The curtain is pulled back and the great OZ is exposed.
If you want to run faster, jump higher and swim farther, then there’s nothing that replaces planned biological stress that trains muscle memory and invokes hypertrophy. That being said the idea of calories in – calories out doesn’t fail because a “calorie is not a calorie,” but rather because the output isn’t really exercise.
You can’t out-exercise your mouth.
While this became fundamentally important to me years ago, it is only in the last year that I have had the ability to dive in and actually test it. Over the last few months I have had many discussions about metabolism – of course I am intentionally provocative, but the responses just flat out amaze me.
First, I truly remember “believing” the same things. Certainly we all can’t test every truth – you don’t have to be a whale to write Moby Dick. With that said, when there is vast disagreement with our actions, observations and results, it serves everyone equally well to double check.
Oh the Thinks You Can Think!
“If you restrict your calories, your metabolism will fall and you’ll go into starvation mode….” I typically reply, and what? Will my metabolism be ZERO? How much will it go down?
It isn’t unreasonable to ask a few rational questions? Shouldn’t we pause for just a moment to think about what we repeat? What absolutely amazes me is how fervently people can disagree about “opinions on metabolism” who have never measured a single metabolism in their entire life.
Until I started talking about this more, I had no idea that metabolism is right up there with protein, carbohydrate and fat – speak. I had some misconceptions for sure, but I can’t say my opinions weren’t nearly as dogmatic as some encountered. With that said, I was wrong, but learned a valuable lesson about what extent I now allow myself to slip into group-think.
I wouldn’t have debated with someone that was experienced measuring metabolism at that time and I am certain that anyone who spends significant time with an indirect calorimeter will agree – the word metabolism is broken. You might as well be reciting a few lines from Dr. Suess:
“Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try! If you try, you can think up a guff going by. And you don’t have to stop. You can think about schlopp. Schlopp. Schlopp. Beautiful schlopp. Beautiful schlopp with a cherry on top.”
Schlopp with calories on top. We learned that resting metabolism rate, or RMR, is really the bottom of what anyone might burn over the next 24 hour period. It doesn’t include the excited phone call when your significant other is late, or the heated debate on mac vs windows, or taking the stairs not the elevator. What RMR represents is an approximate 24 hour projection of what you will burn given the same level of rest. It’s commonly measured after a minimum of 4 hours post meal/exercise and best if done on waking in a fasted, rested state.
Metabolism has two components: the base, average 24 hour number, RMR and the much more important number, the respiratory quotient or RQ. The latter term as you may recall is the ratio of carbon dioxide exhaled to the oxygen consumed. Since the different fuels (e.g. carbohydrates and fats) burn with slightly different chemistry mixtures of oxygen, this ratio gives a real-time measurement of what fuel, or combination of fuels, is burning at any given time. The food you eat and the way you move impacts this ratio. As well, so does training.
For example an endurance athlete’s body learns through volume training that it better start using fat as a fuel early in the race. If not, they will “bonk” and run out of the most common fuel of activity, glycogen, which we learned is a way our body stores glucose for later use. In the next post I will go over some data from Wired article author, Steven Leckart, during few days in my lab last summer.
Hitting the Wall (with my forehead)
For now, let’s discuss this in very general way. In round terms, one of my dismal discoveries during weight loss tactical planning was that a marathon (26.2 miles/42.2km) only burns about 2600 Calories – approximately 100 Cal/mile. The problem is, it get’s even worse. If we compare this number to the amount of glycogen stored in the body ~1500-2000 Cal, we see that this storage can only fuel 58-77% (1500/2600 to 2000/2600) of our race. If we multiply this times the distance of the race, we get: 15-20 miles (24-32 km). This is hitting the wall. It’s caused by insuffcinet utilization of fat during the initial hours to supplement the mostly glycogen fuel of running.
As it turns out, most exercise is simply an activity based in glycogen. We will see this in more detail in part three. What no one seems to tell you is that the “fat burring low-intensity zone” you see on the treadmill or elliptical is based on no fat burning at high intensity. In other words, if you take a full on sprint, your RQ is headed to 1.0 (carbohydrate) pretty fast – you likely will be over 1.0.
I’ve not seen anyone push it hard and stay at RQ = 0.7 (fat). By comparison, sitting in your home or office reading this, you are likely at RQ = .85 (50/50). So “fat burning zone” really refers to more fat burning than none, not more fat burning than when you aren’t exercising. Now, theoretically your lower fat burning crosses a line with increase energy consumption – an exercise sweet spot.
Many of the gym-grade calorimeters (US$3000-12,000 class instruments) use this fixed RQ = .85 “assumption” when calculating your RMR, which is why they are not as useful when trying to get at the details of specifically how your body is reacting minute by minute. Researchers of 100 years ago were using all wet chemistry techniques and as such, were’t burdened with this problem. We’ve known these things for a long time, I am not making it up. It’s only in the last few decades that this lack exercise/activity has become the be-all answer. I see better results from people that are’t moving excessively, but rather focused on enjoyable leisure activities (a dog walk, casual swim, or riding a bike)
Here is what those fat burn charts really mean. You were likely burning at a 50/50 rate when you walked casually into the gym. After beginning to run you’ll not burn much fat at all, because your RQ will go to 1.0 or higher. If you don’t push as hard on that marathon you MIGHT be down as low as RQ = .95 (84%/1%6 carb/fat). In that 2600 Cal/26.2 miles, we are talking about 416 Cal or 3.5 tablespoons of “healthy” olive oil.
