Completely cutting out fats

[Joshua Naterman]

Ok I'll look for a dietician who specialises with athletes then see what they have to say.... Good to hear about it being reversible. Who would have thought eating could be so difficult to understand... Feels like it shoul be a simple as eat when hungry and eat lots of veggies some different meats

Once your metabolism is back to full speed, it kind of is that simple.

[Joshua Slocum]

simple eating is for commuter people, but your training to be a sports car. this type of thinking has made me suffer metabolically for years and only recently has been addressed to accomodate itself to the type of performance i am currently doing. having people like Josh around and lurking around the forums for new things to try is always a fun thing to do as well aside from reading organic chemistry

 

Simple eating is for you and me. Even a Lamborghini can run on just premium. "eat when hungry and eat lots of veggies some different meats" will probably get you about 90% of the way from an 'average' diet to a 'sport car' diet. I eat when I'm hungry, and eat mostly vegetables and meat. I follow a few other simple rules, but it would probably take only a paragraph to summarize the entirety of my diet plan. 

[Keilani Gutierrez]

Simple eating is for you and me. Even a Lamborghini can run on just premium. "eat when hungry and eat lots of veggies some different meats" will probably get you about 90% of the way from an 'average' diet to a 'sport car' diet. I eat when I'm hungry, and eat mostly vegetables and meat. I follow a few other simple rules, but it would probably take only a paragraph to summarize the entirety of my diet plan. 

 

when the quality of food on an island is limited to very rare organic plant matter, fast food exploding everywhere, i was only making a statement of thinking past traditional thinking in my perception of traditional. in your country there is a difference in culture which you are aware of and that is what make's you and I unique. I was speaking from my end of the outlook my culture has on the food pyramid and how i've had to radically change my thinking to match your standard average way of nutritionally thinking. 

[David Birchall]

God no. You need a certain amount of EFA's. Make sure you get them, at the very least. Studies show that it is a very bad idea to go under 20% fat OR over 60% carbs in your diet.

 

 

https://www.gymnasticbodies.com/forum/topic/7096-getting-lean-whilst-increasing-strength/?hl=+snacking%20+works%20+well%20+when%20+used

 

You said if you ate zero fat the fat would just come from your bodyfat and you could burn body fat and gain muscle at the same time.  Is that not what you meant here or has your stance now changed?:

 

 

 

Posted 13 January 2012 - 02:05 PM

I occasionally do the alternate day thing, but not right now. You figured it out, I just keep protein and carbs the same, and have zero fat.   Nothing to it. When I exercise I replace the % burned from carbs only. The end! Just make sure veggies are a part of those carbs!

 

and here:

 

10g/hour, preferably of whey, is what you really want for optimal results. Other than that, replace the carbs that you burn (both through your normal metabolism AND through exercise) and you will be fine. At my size, 160-ish g of protein is what I take in, along with about 300-400g of carbs. That's 620 calories from protein and 1200-1600 from carbs. The fat can come from my body fat, which it does, which is why I am consistently getting leaner and stronger and bigger. It really is that simple.

[Andrew Long]

I remember reading that a long time ago which is one of the reasons I brought this up. Although I couldn't remember where I read it.

[Joshua Naterman]

I simply find that by having the carbs and protein I need, and making sure I am getting a good 20% fat, I can have a larger than optimal deficit. In that post, what I described represents well over a 1000 kcal deficit for me, which is too much for more than one or two non-consecutive days per week. I don't want you guys reading into that too much, because you are going to try and get all fancy, and will probably screw up.

 

That post was primarily to illustrate a metabolic point, but we should all know that without fats you can't absorb a whole lot of important vitamins.

 

I did do that for a little while, just to see what would happen, but I have since found that having at least 5-6g of fat with each veggie feeding is  a much better idea.

 

I have done zero fat on occasion by necessity,for portions of the day, such as the times when, at university, all I have is rice and protein powder, but I try to make sure that that never happens for more than a day or two in a row, and I make damn sure I eat veggies with fat when I get home.

 

These days I drop two tablespoons of coconut oil and two tablespoons of olive oil into my veggie tub and mix it up in the beginning of the day, or when I am cooking the veggies if I cook in a pan that day. That makes for -10g of fat per one cup serving of veggies, and is my primary source of fat these days since I eat chicken breast for the cost effectiveness of it.

 

I often finish off all 8 cups of cooked veggies during a day. That ends up being over 20 "servings" of veggies per day, because greens just get so much smaller when you cook them. My veggies are usually half greens and half mixed veggies, all stirred together.

 

 

 

There are a lot of things that you technically CAN do, but, far and away, the best thing you can do is get your protein and carbs, and make your caloric deficit come from fat. You will still have more than enough in your diet to get your EFA. A 200kcal deficit is something like 22g of fat you cut out. That's almost nothing, but it keeps your metabolism high and allows you to drop 200kcal of actual fat that day, outside of whatever you burn during exercise.

