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7KH 6ROXWLRQ ZZZ&DUE1LWHFRP -RKQ.LHIHU%$06 7KH 3K\VLFLVW·V *XLGH7R 3RZHU'LHWLQJ G G G G G To Drumwright, who always hoped I’d write a book. i Acknowledgements I’d like give the proper thanks to those who had such a profound influence on my attitudes and, consequently, helped shape this book. To Mike Hamlin, my 11th grade Calculus teacher: Thanks for showing me that it’s OK if you don’t know the answer straight-away, but you should at least try to figure it out. And to Bob Glidden, my 11th grade English teacher: You made me realize that being skilled in the Sciences is no excuse for being poor in the Language Arts. ii A Letter From My Closest Friend, Nicole Morgan Hey, I know you asked for a testimonial but I really don’t want to write one. I’m sure you would have wanted Drumwright to write your bio for you, but since that’s not possible, I thought maybe I could do it for you. See what you think. John Kiefer started his academic career in electrical engineering before deciding to pursue sports medicine. Always unpredictable, he instead ended up getting BA’s in physics and mathematics at the same time—in only three years. From there, he decided to try his hand at the next level of academic endeavor: graduate school in physics. That is where I met Kiefer (he prefers ‘Kiefer’ to his first name for some reason; I think it suits him better than ‘John’). He had this strange humility about him that was intriguing. He always seemed to pass tests with high marks without much studying and attributed his performance to luck—lady luck must be his best friend because he did it time, after time. He didn’t even study for our qualifying exams (four four- hour tests covering various branches of physics) claiming he was just going to fail them all. Of course, he passed all of them with flying colors. It wasn’t a case of false humility; he simply holds himself to incredibly high standards. Since I’ve known him, he’s excelled at a wide-range of endeavors. As a few examples, he designed and helped build a human-solar powered hybrid vehicle that won a national race; within a couple of months of starting as a programmer, he took over development of legal software designed to streamline contract disputes; consulted for a technology development company; prepared for body- building and triathalon competitions and successfully trained others for the same; and for a year he even taught 9th grade algebra. Kiefer’s skills range the gamut from theoretical physics to music to philosophy, but with all these iii diverse interests and activities, there’s been one constant: his passion for the human body. Kiefer has been interested in maximizing his athleticism since he was a teenager. He’s experimented with his diet and trained his body for years, but when he began writing his book, I half-expected that something else new and more interesting would come up. I’ve known him for a long time and he thrives on new challenges. It seems I under- estimated his passion for his work. Instead of becoming tired of the voluminous research, his enthusiasm grew as he pieced together the puzzle. His excitement became infectious. The most amazing part of seeing this process unfold was hearing Kiefer become more and more dedicated to the cause of providing the truth to others. Remember those high standards? Kiefer worked feverishly to craft a book that was clear and engaging as well as scientifically valid. He agonized over layout, pictures, diagrams and even word choices. The result is a book that answers your questions— even those you don’t even know you have yet—and that is also a pleasure to read. If you are at all interested in understanding your own body, read this book. Kiefer’s done all the research (a Herculean amount of research citations alone!) and he puts everything into context. You’ll understand what you are doing and why. More importantly, you will see results—I know I did! Let me know if you can use it or what, Nicole Yes Nicole, I can definitely use it. Y G G G G j YLL {GnG 3UHIDFH [YLL %HJLQQLQJ7KH-RXUQH\ 2IWHQ,JQRUHG+D]DUGV 3UREOHPV:LWK:KDW:H¶YH%HHQ7U\LQJ $*RRG6WDUW ,QWURGXFLQJ7KH&DUE1LWH6ROXWLRQ $/LWWOH:RUG$ERXW)RRG 1XWULWLRQ/DEHOV 3ODQQLQJ)RU7KH)XWXUH :KDW7R([SHFW )LQDO7RXFKHV 3DUWLQJ:RUGV 7KHLU&DUE1LWH6ROXWLRQ 7KH&DUE1LWH6ROXWLRQ6XPPDU\ )$4V YLLL mGsG 8VDJH 6DIH)RRGVRQ)DWDQG3URWHLQ'D\V 2LOV 8OWUDORZ&DUE3URWHLQ3RZGHUV 8OWUDORZ&DUE&DIIHLQDWHG'ULQNV )LEHU6XSSOHPHQWV %UHDWK$LGV &DUE1LWH)UXLW*XLGH )RRG6FRUH&DOFXODWRU L[ tGwG 6LPSOH0HQX3ODQV/RZHU&DORULH 6LPSOH0HQX3ODQV+LJKHU&DORULH *RXUPHW0HQX3ODQV/RZHU&DORULH *RXUPHW0HQX3ODQV+LJKHU&DORULH ([DPSOH&DUE1LWHV 7UDQVLWLRQ0HQX3ODQ [ yG %UHDNIDVW 6RXSV 6DODGV 6QDFNV (QWUHHV 6LGH'LVKHV 6DXFHV6SUHDGV 'LSV 'HVVHUWV %HYHUDJHV [L jG %HJLQQLQJ7KH-RXUQH\ 2IWHQ,JQRUHG+D]DUGV 3UREOHPV:LWK:KDW:H¶YH%HHQ7U\LQJ $*RRG6WDUW ,QWURGXFLQJ7KH&DUE1LWH6ROXWLRQ $/LWWOH:RUG$ERXW)RRG 1XWULWLRQ/DEHOV 3ODQQLQJ)RU7KH)XWXUH :KDW7R([SHFW )LQDO7RXFKHV 3DUWLQJ:RUGV )$4V [LL pG xiii xiv [Y G G G G G{Gn xvi xvii Preface We can all remember being pulled down into the pit-of- endless-promises by doctors, athletic trainers, nutritionists and even TV psychologists. We see our ideal bodies at the far edge of the chasm, but the “experts” assure us, if we only follow them to the bottom, we’ll be able to climb the other side and capture the dream of a forever-slim figure. Reluctantly, we follow. During the descent, our hopes shatter as we realize: there is no bottom. Instead of leading you down a bottomless pit, this books aims to bridge the gap between you and your ideal-self. Everything, from the Food Lists to the Menu Plans, is designed with this intent—even the text. Information presented here is precise, pithy and perhaps even a pleasure to read. But, most importantly, it provides the crucial framework needed to succeed and nothing more. So, although critical, discussions about general health and wellness or metabolic diseases are sparse. This book focuses on rapid, permanent fat loss. Increased health and wellness follow naturally. For those craving dizzyingly in-depth and up-to-date information about diet, disease, health, hormones, metabolism and food, visit www.physicsnutrition.com; you’ll also find information on upcoming books in the series. Now, building the bridge to success is one thing; convincing you to cross is another. To cross fearlessly, you need confidence in the quality of the structure. References to more than 1700 supporting research papers should give you assurance, despite the short, crisp treatment of several complex subjects. So if a statement sounds too incredible to believe, the xviii reference marks on the inside margin direct you to the overwhelming evidence located in the Citations section. The references mean to enhance your journey, not distract your focus. Paragraph referencing like this, however, makes it difficult to know which papers support exactly which statements; line-by-line citations reside at www.CarbNite.com, if you’re interested. Finally, unlike many texts, the FAQs are real questions from real people and present material not covered or not covered with great detail in the main text. Be sure to skim through them. Let’s get started. 1 Beginning The Journey We’ve All Been There Nearly all of us have battled with our weight—some of us as early as our teens, but many more as we reach our 30’s, 40’s and beyond. We’ve used every new diet, adhering to every rule, trying to squeeze every last promise from the text. Daily menus are earnestly followed, we purchase exotic foods, adopt life-altering exercise programs and, perhaps most burdensome of all, buy every recommended supplement. The religious fervor of few monks can compare with the zeal of our dieting discipline. We fly through the first few weeks fueled by the nearly instantaneous weight loss. Confidence rises, excitement takes hold and we press forward. But then everything comes to a screeching halt. Almost as quickly as we lost the initial weight, our progress stalls. We’re no longer losing weight, the food choices are monotonous, we’re feeling weak and drooling over decadent treats as if we haven’t seen food in months. Believing we’ve done something wrong, we return to the pages of our current dieting bible and look for the missing details that can put us back on track. But we’re doing everything right. Calories are in the allowable range, there’s not too much fat or too many carbs and we’re getting plenty of exercise. What’s wrong? Frustration replaces confidence then quickly turns to desperation. We cut The Carb Nite Solution 2 calories. We ratchet up the exercise. We cut the fat. We cut out sugar. We cut out more fat. Still, little progress is made. Disgruntled and disheartened, we finally throw up our hands and we quit. Clearly the diet didn’t live up to the claims, but we normally blame ourselves for the disappointment. We figure we’ll give it another try further down the road when we can devote more time, as if we didn’t rearrange our entire lives and sacrifice precious time already. Even after we gain all the weight back, like brainwashed disciples we defend our diet of choice until the end, reciting, “It really worked for me.” Our audience looks in disbelief at our overweight, out-of-shape body. Thousands of people experience this situation every year. Many popular diets are excellent for achieving health goals like lowering cholesterol and triglyceride levels or managing conditions like insulin resistance. Problems arise when using popular diets to achieve a goal for which they were never intended: fat loss. Manipulating the different aspects of the body responsible for fat loss, namely metabolism, hormones, fat cells and enzymes, defies conventional methods and requires a radically different approach than those intended for improving other aspects of health. Current dietary plans improve specific aspects of health and assist weight maintenance; the usefulness, however, ends there. Don’t misunderstand: good health is always a concern. But if your goal is weight loss and, in particular, fat loss—cellulite, flabby butts, beer bellies and love handles—then you’ve been using the wrong tools. Beginning The Journey 3 The Puzzle Unlike many in this field, I’m not a medical doctor or nutritionist to the stars: I’m a physicist. Like you, spending years trying to conquer my problem with body fat left me tired and frustrated. I’ve tried every diet imaginable—low-calorie, low-fat, low-carb, high-protein, zones, phases and many more—while attempting to erase the stigma that first began when, in the middle of my sixth grade class, another student looked me square in the eyes and said, “You’re fat.” In the following years, firmly committing to weight loss was no small task. The late 80s witnessed a flood of discoveries about hormones, food, metabolism and fat cells that overwhelmed experts in the fields of health, nutrition and weight loss. Faced with a million scattered puzzle pieces, all from the same box, experts began arranging pieces to form their own images. There was only one problem: nobody knew what the final picture should look like. Beginning with relatively few, nicely fitting pieces, they continued by expanding to broader and broader topics. As pressure mounted to explain the growing number of discoveries, interpreting study results liberally and often incorrectly became commonplace—pieces that didn’t quite fit were beaten into place. Rather than clear, crisp images, these randomly created mosaics fueled an eruption of new and speculative diets. Unfortunately, the mosaics contained gaping holes and incorporated only a small fraction of the pieces. The surge of research and speculation did, fortunately, set