Do Not Cheat on Tom's Challenge

Or I'm going to be in trouble. I just spoke with Tom and you should use the book for your diet and training.

My offer still stands.

500$ cash prize

to the winner as long as you use the link in this post when you make the purchase. Nevermind the part about two to three meals a day.

Cheat on Tom's Challenge

My good friend Tom Venuto has thrown out a Holiday Fitness Challenge to his readers.

Some might recall my discussion with Tom a while back, where I confronted him on his views on meal frequency. To my disappointment, he ended up agreeing with me on the issue that a high meal frequency does zilch to boost your metabolism.

To be honest, I was secretly looking for a fierce debate. But Tom is one of the few gurus out there that actually cares about being scientifically correct and updated, which is a rarity in the fitness industry. For that he gets my respect.



His book is also the most complete package about weight training and nutrition that money can buy. You can read my review here.

I'll pay you 500$

For those motivated, I encourage you to go and cheat on Tom's challenge by using a low meal frequency diet of two to three meals a day. I know Tom is a fan of higher meal frequencies, and it would be sweet if someone won the challenge by not using the higher meal frequency approach suggested in Burn The Fat.

The registration has just opened and the winners get a trip to Jamaica.

On top of that, I'll personally reward the winners with a 500$ cash prize if the following conditions are met:

1) Eat two to three big meals a day (instead of smaller, more frequency meals).

2) Register and make the purchase(s) via the links in this post. The name on the credit card owner is what makes you eligible to receive the 500$ cash prize* from me.

* transaction via PayPal.

...And one more thing - I will not be available to coach you during the competition, so please do not send me e-mails asking for diet advice- that's what Tom's book is for. You'll also get even more great information from Tom if you sign up for an Inner Circle Membership.

This should be fun. Good luck.

P.S. Registration is be open until November 25th.

Fasting and Metabolism

Made a few short comments in response to a blog post I just saw on The Fitness Spotlight. The post is here and below are my responses to some of the claims made.

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Just a few short comments on some claims here. Sorry if this has been covered somewhere among the comments, I haven't read through them all.

"Liver glycogen levels are depleted within 8-10 hours. Muscle glycogen falls by 50% over 24-hours, even without exercise. "

False on both accounts. Liver glycogen is completely depleted in approx 28 hrs (Cahill et al). And the second statement is also incorrect. In humans, muscle glycogen is barely affected at all after 24 hrs, assuming no strenous activity.

"After depleting glycogen, amino acids are recycled to be broken down for glycogen through gluconeogenesis. "

This is an ongoing process, but liver glycogen does not need to be depleted in order for amino acids to contribute to the maintenance of blood glucose. The longer the fast, the greater the contribution - for example, after 16 hrs, aminos will start contributing more than 50% to the amount of glucose in your blood stream. After 24-28 hrs, 100%.

"We see increases in three of the four hormones driving lipolysis, indicating a propensity towards fat burning. Somewhere around 12-18 hours, lipolysis becomes a major energy pathway, producing energy from body fat. "

Yes. In fact, after an overnight fast, 2/3 of the energy burnt are free fatty acids. Eat breakfast and you'll be putting the brakes on this process, of course.

"T3 levels fall slightly, indicating a slightly lower metabolic rate. Urinary nitrogen excretion falls, indicating less catabolism of muscle proteins. "

No. Are you looking at rats now again? Because the downregulation of T3 takes more than 72 hrs to occur in humans. A short fast in the 16-24 hr range certainly doesn't impact negatively.

Questions & Answers

Quite busy lately, therefore the lack of posts. But I'm still alive and here comes some more questions & answers.

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The window of opportunity

Q: Understanding that a caloric surplus is required for muscle building, is there a window post workout where nutrient partitioning is greater towards muscle building? I would think that the nutrient partitioning "curve" would ultimately swing back to muscle maintenance or fat gain in the absence of muscle stimulus, but the question is how long after that stimulus?

A: Have a pre-workout meal, train, go home and fix yourself a big meal. No need to count minutes or stress about this stuff. The 1-3 hours figure is for fasted-state training and not applicable to how most people go about their diet and training*. The 'window of opportunity' for nutrient partitioning post workout is much longer than a mere 3 hours.**

And since this question usually comes up in this context, never train completely fasted. Have some BCAAs/whey beforehand.

