A Shocking Expose of the 12 Biggest
Scams, Cover-ups, Lies, Myths and
Deceptions In The Diet and Weight Loss
Industries!
By Tom Venuto, Author of
Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle (BFFM)
Copyright 2003, Fitness Renaissance, LLC
All Rights Reserved
A full-page ad in a recent issue of the National Enquirer featured this
headline:
"Lose Up To 2 Pounds Daily...
Without Exercise."
Yeah right! And you'll make a million dollars a day too...without working!
That's a whopper of a lie if I've ever heard one.
Trying to lose fat without exercise is like trying to sit on a chair without
four
legs. If one leg is missing, your chair is going to fall over.
An effective fat burning program must have four crucial components:
1. Aerobic exercise
2. A nutrient dense diet with a mild calorie deficit
3. Weight training
4. Goal setting and motivation
Except for those genetically gifted, fast-metabolism types (that we all love
to hate), it ‘s extremely difficult (if not impossible) for most people to lose
fat
permanently without exercise. It’s always better to BURN THE FAT than it
is to try to starve the fat (refer back to Fat Loss Lie #2 for the reasons why).
To lose body fat, there must be a calorie deficit. Such are the laws of
thermodynamics and energy balance. However, there’s more than one way
to create a calorie deficit. One way is to decrease your calorie intake from
food. The other is to increase the amount of calories you burn though
exercise.
Of the two ways to create a calorie deficit, burning the calories is the
superior method. This is because large calorie deficits cause muscle loss
and trigger the starvation response. Ironically, most people do the opposite:
They slash their calories to starvation levels and exercise too little or not at
all. This causes a decrease in lean body mass and invokes the “starvation
response.”
Paradoxical as it seems, the most effective approach to fat loss is to eat
more (keep the calorie reduction small) and let the exercise burn the fat.
You don’t have to starve yourself – you just have to choose the right foods
and make exercise a part of your lifestyle.
Why would anyone resort to starvation diets when they can burn fat more
efficiently through exercise? Perhaps they believe that eating more food
and working out at the same time will “cancel each other out. Maybe they
shy away from the hard work involved in exercise. There’s also a trend
these days towards avoiding too much aerobic exercise because of the notion that
it will make you lose muscle. Quite to the contrary, aerobic
exercise –combined with weight training - is the only method of fat loss that
allows you to create a calorie deficit and burn fat without slowing down the
metabolism.
Here are the reasons why exercise - not dieting - is the
superior
method of losing body fat:
1. Exercise – aerobic and weight training - raises your metabolic rate.
Dieting decreases your metabolic rate.
2. Exercise creates a caloric deficit without triggering the starvation
response.
3. Exercise is good for your health. Dieting is harmful to your health.
4. Exercise, especially weight training, signals your body to keep your
muscle and not burn it for energy. Dieting without exercise can result
in up to 50% of the weight loss to come from lean body mass.
5. Exercise increases fat-burning enzymes and hormones. Dieting
decreases fat burning hormones and increases fat storing
hormones.
6. Exercise increases the cells sensitivity to insulin so that
carbohydrates are burned for energy and stored as glycogen rather
then being stored as fat.
If anyone ever tries to sell you a program for losing weight and it doesn’t
include exercise (it’s just a “diet”), hold on to your wallet and run for cover.
Even if you could get lean without exercise, you should be working out for
your health anyway, not just for cosmetic reasons.