You can find a large benefit to applying the scientific method to your beliefs in life.

In other words, one of the best ways to grow intellectually is to take things you believe to be right, and methodically and logically try to prove them wrong.

Typically, most people do the opposite, they decide something is right, then they seek out research to validate this belief. Unfortunately, in science you can’t prove what it is, you can only prove what it isn’t.

And while that last sentence is extremely vague and almost proverb-ish, the fact remains, you will see amazing growth in your understanding and knowledge if every once in a while you systematically and logically try and disprove the things that you believe to be right, instead of always trying to reaffirm their correctness.

This works amazingly well in the realm of nutrition and fitness.

BP

PS – it was the use of this approach (borrowed from Karl Popper’s Philosophy of Science) that changed my life and led to the writing of Eat Stop Eat.

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A great question from Chris:

Brad, I am on the fence about your program. I have been low-carbing it for a while now with some great results. However I am starting to feel a little limited in what I can eat. It would be nice to have the occasional taco or dessert! Are you saying all calories are the same? Meaning if i switch to ESE and add some carbs to my diet, and still lift, my weight and body comp shouldn’t change b/c of the calorie reduction? Thanks!

My Answer:

A calorie is a calorie. 100%. After all, a Calorie is a unit of measurement. So just as an inch of anything can only ever be an inch long, one calorie from any food is still one calorie.

Now, all macronutrients are not created equal (proteins, fats and carbs do have different effects on the body) but this does not have anything to do with the measurement of calorie (By the way..I think this whole calorie nonsense would disappear if we finally adopted the Joule as the standard measurement of energy..but that’s another story all together).

So to answer your question, I am confident that you can switch to an eat stop eat lifestyle (as long as you are still lifting), increase your carb intake (within reason) and not see a change in your body composition, as long as you do not increase the amount of energy you are consuming.

Regarding your carbohydrate intake, remember even if you moderately increase your carbs on the days you ARE eating, on the 1 or 2 24-hour periods when you are fasting, your carobydrate intake will be ZERO. So most likely it will all balance out.

I do think that macronutrients play an important role in health, and the majority of us could benefit from eating a little less Carbohydrates, but in the end, my opinion is that it’s your ability to eat a wide variety of foods that will bring the best health, and the ability to reduce calorie intake that will bring the best weight loss (add in resistance training if you want to make sure the weight lost if body fat).

BP

PS- In the last month I have heard from a die-hard paleo person, a vegetarian, a fruititarian, and a pasta addict, and they have all found benefits with Eat Stop Eat. Bottom line – Eat Stop Eat doesn’t discriminate, it can help people of all diet-beliefs lose weight and feel great!

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After yesterday’s post I received a number of questions regarding muscle.

Specifically, the comment I made about the fact that muscle isn’t protein…at least not all of it.

Truthfully, human muscle is about 20% protein (of which only about 50% is actual contractile protein)..the rest is fluid (with a super small amount of fat and sugar)

To give you an idea, here is a video illustrating what roughly one pound of muscle actually looks like OUTSIDE of your body:

(You  might need to scroll down just a little to press play on the video screen)

MUSCLE VIDEO

BP

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“Eat big to get big. Eat protein to build more muscle”

At the surface, this makes sense. After all it works for our fat right? The more calories we eat the bigger our fat gets, so it makes some sort of sense that the more protein we eat the bigger our muscles will get.

What we are describing is a basic dose-response relationship.

A very simplified version of a dose-response relationship would be the relationship between calorie surplus and body weight.

If we eat in a way that creates a constant caloric surplus we will gain weight until we are no longer gaining weight, because well…our body could no longer support the weight and the metabolic implications of the excess fat and we have died (morbid, I know).

This relationship is dependent on the form and function of our body fat. Our fat (adipose tissue) is a storage vesicle. It’s purpose (or more appropriately it’s function) is to store excess energy in the form of body fat.

And it’s special characteristics (form) allow it to do so incredibly well. Fat can expand with almost unlimited ability. It is not uncommon for a morbidly obese person to have more than 60% of their body weight derived from their fat mass!

Unfortunately this same dose-response relationship does not exist with muscle. Healthy human beings (who are not using anabolic steroids), cannot simply grow ever increasing amounts of muscle by eating ever increasing amounts of protein.

This is because skeletal muscle is not a storage form of protein. It’s form and function are for contraction (to move our bodies) and thus they are not designed to simply expand and store proteins when we eat more proteins.

In fact, the majority of the weight of your skeletal muscles doesn’t even come from protein! Only 20% of muscle weight is from protein, of which only 50% is actual structural contractile proteins (the rest are cellular proteins like enzymes and the like). The rest is fluid.

If there were a true dose-response relationship between dietary protein and protein organs in our body, then not only would a high protein diet cause our muscles to grow with unlimited potential, but it would also have the same effect on our heart, our gastrointestinal system and most of our other organs.

So this is where a large mistake is often made…treating our muscles like they are fat..able to simply expand and contract depending on our calorie balance or protein balance. The truth is the form and function of fat tissue is what allows it to react this way to a caloric surplus, while the form and function of muscles allow us to stand, walk, and pick up heavy things.

BP

PS- More on protein – If you are interested in the answer to “How much protein do I need to eat to build muscle” then you just might be interested in my new book “How Much Protein?” Available for the next 3 days for FREE when you purchase my book Eat Stop Eat.

