Mindconnection Brainpower Informational eNewsletter 2024-03-17

This is the time of year when people try to shed the holiday season fat and get in shape for summer. Unfortunately, the time left for losing the fat usually isn't sufficient for the amount of fat they desire to lose if the approach is gradual. So they are looking for something fairly radical.

Last year, intermittent fasting was all the rage. It seems to be retaining that status this year. There are two types:

Day long or longer. You pick one day a period (week, 10 days, month) in which you either do not eat at all or eat only a very small meal before bed (so you aren't awake from hunger pains). Over the period this cuts your calories to 1/X, with X being the length of the period. So for 10 days, you'd reduce total calories by 10%. Do it every other day, and you get a 50% reduction in calories.
Hours long. The idea here is you shrink the available hours in which you can eat. So instead of your first meal at (say) 0600 and your last one at (say) 2030, you eat your first meal at (say) 1200 and your last meal at (say) 1800. But your meal sizes stay the same, you are just skipping the ones that fall outside this window and thus you eat less. Instead of 14.5 hours in which to eat, you have only 8. A typical plan gives you a 40% calorie reduction every day.

These can, and often do, produce significant and rapid fat loss because they produce significant calorie deficits. Variation One automatically cycles you on and off the calorie deficit so that you don't get stuck in starvation mode. Variation Two sticks you into starvation mode, unless you cycle on and off it (for example, do it for two days per week).

Both of these have several problems and downsides, as does any diet that shocks your body. These include erratic bowel behavior, massive energy crashes, lack of mental focus (although a euphoric effect might make it seem the opposite), loss of lean mass, and an escalation of stress hormones.

Instead of panicking yourself into one of these severe diets, I suggest the following.

Since you were comfortable enough with your body to gorge over the holidays, be comfortable enough with it now to accept that going to the opposite extreme isn't necessary. You'll just have to go this summer looking like you should have eaten less this winter.
Think about the previous thought again. Don't worry about what others think, you don't have to be perfect this summer. Focus on getting your lifestyle into alignment with your fitness/fatness/appearance goals and let things happen over time. Set your eyes on NEXT summer.

You can accelerate a bit

But what if you want at least some faster improvement beyond what a consistent diet and training program will eventually get you to? The good news is there are some things you can do that don't cause stress hormone release or those other problems and that will get you faster progress. But again ask yourself just how important this is before you go there. Here are some of those things:

Try intermittent calorie reduction. Not fasting, but using a similar principle. For example, if you always have a handful of nuts (very healthy to do) late each afternoon, go one month eating them only on even numbered days. This could bounce your caloric intake below the loss line (fewer calories in than out) for a day, but you don't go into starvation mode because the next day you are at or above the line again. You can do this with any food. Just pick something to eat only on alternate days. Maybe you like to have one protein shake in the morning and one in the afternoon; skip the afternoon one on even numbered days.
Try total calorie reduction by whole food serving downsizing. When you buy bananas, apples, pears, sweet potatoes, etc., pick the smaller ones of those that are available. This won't save you a huge amount of calories, but you will have a reduced caloric intake that can be combined for effect with the strategy above.
Try intermittent meal downsizing. I meal prep, so all of my meals are planned. The size doesn't vary unless I make less at the prep stage. I prep most of these into glass bowls that I store in the refrigerator. What you can do once a week is take half a prepped meal out of its bowl to eat and leave the rest in there for the same meal the next day or the day after.

These three tactics avoid going into starvation mode. You don't feel deprived, don't get cravings, don't get bowel problems, and don't experience energy crashes. You may experience an hour or two of hunger in any given day, just drink water or tea to stave that off.

You can also use supplements:

Green coffee bean extract. It does contain caffeine, so use it only in the first half of the day.
L-carnitine. It shifts the body into fat burning. Because it's not a stimulant, it has long been called "the night time fat burner". Take this in the afternoon. Take some before bed, but don't overdo it. The more you go beyond the recommended dosage, the greater your risk of severe calf cramps.

And you can try not using certain supplements. For example, many people use a protein powder when their diet already provides more protein than they need. The body cannot store protein, so it's broken down to be stored as fat with some of the breakdown process leftover being uric acid that the kidneys have to deal with. If you have a bottle after bottle of supplements, remember that the capsules have calories. Not a lot per capsule, but they do add up.

Know when to stop

If you find yourself lagging in energy, as in your workouts are lame or you can't concentrate at work, stop with the calorie restriction. Lame workouts mean you do not get the adaptive response, in which case your testosterone will not become elevated and you will tend toward more fat and less muscle. If you can't concentrate at work, you put your job at risk and that's never a good idea.

Always keep in mind that unless your livelihood depends on having an extremely lean physique, there's no reason for you to go to extremes to get extremely lean. You can achieve that naturally over time, or you can naturally over time just maintain a body fat level that you are comfortable with and that puts you in the "healthy range" (this is a max of 8% body fat for men, something like twice that for women).

If your body looks a little soft or even pudgy, will your family or your real friends love you any less? Of course not. So don't worry about how people you don't even know will judge you. Most of them are too busy worrying about their own perceived imperfections that they think other people are judging them on.

My personal goals are different from what I have just discussed, but I have been at this for many decades and it's a thing for me. Even so, I do not resort to the extreme measures that are so common. I have had a few years in which I have not done a photoshoot because I was too fat. That's because I wasn't as disciplined in the cold months as I should have been to prepare for it and there was no way I would be lean enough without going on some crazy fat loss plan. I don't do the photoshoots to document how badly I can treat my body, I do them to document how well I treat my body. In those years I was too fat, I still went shirtless outside and got plenty of sunlight. So what if I wasn't lean enough for physique photos? Not the end of the world.

Mindconnection eNL, 2024-03-17

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