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The Diet Trap Revisited: Yo-Yo Effect, Decreased Basal Metabolic Rate and the Myth of Fat-Free Mass Losses. Plus: Gender Discrimination and the "Diabetic Advantage"

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Image 1: Geoffrey Cannon's "Dieting Makes You Fat" was first published in 1983 and has lost nothing of its topicality. According to relatively recent data ( Bendixen. 2002 ; Kruger. 2004 ), roughly 30–50% of the women and 10–30% of the men are currently or have recently attempted to lose weight by "dieting". I would assume that at least 90% of these dieters followed did so by just following the "Hippocratic approach" to weight loss of eating less and exercising more a strategy that is probably even more futile today, than 400BC, when it was first proposed by the father of modern allopathic medicine (cf. Precope. 1952 ), or 1983, when Cannon and Einzig published the first of the countless editions of their explanation for why dieting is a disaster (which is  by the way, not just because a calorie was not a calorie ;-). Dieting makes you fat - fullstop! From earlier as well as more recent studies on the effects of starvation, calorie restrictio...
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Busting the 3,500kcal = 1lbs Weight Loss Myth! A Scientific Deconstruction of a Dumb Rule of Thumb Reveals that Women Need More, Men Less Than the "Rule" Predicts

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Image 1: If you are still putting your Happy Meal on a scale, you should not wonder why your weight loss falls short of your "calculations" - especially if you happen to be a woman (img. elementsofwellness.com) While I would hope that most of you have by now embraced the notion that a calorie is not a calorie (at least, when it comes to nutritional calories), I suspect that one or two of you have still just been reviewing how much "calories" they have already eaten, or how much "cardio" they will have to do to compensate for the piece of pizza they are going to eat tomorrow at a friends party... > "STOP!" < this is what you should tell yourselves whenever thoughts like that are passing your mind (well, unless you are in the end-stage of your prep for a bodybuilding contest, I guess ;-) After all, a very recent study that is based on the results of two large-scale weight-interventions ( Heymsfield. 2012 ), i.e. the CALERIE study, condu...
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Trigonella foenum graecum Slightly Increases Testosterone, but Fails to Illicit Gains in Lean Body Mass

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A recently published study by Colin Willborn et al. ( Willborn. 2010 ) found that supplementation with 500mg of the purported aromatase inhibitor Trigonella foenum graecum did increase total testosterone +6.57% and bioavailable testosterone +12.26%  over an eight week period. Yet, the ingredient that is part of several commercially sold " muscle builders " did not increase lean body mass in thirty resistance-trained men. Figure 1: Body-fat loss from baseline testing (T1) through Week 8 (T3), mean Delta ± SD. What it did do, however, was to support a reduction in body fat (-2.0%), beyond the one seen in the placebo group (cf. figure 1). This is particularly interesting, because the hormonal data shows that the extract in fact failed to block aromatization effectively; this may be concluded from the fact, that apart from the rise in testosterone, there was a minor increase in estrogen, as well. In view of the lack of strength gains No significant changes were detected amo...
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Further Evidence: High Protein Diet Conserves Lean Mass

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It is becoming common knowledge that consuming a diet (relatively) high in proteins conserves muscle mass. Thus, a recent study by Case & Haub ( Case. 2010 ) only confirms what regular visitors of the SuppVersity obviously knew. The scientists investigated the effect of either a high carbohydrate (CHO;  65% carbohydrates, 15% protein and 20% fats), a "high protein" (PRO; 40% carbohydrates, 30% protein and 30%) and a non-restricted (Control) diet on body composition and weight of 30 active, military males (age=25 ± 4 yr, body fat=15 ± 7%): Control and PRO group increased FFM , 1.7±1.2 kg and 0.8±1.5 kg, respectively. CHO group lost -0.2±3.8 kg FFM. PRO and CHO groups lost 1.0±1.0 kg and 1.0±1.8 kg of FM, respectively. Control group lost 0.7±0.7 kg FM. Although, judged by a bodybuilders standard, for example, the "PRO"-Diet was not really "high protein" in the sense that it still had 40% carbs and thus more carbs than protein, it was exceptionall...
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No Effect of L-Carnitine on Fat Loss or Body Composition in Obese Women

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After last weeks "bad" news on L-Cartinine L-Tartrate the supplement industry, which is still promoting various kinds of l-carnitines as fat loss aids, just received another beating. In a double-blind randomized placebo study Villani et al. (Villani. 2010) investigated the effects of 8 weeks of 2g/day l-carnitine supplementation on body composition, resting energy expenditure (REE) and substrate utilization of 18 premenopausal  women walking @60-70% of their maximum heart rate 4x a week: Figure 1: Chemical structure of L-Carnitine (HMBD v2.5) For the subjects who completed the study (15 P, 13 L-C), no significant changes in mean total body mass (TBM), fat mass FM, and resting lipid utilization occurred over time, nor were there any significant differences between groups for any variable. Conversely REE increased significantly for all subjects, but no between group differences existed . Five of the L-C group experienced nausea or diarrhea and consequently did ...
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