a renaissance of sorts into motion. Diet books, with their new theories, needed support and authors began including citations. The diet industry renaissance coincided with my growing The Carb Nite Solution 4 interest in weight loss. Living within minutes of an extensive medical library, my curiosity led me to examine the offered proof by consulting the original scientific papers. I remember the weeks spent looking up, xeroxing and reading numerous journal articles. It took time to learn the terminology, but within months I’d made my first startling discovery: the research available, even some of the research cited, did not support one author’s theory. The cites consisted primarily of nicely fitting studies along with a few results twisted beyond recognition—the obvious smashed-to-fit pieces. The author ignored or belittled everything else. Insatiably I began checking the validity of other diets over the following years, accumulating vast stores of research in the process. I eventually abandoned the pseudo-scientific diet books and began seeking my own answers. I wanted to know why it seemed nearly impossible to lose my body fat and why so many others were having the same trouble. Was losing the extra pounds really hopeless? Or did some method of stripping fat from the body, something effective for everyone— not just the extremely obese—exist? If such a method did exist, I was going to find it and, well, if it didn’t…at least I’d know enough to never get duped into trying another fad diet. Being a physicist gave me a different perspective than most in the field of diet and weight loss. Relying on the research of others when pursuing your own work is essential to success in the academic world of physics. You can never assume any- thing if you expect to be successful. You need scientific proof. So I applied the same principle as I searched for a solution. The mind-boggling amount of information and numerous considerations gave me the exact same million-piece-puzzle others had already grappled with and, still, no one had the Beginning The Journey 5 slightest idea of the final picture. I refused to throw valid pieces away or distort results to my own ends. If only a quick glance at the answer was possible. After reading over 20,000 peer-reviewed research articles, a stroke of luck turned out to provide the badly needed glimpse of the completed picture. A single event helped pull together years of research and The Carb Nite Solution emerged. Destined to Fail The solution to all our problems rests in the design. All the diets you’ve tried were designed for one of two purposes. Nutritional plans intended to improve athletic performance hold the spot of oldest special-purpose diets. Low-fat diets started in this area as did another popular diet, The Zone. Whether they actually improve performance and what kind of athletic performance they improve—endurance, sprinting, strength, power—is the subject for another book. Both, however, wormed into the mainstream market as fat loss programs, an area where neither is well suited. The second and most common purpose involves improving a condition known as Syndrome X. Syndrome X describes a collection of metabolic diseases such as insulin resistance, high blood pressure, high triglyceride levels, high LDL cholesterol levels, low HDL cholesterol levels and, the only visible symptom, central obesity. Plans target controlling and reversing aspects of Syndrome X one at a time. Some only target cholesterol levels, others insulin resistance and still others high blood pressure. Over the years tweaking these diets to tackle more and more aspects of Syndrome X led to less and less effectiveness. Stretching a plan beyond its original A The Carb Nite Solution 6 reach crippled the previous benefits. A recipe originally resolving one aspect of Syndrome X can’t be expected to tackle every aspect, like obesity. You don’t need to imagine what happens when diets designed for different purposes offer the promise of fat loss because you already know. They rarely deliver. To some degree, they do reduce weight, but only as a side effect of their original intent. As many now suspect, little of the weight lost comes from body fat—the majority may just be stored water, carbohydrates and muscle. It’s easy to see why so many different diets—low-carb, low-fat, The Zone, South Beach and others—perform identically when used for fat loss: the original design was never meant to produce fat loss at all. We need a tool created specifically for fat loss, not something with the side effect of weight loss. The solution, the right tool, does exist. Unlike any previous diet, The Carb Nite Solution is designed specifically for ongoing fat loss—and I emphasize fat loss, not just weight loss and not just fat burning. For the entire time you’re on the diet you will burn the stubborn body fat deposits on your thighs, waist, stomach, love handles, underarms and everywhere else. Every diet thus far has failed to accelerate the loss of body fat. Sure, some may help you to burn fat, but it’s the fat you eat (dietary fat), not the fat you’re trying to get rid of (in this case, body fat). The Carb Nite Solution is a tool, not a lifestyle. Designing one diet to at once promote optimal health and rapidly shed body fat is nearly impossible for several reasons. Often, lifestyle diets promote specific health benefits and cause only a small amount of fat loss as a side effect. On the other hand, The Carb Nite Solution is focused on body fat loss. Fortunately, the B Beginning The Journey 7 process of losing fat reverses Syndrome X. It simultaneously raises HDL cholesterol levels, improves insulin sensitivity, and lowers triglyceride and LDL levels. At the base of all these problems is excess body fat, so it’s no surprise that deflating the spare tire improves many of the deadly features of Syndrome X. The Road Ahead Don’t be fooled into thinking The Carb Nite Solution is just another Frankenstein creation that’s worth a try. Welcome to the world of power-dieting. Food produces powerful, drug- like effects and as with any drug you need to know how it affects your mind and body. The Carb Nite Solution not only teaches you how to rid yourself of all the excess body fat but in the process you’ll discover several things about yourself. You’ll quickly learn how much extra water and carbohydrates your body normally stores and how long it takes to get rid of the surplus. You’ll learn how to eat with convenience and ease, controlling hunger all day long. You’ll learn exactly how common items like caffeine affect you. You’ll learn how carbs can heat up the night while giving you a good night’s sleep. In short, you’ll learn exactly how your body reacts to things you normally don’t think about twice. Within a few days of starting the diet, you may discover some shocking things about your body. Though not a new experience for all, stripping the carbohydrates from your diet will produce profound changes; and removing carbs from your daily meal plans is exactly what you’re going to do for the first nine and a half days. These are your first few fat and protein days. Water weight falls away. Bloating after a meal becomes C The Carb Nite Solution 8 a distant memory. Some sluggishness may strike briefly, but a fresh sense of calm, cool collectedness quickly follows. Your mood stabilizes, your body lightens, and you realize you’ve hit your stride. You feel like you could do this forever. But you don’t need to. Actually, it’s not that you don’t need to, you can’t. On the tenth night comes a treat. More than a treat, it’s actually the key for fat loss success that’s been lying dormant in the research for decades. It’s Carb Nite™, the solution to all your past dieting frustrations—especially the frustrations of those controlling carbs. The tenth day unfolds as a typical fat and protein morning, just as the previous nine days, but the thought of Carb Nite starts a small trickle of excitement, building into a torrent as the afternoon rolls around. You take note of pastries and pasta, chocolate and cheesecake, donuts and daiquiris. The temptations approach from every direction: Are you on the verge of stumbling, tantalized by all these decadent treats? No, you have a secret—you’re seeking them out for your dieting pleasure. Yes, dieting pleasure. Carb Nite is about the treats and sweets because carbohydrates matter most. Rising insulin levels in response to all the sweet, sticky, crumbly carbs is the secret behind Carb Nite’s magic. Anticipating this opportunity to feast and enjoy what seems like a break from the diet, you find yourself noticing all the things you’ve given up over the last nine and a half days. You’re about to enjoy them all and you know it’s a necessity. Your success depends on a full enjoyment of Carb Nite. What many consider a set back on any diet, a pleasure plagued with never-ending guilt, instead creates the hormonal afterglow essential for the success of this diet—the reason for calling The Carb Nite Solution a power- diet. Beginning The Journey 9 Carb Nite ends with a warm feeling all over. Your body’s disabled ability to convert carbohydrates into fat causes the overload of carbs to be burned off as heat—this in addition to a spike in overall metabolism caused by the sudden shot of carbs. Weathering the rise in body temperature smoothly transitions to a good night’s sleep. Sleep will be deeper and more sound than normal from an increase in your brain’s ‘feel good’ hormone, serotonin. Again, the feel-good sensation is caused by the late-day carbs. You may even find yourself experiencing dreams more lucid than ever before. The only thing interrupting the night’s sleep might be some muscle cramping if you fail to drink plenty of fluids and take other minor precautions. The next morning, morning eleven, you awaken to…fat and protein. Carbs are a distant memory by noon and you feel yourself easing back into the groove. Not to worry, you won’t suffer another nine-and-a-half-day stretch without carbs. For the week, the 30 gram daily limitation on carbs—the amount of carbs in two slices of white bread—is still in effect, but now you have a choice: What night to make Carb Nite. Maybe you have a dinner party Sunday night or a date night with the spouse on Friday or even a special celebration for one of the kids on Saturday. Whatever the occasion, or for no occasion at all, your once-a-week Carb Nite will be the night of your choosing— assuming you’ve given yourself enough time since your last Carb Nite. And this is how it is for possibly up to six months. You routinely take a reprieve from the severe carbohydrate restrictions of the week to enjoy everything you’ve been missing—everything you’ve probably been missing for years. Carb Nite, once per week, in combination with severe carbo- The Carb Nite Solution 10 hydrate restriction lays the groundwork for achieving the body you once had or always wanted. 