John Parrillo's - The Winning Fat Loss Formula

GameDayDog · 09-08-2005, 12:50 PM

Whew.. thys is just one of the articles I refer to when folks ask if it's okay to do cardio whyle bulking... or why do I believe that cardio timing is more important than just "doing" cardio... I'm putting thys in the fat-loss area and in the training area...

Sigh.. I searched, but couldn't fynd a copy of thys onlyne anywhere.. so I gotta type it.. Here goes..

**********
John Parillo's - The Winning Fat Loss Formula
MuscleMag Magazine - April 2005 - pgs 280 - 281.

A successful approach to losing bodyfat involves alternating between one month of a weight gain cycle and one month of a fat loss cycle. The first month you would gain a pound each week (four pounds), and 75 percent of the gain is muscle: i.e. you gain one pound of fat and three pounds of muscle. In the second month you lose a pound a week (four pounds), and 75 percent of that loss is fat: i.e. you lose three pounds of fat and one pound of muscle. At the end of the two month cycle you will have lost two pounds of fat and gained two pounds of muscle. Extend that schedule to a year and after 12 months you have gained 12 pounds of muscle and lost 12 pounds of fat. You are constantly making progress and your metabolism never gets the chance to slow down.

I believe these weight gain & fat loss goals are quite realistic, very easily attainable for anyone and particularly easy for bodybuilders who are giving a 100% effort to their training and nutrition programs. The beauty of the above approach is you are constantly making progress. You are always either gainiing muscle or losing fat, and the constant change prevents your metabolism from adapting, allowing you to make continuous progress without wasting your time being stuck on a plateau and trying to figure out what to do.

In principle you could keep up this program year after year. If your bodyfat level is 20% or more, you may want to devote a few months to getting in shape first. If you're extremely skinny you may want to devote a few months just putting on size. But if you're somewhere in the middle, maybe with a level of bodyfat around 10%, you should consider giving this program a try. To gain a pound a week increase your calories by 300 to 500 a day, do 20 to 30 minutes of aerobics a day, and train lyke a powerlifter by doing heavy sets in the range of 3 to 6 reps. To lose a pound a week, decrease calories by 300 - 500 a day, do 60 minutes of aerobics a day and train lyke a bodybuilder by increasing your work volume in the gym and using moderate weight in the range of 8 to 12 reps.

Fat Burning Tips

You can maximize this fat burning mode in other ways:

1. Continue to eat five, six or more meals per day in order to keep your metabolism in a constant state of acceleration. This meal frequency has several beneficial effects. Everytime you eat, your metabolic rate increases a little because of the thermic effect of feeding (also known as diet-induced thermogenesis). Eating frequently keeps your internal furnace stoked and keeps your metabolism speeding along. If you go too long without eating, your metabolism begins to slow down.

2. Eliminate as much fat as possible from your diet since fat slows down your metabolism. The tendency of dietary protein and complex carbohydrates to convert to fat is negligible, whereas dietary fat is very prone to be stored as bodyfat. (ref. 1,2,3,4) . This topic is a hot one in today's scientific literature and is a matter of debate in bodybuilding circles. (The topic is less a matter of debate in the scientific journals, where actual research is reported.) Very little of your bodyfat comes from complex carbs or protein being converted into fat; almost all of your bodyfat comes from the fat in the foods you eat. How much fat your body stores seems to be more closely related to how much fat you eat rather than how many calories you consume.

3. Decrease your carbohydrate intake, thereby lowering insulin levels and activating fat-burning mechanisms in the body. but how do you cut down on carbs without decreasing calories? You consume more of other specific food items. Because fat is not an option, your only other choices are medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil or protein. Either one will work in lowering carb intake, but a combination of both probably works best.

Let me be brutally onest about carb cutting. If you're used to receiving most of your calories from carbs, cutting back signicantly on carbs makes you feel bad, at least for a while. People who reduce their carb intake dramatically have low energy levels, are irritable and grouchy, and get headaches. MCT oil is more effective at relieving some of these symptoms than protein because the oil is more readily used as an energy source.

