Let’s be honest, the reason most of us try to make nutritional changes is to improve our physique. As although staying healthy and preventing disease are important, we ultimately pass on dessert because we want to look better in our swim trunks.
But that being said, looking better and “losing weight” don’t exactly go hand-in-hand. With most programs recommending calorie restriction to lose weight, and this resulting in a significant amount of muscle loss to go with any reductions in fat.
Average muscle loss on a generic calorie-cutting diet is over 40%!
Aside from accelerating the aging process, and making fat storage more likely in the future, this isn’t exactly aligned with the better physique we were shooting for in the first place.
…regardless of what the scale says.
Conversely, we could have followed a low-carbohydrate strategy and lost strictly fat while maintaining all of our muscle.
For instance, in a 1971 research study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers put obese men on diets of equal calories and protein, but varied carbohydrate contents (30g, 60g, or 104g), and found these differences:
Or put another way:
By keeping carbohydrates 74g lower the men lost 4.3kg more weight, and the composition of fat in that weight was 20% higher!
“Why?” you ask?
Because excess carbohydrates are driving fat storage, not excess calories!
Or as the grandfather of low-carb eating, Dr. Robert Atkins, explains it:
“They would lose weight because they would keep their insulin down. They wouldn’t be hungry and they would have less resistance to burning their own fat.”
This was the guy everyone called a ‘quack’ right?
Interestingly, he also had this to say about heart disease:
“Sugars and starches are harmful in any event because they raise triglyceride levels and this is a greater risk factor for heart disease than cholesterol.”
Which makes you think he was the only one brave enough to question conventional wisdom – and smart enough to pass on the bread, cereal, and QUACKers.
Stay Lean!
Coach Mike
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