The following article was taken from Vol 3 # 2 newsletter of Vitamin Research Products and may be freely distributed in whole or part. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Get Lean Without Getting Hungry By Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw Too much body fat is the bane of competitive body builders. You can have terrific muscles, but if they are buried under too much subcutaneous (below the skin) fat, you look smooth and you lose. Too much fat is ugly, and it can kill you, too. Most scientists studying obesity say that 20% or more above the "ideal" weight puts a male at medical risk for increased risks of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and perhaps other diseases such as diabetes. Stored body fats are susceptible to oxidation (in contact with oxygen and other substances with similar chemical effects) that cause them to become rancid or, technically, peroxidized. These rancid fats are carcinogenic (can cause cancer), mutagenic (can damage DNA, your body's blueprints), thrombogenic (can cause abnormal blood clots leading to heart attacks or strokes), and are immune suppressors (reduce the effectiveness of your immune system which defends you against bacteria, viruses, and cancer). It is more than a coincidence that the frequency of these illnesses increases rapidly with both increasing obesity and advancing age. Free Radicals and Aging When the fats are oxidized, a lot of free radicals are created. Indeed, fats are the number one target for free radical damage in your body because when a free radical attacks fat, it can cause a chain reaction which creates hundreds, thousands, or even millions of additional damaging free radicals. You will be hearing a lot about free radicals in the next few years! Free radicals are promiscuously chemically reactive entities that are usually controlled in your body, but when they get out of control they can do a lot of damage. If you got a lethal dose of X-rays, it would be the free radicals created by the X-rays that would actually kill you. One well supported major theory of aging, the free radical theory of aging, states that over a lifetime, accumulated unrepaired damage by free radicals causes much of the deterioration that we recognize as aging. Experimental animals that have had their lives extended have much leaner bodies than their littermates that don't live so long. This "leaner is longer" is true whether the animals' lives were extended by calorie restriction or by supplementation with antioxidants that control free radicals such as the food preservative BHT, or the free radical-controlling nutrients vitamin E, vitamin B-5, and the nutrient amino acid cysteine. Body Fat is Nature's Ice Age Life Insurance! Back in the bad old days (not so long ago!), almost everyone died young - generally in their twenties or thirties, if not earlier. Few people lived long enough to die of obesity-related cardiovascular disease and cancer, while millions died of starvation. Modern agricultural technology has brought us a cornucopia of food, but our genes are still programmed for a time when famine, not fat, was our greatest danger. Because of this, the body often holds on tenaciously to that warm body fat security blanket, especially in those who have inherited "fat" genes (body build has been proven to be inherited) making it an especially difficult job to get the fat off and, particularly, to KEEP it off. A Scandinavian study of twins separated at birth by adoption showed that genetics is responsible for at least 85% of whether one has a lean, medium, or fat build. The home environment of the adopting parents was not provably responsible for even a part of their adoptees' body build, though there might have been minor effects too small to detect. Another scientific study has shown that 95% of the people who lose weight on a calorie restricted diet regain every pound of it within one year! That 5% success rate is worse than the cure rate for terminal cancer, but the diet quacks keep telling people to count their calories and go hungry. There are a lot of things that the diet quacks don't tell you, too. They don't tell you that if you use their caloric restriction techniques, that you will have to go hungry for the rest of your life, or the fat comes right back. They don't tell you that caloric restriction can make the hunger and weight controlling hypothalmus gland in your brain think that there is a famine, and consequently change your body's biochemistry to make it more efficient, causing a weight plateau even if you are on a potentially dangerous starvation diet. They don't tell you that caloric restriction actually shuts off your most efficient body fat reduction mechanism. And they don't tell you that losing weight and then regaining it is much worse than futile! Weight Loss Versus Fat Loss Most of you probably know that losing weight is not the same as losing fat. But you may not know that on a low calorie diet, if it is not accompanied by very heavy exercise, 25% of the weight you lose will be lean body mass, not fat! Even if you do very heavy exercise, there will still be a lean body mass loss of about 5%. The weight that you regain after you stop dieting is almost entirely fat, however. If you frequently cycle between eating as normal and eating a low-calorie diet, you can actually end up with less muscle mass than when you started, though your weight will not show it. Your body fat percentage measurements and your contest results will certainly show it, however. For that reason, we do not recommend a low calorie diet as a way to lose body fat. Morever, remember that 95% of people who lose weight on a low-calorie diet regain all of it within a