This month I have been busy helping people sustainably release excess weight.
Please bear in mind that I am not a doctor, and that I encourage all of my clients to be monitored by their health care practitioner.
A recurring story among my middle-aged clients is that they have been eating substantially less, exercising a whole lot more, and not shedding a single pound. I know they are being completely honest and I feel their pain.
They’ve tried every whole food based diet, from Paleo to Vegan, and while they may have experienced an initial loss with every dietary change, eventually they gain it all back - and then some.
“It’s just not fair!” they cry.
To make matters worse, they see a friend pig out on chips, fries, pop, pizza and not gain a single pound. What’s the deal here?
Well for one, we all come in different shapes and sizes. There are many skinny fat people – thin on the outside and fat on the inside (TOFI). That can be worse than obesity. Belly fat is more harmful to health than subcutaneous (under skin) fat. Because it is less obvious, it is also easier to overlook, failing to promote healthy change.
Or that friend may often forget to eat, because they are so busy running around. They naturally produce a lot of adrenaline, constantly ‘running away from the tiger’, mobilizing stored fat and sugar for fuel. Hence, they spend a lot of time self-eating – cleaning up debris and accumulation. Regardless, this too may not be sustainable. While some may be more resilient than others, heart and adrenal exhaustion sooner or later will afflict such people. This is why ephedra, the weight loss supplement that raises adrenaline, was pulled off the market.
A normal weight person has between 1400-2000 calories of sugar stored in the liver and muscle tissue, and roughly 30,000-100,000 calories stored in fat cells. While prolonged starvation is ill advised, we should be able to fuel our body with stored fat daily. In fact, in 1965, a 456-pound 27-year-old man fasted for 382 days, under medical supervision, ending up at 180 pounds sustainably. Besides water, he was only given yeast, a multivitamin and potassium, as needed. (Please do not embark on a prolonged fast without medical supervision.)
How do I help my clients safely access stored fuel daily?
I encourage a prolonged overnight fast to deplete a lot of the easily accessible sugar stored in the liver. Then I create and put them through exercise programs that recruit and activate all muscle fibres, via very short bursts of highly intense exercise, or by lifting very heavy weights slowly and to muscle exhaustion.
To access fat stores, again I encourage prolonging the fast between dinner and breakfast, while eating most food earlier in the day, when we are more insulin sensitive (insulin is the main fat storage hormone); no snacking; no refined starch or added sweeteners; and lots of colourful non-starchy vegetables, garnished with a small amount of high quality protein and lots of healthy fats.
So far, so good. My clients are exceeding expectations. I count my blessings and have learned so much from them. I expect to be challenged to learn even more.
Originally published February 3rd, 2017
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