Thermogenesis and Visceral Fat Loss by Dr. Michael Colgan

Dr Michael Colgan
22 March 2013

Thermogenesis is the creation of heat in the body. It occurs mainly through an extraordinary mechanism called brown adipose tissue (BAT), which permits the production of heat directly from bodyfat without going through the energy cycle.(1) 

A hibernating bear for example, can lose 300 lbs of fat while it sleeps, as its body converts bodyfat to BAT, then creates the heat required to prevent it freezing over the winter. The bear does not have to move a muscle.

We are not as efficient as bears at burning fat with BAT. Nevertheless, the amount of BAT in the body of a 40-year-old man or woman is still sufficient to use 10% -15% of their total energy, and get all of it from bodyfat.

But you have to get your BAT moving. Turn up the inner heat. Exposure to cold is very effective. Bit extreme but it works. I am busy at my annual task convincing clients to sit and meditate under a freezing waterfall, or lie in the snow in swimmers by the pool (frozen). These are popular methods for fat loss right now, every Canadian springtime. I wear a 30-below suit with hood and balaclava so they don’t notice my hysterics.

Usual weight loss programs don’t activate BAT at all. Quite the opposite. If you go on a sudden food restriction diet, the body automatically turns down its heat production and its energy production as a defence mechanism to conserve its fat. That’s why dieters generally feel cold and tired.

You Can Increase BAT Activity

If you can’t face the freeze, there are several things in natural foods raise BAT activity nicely. Best known is caffeine from coffee. Controlled studies show that a cup of ground arabica coffee on an empty stomach in the morning increases thermogenesis and burns bodyfat for up to four hours afterwards.(2,3)

Green tea also has a separate thermogenic effect, originally thought to be because of its caffeine content. Recent studies, however, show that a group of chemicals called catechins in green tea are mostly responsible. The main catechin in green tea, epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) induces thermogenesis by itself.(2-3)

In a placebo-controlled study, in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, two groups of 19, healthy, middle-aged men used a moderately reduced calorie diet, plus tea for 12 weeks. Green tea extract was added to the tea of 19 subjects to yield high levels of catechins. Tea without the extract, containing only low levels of catechins, was used by the 19 controls. The group consuming tea with high catechins lost an average of 5.4 lbs of bodyfat, approximately TWICE the bodyfat loss of the control group. Much of the loss was visceral fat from belly and thighs. The researchers concluded:

“Body weight, BMI, waist circumference, body fat mass, and subcutaneous fat area were significantly lower in the green tea extract group than in the control group.”(4)

You don’t have to freeze off the flab. Lose that belly fat nice and easy. Brain Boost contains high levels of EGCG from green tea, and the e+ shot contains both green tea caffeine and catechins. Take both before your workout and green tea with every meal. It’s a great way to fine-tune abs and buns for the summer, with the bonus of a better brain and more giddy-up to boot.

For more information go to http://www.thehealthyhelms.com/

1. Stock MJ. Thermogenesis and brown fat: relevance to human obesity. Infusionstherapie, 1989;16(6):282-284.
2. Wolfram S, Wang Y, Thielecke F. Anti-obesity effects of green tea: from bedside to bench. Mol Nutr Food Res, 2006;50(2):176-187.
3. Nagao T, Komine Y, Soga S, Meguro S, Hase T, Tanaka Y, Tokimitsu I. Ingestion of a tea rich in catechins leads to a reduction in body fat and malondialdehyde-modified LDL in men. Am J Clin Nutr. 2005;81(1):122-129.
4. Nagao T, Hase T, Tokimitsu I. A green tea extract high in catechins reduces body fat and cardiovascular risks in humans. Obesity, 2007;15(6):1473-1483.

Exercising but Not Losing Fat? Maybe This is the Problem by Dr. Michael Colgan

Dr Michael Colgan -- 14 March 2013
from Isagenix Nutritional Sciences

Image from compareweightlossprogram.com

One of my fat loss clients, has been steadily losing about one pound of fat per week on our nutrition and exercise program, 32 lbs overall. Eager to make a Size 4 for the summer, she thought she wasn’t losing enough. So she joined another gym and hired a trainer.

First week he had her jogging on the treadmill, a hard puff-and-pant exercise for an overweight girl who never jogged. He told her she had to keep going for 30 minutes or she would not lose any fat. Then she had to do an aerobics class for 30 minutes. But she was allowed an oatmeal muffin and some nice organic fruit juices to keep her going. She did both bouts of exercise for five days for one week, then came back to me exhausted, pleading that she had gained weight, and that perhaps ours was the best way.

