 Myth-busters
 "Stress Makes You Fat" and Other Diet Deceptions
With nearly 72 million Americans on a diet, it’s no wonder that diet options abound. But many of these so-called solutions won’t make a big difference in your fat-loss efforts. And some can have serious negative effects.
Fortunately, you can lose fat safely and easily. But first, you need to know just why you should avoid three of the most deceptive diet choices around.
The Cortisol Blame Game
Visit the website for the diet pill CortiSlim, and you’ll see a newly transformed woman claiming, "Stress was piling on the pounds!" The makers of this diet pill advertise that cortisol is to blame. Cortisol is a natural hormone that’s produced by your adrenal glands in response to stress - but does cortisol add weight? No.
Have you ever seen a caged animal at the zoo that appears to be stressed by living in captivity? When animals are under stress, increased cortisol will suppress their appetite. Over time, they become thin and start to waste away. The same is true of humans.
Cortisol gives your body the chance to pool all of its stress-fighting resources in order to deal with a crisis. Under those conditions, your appetite will disappear. Think back to the last time you were panicked or upset. Having lunch was probably the last thing on your mind.
Several weight-loss products try to link cortisol to weight gain by pointing to a single Yale University study published in 2000 that showed that women who respond poorly to stress tend to have a belly. True, excess cortisol can affect where your body stores extra calories as fat. But cortisol itself does not cause weight gain.
Fat Burners and Metabolism Boosters
Products in this category claim to help you lose weight by raising your metabolic rate. Contrary to the hype you may have read, the increase is very slight.
Even ephedra, one of the best, is only modestly successful at raising metabolism - perhaps by a fraction of a percent. This natural herb was banned by the FDA, but that ban was overturned by an appeals court in August 2006. Today, ephedra is starting to make a comeback, despite the fact that its metabolism-boosting properties are negligible.
One of the more popular fat burners claims that you can eat anything you want and still lose weight. This product uses a less-effective ephedra substitute, synephrine, which is supposed to increase your metabolism without the "harmful stimulants" used in other weight-loss products. Other ingredients in this product include caffeine, glucuronolactone, and taurine - the same ingredients found in Red Bull. If you feel any effect from it, it will be from the combination of synephrine and caffeine.
You should think of products like these as stimulants - not fat burners. They may help wake you up and give you a temporary jolt of energy, but so does a good cup of coffee.
Carb Blockers
To ease your guilt after splurging on bagels or pasta, carb blockers may seem like the answer. The term "carb blockers" sound magical… until you realize that what they’re actually blocking is an important digestive enzyme.
The idea of taking something that will interfere with your body’s ability to digest food is not a good one. In fact, it’s dangerous. Your body absorbs essential vitamins and nutrients in the form of carbohydrates. By blocking them, you are robbing your body of what it needs to survive.
The active ingredient in most carb blockers is a white kidney bean extract called phaseolus vulgaris. This substance prevents the enzymes in your stomach from digesting starches.
Dietrine, a well known carb blocker, states on its website: "One Dietrine capsule taken prior to a meal can block up to 1125 calories from fat and carbohydrate foods."
There are no reliable clinical studies to support such a claim. In fact, the only respectable study, published in the Alternative Medicine Review, concluded that "no statistical significance was reached."
Flip Your Body’s Fat-Burning Switch
Truth is, I have had more success with my patients by using a single exercise strategy than I’ve seen with all the dieting and supplement strategies combined. If you’re a regular ETR reader, you’ve heard me talk about this strategy before: Exercise in short bursts. By exercising this way, you can burn fat for up to 24 hours after you finish. Even while you sleep.
This type of exercise teaches your body that storing energy as fat is inefficient. Fat is a low-energy, slow-release fuel. It’s not good for providing you with quick high energy. So if you don’t exert yourself long enough to make good use of your stored fat during your actual exercise routine, your body gives it up afterward, during the recovery period.
You can use any number of exercises to turn your body into an automatic fat burner. The only rule is that the activity has to use enough muscle mass to challenge the rate at which you’re using energy. I like bicycling and swimming, because they’re low-impact and don’t have as much risk of injuries as high-impact exercises like jogging. What you choose will depend on your level of fitness.
Here’s how to get started:
- Perform a light warm-up and stretch before each exercise session.
- Begin with 20 minutes every other day. (This averages to only 10 minutes per day.)
- Exercise at an easy pace at first, and increase it gradually.
- As your fitness improves, increase the intensity of each session.
- After a few weeks, break each session into two short bursts of exercise - two six-minute sets separated by six minutes of focused recovery at a gentle easy pace.
- Eventually, you can go with even briefer episodes of gradually increasing intensity.
The most common error people make is assuming you must work at a higher level of perceived exertion to get results. This is not true. The point is to start with what is a comfortable level of exertion for you. Then, as that level of activity gets easier, you focus on increasing the level or resistance of the activity rather than the duration.
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A Naturally Good Conversation About the Mythology of Success
By Michael Masterson, Founder of Early to Rise, sister publication of Total Health Breakthroughs
When we talk about business, Dr. Sears and I often discuss myths. Just as there are widespread myths about health among modern health professionals, there are also commonly held myths about business among successful executives.
Popular myths can be destructive. In the world of medicine, they can put you in danger of becoming seriously ill. How does the average person separate the ideas that are helpful from those that could literally end up killing him?
