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“More than any other reason, people believe weird things because they want to…It feels good.

It is comforting. It is consoling." - Michael Shermer “Why People Believe Weird Things.”

Being duped about weight loss doesn’t make you a bad person or an idiot. There’s real desperation surrounding the topic of dieting for many people, and the hope that there could be a shortcut, or an explanation for past failures, is alluring. It would be comforting if many of the myths being pandered were true.

Given how many people fail at weight loss, they may start to wonder if maybe it’s not them that are failing, but some vast conspiracy or misunderstanding leading people astray. There’s gotta be a better way.

Believing that you or anyone else can violate the first law of thermodynamics - that energy can be transformed, but never created or destroyed - for instance, would be really convenient. All you have to do is find the right guru to tell you how to do it, right?

Although most dieters do make huge weight loss mistakes that keep them from achieving or maintaining their goal weights, I’m sorry to say there’s no evidence to support the idea that researchers misunderstand the basic principals of weight loss, or that conspiracies separate the thin from that fat. We actually know quite a lot about what works in weight loss, it’s just that most people either don’t know about it or aren’t interested in changing their lifestyles.

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But by allowing yourself to be taken in by charlatans promising you a quicker path to the body you want, you’re putting yourself at a major weight loss disadvantage. You’ve only got so much mental energy and willpower per day, and using it to support the factors that research has demonstrated work for weight loss will serve you better than siphoning any of it off to explore the debunked paths of money-hungry weight loss gurus.

In this short ebook, I hope to explore some of the big myths I’ve come across on the internet, in dieting books, and when working with my coaching clients. Again and again I see the same issues coming up, and they’re wreaking havoc.

Before I worked with them, some of my coaching clients actually got fatter trying to follow some of the more insane advice, such as stuffing themselves with extra calories in the hopes of speeding up their metabolisms. Others merely waste time and money.

The ebook is intended to educate you about some of the more flagrant of these myths, and hopefully leave you better equipped to spot them next time someone offers you a short cut to your beach body.

If I can stop a few people from wasting their time and moving away from their goals instead of toward them, this project will have been well worth the effort.

Myth #1: If You Want To Lose Weight, Eat Enough To Get Fat

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About a decade ago, a peculiar myth started taking hold among some health and weight loss gurus, and it’s still popular today. The idea being pandered is that if you want to lose weight, you need to eat more, but only from the “right foods.”

They’re essentially claiming that calories don’t matter, with caveats. Sometimes people will proclaim a certain macronutrient ratio allows weight loss during a caloric surplus. Other times, we’ll hear that a low fat vegan diet, whole foods, low carb diets, or raw food diets will do the trick, so long as we just stick to the right foods and eat tons of it.

Although the explanations are often light on science and heavy on unverifiable anecdotes, sometimes it’s suggested that the extra calories will repair your metabolism after it’s been “damaged” by dieting.

But there’s a problem with surplus calorie diet plans: they don’t work.

I was once obese, weighing in at 220 pounds, and I became trim by eating fewer calories than my body needed to maintain homeostasis (although I often didn’t plan to eat fewer calories because I was playing with caloric density and it happened naturally).

But to prove that the overeating idea was nonsensical, I decided to eat many more calories per day than I really needed for several months while eating my normal low fat raw vegan diet. The results? I got fat, which I talked about in this video:

I’m hardly alone. Studies have found that when overfed, most people gain extra fat, but even when people don’t gain much extra weight, it’s not like anyone is losing tons of body fat.

Why do some people gain more fat than others when overfed? Metabolic rates do vary - sometimes significantly - but most of the weight

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gain variance comes down to NEAT activation, or Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis.

When fed extra calories, some people react by pacing, tapping their feet, or otherwise burning off the extra energy, sometimes over 90% of it, leaving very little to be stored or used for other purposes. Other people don’t move much more, and might move even less. You can read more about the interesting field of NEAT research here.