Protein is not a very efficient energy source. The role of protein is to serve as a building block for repair and maintenace of tissues, not to provide metabolizable fuel. Using protein for energy is akin to trying to burn a wet log. Carbs on the other hand are a great energy source. If you want to reduce carbs in order to manipulate hormone levels and to promote fat metabolism, it makes sense to replace those calories lost from carbs with another fuel source, namely MCT oil. This oil supplement is a good choice because it is readily burned as fuel and won't be stored as bodyfat. (ref. #5 & 6)

I suggest you ease into carb reduction slowly. Start by eliminating starchy carbs (potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice & so forth) from your last meals of the day. Replace those calories lost from those carbs with an equivalent number of calories from MCT oil. MCT oil actually has a higher thermogenic effect than carbohydrate, which means more of this dietary energy will be lost as body heat, with less energy available for storage. this los of body heat further promotes fat loss. Continue in this way until you reduce your daily carbohydrate intake, in grams, to about half of what you normally consume. At this point you will be consuming mostly protein, vegetables and MCT oil.

4. Do your cardio when you are relatively carb depleted. This strategy will cause your body to burn more fat for energy during your workout because fewer carbs are available to burn. The best time for doing cardio is in the morning, right before breakfast. At that time, your glycogen stores are the lowest they will be all day; therefore, you will rely more heavily on stored fat for energy. To prevent muscle loss consume two scoops of a quality protein powder before doing your aerobics.

Fat Loss & Cardio

For maximizing fat loss, another good time to do cardio is right after weight training, because then you are relatively glycogen depleted as well. You should do moderate to fairly high intensity aerobics to ensure you are breathing hard and sweating. While you do indeed burn a higher percentage of calories from fat druing low intesity aerobics, you will burn more grams of bodyfat if you do high intensity aerobics because you will burn so many more total calories. If you do reasonably intense aerobics you will also get the added benefits of increased vascular density and enhanced fat burning capacity. Increase the volume of aerobics progressively and you get leaner. If your fat loss plateaus the first measure to take is to do more aerobics. If that additional cardio doesn't work, you should probably back of the cardio for two weeks, increase your calories, put on some muscle and get your metabolism going again.

How do you know if you're losing fat and not muscle? By having your bodyfat measured once a week with an accurate assessment method such as calipers. With the information you attain, you can determine, in pounds, your lean mass & fat, & make adjustments in your training and diet accordingly to make sure you stay on track.

With proper assessment you can pinpoint exactly where the problem in your diet program is and make detailed adjustments to fix the problem. Otherwise, if you're just plodding along, going by what feels right or seems to make sense, you're not sure what to change if you aren't making good progress. Remove the guesswork from your bodybuilding program. Don't leave anything to chance.

References :
1. Flatt JP. 1987 - Dietary fat, carbohydrate balance, and weight maintenace: effects of exercise. AM J Clin Nutr 45: 296-306
2. Flatt JP. 1995 - Use and storage of carbohydrate and fat. Am J Clin Nutr 61: 952S - 59S
3. Swinburn B, et al. 1993 - Energy balance or fat balance? - Am J Clin Nutr 57: 766S - 71S
4. Acheson KJ, et al. 1982 - Glycogen synthesis versus lipogenesis after a 500 gram carbohydrate meal in man. - Metabolism 31: 1234 - 40.
5. Baba N, et al. 1982 - Enhanced thermogenesis and diminished deposition of fat in response to overfeeding with diet containing medium chain triglyceride. Am J Clin Nutr 35: 678 - 82.
6. Bach AC, et al. 1982 - Medium-chain triglycerides: an update - Am J Clin Nutr 36: 950 - 62.

***********

I'll also make it easy on ya & post thys link to MCT (medium chain triglycerides

) oil.. - http://www.nextag.com/mct-oil/search-html

Peace..~G

**dbflgirl** · 09-08-2005, 02:28 PM

As with so many of these articles, my comment is that while there's some truth here, there's also a lot unsaid.

First and foremost, there is a difference between minimizing bodyfat and optimizing health. While it's true that many diseases have been linked to excess bodyfat, it's also true that our bodies need more than just proteins and MCTs for optimal health.

One of the dangers in reading all nutrition articles in the context of bodybuilding is that the issue of overall health can get lost. While some of us here are indeed focused exclusively on bodybuilding, many others (like me) are looking for a balance between looking good, feeling good and being healthy.