11 Often Ignored Hazards Muscle: What Are You Willing to Lose? While sitting in the lobby of the restaurant waiting for your reservation, a child grabs your attention as he flexes his arm, mimicking the obvious gym rat walking by. You glance away to hide your thoughts: visibly defined muscles really do portray a sense of health, confidence, beauty and attractiveness. Nostalgia for those school days of a tight, toned figure well up inside. You can’t wait for the opportunity to see yours take shape again. The essential goal for any weight loss plan should always be the preservation of muscle. Maintaining muscle size and strength during weight loss nearly guarantees the lost weight to come from water, carbohydrate stores and most importantly, body fat. Fat loss results when the focus shifts from simple weight loss to losing weight while saving muscle. Hence the reason for stressing fat loss throughout the book and not merely weight loss. The Carb Nite Solution is not a weight loss diet; The Carb Nite Solution is a fat loss program. An emphasis on sustaining muscle and consequently losing only body fat is still consistently ignored by other diet plans. You may be wondering why the short sermon on insuring fat loss as opposed to weight loss. During an otherwise uneventful conversation with someone about popular diets, he The Carb Nite Solution 12 volunteered a striking comment, “Who cares what kind of weight I lost?” There are three important reasons why everyone should care. 1) Losing body fat makes you healthier while losing the same weight as combination of fat and muscle actually degrades your health. In other words, by losing fat you can decrease your chances of developing disease. By losing the same amount of weight from a combination of muscle and fat, you increase your chances of developing disease. 2) Muscle tissue is an important, metabolically active tissue. By losing muscle tissue you reduce your metabolism and make it easier to regain the weight you lost. 3) Laboratory animals, subjected to calorie deprivation— either throughout life or during their final years—live longer than well-fed peers. Years of research on this phenomenon show the loss of strictly body fat, not muscle, explains the extended, active lifespan. Are you willing to lose vigor and vitality? Or maybe you’d rather focus on losing those hips or love handles. Fat Cells: A Formidable Enemy It seemed too good to be true. The excitement from losing weight at such a fast pace was dizzying. Low and behold, it was too good to be true. You denied the symptoms, hiding the facts from yourself. Maybe you ignored it for a week or even two, but now a month has passed. You feel the phrase urging forth at every inquiry about your diet. You fight to hold back the mantra of defeat. On one lousy day you finally cave to BA C Often Ignored Hazards 13 reality by uttering the most dreadful phrase among dieters, “I’ve hit a plateau.” A plateau, as applied to dieting, describes the situation normally occurring within the first few months of a typical weight reducing diet. No matter what you do, you simply cannot continue losing weight. All dieters on nearly all plans experience plateaus. Fat cells determine significantly when or if plateauing occurs. As obvious as it may seem, fat cells store the fat in your body. They’re not made of fat; they just hold it. Collecting in large amounts around the internal organs and under the skin, fat cells are like little balloons inflating as they fill with additional fat and, once full, signal the body to create many more. When body fat reserves dwindle, a large number of fat cells sit empty because fat cells rarely, if ever, die. Even fat cells responsible for your baby-fat—the fat everyone said was so cute while pinching your cheeks—still lurk beneath your skin. Not only are fat cells practically immortal, your body can create an unlimited number at any age. There is an up side. Full fat cells give the body an intense message signaling the release of excess body fat stores— metabolism rises, hunger loses intensity and fat cells empty out while refusing to store more fat. This contrasts with the popular notion that obese and overweight people have slow metabolisms. In fact, being overweight raises metabolism and accelerates fat loss. In the beginning, the greater the amount of body fat to lose, the more quickly it’s lost because all those extra fat cells overwhelm the body with a signal to waste energy. And why not be wasteful when there’s plenty of energy in reserve? The massive amount of rapid weight loss is DE The Carb Nite Solution 14 the exact reason diet book authors love to showcase the success of their diets using obese participants—they would be equally successful on any diet plan, at least initially. But as helpful as bloated fat cells are to the dieting effort, empty fat cells are nothing less than catastrophic. Dieting alone normally causes debilitating metabolic changes within a few days and emptied fat cells intensify the signals. The body halts fat burning—both dietary and body fat—metabolism nose- dives and hunger grows uncontrollable. Eating even loses the ability to satisfy. The excess of empty fat cells tells the body it’s time to refuel and without a proper plan, you’re likely to oblige. When popular diets bring you to this point, you experience a plateau. All diet plans create empty fat cells and risk plateaus. Current attempts at a solution are rash and crude, making the situation worse. Using these plans only offers the chance of emptying a few cells while failing to even ease this difficult task. Losing anything more than a few pounds of fat sounds bleak—your progress screeches to a halt before even coming close to your goal. The Carb Nite Solution finally gives you the power to tame the dreadful effects of these little cells, avoiding the anxiety and aggravation of another plateau. Rebounding: A Dreadful Conclusion Weight loss stalled and determination wavering, you choose relief to torture—dieting is abandoned, if only for now. As feared, you feel the weight creep back in less time than it was lost. The daily climb through the numbers on the scale suggests things aren’t as bad as imagined. You lost 30 lbs and gained back 30 lbs, but something doesn’t quite feel the same. F Often Ignored Hazards 15 You can’t explain the new sense of softness on your thighs and around your waist. You expected your energy to return with the weight; it didn’t. You expected your strength to return; it didn’t. You expected to look just as you did before; you don’t. There’s something going on. You check the scale again. There it is in black and white: you really do weigh the same as before. What’s different? As difficult as losing weight may seem, current weight loss plans make regaining the pounds a breeze. This rebounding effect—gaining the weight back in a much shorter time than lost—is a natural consequence of traditional weight loss plans, mainly because of fat cells. But there is a second, much worse aspect to rebounding, one associated with stress. Affecting more than just med school students and parents of unruly teens, stress plays a role among dieters as well. And, as anyone who’s experienced dieting knows, trying to lose weight is psychologically taxing. The physical strain experienced by your body, however, normally escapes attention and the combination of these two—mental and physical—creates a state of constant distress. No conversation involving stress is complete without a brief discussion of cortisol, levels of which rise in response to stress. Cortisol levels normally only increase at night and during exercise, situations resulting in increased body fat burning. These bursts of cortisol drop quickly upon waking or cessation of exercise; in contrast, levels remain elevated for long periods, sometimes days, in response to chronic stress. Connecting the dots reveals an unwelcome conclusion: typical dieting keeps cortisol levels elevated for the duration. Soaring cortisol levels bear a large amount of responsibility for the loss GH The Carb Nite Solution 16 of muscle described earlier, but another, possibly worse result comes from this enduring elevation. Being familiar with the world of nutrition through your experiences with dieting, you probably know that eating carbohydrates causes a release of insulin in the body. Nearly all weight-reducing diets cause substantial and often sustained insulin release along with stress. Normally, levels of only one—insulin or cortisol—are elevated at any given time. The simultaneous increase in insulin and cortisol levels causes a terrible problem, one you’ll experience using these weight reducing diets: the creation of an abundance of new, empty fat cells. This does two things. First, it slows your fat loss progress more quickly, hurrying the advance to a plateau. Secondly, when you end the diet the newly created supply of empty fat cells help make you fatter than ever before. Picture someone starting at 180 lbs, 30% of which is body fat. Having only briefly achieved their goal of reducing body weight to 140 lbs—possibly a wedding-day weight—the loss quickly returns. Returning to a former number on the scale doesn’t sound so bad until experienced: it’s like inheriting a different body. The regain no longer consists of a balance between muscle and fat, but is primarily fat. The loss of precious muscle combined with an appearance of the many new fat cells make the excess fat storage at a familiar body weight possible. Now, instead of being 180 lbs at 30% body fat, they’re 180 lbs and 40% body fat. Being actually fatter than before starting the diet, they feel softer, less energetic and weaker. I J Often Ignored Hazards 17 The eventual regain of weight—over several years—holds fewer consequences than rebounding, but still carries a serious repercussion: an indefinitely slowed metabolism. For many, even escaping a short-term rebound does little to prevent this long-term gain. Regardless of timeframe, weight regain creates frustration among dieters echoed by health-care professionals when they ask: Why diet if you’re only going to gain the weight back? Nearly eliminating the rebound effect and narrowing the possibility of long-term weight regain, The Carb Nite Solution renders the question meaningless. Fat loss can be permanent. K The Carb Nite Solution 18 19 Problems With What We’ve Been Trying Cutting Calories You can’t help but notice the methodical chanting of athletic trainers, nutritionists and even your friends who watch Oprah religiously: calories in, calories out. What does it mean? Sheepishly you ask and discover the simplistic logic. Lower caloric intake to less than daily needs and you’re guaranteed the slim figure you’ve been imagining for years. You anxiously plan an 1800-calorie menu for the next day. A couple months of limited success pass, but you don’t look or feel as good as you ought and the weight loss fades—you must be eating too much. You plan 1400-calorie menus and your march to slimness slows once again. Then 1200-calorie, 1000-calorie, 800- calorie menus fall like dominos as you struggle to sustain mental and physical energy. How long can the downward spiral continue? And why isn’t a fitness model staring back from the mirror yet? The single most popular method of weight loss is cutting calories. Despite the popularity, the cutting calories approach carries many heavy costs. The first is muscle loss. How much muscle might you actually lose on the traditional low-calorie diet? In the first two months of low-calorie dieting about half the weight lost comes from lean tissue. That’s one pound of muscle lost for every pound of fat lost. Over time this A The Carb Nite Solution 20 percentage drops to anywhere from 25% to 15%, meaning normal dieting continues to disintegrate muscle at the rate of one pound for every three to four pounds of fat. Imagine setting the goal to lose 30 lbs of body fat. You begin by losing 20 lbs of total weight during the first two months. Concentrating solely on the number displayed by the bathroom scale, you’re unaware of the loss of 10 lbs of muscle along with only 10 lbs of fat. Over the next two months you lose another 12 lbs but again, the total is not body fat—only 9 lbs came from fat. Four months have passed and the scale welcomes you with a pleasant surprise: 32 lbs vanished since beginning your diet. Unbeknownst to you, the scale masks the terrible truth that only 19 lbs of fat is gone with another 11 lbs to go if you want to reach your goal. The destruction of 13 lbs of lean mass also occurred. Scales often deceive us in this way. The severe muscle loss is only the tip of the metabolic iceberg. Before substantial amounts of muscle evaporate, metabolism drops sharply as calories dip below maintenance levels. Only four days of caloric restriction suppresses all the major hormones responsible for burning body fat, maintaining energy levels and controlling hunger. The result: less energy is burned at rest and when active, less fat moves out of storage, more fat is stored in fat cells and hunger becomes unbearable. By day four you’re already entrenched in a losing battle. Not to be beaten, low-calorie advocates recommend a solution. Simply cut calories further. After all, this is low- calorie dieting. How low will you go? Before you realize, calories wither to such meager levels that decreasing them any further will jeopardize your health—as if you haven’t already. And to be successful at maintaining your fat loss—you will not B C Problems With What You’ve Been Trying 21 continue to lose, only maintain—your only choice remains severe calorie deprivation for the rest of your life. