I am so interested in reading more about this theory..please shoot me a pm as well if possible!
Thanks!

Oh boy. I seem to have opened up Pandora's box, huh. Tell you what, next one wants a pm, send me a pm.

But can we talk about exercise that induces a hormonal environment that yields weight loss?

I pm'd you about how I was looking at cardio strength training to affect hormones.

That would be okay yes?

F

Yeah, that would be OK.

Martin, have you ever looked at the hcg diets? One aspect of that diet is that it actually targets fat loss around the middle and lower belly area. It is a hormone based plan, that is supposed to actually change the way the hypothalamus regulates fat storage after you complete the diet program.

I personally have used hcg to lose weight that LC alone wouldn't let me lose. There are actually quite a few of us on this site who have used hcg.

I was skeptical of it, but I kept seeing people I know IRL have great success with it. It completely goes against conventional wisdom. But so does LC.

Dr. Oz last week endorsed the HCG diet so long as you were working with a doctor and doing the injections not the homeopathic drops.

Having used HCG to get pregnant, I always gained weight never lost. Maybe it's all in the dose.

F

Here's some info on Lactic Acid Training and hormones and weight loss.

I'm still looking for science based sources as opposed to bodybuilding articles, but this one outlines the basics of how the workout fosters fat loss.

"Short rest intervals lead to an increased production of lactate, and an increase in lactate leads to dramatic increases in Growth Hormone, thus resulting in very significant losses of body fat.

This method is called the "German Body Composition" program, or GBC for short."

http://www.t-nation.com/free_online...ng_for_fat_loss

Here's an article from Mark's Daily Apple

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/human-growth-hormone-2/

The HCG diet. Here's the thing, HCG doesn't cause weight loss. It's the semi-starvation diet (500kcals/day) that does that. HCG might reduce hunger but what happens when I stop the HCG injections and return to eating a normal amount of calories? The whole thing isn't based on hormones, it's based on caloric deficit. And that doesn't work. It doesn't work because if you gotta cut calories to maintain weight, then you gotta cut calories to maintain weight. And since a semi-starvation diet will shrink both fat and lean tissue, we're just going to end up a smaller version of ourselves. The problem remains: How do we shrink fat tissue?

About exercise for fat loss. It doesn't work. If it did, we'd all be lean. We are not lean because we exercise. Instead, we exercise because we are lean. What happens when we grow fat? More fuel gets locked in fat tissue, less fuel is available for everything else. This means we become lethargic because we grow fat. What happens when we exercise but keep doing whatever is making us fat? We just use less fuel to do whatever exercise we're doing. For example, we could otherwise lift 200lbs for 20 reps, but because we have less energy, we can only lift 100lbs for 10 reps. What if we just pushed harder and lifted those 200lbs for 20 reps? Well since we couldn't get to the fuel locked in fat tissue, we'd have to use other fuels like our protein and convert it into fuel and use that. The problem remains: How do we shrink fat tissue?

Obesity is not a problem of hunger and surplus calories. It's a problem of fat tissue and fuel partitioning. If we don't fix that, no amount of exercise or semi-starvation will change anything.

Has anyone here resorted to liposuction to take care of this problem area? I don't see anything "wrong" with that...when diet and exercise have done all they can, why not use liposuction?

Does anyone know anyone who had this done? I'd love to hear about your/their experience.

I had lipo in 1998. Best thing I ever did. I weighed 145 at 5'6". I was scrawny on top - you could see my ribs but I had horrible saddlebags and thick thighs. I always would look in the mirror and cover the bumps on my thighs and think if only the lumps were gone I'd look normal. Even at my low of 126 in college those lumps completely ruined my figure (in my opinion of course).

He took 5 lbs off total, mostly on the outside of my thighs, and some on my inner thighs and some on my belly just below my belly button. Hard recovery but worth every single second of pain.

Fast forward 5 years. I gained weight but the very weird thing is when I did gain, I gained it all over normally. Old me would have still had no fat above my waist and elephant thighs. New me gained it on my arms, waist, butt, thighs all evenly. I think I looked better at 173 than I did at 145 before lipo.

The only negative is that my inner thighs are lumpy. I'm not sure if it's a product of uneven lipo or just cellulite bc my legs have always been lumpy but I'll take lumpy anyday. Also, I never gained any more fat below my belly button but did above it so my belly looks a bit odd if you look closely, but again, in clothes I look MUCH better than I did. Now I worry about my fat arms and that was never a concern before.

I would do it again in a heart beat - not to lose weight, but to get those patches of fat that no exercise or diet could ever touch.

hth!

MartinLevac said;



Just a little nit-picking here... 500 calories sounds more like outright starvation than semi-starvation, this might make things a little different. Maybe depending on how much carbohydrate is taken in, or how much protein (I understand there's not much fat in the diet, so any hormonal effect of fat isn't an issue). I'm on the hcg-skeptical side--I'm not sure if the hcg is doing what is claimed--but I see some people with good results. The standard diet looks like it's about one half calories from protein, one half from carbs--that would make it around 60 grams each protein and carbohydrate. So it is technically a low-carb diet... and the lower protein intake might not be a positive as far as retaining lean mass is concerned, but if you look at a 1600 calorie diet, 60 grams of carbs, or a 500 calorie diet, 60 grams of carbs, both the insulin response to meals and the basal insulin levels during the course of the diet are likely to be quite a bit lower on the lower calorie diet.

Returning to the diet that got you fat in the first place is never a good idea, no matter how you lost the weight. But does the diet you maintain on have to be the diet you lose weight on? Transition to maintenance might be smoother if it is, but is it a necessity?

M Levac did you listen to the second half of Taubes interview on the Dr. Oz radio show? He talks about exercise and insulin and I thought it was interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sbw_8vRvbg0

Essentially once you refeed after a workout you lose your insulin sensitivity. People had suggested I eat a sweet potato after my met con workouts but I won't do that now as it seems to destroy insulin sensitivity.

Also, have you heard of exercise that seeks to influence hormones and use them effectively such as lactic acid/met con/cardio strength training or did your comment include that type of exercise?

Here are some studies I keep seeing referenced when I research metabolic conditioning:

2001 East Tennessee Stat University study: High intensity interval training (HIIT) yielded higher postexercise metabolism rates and greater improvements in body composition compared to steady state cardio.

1994 Tremblay et al Endurance exercise (steady state aerobics) burned more calories than the HIIT group but the HIIT group lost 900% more subq fat than the steady state cardio group.

I know for insulin resistance the strength + cardio is most effective.

F

The fewer calories for equal carbs, the higher the carb count per calorie, the higher the insulin response to those carbs. Fat slows down digestion and thus rise in blood glucose.

There is no maintenance phase to a semi-starvation diet. If semi-starvation is what it takes to cut weight, it's also what it takes to maintain it. Taubes explained that a semi-starvation diet works only because we are cutting carbs. Every low carber knows that to maintain weight, we must eat no more than X amount of carbs. Accordingly, if the reason semi-starvation works is because we cut carbs, then to maintain we must continue to semi-starve.

If we eat low carb and eventually hit a wall and can't lose any more weight just with diet, how is semi-starving going to change the hormonal milieu any further and keep it there once we stop semi-starving? When the nail is in and you can't push it any further with the hammer because the head is flush with the plank, it won't make a difference to just hit the nail harder with the same hammer. You've done all you can with that tool, it's time to use a different tool, one more suited for this new different job.