I’ve heard professional female bodybuilders claim mid single digits, but that is probably done with the help of pharmaceuticals.
When women take male hormones, they take on male characteristics, and one of those is achieving body fat levels equal to men. I wouldn’t advise women to take that route unless they want a beard and a voice like James Earl Jones.
DAVID GRISAFFI: Listen to Tom, ladies and gentlemen. Stay away from drugs—
there are no shortcuts! Since we’re on the subject of body fat and abdominal body fat, what are different ways to measure body fat?
I think many people get confused about the measuring process.
Why would you want to measure? I always tell my clients the mirror tells all like in Cinderella! What do you think?
TOM VENUTO:
I would say that the mirror alone might be better than the scale alone, but knowing your body composition does have great value.
I know a lot of bodybuilders who never measure body fat, and they can time their competition peak with the precision of an F-16
landing on an aircraft carrier. All they use is the mirror. However, these are athletes with high levels of what I call “sensory acuity.”
That means they can tell by feel, touch, sight, and even pure instinct exactly when something is working and exactly when they are making progress or stalling out.
The advantage of body fat testing is that it gives you objective feedback and lets you track your fat weight and lean weight and not just your total weight. Total body weight losses on a scale can be very misleading. Much of that is from loss in water weight that happens when you start a lot of diets, especially low carb diets.
But you have to realize that some of the weight you lose could also be muscle, especially if your calories are too low or if you’re not doing any weight training. A body fat test, like a simple skinfold caliper test, will tell you what you’re losing—fat or muscle.
I know what you’re getting at when you suggest that the mirror is where it’s at, but I think body fat measurements are very valuable, and if you have access to accurate testing you should take advantage of it. The more feedback you have to chart your progress the better. It’s also a great motivational tool.
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The trouble only occurs when your body fat percentage number becomes some kind of Holy Grail to you and it’s the only thing you focus on. I’ve seen that happen a lot. I’ve seen people go from elation to total depression just based on the results of their weekly pinch-an-inch test, and they walk around mentally defeated for days. That is not productive.
DAVID GRISAFFI: Tom, as an expert on diet and nutrition, I’d like to ask your thoughts on low carb eating. Is it safe? How long should we do it?
Are there any long term risks?
TOM VENUTO:
There is no doubt in my mind that reducing carbs can help accelerate fat loss for short periods during fat loss programs. I just do it differently, more sensibly, and with more flexibility than most traditional low carb diets.
The problem with low carbs in general is that most people don’t take into account their individual goals and unique body type, so they follow a one-size-fits-all prescription of the latest low-carb program and they take the carb restriction too far. Zero carb or close to zero carb diets are, in my opinion, completely unnecessary and way too extreme. If you can find a happy medium, you may be really surprised at how well it works.
A common problem with sustained very low carb diets is the rebound effect. The lower you drop your carbs, the more likely you will be to have a relapse and gain the fat back when you put the carbs back in, unless you have the willpower and discipline of an elite athlete and you can ease back into higher carb eating.
With these caveats, reducing carbs does help fat loss in many cases because it helps control your insulin and blood sugar more effectively than a high carb diet, and that has a lot to do with how your body stores fat. The high protein in these diets also speeds up your metabolism because of the “thermic effect” of protein food.
You also can’t forget that if you cut back on grains and starches, it’s a lot harder to over-consume calories. Unless you’re really indulging on the fats, a low starch and low grain, high lean protein and high fibrous carb diet has built in calorie control. You have to 26 Tom Venuto
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be careful, though, because without at least some complex carbs, you won’t have enough energy to train hard.
When you’re talking about low carb diets you also need to pay close attention to the type of carbs you eat. You can’t just say eat less carbs altogether—that’s too simplistic. It’s not just the quantity of carbs, it’s the quality.
Before you even bother with reducing carbs, get all the junk out and get off all processed carbs including refined bread, crackers, pretzels, pasta, bagels, and switch only to natural, unprocessed carbs like vegetables, oatmeal, yams, rice, potatoes, and so on.
Once you’ve done that, then you can start thinking of backing off even the natural starches and grains if you’re not very carb tolerant.
I think that a moderately reduced carb diet that is done in low- and high-carb cycles is the most sensible approach and the one you’re most likely to stick with.
DAVID GRISAFFI: Great information, Tom. What’s a good carb cutting cycle to lose body fat and get lean?
TOM VENUTO:
Carb cycling is an awesome method for fat loss. It’s much better than staying on low carbs all the time. It helps accelerate your fat loss, prevents your metabolism from slowing down into
“starvation mode,” and at the same time makes your diet easier to stick to because you get to “re-feed” and eat more on the higher carb/higher calorie day.
