The Calorie Myth

Gradually, weight lifting [resistance training] changed the way I looked. The alteration was not dramatic, but I loved it. My back became broader, which makes my hips look smaller; my arms and legs are firmer and more shapely. I never grew big muscles, but they are defined; you can see their outlines. I feel different, too, more confident of my body’s strength and of my ability to do almost any movement in daily life with little effort.

—Gina Kolata, New York Times¹⁶³

PRINCIPLE 1: EXERCISE MORE MUSCLE TO GET MORE RESULTS

Why do people ride a bike to burn body fat instead of drawing pictures of bikes to burn body fat? After all, both activities exercise muscles. We choose to ride a bike because doing so exercises more muscle (the large leg muscles) than drawing bikes (the small hand muscles). The more muscle exercised, the better our results. Traditional exercise has that much right. However, we can do a lot better.

Just as we get better results in less time by working more muscles within our body, we get even better results in even less time by concentrating our efforts on exercising more of the the individual fibers that make up our muscles. Boston University researchers found that when we engage in exercise that works more muscle fibers, we exercise the uniquely clog-clearing muscle fibers called type 2b muscle fibers, which have “a previously unappreciated role in regulating whole-body metabolism [unclogging].”¹⁶⁴ Because of that role, the researchers concluded that strength training might be even more important to overweight people.

So how do we activate these and all the rest of our muscle fibers? The answer may surprise you. The best strategy is to exercise less—but smarter. Here’s how this works. Just as we have different muscles to do different things—our biceps help move our arms and our hamstrings help move our legs—we also have different muscle fibers to perform different roles within the tissue that makes up our muscles. For instance, the type 1 (slow-twitch) fibers in our arms, our legs, and every other muscle group enable us to move with a little force for hours. They keep us walking around all day. On the other hand, type 2 (fast-twitch) fibers enable us to move with a lot of force for minutes and seconds. They enable us to lift furniture briefly and they come in three forms: type 2a, type 2x, and type 2b—each getting progressively stronger, larger, and hormonally helpful (I’ll dig into hormones in a minute).

Just as our stronger, larger leg muscles help us burn more fat than our smaller, weaker hand muscles, our stronger, larger type 2 fibers help us burn more fat than our weaker type 1 fibers. Similarly, much as we engage more muscle groups when we lift a heavy object (we lift heavy boxes with our legs, back, and arms, while we lift light boxes with only our arms), we also use more muscle fibers the heavier the object we move (we use type 1 and all type 2 fibers when we do smarter exercise, while we use only our type 1 fibers when we jog).

When we put all of this together, we arrive at a surprising and encouraging conclusion. The more resistance we use, the more muscle fibers we work, the more energy we use, the faster we run out of energy, the more sore we get, and therefore, the less exercise we need to do in terms of both duration (exercise for about ten minutes at a time) and frequency (once or twice per week) to burn fat and boost our health long term. For instance, we can’t hold a heavy box (a lot of muscle fibers worked) as long or as often as we can hold a light box (a few fibers worked).

This means the choice between exercising more, but with less resistance, and exercising less, but with more resistance, is clear. If we choose to follow the traditional guidance and to exercise more, we have to pick an exercise that requires a little force, engages few muscle fibers, and requires a little energy. We then do this exercise for a long time before we run out of energy and we get little hormonal benefit. Further, it does not make us particularly sore so we are compelled to do it frequently. However, if we choose to exercise smarter—i.e., with more resistance—we pick an exercise that requires a lot of force, many muscle fibers, and a lot of energy. We then run out of energy in a short time and we achieve dramatic hormonal benefits. We also get quite sore and are unable to do it frequently. In short, we get more results in less time. As Dr. Ralph Carpinelli, of the Human Performance Laboratory at Adelphi University, clearly states, “There is little scientific evidence, and no theoretical physiological basis, to suggest that a greater volume of exercise elicits greater increases in strength or hypertrophy [muscle development].”¹⁶⁵

Is this strategy a way of cutting corners? I don’t think so. When we think about the class genius who aces her test in half the time it takes others to get a C, we don’t say she’s cutting corners. We call her smart.

