February 26, 2009

In a newly released federal study that will appear in the New England Journal of Medicine, led by the Harvard School of Public Health, and and Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana you’ll read that the type of diet you’re on doesn’t matter at all.  So low carb, high protein, low-fat all work over time so long as you only watch the calories!

So basically what this article is saying, implying, or at a minimum, this is the perception it will create, is that if you starve yourself you’ll lose weight.

And they’re absolutely right.  If you starve yourself you’ll lose weight, and fast.  The research continues to support its position by showing the results of weight loss in several of the participants.  They all lost weight…amazing.  But what is really mind boggling is this research paper didn’t make a single mention of body composition, NOT ONE!

How can all of these very smart people completely ignore a simple body composition test?  Maybe all of the people tested lost more muscle than fat, that wouldn’t be good would it?  Maybe they are now thin and fat, with no metabolism and little strength.  How can that be healthy?

One of my favorite quotes comes from John Parrillo of Parrillo Performance in Cincinnati.  He always tells people attempting these silly low calorie, starvation diets to try replacing 1000 calories of cookies, cake and ice cream with chicken, vegetables and rice.  If it’s simply calories in and calories out they should both lose the same amount of fat, right?  WRONG!  In a single line, this entire piece of research can be tossed out because they didn’t even address fundamental body composition.

To lose weight effectively, you need to fuel your metabolism with calories that have little likelihood of converting to fat, like the ones we mentioned above.  You also need to eat about 5 small meals per day, which can be hard for busy individuals (that’s all of us).

To lose weight fast without killing your metabolism, we suggest switching to the documented “fat-burning fat”, called CapTri.  For meal substitutes we suggest any variety of Parrillo bars but would likely stick with the energy bars (graham cracker our favorite) to start.

Recommending super low calorie diets can be harmful because people will interpret that information differently.  It’s best to eat healthy, fat-burning foods throughout the day.  Just remember that 1000 calories is certainly low, but 1000 calories of cookies, cake and ice cream won’t help you lose weight!