geared as an all expertise level activity to load learn and move.

what do you think?

Unit A - what to do -movement- no equipment/excuses required
--------------------------

do these ankle drills

if there's pain, slow down or decrease range of motion but start moving the ankles

repeat

do tea cup both arms

repeat

sit down
stand up
repeat

forward roll,

side roll

repeat
both sides as soon as can do sore ankle side

walk
walk faster as ankle allows
walk
repeat many times

jump over something
jump back
jump to the side
jump to the other side

repeat

forward roll, both sides
side roll
repeat

lie down
stand up
lie down
stand up

backroll

repeat.

when ready:
jump over something
jump back
jump to the side
jump to the other side

repeat

lie down
roll to the side
stand up from the side
go down to the side
same on the other side
repeat

put one leg out
sit down on chair
keep leg out
stand up
switch legs
repeat

when ready
run to lightpost
walk back from light post
run to light post
walk back from light post
repeat

jab hook cross upper cut

repeat

run ro lightpost
walk back from lightpost
repeat

lying leg raises

----------------------------

REPEAT enough of UNIT A to fill 59mins
-------------------
then
shivasna

---------------(don't repeat)----------

WHAT TO DO UNIT B: food - do PN

REPEAT THROUGHOUT DAY
----------------
REPEAT UNITs A+B, 5.4 days / week Follow @begin2dig

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Less: Not considered Harmful - exploring "less" around food.

Follow @mcphoo

One thing more; one thing less - that is a strategy we've been talking about here at b2d for the past two months: as a way to engage with behaviour change, we can change ourselves by exploring doing one thing more; one thing less - just one for a week a go.

In the last post under the subject of exploring "more" i talked about exploring more volume - i'm still doing it - much more to learn there about how my body is responding to that in terms of body composition.

Fascinating. Had a lovely chat with Georgie Fear and Roland Fisher, lean eating coaches from Precision Nutrition. Georgie holds an RD and Roland is a veteran body comp and strength coach. We'll come back to their expertise in this space anon. The main take away: working out both every day and with higher volume (and increasing load) is fine. More is more on many levels.

This time, we turn to less. And the topic here is LESS food.
With Intermittent Fasting being the New Black of dieting it may seem odd to talk about eating less. That's what dieting is so often about, is it not? Eating less? So how is less here good or different?

Two kinds of less here with food - one is yes, going without food for some period of time. One i find actually harder - is having less when actually eating - the oft cited eat till only 80% full. For me, it's easier to go binary: have something or have nothing. But to have something and then have less of it - when it's food! well that's really challenging.

Indeed, last year, when i was really focussing on exploring leanness, and was plateauing, it was in conversation with Ryan Andrews of Precision Nutrition where he said, sometimes, to really get to that next level of lean, we just need to eat less. That's pretty basic isn't it? THat's dieting. But you see i thought i was eating less. But i wasn't. SO i did. And at that point, combined with what else i was doing workout wise, less was very much more. That was my first experience with a new kind of less and getting to a new kind of lean. Not perfect, but good, interesting. Kinda awesome.

The particular less i'd like to explore here is the über Less - the fast.

Let me offer the ending first: the big take away from day long fasts is that we won't break.

Next, let us consider the fear/stress around fasting - that we've had nasty experiences when we've gone without food for any particularly unusual length of time.To that, the answer - at least for me and some of the folks i coach who have wanted to explore fasting - has been practice: making it possible to adapt to fasting. We'll go over this below, as well as why someone might want to explore this.

Fear of Fast?

Some of us are afraid to fast or go without food for more than a few hours, based on their experience with what is presumed to be "low blood sugar" - and yes roaring headaches from going without food can occur.

Getting Over the "Low Blood Sugar Means I Can't Fast" scenario: Assuming a healthy person - no diabetic issues for example (and even there fasting can happen but consult physician etc etc) In my experience working with folks who have such a response (and i've been there), is that (a) starchy carbs form too high a proportion of regular eating and thus (b) ratios of protein, veggies and healthy fats are chronically way too low. This seems to mean that the capacity Mike Nelson researches called "metabolic flexibility" seems less tuned in. We have fewer reps of dealing with a lower amounts of available glucose in our diets, and thus are not nearly as comfortable or efficient at converting fat (an abundant energy source) for brain fuel in particular. And so our bodies freak out, stress goes up, and we may feel like crap.