So why do many other programs suggest that we work fewer muscle fibers for a longer periods of time (via conventional cardio)? For the same reasons so many diet programs suggest starving ourselves: They are rooted in the calorie myths. They are focused on mythical metabolism math and manually burning more calories. They fight against our set-point and therefore rarely work long term.

Finally, it’s important to note that exercising with more resistance doesn’t mean that you have to put more stress on your joints. The techniques that follow will allow you to increase resistance and maximize the results of your workout without increasing the impact on your body. These exercises are safer than the high-impact cardio activities many people embrace, such as running. So let’s focus on increasing your results while decreasing the amount of time you spend at the gym.

PRINCIPLE 2: FOCUS ON HORMONES INSTEAD OF CALORIES

Traditional exercise is all about “burning calories.” In case you haven’t noticed, research reveals traditional exercise is all wrong.

Smarter exercise ignores the quantity of calories burned during the 1 percent of your life spent exercising. It focuses on how you exercise, which is to say what muscle fibers you engage, and on triggering more clog-clearing hormones. All you need to harness these hormones is to apply the first principle: exercise with more resistance to work more muscle to get more results.

Why should we focus on hormones instead of calories when exercising? One of the reasons our body slows down and burns muscle before it burns body fat is that burning body fat is hard. Until we get the right combination of hormones, we are not burning through anything meaningful other than time and muscle tissue. The other reason is that our body does not want to burn fat unless it has no other option. It is unfortunate for our waistlines, but it makes perfect survival sense. Our body stores fat to protect us from starving. If it burns fat, it cannot protect us.

“Hard to do” plus “do not want to do” generally equals “it’s not happening.” That is, unless our body has no other option. The way to achieve this is simple: require it to expend a huge amount of energy quickly. Use more resistance. Exercise smarter. Work all muscle fibers.

As we know, when our body needs a lot of energy it can do four things: Make us eat more. Slow down. Burn muscle. Burn fat. However, when we exercise with a lot of resistance, we eliminate three of these options. Making us eat more will not work because digestion takes a long time. It is too late to slow us down because the energy demands have already been made. Burning muscle is out of the question, since smarter exercise stimulates muscle rather than destroying it. Left with no other option, our body is forced to produce hormones such as epinephrine, adrenaline, noradrenaline, growth hormone, etc., which free up energy stored as body fat.

Please keep in mind that increasing the frequency or duration of exercise does not yield the same results as increasing the resistance of our exercise. More frequent or longer workouts are akin to a martial artist trying to break four progressively thicker boards by gently tapping on them more. Breaking through the boards is about higher quality (force), not higher quantity (duration and frequency). With one focused, quick, safe, and intense strike, the martial artist will achieve something no quantity of lower quality could ever accomplish. Similarly, with one focused, quick, safe, and intense workout, we will achieve something no quantity of lower quality ever could. We will break—in a healthy way—each of our progressively stronger types of muscle fibers and achieve a set-point-lowering reaction no quantity of lower quality ever could.

PRINCIPLE 3: INCREASE RESISTANCE AND REDUCE FREQUENCY TO INCREASE RESULTS

If we have more hair cut off when we get a haircut, we can get haircuts less often. That is not some too-good-to-be-true gimmick. That is common sense. The more hair we have cut off, the more time needed to grow it back. Similarly, if we exercise more muscle, we can exercise less often, because more time is required to recover.

How long our muscles take to recover is a great way to tell if we are exercising smarter. If we are able to exercise on Monday and then do the same thing a day or two later, we are not activating all our muscle fibers. If Monday’s workout used enough resistance to exercise all our muscle fibers, they will not be ready to go again one, two, three, four, or even five days later. Type 2b muscle fibers need at least six days to recover.

If we are exercising frequently, either we are not exercising smarter or we are not giving our clog-clearing hormones enough time to do their job. Either way we are spending more time exercising and burning less body fat long term. Enough of that. Let’s do a little smarter exercise and then let our unclogged bodies do the rest.