* Protein synthesis peaks acutely 1-3 hours post-workout and it is advantageous to have amino acids circulating in your blood stream during this period. Studies show that participants ingesting protein during this time frame gain more muscle - but these studies are performed on completely fasted individuals. For someone ingesting protein through a pre-workout meal or other source of protein pre-workout, those amino acids would be used for protein synthesis (making it less essential to stress about the post-workout shake).

** Protein synthesis is elevated above baseline for at least 24-36 hours after weight training.

Late night hunger

Q: It seems like lately, I have been getting a case of the late night (around 9pm or so) munchies. I usually eat dinner around 5:30 everyday, but I always seem to get hungry around the same time. I have always heard that you shouldn't have carbs within a few hours of bedtime, is there any merit to this?

A: One of my biggest downfalls before coming up with the 16-8 system/IF was late night hunger. The best solution was the simplest one, which meant eating a lot more before bedtime. Irrational fear of fat gain, much a consequence of the don't-eat-carbs-after-x pm-bullshit-myth, held me back from doing it in the past. I did my reading, figured out there wasn't much to it, and decided to try a different approach. Finally got lean as hell eating big in the evening, sometimes way past midnight. Lesson learned. Hope that answered your question (hint: a big fat no).

Catabolic cardio?

Q: Is there any way to perform cardio in a way that limits its catabolic effects? Is their any benefit to doing submaximal intervals vs. steady state?

A: The type of cardio that has the least impact on your recovery capabilities/gym performance will be the least "catabolic". If your conditioning is not adequate, don't play around too much with HIIT. Go with low impact cardio performed for duration rather than intensity if you want to play it safe, and if metabolic conditioning is of a lesser priority than fat loss.

Sodium and weight loss

Q: When I used to have to cut weight for wrestling I would eliminate sodium content about 3 days prior and see a nice drop. Also, drinking about a gallon of distilled water always makes me eliminate a lot of water retention(yes more than just chugging tap water)... purely anecdotal I realize and of course that might just be for the lack of sodium in distilled water. Any truth to this?

A: Yes, cutting sodium, or rather reducing it compared to your daily baseline intake, will cause you to shed water. Reduce sodium for a day and odds are you'll wake up a little lighter - but you'll bounce back on day 3, since this only works in the very short term. The hormones regulating water balance adapts rapidly (and you need to reduce sodium further to drop more water). And you're right on the other claim, as tap water usually contains (very) small amounts of sodium.

Fat loading

Q: Basically, we all know about carb-loading. This author promotes fat loading of 12-24 hrs, saying it will jack up the enzymes involved with burning fat. Drop the dietary fat back down low, and the enzymes will remain high for several days, helping to increase the rate at which body fat is burned. Thoughts?

A: Let's see

1) IMTG stores are extremely small vs glycogen stores
2) dietary fat has much less of an impact on leptin vs carbs
3) excess dietary fat gets stored efficently as adipose tissue vs carbs

Yeah, sounds like a great concept. Like carb loading, without any of the benefits.

Lyle McDonald chimed in:

Everything I"ve seen shows that the increase in fat use for fuel has everything to do with reducing carbs and nothing to do with increasing dietary fat per se.
Consider that the body will shift to using fat for fuel under the following conditions

1. lowcarb/ketogenic diet
2. protein sparing modified fast
3. complete starvation

What's the commonality? The lack of carbs. NOT the presence of dietary fat.

The bottom line is this, ingestion of dietary fat has very little impact on the body's use of fat for fuel and this has been shown endlessly.

EFA and growth hormone

Q: I was arguing with my friend regarding this issue. He stated that EFA (Essential Fatty Acids) slowed down the release of GH (Growth Hormone), however, i disagreed with him. We had this bet over it and i was wondering whats the truth behind this?

A: Eating anything affects basal levels of GH. Starve and you'll have high basal GH all the time. However, diet does not interfere with the nocturnal and the two daily pulses (though they are augmented with fasting). I am unaware of anything specifically related to EFA* and it's probably bullshit, as I have looked into this quite a bit.

* I would expect EFAs to affect GH no differentely than any other fatty acid, which is by lowering it.

Questions & Answers

This is the first in a series of posts with the most useful replies I made in the íntermittent fasting thread on www.bodybuilding.com. Answers have been edited/updated when needed.