If anyone tells you that calories don’t matter, they are making an incredibly bold claim. If this could be demonstrated in a lab, it would disprove the first law of thermodynamics, upending more than a 100 years of studies demonstrating that energy can’t be destroyed, and would surely garner a Nobel Prize in physics.

Until your youtube weigh loss guru has a few studies published in peer-reviewed journals demonstrating their theory in action, it’s probably best to assume that calories DO matter quite a bit, and that if you want to lose weight, running a calorie deficit is a good idea.

Myth #2: If You Want To Lose Fat, Get Jacked

Muscle is a great thing, and there’s a pretty good chance that you’d be healthier, fitter, look better, and be less prone to lose lean mass as you shed fat if you did some regular muscle-building resistance training.

But if anyone tries to sell you on the idea that the way to weight-loss

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success starts and ends in the weight room, think again.

This is usually the pitch: It’s hard to eat fewer calories, so don’t. Instead, use strength training to build muscle. The muscle you put on will burn more calories, so you’ll slim down without depriving yourself. We usually hear of this sort of approach when the guru in question owns a gym, or is a personal trainer, and they often claim highly improbable amounts of metabolic burn per pound of muscle put on.

We’re sometimes told a single pound of muscle will burn an astounding amount of calories each day. Often, these figures range between 50 and 100 calories per pound.

But as I explain in this article and video, muscle doesn’t burn many more calories than fat. Peer-reviewed studies have pegged a pound of muscle as burning between 5 and 6 calories per pound per day, compared to the 2 calories needed to sustain a pound of fat tissue.

The notion becomes even more ridiculous when you consider that most body builders spending many hours lifting weights each week generally think it’s fantastic if they can put on two pounds of muscle per month, or 24 pounds per year, which would, by the end of a year, increase metabolic burn by a grand total of 144 calories per day. However unless you’re on steroids or training like the dickens, and particularly if you’ve been strength training for awhile and your gains have slowed down, you’re unlikely to come close to this. Realistic results, particularly for women, will be closer to half a pound to a pound per month if you’re training hard with progressively harder weights or bodyweight exercises.

That amount of muscle (after a year of gains) would burn the equivalent of a small apple each day, and while that’s nice, it won’t make or break your weight loss goals.

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That being said, you should consider strength training anyway (in addition to running a calorie deficit). It’ll preserve your muscle as you shed fat, and also lower your body fat percentage, even if you never shed a pound of fat. Many overweight people find out they’re pretty scrawny and not nearly as muscular as they thought after shedding their extra weight, so it makes sense to add on at least a few pounds of muscle to improve your appearance.

Find out more about preserving muscle during weight loss here.

Myth #3: Restricting Calories Leads To Weight Loss Plateaus

Many people who’ve tried dieting have had an experience like this: They’re overweight, so they decide to eat x number of fewer calories per day. They start losing weight, and they’re happy with their progress. But over the course of a few weeks or months, their weight loss first slows down, and then stops completely. They take this as a sign that they’ve damaged their metabolism, or that their body is now “fighting” to maintain its weight.

In many cases, this plateau does indeed occur, but not for the reasons people think.

You’ve probably heard some weight loss math logic that goes like this: There are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat, so if you shave off 500 calories from a weight-maintenance level of calories you’ll be a pound thinner at the end of a week, and if you keep it up, you’ll be another pound thinner after each subsequent week.

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Right? Wrong.

By the end of your first day of lowered caloric intake several things have happened.

At the beginning stages, the biggest impact comes from thermic effect of the food you digest. All digestion uses energy, so if you eat less food, your body doesn’t need energy to digest that food. So you’re not actually burning as much energy as you think you are.

Second, by the end of day one, you’ve burned off some fat. That fat was once burning calories to maintain itself, but since it’s now gone, your whole body is actually functioning on less fuel than it was before. For every day you push on, there’s less fat burning less fuel, and it adds up.