PRINCIPLE 4: LOWER WEIGHTS TO LOWER YOUR WEIGHT

Smarter exercise does not require lifting weights. We are going to focus on lowering weights.

Every resistance training exercise has two parts: lifting the resistance (for example, standing up) and lowering the resistance (for example, sitting down). Lifting the resistance is called the concentric portion of the exercise. Concentric is when the muscle contracts. Lowering the resistance is called the eccentric portion of the exercise. Eccentric is when the muscle extends. Lifting weights—the concentric action—gets more attention in muscle magazines. But lowering weights—the eccentric action—gets more results in studies.

While lifting weights helps boys feel like men, safely and slowly lowering weights enables us to use up to 40 percent more resistance. That enables more muscle fibers to be worked and more clog-clearing hormones to be triggered. That means more results in less time. For example, Marc Roig, PhD, of the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of British Columbia, found that “eccentric training performed at high intensities was shown to be more effective in promoting increases in muscle.”¹⁶⁶

Focusing on the eccentric—lowering—portion of resistance training works so well because it safely allows our muscles to generate more force. To test this principle, walk up a flight of stairs and then walk back down them. Notice how the trip down was easier? That is because your muscles are stronger while doing eccentric—lowering—actions on the way down. Or if you want to take this test one step further and eliminate the influence of gravity, hop onto a seated row or chest press machine (or any exercise that moves horizontally), and select a weight that you cannot lift with one arm but can lift easily with two arms. Lift it with two arms and cautiously relax one arm and observe how you are able to lower the resistance with one arm. You couldn’t lift the weight with one arm, but you could lower it with one arm because, as Neil Reeves, PhD, of Manchester Metropolitan University, tells us, “Muscles are capable of developing much higher forces when they contract eccentrically compared with when they contract concentri-cally.”¹⁶⁷

Once we understand this principle, we can see why it is less effective to focus on lifting resistance. It’s a bit like writing with our nondominant hand. It “works,” but we know how our body operates best, so why not leverage that to do better work in less time? We’ll cover how in part 3.

PRINCIPLE 5: REDUCE TIME EXERCISING TO REDUCE BODY FAT

This novel time-efficient training paradigm can be used as a strategy to reduce metabolic risk factors in young and middle-aged sedentary populations who otherwise would not adhere to time-consuming traditional aerobic exercise regimes.

—Dr. John Babraj, Heriot-Watt University¹⁶⁸

As we covered earlier, the more muscle we exercise, the more energy we use and the less exercise we can do. This point is extremely important and is worth rephrasing and repeating because all we ever hear is “exercise more.”

We have a limited amount of energy. If exercise Y takes five minutes to use up our energy but exercise X takes an hour to use up our energy, then exercise Y uses much more muscle and is much more metabolically beneficial than exercise X. We will be doing smarter exercise for just a few minutes per week because it’s physically impossible to do a lot of smarter exercise. We run out of energy and the body shuts down, whether we like it or not.

The best way to exercise smarter is the eccentric training that we just covered and will dig deeper into momentarily. However, if you enjoy using cardio machines such as stationary bikes or ellipticals to exercise, you can do those smarter—using more resistance—as well. Let’s call this smarter interval training. Experts at Pennington Biomedical Research Center have found that interval training stimulates the body to improve insulin sensitivity more than low-quality/high-quantity cardiovascular exercise. In order to tap into that smarter cardio response, we have to update the way we think about cardiovascular exercises.¹⁶⁹

Contrary to popular belief, cardiovascular exercises and resistance training exercises are not completely different. Traditional cardiovascular exercises are resistance-training exercises that require little force and work only our weakest muscle fibers.

Say we get on a leg-press resistance-training machine, add no resistance, and move our legs up and down for thirty minutes. Did we do resistance training or cardiovascular exercise? Our hormones don’t care. Our muscles did not have to generate much force, so we did nothing to lower our set-point. Or say we get on a stair-stepper cardiovascular exercise machine, add no resistance, and move our legs up and down for thirty minutes. Did we do resistance training or cardiovascular exercise? Our muscles don’t care.