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Low-Fat Exciting news is quoted over and over in newspapers and magazines: Research shows low-fat dieters eat as much as they want and lose weight. New research? It must be true. Once again, you try low-fat dieting thinking of your failed attempts and bland food choices but motivated by the thought of eating as much as you want. You will succeed this time and you’ll do everything to insure it, even if it means cutting fat calories to near zero. Dressing-less salads, fat-free pastries, pretzels, potatoes, pears and even popcorn—minus the butter, salt and taste—round out your menu. You discover pasta with fat-free spaghetti sauce, fat-free candy, fat-free cookies, fat-free chips and more. Even soft drinks are fat-free. It’s been a week, time to check progress. You head back to your new friend, the bathroom scale. The numbers are in and…you gained three pounds. What the…? Your friend, the scale, wouldn’t play such a cruel joke. What’s going on? Science proves you can eat as much as you want while losing weight if fat calories are kept extremely low. Doesn’t it? As a matter of fact, American consumers eat far less fat today than thirty years ago, but skyrocketing rates of obesity imply something mysterious about those all-you-can-eat studies. What do the studies really say? The technical classification of these smorgasbord-sounding studies is the Latin phrase ad libitum. Think of ad libitum as a way of saying the researchers and participants were too lazy to keep track of The Carb Nite Solution 22 the calories. You can generate excitement by suggesting the subjects ate to their heart’s content. On the other hand, you tell the real story by saying the subjects ate as little as they wanted—eating only low-fat foods proved difficult. During low-fat diets, when participants and researchers actually recorded or controlled calorie intake, the only subjects experiencing weight loss were those cutting calories below maintenance levels. To sustain their weight loss, they suffer the same fate as those who start by cutting calories: eternal dieting. The apparent magic of all-you-can-eat, low-fat dieting comes from a clever spin on words or maybe a misunderstanding among reporters, not from the diet itself. Familiarity with diet plans leaves few surprised by the truth: low-fat diets require calorie restriction to achieve weight loss. Cutting calories is simply an accepted part of the sacrifice. But choosing the low-fat method for weight loss means sacrificing more than just tasty treats and calories—you’ll be sacrificing muscle. Of all the popular dietary schemes, none destroy more muscle than low-fat dieting. Over the first year, only 20% of a low-fat dieter’s weight loss comes from body fat. Losing 50 lbs of weight means only 10 lbs of fat loss, with the majority of the balance from muscle. Eliminating dietary fat only magnifies the worst aspect of cutting calories— significantly less muscle loss occurs when cutting calories if dietary fat remains intact. As if the negative impact of muscle loss on health isn’t enough, there’s more. Keeping levels of dietary fat below 10%—the recommendation of low-fat plans such as The Pritikin Principle—aims to reduce cholesterol levels, a task for which it performs well. Resolving this one feature of Syndrome X, however, is countered by increasing four, more DEF Problems With What You’ve Been Trying 23 deadly aspects of Syndrome X. Not only does a low-fat approach to weight loss jeopardize your health through muscle loss, but such severe dietary limits on fat accelerates the development of a syndrome known to shorten your life expectancy. Ready to jump on the low-fat bandwagon? Low-Carb First no food, and then no fat and now it’s no carbs. As you tell friends about your new diet you’re warned about, no, almost threatened with a list of ailments: inability to think, bad breath, clogged arteries, obesity and cancer. Finally, your nutritionist strikes the deathblow—your body needs carbohydrates to live. Your head spins. How can all this be true when studies confirm the opposite? And you’ve never heard about anyone dying from not eating carbohydrates, but the idea is so new, nobody really knows much about these diets yet. Right? The low-carb diet—more properly, the ketogenic diet—is nothing new. The long and varied history began with a small publication written by…William Banting? That was 1863. You might have been thinking Dr Atkins, but his first book, Dr Atkins' Diet Revolution, wasn’t published until over one hundred years later in 1972. And he was still preceded by three other versions of the low-carb diet, two of which made it to publication in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Even by then, another version emerged in the 1920s to fight childhood epilepsy and its use continues today. While not a pioneer, Dr Atkins did popularize the low-carb approach by allowing users G The Carb Nite Solution 24 to continually increase dietary carbohydrate levels. This simple change, as opposed to the strict lifelong limits associated with earlier versions, makes low-carb diets highly marketable—and very risky. To avoid confusion, we need to identify a clear difference among these ketogenic diets and find a more useful phrase than ketogenic. Mainstream low-carb dieters restrict carbs to 50% or less of daily calories, hovering regularly near the top of the scale. Advocates don’t normally explain it this way, but it appears to be the common thread. Scientific research, however, describes a more specific range from 8% to 50% of calories from carbs. This is about 40 to 250 grams per day. Anything less than 8%—specifically, 30 grams or less—falls under the heading ultralow-carb. Since these are both ketogenic diets, this may seem like splitting hairs, but the difference between the two is the difference between success and failure. During an ultralow-carb diet, the body stops making some very special and bothersome enzymes. These enzymes convert carbohydrates into fat, which can then be stored as body fat. The ultralow-carb diet cuts off the one avenue available through which carbohydrates can become body fat, guaranteeing that an overdose of carbs has no possible way of heading to your stomach or thighs in the form of body fat. On the other hand, with their extra carb allowance, simple low- carb diets trigger the production of these carb-to-fat converting enzymes making it possible to store all those extra carbs you thought you were enjoying as fat. As an example, Atkins begins as an ultralow-carb diet for two weeks, after which you slowly switch to the standard low- carb diet by adding fruits, vegetables and loads of sugar- alcohols (more about these later). Had Dr Atkins required HI Problems With What You’ve Been Trying 25 maintaining the ultralow portion for the next six months, you would enjoy ongoing and significant fat loss, even though the rate of fat loss would slow and eventually plateau. Instead, as carbs increase in the diet, so does body weight—as a matter of fact, by the end of the sixth month you’ve stopped losing body fat and started gaining. For us, for our goal of fat loss, this is the most important difference between these two ketogenic diets: ultralow-carb and simple low-carb. The simple act of eating carbohydrates, even as little as 50 grams per day, prematurely stops fat loss and can accelerate body fat gain. Avoiding these problems takes 30 grams or less. Does adding more and more carbohydrates to your diet still seem like a blessing from Dr Atkins? But we can’t ignore the common fault: neither diet—low- carb or ultralow-carb—spikes insulin levels. This is incredibly important. The body produces the hormone insulin in response to a carb-rich meal; insulin then helps the body use carbohydrates for energy. Since both diets limit the intake of carbs, both diets limit the release of insulin. Low-carb enthusiasts flaunt this as an advantage, since elevated levels of insulin often mean little fat burning. An insulin spike, however, only temporarily stops fat burning, but the resulting hormonal afterglow accelerates body-fat burning for days. Besides enhancing metabolism by itself, insulin also creastes a lasting glow by acting similar to a booster rocket. Booster rockets provide a short burst of extra force to propel some thing—airplane, satellite or space shuttle—before being ejected. In much the same way, a short and powerful burst of insulin boosts levels of several, to say the least, impressive fat burning hormones. Insulin levels plummet within two hours, but just as the space shuttle continues on without its booster JKL 7KH&DUE1LWH6ROXWLRQ ǰȱ ȱȱȱȱȬȱȱ¢ȱȱ ȱ¢ȱȱ¢ǯȱȱȱȱȱȱǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱQHYHUȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱǯȱȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ¢ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ǰȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱǯȱ ȱ¢ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱDzȱȱȱǰȱ ȱȱȱ¢ȱǯȱȱȱȱȱȱ¢ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱ ȱ ǯȱ ȱ ȱ ǰȱ ȱ ȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱȱ /HYHO,QVXOLQ )DW%XUQLQJ+RUPRQHV KRXUV GD\V 7LPH ,QVXOLQDQG+RUPRQH6SLNHV 111f89035cc958ba8892b05c597dddf5qydlhrh7a2lj01b9 Problems With What You’ve Been Trying 27 levels to plunge, no matter how much fat and protein you eat. Actually, leptin levels mimic the lows found in starvation when carbs are lacking. And low leptin levels signal fat cells to stay full and store as much incoming fat as possible—in other words: kiss your fat loss good bye. This may explain why several years of maintaining low insulin levels causes unavoidable fat gain—even for those eating only carbs causing small amounts of insulin release. Fat loss and even weight maintenance are nearly hopeless without periodic insulin spikes. Unfortunately, as neither the ultralow-carb nor low- carb diet offers any hope of spiking insulin levels, there appears no way to overcome this fatal problem while clinging to the requirements of these diets. Dr Atkins claims a low-carb diet creates a metabolic advantage. What do you think? Low Glycemic Index A new wave hits the diet industry and you soon find yourself swimming in conversations laced with phrases from, apparently, another language. You search for meaning in the expressions low-glycemic index carbohydrate and high-glycemic index carbohydrate. Relief comes when you learn simply that some carbs are good and