By Paul Chek, HHP, NMT
Founder, C.H.E.K Institute

In Part 1 of this series, you learned:

• The two common hurdles that must be jumped to get fat off for the long run.
• To critically review the misleading concept of counting calories.
• That many of you are actually dieting, without even realizing it and that instead of asking your doctor, what you should take, you should be asking what you should take away.

In Part 2 of the series, you will:

• Understand why exercise, even regular high doses, can make you fat.
• Recognize what displacement foods are and how they can antagonize the effects of an otherwise good exercise program.

Part 2

The No Diet + Exercise= Fat

Are you faithfully working out several times a week, yet can’t seem to change your body shape? If you answered “Yes,” chances are very good that it’s because you are dieting. No, that’s not a misprint. I did say, “Because you are dieting.” Allow me to explain.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve had young women, mothers, adolescents with and without parents tagging along, men going through a mid-life crisis, world class athletes and even competitive bodybuilders suffering a rebound fat accumulation. Interestingly enough, they were all suffering fat gain in spite of the fact that they were all exercising regularly and eating what they thought was a “good diet.”

After analyzing their 10-day diet log, it became evident that they were dieting. The reason they were dieting was because too large a percentage of their diet consisted of displacement foods or, foods that cost more in nutritional value to digest, metabolize, assimilate and eliminate than they deliver.

In some cases, as much as 90 percent of their diet was composed of displacement foods.

Let me give you some examples of displacement foods:

• Boxed cereals (even many of the ones labeled “organic” are garbage)
• Sports Bars
• Fast foods
• Most canned foods, particularly canned fruits in syrup
• Anything cooked or prepared in a microwave
• 99 percent of all packaged foods. This all includes any commercially processed grain products, such as pancake mixes, pastas, breads (white is the worst) and granola bars
• Pasteurized milk and juice. Most pasteurized dairy products are void of enzymes and contain sweeteners. This means they are not good for your body, particularly if good digestion and health are of concern to you. (3)
• Most processed sandwich meats; many of them have both glutin and sugar added to them as fillers, not to mention the use of synthetic fillers.
• A large percentage of the whey protein shake mixes and protein powders
• All packaged dessert foods, such as donuts, Twinkies, Ding Dongs, cookies (unless made from organic whole-foods) and ice cream.

To better help you understand the potentially devastating effects of eating displacement foods, consider that Weston A. Price quotes Professors Meigs and Converse at the Beltsville Experimental Station, in which they have shown that feeding cattle on a grade of dried hay that was low in chlorophyll resulted in the development of dead or blind calves.

They further went on to say that when the milk of these cows was fed to three normal calves, they all died within 2 ½ months. These calves had been fed whole milk until 20 days of age. It was discovered that the main deficiency in their food was vitamin A (4).

Figure 2

A similar example was given by Owen Lehto who refers to college experiments done in 1932, in which they proved that one could starve an animal faster by feeding it straw than by feeding it nothing at all (5). Why? Because straw is primarily fiber and is relatively void of nutrition, therefore, if you look back at (Figure 2), you will see that to even be alive (resting metabolic rate) is costing you between 55-70 percent of your daily caloric expenditure.

Therefore, if there are too many displacement foods in your diet, you quickly drop to the point at which you have calories, but inadequate nutrition to process them, thus you go nutritionally bankrupt.

While there are many more studies I could refer to, it’s not really necessary because the longest ongoing study is the human race itself! . That’s right, the major food processing corporations have been weaning the nutrition out of diets with progressively greater effort since about 1900. The study resulted in untold numbers of visits to doctors and other medical and health care practitioners to find out what was making people feel so sick.

Look at the rate of childhood obesity, insulin resistance and type-2 diabetes among children that are by no means starving for calories ... they are starving for nutrition.

Rigorous Exercising and No Results?

An excellent example of a case of the “no diet” was a man who consulted me for help after working with a personal trainer and a trainer of top bodybuilders and athletes. Although he was exercising 14 hours a week, he had gained over 40 pounds (of fat) in one year. Now, before I go on, please realize I work with Olympic medal winners and world record holders that don’t exercise anywhere close to 14 hours a week and they don’t gain weight.