There are a lot of ways to do this. One of the older methods is five days on a strict very low carb or ketogenic diet, then two days of
“pigging out” on high carbs on the weekend. Some people had results with this, but I see flaws in it. By the fourth and fifth day, you’re starving and craving everything, and you tend to binge inappropriately on your high carb weekends. Some people cycle up and down at random, or time their carb intake with their training days, and that can work too. I prefer three days of low or moderate carbs followed by one to three days of high carbs because of its sheer simplicity and because it works.
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Here’s an example of how I use this carb cycling method myself: For three low carb days I eat about 175–200 grams of carbs with most of the carbs eaten early in the day and only lean protein, fibrous carbs, and good fats in the evenings. Every fourth day I cycle my carbs by having a high carb “re-feed” day of about 300–
400 grams of carbs.
Women will probably be closer to 100–125 grams on low days and 200–250 on high days, but it varies based on energy output, carb tolerance, and the results you’re getting. It could be a little bit more or a little bit less. If you’re really depleted and losing weight too fast, you might do a second or third day on high carbs or eat more carbs on the high days before going back to the low carb cycle. If you’re not losing fat fast enough, you would stay with three low days to one high day and you might eat fewer calories and carbs on the low days.
The way to tell how many grams of carbs is right for you is to start with a sensible baseline and then experiment with carb reductions on your low carb days until you find your optimal carb level.
DAVID GRISAFFI: Low carbs were all the rage for a long time and it’s now just starting to cool off, but the low fat craze is still in vogue for some people. What are some of the downsides of fat free diets or fat free foods for your body or weight loss goals?
TOM VENUTO:
People are finally starting to get educated about good carbs and bad carbs instead of just no carbs, and they’re also getting educated about good fats and bad fats instead of just no fat. But you’re 100% correct that low fat is still very much in vogue with many people. One reason is because of the word “fat.” Dietary fat and body fat are two different things, but people simply make a mental association and link the two together, and they’re scared to eat fat.
I have to admit I went through this fat phobia myself. I remember one medical doctor who wrote a low fat diet book and his mantra was, “The fat you eat is the fat you wear.” Years of “eat fat, get fat” programming can be really hard to get out of your head. When I was in high school and college, low fat was the thing. But it wasn’t just a fad diet book trend, it was being taught by MDs and 28 Tom Venuto
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nutrition professionals, so I cut almost all the fat out of my diet for a long time. When I went from a diet that was 7–10% of calories from dietary fat to about 20% of calories from well chosen dietary fats, the results were noticeable in muscle growth, fat loss, and energy.
One of the downsides with fat free foods is that you tend to over-consume them and they don’t satisfy you or fill you up. Paul Chek calls that the “Just can’t eat one syndrome,” and I think there is actually a snack food company that uses that as their tag line on the package.
Did you ever sit in front of the TV with a box of “no fat, no trans fat, 100% whole grain” crackers thinking it was great healthy stuff, and before you even put a dent in your stomach, you had eaten half the box, or even the whole box? How about the tub of no fat frozen yogurt or fruit sorbet? Same thing, right? Did you ever realize you can slam down 500, 800, 1000 calories at a clip that way? It’s excess calories that makes you fat, not necessarily dietary fat, and it’s easy to go overboard on calories with those types of non-fat snack foods.
Also, we talked earlier about moderating carb intake if it’s necessary, based on your body type. Well, these low fat snack foods can provide high calories and carbs without the fat and fiber, so you get the insulin spike and blood sugar fluctuations that you want to avoid. Your best bet is to avoid packaged, boxed snack foods or, if you’re carb tolerant, eat them in very measured amounts. Focus more on eating foods the way they came out of the ground—lots of fruits and vegetables.
DAVID GRISAFFI: Speaking of insulin, that brings me to the subject of hormones.
Your hormones effectively work together to produce your metabolism. My question is, what happens when our hormones become out of balance? For example, you talked about insulin, but what about other hormones? What is adrenal exhaustion and how does it affect our weight loss goals?
TOM VENUTO:
Your hormones are chemical messengers that control everything that takes place in your body. If your hormones are messed up, it Copyright © 2008 Fitness Renaissance, LLC. WARNING: This ebook is protected by Federal copyright law. It is
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can throw a wrench in the fat loss works and make getting leaner more difficult.
For example, the hormone leptin is especially interesting when it comes to fat loss because it tells your brain whether you are starving or not. If your brain gets the starvation signal because leptin is low, then other hormones such as thyroid, which is responsible for keeping your metabolism humming along, is decreased and your body goes into starvation mode. In fact, some experts say that leptin itself is the starvation mode. You can maintain normal leptin levels by dieting intelligently and not starving yourself and by using the re-feed and cycling method I talked about earlier, but some people are leptin resistant just as they can be insulin resistant. Good nutrition and training over time will fix that.