Second, as we age, our entire hormonal system changes, with nearly all hormones decreasing with age. Since fats are so closely tied to hormone regulation, increasing dietary fat as we age is one of the best defenses against aging (see the article AFR posted here http://www.ironmass.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2454).

Third, while it's true that dietary fat can be readily converted to bodyfat as there is no chemical change that has to occur, the bottom line is that fat will only be stored if there is a deficit. So while I'd support lower fat bulking, I wouldn't necessarily support low fat dieting (I am talking about for "regular" folks - not folks who are doing a temporary diet to get ready for a contest). Fat goes a long way to keeping you sated, which goes a long way to helping you not want to eat so much.

Fourth, this article doesn't identify a target range for carbs beyond saying to cut them to half of what you normally eat --which makes no sense, imo, since some of us might be eating 75g and others 300g and we are all different heights/weights. Beyond this, I believe that some carbs are necessary and, for a large percentage of the population (those who have normal insulin responses) healthy, assuming we are talking about complex and/or fibrous carbs and not Twinkies and french fries.

Fifth, his math is questionable. He says, "To gain a pound a week increase your calories by 300 to 500 a day, do 20 to 30 minutes of aerobics a day, and train lyke a powerlifter by doing heavy sets in the range of 3 to 6 reps. " Well, if I were to eat an extra 300 calories a day and add in all that cardio, there is no way I'd gain a pound a week. Even if I ate the full extra 500 calories a day, if I also increased my activity as he suggests, there is no way I'd gain a pound. Fact is, this rate of gain wouldn't be so easy for some of us and I suspect that rate of loss would be a challenge for others of us.

I could go on but I won't

I do think there are some valid points made here, but I think there are also some wild over-generalizations as well as a one-size-fits-all approach that simply isn't realistic. The key to this and so many articles is to take from it what works for you.