year! Restricting one's food intake by willpower is a very unnatural way to lose body fat, with delicious and fattening foods all around and readily available. We recommend methods that use natural body mechanisms of fat control, not unnatural self-starvation willpower. If our ice age ancestors had been willing to go hungry when they could get food, the human species would be extinct. New scientific research findings in recent years have uncovered natural body mechanisms for getting rid of body fat that work WITH your body, rather than against it, making the job of getting fat off and keeping it off relatively easy. These techniques do not require your going on a low calorie diet, being hungry, or doing any extra work. Perhaps the most important of all to the dedicated body builder, they cause no loss of lean body mass, they do not require drug use, nearly all are IFBB, AAU, and Olympic legal, and they are completely natural. The Glycemic Index: A Key Concept for Fat, Hunger, and Energy Control A popular magazine recently stated that the calories from table sugar were more likely to fatten you than the calories from a potato because the potato contains a lot of complex carbohydrates that your body has to break down. But they were wrong! In fact, the calories from a potato are more likely to fatten you than the calories from pure table sugar! Why? Because of something discovered just within the past few years called the glycemic index(1). It has become a well established theory among scientists studying obesity that the ratio of the hormone insulin (released in response to increases in blood sugar) to that of growth hormone (a natural anabolic non-steroid hormone that stimulates muscle building and fat burning) plays a mojor role in controlling your body ratio of fat to muscle. Insulin is a necessary hormone without which body cells could not burn the glucose or blood sugar circulating in the bloodstream for energy. However, too much insulin results in the conversion of any excess glucose in the bloodstream to stored fat. Remember, stored fat is your life insurance policy against famine. Your genes don't realize that you are living in the 20th century in America and have more than enough food to survive. Your body, especially after young adulthood, still tends to accumulate stores of fat to use in a food shortage "emergency". Recent research also indicates that individuals who secrete extra large amounts of insulin in response to carbohydrates are at extra risk for cardiovascular disease. Thus, it is good for nondiabetics, as well as diabetics, to keep blood glucose -- and insulin levels -- under control. All Carbohydrates are not Created Equal This brings us to the glycemic index. Most carbohydrates (sugars and starchy foods) increase blood levels of glucose by being broken down into sugars in the digestive tract and absorbed. But there is a big difference in how much particular carbohydrates increase blood sugar and how fast they do it. Scientists studying this (so they could advise diabetics what they should and should not eat) found a very surprising thing: some complex carbohydrates (like potato) increased blood sugar levels more than simple sugars like sucrose (the table sugar found in candy bars, etc.) They devised a way of comparing different carbohydrates called the glycemic index. The glycemic index of a particular food is the ratio of how much a certain quantity of that food increased blood sugar divided by how much that same quantity of glucose increased blood sugar, then multiplying this ratio by 100. So, a glycemic index of 100 meant that the food increased blood sugar as much as glucose; numbers higher represent foods that increase blood sugar more than glucose while numbers lower represent foods that increase blood sugar less than glucose.(1) Using the glycemic index gives you a real insight into the physiological effects of the foods you eat. Table sugar (sucrose) has a glycemic index of 59, while the natural fruit sugar fructose has a glycemic index of only 20. Honey has a whopping glycemic index of 87 and whole wheat bread's glycemic index is 72, higher than (yetch) white bread (69), and much higher than pure table sugar (50)! On the other hand, a whole grain rye bread has a glycemic index of only 42. Most corn and wheat products have a much higher glycemic index than rye or oat products. This why corn and wheat, not oats and rye, are used in cattle fattening feed lots. When the sedentary cattle eat the corn and wheat, a lot of insulin is released, causing the blood sugar made from the ingested carbohydrates to rapidly enter the cattle's fat storage cells and get converted to stored body fat. This huge insulin release drives so much blood sugar into the cattle's fat storage cells that their blood sugar drops below normal, making them crave more carbohydrates, which starts the whole hunger-feeding-fattening cycle over again. You can help avoid fattening yourself up like feedlot cattle by watching the glycemic index of what you eat. Not all corn and wheat products have high glycemic indices, however. Pasta, in general, has a low glycemic index - even if made from corn or wheat flour. This may be the scientific reason that pasta is so important in the Pritikin weight loss program. Do you have to give up eating sweets? Not at all! You can eat delicious sweet desserts and snacks sweetened with fructose, which has the lowest glycemic index of all carbohydrates tested, 20. You can get fructose in health food stores and in the diabetic section of large supermarkets, where it is sold mainly to diabetics who use it instead of regular sucrose on the advice of their physicians. You can also find jams that are made with fructose there. Under