By the end of 40 to 60 days, what started off as a 500 calorie deficit is actually down to 250 - 300 calories, which means slower weight loss. If you keep pressing on, you’ll eventually no longer make any progress, and you will have plateaued in reality.

So yes, restricting calories and losing fat will eventually cause a weight loss plateau unless you periodically readjust your caloric consumption downward to compensate. But your body isn’t fighting your weight loss. There’s just less of it to burn fuel, and less food needing to be digested. Thinner people burn fewer calories at rest than do do fat people.

To learn more about the science behind dealing with a weight loss plateau, check out this video.

Myth #4: Getting In Shape And Exercising

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Will Jump Start Your Metabolism

Nope.

Weighing less, as we went over in myth #3, will slow your metabolism, not speed it up. And as mentioned in myth #2, unless you put on a highly-improbable sum of muscle to replace your lost fat, you won’t be able to totally make up for that loss.

But what about the fitness aspect?

Say you decide to jog a mile.

You’ll burn more calories if you’re dragging around a fat body and gasping for air than if you’re racing around in a trim state and not working too hard, even if you’re going at the same pace.

The upside is that being fitter allows you to work out longer and harder, which can increase caloric burn.

A submyth of this one revolves around EPOC, or Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption.

The idea here is that, sure, you’ll burn calories during exercise, but that real prize comes about after you exercise because your metabolic rate is increased throughout the day. Sometimes we hear that EPOC burns more calories than the actual exercise.

EPOC is a real thing, but it’s just not going to be a game changer for most people. Researchers have found EPOC burns 6-15% additional calories1 in the 24 hours following exercise in people who are not used to exercising hard, so if you burn 500 calories, you’ll burn an additional 30 to

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75 calories.

But once again, being in shape is an impediment to EPOC, not a benefit. Very fit people had EPOC levels as low of 1% extra, and people who exercised regularly burn around an extra 4.8%2.

You certainly should be working out as it’s been shown to be critical in maintaining weight loss in the long term. It also makes you healthier, less prone to disease, and promotes a better physique. Doing strength training in particular will also preserve your muscle mass as you shed fat.

But being fitter won’t lead to your metabolism burning more calories.

Myth #5: Because You’re Metabolically Broken, Counting Calories Doesn’t Work

The idea of the broken metabolism is a popular one. After all, if it were true, it would explain why people have so much trouble losing weight. Either their genetics are messed up, their thyroid is shot, or their previous attempts at weight loss damaged their body in some way.

The problem is that scientists have gone looking for these scenarios in weight loss studies, and they haven’t found them.

First, let’s tackle the idea of broken metabolisms holding people back.

In a fascinating study,3 researchers tracked down pairs of twins that consisted of a thin twin and a fat twin. Twin studies are interesting because they deal with two different people walking around in the same body. In this case, the fat twins universally claimed that while they were eating and

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exercising just the same as their thin twins, they stayed fat. They often thought they had a metabolic problem.

But when the researchers tracked the food intake and exercise level of the twins, the thin twins were eating far less, eating healthier, and moving their bodies way more than the fat twins. Turns out that the fat twins have a perception problem, not a broken metabolism problem. They even kept food and exercise diaries that were considerably less accurate (always underestimating food consumed and calories burned) than their thin brothers and sisters.

In another study4 researchers looked at obese people claiming to have slowed metabolisms. These subjects were positive that they were eating just 1,200 calories per day - which is a very small intake - but not losing any weight.

When the researchers tested their metabolic rates, they found them to be within 5% of the values predicted by metabolic rate calculators such as the Harris-Benedict equation, so they really weren’t slow at all.

What they found instead was that the subjects were underreporting their food intake by 47% - almost half! - while over reporting their physical activity by 51%.

The problem wasn’t a slowed metabolism, but once again a problem of perception.

Although not very common, some people do have thyroid conditions which can slow down their metabolic rates. But even with this disadvantage - which can often by treated - studies have found they can lose weight just fine.

