This article is directed toward women but the information is useful for anyone.

http://www.bodybyscience.net/home.html/?page_id=301

To paraphrase: High intensity anaerobic exercise can be very useful for fat loss. Not because it burns calories, but because it depletes glycogen in the muscles. When glycogen is depleted in the muscles they become more insulin sensitive, which results in lower blood glucose, lower insulin, lower hepatic IR, lower triglycerides and more fat being mobilized out of fat cells. Women especially could find this useful because their muscle mass is smaller than men's to begin with, so increases can make a big difference.

What it's done for me so far: After losing about 60 pounds on VLC, I've been stalled for few years. Over the past year or so my weight creeped back up from a low of 160 to 180. I recently tried the Drs Eades "6 week cure" diet, which resulted in a quick 10 pound loss (probably from eliminating alcohol) back down to 170 but I hit the wall again. A month ago I discovered Body by Science, read the book and was inspired to give it a try. Four 10-12 minute workouts later I'm still 170 but I've dropped a size in jeans and my strength has increased so I must trading fat for muscle mass. Not bad for 45 minutes of exercise and no dietary change.

I highly recommend the book, especially for the detailed explanations of cellular and endocrine processes related to exercise (I find understanding the scientific basis motivational), but if you want to try out the protocol without buying the book, the articles and videos on the site have plenty of information.

Thank you - I'm reading the book reviews now, and am very intrigued.

So great to hear that you've blasted right on through 'the wall'. Woo hoo!!!

Is this similar to Eades's "Slow Burn" method? I haven't read it, but it sounds similar from what little I have picked up.

It is quite similar, but BBS recommends longer recovery. The philosophy on HIT vs cardio is pretty much the same. BBS goes into a lot more detail on the biochemistry. But I'd say if you like Slow Burn, you'll probably like BBS.

Thanks, I certainly hope this continues! It does seem quite sustainable. The time factor is always what gets me off track on workout programs.

I could argue that a stall is really reaching a steady-state, meaning calories in equalling calories out. Two ways to continue weight loss: Ingest fewer calories or burn more calories.

But neither method is popular with this group.

Or supported by science.

Or supported by clinical or personal experience.

It would have been inconceivable to me that anyone would argue with this, but the posts above mine seems to have done just that.

If a person is maintaining weight, it clearly means that calories-in is matching calories-out. The question, when it comes to stalls, is "why". Why is a person able to lose weight without hunger while doing LC, but only to a certain point? Why does he/she not keep losing until body fat is virtually eliminated? What determines if and at what point a stall occurs in a given individual?

There are many theories on this -- Dr. Eades had a couple good blog posts on it. But a weight loss stall means CI=CO by definition. Is this really debateable?

Over years and dozens of posts here. Check them out.

We welcome you, or anyone, to come up with something that proves your point. The Car Gas Tank analogy is not proof. The Bathtub Faucet And Drain analogy is not proof. Your own, personal experience is not proof. Beliefs held that keep you exercising but fail to explain physical phenomena are not proof.

Try to find something that doesn't write off the whole of cell biology, either. This WILL require mathematics beyond addition and subtraction.


An extraordinary array of genetic and environmental and neurochemical factors interrelated across multiple physiological systems and scientific disciplines of such complexity that only the exercise gurus and blogger-nutritionists claim to know it all.

A weight loss stall means that total body mass is not changing.

Maybe that is CI = CO.

It could also be:

CI > CO, muscle is being used up, and fat is being put on. This is the skinny-fat scenario.

CI < CO, muscle is being used up, and fat is being put on. This is the cortisol-excess-cardio scenario.

CI > CO, fat is being used up, and muscle is being put on. This is the not-losing-weight-but-getting-smaller scenario. Or the high protein turnover situation discussed by Bernardi.

Seejay -- I'm trying to follow. (Preferably without, as was suggested, searching through years of posts.) This is actually the first time I've heard the claim that weight can be maintained without an energy balance.


