Fat Loss

I just finished reading two books by Al Sears, MD: Dr. Sears' High Speed Fat Loss in 7 Easy Steps and P.A.C.E.: The 12-Minute Fitness Revolution. The former does a good job of summarizing most of what I've gleaned from dozens of books on fitness and nutrition over the past several years:

• Avoid processed foods like the plague.
• Increase protein intake to burn fat.
• Eat healthy fats - particularly those with lots of Omega 3 fatty acids (and coconut oil).

It also makes an interesting, and to me compelling, case against moderate intensity "cardio" exercise, the sort of exercise that is pretty much universally claimed to burn the most fat. His argument is that too much of this sort of training only trains your body to store fat, particularly if you eat lots of refined carbs, which your body can very efficiently store as fat. In my experience I believe this to be true. High intensity exercise revs up your metabolism for long after you've finished exercising, and it is the sort of exercise that challenges your lungs and heart to grow stronger (which is key to getting faster, opposed to hitting a plateau). For the past few years I've done most of my training using "chunks": chunks of intensity interspersed with my normal riding, aiming for about 20 minutes or so of intensity (i.e. anaerobic zone performance) per training session. An added advantage is that I train less, so I recover faster (a very important consideration when your over 50, but also for folks that work a lot or have lots of family obligations). As I get closer to race day, the frequency and intensity of my training drops, while the duration increases so that the duration and intensity becomes more like race day as the actual race gets closer.

The latter book expands on the former. It's perhaps written more for the sedentary 50 year old than the elite athlete, but it was still a worthwhile read. The only criticism is that there is a fair amount of hawking of Dr. Sears' services and wares. But even with that he is pretty much dead on, with perhaps one criticism. At one point in the book he states that "overconsumption of protein is the key to fat loss." While I believe it can be crucial for rapid initial loss of fat, long term consumption of too much protein can be very hard on your kidneys. Moderate amounts of protein and a whole foods diet is probably a lot safer bet. And he seems to stick to that path through most, but not all, of the book (the book really needs a good editor).

Probably the two most worthwhile parts of the book are his two analogies that refute the conventional wisdom that weight control is merely a matter of controlling caloric intake. When my wife sees how much I eat and am still able to maintain an off season weight of around 168 pounds, she tends to agree with Dr. Sears. His first example is a woman that eats a carb heavy (most likely refined carbs) diet. As she restricts her calories her weight continues to go up, despite eating 1500 calories or less per day for weeks. His second example is a man that eats several thousands of calories per day, mostly of protein, and can't gain the additional weight that he wants (the same sort of diet that body builders use to achieve a very lean body mass). Clearly weight is not a matter of calories in, calories out. The former example illustrates how easily your body will metabolize refined carbohydrates (sugar, flour, all the refined corn and soy fillers, etc) into fat while breaking down your own muscle tissue to get an adequate amount of protein. The latter example clearly shows that excess calories are not always stored as fat. The main concern that I have for the latter example, especially for folks over 50, is that overconsumption of meat can raise your body's acidity, with lots of bad implications for your health, including leaching calcium from your bones. That's why moderate protein consumption (a portion about the size of your palm at each meal) together with lots of whole fruits and vegetables (to create a better acid/alkaline balance in your body) is a better strategy for everyday eating.

Coconut Oil

Coconut Oil has been a part of my diet for a few years now. I first heard about the benefits of coconut oil at Mercola.com. I recently revisited the topic by reading Eat Fat Lose Fat by Dr. Mary Enig and Sally Fallon. In the book the authors advocate a whole foods diet with substantially more healthy fats than advocated by most other current diet protocols. In addition to coconut oil, fish oil and olive oil are the everyday fats that they recommend, though they are not the only healthy fats. I'm writing this to summarize some of the tidbits of information that piqued my interest:

• Coconut oil promotes the assimilation and storage of essential fatty acids, so basically there is a synergistic effect with fish oil. Fish oil is brain food, in addition to its ability to lower inflammation in your body. Anything that amplifies such effects is likely to be very good for you.
• Coconut oil is perhaps the safest fat for folks with gallbladder disease or that have lost their gallbladder, as most of the fats in coconut oil do not require bile for digestion.
• Renowned cardiologist Dudley White is noted as commenting that he became a cardiologist in 1921, but did not see his first case of myocardial infarction until 1928. He attributed the increased incidence of MI since that time to increasing use of new polyunstaturated fats corn oil, which were replacing saturated fats like lard and butter.
• The phospholipids in your brain cells are made up of one saturated fat and one unsaturated fat. Avoiding all saturated fats per the current dietary mantra can lead to compromising your brain's chemistry.
• Saturated fats protect your liver from toxins like alcohol. Liver problems have become more common place - thanks to increasing consumption of alcohol and high fructose corn syrup - at a time when the public has been advised to avoid saturated fats.
• Saturated fats lower levels of C Reactive Protein, a marker for inflammation, which recent research implicates as a common factor in all degenerative diseases.
• The fatty acids in lung surfactant are normally 100% saturated. An adequate amount of saturated fat in critical to optimal lung function, and therefore is crucial to achieving peak performance on a bicycle!
• Coconut oil contains a medium chain fatty acid (MCFA) called lauric acid. Your body converts it to monolaurin, which helps protect you from a wide range of diseases. Being sick less means being able to train more, and decreased susceptibility to disease probably also translates into being able to train harder before pushing your body into a disease state.
• The MCFAs in coconut oil use up more energy when they are metabolized than they provide, and lauric acid is the most rapidly oxidized fatty acid (coconut oil is roughly 50% lauric acid). So coconut oil can actually help you lose weight, another critical issue for serious cyclists!
• Coconut oil has a thermogenic effect, meaning that it raises body temperature, resulting in a boost of energy and metabolic rate.

I suspect that most folks reading Eat Fat Lose Fat would have a difficult time in fully following any of the three dietary protocols suggested in the book, especially if they rely on food manufacturer's advice on healthy foods. But don't let that stop you from incorporating coconut oil and coconut products into your diet. I add one to two tablespoons of coconut oil to my steel cut oatmeal every morning and substitute coconut oil for butter or vegetable oils in cooking, and have started using more coconut milk as I've discovered new ways of using it in cooking.