the cold acid conditions found in a citrus energy drink, fructose is actually 70% sweeter calorie per calorie than sucrose. Losing Fat and Putting on Muscle while Pigging out on Ice Cream! Ice cream, even sweetened with table sugar, sucrose, has a glycemic index of only 36 (probably due to the emulsion structure of the ice cream slowing absorption of the sugar), compared to 32 for skimmed milk. Indeed, a home made ice cream using fructose instead of sucrose has a glycemic index too low to measure! It causes no significant measurable blood sugar increase, and can even be eaten by many diabetic patients. One body builder saw Durk talking about ice cream, glycemic indices, and body fat on one of Durk's 30 or so appearances on the Merv Griffin show. He thought that the whole idea was crazy, and set out to prove it by eating two to three pints of ice cream per day in addition to his regular diet! He also used the nutrient human growth hormone releasers that Durk had discussed. (An upcoming issue of Durk and Sandy's newsletter will feature an article on GH releasers and how to use them.) In ten weeks of ice cream piggery, he lost 3 1/2" from his waist and added 1" to his chest! His weight loss was 6 1/2 pounds, but since he put on muscle while losing fat, his fat loss was substantially greater than his weight loss. Compare that to going hungry on a calorically restricted diet where you lose muscle along with the fat! (See our Life Extension Weight Loss Program for more details of this case history, and for the limits to validity of any case history type study. Case histories, unlike scientific animal experiments and double-blind placebo controlled experiments on humans can never prove anything, but they sometimes provide interesting research leads.) Eating a Meal of Mixed Foods When eating a combined meal, the effects of the glycemic index are attenuated. A high glycemic index food will generally be less effective at increasing blood sugar levels when mixed with other food, especially when there is a lot of soluble fiber or fat in the other foods. Thus, the glycemic index can be used most effectively to compare individual food items, such as snacks, or athletic carbohydrate preloads. IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTE Consumption of large amounts of fructose can have serious adverse cardiovascular effects if you are copper deficient, and according to U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists, about half of all Americans are copper deficient. Play it safe; take a mineral supplement of the FDA's Recommended Daily Allowance of copper, 2 milligrams per day, preferably in chelated form. Thermogenesis, the Cool Way to Lose Fat -- and Only Fat! Your body has a major means of getting rid of extra fat that was just discovered within the past few years called thermogenesis. You have small deposits of a special fat in your body that are called brown fat because, compared to ordinary fat (a whitish color), they look brown. This brown fat has evolved to perform one special task: it burns regular white stored body fat to create heat which can keep your body warm. These thermogenic (heat generating) brown fat deposits are activated by cold, eating certain types of food, by sustained, heavy exercise, and other stimuli. Even though these brown fat deposits amount to only about 1% of your body fat, they can have an amazing effect on your body fat percentage because, when activated, they can burn their own weight in white fat every twelve hours! Thermogenesis Versus Exercise for Fat Loss Amazingly, exposure to cold is a more effective way to lose excess body fat than is heavy exercise. Experimental animals exposed to moderate cold and allowed to eat all they wanted actually ate more food than exercised animals but lost more body fat! It is not necessary to be shivering cold to take advantage of this body fat loss mechanism, however. In ordinary street clothes, thermogenesis turns on at about 72 degrees F, not an uncomfortable temperature. If you wear less, thermogenesis turns on at even higher temperatures, typically between 82 and 86 degrees F for someone nude or wearing shorts. You can use this technique for fat loss without dietary change or even exercise by turning down your thermostat in cool weather one degree Fahrenheit each week (or setting your air conditioner down one degree Fahrenheit each week) which will cause you to become thermogenically activated and cold adapted. Visitors may find your home somewhat chilly, but you won't! And they will be amazed at how much you eat and yet remain lean! This effect is worth about 25 pounds of fat loss per year for someone starting from a normal body fat percentage, and, unlike caloric restriction, becomes more - not less - effective as you lose more body fat. How a Three Piece Suit Can Help Make You Fat and How Body Builder's Posing Briefs Can Help Make You Lean The type of clothes that you wear can help make you either fat or lean! The calorie content of a food is simply a measure of the heat energy released when you burn the food in your body, just like heat calories are released when you burn a log in your fireplace. If your house has little insulation and lots of drafty heat leaks, you will have to burn a lot more logs - a lot more calories - to keep your home warm. This is also true for clothes. Clothes that keep heat in, keep calories in, so that more calories can be stored as body fat. Clothes that let heat out let calories out, too. The difference between a three piece wool worsted suit and an equally socially acceptable tropical weight suit can be up to about 25 pounds of body fat per year. Exercise in which body temperature is not allowed to rise is another way to stimulate