For instance, in yet another study5 in which people claimed they couldn’t

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lose weight despite eating only 600 to 1,000 calories per day, researchers found most participants once again underestimated their caloric consumption by about half, but had perfectly normal metabolic rates. However, there was one woman in this study who did have a slowed metabolism due to the use of medications, which reduced her metabolic rate by 23% below average.

One might imagine this impairment would completely doom any attempt at weight loss, yet she was the only member of the study to accurately report her caloric intake. And you know what? She was also the only one in the study to actually lose weight! Even if you are in the extreme minority with a slowed metabolism, it won’t necessarily doom your weight loss attempts.

Learn more about this myth in this video.

Myth #6: Starvation Mode Kicks In When You Diet

Starvation mode is one of the new boogie men we’ve been hearing a lot about recently. The idea is that when you limit your calorie consumption, you throw your body into this “mode,” wherein you have a ramped down metabolism brought about by your body’s attempt to protect itself from starvation.

Most of the misunderstanding about this one stems from the weight loss plateau myth we talked about above. Just because your body isn’t burning as many calories as it was doesn’t mean it’s in starvation mode. Lean people burn fewer calories, but their metabolisms still work just fine.

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But this myth is really made up of a number of sub myths, which have to be pulled apart separately:

• The Minnesota Starvation Experiment: Conducted during World War II to determine how best to help concentration camp survivors and famine victims return to health, this study supposedly demonstrated that starving people and forcing them to do tons of exercise starts starvation mode in humans. However, modern reevaluations of the data from the experiment shows that this only occurs when body fat levels of the subjects dips dangerously low (i.e., they are literally starving to death). I talk about the details in this video.

• Yo-Yo Dieting and Starvation Mode: Some believe the act of repeatedly gaining and losing weight, or yo-yo dieting, is what causes starvation mode. Studies have found this not to be true. Learn about yo-yo dieting’s effect on metabolism in this video.

• Prolonged Periods of Low-Calorie Intake Kickstarts Starvation Mode and Guarantees Weight Regain: Some of the most interesting data we have on low calorie intake and metabolic health comes from the Biosphere Two experiments. A group of researchers locked themselves in an enclosed ecosystem under medical supervision. They were supposed to grow all their own food, but a disease breakout in the ecosystem killed off many of their crops, putting them on a “starvation diet” on which they lost tons of weight. Yet they remained healthy, and although they regained their weight when they got out and started eating more calories, they certainly did not suddenly become fat. Learn more about this experiment in this video.

• The Biggest Loser Reality Show Proves Starvation Mode Is A Threat: The Biggest Loser reality show is a giant billboard for what

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not to do if you want long-term weight loss. Unsustainable caloric deficits, unhealthy diets, and ridiculous exercise loads are never going to be good choices. Recently, a study concluded that, even years after the end of the show, contestants had slowed metabolisms. Many of the contestants end up regaining their lost weight. But the sensationalist media coverage in the New York Times and other media outlets missed some major issues when they reported this. I go into the details of why you should be alarmed in this video.

Myth #7: You Have A Weight Set Point You Can’t Shake

Dieters often lose weight only temporarily, and then bounce back to somewhere around their previous weight. They might conclude their body must have a set point it keeps guiding them back to.

There are several logical flaws to this idea.

The biggest is that genetics change only slowly, mostly over the course of hundreds or thousands of years, and any genetic set point we may have would have had to have changed very rapidly. Up until the 1900s, well over 95% of humanity managed to stay trim their whole lives. The few that didn’t were often rich enough to afford lots of animal foods and a life without physical activity.

Might an observer at the time have concluded most of humanity had a skinny set point, but the rest had a fat set point?

Today, more people are overweight and obese than are trim. What happened? Did our weight set points magically change?

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No. Our habits changed.