09-08-2005, 12:50 PM	#1
GameDayDog The Dawg Is Back!! Join Date: May 2005 Location: Doin Compound Movements 4 Scooby Snacks! Posts: 1,975 Recipes: 0 Rep Power: 32	John Parrillo's - The Winning Fat Loss Formula Whew.. thys is just one of the articles I refer to when folks ask if it's okay to do cardio whyle bulking... or why do I believe that cardio timing is more important than just "doing" cardio... I'm putting thys in the fat-loss area and in the training area... Sigh.. I searched, but couldn't fynd a copy of thys onlyne anywhere.. so I gotta type it.. Here goes.. ******** John Parillo's - The Winning Fat Loss Formula MuscleMag Magazine - April 2005 - pgs 280 - 281. A successful approach to losing bodyfat involves alternating between one month of a weight gain cycle and one month of a fat loss cycle. The first month you would gain a pound each week (four pounds), and 75 percent of the gain is muscle: i.e. you gain one pound of fat and three pounds of muscle. In the second month you lose a pound a week (four pounds), and 75 percent of that loss is fat: i.e. you lose three pounds of fat and one pound of muscle. At the end of the two month cycle you will have lost two pounds of fat and gained two pounds of muscle. Extend that schedule to a year and after 12 months you have gained 12 pounds of muscle and lost 12 pounds of fat. You are constantly making progress and your metabolism never gets the chance to slow down. I believe these weight gain & fat loss goals are quite realistic, very easily attainable for anyone and particularly easy for bodybuilders who are giving a 100% effort to their training and nutrition programs. The beauty of the above approach is you are constantly making progress. You are always either gainiing muscle or losing fat, and the constant change prevents your metabolism from adapting, allowing you to make continuous progress without wasting your time being stuck on a plateau and trying to figure out what to do. In principle you could keep up this program year after year. If your bodyfat level is 20% or more, you may want to devote a few months to getting in shape first. If you're extremely skinny you may want to devote a few months just putting on size. But if you're somewhere in the middle, maybe with a level of bodyfat around 10%, you should consider giving this program a try. To gain a pound a week increase your calories by 300 to 500 a day, do 20 to 30 minutes of aerobics a day, and train lyke a powerlifter by doing heavy sets in the range of 3 to 6 reps. To lose a pound a week, decrease calories by 300 - 500 a day, do 60 minutes of aerobics a day and train lyke a bodybuilder by increasing your work volume in the gym and using moderate weight in the range of 8 to 12 reps. Fat Burning Tips You can maximize this fat burning mode in other ways: 1. Continue to eat five, six or more meals per day in order to keep your metabolism in a constant state of acceleration. This meal frequency has several beneficial effects. Everytime you eat, your metabolic rate increases a little because of the thermic effect of feeding (also known as diet-induced thermogenesis). Eating frequently keeps your internal furnace stoked and keeps your metabolism speeding along. If you go too long without eating, your metabolism begins to slow down. 2. Eliminate as much fat as possible from your diet since fat slows down your metabolism. The tendency of dietary protein and complex carbohydrates to convert to fat is negligible, whereas dietary fat is very prone to be stored as bodyfat. (ref. 1,2,3,4) . This topic is a hot one in today's scientific literature and is a matter of debate in bodybuilding circles. (The topic is less a matter of debate in the scientific journals, where actual research is reported.) Very little of your bodyfat comes from complex carbs or protein being converted into fat; almost all of your bodyfat comes from the fat in the foods you eat. How much fat your body stores seems to be more closely related to how much fat you eat rather than how many calories you consume. 3. Decrease your carbohydrate intake, thereby lowering insulin levels and activating fat-burning mechanisms in the body. but how do you cut down on carbs without decreasing calories? You consume more of other specific food items. Because fat is not an option, your only other choices are medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil or protein. Either one will work in lowering carb intake, but a combination of both probably works best. Let me be brutally onest about carb cutting. If you're used to receiving most of your calories from carbs, cutting back signicantly on carbs makes you feel bad, at least for a while. People who reduce their carb intake dramatically have low energy levels, are irritable and grouchy, and get headaches. MCT oil is more effective at relieving some of these symptoms than protein because the oil is more readily used as an energy source. Protein is not a very efficient energy source. The role of protein is to serve as a building block for repair and maintenace of tissues, not to provide metabolizable fuel. Using protein for energy is akin to trying to burn a wet log. Carbs on the other hand are a great energy source. If you want to reduce carbs in order to manipulate hormone levels and to promote fat metabolism, it makes sense to replace those calories lost from carbs with another fuel source, namely MCT oil. This oil supplement is a good choice because it is readily burned as fuel and won't be stored as bodyfat. (ref. #5 & 6) I suggest you ease into carb reduction slowly. Start by eliminating starchy carbs (potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice & so forth) from your last meals of the day. Replace those calories lost from those carbs with an equivalent number of calories from MCT oil. MCT oil actually has a higher thermogenic effect than carbohydrate, which means more of this dietary energy will be lost as body heat, with less energy available for storage. this los of body heat further promotes fat loss. Continue in this way until you reduce your daily carbohydrate intake, in grams, to about half of what you normally consume. At this point you will be consuming mostly protein, vegetables and MCT oil. 4. Do your cardio when you are relatively carb depleted. This strategy will cause your body to burn more fat for energy during your workout because fewer carbs are available to burn. The best time for doing cardio is in the morning, right before breakfast. At that time, your glycogen stores are the lowest they will be all day; therefore, you will rely more heavily on stored fat for energy. To prevent muscle loss consume two scoops of a quality protein powder before doing your aerobics. Fat Loss & Cardio For maximizing fat loss, another good time to do cardio is right after weight training, because then you are relatively glycogen depleted as well. You should do moderate to fairly high intensity aerobics to ensure you are breathing hard and sweating. While you do indeed burn a higher percentage of calories from fat druing low intesity aerobics, you will burn more grams of bodyfat if you do high intensity aerobics because you will burn so many more total calories. If you do reasonably intense aerobics you will also get the added benefits of increased vascular density and enhanced fat burning capacity. Increase the volume of aerobics progressively and you get leaner. If your fat loss plateaus the first measure to take is to do more aerobics. If that additional cardio doesn't work, you should probably back of the cardio for two weeks, increase your calories, put on some muscle and get your metabolism going again. How do you know if you're losing fat and not muscle? By having your bodyfat measured once a week with an accurate assessment method such as calipers. With the information you attain, you can determine, in pounds, your lean mass & fat, & make adjustments in your training and diet accordingly to make sure you stay on track. With proper assessment you can pinpoint exactly where the problem in your diet program is and make detailed adjustments to fix the problem. Otherwise, if you're just plodding along, going by what feels right or seems to make sense, you're not sure what to change if you aren't making good progress. Remove the guesswork from your bodybuilding program. Don't leave anything to chance. References : 1. Flatt JP. 1987 - Dietary fat, carbohydrate balance, and weight maintenace: effects of exercise. AM J Clin Nutr 45: 296-306 2. Flatt JP. 1995 - Use and storage of carbohydrate and fat. Am J Clin Nutr 61: 952S - 59S 3. Swinburn B, et al. 1993 - Energy balance or fat balance? - Am J Clin Nutr 57: 766S - 71S 4. Acheson KJ, et al. 1982 - Glycogen synthesis versus lipogenesis after a 500 gram carbohydrate meal in man. - Metabolism 31: 1234 - 40. 5. Baba N, et al. 1982 - Enhanced thermogenesis and diminished deposition of fat in response to overfeeding with diet containing medium chain triglyceride. Am J Clin Nutr 35: 678 - 82. 6. Bach AC, et al. 1982 - Medium-chain triglycerides: an update - Am J Clin Nutr 36: 950 - 62. ********* I'll also make it easy on ya & post thys link to MCT (medium chain triglycerides ) oil.. - http://www.nextag.com/mct-oil/search-html Peace..~G __________________ I am Thee Alpha.. RaSP is Thee oMEGA.. Between the 2 of us - We have everythyng covered... I want to be bigger than all the humans!! "I'm sure I should be doing cardio too....but I don't run from anything...so why practice?" - 1stInDoor Goal - 200#'s 5/27/07 - 4/27/07 - 175# 3/27/07 - 167#

