I bet you’ve heard this one before – a calorie is a calorie.  So eating 100 calories worth of Cheezy Poofs is the same as eating a half-cup of cottage cheese, because they are both roughly 100 calories, according to this logic.  Well, as I have mentioned before, nothing could be further from the truth.

In a 1957 (!) study, three groups of people were put on low calorie (1000 calorie) diets.  The first group ate 90% of their calories in fat, the second group ate 90% of their calories in protein, the third group ate 90% of their calories in carbs.  Guess which group actually gained weight, despite only taking in 1000 calories per day? Yep, the carb group.  The other two groups lost between 0.5 to 1.0 pound per day!

Several studies have been done since, all coming to the same conclusion – low carbohydrate diets result in significantly greater fat loss than low fat or low calorie diets.  In fact, in several of the studies, the low carb groups were consuming more overall calories than the high carb groups and losing more fat.

So low carb diets become the next entry on the list that we started last time of most effective fat burning techniques:

1. Eating more often (shooting for 6 small meals per day)
2. Resistance training
3. Interval cardio
4. Low carbohydrate diets

One last item on the list to be added next time…

Last time we talked about the Thermic Effect of Feeding (TEF) and its role in burning fat. TEF can represent as much as 10% of the calories burned in a day. So how do you burn the other 90%?

Physical activity can represent 20-30% of your daily energy expenditure – this is comprised of your normal physical activity (for example, lifting the kids or groceries, washing the car, walking, etc.).

So that leaves 60-70% of your daily energy expenditure coming from – get this – DOING NOTHING! That’s right, sitting around watching TV, sleeping, etc. Your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) is where most of your calorie burn comes from! When you hear people blame a “slow metabolism” for being fat, they are partially right – their RMR is not what it should be to burn the amount of calories they consume!

So, last time we learned that eating more frequently increases your TEF, but how do you increase your RMR, which is REALLY going to get the fat burning?

It’s really simple – the more muscle you have, the higher your RMR will be. When you workout, you are breaking down muscle fibers.  The process of rebuilding that muscle is intense – it requires rest and protein, and subsequently raises your metabolic rate. Once you have built the muscle, it will keep your RMR elevated as it takes a lot of the body’s effort to maintain it.

Also, the high intensity intervals, the cardio where you do all-out bursts for a short period of time followed by recovery, creates the
same demand on your metabolism as resistance training. If you choose to do cardio, this is the kind of cardio you should be doing.

So to wrap this up, science tells us these things are the most effective things you can do to lose fat:

1. Eating more often (shooting for 6 small meals per day)
2. Resistance training
3. Interval cardio

There are two more things to add to this list that I’ll cover next time.

Yesterday, I talked about creating a calorie deficit, meaning that you need to burn more than you consume.  So, let’s assume that you determined that you needed to take in 2,000 calories a day to create a calorie deficit – is it better to:

A. Eat one 2,000 calorie meal per day
B. Eat four 500 calorie meals per day
C. Eat six 333 calorie meals per day

They’re the same, right?  Same amount of calories coming in, so they have to be the same.  Ummm, no.

Actually, studies have shown that C is the most effective meal pattern for burning fat due to a principle known as the Thermic Effect of Feeding, or TEF.  Your body burns calories for everything you do, including to process the food you are taking in, up to 10% of your calorie intake per day.  So if you are eating 333 calories in a meal, your body is using approximately 33 of them to process your meal.  When you eat less frequently, you’ll experience a lower TEF, which has been related to weight GAIN in the long term.

Other studies have shown that the higher the TEF (from eating frequently) the higher the feeling of satisfaction.  This is important from a psychological standpoint, meaning that you do no feel like you are starving yourself because it is only a couple of hours until your next meal.

One other important point above – your meals don’t have to be EXACTLY the same size every time, but they should be as close as possible, meaning, do not eat one huge meal with five apples spread through out the day.  Remember, every meal should contain a protein source.

In Part Two, I’ll cover metabolism and a little more about calories.  You are not going to believe what I tell you!