Scaling Tall Building
So recently, I decided to put it to a little test. What would happen if I climbed the Westin Tower in downtown Atlanta? At 73 stories, it’s the second tallest hotel in the U.S. and 19th in the world. I haven’t exercised in 2 years as part of an ongoing experiment, but my muscle mass hasn’t changed in any significant way and I am frequently experiencing cold stress.
This was going to be fun, of course when you have a gas mask on, along with a beeping backpack and a camera, it’s probably good to ask security for permission. “I can’t tell you that it’s okay, but I can say there aren’t any cameras and it’s perfectly okay for the guests of the hotel to use the stairs.” said the man with the ear piece – enough said. So my partner in crime, Kevin and I calibrated the US$ 34,000 instrument with standard O2/CO2 gas and we were on our way to the basement.
We had to walk down a few floors so I rested about 30 minutes while he made technical support calls and then we performed a short baseline, rested metabolism. Remember, when you see the number on the treadmill or elliptical, it’s necessary to subtract out the calories that would have been otherwise burned during the same time just by being alive.
Up the stairs we went. 20 mins later, we were at the top. Not bad for a nearly 50 year old, no exercise father of three. I was a little winded, but we made the 1784 linear feet (~1196 stairs) and 700 vertical feet) at a steady pace of 1.4 mph. Not exactly pushing it.
The result? 4 1/2th Oreo cookies. three stinking cookies and I am NOT talking double stuff.
I know that this wasn’t two brutal hours of crossfit, nor was it a good upper body trip to the gym, but where is the truth between 3.5 tablespoons of olive oil and 4 1/2 Oreo cookies? How far off can we be?
We all want to believe that all that sweaty movement is burning a lot of calories. It just SEEMS like a lot of work and in physics work and energy expenditure are two totally different quantities. Sadly, this mindless repetitive movement we call exercise seems to fit neither of these definitions in a significant way. Not only are there few calories burned, but they are mostly glycogen (carbohydrate) calories and result in a lot of metabolic upheaval to replace and repair tissue. A few months after my first cold experiments Segway and overall brilliant engineer, Dean Kamen, told me that he too had calculated the food-for-movement economy when conceiving the segway – he came up 1/3 a chocolate chip for 100 m climb (~30 stories).
We are relatively easy to move around.
Did you hear me say don’t exercise at all? No. Did I say exercise was unhealthy? Well, not yet, but I reserve make that judgement to later. What I am saying is that if you are competing, there’s no way to win without being conditioned through training. In swimming, it’s about technique and muscle memory (streamlining efficiently through the water). In running and cycling, it’s a game of fuel conservation and primarily oxygen utilization (VO2 Max). And in weight lifting, it centers on stressing the muscle and giving it sufficient time to recover and rebuild.
I’m exercise agnostic at the moment as it’s enjoyable to many people, but do want to respectively question the main reason that is offered as a fundamental, unquestionable truth: Are we obese as a society because we don’t move enough? Is it really our lack of activity that has caused this obesity pandemic?
Lose, or Lose Not. There is No Try.
If you are trying to lose fat, exercise is probably not the best place to start. In part three I will give you a few examples why, but there is a LARGE leap from the “lean mass burns more than fat” catch-all phrase to the generally accepted idea of sedentary lifestyle. What that phrase should be is:
In a petri dish when measuring the metabolic activity of equal mass of muscle and adipose tissue, the muscle tissue is more metabolically active and consumes more energy during a given period of time.
Now let me give you a little “Alabama” talk:
A 300 lb fat man burns more calories wallowing around each day than his lean, fit, 180 lb. friend.
It doesn’t matter much how much their tissue is burning per hour if you’re the same “skinny man inside the fat suit” lugging around an extra 120 lbs of fat all day, every day. It reminds me of the childhood riddle: which weighs more, a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks?
This is not a metabolism problem, it’s a food problem. The excess bodyfat is due to what we eat, when we eat, and how we eat. That’s all. Exercise has a role in health, but it is not the panacea for health or the explanation for the obesity pandemic.
I have now coached several life long, morbidly obese people through a weight loss process. Nothing makes them feel more miserable than to walk into a gym full of fit people with iPods, and feeling as Daniel once described, “like I was wearing something made by Omar the desert tent maker.” Life is a workout when you are 30, 50, or 100+ lbs overweight. Slow metabolism is not your problem. Oh, You don’t need to eat the storage organ (fat) of a plant or animal to burn fat from your own storage organ. How does this even begin to make sense?
Once we begin down the path of protein, carbohydrate and fat – speak, then sprinkle some metabolism speak and add some missing nutrients, we find the recipe for obesity. In reality, chronic over nutrition is far more prevalent than your situation being a deficiency problem – activity or nutrient alike.
Things are repeated over and over, but I hope we all do a little more critical thinking. Over that last 4 years, I have met so many intelligent people and asked a lot of seemingly obvious questions. It turns out there’s a big difference between 40 years of experience and one year of experieince 40 times.
Oh, and lest you accuse me of being an academic snob, I will say that the debates are sometimes MORE intense with PhDs. The great thing is that I now have a lab and can say, well, tell me what you think is going on and let’s just measure it. I’ve learned a lot just answering questions my children have involving Dad’s mid-life crisis calorimeter. They tend not to be as ill-advised, yet.
So next time we will get into some really interesting comparisons of activity. We will look at Steven’s results and shuffle through to some interesting cold stress experiments touched on in the article along with some other crazy stuff that didn’t make it.
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