Now let’s say we get on a stationary bike, increase the resistance so much that the only way we can generate enough force to move the pedals is to stand up as we pedal. Let’s say we then pedal as hard as we can for thirty seconds, at which point we have to stop because we are out of energy. Did we do

1. Resistance training?

2. Cardiovascular exercise?

3. Neither?

4. Both?

5. It does not matter—our muscles had to generate a lot of force and therefore we triggered the hormonal reaction we’re after?

Answer: 5—IT DOES NOT MATTER. Our body does not care about resistance training or cardiovascular training. It responds in terms of how many muscle fibers an exercise works. So the question then becomes: “How do we use more muscle fiber in cardiovascular exercise?”

Easy. Give your muscles more resistance. Perform smarter interval training. That’s how exercising less leads to fat loss and cardiovascular health.

Brian Irving, PhD, of the University of Virginia, took two groups of women and had them do traditional cardiovascular exercise or smarter cardiovascular exercise. The two groups burned the same number of calories exercising, but the smarter-exercise group spent significantly less time exercising, while losing significantly more belly fat.¹⁷⁰

Martin Gibala, PhD, of McMaster University, separated people into smarter cardiovascular exercise and traditional cardiovascular exercise groups. Over the course of the two-week study, the Smarter Group ex-ercised for two-and-a-half hours while the traditional exercise group exercised for ten-and-a-half hours. At the end of the study both groups got the same results even though the smarter-exercise group spent 320 percent less time exercising than the traditional exercise group. Gibala put it like this: “We thought there would be benefits, but we did not expect them to be this obvious. It shows how effective short intense exercise can be.”¹⁷¹

Many more studies show the same encouraging results and further prove that hours spent exercising per week are unnecessary when compared with smarter exercise. Consider this small sample:

• A study at Harvard University found that “vigorous activities are associated with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease, whereas moderate or light activities have no clear association with the risk of coronary heart disease.”¹⁷²

• A study at Stanford University found that “the intensity of effort was more important than the quantity of energy output in deterring hypertension and preventing premature mortality.”¹⁷³

• Another study from Harvard found that “there is an inverse association between relative intensity of physical activity and risk of coronary heart disease.”¹⁷⁴

• The American Heart Association noted that “vigorous-intensity activities may have greater benefit for reducing cardiovascular disease and premature mortality than moderate-intensity physical activities.”¹⁷⁵

• Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology discovered that “exercise training reduces the impact of the metabolic syndrome [the clog] and that the magnitude of the effect depends on exercise intensity [quality].”¹⁷⁶

Even day-to-day cardiovascular benefits, like not being out of breath after walking up a few flights of stairs, are achieved faster with smarter exercise. Edward Coyle, PhD, in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the University of Texas, found that interval training produced a marked increase in aerobic endurance among untrained people, serving as “a dramatic reminder of the potency of exercise intensity.”¹⁷⁷ Vigorous intensity exercise has been shown to increase aerobic fitness more effectively than moderate intensity exercise, and this fact hints at its greater cardio-protective effects as well. If you like doing cardio, then smarter interval training has clearly emerged as the best way to spend your time. You can trade quantity for quality and get more for less by increasing the force of your exercise. (Again, we will cover exactly how to do this in part 3.)

PRINCIPLE 6: HEAL—DON’T HURT—YOURSELF

Given how little time eccentric and smarter interval training takes, a common reaction to this new approach to exercise is: “Sounds good. I’ll just add that to my existing routine.” That might not necessarily be a bad approach, but to ensure that we spend our time healing rather than harming ourselves, it is critical to keep four things in mind:

1. Unless it is a very-low-intensity and low-impact activity such as walking or yoga, more isn’t better; it’s worse.

2. Spare time is best spent on sleep, increasing the SANEity of your eating program, and then on restorative and recreational activities.

3. The safest and most sustainable way to increase intensity is to increase resistance while decreasing speed.

4. Protect your time, money, and mind.

MORE ISN’T BETTER; IT’S WORSE

Imagine you recently had major surgery and have been prescribed a cutting-edge prescription to help you heal. Your surgeon tells you to take one dose per week. At one dose per week this prescription will make you quite sore, but will benefit you in ways that are hard to believe until you experience them. She then informs you that because of its high potency it is critical not to increase the dose. You get it. You keep your recovery simple. You stay patient while your body heals itself. And you enjoy a healthier and happier version of yourself for the rest of your life.