Insulin is the hormone released by the pancreas in response to increases in blood sugar. Insulin is important because it’s an anabolic hormone, but it can be a double-edged sword because it can also promote fat storage. Insulin brings blood sugar down by driving glucose into the muscle cells and also driving amino acids into the muscle cells, but at the same time it pushes fat into the cells too.
Sex hormones such as testosterone are the most well known for their impact on muscle growth, and growth hormone works with testosterone to help build muscle. Once again, good nutrition and training combined with proper recovery help to optimize these hormones naturally.
When you talk about adrenal exhaustion, you’re now talking about stress response and stress hormones such as cortisol. These hormones can get out of whack when your lifestyle is in disarray, you’re not sleeping well, or when you’re not eating properly and not exercising, abusing stimulants like caffeine and ephedrine, or even when you abuse exercise by overtraining and under-recovering.
As we’ve already talked about, the marketplace offers all kinds of solutions to fix our hormone problems, but the only 100%
guaranteed solution is lifestyle changes. Exercise, including strength training, not just aerobics, combined with proper nutrition 30 Tom Venuto
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will fix almost any hormonal problem that is not clinical in nature.
If it’s clinical, then work with your doctor.
DAVID GRISAFFI: Let’s stay on this subject for a minute: insulin, blood sugar, and carbs. The glycemic index is the scale that measures the rate at which food causes glucose levels to rise in the blood after you eat carbs. Is this really an effective method for losing body fat?
TOM VENUTO:
I mention the glycemic index (GI) in my fat loss program just to explain what it is, but I don’t include a GI chart because that would be just one more complicated thing people would have to keep track of. I don’t think it’s necessary if you watch your calories and you go by another criteria for picking your carbs—
that is, whether the carb is natural or refined.
GI isn’t the critical or deciding factor in weight loss that a lot of people and diet books say it is. There are several books written on the subject that put the GI up on a pedestal as the critical factor, but it’s only one factor.
GI goes by a scale of 1 to 100 that measures how quickly carbohydrate foods are broken down into glucose. According to advocates of the GI system, foods that are high on the scale such as rice cakes, carrots, potatoes, watermelon, or grape juice are
“unfavorable” and should be avoided because high GI foods are absorbed quickly, raise blood sugar rapidly, and are therefore more likely to convert to fat or cause blood sugar-related health problems.
Instead, they tell us to eat carbohydrates that are low on the GI scale such as black eyed peas, barley, old fashioned oatmeal, peanuts, grapefruit, apples, and beans because those foods are low on the GI scale and do not raise blood sugar as rapidly.
The GI has some practical uses for those with blood sugar regulation problems. In fact, the original purpose for the GI was as a tool to help diabetics keep their blood sugar under control. The reason I don’t put that much emphasis on GI for fat loss is because there are flaws in strictly using the GI as your only criterion to choose carbs.
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For example, the GI scale was developed based on eating 50
grams of carbohydrates by themselves in a fasted state. Note two things—the quantity: 50 grams—and when it was eaten: fasted. If you are following effective principles of fat-burning and muscle-building nutrition such as those outlined in my Burn the Fat, Feed
the Muscle (BFFM) ebook (www.BurnTheFat.com), you should be eating small, frequent meals to increase your energy, maintain lean body mass and optimize metabolism for fat loss. If you eat small frequent meals of mixed protein and carbohydrates, not just carbs by themselves, then the glycemic index loses some of its significance because the protein and fat slow the absorption of the carbohydrates (as does fiber).
The glycemic load was developed to account for some of the flaws in GI, but then you have another chart to worry about, so I don’t bother with that either. A more important and relevant criterion for choosing carbs on a fat loss program—as well as all your other foods, proteins and fats included—is whether they are natural or processed. To say that a healthy person with no metabolic disorders should completely avoid natural, unprocessed foods like carrots or potatoes simply because they are high on the glycemic index doesn’t make sense to me. How could you say carrots are fattening or unhealthy?
High GI foods don’t necessarily make you fat, and eating low GI foods alone doesn’t guarantee you will lose fat. You have to take in the bigger picture, which includes calories/energy balance, meal timing and frequency, macronutrient composition, choice of processed versus refined foods, as well as how all these nutritional factors interact with your exercise program.
DAVID GRISAFFI: That’s a good way to put it in perspective. I know you and I have talked about organic foods in the past. I'm a big believer in organics; however, you are a little slower to come to the table.
What is your opinion of them now?
TOM VENUTO:
You’re right. I wasn’t even aware of organic farming and organic food for a long time, and then I was aware of it for a while but I still didn’t eat organic. Then, the more I studied the subject and the more I researched commercial farming, industrial pollution, and 32 Tom Venuto
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the chemicals that end up in our food, the more the organic argument started making sense.
