This is all quite interesting. I never had to fight off the weight until recently. Then, it became seriously difficult to lose anything, and sometimes I would even gain more weight when dieting. No matter how long or hard I trained (I was up to running 15 miles regularly and still not losing weight) the weight never changed. I am no expert, but here's what I have learned after much research and experimentation:

Over the past year, I have done a good bit of reading and changed my whole nutrition plan. That change has been incredible simple and successful. I went from 165# and 30% body fat to 125# and 16% body fat in 6 months, without horrendous workouts. The key was eating clean, unprocessed food, and monitoring when I ate certain foods. What was different? I switched to managing my insulin.

Here's the thing: insulin promotes the release of human growth hormone (useful for tissue repair & recovery). It also helps turns carbs in glycogen (energy stored in the muscle, but not fat) & fat. So, you eat simple sugars (fruit or junk candy or high fructose corn syrup), your body releases huge amounts of insulin in response to the sugar influx, and the sugars then become builders, glycogen, or fat... all depending on what's needed at the time. If you've been lfting or biking and immediately have some simple sugars, they will become glycogen & aid in recovery and stimulate relase of HGH. Eat too much sugar, and it turns into fat. Continue the overdosing and you get insulin resistance, diabetes, & obesity. That's why your nutritionist poo-poo'ed the fruit as similar to high fructose corn syrup; the sugar in fruit is fructose and is treated similarly by the body. By eating whole, unprocessed complex carbs, the sugar is released slowly into the bloodstream and insulin is only released in small amounts over a much longer timeframe. Less of the carbs are converted into fat.


The second issue is processed food... it is highly concentrated forms of food items that were at some point fine to eat when they were whole. However, the processing has removed to fiber, moisture, minerals, vitamins, etc that made the food "healthy". Also, who knows what junk has been purposefully (or mistakenly) pumped into processed food. Ever hear of the story where a manufacturer lied on their nutrition label? I believe it was an ice cream company who horribly falsified the sugar & fat content. That's why prepared frozen meals aren't the best choice.

Notice that I never mentioned fat. Sure, I eat lean cuts of meat (to include chicken, tuna, steak, and turkey), but I don't even count the amount of fat that I eat. I cook in olive oil, have oil & vinegar on my salad, and I even eat peanut butter (lots of it) to get extra fat in my diet. Fat is not a concern, so long as it is ingested in reasonable amounts.

I also never mentioned eating less. I eat enough to sustain my energy demands (right now it's 6 meals a day, with about 4oz of lean protein and 20g of complex carbs). RMR testing is incredibly beneficial here. However, I have found some reasonable estimators online (there's even one on the Friel training website), and then I add in the calories consumed during my workouts. If you cut your calories consumed, you slow your metabolism. Slowing the metabolism means that your body becomes greedy, and converts a larger portion of the food you eat into fat. Over eat just a few times with a damaged metabolism and the fat just piles on. You ABSOLUTELY must eat enough food to support your needs. Cutting calories more than 15% in an effort to lose weight poses a great risk for slowing the metabolism.

Of course, all of this goes along with the disclaimer that this may not work for all people... I have figured out that I am what is termed "carb sensitive". This protocol has worked exceptionally well for me.

Sorry this is so long, I just wish we were all taught this in school.