Happy New Years! Ok so I know I’m like 3 weeks late, but as always the most popular resolution is weight loss and better health, which means I’ve been very busy!
So how did you do over the break? According to the New England Journal of Medicine (http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/342/12/861) the average weight gain over the holiday season (from Thanksgiving to New Years Day) is 3.3lbs? (10% of you really enjoy your holidays and put on over 5lbs, that’s a lot of eggnog!) And that was a study done in 2000, I’m sure 10 years later that number has climbed. And I highly doubt that it’s muscle!
How bad were you over the holidays?
While this is a lot less than what most people would guess it can add up. If left unchecked in 5 years it would equal over 16 pounds of fat.
Now not to brag but I actually lost weight. And don’t think I avoided the nog, I actually went looking for the real high fat stuff.
- Mmm farm fresh
(It’s only available around Christmas I had to take advantage!)
So my trick for not gaining weight while still eating what I want?
Calorie shifting, or zig zag diet, it was developed by power lifting world record holder Dr Fred Hatfield (aka Dr. Squat).
Dr Squat then and now
It’s all about tricking you metabolism, to either lose fat or gain muscle. A technique used by many bodybuilders and fitness athletes to obtain low levels of body fat.
Zig zagging allows one to eat low calories without slowing down the metabolism, because every few days you’ll increase your calories.
The benefit of this style of eating is twofold first by having a ‘high’ calorie day won’t cause your body to go into starvation mode.
When you eat low calories for too long your body thinks slows down the rate at which it burns calories, which makes it extremely hard to lose fat. In fact when this happens it will take fewer calories to put on fat! This, of course is absolutely the worst thing that can happen.
So by adding in a higher calorie, you speed up your metabolism. Then while your metabolism is sped up, you once again lower your calories.
The second benefit of zig zagging continuously is that you’re less likely to hit plateaus. The body likes homeostasis, but if you keep adjusting calories it won’t have the opportunity to remain static.
How does the science hold up on this? Well even in the extreme case it worked!
Researchers had (non obese) subjects fast every other day for 21 days. (http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/81/1/69)
Their conclusion, fat oxidation (burning) increased thus they deemed it as a feasible fat lose protocol.
The only down side, on the fasting day you want to eat your arm off! (Ok so maybe not their exact words but you get the picture.)