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Calorie Restriction (CR) vs Intermittent Fasting

Q: I think CR in general is probably more healthy for some people than "fasting".

A: Depends on how you define "healthy". The whole premise of CR for life extension may sound great on paper, but it's not much fun to chronically restrict calories for rest of your life in order to live a few years more. Especially if the price you pay is hunger and weakness.

Studies hint that IF may have life extension benefits on it's own, some of them are unique to IF and not seen with CR: disease prevention, protection against brain disorders (i.e Alzheimers), immune system support and improved pulmonary function, even on higher calorie intakes.

IF at energy balance > CR.

So perhaps we can get all the benefits of CR, and then some, without having to restrict intake as harshly. Here's an example of some of the exclusive benefits of IF vs CR;

"...Nevertheless, intermittent fasting resulted in beneficial effects that met or exceeded those of caloric restriction including reduced serum glucose and insulin levels and increased resistance of neurons in the brain to excitotoxic stress. Intermittent fasting therefore has beneficial effects on glucose regulation and neuronal resistance to injury in these mice that are independent of caloric intake. "

From "Intermittent fasting dissociates beneficial effects of dietary restriction on glucose metabolism and neuronal resistance to injury from calorie intake" by Anson et al.

Then again, it may be wishful thinking. Main support for the hypothesis comes from animal research, human research is still sparse. However, there are some recent studies that lends support for the hypothesis to be valid for humans as well, for example:

"...These findings demonstrate rapid and sustained beneficial effects of ADCR on the underlying disease process in subjects with asthma, suggesting a novel approach for therapeutic intervention in this disorder. " (the authors conclude that alternate day fasting > CR)

From "Alternate Day Calorie Restriction Improves Clinical Findings and Reduces Markers of Oxidative Stress and Inflammation in Overweight Adults with Moderate Asthma" by Johnson et al.

The mechanism by which fasting protects the heart is not known, but may involve an enhanced ability of cells to cope with oxidative and metabolic stress. Wan et al speculated that...

"A recent study showed that alternate-day caloric restriction can reduce systemic markers of inflammation and oxidative stress and can reduce symptoms in subjects with asthma" (Here they are referring to the human trial by Johnson et al)

Because...

"Intermittent Fasting imposes a mild beneficial stress on cells."

And affects adiponectin:

"Adiponectin concentration was twofold greater in the plasma of rats that had been maintained for 3 months on the IF diet"

Conluding that Adiponectin may possibly explain some of the beneficial effects:

"Adiponectin has previously been shown to have cardioprotective and anti-inflammatory actions. "

Yet finishing with some reservations, as the research is still scarce on this topic:

"IF results in changes in levels of several circulating factors including decreased levels of insulin, leptin and cholesterol, and increased levels of testosterone [27]*. It will therefore be important to elucidate the roles for, and interactions, of these different factors in cardiovascular responses to IF. "

* The effects on testosterone seems unique to rodents so far (personal conslusion based on my review of the topic).

The above is from "Cardioprotective effect of intermittent fasting is associated with an elevation of adiponectin levels in rats" by Wan et al. A recent paper discussed the cardioprotective benefits with regards to humans:

"Short-term modified alternate-day fasting: a novel dietary strategy for weight loss and cardioprotection in obese adults" by Varady et al.

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I wrote the above almost two years ago (added some recent studies for the sake of context). Since then, there's been some additional findings, though nothing groundbreaking. There's a lot on this topic, but I'm gonna cut it short here. Have written plenty on this in the book. To summarize my response to the question: intermittent fasting may or may not have exclusive benefits which cannot be obtained with a traditional, calorie restricted diet. However, due to the scarcity of research on humans, and due to many confounders present in the available research (i.e some of the studies on IF/ADF does not use a CR control group), it's hard to say anything for certain yet.

Intermittent Fasting and PPOS

Q: The Life Extension Foundation is big on the idea that big meals = elevated post prandial oxidative stress (PPOS) which is obviously a negative. Any opinion on this seemingly negative effect of IF/Big Meals?

A: Studies* show oxidative stress is less on intermittent fasting compared to regular calorie restriction. Yes, even when comparing the same calorie intake with varying meal splits (i.e 3 big meals vs 6-9 small meals). The neuroprotective effects of the fast yields the net effect of PPOS being lesser on IF - despite larger meals.