some bad. But there are also friendly carbs, which sound good as well. When you search through the different food lists you make a startling discovery: some good carbs aren’t friendly, some bad carbs are. You learn more and the confusion only mounts. Can the glycemic index do anything other than complicate your life? M The Carb Nite Solution 28 As acceptance fades among medical professionals, the glycemic index (GI) moves to the field of weight loss for a second chance at life. Before diving into a technical discussion about what glycemic index means, how it’s used, the difference between high- and low-GI, friendly, or good and bad carbs, the scientific research sums up the fat loss and even health claims with a single word: nonsense. Rather than restricting carbohydrates altogether, reliance on glycemic index for menu choice approaches the same goal as low-carb diets: insulin control. Like low-carb diets, low-GI diets focus on limiting insulin release because insulin can stop the body from burning fat. The truth: Simply eating carbohydrates, alone or in combination with other nutrients, prevents your body from burning fat regardless of how much or how little insulin levels rise. Glycemic index diets recommend eating low-GI carbs, which create the smallest rise in blood sugar levels and, normally, the lowest rise in insulin. Unfortunately, low-GI carbs also stop you from burning fat for the longest periods because low-GI carbs cause the longest periods of elevated blood sugar and insulin levels. And some of the lowest GI carbs are undeniably the most fattening of all. Yes, low- glycemic carbs are the supposed ‘good’ ones—good for what? Nobody knows as researchers continually fail to find a connection between low-GI diets and weight loss, or a connection between high-GI diets and weight gain. Despite the absence of a connection between low-GI diets and weight loss, a link to weight gain—specifically, fat gain— does exist. Similar to low-carb diets, a low-GI diet fails to spike insulin levels, causing metabolism to slow over the years and body fat storage to increase. With low-carb diets, less than a OPN Problems With What You’ve Been Trying 29 year passes before this slow, consistent weight gain settles in, but low-GI diets may take several years before landing you in this situation. Although the time frames differ, the result is identical: a slow, steady gain of a few pounds of body-fat per year. According to research, you can do little to stop the process while meticulously following the strict low-GI guidelines as recommended by The Zone, Sugar Busters!®, Fat Flush® and even South Beach. Do you still believe South Beach will get you into a Speedo® swimsuit as the diet implies? Mini-Meals Wow! You finally learned the secret: eat six meals per day and lose weight. The idea makes perfect sense: going too long between meals scares the body into storing excess body fat. But eating every three hours relaxes the body and the weight melts away. It’s so simple. You plan for the next day with plenty of time for preparing easy-travel meals. Before you realize, work’s piled up and you scurry every morning to put your meals together. This week’s even worse and you settle for the cafeteria, nutrition bars, vending machines and, heaven forbid, fast food restaurants. Eating went from enjoyable to irritating, but the results are worth it, right? That cover-model body is just around the corner. You’ve been watching your weight for weeks now and it’s down two pounds one week, up one the next, maybe the same the week after that, then down, then…well, it’s just not changing much at all. You’re not losing weight, eating is a full time job and missing one meal sends hunger pains off the chart. How did you get into this mess? Q The Carb Nite Solution 30 Trying to discover the perfect number of daily meals for health and weight loss has been going on since the 1950s and the vast majority of studies—32 of the 36—reveal this conclusive result regarding weight loss: the ideal number of meals per day is…whatever you feel like. Whether you eat one, two, three, all the way up to six or more meals per day you‘ll lose exactly the same amount of body fat, keep exactly the same amount of muscle and, therefore, end up with identical weight loss but only by restricting calories. If daily calories are kept low and equal, say 1200, identical fat loss occurs with one 1200- calorie meal per day, or three 400-calorie meals per day, or even six 200-calorie meals per day. Regardless of the number of meals, the previously discussed problems of calorie restriction are unavoidable—muscle loss, falling metabolism, and fat cell buildup. The studies prove a few more interesting things. First, consuming several smaller meals throughout the day actually lowers metabolism over time: even without calorie restriction, the ill effects of a low-calorie diet materialize from spreading meals thin. Secondly, a powerful hunger-stimulating hormone called ghrelin establishes a strict eating schedule. Forcing yourself to stick with a rigid and frequent eating schedule eventually triggers rising ghrelin levels prior to each mealtime, causing extreme hunger pangs. Besides ravenous cravings, missing a regularly scheduled meal results in sluggishness and irritation. Finally, having to eat more than three times per day brought complaints from nearly every study subject about the difficulty of scheduling so many meals—even when meals were prepared for them. R S Problems With What You’ve Been Trying 31 Just what you’ve always wanted in a weight loss plan: slower metabolism; increased hunger; difficult scheduling; all with no benefits. Ready to start eating every three hours? Exercise for Weight Loss Exercise sounded foolproof. With all those svelte, reedy runners and lean, buff bicyclists it must work. Everyday you pull yourself from the warmth of the bed to begin those chilled morning runs. You even welcome free afternoons with a little burned rubber from the new bicycle. The weather sometimes forces you to the treadmill or stationary bike, but you don’t mind—the whirring motors lull you into your zone. Six months of unwavering dedication and you’re shocked by the results: you’ve lost four pounds. Four pounds? You fume after remembering all those wasted hours running and cycling to lose less than one pound a month. How can you spend so much time, expend so much energy and lose so little weight? Being nearly as old a recommendation as low-fat, exercise often replaces diet as a way to lose weight. Who better to follow than those already there? Professional distance runners and cyclists, along with other elite endurance athletes, maintain a small, toned figure throughout their careers, which many began as children. And this is the key: they’ve always been thin, slim and trim. Never in their lives did they need to lose body fat. When using exercise, any type of exercise for weight loss—including running, cycling, weight lifting, walking, bouncing—the average person is lucky to lose one pound a month. For the first six months, it’s normally less. Don’t expect those few pounds to be fat, either. After a large group T The Carb Nite Solution 32 attempted exercise for fat loss, the results led researchers to advise waiting at least nine full months before hoping to see any fat loss resulting from exercise—nine full months of zero fat loss. As time goes on, the research only becomes more convincing. Comparing those who start diet and exercise with those who only diet reveals both groups lose identical amounts of weight—exercise contributed nothing to the loss. Taking it a step further, comparing those who begin exercise without a diet plan with those who just sit around all day still shows identical weight loss, which is zilch in this case—again, exercise contributed nothing. Even those trying to maintain their newly achieved figures failed when using exercise without diet—once again, nothing. And unlike those trying to convince you with one or two studies that exercise will help you lose body fat, over two-dozen studies show exercise doesn’t help fat loss sooner than six months into your routine. Although many compelling reasons to exercise exist, short-term fat loss is not one of them. Still planning on running to help get you into that swimsuit by spring? U 33 A Good Start We Have a Winner You’ve been reading this book in the hopes of learning how to rid your body of those annoying fat deposits and, so far, the entire discussion has detailed what’s wrong with everything else. By now, I hope you’re convinced to at least try a different approach. But the current options seem useless for fat loss, so what’s left? Returning to the primary goal, which is weight loss while sparing muscle, there’s only one option to reconsider—the ultralow-carb option. In a diet containing high levels of carbohydrates, if carb supplies ever fade too quickly—such as eating too little or during exercise—muscle is converted into sugar for energy. Muscles continue wasting away until the body receives a fresh supply of carbohydrates or no longer needs any. While not always perfect, low-carb diets stop muscles from being destroyed for energy. When low-carb plans keep carbohydrates low enough and dietary fat high enough, the resulting change in metabolism makes the body more comfortable burning fat for energy as opposed to muscle. Carbohydrate levels must be kept consistently minimal because the body always prefers carbs, and once these run out on a carb-rich diet, muscle becomes the next source of energy. As a carb-restricted diet wears on, AB The Carb Nite Solution 34 muscle remains safest from destruction when dietary carbohydrates are lowest, making the ultralow-carb diet an excellent starting point for a fat loss plan. Besides sparing muscle, the ultralow-carb diet provides several other advantages. Not only does the ultralow-carb diet avoid some of the physical stress associated with dieting— meaning lower cortisol levels—there is little insulin around to initiate the growth of new fat cells. The very nature of the ultralow-carb diet keeps both insulin and cortisol levels extremely low, making it immune to the most disastrous side effect of traditional diets. The ultralow-carb diet also controls hunger more readily than other types of diets. Contrary to popular belief, insulin is not the most potent hunger-stimulating hormone. Actually, insulin’s role in stimulating hunger is poorly understood. The current theory involving insulin (as explained in South Beach, Atkins and other soures) lacks conclusive evidence. A newly discovered hormone, ghrelin, stimulates hunger more than any other. When ghrelin levels are high, hunger rises and when levels fall, so do the cravings. Carbohydrates cause a crash in ghrelin levels immediately after a meal, delivering a feeling of satisfaction, but a carb-based diet also causes ghrelin to spike between meals making hunger extremely powerful. The ultralow-carb diet avoids this problem by keeping ghrelin levels under control—levels are never too high and most often low. The other major problem when dieting is the plunge in metabolic rate, which is also partially avoided with the ultralow-carb diet. Your basal metabolic rate—the rate at which your body burns energy when resting—slowly falls on an ultralow-carb diet instead of plummeting within the first CD E A Good Start 35 week, as occurs with typical diets. Regrettably, problems with leptin levels falling still persist and metabolism will drop. Of paramount importance is finding some way to avoid these two problems or those fat cells will never empty. And if they do, a plateau will quickly develop. The real trick is finding some way to preserve or