Smarter exercise is similar. Owing to its high potency, more is not better; it’s worse. There are few areas in life where we have the opportunity to do less and get more. Pharmacology and physiology are two of them. Take advantage of this opportunity. You have access to the world’s most powerful physiological prescription for hormonal healing. Take it as prescribed. Keep your recovery simple. Stay patient. Let your body heal itself. And then enjoy a healthier and happier version of yourself for the rest of your life.

SPARE TIME IS BEST SPENT ON SLEEP AND ENJOYABLE ACTIVITIES

If you want to use the spare time freed up thanks to exercising less—but smarter—on your health, you would be best served spending it (in order of benefit):

1. Sleeping more. I know this seems like common sense, but consider one of the most frequently prescribed methods to burn fat and boost health: sleep less, exercise more. Hormonally clogged, sleep-deprived, and overstressed individuals are told to wake up early to further stress their body. This worsens their hormonal clog. Telling us to wake up at 4:00 a.m. and jog for an hour is like telling someone who just broke an ankle to stop icing it and to go jump up and down on it.

Remember, a broken metabolism really is like a broken ankle: it heals itself when we put less stress on it—not more. Sleeping less increases stress. Traditional exercise increases stress. Starvation increases stress. That’s why we’re going to eat more and exercise less—but smarter—and take the time we save and spend it sleeping. We’re going to figuratively rest, ice, elevate, and do a little physical therapy to enable our broken metabolism to heal itself.

2. Increasing the quality of your eating. Think of creative ways to maximize your intake of exceptionally SANE foods such as deep leafy greens, seafood, grass-fed meats, cocoa/cacao, coconut, acai berries, goji berries, green tea, etc. Remember, the quality of the food we eat is at least 90 percent of the long-term health and fitness equation.

3. Enjoying very low-intensity and low-impact restorative and relaxing activities such as walking, recreational bike riding, yoga, Pilates, stretching, tai chi, meditation, qigong, etc. Moving more is wonderful for you as long as it reduces stress. Do about a half hour of eccentric and smarter interval training per week and then focus on restorative activities.

4. Doing exercise-related hobbies such as jogging or going to an aerobics class with friends in moderation. If a moderate amount of traditional exercise helps you reduce stress and makes you happy, then by all means enjoy it. However, please do not let it have a negative impact on your smarter exercise, SANEity, sleep, or emotional state.

Here’s what not to do. Sleep less so that you can jog for two hours on hard pavement while breathing in car exhaust. Quench your thirst with a “sports drink” whose primary ingredient is high-fructose corn syrup. Eat a plate of pasta and breadsticks because of your postjog starchy-carb cravings. Treat yourself to some ice cream, since you “deserve it” for jogging. Sleep even less the next night because of the insomnia those inSANE foods caused. Wake up the next day feeling terrible, skip your eccentrics because you are sore, binge on inSANE sweets because you are overstressed, and then max out your credit card buying pills, powders, and potions that promise to make everything better because you feel that despite trying harder, you are doing worse. You are not broken. The “eat less, then sleep less so you can exercise more” approach is broken. Go smarter, not harder, and you will transform your life more simply and affordably than you ever thought possible.

INCREASE RESISTANCE WHILE DECREASING SPEED

Every few years, a new at-home “extreme” workout video will come out. These workouts attempt to increase intensity by increasing the speed of exercise. We jump, we sprint, we flail around, and we work up a sweat, but we do not work all our muscle fibers, and we do set ourselves up to get seriously injured.

When you exercise smarter, you will be completely exhausted in a matter of seconds. That’s intense. You will do that by moving in an extremely slow and controlled manner. That’s safe. You will put zero impact on your joints. That’s sustainable. You will be sore for several days after a single short workout. That’s effective. Smarter exercise actually does what these videos claim to do and it does so dramatically more safely and sustainably.