I've been thinking about that question for a long time," Dr. Sears said. "And although it is impossible to have one answer that will cover you for every medical problem, there is a simple principle that anyone can follow.
"And what is that?"
"Stay as close as you can to Mother Nature."
"Which means?"
Eating the way Nature intended us to eat, avoiding those things that Nature intended us to be afraid of, and seeking those things that - in a natural environment - we would be attracted to.
One example of a medical myth has to do with sunlight. The medical establishment has been telling us for more than 20 years that the sun is dangerous, that it causes cancer, and that we should do everything we can to avoid it.
I asked Jon Herring, who is just about finished preparing a breakthrough report on this subject for ETR readers, to give you an idea of just how wrong this myth is. Here's what he says:
"For a full generation, Americans have been hiding from the sun, wearing protective clothing, and slathering on sun block. And during this period, the incidence of malignant melanoma (the deadly form of skin cancer) has dramatically increased - most revealingly among those who stay furthest from the sun."
"Fact is, there is virtually no aspect of human health that is not improved by moderate exposure to sunlight. Except in the far north and during the winter, 15 to 30 minutes a day is all it takes. Sensible sun exposure has been conclusively shown to reduce blood pressure, reduce or eliminate the symptoms of depression, optimize weight, improve muscle tone, strengthen bones, improve immunity to illness, reduce tooth decay, improve blood sugar regulation ... and this is just for starters."
"Perhaps most important, sun exposure is inversely correlated with virtually every known deadly internal cancer. In other words, the more UV light a population is exposed to, the greater the reduction in death rates due to cancer. When did you ever hear that bit of information from mainstream medicine?"
Another huge medical myth is that excess bodyfat is caused primarily by eating fat.
"The truth is that eating fat does not make you fat," says Jon. "Sugar and refined carbohydrates play a far more important role in fat storage. For one thing, eating fat sends a signal to your brain that tells you when you've had enough food. So when you include fat in your diet, you don't need to eat nearly as much to feel satisfied. This is why people on 'low-fat' diets often overeat. Also, when manufacturers remove the fat from foods, it is usually replaced with sugar, sodium, and artificial flavors.
"Dietary fat is actually necessary for shedding bodyfat. So rather than eliminating fat from your diet, you should focus on replacing bad fat with good fat. You should avoid vegetable oils and all hydrogenated oils (trans-fats) and replace them with olive oil, coconut oil, and fat from fish, naturally raised lean meats, avocado, nuts, and whole vegetables. Fat is essential to your health. You need it for your body to function properly."
In business, there are myths too. For example, I know from my experience that the following ideas about success in business are bankrupt:
- Nice guys finish last.
- Good negotiators are tough negotiators.
- Smart businesspeople keep their secrets to themselves.
- You've got to break eggs to make omelettes.
I know these ideas to be false, yet I find it impossible to disprove them the way researchers can disprove medical myths. To make matters worse, these business myths often work - either on the surface or in the short run.
In his book Winners Never Cheat, Jon M. Huntsman (one of the country's most successful and wealthiest businessmen) lends support to what I've learned from experience. He admits that the world of Wall Street, to pick a particularly serpentine environment, is filled with unethical businesspeople. But he argues that in the end (and by that he doesn't mean the final end, as in the hereafter), the bad guys pay.
"WorldCom, Tyco, Enron, and other giant companies had leaders who failed to play fair," he says. But "because they cheated, they lost. Accumulation of wealth became a driving force to these executives. They forgot the golden rule of integrity: Trust is a greater compliment than affection. With integrity comes respect."
I was thinking about Dr. Sears' idea of using the fundamental rules of Nature as a way of separating myth from reality when it comes to health advice. I was intrigued by the idea because it occurred to me that it could also be applied to the business of wealth building - and because it tied in to some thoughts I recently articulated in a speech I gave on retirement.
"If you want to get wealthy in a relatively short amount of time and achieve a desirable retirement without stress and worry," I told the audience, "you'll have to follow the wisdom of people who were becoming wealthy centuries ago."
In older, agrarian societies, a man got rich first by working hard to achieve a good income ... then by saving a good part of that income and investing it into a family business ... then by enhancing the value of that business by providing good value to his customers ... and finally by training his children to take over the business so that when he was ready to retire, someone was ready and able to take his place.
The bulk of my speech focused on that aspect of the wealth-building process: mentoring. The giving and receiving of knowledge in a way that draws upon our natural needs and abilities at various stages of life. The argument goes something like this:
When you are young, you are rich in energy but poor in wisdom. It is natural, then, that you should want to work hard in exchange for knowledge - following the path that someone older has charted.
Your income increases as your knowledge and contributions to the business increase. You begin training someone to replace you, even though you may be at the height of your power. You know you won't be able to - or want to - work at this pace forever.
When you are older, you are poor in energy but rich in wisdom. It is natural then that you should work less yet continue to provide the guidance the business needs. At that point, you turn your business over to your protege, including the lion's share of the income and value, in exchange for his taking on all or most of the hard lifting.
Makes sense, doesn't it?
This is rough thinking, I admit. But I hope you can see where I'm going with it. The point is pretty simple: With our health and with our wealth, following the fundamental rules of Nature is the best way to separate the wheat from the chaff and figure out which advice to follow.
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