Dr. Jonny Bowden

Tag: fats

  • Mediterranean Diet…The Best Diet Ever? Not So Fast!

    Mediterranean Diet…The Best Diet Ever? Not So Fast!

    Last week, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study which, according to the fawning mainstream press, proved “conclusively” that the best diet in the world was the Mediterranean diet, that it protected everyone from heart disease and stroke, and that everyone in the world should be on it.

    Except the study showed no such thing.

    Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of the concept of Mediterranean eating, even though I’ve never seen anyone definitively define what “The Mediterranean Diet” actually is. (Check the definitions: most are squishy and vague with phrases like “higher in vegetables” or “lower in dairy”.) We do know that in all styles of Mediterranean eating there is way less sugar. And there’s lots of olive oil, nuts and other good stuff.

    We also know that Mediterranean folks eat their big meal of the day in the middle of afternoon. And that they take naps. And that the men talk about their feelings. (A lot.) And they get lots of sun. And that all of these things have a great deal of impact, though that’s not what gets mentioned when the press talks about “The Mediterranean Diet”.

    But I digress.

    Back to the study. What the researchers actually did was create three groups of people. Group one ate what is generally thought of as a Mediterranean-type diet, but supplemented with lots of extra-virgin olive oil. Group two ate the same diet, but supplemented with lots of nuts. And group three ate the standard, American, low-fat high-carb diet that the diet dictocrats have been pushing on us for decades. The one recommended by such groups as the American Heart Association and the god-awful moribund American Dietetic Association (or whatever it is they’re calling themselves these days to try to reinvent themselves as contemporary. Good luck with that.)

    Here’s what the results showed with laser-sharp clarity: The low-fat diet is a complete and utter failure.

    Both “Mediterranean diet” groups did well on measures of cardiovascular health, and there wasn’t much difference between the two groups. But the low-fat group did horribly. In fact, they did so badly that in the middle of the study, the researchers intervened, and tried to give the low-fat group more instruction and attention to bring them up to speed. Didn’t matter. They bombed anyway.

    Side note that was missed in all the media reporting: The researchers clearly state that they believe the excellent results achieved by both “Mediterranean” groups were largely driven by the supplemental nuts and the supplemental extra-virgin olive oil. Not necessarily the “diet” itself.

    So what have we learned, class?

    We’ve learned that the American, low-fat diet stinks. And that nuts and olive oil are extremely healthy foods.

    As far as the Mediterranean diet being the “best” diet ever, that’s still up for grabs. This study certainly didn’t show that, as it didn’t pit the “Mediterranean diet” against any other diet but the low-fat one; there was no group doing a “paleo” diet, or a “high-protein” diet or a “raw foods” diet.

    And we still don’t have a good definition of the Mediterranean diet. (As my mentor, the great Robert Crayhon once quipped, “People think the “Mediterranean Diet” means adding a bunch of olive oil to your corn flakes”.) And we still don’t know which aspects of the so-called Mediterranean lifestyle are the ones that really produce the results. Is it the olive oil? The nuts? The vegetables? The low level of red meat? The fact that they eat slowly and in the middle of the day? Maybe it’s all of those things, maybe it’s just some of them… this study certainly didn’t address that question, so we can’t say for sure.

    What we can say is this: No diet, ever, in the history of the world, has been higher in sugar and processed carbohydrate junk foods than the one that most people in America consume on a daily basis.

    And no diet is better designed to produce the epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart disease we are currently witnessing.

    My own personal opinion is you could design a dozen diet studies showing the superiority of a dozen different diets (from Atkins to Ornish to Zone) as long as you compare each of them to the crap we’re eating now.

    With a bar that low, almost any diet is going to look like a superstar.

  • Tip 281: Increase Fat Burning During Exercise

    Tip 281: Increase Fat Burning During Exercise

    The following is a guest article by my good friend and colleague, Charles Poliquin.

    Tip 281: Increase Fat Burning During Exercise with Strategic Nutrition to Get Lean

    by Charles Poliquin

    Increase your rate of fat burning while strength training with optimal pre-workout nutrition to get lean. By eating the right nutrients before working out, you can increase work capacity, performance, and speed recovery from intense exercise. Many misconceptions exist about the best way to burn the most fat during exercise but a review in the British Journal of Nutrition provides a guide to get leaner and stronger.