Here’s what I learned from my research, a lot of it from Paul Chek and resources he recommended, by the way. The Food and Drug Administration lists more than 3,000 chemicals that can be added to our food supply, and one billion pounds of pesticides and agro-farming chemicals are used on our crops every year. Depending on what source you quote, the average American consumes as much as 150 pounds of chemicals and food additives per year.
Food grown on certified organic farms does not contain pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, hormones, antibiotics, or chemical fertilizers. It is also not irradiated or genetically modified.
Supporters of organic food also suggest that the vitamin, mineral, and phytonutrient content of commercially grown foods can be anywhere from a little bit low to virtually absent.
I mentioned organic food to a friend of mine last week, and he asked, “Do you mean like what you get at Whole Foods?” I said,
“Yes, exactly… that’s a natural food and organic supermarket.” He said, “Yeah, well, that place costs so much, I call it Whole Paycheck!”
Organic food is more expensive but I think it’s probably worth it, and if money is not an object for you, then why not invest in premium fuel? Look at it this way: If you put the cheapest fuel in your luxury car, how well is it going to run and how many miles are you going to get out of it? You can buy another car, but you only have one body.
I eat much more organic now, but I can’t say I eat entirely organic.
If I’m eating an apple or some blueberries, and it doesn’t happen to be organic, I don’t freak out over it. When you really look into the subject of food processing, industrial pollution, and commercial farming, it can almost scare you half to death, but I don’t recommend becoming an alarmist. There’s an old proverb that the people who live in fear of disease are the ones mostly likely to get it.
As for my own results, I can’t honestly say I noticed any dramatic change in my physique or in the way I feel yet. I was a successful Copyright © 2008 Fitness Renaissance, LLC. WARNING: This ebook is protected by Federal copyright law. It is
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natural bodybuilder for many years before I started eating things like grass-fed beef and organic food. However, I think this is probably the type of nutritional lifestyle change where you’ll get benefits over the long term, even if you don’t see an immediate transformation.
One thing I would suggest before running out for organic foods is consider what kind of shape your diet and your lifestyle are in right now. If your diet is such a total mess that you’re drinking alcohol, smoking, abusing coffee and stimulants, not eating any fruits and vegetables to begin with, then I think it might be moot to worry about whether your food is 100% certified organic. Just start cleaning up your diet and establishing new healthy habits, one step at a time.
I know this topic is controversial and hotly debated, but what I would recommend to anyone, whether they choose organic or not, is to continuously look for ways to improve their nutrition above the level it’s at now. For some people, going organic is the next level. Some people aren’t ready for that type of change yet. I also recommend that everyone become as educated as they can about what is really in their food because most people are completely unaware of what dangers might be lurking in their food.
Your friend Ori Hofmekler wrote something really insightful on this in one of his books. He called these toxins “stealth” factors.
He said, “On a daily basis we don’t realize (and can’t feel) that these toxic factors are present. There’s nothing more dangerous than stealth toxins coupled with ignorance because the inability to see or feel these dangers makes us even more vulnerable.”
At least be educated and be aware—know what’s in your food and then you can make better decisions. A great resource on this subject is Paul Chek’s audio program, “You Are What You Eat”
and his book, Eat, Move and Be Healthy.
DAVID GRISAFFI: What about detoxification? Detoxification is a new buzzword around the fat loss and health communities. Could you explain a little about this process?
34 Tom Venuto
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TOM VENUTO:
Detoxification is a buzzword that’s very popular and trendy today, but unfortunately it’s really an undefined word that could be referring to a lot of different things. Depending on how the word is used, it could describe everything from legitimate and important nutritional concepts to total gimmicks and crash weight loss diets which are ineffective and unsafe.
We definitely live in a polluted environment where the commercial food supply is full of chemicals, so we all owe it to ourselves to become educated about what is in our food. But we also have to be careful because this detox thing—especially in the context of weight loss—is full of pseudo science and gimmicks that are as bad as the diet patch and diet pill.
Whether you’re for or against any kind of detoxification, one thing is hard to dispute: Fasting, cleansing, or detox protocols used to initiate a weight loss program are clearly very sneaky ways to achieve rapid, dramatic losses of body weight. This makes the diet appear highly effective because of the large weight loss right out of the gate, and it makes for great infomercial testimonials.
A fast at the beginning of a diet program can cause very rapid weight loss that could boost the total weight lost over a six-week program to an impressive sounding 25–30 pounds. I say, “Big deal!” Do you want to lose body weight or permanently lose fat?
The first 15 pounds is water, glycogen, and muscle tissue. Then maybe 10 pounds is fa