even increase metabolism and levels of fat burning hormones like leptin. Resolving this problem not only guarantees ongoing fat loss, but also makes a rebound unlikely. A Painful Epiphany Having just completed my Master’s work in Physics, I decided to try my first bodybuilding contest. This wasn’t my first attempt at getting into contest shape. Several times before, diet and exercise were combined in the hopes of seeing my abdominal muscles. All prior attempts ended in failure—no diet had ever worked as advertised. I began to believe my body would always be against me. So, this was my last ditch effort. At the time, the only diet with any promise of dropping my body fat levels to minimum was the ultralow-carb diet. Other amateur bodybuilders chose a low-fat, ultralow-carb diet, but my research showed that higher levels of fat are important. Research at the medical library also supported the promise of saving as much muscle as possible during the weight loss. I’d tried it once before without success. This time I convinced myself it would work. I ate nothing but eggs, ground beef, chicken, cheeses, and oils. Sticking to the diet became difficult after the first week, but I continued for five more. Then, late one night, I had a run in F The Carb Nite Solution 36 with a couple of dozen donuts. I still remember the smell of those warm, freshly made Krispy Kremes® as I slipped into a mindless feeding frenzy. Within minutes, 20 donuts disappeared. Shortly after emerging from the zombie-like state, I found myself curled in the fetal position. Prior to falling asleep—or maybe passing out—I moaned from the stomachache. The next morning I collected myself and recommitted to preparing for the bodybuilding competition. I noticed a little bloating, otherwise the damage looked minor. I returned to my regimen of meats, cheeses and oils. By the next day there were no signs of the donut disaster. On the third morning a rush of excitement hit. The first ever appearance of my abs made it clear, I was ahead of schedule—farther than I’d ever dreamed. I repeated a less painful variation of the donut disaster once a week to achieve the chiseled physique needed to win the contest. The Carb Nite Solution was born. Over the next couple of years, I invested the majority of my time researching why this worked. In the process, the diet has been highly refined—nearly perfected. And it turned out to be simpler than ever imagined and held further surprises. click “Download Now” button below to End of Free Chapters... Obtain the Complete Version Carb Back-Loading Manual For Total Body Fat Control John Kiefer, MS ™ Disclaimer The Content presented herein is for informational purposes only and intended for use by adults capable of understanding the Content and capable of seeking medical advice from appropriately licensed professionals when necessary or appropriate. Although I have researched various topics extensively and attempted to organize numerous issues associated with diet and exercise in a clarifying manner, the Content is not intended as a substitute for professional medical input or action. Always seek the advice of a qualified health provider regarding a medical condition or your ability to apply the Content in a safe manner. Please never disregard professional medical advice or fail to seek it in a timely manner because of something you have read anywhere, including here. vi Contents Get Started Now! xii About the Author xiv Acknowledgements xvi Section I Introduction Chapter 1 The Ultimate Drug 4 Chapter 2 Catalyst 8 Chapter 3 Cliff Notes: Carb Back-Loading 14 Chapter 4 Modulated Tissue Response 16 Chapter 5 Always Improving 20 Section I Essential Points 22 Section II Bricks Chapter 6 Controversy 26 Chapter 7 Insulin: The eXtreme Growth Agent 28 Chapter 8 Carbs to Burn 30 Carb Back-Loading Chapter 9 Glucose Transport 32 Chapter 10 Why So Sensitive? 36 Chapter 11 Sensitivity, It Varies 38 Chapter 12 Exercise a Little Control 40 Section II Essential Points 44 Section III Mortar Chapter 13 Some Assembly Required 48 Chapter 14 Best Breakfast Ever—None 50 Chapter 15 Eat At Night 52 Chapter 16 No Carbs, No Problems 56 Chapter 17 The Sweet Spot 58 Chapter 18 16 oz Carb Curls, Post-Training 64 Chapter 19 Slam the Carbs 66 Chapter 20 Highly Inefficient Design 70 Section III Essential Points 76 Section IV Aftermarket Add-Ons Chapter 21 High Performance Tuning 80 Chapter 22 Omega-3s 82 Chapter 23 Medium Chain Triglycerides 86 Chapter 24 High-Insulinotropic Carbs 88 viii Chapter 25 Whey Isolate 90 Chapter 26 Hydrolysates 94 Chapter 27 Leucine 96 Chapter 28 Caffeine 100 Chapter 29 Creatine 104 Section IV Essential Points 108 Section V What To Do Chapter 30 Tell Me How, Hold the Details 112 Chapter 31 Strength Accumulation & Density Bulking 114 Chapter 32 Preparation Phase 116 Chapter 33 Upon Waking 120 Chapter 34 Low-Carb Mealtimes 122 Chapter 35 Pre-Training 130 Chapter 36 Intra-Training 132 Chapter 37 Post-Training 136 Chapter 38 Carb Loading Mealtimes 140 Chapter 39 Before Bed 144 Chapter 40 Off-Days 146 Chapter 41 All Day Supplementation 150 Section V Essential Points 152 Carb Back-Loading Section VI Nobody’s Perfect Chapter 42 Customize 156 Chapter 43 Training Fasted 158 Chapter 44 Middle Training 162 Chapter 45 Late Night Sessions 164 Section VI Essential Points 166 Section VII Dos and Don’ts Chapter 46 Everybody Needs Advice 170 Chapter 47 Don’t Be a Fat Kid 172 Chapter 48 Gluten Allergies 174 Chapter 49 Don’t Let Training Derail You 176 Chapter 50 Cardio 180 Chapter 51 Gender Differences 184 Section VII Essential Points 186 Section VIII Experiences Chapter 52 Case Study: Jay DeMayo 190 Chapter 53 Professionals 196 x Chapter 54 Everyday Success Stories 206 Section IX Appendix Appendix A FAQs 216 Appendix B Ultra-Low Carb Vegetables 222 Appendix C Carb-Needs Calculators 224 Appendix D Pre Carb-Mealtimes Macro Calculator 230 Appendix E Sample Days 238 Section X References Carb Back-Loading xii Get Started Now! Read Essentials: p22, 44, 76, 108, 152, 166 & 186. Read the FAQs, p216. Determine carb needs, p224. Determine protein and fat needs, p230. Read attached sample diet plans (see Appendix E) Get Jacked! Carb Back-Loading xiv About the Author KIEFER WARNING: He goes only by Kiefer John Kiefer is a highly sought after training and nutrition consultant. To guide his work, he has read over 40,000 medical research papers covering various facets of human biology. His extensive knowledge of human nutrition and performance is tempered by 15 years of experience applying, observing and refining his methodology. Kiefer holds two B.A.s (Mathematics and Physics) from Otterbein College and a Master’s of Science in Physics from the University of Florida. He published his first diet book for radical fat loss, The Carb Nite® Solution, in 2005, which can be found at http://www.CarbNite.com. He is currently an advisor to Muscle&Fitness and Men’s Fitness magazines and his clientele includes world-record powerlifters, internationally ranked fitness competitors, CEOs and recreational athletes who want super-human results without the super-human torture. Find more of Kiefer’s work at http://DangerouslyHardcore.com. Carb Back-Loading xvi Acknowledgements I want to thank: Brian Carroll for trying out a crazy new diet from a crazy physicist and spreading the word once he realized I’m not a hack; Bob Ihlenfeldt for his honest impression of the first version of this book, which was that he hated it, he hated me and hated Carb Back- Loading—luckily, that meant he thought it was pretty good; Naomi Most for helping keep me and DH.com organized so I could finish this book; Caroline Gick for helping out in a pinch; And everyone else who made this project possible. Carb Back-Loading Section I INTRODUCTION Section I: Introduction Carb Back-Loading 4 Chapter 1 The Ultimate Drug Carbs are a drug. As with any drug, knowledge of effects—and side effects—is the only way to guarantee the right outcome. Drugs often hit the market before all the effects show, leaving consumers scrambling for answers, alternatives and adjuncts. Carbs share this trait, having become a part of the human diet millennia ahead of our capacity to understand their full influence. Years of ignorance left a trail of recommendations prepackaged with folk-lore, hearsay and guesswork as to what type to eat, when to eat and what, exactly, their role in the body is. This common-sense approach to carb inclusion ranges from eating carbs first thing in the morning, to cycling them; some people go anabolic—eating carbs just on the weekend—and still others have just one Carb Nite® a week. But only recently have people started eating their carbs at night. Oh that’s right, Oprah’s trainer says don’t eat them at night. As a matter of fact, don’t eat anything at night. That’d just be dumb according to the supposed experts. There’s nothing to gain but fat. Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if a pepperoni pizza before bed—the whole pizza—could cause fat loss and make muscles grow. Stop right there, they say; that’s crazy talk. Section I: Introduction Carb Back-Loading Admittedly, not everyone’s concerned about their carbs, as some people eat them at-will without affecting strength, muscle mass or waistline. The rest of us, unfortunately, need to control the starchy dinners and sugary sweets. Pancakes for breakfast; sure and how about a serving of moobs—man boobs for the un-indoctrinated—in a few weeks to go with it. For those who don’t need to worry, the pancakes won’t matter, nor will ice cream or pasta or even post-workout nutrition. They’re freaks. Most of us seethe over the inequity of it because despite how carbs cause body fat stores to bulge, carbs spark muscular growth too. Forget the sweet savory taste, forget how they turn a boring slab of breast meat into chicken and dumplings—growing huge rounded shoulders, sculpted pecs and massive quads requires carbs. They’re a means to an end. Most people need the carbs to approach the realm of freakiness, but on the way, fat accumulates and hides the hard work. That’s what carbs do, they make things grow. They make lots of things grow like fat cells and muscle cells. Carbs don’t discriminate. The solution: limit the carbs, cut them out or cycle them in some way. It’s not fun going sans carbs and even less fun going months without, only to lose some of the muscle and strength gained along the way. We can do better. That’s what this book is about. Forget about the constant cycle of bulking up, leaning down, bulking again, leaning down and so on, taking one step backward for every two steps forward. It’s time to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. An extra 100 pounds of body fat is not a prerequisite, either. Starting at a typical low-20’s The Utimate Drug 6 body fat percentage, anyone can gain muscle, strength and maybe even good looks while dropping into the sub-15% body fat range and lower. No magical supplements or crazy food combinations needed; it’s as easy as pie…literally. I don’t live in a vacuum and know that these promises float around the internet like fairy dust, and they’re about as real too. The empty promises only empty the wallet. Yet gurus everywhere chant the mythical formula: gain muscle and lose fat at the same time with ease. Hell, the cover accompanying my article in the May 2011 Muscle&Fitness advertised Carb Back-Loading as The Holy Grail of Dieting. Had I been a typical reader, I would have been skeptical, as were the magazine editors when I first discussed it with them— until they tried it. And loved it. I'm not going to convince anyone to read further or to rush to the checkout counter for those flipping these pages in the bookstore. I'm