I must admit before I share this information. I've been trainer for more than 20 years. Looking back, I have preached information that was not correct, based on physiology, and trained and coached client based on trend and fads.
When starting as a novice trainer, I thought experienced trainers have figured everything out and know everything about health. But more I learn and educate myself with what really happens to human body with diet and exercise, I've learned that majorityof trainers, even the popular ones, have not figured things out and following what I have preached long ago. Most likely, that is why we are not seeing much results, nation wide.
Over the years, I had to revisited and relearned, all of the physiological and biomechanical components to understand the foundation of human body, and continuing to do so even now, so that I will not be fascinated by fads or trends. I've used to say that Master's degree didn't teach me anything but now I know that they have taught me almost everything. What I didn't do was applying them to improve my knowledge.
It is very interesting to witness how nutrition and dietary guidelines has gotten so confused to the point even government and medical professionals does not know how to correct the wrong. When you look at 2015-2020 Dietary Guideline(1), it is suggesting to go fat free and allowing to consume 10% of added sugar. Which means, if you are following 2000 calorie diet, you can have 50g of added sugar a day or more than 8lb per year, which is enough to lead you to obesity, diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer. Surprisingly, this information has not been changed since 1980. It has been improving but not quite there yet to the point where guideline can help reverse the health of U.S. population.
Great news is there is a movement happening that group of medical, nutritional, and physiological researchers are getting together to bring out the truth. I'm just here to share some information to be a part of that trigger.
Eating Habit Myth 1: You should eat more frequent meal but in smaller portion to lose fat.
If you've had dietary coaching, you may have heard of the advice where you should be consuming 4-6 small meals a day to be lean and fit. Sadly, this does not work. On average, U.S. population eat between 6-11 meals per day. Because the insulin spikes every time you eat food and can last for 2-3 hours before it settles down, consuming suggested 6 meals per day means insulin is at elevated state for 12-18 hours. Which means, insulin level is low only when sleeping.
The diagram on right (2) is the study done with smartphone app, where they click the button every time the subject eats. And it looks like from the time when they wake up to sleep, they hardly stop eating. No wonder obesity and diabetes are skyrocket. However, I cannot blame people since they are following what they were suggested. I even suggested strongly to my past clients (I'm so sorry), to eat frequent meal because every other trainers said so. Any success with it? Yes, they didn't lose weight and I had to train them harder to maintain weight.
Eating Habit Myth 2: If we don't eat, we have no energy.
Food is our source for energy. There is no doubt about it. But when it comes to energy, our body is smart enough to store excess energy from food source in a form of fat. When we eat, regardless of what we eat, the insulin will be secreted. How much insulin would be secreted may vary from type of food we consume, however, insulin level ｓ still will be elevated.
So what is the role of insulin? Simply put, insulin has a role to store. Initially, food energy is stored in a form of glycogen in liver and muscles. After a while, if the energy has not been used, then stored in a form of fat.
Majority of times people, even athlete has at least 3% body fat. What does that mean? Let's say someone weighs 150lb with 3% body fat. This person will have 4.5lb of fat or more than 18,000 calorie worth of energy. If you have metabolism of 3000 calories per day, you can last for 6 days without any food.
There actually a record of fasting done for 382 days with only water and supplement. This gentlemen went from 456lb to 180lb. It is not something I would recommend, however, it shows that we can use our stored energy without consuming additional food as energy source.
Eating Habit Myth 3: Eat less, move more
This probably is the number one suggestion for weight or fat loss that you may have heard. But how is that working? Studies have shown that calorie restriction diet accompanied with increased in exercise is proven to fail. In other words, "eat less move more" does not work. Data to the left (4) is from study done with about 50,000 postmenopausal women over 7.5 years with about 360 calorie restriction. As the results shows, there is no significant change in weight. It seems to drop in the first year, however, weight seems to bounce back to their original weight and they are not gaining muscle mass though "professionals" argue it is muscle gain. There are numbers of studies have proven that calorie restriction diet does not work but doctors, trainers, nutritionists are still insisting on performing calorie restricted diet to improve the health and weight of their clients and patients.
Just to be clear, people are not failing because they are not following the advice, but the failing because of following the advice. People failed on their diet because they've followed the advice that does not work and has been proven to not work. Joslin's Diabetes Mellitus (2005) states "reduction of caloric intake is the cornerstone of any therapy of diabetes, however, none of these approaches has any proven merit". In other words, "we know it does not work but we are going to recommend it". Does that make any sense?
