I’m back home after a whirlwind trip down to New York City to film a spot on the Morning Show with Mike and Juliet.
From my experience this was a win. Not a giant win, but a small significant one.
After all, the point of my appearance on that show wasn’t to win the approval of a dietitian and a medical doctor (It’s not like this was a scientific debate), and I fully expected them to be skeptical….(after all, they got to hear a 30 second hyped up montage, me talk for about 1 minute and then were asked to give an opinion.)
Instead, my plan was to expose a large audience of people to a style of eating that can help them lose weight, and to help them understand that this method is incredibly simple and effective.
No supplements, no phases, no stress, no guilt, no unhealthy obsession with ‘eating clean’, just a simple way to eat less while enjoying the foods you eat.
Given the time I had, I think I did a fairly good job.
OK, so now lets get to the good stuff, here is the behind the scenes info:
First, let’s start with the evil dietitian and the mean medical Doctor – They were actually both super nice, open minded women. I kid you not! Off the air they were both very likable people.
And, Dr. London is no stranger to the weight room, that lady had some muscle!
As for their on-air personalities and their concerns about Eat Stop Eat, well we’ve all heard them before. “Your metabolism will slow down and you will lose muscle.”…nothing new here.
I knew this was what they were going to say, after all, I thought the EXACT SAME THING before I went back to school.
And as I said before, my goal wasn’t to convince these two people that I was right and they were wrong…because you simply can’t change a person’s way of thinking in only 30 seconds.
But just for the sake of argument and to show that I’m not just cherry picking one random unnamed, unreferenced study… here is a snapshot of just a few of the papers that I review in Eat Stop Eat that show that your metabolism does NOT slow down and that you do NOT lose muscle:
- Carlson MG, Snead WL, Campbell PJ. Fuel and energy metabolism in fasting humans. Am J Clin Nutr. 1994 Jul;60(1):29-36.
- Halberg N, Henriksen M, Söderhamn N, Stallknecht B, Ploug T, Schjerling P, Dela F. Effect of intermittent fasting and refeeding on insulin action in healthy men. J Appl Physiol 2005; 99: 2128-2136
- Jensen MD, Ekberg K, Landau BR. Lipid metabolism during fasting. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2001 Oct;281(4):E789-93.
- Johnstone AM, Faber P, Gibney ER, Elia M, Horgan G, Golden BE, Stubbs RJ. Effect of an acute fast on energy compensation and feeding behavior in lean men and women. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2002 Dec;26(12):1623-8.
- Klein S, Sakurai Y, Romijn JA, Carroll RM. Progressive alterations in lipid and glucose metabolism during short-term fasting in young adult men. Am J Physiol. 1993 Nov;265(5 Pt 1):E801-6.
- Mittendorfer B, Horowitz JF, Klein S. Gender differences in lipid and glucose kinetics during short-term fasting. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2001 Dec;281(6):E1333-9.
- Samra JS, Clark ML, Humphreys SM, Macdonald IA, Frayn KN. Regulation of lipid metabolism in adipose tissue during early starvation. Am J Physiol 1996;271:E541-E546
- Webber J, Macdonald IA. The cardiovascular, metabolic and hormonal changes accompanying acute starvation in men and women. Br J Nutr. 1994 Mar;71(3):437-47.
- Zauner C, Schneeweiss B, Kranz A, Madl C, Ratheiser K, Kramer L, Roth E, Schneider B, Lenz K. Resting energy expenditure in short-term starvation is increased as a result of an increase in serum norepinephrine. Am J Clin Nutr. 2000 Jun;71(6):1511-5.
- Gjedsted J, Gormsen LC, Nielsen S, Schmitz O, Djurhuus CB, Keiding S, Ørskov H, Tønnesen E, Møller N. Effects of a 3-day fast on regional lipid and glucose metabolism in human skeletal muscle and adipose tissue. Acta Physiol (Oxf). 2007 Nov;191(3):205-16.
So even if they weren’t taking the opposite view just for the sake of good TV, I should point out that I certainly did not expect either woman to be completely up to date on the literature in this field.
I had to go back to school full time, spending almost two years reviewing papers full-time just to get to the level of understanding I currently have – and I am nowhere near the world’s leading expert on this topic.
Both these woman run extremely busy personal practices…it simply wouldn’t be fair to think they had time to review all of these papers before we went on the air. (TV moves fast, I only found out about this appearance on the Weekend, so I imagine both Kerri and Dr. London only even heard about Eat Stop Eat on Sunday, maybe 24 hours before the show went live.)
So in the end, despite the fact that I was met with the same old argument, it was a good experience and I met some great people.
I hope I exposed a lot of people to a style of eating that will help them lose weight without asking them to become obsessive compulsive about what they eat or by asking them to spend hundreds of dollars a month on useless supplements or specialty foods.
The Morning show is run by a group of very nice, very professional people, and if even one person who saw the show has success with the Eat Stop Eat lifestyle then it was worth my time.
BP
PS- if you missed the show you can see the clips by using the following links:
http://www.mandjshow.com/videos/mj-investigates-the-latest-dieting-fads-continued/
http://www.mandjshow.com/videos/an-mj-investigates-greenroom-exclusive/