[David Birchall]

My understanding:

 

You need fat for a number of things including uptake of fat soluble vitamins.

 

If you are in a deficit you lose fat regardless of what your macronutrient ratio is (adequate protein assumed relative to caloric deficit size).

 

If you are in a deficit you lose fat regardless of how many times a day you eat (adequate protein assumed relative to caloric deficit size).

 

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nutrition/carbohydrate-and-fat-controversies-part-1.html

 

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/meal-frequency-and-energy-balance-research-review.html

[FREDERIC DUPONT]

A little off topic, but this is a question I could not find an answer to:

 

Lots of pesticides and other chemicals are found in high concentration in top of the food chain predators; most times, these substances are found in the fat.

When a human loses a large proportion of his BF, is there a risk of reaching toxic levels of pesticides or other chemicals released by the use of the fat that contained them?

[Joshua Naterman]

Well, for one thing those chemicals, at least those that are still legal for use, are not very toxic to humans.

 

So, while it is theoretically possible to see a rise in fat-bound toxins, the likelihood of them reaching toxic levels from what is basically the same fat burn as every day activity is just not an issue. We probably don't even get remotely close. If we did, people would have all kinds of toxicity issues all the time, especially in athletes, yet athletes are healthier, as a population, than the general public (general health status, excluding eating disorders and drug use).

[Joshua Naterman]

My understanding:

 

You need fat for a number of things including uptake of fat soluble vitamins.

 

If you are in a deficit you lose fat regardless of what your macronutrient ratio is (adequate protein assumed relative to caloric deficit size).

 

If you are in a deficit you lose fat regardless of how many times a day you eat (adequate protein assumed relative to caloric deficit size).

 

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nutrition/carbohydrate-and-fat-controversies-part-1.html

 

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/meal-frequency-and-energy-balance-research-review.html

You will lose fat no matter what, but you will lose a lower proportion of lean mass with more frequent meals (assuming correct macronutrient ratios are present). Over the long term, this can lead to an unexpected metabolic decrease, due to the lean mass reduction, which is what actually has happened to an enormous number of people who keep getting fatter. They eat the same thing, or even less, yet get fatter and fatter.

 

You have to understand that your endocrine environment (hormone levels, sensitivity to hormones, and ratios between hormones) is going be different with variations in eating patterns, macronutrient ratios, exercise patterns, and of course the interaction between these. This endocrine shift is also responsible for part of the problems that people have with appropriate weight loss, in the beginning.

 

Like Nic pointed out earlier, many of our hormones come from fats, because they provide us with cholesterol (and the raw material to make cholesterol), which is where our steroid hormones come from. Lower your fat too much, lower your testosterone.

[Joshua Naterman]

Lyle is probably wrong about lactate, which is the basis for his argument that there is technically no carbohydrate requirement for the human body. The majority of lactate ends up getting used by solid organs, and not going through GNG... only ~20% of lactate goes through GNG after exercise under normal circumstances. 70% is oxidized, and 10% is converted to amino acids. I don't know how much of this trend continues at rest, but it probably isn't very different. The majority of GNG happens in the liver, even at rest, which indicates that lactate enters into circulation. We know that anyways, because there's always lactate in the blood.

 

This is based on new-ish research evidence that has upset the idea that most lactate gets recycled into glucose, which (I think) makes a lot of sense when you look at how blood flows through the body, and which tissues use lactate for energy directly.

 

I personally think that it is a bad idea to base your understanding of nutrition entirely off of what Lyle McDonald teaches. I'm not saying he's an idiot, because he isn't, but I do not think that his explanations line up with continuing research in physiology. I think that, as time goes on, he will change what he says, just like everyone else, to reflect this.

 

We are all learning. You can't base everything off of any single person, myself included. I try my best to make sure I vet everything I say in multiple ways, but I'm not perfect. As the years fly by we will all look back to older posts and see differences between newer posts.

 

Maybe I just look in more places than other people for information, and spend more time re-evaluating things. *shrug*

[David Birchall]

How will I lose a lower proportion of lean mass with more frequent feeding If I am consuming adequate protein?

 

If I had say 100g protein in two protein shakes a day one in the morning and one at night I would lose more lBM than if I sipped the shakes throughout the day.  I accept that but what about the digestion of real food and what about an adequate 1-1.5g protein per LBM?

 

In my own experience I have found no benefit in eating more than 3 meals a day when I have been consuming 1.5g protein per lb of LBM of whole food (retained all my lifts when I was barbell training, PSMF diet of 1000kcal a day for several weeks a couple of years ago).

 

I can't find any studies on PubMed that show that when an adequate amount of whole food protein is given and strength training is kept up, a higher meal frequency beyond three meals a day is better for retaining LBM.  Are there any studies you can point me to?

 

I am interested because there are so many conflicting views that I like to draw my own conclusions based on my own experiences of what works for me as well ideas from current research and physiology.  I accept the body has limits on protein synthesis, glycogen sythesis etc. however I value real world results more because there may be factors that are not taken into account when drawing conclusions based on parts of textbook physiology.  How does digestion speed factor in?  Doesn't more protein just take longer to digest?