As often occurs, there were several things wrong with the gym exercise she was given. First, the treadmill jogging was anaerobic for her. That is, she was puffing and panting, indicating a shortage of oxygen. Bodyfat is calorie dense. At 9 calories per gram it needs plentiful oxygen to enable the body to burn it. All endurance athletes know this well. Their VO2 max is the maximum aerobic effort they can make and still burn fat. Any greater intensity and they will turn anaerobic, stop burning fat, quickly burn up all their sugar, and hit the dreaded “wall”.

Second thing wrong; the trainer didn’t give her a diet beyond telling her some healthy things to eat, and he encouraged her to take fruit juice during exercise to keep her going. She told me she also had an oatmeal muffin and juice at the gym beforehand, “or I just couldn’t face it”. We estimated that she had at least 400 calories before starting and another 200-400 during the exercise, about 600-800 extra calories per day, a total of 3,000 – 4,000 extra calories for the five workouts. Bottom line. Any calories you put in your stomach before or during exercise to lose fat, will be preferentially used first by the body. So she was setting herself up to grow plump as a goose.

How much fat did she burn? If you could burn fat perfectly, (remember, no calories in the stomach and no panting) aerobic treadmill work or aerobics classes can use up to 200 calories of fat in an hour. So, if everything was perfect, she could burn a total of 1000 calories (about 4 ounces of fat) over the 5 workouts. Because of the mistakes in her program, likely she burned half that, probably only 500 calories (only 2 ounces of fat loss) over the whole 5 workouts. Meanwhile she ate an extra 3,000 – 4,000 calories, at least half of which would be turned to fat (6-8 ounces of fat gain) just to be able to do the workouts.

For comparison, steady housework uses about 130 fat calories per hour. It’s a good level of effort for burning fat, and costs nothing. Because you are in proximity to food, however, you have to resist eating anything, or you switch to burning mainly sugar. Two hours housework a day will burn far more fat than most gym workouts. Let’s consider perfect fat burning again: 2 hours housekeeping per day x 6 days a week = 12 hours. Twelve hours at 130 calories = 1,560 calories (6 ounces of fat loss) per week. Beats her gym workouts – no contest.

Whenever I see nonsensical gym programs for fat loss I turn back to the rigorous meta-analysis of 25 years of controlled research on exercise and fat loss published in The International Journal of Obesity. These were all medium intense gym programs for fat loss, supervised and motivated by university trainers. They counted only people who attended regularly for 4-6 hours per week. Average weight loss over all the studies was 6.4 lbs in 15 weeks. That’s an average loss of only 7 ounces a week.(1)

The researchers also examined studies that added a reasonable nutrition program to the exercise. Results got much rosier. The same meta-analysis examined the best of the exercise-plus-diet studies over 25 years. In 15 weeks, on a good diet plus 4-6 hours per week in the gym, subjects lost an average of 24.2 lbs. That’s a loss of 1.6 lbs per week.(1)

So, if we compare the exercise alone groups (loss of 6.4 lbs) with the exercise-plus-diet groups (loss of 24.2 lbs), adding the nutrition resulted in a loss of 17.8 lbs of fat. Now you know, no matter what anyone tells you, fat loss is mostly dependent on what and when you eat.

My client is back on her diet track now. After torturing herself very expensively in the gym for 5 hours, our body composition machine showed a gain of 4 lbs, about 3 lbs of water because her body was swollen from the effort, and about 1 lbs of fat. By working out until (in her own words), “my legs turned to Jello”, she had wiped out a week of the fat loss she was getting from a simple diet of two shakes and one meal a day. As I have written many times before, the usual exercise program is excellent at removing fat – but only from your wallet.

If you want to learn more secrets of weight loss go to The Healthy Helms Website.

 1. Miller WC, Koceja DM Hamilton EJ. A meta-analysis of the past 25 years of weight loss research using diet, exercise or diet plus exercise intervention. Int J Obesity, 1997;21:941-947.

How to Reduce Your Body Fat Percentage

Image from LiveStrong.com

Wonder how to reduce your body fat percentage?  Here is a great presentation from the LiveStrong  blog.

Click HERE for presentation.

University Study Finds Isagenix Superior to Leading “Heart Healthy” Diet

September 20, 2012 IsagenixHealth.net

Dr. Krista Varaday
University of Illinois
Chicago College of Applied Sciences

Dr. Krista Varady discusses clinical research on Isagenix products.

The highly anticipated results are in—Isagenix products are superior to a leading “heart healthy” dietary plan for weight loss and visceral fat loss. The manuscript has been submitted to two peer-reviewed journals and is still under review; however, you can read more details about the study on our clinical research summary and marketing flyer.

Krista Varady, Ph.D., the lead investigator of the study, is a prolific researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s College of Applied Sciences with more than 30 peer-reviewed research publications. She has a Ph.D. in nutrition from McGill University—one of the top universities in Canada. Dr. Varady has devoted much of her time to investigating the ability of weight-management strategies to decrease cardiovascular disease risk and is one of the pioneers in research on alternate-day and intermittent fasting.