One of the reason why it does not work is because of metabolic adaptation. When you go through calorie restriction, the body will match with what reduction you will be going with. So if you reduce calorie by 30%, the metabolic rate will also reduced by 30%. This means, less energy, less heat, less productivity and so on. Ancel Key's study in The Biology of Human Starvation proved that 500 calorie reduction decreased the resting metabolic rate by 40% with heart stroke volume (amount of blood the heart can pump out in 1 beat) by 20%.
Eating Habit Myth 4: Only way to control hunger is to eat less but more frequent.
When going through weight loss, many will experience a battle with hunger. Because of the hunger not being able to manage, experts have suggested to eat more frequently with smaller meal to maintain caloric restriction. Well, from Myth 3 we've identified that calorie restriction does not work.
So how do we control hunger? Hunger is nothing to do with your will power because it is physiological response of you body. Hunger signal is coming from hormone called ghrelin. Depending on you eating habit, ghrelin will respond to let you know that it is time to eat. So let's say for example that you are used to eat 3 times per day and convert yourself to eat 6 meals per day because your trainer, doctor or nutritionist advised you to do so. After few weeks of following the advise, the ghrelin will also adapt to your meal frequency and spike as the time get closer. This is why, not eating for majority of U.S. population is so hard.
It is important to know that being hungry is ok and it is just your hormone responding to your past habit. It can be retrained but may require 2-4 weeks depending on how well your body responds.
We all have experienced this. You were supposed to eat lunch at 12pm but the work got busy and was not able to eat. Then 4pm came and you were hungry again but you need to attend meeting so you couldn't eat again. At 8pm you were finally able to sit to eat but you were only able to eat only few more food than usual instead of making up for extra one meal.
Hunger is just a response and it is not a sign of starvation.
Eating Habits Myth 5: If I don't eat my metabolism decrease.
If you are on diet and exercising at the same time, you may hear something like "if you are not eating, your metabolism will be slower". Well, the study shows otherwise and understanding of hormones will also help you understand.
First let's think about insulin and glucagon. Insulin and glucagon secretes in pancreas. They have complete opposite characteristics. Insulin, as mentioned before, has a job of storing energy. Glucagon on the other hand has responsibility of using energy. Interesting thing is, they do not work together. Meaning, when one is working, other is at rest. So when insulin is working, glucagon is not working at all. Therefore, when you eat, insulin is at work and glucagon is not. When the insulin is calmed down after few hours of meal, then the glucagon starts working.
Let's put this into metabolism. When insulin is working, the body is working on storing the food energy. Therefore, the metabolism will be lower because the body is not in the mode to use energy. On the other hand, if the glucagon is working, the metabolism will be higher because the body wants to use energy.
Let's get more practical. When you are eating, the insulin is increased, therefore the metabolism is lower. When you are not eating and insulin is calmed down, glucagon will be active, and metabolism is higher. This is why we do not need to worry about starving to death when we sleep for 6-8 hours.
Study has found that after 22 days of alternate fasting, resting metabolic rate was increased by 10%(7).
Eating Habit Myth 6: Women response to hunger differently.
This is actually correct but I need to add more to this. Women's metabolic response is not too far from men. However, hormonal response can be more significant than men. When it comes to hunger, ghrelin response seems to be more radical compared to men (9). This may be one of the reason why, that the weight loss can be challenging for women. However, this does not mean that women can't train their hunger hormone, ghrelin. In fact, controlling meal frequency, including snack and desert, can help regulate their ghrelin and able to manage their weight more easier.
Cravings by the way is like an itch. If your kids have an itch what would you say? " Don't scratch it", right? Same thing for the hunger. Just because you sense hunger don't jump into conclusion that you are in need for food.
Eating Habit Myth 7: If you don't eat you will lose muscle.
If you are working out to increase you muscle mass or improve your metabolism, consistently eating food, may seem to be important to keep muscle mass. The study has shown otherwise. When you look at the data on left, you can see the initial muscle mass of the subject and the day 70 of fasting. There is no significant decrease in muscle mass, however, fat mass has decreased by about 5 kg (11lb).
From metabolic and muscle building standpoint, this is huge! Forget bulking or cutting phase!
So what is the point?
The point is, focusing on calorie restriction, although government or experts may advise you, it does not work. It is proven not to work, so why do it? What is more important is to manipulate your hormonal balance to make sure that they are working for you and not against you. Here is a dietary guideline.
Limit your caloric intake to 3 times per day.
It is ok to skip a meal and be hungry.
Eat until you are full, rather than meeting calorie requirement.
If something is working for you, don't change it.
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