[Joshua Naterman]

How will I lose a lower proportion of lean mass with more frequent feeding If I am consuming adequate protein?

 

If I had say 100g protein in two protein shakes a day one in the morning and one at night I would lose more lBM than if I sipped the shakes throughout the day.  I accept that but what about the digestion of real food and what about an adequate 1-1.5g protein per LBM?

 

In my own experience I have found no benefit in eating more than 3 meals a day when I have been consuming 1.5g protein per lb of LBM of whole food (retained all my lifts when I was barbell training, PSMF diet of 1000kcal a day for several weeks a couple of years ago).

 

I can't find any studies on PubMed that show that when an adequate amount of whole food protein is given and strength training is kept up, a higher meal frequency beyond three meals a day is better for retaining LBM.  Are there any studies you can point me to?

 

I am interested because there are so many conflicting views that I like to draw my own conclusions based on my own experiences of what works for me as well ideas from current research and physiology.  I accept the body has limits on protein synthesis, glycogen sythesis etc. however I value real world results more because there may be factors that are not taken into account when drawing conclusions based on parts of textbook physiology.  How does digestion speed factor in?  Doesn't more protein just take longer to digest?

When you aren't super close to your genetic limits, the dietary factors are a lot looser, but the primary factor is maintaining realtime positive nitrogen retention to the point where net 24 hour balance is maintained as a positive.

 

You can't get the same amount of protein absorbed from a large bolus vs smaller boluses that add up to the same absolute amount. The larger the bolus, the larger the percentage of the meal that is not digested.

 

There does come a point where this matters. The studies I am familiar with specifically show that, for non-sedentary populations (people who are training at least 3x per week for 30 minutes per day), insulin sensitivity is better and, as you say, real world results with high level athletes show conclusively that more meals per day does work better.

 

With your every day Joe, it is possible to do things that are not as ideal and still get good results, but they will always get better results with a more precise approach. If this wasn't true, you wouldn't have the highly paid nutritionists for national sports teams. They'd just eat three squares a day and be done with it.

 

You have to be very careful about comparing weight loss studies to athletic studies, and also what the athletic populations are.

 

 

I don't want to come off like a jerk, but... I have to be honest here, as usual. I don't have the time to teach nutrition. If I did, I'd be a nutrition professor, and I still wouldn't spend my time teaching for free, because I'd be busy grading papers and doing research.

 

If you want to learn why things work, you do need to start with textbook physiology, then move on to exercise physiology and basic nutrition, then move on to sports nutrition, and finally pick up Benardot's book Advanced Sports Nutrition 2nd ed. It's less than 20 bucks, which is ridiculously low, but will help you understand everything you just asked about IF you have the requisite background. It is not a beginning book.

 

Statistics is a 100% required subject to really understand as well, if you intend to read research and learn how to identify good and bad research, and determining whether or not the results are applicable to what you are looking for.

 

I realize that's a pain, but that's why there aren't very many people around that actually have what I would call well-informed opinions. Lots of people have opinions, and lots of those are informed, but the information is usually not up to par.

 

Hence the low carb craze, the "fat is bad" craze, "three meals or six meals, it doesn't matter," etc.

 

I do try, but every one of you needs to be doing what I do when I actually want to know something: I get my hands on the facts, which usually means a textbook, and I start reading. Then I get the next subject, and so on. I start learning the basics, and then I use those basics to understand the more advanced concepts from a fundamental perspective.

 

That's why classes are easy for me: Because I know how to learn. You have to be methodical, establishing your base first, and then moving on sequentially.

 

Funny enough, it's just like the GB program. Foundation 1 first, then 2, 3, 4, etc. The posts I see are often a simple result of not being grounded in the basics.

 

If you feel like you get the same results, then that's good for you! I'm not here to tell you your results are different from whatever you are seeing. I'm here to try and keep things organized. I love to teach, and probably will forever, but I can't teach a full course. I don't have the time.

 

Some links for thought:

Sociology of Education: January 2012. Competitive Food Sales in Schools and Childhood Obesity: A Longitudinal Study by Jennifer Van Hook   and Clair E. Altman (19,450 Children)

 

Also:

International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: meal frequency. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21410984

Notice in the introductory area that there is not enough research to definitively provide answers, from a scientific perspective, to the questions you asked.

 

Please notice that statement 1 applies ONLY to sedentary populations.

I think you will find it interesting that, despite the scant nature of evidence, what HAS been published does suggest everything I am saying here.

[David Birchall]

Thanks for taking the time to reply and no you didn't sound like a jerk

 

I studied statistics at university as part of my degree and hated it lol however it comes in handy.

 

I like to read white papers and studies out of the joy of learning more than anything and reading about the body is a hobby for me really rather than a method to an end of training & dieting more efficiently.  I like trial and error better for that.

 

I will check those books out.  Thanks.