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09-08-2005, 02:28 PM	#2
dbflgirl Silver Member Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Hurricane Alley Posts: 646 Recipes: 0 Rep Power: 18	As with so many of these articles, my comment is that while there's some truth here, there's also a lot unsaid. First and foremost, there is a difference between minimizing bodyfat and optimizing health. While it's true that many diseases have been linked to excess bodyfat, it's also true that our bodies need more than just proteins and MCTs for optimal health. One of the dangers in reading all nutrition articles in the context of bodybuilding is that the issue of overall health can get lost. While some of us here are indeed focused exclusively on bodybuilding, many others (like me) are looking for a balance between looking good, feeling good and being healthy. Second, as we age, our entire hormonal system changes, with nearly all hormones decreasing with age. Since fats are so closely tied to hormone regulation, increasing dietary fat as we age is one of the best defenses against aging (see the article AFR posted here http://www.ironmass.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2454). Third, while it's true that dietary fat can be readily converted to bodyfat as there is no chemical change that has to occur, the bottom line is that fat will only be stored if there is a deficit. So while I'd support lower fat bulking, I wouldn't necessarily support low fat dieting (I am talking about for "regular" folks - not folks who are doing a temporary diet to get ready for a contest). Fat goes a long way to keeping you sated, which goes a long way to helping you not want to eat so much. Fourth, this article doesn't identify a target range for carbs beyond saying to cut them to half of what you normally eat --which makes no sense, imo, since some of us might be eating 75g and others 300g and we are all different heights/weights. Beyond this, I believe that some carbs are necessary and, for a large percentage of the population (those who have normal insulin responses) healthy, assuming we are talking about complex and/or fibrous carbs and not Twinkies and french fries. Fifth, his math is questionable. He says, "To gain a pound a week increase your calories by 300 to 500 a day, do 20 to 30 minutes of aerobics a day, and train lyke a powerlifter by doing heavy sets in the range of 3 to 6 reps. " Well, if I were to eat an extra 300 calories a day and add in all that cardio, there is no way I'd gain a pound a week. Even if I ate the full extra 500 calories a day, if I also increased my activity as he suggests, there is no way I'd gain a pound. Fact is, this rate of gain wouldn't be so easy for some of us and I suspect that rate of loss would be a challenge for others of us. I could go on but I won't I do think there are some valid points made here, but I think there are also some wild over-generalizations as well as a one-size-fits-all approach that simply isn't realistic. The key to this and so many articles is to take from it what works for you.