Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Behind the scenes about exercise and weight

I've always been a fitness nut. I run or play tennis every day and have for probably 30 years. I miss exercise maybe one day a month. The other days - I go an hour at least. Love it.

This past Spring, I decided to learn how to film, and Dr. Heidi's nutrition course in CA was perfect timing. So I went out there. Once a week, I was in on the 4 hour seminar with her students. Of course me with all my camera gear.
It happened that I'd let myself go a little. Wine too often at dinner a few months in a row put on some weight in the middle I didn't want. The evening desserts, even though they were raw yogurts with a little maple syrup, were becoming too regular.

So I put on like 7-8 pounds and I hated how it looked and felt.
Anyway, during this 7 week nutrition course, Dr. Heidi assigned all the students to select a different eating and drinking regime so they could experience the effects.

They all chose an approach from the many options offered by different doctors and nutrition experts that Dr. Heidi presented during the course.

For herself, Dr. Heidi decided to do a "beast and blubber" extreme regime. Inspired by Gary Taubes' book, Bad Calories, Good Calories. (Dr. Heidi does NOT recommend the B&B regime to ER Fat Burn participants. It was her personal experiment. She'd tried everything else.)

She went from eating almost nothing but organic veggies and salads to only fish, chicken, and beef. All grass-fed, pastured, nothing from any industrial feed lot.
So I decided to do that too, although not quite as extreme. I went from one giant salad a day to one per week. Veggies were cut back 80%. For 6 weeks.

Of course, I did my daily runs as I've done all these years.
Results: 6 weeks later, the extra 7-8 pounds were gone. I felt like my old self again.

I'm less extreme now, but have discovered that my body doesn't need as many veggies as I thought it did, especially when I don't eat any junk carbs or industrial food.

So for me exercise had nothing whatever to do with the weight and lump loss.

Like the famous guru said, "Believe nothing. Try it for yourself and see if it agrees with you or not." Different strokes for different folks. I try something different only if what I've been doing before isn't giving me the results I want. Since I don't pretend I can predict, I test new things.

You?



Sept Extreme Regime starts SAT, Sept 6 (that's the first group call).
3 Active spots left. See here.


P.S. Speaking of runners, Danish investigators reported that they trained sedentary individuals to run marathons. After an 18-month training period, the 18 men in the study lost an average of 5 lbs of body fat. The 9 women had no change in body composition. (Reported in Taubes, p. 267.)

Dr. Hedi's ER Fat Burn program is a first practical application of Gary Taubes' meticulous analysis of 150 years of weight and obesity research described in his 2007 601-page book (featured in the NYTimes), Bad Calories, Good Calories. Dr. Andrew Weil has fully endorsed Taubes' work, telling Larry King Live:
"[Gary Taubes] has done a meticulous job of showing that many of the assumptions that are held by the conventional medical community simply rest on nothing…It’s very important to get these out to the medical community because a lot of the ways we try and prevent and treat obesity are based on assumptions that have no scientific evidence.” (emphasis added, KK).

7 comments:

Robin Plan said...

I don't think I could do like Dr. Heidi with eating only meats but I've found I like the taste of pastured, grass fed meat. This is a big thing for me because I've never liked meat. Now I know what I was almost force feeding myself before wasn't real food.

Thanks Kim and Dr. Heidi for everything.

I ordered the book Bad Calories, Good Calories.

Robin
www.weirdfoodburnsfat.com

Carol Raynor said...

I was so the opposite of you Kim. I hated exercise. Running/Jogging was too hard on my joints, swimming was OK but too much trouble, going to the gym – no time, sit-ups – forget it. I considered a tread mill, but my husband said it would only gather dust. I just have never been one for exercise. My day time job is at a desk and when I got home I was too tired to think much less exercise.

I knew I needed to lose weight (5’0” and 169 lbs) and had tried every diet I knew. I would lose some weight but as soon as I went back to my “normal” eating habits, the weight would come back with a vengeance. One of the things that drew me to the Extreme Regime program was the introduction call where I learned about the benefits of coconut oil, non-processed food, range feed beef and pastured chickens. And truthfully, there was the appeal of no exercise required. I could if I wanted to, but it was not mandatory.

You are right to say “don’t believe everything you hear - try things for yourself and see what happens.” I love trying new things. I finished the ER program 20 pounds lighter. I was shocked at my own results. I now have a re-bounder that I believe will work nicely for some movement in my life. It worked for me and that’s all I care about. I’ll be auditing the course this time to reinforce what I learned. I have also order the book and look forward to reading it.

Unknown said...

Interesting article, I'll have to order the book and read the details. I find that for me, I need to eat a variety of foods to really feel satisfied. So while I might be able to follow the diet for a couple of days, I think I'd feel at a loss without some of my favorite fruits and veggies.

I will have to try the diet and see what I think. I look forward to reading the book.

Dean said...

Three points: 1 if Kim were not working out she would have gained much more than the 7-8 pounds that she did gain, 2 if she stopped the workouts when she started the Extreme Regime it may not have been as effective, 3 If she had a progressive fitness plan rather than just randomly working out with no specific goals she could have maintained her regular diet and still lost those 7-8 pound and her definition would improve as well (over all body composition - look at that nice physic). Diet alone is one way, but diet and exercise is the best way to improve body composition and overall health and has been shown to be the greatest factor in maintaining desired body weight (I don't have the exact research but I have seen the results). If you looked for research that related exercise with fat loss you would find many more studies then research that suggest exercise makes no difference in weight loss. With the marathon trainee’s diet, muscle gain and overall health did not seem to be factored in. Most things work if they are followed and there is no cheating. The question is can you maintain your desired weight once you achieve it. If you like the food in the Extreme Regime you should maintain the results, if not then the results will be temporarily.

Robin Plan said...

Hi Kim - I have to respond to Dean's comment here:
"If you like the food in the Extreme Regime you should maintain the results, if not then the results will be temporarily."

The food is real food, the kind that has been given a bad rap by the media for years. Real food is what our great great grandparents ate. They didn't die of the diseases we are seeing today. Real food is grass fed meats verses grain fed. Pastured chickens and their eggs. Fruits and veggies grown organic. Butter, raw dairy, coconut oils, etc. Nothing odd just old fashioned real food. That kind of food seems weird compared to what we call food today - the food stuff we eat today is weird.

I can eat this ER food forever and feed it to my family.

Robin
www.weirdfoodburnsfat.com

Dean said...

Robin, are you trying to correct me, clarify what ER is, or counter the subjective nature of my comments? Most people eat processed food because it is convenient, cheap and tastes good. Foraging for food is time consuming and expensive not to mention the extra effort in preparation of the food. I agree the less processed our food is processed the better. My point is if people want to maintain the results they need to maintain the plan that created the results (liquid diets work, fitness programs work, Atkins works – most things work but are not maintained so neither are the results). Good for you Robin on your commitment, now only time will tell. Good luck, Dean

Jeff Iversen said...

People are fat because they don't know how to eat. In the same way, many people will not lose weight through their workouts because they don't know how to exercise for maximum fat loss. Look at all the studies that have been done on the long boring cardio workouts. What a failure or an inefficient way to lose fat.

Those people who are following the Tabata Protocol or "High Intensity Interval Training" (HIIT) burned 9 times more fat than those who did the traditional and boring aerobic exercise.

Read my post about, Are You Intense About Losing Fat? and watch a few videos about a man who lost 50 lbs. See another woman who lost 45 lbs in four months using HIIT and kettle bells. If you tried to tell them that exercise was a poor way to lose weight, I wonder what they would say?