    Proven strategies to boost fat burning with pre-workout nutrition include the following:

    1. Eat low-glycemic carbs with protein before training
    2. Avoid fructose and milk
    3. Load l-carnitine in the muscles
    4. Drink caffeinated green tea
    5. Take fish oil

    Pre-workout nutrition may influence the rate of fat burning when exercising by as much as 66 percent. Burning fat rather than carbohydrates during strength training is best because it can lead to the best body composition. If you’re doing endurance or high-intensity interval training, burning fat will increase your performance and time to exhaustion because increasing the use of fat for fuel spares glycogen (fuel source from carbohydrates).

    Eat low-glycemic carbs with protein at least an hour before training to maximize fat burning. Low-glycemic carbs include green vegetables, some fruits, and grains that have a glycemic-lowering nutrient added to them like rye bread with fenugreek. Low-glycemic carbs will produce a slow, gradual increase in blood sugar to support energy levels and fat burning because it will reduce pre-exercise muscle glycogen concentration and increase the availability of fat use for fuel. Basically, by eating this way, you’re telling your body what to burn and when to burn it to produce the most energy.

    Fructose is a sugar that is found in fruit and is everywhere in processed foods in the form of high-fructose corn syrup. Avoid it pre-workout. Limit fructose in your diet because it blunts fat burning but it also lowers the glycemic response of carbohydrates—just not in a favorable way for overall metabolism. Eating fructose actually inhibits fat burning during and after exercise to a greater extent than eating high-glycemic carbs with glucose like bread or cereal. Not only does fructose stop the use of fat for energy, it makes the cells more resistant to insulin, putting you at risk for diabetes. It also leads to higher blood lactate concentrations during exercise. Greater lactate production will impede performance and is counterproductive.

    Along with avoiding fructose, stay away from milk proteins because they are particularly “insulinotropic,” which means that they will cause persistently high insulin levels. This puts you at greater risk of insulin resistance and diabetes.

    On the flipside, regularly taking fish oil in your pre-workout meal will improve fat burning and insulin sensitivity. Fish oil improves gene activity that tells the body to use fat for energy within minutes of ingesting it. Fish oil also increases blood flow to fat tissue, which is considered a limiting factor in the use of fat for fuel during exercise. Basically, fish oil is a highly liquid and permeable fat and it helps everything to move more fluidly in the body (like a well-oiled machine).

    Together with the amino acid composite l-carnitine, fish oil increases the transport of fats into the cells to be used for energy in the body. By raising the level of muscle carnitine, you make the body more efficient at processing fuel so that it can burn more fat, spare glycogen, clear lactate and bump up anabolic hormone response. Ideally, you want to take carnitine regularly to “load” it into the muscles, but you can also take it with your pre-workout meal for best results.

    Carnitine availability is reduced when muscle glycogen content is elevated, making it all the more important to ensure you are moderating your glycemic load before training. Carnitine will boost performance for strength athletes, but it’s especially effective at increasing performance during endurance exercise. One study indicated a 55 percent reduction in muscle glycogen use after carnitine loading for six month. The glycogen sparing effect of burning more fat means endurance athletes will be able to “tap into” these glycogen stores at the later stages of a race or training run.

    Green tea with caffeine is an awesome addition to any athlete’s diet because the antioxidant content in the tea combined with the caffeine can increase fat burning by up to 15 percent. It has also been shown to elevate fat burning for 24 hours after ingestion. Caffeinated coffee can also boost performance and fat burning, but recent evidence suggests green tea may be better. Include caffeine from both sources for best results.

    References:

    Gonzalez, J., Stevenson, E. New Perspectives on Nutritional Interventions to Augment Lipid Utilization during Exercise. British Journal of Nutrition. 2012. 107, 339-349.

    Fernandez, J., Da Silva-Grigolettos, M. A Dose of Fructose Induces Oxidative Stress During Endurance and Strength Exercise. Journal of Sports Science. 2009. 27(12), 1323-1334.

    Charles Poliquin, M.Sc., is one of the top strength and conditioning experts in the world. He’s trained olympic medalists in 12 different sports and has written many books and over 500 columns. His site,  http://www.strengthsensei.com/charles-poliquin/, is a terrific resource for real, science-based information about physical fitness.