If you want to know the truth about how to lose fat and build muscle, then these two books are my best answer!

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It has been a very eventful last few days for me.

I moved my little girl into a ‘big girl bed’. I was afraid she was going to miss her crib, but she LOVES the new bed, which has made the transition very easy.

Then on Valentine’s day I was hit with some nasty food poisoning. Really nasty.  I think I have it narrowed down to the peanuts in the Mango Salad.

Next time their is a nation wide recall on a food product, I think I’m going to pay closer attention.

SInce this was the farthest thing from fun, here is a link to all of the peanut products that have been recalled – Peanut Products – Take note, many of the items on the list are protein bars.

BP

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When it comes to nutrition and weight loss research, the first question everyone always asks is “Were the results significant”.

Unfortunately ‘significant’ isn’t what it used to be.

So what does significant mean anyways?

The use of significant research can often be very misleading, sending you down the wrong path in your quest for ‘research proven’ weight loss.

Some background…

In statistics, a result is called ‘statistically significant’ if it is unlikely to have occurred by chance.
That’s all it means.

So the commonly used significance P value of <0.05 simply means there is less than a 1 in 20 chance that the results found in the study were just a fluke and happened by complete chance.

What it does NOT mean is that the difference is necessarily large, important, or ‘significant’ in the common real-world meaning of the word.

Finding SIGNIFICANCE doesn’t mean the results were SIGNIFICANT.

How confusing is that?

The truth is, having statistical significance says nothing about the practical significance of the findings. Yet, for some reason, we are led to believe that significance is the ‘holy grail’ of scientific research.

Basically, if it is significant, it is right.

I’m not sure how this happened.

I think it has something to do with the use of scientific research as legal evidence in court cases. To me, this is when it no longer mattered if the results were applicable in the real world to real people; it only mattered if they were legally defensible.

The other tricky thing about significance it that significance DOES NOT mean causation.

In other words, just because the results of a study were found to be significant, it does not mean that one thing in the study actually caused the other.

This is Causation and it is actually EXTREMELY difficult to prove.

In fact, a good scientist will point out that causality can ONLY be proven by demonstrating a mechanism. Statistics and significance alone can never prove causality.

To even SUGGEST the idea of causation, you need to have certain evidence…

The relationship has to be strong, consistent, specific, plausible, follow a logical time sequence and shows a dose-response gradient.

It is VERY RARE that one scientific study can prove all of these things, and certainly being ‘significant’ proves NONE of these things.

Often, journalists and bloggers get so geeked up by a finding that is statistically significant that they all but ignore the practical importance or relevance of their findings.

“Scientifically proven to cause X”

If you see a claim like this, it’s probably wrong, or at least greatly oversimplified.

Significance tests are NEVER the whole answer. They are just one single piece of a very large puzzle. Statistical significance is irrelevant if the effect is of no practical or real-world importance.

So why did science ruin the word significance? Well significant used to mean “important; or something of consequence.”

Which I would argue it no longer means. It is an overused, overhyped term that is more science-marketing than it is science.

So we need a new word to describe the findings of research and whether they apply to the real world.
I nominate ‘Remarkable’.

Especially if you define something that is remarkable as  “worthy of notice or attention.”
So instead of asking if the results of the study were significant (which they almost always are these days) ask if the results of the study were remarkable.

More importantly whenever you read about research you need to ask yourself did the story give you enough information to determine whether or not the findings were remarkable. If they couldn’t give you enough information to make this decision easy, it probably wasn’t.

Or, if you don’t have the background needed to decide whether the results were remarkable, but feel like they SHOULD be, this is probably just an example of great science-marketing.

Remarkable…it’s the new significant.

BP

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Here is a quick reminder for anyone who is trying to lose weight:

Consider the model on the cover of a fitness magazine.

First the model diets for months to prepare for the photoshoot.

After dieting, the model may even dehydrate specifically for the shoot.

(The model will only look good and that lean for a couple of hours on the day the photo shoot).

During the photo shoot oil and makeup is applied to make the model look as perfect as possible.

Different types of oils are used to make muscles look defined, and make up is used to make everything as perfect as possible.

A high priced professional photographer will set up lighting and angles to make the model look as good and lean as possible (lighting makes a WORLD of difference!).

The model may do a pump-up style workout to make certain parts of his or her body look bigger than normal (arms, chest, shoulders..that sort of thing) – I did an example of how much a pump and a tan can effect the way you look..you can check it out HERE.

Sometimes, duct tape is used to ‘hide’ any extra fat (duct tape across the lower back helps pull love handles out of site for a photoshoot)

Clothes are chosen and altered to make the model look as good as possible.

After 2 to 3 hours of shooting (maybe a dozen rolls of film), the photo shoot is over.

The model (who is probably exhausted) goes and eats.

But the magic doesn’t stop here.

The photos are developed/downloaded.

From the two hundred or so photos, 2 or 3 are chosen.

These photos are sent to a artist who does the necessary touch up work with photoshop.

Moles and birthmarks are removed, shoulders made broader, waist made smaller, skin toned smoothed out, smile whitened, hair cropped, definition added and background removed.

Finally the picture is ready to appear on the cover.

Obviously this is not a real representation of how the model truly looks. It is idealized and stylized….In a sense..EVERYTHING was made perfect.

This should NOT be your inspiration for how you want your body to look.

Create realistic expectations based on YOUR body, and NEVER trust pictures in magazines.

BP

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