not going to say, I’m awesome, trust me. I won’t even mention how stupid-simple the program is and how anyone can get results with only half-assed effort. But I will issue a warning: if you keep reading, the excitement and impatience to achieve the physique of your dreams—or your significant-other’s dreams—will overwhelm. Knowledge is power; after reading this book, you’ll be omnipotent. Section I: Introduction Carb Back-Loading 8 Chapter 2 Catalyst Every diet worth its salt has an origin story, some reason the thing exists in the first place, the catalyst. Most of the time, it's fabricated, a lot of marketing with a smidgen of personal history for authenticity. Carb Back-Loading’s origin story is nothing of the kind. I invented it twenty years ago when a group of military scientists drafted me to become part of black-ops human enhancement project with the ultimate goal of... Wait a second. That's not what happened at all. I've been spending too much time on the Internet again. If no super-soldier origin story exists, then how did an average guy from Podunk, Indiana come up with what everyone's chased for years? Simple: I was a fat kid. A very smart, very tenacious, very self- conscious fat kid. The details bore the paint off the walls, and there’s no reason to share them, so here’s the short of it: my parents fed me breakfast cereal, pop tarts and coca-cola, I grew moobs, students made fun of me, my gym teacher made fun of me, I started working out and it changed my life—sort of. Training brought strength, muscle and a Section I: Introduction Carb Back-Loading definite change in my physique, but I was still doughy. I wanted jacked and I wanted ripped. My diet needed help. Hell, my family taught me that washing down a grilled cheese sandwich with ketchup packets constituted a healthy lunch. Grains, dairy and vegetables: what more could a guy need? The fact that I believed it is embarrassing enough, but the physique it created was more so. The epiphany took time, but I did realize that maybe my family—and their trouble with their own weight—hindered me rather than helped. I did what any science- minded youth would do, I hit the books. This was before the Internet, so I literally hit the books. I quickly learned that the books weren’t any better than my parents because none of them could produce the results I wanted. Maintaining muscle while leaning down seemed beyond the knowledge of the most famous diet writers. And forget about getting shredded. The first serious reduction in my body fat came with my near religious dedication to—in my opinion—the first legitimate attempt at harnessing the drug-like potential of carbs, Dr. Mauro DiPasquale’s, The Anabolic Diet. This was back in 1995 when science still didn’t know about things like ghrelin, leptin, nutrient- activated protein synthesis channels and the function of glucose and fatty acid transporters, but we were discovering new things every day. The Renaissance had started and Dr. DiPasquale took advantage of the emerging information, filling gaps with his experience. The Anabolic Diet didn’t take me all the way, however, and I definitely didn’t gain muscle, even when I tried the bulking phase. Catalyst 10 But I didn’t gain body fat either, I lost it—exclusively. For the first time in my life, I didn't have love handles. That was a long time ago. Discoveries built upon discoveries, growing faster than all but the most diligent—and geeky—could keep up with, and now, even they can’t ingest the deluge quickly enough. Everybody and their brother learned that to become successful in the fitness world took no real knowledge at all: throw out a few buzzwords, promise a quick-six-pack or eight minutes to a sexy figure and spew random opinions about health on the Web and success would follow. Who could have guessed that a Renaissance would bring the Dieting Dark Ages that exist today? I couldn’t take it anymore. The tallest boots I found still didn’t reach high enough to avoid getting splattered with pseudo-knowledge exrement. I devised The Carb Nite® Solution, an ultra-low carb diet that includes a night of almost literal binging on carbs: pizza, donuts, pasta, cupcakes, pretzels, popcorn, etc. I spent a ridiculous amount of time researching the human body to refine Carb Nite® to cause massive fat loss without a loss of muscle tissue and without devastating metabolism in the process. No excrement necessary. I’m not here to talk about Carb Nite, though, because it has one fatal flaw: it doesn’t allow much muscle growth unless starting off portly. A few years ago, I found myself engineering software for a large company, glued to my chair for some 80 hours per week. I didn’t train, I didn’t eat well and it showed. My body reverted to its true fat-kid nature, not only in function—because of all the shit I ate— but also in form. I felt and looked disgusting. Section I: Introduction Carb Back-Loading Not a big deal. I quit my job, decided to build a business for myself, trained my ass off and followed Carb Nite with the blind dedication I once had for The Anabolic Diet. In no time, I dropped 20 lbs of fat, was shredded, vascular, freaky and lifting big. But as short of a time as it took to get back to normal, I became frustrated. I was stuck at normal. I didn’t want to be just shredded, I wanted to get huge again, back to my 230 when I was cut and jacked, before diving full-time into the software world. No matter how much I ate, even the addition of a second Carb Nite per week, my muscle mass didn’t budge. What did happen? I stayed shredded, felt exhausted most of the time and started accumulating injuries. Know the song Baby Got Back, by Sir Mix-a-Lot? One-hit wonder without a doubt and I believe he still performs Baby Got Back at some of the more progressive Bar Mitzvahs. Diet writers are like this too: one-hit wonders who keep peddling an out-of-date product. They don’t realize, or refuse to realize, that science learns more each day and we’d be wise to take lessons, adapt and prosper. That’s why I’m always poring over research. Maybe it’s a strength routine to correct scoliosis, maybe it’s about cellular receptor sites like the mammalian target of rapamycin, or maybe epigenetics and why all those pop tarts as a kid screwed up how my genes express, making it easier to stay and get fat. On the day of the epiphany that sparked the creation of Carb Back-Loading, I was reading papers about using resistance training to help type II diabetics control their blood sugar. Catalyst 12 This might seem like an odd topic to inspire the creation of the Holy Grail of Dieting, but that’s where it started. I’ll explain with more detail later, but basically, in type II diabetes the cells of the body no longer react to insulin and, therefore, can’t absorb sugar. After resistance training, however, the muscles of diabetic subjects can absorb and burn sugar without increasing their sensitivity to insulin. This set off a cascade of thoughts and a new research focus. Before I explain why and how it works, maybe I should first tell you how to do it. Section I: Introduction Carb Back-Loading 14 Chapter 3 Carb Back-Loading: The Cliff Notes Carb Back-Loading runs contrary to about everything out there. It bucks many established norms. Many of these norms grew from a time before a deep understanding of human metabolism and performance existed, making some of the most common truths no more than anecdote. Take breakfast’s place as the most important meal of day in health folklore, or the idea to eat most calories before evening or even ensuring that the first meal of the day needs to be carby and fatless. Not a single one of these can be established as fact. It’s not because scientists never researched the topics. They have. That’s how I know they’re not fact; the research shows that none of these ideas is true. Carb Back-Loading snubs all three of these recommendations and does so because of the existing research, not because I want to be a contrarian. Back-Loading does, however, also complement many lifestyles. Even with these seemingly thrown-in-for-convenience rules, I base the prescription on science rather than marketability. What results is an easy, ridiculously effective plan. Section I: Introduction Carb Back-Loading Carb Back-Loading Cliff Notes 1. Shift calories to later in the day, eating lighter in the morning and early afternoon, and feast at night. This may include skipping breakfast. 2. Keep carbs at an absolute minimum throughout the day until training. 3. Train in the afternoon, at around 5pm or so. 4. Start ingesting carbs after your training session, up to 30 minutes later. 5. Continue eating carbs throughout the night. That’s all there is to it. It may seem too good to be true, that I designed this simply to sell, but it's how the body works. Eat bacon and eggs, maybe a chicken salad, a few nuts, cottage cheese, a hamburger patty with a tomato and some mustard—fat and protein with some fiber—before training. Train in the evening, say from 5 to 6:30, then start slamming the carbs. When I say slam, I mean slam. Pizza, French fries, donuts, sandwiches, ice cream, whatever, as long as there’s carbs involved. 16 Chapter 4 Modulated Tissue Response (MTR™) To the less astute, Carb Back-Loading may look like normal nutrient timing: eat carbs post training, end of story. But this misses the point—it misses the whole target. The mechanisms that allow Carb Back-Loading to build muscle while simultaneously losing fat with ease depend on daily biological rhythms, bio- molecular manipulation and, unlike most diet protocols, a specific window of time in which training should occur. One of the guidelines is to train in the afternoon. Back-Loading accommodates other training times while remaining simple but, as I explain later in the book, the best results will come with an optimum training schedule. The reason is a principle I call Modulated Tissue Response™, or MTR. It may sound complicated or esoteric, but the gist is not. MTR describes the process by which we give each tissue of the body a specific instruction, either through diet, activity or both. Understanding the interaction of food, exercise, and daily rhythms gives control over any aspect of the body, from health to performance or simply aesthetics. MTR makes getting and staying ripped stupid-simple, or it can make dropping even a few pounds of fat impossible. Section I: Introduction Carb Back-Loading I am not going to tell a story involving post-WWII Bulgarian research that defines the principles of MTR. Not until the last decade have experimental methods existed to develop targeted procedures of body-manipulation. Sure, we knew the basics: eat too much and get fat, train enough and get muscular—but everything in between was a crap shoot and created an industry of pet-programs without basis in science and often without real-world results. Any rationale—illogical or not—was enough to convince the desperate. Hope fostered an unscrupulous industry of shit-slingers. MTR utilizes the latest research to target and manipulate biomolecular signals to achieve any goal with the least possible effort. If I could choose a tagline, it would be work smarter, not harder. This bleeding-edge research allowed the creation of the soon-to-be-released Shockwave Protocols that integrate training and diet for maximum results toward various goals. Carb Back- Loading forms an integral component of the protocols. Everyone, every day utilizes MTR. Look at the typical American, the result of undirected MTR. The lack of activity tells the body to lose muscle and bone, to waste and weaken; the standard desk- posture tells the trapezius muscles to enervate and lengthen and pecs and