It may be helpful to think of these videos and other extreme forms of exercise as a bit like cutting your hair with a chainsaw. It may sort of work, but it also carries along with it excessive and unnecessary risk. Also, if these exercises were as potent as they claim, why would we need to do them five to seven days per week? Think about the potency of exercise as being like the potency of an ingredient in a recipe. We do not need a large quantity of potent things—and if we need a lot of something, it is not potent. Eccentric exercise, done for a few minutes once per week, actually is potent exercise.

To be fair, quite a few young athletic people swear by these extreme-exercise regimens. If you enjoy extreme exercise and can do it safely without craving starches and sweets or skimping on your eccentrics, then by all means, enjoy. Let’s just make sure we’re doing what’s best for our health and fitness for the rest of our lives.

When it comes to evaluating the long-term efficacy of exercise, there are three primary criteria to look at (in priority order):

1. Safety

2. Sustainability

3. Resistance

SAFETY: If an exercise technique isn’t safe, it’s counterproductive. Let’s say Tom slips a disk in his back while powerlifting and can’t resistance-train effectively for the rest of his life. Some people like to say, “Pain is temporary, pride is forever.” As someone who was part of a state championship Ohio football team and also blew his knee out twice playing football, I can tell you that pride is temporary, pain is forever. Talking about my high school successes grew old many years ago, but my knee still hurts.

SUSTAINABILITY: If an exercise technique isn’t sustainable, it risks being counterproductive. Back in my football days, we did workouts at 6:00 a.m. and then again in the afternoon. Both of these workouts made mainstream extreme workouts look relaxing. Vomiting and passing out were quite common. Today, just about every one of my teammates and I no longer train even close to that way either because we got hurt doing it or because it was so absurd that it spoiled exercise for us. This is one of the reasons why some former athletes become obese. Unsustainable approaches can lead to burnout and complete exercise avoidance long term.

RESISTANCE: Increasing exercise resistance (versus duration or frequency) is the key to hormonal healing. If an exercise technique doesn’t allow us to easily add resistance, the only way to increase intensity is to do the movement faster and that is a recipe for injury. This is why running isn’t as good as stationary biking when it comes to smarter exercise—it’s quite difficult to safely add a lot of resistance while running.

Before you try any new exercise program, I recommend asking yourself three questions:

1. Does this put safety first?

2. Can I do this for the rest of my life?

3. Can I increase resistance without increasing risk?

If you answer no to any of these questions, you may want to stick with eccentrics and smarter intervals.

If you take nothing else from this book, please remember this statement:

There is no pill, product, or service that comes close to providing the health and physique benefits you will get from eating so many nonstarchy vegetables, nutrient-dense proteins, and whole-food fats that you are too full for starches and sweets.

Why do I say this? At least 95 percent of people avoided obesity and over 99 percent avoided diabetes for all human history before (insert name of new pill, product, or service) existed. Remember, slim is simple, but there is a massive amount of money to be made in convincing us otherwise.

Until we achieve baseline health and fitness, anything or anyone who makes avoiding obesity and disease seem more complex than eating more but higher-quality food, and doing less but higher-quality exercise, should be ignored. Otherwise, we will end up heavier, sicker, and with less money in the long term.

Of course if we are already healthy and fit and now want to achieve unnaturally low levels of body fat or world-class athletic performance, we should absolutely get our credit cards out and get ready for some complexity. But if our goal is to be slim and healthy for the rest of our lives, the most effective way to do that is to keep things simple, SANE, eccentric, and inexpensive.

We’ve learned the science of the set-point. We’ve seen how we can eat more—but smarter—by going SANE. And we’ve discovered how we can exercise less—but smarter—by getting eccentric and by doing smarter intervals. Now that we know how we make our body transform itself by eating and exercising smarter, it’s time to make our mind transform itself by thinking smarter.

Just as putting high-quality food into our body dramatically enhances our ability to reach our goals, putting high-quality thoughts into our mind dramatically enhances our ability to reach our goals, too. Part 3 covers a specific five-week plan that will create a beautiful mind along with a beautiful body and empower you along a lifetime of previously unimaginable vitality.