Excess Calories = Weight Gain? Not!!

I'm in the middle of reading Refined Carbohydrate Foods and Disease: Some Implications of Dietary Fiber by Burkitt and Trowell (1975). It clearly reinforces the notion that weight gain is not simply a result of excess calorie consumption, but just as much the result of poor bowel motility. Basically the argument is that increased consumption of refined carbohydrates during the last 150 years has resulted in a stunning loss of fiber from our diets. The authors compared an estimate of daily wheat fiber consumption in 1770 to that of 1970, showing that consumption of such fiber went from 6.26 grams per day down to .2 grams per day! Of course wheat constitutes a small portion of total dietary fiber (don't forget your veggies), but that is a very stunning difference. They also showed how the reduction of wheat dietary fiber and increased sugar consumption mirrored the increase in obesity.

I'm currently about half way through the book, but what I just read struck a chord with me, as it confirms my own experience with weight gain and loss during the past few decades. They point out that studies long ago established that most nutrients and calories are absorbed in the small intestine, and that the efficiency of the small intestine decreases as fiber increases. In effect, more fiber means a faster transit time and more calories being excreted as waste. This absolutely banishes the notion that weight gain is a result of excess calories - weight gain is as much a result of chronic constipation! Of course, exercise also increases bowel motility, which is why I was able to eat 5,000 to 7,000 calories of pure junk food every day (think of a six-pack of donuts for breakfast every morning) and maintain a healthy body weight in the mid-1980s while riding hundreds of miles per week (yes, that is a lot of miles, but probably not enough to soak up 7,000 calories per day - I certainly wasn't racing back then).

It is easy to see if you are getting a good balance of fiber in your diet by checking your (hopefully) daily output against the Bristol Stool Analysis Chart. It should consistently be 3s and 4s. It's interesting that the German's knew about the importance of stool analysis long before the Bristol chart came out, which is why the Platform Toilet is fairly ubiquitous in that country. It provides a shelf that permits close up examination of the day's efforts, which is invaluable if you have a large number of "sinkers" vs. "floaters" (the latter is caused by increased fat content, by the way). NOTE: There is one other major stool category - the "mixers," effectively the Type 7 stool shown on the Bristol chart.

The interesting thing is, if you are getting sufficient fiber from foods as opposed to supplements, you increase your satiety and it is much easier to resist overeating the calorie dense carbohydrate foods that cause weight gain for most people. And when you do eat these sorts of calories your body is less likely to absorb as much of them, a very win-win situation!

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.

Melanoma

I'm once again off-topic, since this post doesn't have a lot to do with food. But skin cancer is a real concern for cyclists, given how much time we spend in the sun. I happen to be a cancer survivor, having had a melanoma removed six and a half years ago, so this is a subject near and dear to me.

After my experience I looked high and low for anything suggesting any means of reducing the likelihood of a recurrence. For a time I bought sunblock clothing and special sunblock that left me pasty-looking, I even bought sunblock dye and dyed all of my regular clothing. Despite searching high and low there didn't seem to be much else that I could do. Things have changed a bit since then.

First off, hiding from the sun is probably the worst thing you can do, though avoiding sun burns is still essential. My feeling, based upon reading a few years back, is that it is best if you can start tanning early in the season and let your natural melanin protect you, with a light sunblock as extra protection when you anticipate long exposure on high UV days. To learn more about how sunlight and adequate levels of Vitamin D is thought to help prevent melanoma see this page on Dr. Mercola's website.

Second, cut back on sugar so that it is a condiment to flavor meals, rather than consumption of sugar for sugar's sake (i.e., cakes, candy bars, soda pop, etc). Sugar is implicated in all kinds of inflammatory processes, so there's no sense in adding extra fuel to cancer's fire. If you are going to eat sugar (and I do) it's probably best to have it with your meal, than as a between meal snack.

Third, Curcumin (found in Turmeric and Curry) has generated a lot of excitement for what appears to be its ability to block a pathway for the development of melanoma, as well as other cancers and degenerative diseases. For more on that, see this Science Daily article. Turmeric is available in supplement form. I take a couple of capsules per day for it's anti-inflammatory effect and for the possibility that it may keep future melanomas at bay.