Leptin, Dieting, and Cheating
May 5, 2009 | 2 Comments
After posting the article on leptin and weight loss and Joel Marion’s Cheat Your Way Thin Diet which included my comment “I’m not convinced that the ‘Leptin Story’ is a simple as Joel makes it out to be..” several readers posted comments and sent emails asking about my view on cheating, leptin, etc.
One thing that I have come to realize over the course of my nutrition studies and dealings with clients is that it is really hard (and usually it doesn’t work) to trick your body. It is better to work with the body’s biochemistry and use your diet to manipulation your system to do what you want (lose weight, build muscle, etc).
Now on to cheating and leptin. The concept of a ‘cheat day’ has been around forever. It was a cornerstone of the Body For Life program, cyclic ketogenic diets are based around carb ‘refeeds’ or ‘cheats’. I have previously written an article about this very topic. Here’s an excerpt:
Like with most things, there are several rumors, misuses, and down right false statements that have been floating around the fitness world about refeeds. Let’s look at two of my favorites.
1. Refeeds will improve thyroid function and return your metabolic rate to where it was prior to your dieting — This one’s been around forever. I was guilty of saying it to people also at one time. But honestly, if you take a little time and think about it, the above statement doesn’t make any sense.
The human body is incredibly smart. It’s spent thousands of years developing a set of genes that will allow for maximum conservation of fuel to aid in survival. One huge bolus of calories/carbohydrates isn’t going to convince your body that you aren’t starving anymore and it’s okay to signal the thyroid gland to crank up your metabolism again. While refeeds have benefits most of the time they won’t do anything for your thyroid function. (For the potential exception to this rule keep reading.)
2. You can severely restrict your calories for a period of 1-2 weeks, then stuff your face for an equal period of time, and end up with the same amount of fat mass but more lean mass — Many of you may be familiar with the situation I just described or its official name “Anabolic Burst Cycling of Diet and Exercise (ABCDE)”…. One of the problems with this approach is that people have a much greater ability to over consume than under consume. They’ll eat their faces off and stuff their adipocytes so full of triglycerides that they can’t possibly burn it all off in the following two week period.
I think the leptin angle fits under category one in that using 24 hour calorie bursts are not enough to trick your system into thinking that there is an abundance of food – especially because it is followed repeatedly by 6 days of calorie restriction.
“But what about the before and after pictures?”
If you go to the page where Joel’s system is available you’ll see a bunch of very convincing before and after photos. So I must be wrong and the stuff your face to re-boost leptin angle does work.
No.
If you look at Joel’s program it is a solid diet that is sold on the fact that it is okay to eat pizza and carbs once a week. The dieting guidlines for the remaining 6 days require to you restrict your calories and cycle your carbs using
- Low Carb
- Low Glycemic Load Carb
- High Glycemic Load Carb days
on the cheat days you are not supposed to save all your meals up for one massive gorge fest nor are you supposed to “stuff yourself or eat until the point of discomfort”. You can monitor your calories by counting them or monitoring portions (you know I prefer monitoring portions). Joel offers a deluxe package that has 3 months of meal plans laid out for you (which I know a lot of people like).
So the bottom line is – The Cheat Your Way Thin Diet does not miraculously manipulate leptin using methods unknown to 1,000 of scientist. But it is a solid carb cycling based diet that has built in the freedom to eat what ever you choose (preferable carbs) one day a week.
You can learn more about it here -> Carb Cycling and Cheating Diet and if you like done for you programs make sure to check out the deluxe package.
2 Responses to “Leptin, Dieting, and Cheating”
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Awesome review Mike. I’ve been waiting for something like this. I’ve noticed a lot of the people recommending this just state that their colleague came out with this great program and check it out. No one, that I have seen, has done an in depth review like this.
Just a random observation, the majority of the ‘diets’ that are coming out now are just solid eating plans that manipulate some variable that people tend to struggle with when dieting in the traditional sense. In this case, its the fact that diets are restrictive and people can’t have any fun and must only eat veggies.
Charles Staley recently reviewed The Burrito diet. Which essentially is a portion control diet, at least in my opinion. As I am sure you’ve noticed that most people have a hard time stopping when there is food left on their plates.
Personally I think this is going to be the trend that ‘diets’ take for the foreseeable future. Alwyn Cosgrove hit the nail on the head, in one of his recent interviews at T-nation, when he talked about making it fun for his clients because if it sucks they are gonna bail faster than a fat kid dives on cake.
I think I could go on…..but that’s enough rambling for one day.
Mike,
I hope a lot of people were paying attention to this post. I’m not sure people looking for some sort of trick to their weight loss will ever go away, but I’m hopeful that the search for solid information based in good science becomes the trend.