Why do people lose weight to begin with? Usually, they’ve changed their habits. Most likely, they did some of the following:

• They exercised more• They ate fewer animal products, calorically-dense foods, and

processed foods and instead chose more filling, calorically-diluted whole foods

• They ran a calorie deficit• They started sleeping more

Then they regained their weight. Why? They probably changed their habits in some of these ways:

• They stopped tracking calories and running a calorie deficit• They moved their bodies less• They stopped eating as many filling, calorically-diluted foods and

instead chose to eat more animal-based and calorically-dense foods

In other words, they stopped maintaining the changes that lead them to their lower weights.

This is why most people’s approach to dieting is crazy. Anything you can do only temporarily will never led to long-term results. You need to make lifestyle changes that will bring about a trim body as a byproduct, and once you’ve got that trim body, you need to maintain it by maintaining the habits and lifestyle. Going back to your previous ways, to a degree, will lead to some degree of return to your previous weight.

If you want a leaner body, you must adopt the lifestyle habits of a leaner person, not a fat person on a binge diet.

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Learn more about weight set points and the interesting experiments researchers have done regarding them in this video.

The Saner Approach

At the end of the day, you lose weight when your body is burning more calories than it’s taking in. Period. End of story.

I’m hugely focused on healthy eating because I think it’s so important for a long life, good mental function, and athletic performance as well as for making weight control easier, but I’ll be the first to admit that you can lose weight on a diet entirely composed to chocolate cake or cheese wiz, provided you’re taking in fewer calories than you’re burning.

Once you realize that caloric balance is what’s most important when it comes to weight loss, you can shift focus away from unimportant minutia like:

• Whether HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) running, or weight lifting is better for weight loss, and many other unimportant fitness questions.

• Whether or not you’re so metabolically disadvantaged or broken that you can’t lose weight.

• Whether or not you’re including the right superfoods in your diet

Instead, you can put your focus on more important questions, such as:

• In what ways can I change my diet to allow for a calorie deficit without consciously restricting caloric intake?

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• How can I adjust my exercise and diet regimen to preserve muscle mass while I’m losing weight?

• If I can’t lose weight subconsciously, how can I make a calorie deficit relatively painless to follow?

• How can I adopt diet and lifestyle patterns resulting in weight loss that I can maintain for the rest of my life?

• What diet pattern allows not only for my ideal weight, but also ideal health and athletic performance?

For some people, weight loss on the right plan is largely painless and almost an afterthought. For others, more effort will be required. It’s also far easier for an obese person to lose the first part of their excess weight than it will be to go from a relatively normal weight to ripped.

For the first 40 pounds or so of my weight loss I didn’t have to restrict calories at all - I just made diet and lifestyle upgrades. After that, though, I needed to consciously track a calorie deficit to get trimmer.

If you’d like to know what works for me, and what has worked for so many of my coaching clients, I highly suggest you check out my book, Raw Food Weight Loss And Vitality: http://www.raw-food-health.net/Raw-Food-Weight-Loss-And-Vitality.html

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1 J. Laforgia et al., “Effects of Exercise Intensity and Duration on the Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption,” Journal of Sports Sciences, 24 (12), December, 2006, p. 1247.

2 C. J. Gore and R. T. Withers, “Effect of Exercise Intensity and Duration on Post-exercise Metabolism,” Journal of Applied Physiology, 68 (6), 1990, p. 2362.

3 Pietilainen , PH. et al. ̈Inaccuracies in food and physical activity diaries of obese subjects: complementary evidence from doubly labeled water and co-twin assessments.” International Journal of Obesity (2010) 34, 437–445

4 Lichtman, Steven. Et al. “Discrepancy between self-reported and actual caloric intake and exercise in obese subjects.” N Engl J Med. 1992 Dec 31;327(27):1893-8.

5 Buhl, KM. Et al. “Unexplained disturbance in body weight regulation: diagnostic outcome assessed by doubly labeled water and body composition analyses in obese patients reporting low energy intakes.” J Am Diet Assoc. 1995 Dec;95(12):1393-400; quiz 1401-2.