thermogenesis, since your brown fat must keep burning off white fat to maintain your body temperature. Swimming is ideal, since you are able to do the heavy, sustained type of exercise that produces the most benefits, including cardiovascular conditioning, without increasing your body temperature (which inhibits thermogenesis). Or, if you prefer weightlifting, which is better for muscle building because it is a peak output form of exercise, you can use a fan to air condition your body as you exercise. Use a variable speed fan to blow the hot air away, and further cool you by evaporating your sweat, thereby allowing your body to remain cool, which stimulates thermogenesis. The last thing you want to do is work out in a sweat suit, which keeps in your body heat, depressing your brown fat thermogenesis. What you lose with a sweat suit is nearly all sweat (water and salts), not fat. Think cool! You can lose more body fat by driving around in an air conditioned Cadillac with nothing on but your jogging briefs than you can struggling along jogging in a sweat suit! Why work so hard to defeat your most important fat loss mechanism! Certain foods enhance your brown fat's thermogenic activity, too. A low carbohydrate diet is a real turnoff to thermogenesis, as carbohydrates stimulate thermogenesis. However, not all carbohydrates are equally effective in doing this. The natural fruit sugar in fructose is about twice as good in stimulating thermogenesis as is regular table sugar, sucrose, yet it only releases about 1/3 as much insulin, the fat storing hormone. Have you ever eaten a big meal, then awakened in the middle of the night with the back of your neck covered with sweat? You were experiencing diet induced thermogenesis; your biggest deposits of brown fat are at the back of your neck. A very low fat diet also reduces thermogenesis. Experimental animals fed the typical high fat American diet and exposed to cold ended up with less body fat than animals fed low fat diets! Recent studies indicate that about 30% of one's calories should be fat, that 40% (about the typical American diet) is too high and that 20% is too low. See our Life Extension Weight Loss Program(2) for information on special fats called MCTs (medium chain triglycerides) that strongly stimulate thermogenesis, cannot be stored as body fat, and even make you burn regular body fat. Even during AAU and Olympic competition, though, you can use a supplement containing the essential amino acid nutrient L-phenylalinine, along with vitamin and mineral co-factors required for your body to convert it to noradrenaline, the brain's version of adrenaline, which gives you the sustained drive you need in any competitive situation. Try a formulation that contains fructose and other nutritional cofactors such as our RISE & SHINE (tm). Just how thermogenic is fat loss? Normal laboratory rodents will have body fat percentages from about 15% to about 18% when eating all the lab chow that they want. If you give them an unlimited supply of a wide variety of human junk foods, they really fatten up, eating 50% or so additional calories, and going to about 50% to 80% body fat. If you allow them to continue to eat all the junk food they desire, but apply thermogenic techniques, they will eat even more junk food, but their body fat percentages will fall to the 4% to 7% range! Just as there are natural body mechanisms for storing up body fat (nature's insurance policy against a famine), there are also natural mechanisms for getting rid of fat (such as using it as a source of energy when it is cold). Rather than fight your body's fat storage mechanisms, stimulate those that cause your body to eliminate body fat, which is a lot easier on you and a lot more effective, too! Understanding the mechanisms by which your body works is always the best way to get what you want from it. Live long & stay strong, Durk Pearson & Sandy Shaw 1) See our article on this subject "Inside Sugar" in the June 1987 issue of Joe Weider's Sports Fitness which includes a glycemic index of many different foods. This article tells you how to select the right type of carbohydrates for training and for performance (they are not necessarily the same), and how to use the glycemic index to avoid many common foods which make you hungrier for more carbohydrates than if you hadn't eaten anything at all! 2) There is no way to condense the contents of a 365 page book into a 4100 word article. For example, we haven't even touched on the use of "Designer Food(tm)" nutrient supplements that control hunger with 90% to 95% fewer calories than regular foods. For our full approach to natural fat loss, including 17 different methods which do not involve dieting, hunger or extra exercise, and which cites 386 references to the published scientific literature, see our Life Extension Weight Loss Program, now available everywhere in paperback, published by Doubleday Book Co. We really wanted to call it Scientifically Remodeling Your Body, or at least The Life Extension Fat Loss Program, but Doubleday wanted the title to make our book look like a competitor with diet books. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can read much more by these two scientists about their latest work in the monthly eight page per issue Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw's Life Extension Newsletter which is available from VRP for $29.95 for a one year charter subscription starting from the first issue. Just like the Wall St Journal, your money will be refunded for unsent issues if you are not completely satisfied. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vitamin Research Products' address is: 2044 Old Middlefield Way, Mountain View, CA 94043