Dr. Varady’s research was presented in August at the 10th annual Isagenix Celebration in Phoenix. Eager to share the exciting results, Dr. Varady answered questions from Isagenix Chief Science Officer Suk Cho, Ph.D.:

Q: What did you think when you tried Isagenix?

A: I always try things before I make my subjects do it. I used Isagenix for three weeks in January before we began the study. I didn’t want to lose a ton of weight, but I did want to see if I could lose a few pounds with it. The easy of use was great—no dishes at breakfast or lunch; you didn’t even need to have milk at home. I went out and bought a few shake products to compare it to and I’m not sure what you guys do, but the consistency is like a smoothie. The other shakes were clumpy and it made them less appealing.

Q: What else impressed you about Isagenix products?

A: I was impressed by the Cleanse Day and the high-protein IsaLean® Shake. All the ingredients actually seemed wholesome. I had thought the shake would be a high-sugar beverage, but I found it to be really nutritionally complete.

Q: What attracted you to collaborate with Isagenix on research using their products?

A:  The main thing was that Isagenix incorporates fasting while on Cleanse Days. I find that really novel. If you look at other meal-replacement diets, they never really incorporate fasting or cleansing. Usually it is a shake for breakfast and a shake for lunch, but they don’t use all the other products Isagenix uses. I like that it is a multifaceted approach. You are also using supplements that may provide metabolic benefit and protect against free radicals—I thought that was really neat too, but the main thing was that there was a Cleanse Day every week because I am really interested in fasting research.

Q: What can you tell us about the study’s results?

A: Our main finding was that weight loss was actually greater in the Isagenix group. On average they lost 3.9 kg, so that works out to be around 9 pounds or so. Obviously, some lost more and some less, but the Isagenix group lost 3 pounds more on average than the other diet. We also saw those changes with fat mass. With Isagenix, we saw slightly greater reductions (although not significant) in fat mass. Neither group lost a significant amount of lean mass, which is great because you want to maintain your muscle mass to keep your metabolic rate higher and that allows you to burn more calories per hour.

Q: What are the results for visceral fat (fat that surrounds the organs)?

A: Even though it wasn’t statistically significant between groups, we found that there was a much greater reduction in visceral fat in the Isagenix group—about twice as much. They lost 0.7 kg, about 2 pounds. I find that amazing—they lost 2 pounds around their organs—that’s a lot!

Q: What other part of this study’s results do you find most exciting or intriguing?

A: What I found most intriguing at first was the adherence of the Isagenix group; they seemed to adhere better because of the convenience factor of the Isagenix system. Also, the Isagenix group lost more weight and more fat (especially visceral fat); and the blood chemistry looked wonderful.

Q: What other personal observations have you made about the Isagenix products and how they affect subjects?

A: Isagenix people just seemed happier. Also, the satiety (or fullness) aspect; people didn’t feel motivated to binge after a shake or cheat on the diet because they really did find those shakes quite filling, so I was pretty impressed with that. That is the main reason that I am even testing out these diets—to find diets that people will actually do and adhere to over the long term. They liked the taste of the shake and just in terms of the easiness too, they said small things like “there were less dishes to wash” and “for breakfast all you really have to do is keep the blender clean, there’s not that much prep involved and it is a portable system.” But those are actually really important things—if a diet is hard to do, people aren’t going to do it for very long. So making it easy, making it easy to clean up after—all those things add up for long term weight loss.

Q: You had some products left over after the study and people asked you for them, right?

A: Yeah, I had 3 boxes left of the shakes and I have never seen women diving in there, fighting with each other. They were all over each other. Those were gone pretty quickly after we opened them up!

How to Calculate Your Body Mass Index (BMI)

Overweight and obesity are not the same, rather they represent different points on the same path of weight, ranging from being underweight to being morbidly obese. Where you fall on this path is determined by Body Mass Index (BMI).

BMI is a measure of weight proportionate to height. Generally, BMI is considered an effective way to evaluate whether a person is overweight or obese, though there are exceptions to the rule. Some muscular people may have a BMI that puts them in the overweight range. However, these people are not considered overweight because muscle tissue weighs more than fat tissue.

According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), a BMI from 18.5 to 24.9 is considered normal while a BMI of more than 25 is considered overweight. A person is considered obese if the BMI is above 30, and morbidly obese if the BMI is above 40.

BMI Ranges

• Underweight = 18.5 or less
• Normal weight = 18.5-24.9
• Overweight = 25-29.9
• Obesity = 30 or greater

Link to Body Mass Index Calculator (BMI):
http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/english_bmi_calculator/bmi_calculator.html