* in ref to Anson et al.

Catabolism during the fast

Q: So, how long does it take for significant muscular catabolism to start? Over 24 hrs?

A: That's context dependent, but consider that blood glucose is maintained within range mostly by gluconeogenesis beyond the 16 hr mark*. That answer might not make a lot of sense, but eat sufficient amounts of slow releasing protein before going to bed and it shouldn't be an issue even if you go for longer than 16 hrs.**

They key factor in whether you'll lose muscle or not is the severity of calorie deficit, not meal time intervals within a non-retarded range.

* note that the studies looking at this contained nutrional regimens very different from what we are doing (i.e Cahill et all fed test subjects 100 g cho before bed time, no protein, and then had them fast for several days to gauge the rate by which liver glycogen vs gluconeogenesis contributes to maintain blood glucose).

** hell there's even a study out there suggesting proteolytic gene expression does not become turned on until the 40 hr mark or so.

A more recent question on the same topic -

Q: Hey guys, got a question about fasting length. I'm currently IF'ing by doing two 24 hour fasts per week (two days with complete fasting) My question is, could I do both fasts consecutively and do one large 48 hour fast? What is the longest amount of time that it is safe to fast before LBM loss/metabolic downregulation?

A: Safest? Well, consider that de novo gluconeogenesis escalates beyond 16 hrs. 16 hrs is the tipping point - your glucose demands after this point is met primarily (more than 50%) by conversion of stored amino acids into blood glucose. Liver will support the brunt of glucose needs before that point. Theoretically, proteolysis will occur to the greatest extent 24-48 hrs into the fast. Of course, there are numerous confounders here to take into account (i.e a casein heavy meal before the fast will delay proteolysis further).

Metabolic downregulation? Up to 72 hrs according to most studies.

Some pics

It's been a while now, so here's a few recent ones. This is more or less the condition I maintain at all times of the year. Weight is approximately 195-200 lbs. I'm not sure of the exact number, since my scale is broke.

Randomness

I get these e-mails from time to time and it's always a pleasure to read them.

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"Martin,

after all the knowledge I have gathered through your site, and from your articles I decided to give this a go when i started a mini-cut.

After 5 weeks of mini-cutting I went from 167.5 lbs to 160.7lbs, Most of the loss would be fat throughout the entire process. Following the IF principles was cake, after day 1-2 the hunger cravings were non-existant, and everything was smooth sailing.

Eating big, and letting the body recover while keeping workouts simple and to the point were nothing but a walk in the park. Intensity was high and energy was beyond belief.

I really cannot exaggerate how easy of a lifestyle this is to a college student who spends countless hours in the library, studying, and working to support the needs to complete a college career and get a job. After 5 weeks of attempting this on my own I am sold on your research, your lifestyle, and the way at which people have been doing this for years.

After reading your testimonials, responses, and following an individual on bodybuilding.com who was a client of yours I always wanted to give this a shot, and did not know if I could change from the whole 6 meals a day thing, I have always had thoughts and wanted to just eat a massive meal 2-3 times a day and call it quits. Well reality sunk in, I gave in, and it is something that has happened to work very well for me.

Here is a link to my workout journal, and I took two videos. One of Before, and One of after (from 9-14-09 to 10-19-09 (Today)) Showing the changes my body experienced while utilizing IF on a cutting diet. Calories never dropped below 2500 on workout days while off days were a touch lower with lower carbs (i know you advocate that). Based off what everyone has said about this lifestyle it came true for me.

I wanted to e-mail and tell you this, that if I do decide to do a contest in the future, I will need your assistance with dialing in my body for the final weeks and work my way towards placing in a bodybuilding show (a dream of mine).

Thank you for all of your advice on the bodybuilding.com forums. It is GREATLY appreciated, because half of the people on there dont know jack shit.

Best Wishes Always,

- Bob Kupniewski

The Link and the transformation videos after a 5 week IF experiment:

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showpost.php?p=399364911&postcount=7383

I hope you get some good feedback from this, and understand what you are doing is working, and the more you promote the greater of an individual you will become. Keep up the hard work."

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By the way, I'm planning a "Best Of" post based on the long running intermittent fasting thread on bodybuilding.com. It will contain expanded and updated answers to questions posted there, and should be a good complement to Questions and Answers on this blog.