In fact, many of them have a harder time keeping it on than losing it. Care to guess what the great majority of his daily meals consisted of? His daily diet log looked much like this:

Breakfast: Corn flakes with skim milk and a banana

Lunch: Pizza or a sandwich of white bread and typical store bought sandwich meat

Dinner: Often best meal of day, yet still contained a lot of canned and processed foods

Drink: Primarily drank diet Coke all day and rarely drank water

Snack: Peanuts, light beer and occasionally a bodybuilder style shake drink, which for the most part are sweetened with aspartame.

This case is exemplary of what many go through.

The Ups and Downs of Exercising

He began at about one hour a day of exercise, which initially took some weight off of him. After a few months, he started gaining the weight back again. Did he change his diet? Yes, he ate less. Did he lose weight? Yes, most likely his own muscle due to lack of quality protein in his diet and high stress levels. His body then had to make hormones and neurotransmitters and repair vital tissues from something; in such cases of poor diet, excessive exercise and high stress levels, the body often begins to metabolize its own muscle through a process called gluconeogenesis.

What do you think he and his trainer did next?

They increased the amount of exercise. Yes, he again began to lose weight for a short period of time, after which he gained back even more in spite of his more rigorous exercise regimen. Again, they increased the amount of exercise. This went on until he was lifting weights and doing some form of cardiovascular exercise two hours a day, seven days a week, yet was now approaching 300 pounds.

It's obvious that this client was in survival mode. He was in the same situation as the cows I referred to above, but they didn’t make the cows exercise. In fact, he’d probably have been better off eating straw and drinking water than much of the items he was eating. And as he rightfully pointed out to me, most of the foods he was eating stated right on the label that they were “natural,” “wholesome,” “fortified” or were labeled as “sports nutrition” or “performance nutrition” products.

The first two things that we had to do to get this man moving toward health were:

1. Get the displacement foods out of his diet.

2. REDUCE the amount of exercise he was doing to prevent complete collapse of his adrenal glands and reduce the threat of disease by malnutrition.

You will have to do the same things if you have patients/clients who fit this profile, and if you fit the profile yourself, it’s time to get it right.

In the final part of this series, you will:

• Recognize the limitations of aerobic exercise for reducing body fat and elevating metabolism
• Appreciate the metabolic benefits of functional free weight training
• Learn how to develop a fat burner resistance training circuit

Continued in Part 3a

Paul Chek is an internationally respected speaker and consultant in corrective and holistic exercise kinesiology and was the first person to introduce Swiss balls to a professional sports team in the United States (the Chicago Bulls in 1991) and abroad (the Canberra Raiders Rugby League team in Australia in 1995), as well as a host of other professional organizations. For information on Chek's Swiss ball of choice -- the DuraBall Pro -- his courses, videos, books and seminars, or the C.H.E.K Institute, call 800/552-8789 or 760/477-2620 (international) for your free catalog or visit the Web site.

References:

1. Berardi, John. "Massive Eating , Parts I and II" Online: www.johnberardi.com
2. Julia Ross, M.A. The Diet Cure (p.17) Viking, 1999
3. David Getoff, N.D., Attaining Optimal Health for the 21st Century (video series).
4. Weston A. Price, D.D.S., "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration," (6th Ed.) (p.385) Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, Inc. Copyright 1939, 14th Printing, 2000
5. Owen Lehto, "Vibrations – A Practical Study Of The Forces That Effect Our Health," The Wilbur Register, Wilbur Wa. 1992. (p.15)

Suggested Resources:

1. "How To Eat, Move and Be Healthy!", by Paul Chek
2. "You Are What You Eat" (Audio/workbook program)
3. "Flatten Your Abs Forever!" (VHS Video 2.5 Hrs.), by Paul Chek

Related Articles:

Cardio Training -- Paul Chek's Perspective

How to Activate "Survival Reflexes" for Improved Strength and Function

Jane's Jungle Workout

How to Choose and Use Swiss Balls Correctly

Fear the Squat No More!

The Power of Walking