This implies that fat calories weigh less than muscle calories?


This implies that muscle calories weigh less than fat calories?


This implies that muscle calories weigh less than fat calories?

I'm unable to piece together the logic. Perhaps it would be easier for someone to give me an example of a scenario where an individual can maintain a given weight long-term with either CI>CO or CI<CO. Note that by CO I mean every unit of caloric energy that is burned, whether it be by exercise, metabolism, any other function. Anything that is not burned must be stored (as weight), right?

BTW -- I'm aware that "a calorie is not a calorie" in terms of weight gain and weight loss, and that's why LC is the way to go. But we're talking about CI/CO and weight maintenance, which is a different thing entirely.

Only if we believe that's how it works. And only partly. We can also waste calories through various mechanisms. But that's still not how it works. It's the system that decides both Ein and Eout. When Ein increases, the system increases Eout to compensate. When Eout increases, the system increases Ein to compensate. And what determines both Ein and Eout is system size.

So what determines system size?

Sure. I mean I had a friend who lose 170 lbs on low carb. She had several long stalls during her journey, and one several-month stall was finally broken when she increased her daily calories from 1400/day up to about 1800/day. OK, perhaps at the lower weight she was in a CI=CO stasis. But clearly *increasing* her calories to break the stall would see counterintuitive to many who spout the standard weight loss dogmas.

Hi kilton:

You seem to assume that the posts above yours are arguing with doctorK's first sentence. I took them as a response to the second and third sentences.

Here's doctorK's full post:



As an obese woman whose weight loss has stalled and who is part of "this group" in that I share the views of many on this forum about the metabolic causes of obesity, here's what I heard doctorK say:

"It's really very easy. If you want to lose weight, stop shoving so much food in your pie hole and/or get off your bottom and move, you lazy gluttons. But of course the folks on this forum are too weak-willed to do that, so they've come up with a bunch of gobbledy-gook so-called science to justify why they're still fat and why they shouldn't do the most obvious thing in the world - diet and exercise."

(My apologies to doctorK if that's not what he intended, but that's what I heard, probably because that is the popular view. And "calories in, calories out" is code for the popular view.)

The problem is that I know from personal experience that eating less and exercising more did not help me lose weight. I also know from personal experience that when I adjusted what I ate (fewer carbs not fewer calories) so that I was working with my hormones rather than against them, I lost almost 20% of my weight and maintained that loss effortlessly.

The science described in books like GCBC explains why that's so.

So I agree with Caveman and Seejay. Science and experience contradict doctorK's statement - at least the last two sentences.

There's no simple answer for obesity. In my case, I'm extremely insulin resistant. After a year and a half of low-carbing, my serum insulin is still pretty high. My doctor says that as the insulin levels come down, I'll lose weight. As that stored fat is released, maybe I'll eat less because some of my energy needs will be met from this released fat. If that happens, I will be "ingesting less" as doctorK suggests. But I won't be losing weight because I'm ingesting less. I'll be ingesting less because I'm losing weight. The question I need to answer is: How do I lower my insulin?

I could follow doctorK's advice, but if my insulin stays high and I remain insulin resistant, I won't lose weight; I'll simply become hungry and dragged out. This is because the amount of fat I have stored and the ability to release that fat for energy is not determined by, as doctorK has implied, how much I eat and how much I move, but by insulin. [I leave aside the issue of whether fewer calories or more exercise would lower my insulin or increase my insulin sensitivity. One or both of them may. But I don't think that's what doctorK intended by his comment.]

Anyway I guess my point is that I don't have any particular quarrel with doctorK's first sentence - which is actually uninteresting and unimportant as far as I'm concerned. My quarrel is with sentence two - which offers a "solution" to obesity which doesn't work for me - and sentence three - which somewhat sarcastically implies that only a ninny would disagree with such an obvious solution.