For folks who have a pretty good balance of protein, veggies/and fats with starchy carbs already, especially a more low carb, protein sparring approach to food, going without food for 16-24 hours is not a big deal. Really.

TWO WEEK SWITCH UP - If one wants to explore intermittent fasting and not crash, it may be a good idea to focus initially just on LESS starchy carbs in favour of more protein, fats and veggies for awhile before fasting. It's easy to test - what's your usual longest period without fuel? How do you feel? Try changing up the ratios for a couple weeks to more protein, fat and veggies, reduce the starchies except perhaps after a workout, and then try going for that fasting window - see how you feel hitting your typical pain point. Have you gone past it? you may feel hungry but is the headache edge there? If not, well, you're on track. Congratulations on a new effective Less. Lean Gains, by Martin Berkhan has made the 8 hour window for eating popular.

IF poster boy Brad Pilon of Eat Stop Eat

Something else that helps to improve metabolic flexibility in genearl and to become what John Beradi calls "a better fat burner" is to exercise. We'll not get into the reasons here, but suffice it to say, exercise of any kind that gets the heart rate up does wonders for improving metflex.
From being at a better metabolic flexibility point, it seems it can be easier to think about pushing out the fasting time to say eating in an 8 hour window. And when that feels safe, that practice can be a bridge to trying a 24 hour fast. From dinner to dinner say. Brad Pilon is really the go to guy on eating, stopping eating for a bit, then eating again. His Eat Stop Eat is in a fifth edition and well worth picking up.

One of Brad's caveats: in terms of fasting for weight loss/body comp, to do so for more than 24 hours hits diminishing returns. He's a once or twice a week guy - for one or two distinct fasts.

Each of the above changes is very much about progressive strategies in LESS

- less starchy carbs (in favour of other foods being more - it may help as a guide to think of less foods in the yellow/beige/brown tones and more in the bright rich dark colour tones).
- less hours in the day in which to eat
- less actual food in 24 hours - privileging water, or other non-caloric intakes.

Lean Guy John Berardi before IF


Lean-er Guy John Berardi after IF see the PN Intermittent Fasting Book

THere are many rifs on "fasts" and food allowable in fasts. Some folks, like the perfect health diet folks, think spinach and coconut oil in a bone broth is fine on a "fast." Brad Pilon makes a different metabolic argument, saying really, no food. If following john berardi's ideas - having bcaa's, creatine and greens at various points during a fast day is dandy. Me, i'd swap out bcaa's for eaa's (essential amino acids). The point is though, these are all explorations in less. And that doing LESS can be safe.

WORKING OUT with LESS

Lonnie Lowery is a champ of fasted lower intensity cardio. For some of us it's a revelation that we can also wake up and work out hard, fasted. For good or ill, almost all my workouts for the past year have been fasted; more than 90% have been fasted for the past 6 months, whether cardio or strength or the usual mix of both. Now, for muscle growth, that may not be optimal - not sure - though i am getting stronger etc. BUT it's interesting to note that it's really really fine to work out without fuel and to fuel up later, and that i feel fine. So

WE CAN WORKOUT WITHOUT FOOD AND NOT BREAK

We just may need to work up to that.

One of the big payoffs of a day long fast: it can help bust a plateau - so many things can tho, it's just one way to get the scale moving again. But perhaps more than that, a fast can be about hedonic control - getting when we're eating because we want to eat rather than because we need to eat.

UNBREAKABLE -

The biggest realization/experience for me in exploring IF: we don't break if we're hungry. Hunger can be a distraction, but it doesn't need to be dysfunctional. Indeed, i found keeping busy lets time pass pretty easily.

Why bother with Fasting?

We don't need to fast. The benefits - physiologically - of fasting it seems can be well experienced by eating better, both for weight loss and for general health. so why bother exploring this particular less? It's perhaps an Uber Less, isn't it? But sometimes, if we don't have our "better eating" practice nailed, well, fasting can give us a boost. And that can help build practice, too.

Fasting can also be an interesting way to explore one's body - that one won't break - from not eating; that we can, indeed, thrive with less, and that seems a compelling, satisfying discovery. How bout you?

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