front delts to shorten and tighten; eating carbs while being inactive signals fat cells to multiply and expand; and because they give the body far more calories than it needs, it becomes diabetic, the body’s last attempt to prevent the addition of more body fat. Understanding MTR makes one thing clear: sole responsibility for how the body looks and functions lies with the owner. On the other hand, even a little direction creates huge change. Training gives muscles the signal to grow, redirecting the growth Modulated Tissue Response (MTR) 18 signals produced by eating food. Lift heavy weights, eat carbs and protein and muscles expand and strengthen, which in turn strengthens bones and increases nervous system efficiency. But the carbs give fat cells the instruction to grow as well. The side effect is expanding fat mass along with muscle mass. Our signaling is still 100% anabolic. Of course the signaling should be anabolic; growth requires anabolic signals. That’s exactly what anabolic means, stimulating tissue to grow. Catabolic, a word loathed in the health and fitness community, means to destroy tissue. Testosterone is anabolic for muscle tissue; estrogen is anabolic for fat tissue. Insulin is anabolic for muscle and fat tissue; cortisol is anabolic for fat tissue and catabolic for muscle tissue, but, depending on conditions, can be catabolic for fat tissue instead. The list of actions goes on and on. The short of it: hormones and other signals set the thermostat to grow or shrink based on a large set of complicated interactions. Manipulate these signals and transform the body. Even medication plays a part. Think about it: 100 years ago the average person needed to exert an incredible amount of effort to reach 300 lbs, but now that food science and the drug industry have mastered the correct signaling process for unlimited fat mass, we longer need to pay a nickel to see the fat man or woman at the carnival. Sit in front of Walmart and watch as 300-plus pounders stream by in herds. MTR, however, does not and cannot define one perfect diet, as many experts and authors like to assert about their plans. These experts pick up a single fact or study—or worse, an unfounded personal belief—and push it as the only option. There are no alternatives, they say, but what they mean is that they know little Section I: Introduction Carb Back-Loading about the human body. They may know one diet and its effects, and the rudimentary knowledge to defend it, but take them from their sweet spot, and they're clueless. No absolute best diet exists; no absolute best diet exists for anyone, but there is an absolute best diet at a specific time for a specific goal. This makes the principles of MTR invaluable by offering the opportunity to fine-tune the body through diet and training to meet any need at any moment. Acquiring the knowledge—not just a collection of facts, but experience applying the information—to competently invoke MTR takes a massive commitment, the time for which few have. But don’t worry, my job is understanding MTR and describing how to use it. In this book, I teach a specific method of combining MTR principles—Carb Back-Loading—to enhance performance and aesthetics. You can use the content as a synergistic-whole or dissect it, decompose it and reassemble it for other purposes. Each section contains enough information to bend the MTR methods to your needs if your needs are different than wanting to look and perform like a super hero. 20 Chapter 5 Always Improving The Version 1.0 on the cover of a performance oriented nutritional guide might seem odd. I designated this book Version 1.0, not because I engineer software—well, it obviously has something to do with that—but because any nutritional protocol claiming to be the bleeding edge needs to adapt quickly as new research unfolds and as the author gathers more experience. As such, the old publishing model of first edition, five years on the shelf, second edition, five years on the shelf and so on is defunct and for human performance manuals detrimental. As limiting as this old-style procedure may be, it is mimicked by online ebook publishers. Adopting antiquated systems is not my style. I like to forge new paths, so I decided to do the same here. In the software world companies release the best product available at the time, then make improvements as rapidly as possible. They designate each release thereafter with versions, minor revisions or additions being labeled by a 1.1 or 1.2 and major revisions—new editions in old-speak— being labeled 2.0, 3.0, etc. I made this mistake with my first published book, The Carb Nite Solution, and now after five years, I feel I could have been adding Section I: Introduction Carb Back-Loading periodic refinements, producing an exceptional manual. The information it contains is still cutting-edge and, most importantly, it works better than its competitors. But it's no longer bleeding-edge. As I incorporate newer information and add alterations based on mounting experience, I will release new versions as warranted, and for those of you jumping onto the ground floor with Version 1.0, each minor upgrade will cost little; and each major upgrade will be steeply discounted. 278f2ce47c5558b287daf6ba2478cfe64nkebikbtwbz01nl 22 Section I Essential Points Carb Back-Loading Cliff Notes 1. Shift calories to later in the day, eating lighter in the morning and early afternoon, and feast at night. This may include skipping breakfast. 2. Keep carbs at an absolute minimum throughout the day until training. 3. Train in the afternoon, at around 5pm or so. 4. Start ingesting carbs after your training session, up to 30 minutes later. 5. Continue eating carbs throughout the night. Modulated Tissue Response (MTR)™ The ability to select which tissues grow and which shrink, e.g. growing muscle while losing fat. Section I: Introduction Carb Back-Loading 24 Section II BRICKS Section II: Bricks Carb Back-Loading 26 Chapter 6 Controversy Carbs cause controversy. While the health experts and celebrity doctors battle over whether humans need carbs to survive—we don't—the more performance minded nutrition experts ponder an intelligent question: how best can we use carbs to achieve various goals? Science has yet to answer this question for all the various athletic scenarios. Researchers drag trusted assumptions, like the dependence of endurance training success on carbohydrates, into the laboratory for verification and discover that the assumptions were worthless. Deeper exploration of the carb conundrum reveals that carbs impart little benefit except when used in precise, timed fashion. For endurance, achieving maximum performance does not require carbs during the training phase; but for peak performance at the event, the body needs carbs. Precision is key. To reach that level of precision, however, the simple ideas handed down through the years about food, particularly carbs and insulin, need to be modified and sometimes abandoned. With all the discusson about sugar and insulin in the media, it might appear that I'm wasting time talking about the two. Turn on the TV, fire up Dr. Oz and listen to how simple it sounds: eat carbs, the carbs cause a rise in insulin levels and then the insulin pushes the carbs into cells Section II: Bricks Carb Back-Loading for energy. Throw in a little type II diabetes and the cells just don't listen to insulin and then sugar floats around in the bloodstream doing nothing. For the average person who needs to lose 50 to 100 lbs of pure fat and is probably only a week away from full-blown diabetes, this explanation is good enough. But if you're 15% body fat, want to gain 30 lbs of pure muscle and maybe lose a few percentage points of body fat along the way, you need to know more than 6th-grade basics. 28 Chapter 7 Insulin: The eXtreme Growth Agent Most people with whom I work don't fully understand the function of insulin. From the information spewed all over the web by the current cavalcade of health gurus, I know why: many of the experts don't quite get it either. In the health industry—to distinguish from the scientific community—people see insulin like lighter fluid. Sugar is fuel. Hose it down with a little insulin and a roaring inferno ensues. This is not the case. Insulin’s main function in the body is anabolic: it wants to build stuff. That’s why insulin rules amongst the anabolic elite: it makes everything grow from muscle mass, fat mass and even glycogen, which is essentially human starch. Insulin, however, has no real plan about how to build anything, nor does it participate directly. Its job—the most critical in any building project—is to transport raw material. Insulin alerts cells to the presence of material and gets them ready to absorb. This goes for everything from blood sugar to cholesterol molecules1. Most cells can absorb these raw materials to some extent without insulin, but insulin turbocharges the process, which I’ll explain later. A host of factors determines how cells use the raw material, but if more material flows in than the cell needs, it’s going to store it Section II: Bricks Carb Back-Loading as something: triaglycerol (fat), glycogen or even muscle tissue (of which there is a type that’s made for storing protein and is essentially non-functional). Insulin does seem to know which material should be used first, however. That’s why when insulin’s around, not only is it anabolic, but it’s greatly anti-catabolic. It can stop muscle protein breakdown2—which is good—but it also stops the body from releasing and burning fat3. When insulin levels drop, however, fat burning goes through the roof4. When insulin is high, it increases the efficiency of fat storage—insulin makes storing fat easier for the body5. Eating carbs with all 6 to 8 of the traditional every-two-hour meals tells the body that if there’s excess material, do something with it. Protein, sure, is going to be used for tissue repair and growth, enzyme and hormone production and so on. Fat, well, excess fat will get stored as fat. For carbs, if glycogen levels are full—which they normally are—fat cells convert the excess to fat before storing it away. The point: don’t think you need super-elevated levels of insulin 24/7. You don’t. It’s extremely useful to elevate insulin levels at times, and detrimental at others. Carb Back-Loading is the easiest way to optimize your eating and training schedule so that insulin is always targeting the correct tissues while not interfering with fat burning. 30 Chapter 8 Carbs to Burn Throughout this book I make reference to low-carb portions of the day and yet meal plans located later in book contain lots of vegetable suggestions like lettuce, asparagus, some tomatoes, olives, cucumbers and so on. Without clarification this may seem oxymoronic. It’s not. What doesn’t make sense is using chemists' classifications for carbohydrates instead of a modern system that recognizes effects on the endocrine system. From the body’s point of view, only two types of carb exist: usable carbs and fiber. Carbs, in general, as is well known, cause a release of insulin, get burned in lieu of fat, augment blood sugar levels and get stored as fat. This last condition occurs when eating more than the body needs at that moment, as I alluded in the previous chapter. These burnable, fat-inducing carbs include sugar, starch, glycerine and sugar alcohols—also called polyol—and make up what I term usable carbs. Fiber, however, doesn’t do any of these things and often does the opposite. The only way for the body to get energy from fiber is through fermentation in the colon1. The result of the fermentation is not sugar or alcohol, but short chain fatty acids. Fiber—a
