Dear Reader,
Last time, I told you about the pitfalls of diet pills and fat burners. In spite of their big promises, they’re a waste of your time and money. Today, I’ll expose another fat loss deception: Carb blockers.
Ever since the Atkins diet hit the market, Americans have been watching their carbs. To ease the guilt that came from eating bagels and pasta, carb blockers seemed like the perfect answer. After all, who wouldn’t enjoy French fries knowing that those troublesome carbs conveniently disappear on the way down?
It sounds magical until you realize that carb blockers actually inhibit an important digestive enzyme.
The idea of taking a substance 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 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 very clearly on its website that, “One Dietrine capsule taken prior to a meal can block up to 1125 calories from fat and carbohydrate foods.”
I hope they have talented lawyers. Statements like this are not only untrue – they’re illegal.
There are no reliable clinical studies to support such a claim. In fact, the only respectable study concluded that, in regard to weight loss, “no statistical significance was reached.” No statistical significance means no proof.1
Worst of all, carb blockers give people a false sense of security. This usually means overeating all of the wrong foods.
If you want to lose fat, skip the pills and exercise in short bursts. If you’re a long time subscriber, you’ve heard me talk about this before. And there’s good reason…
When you exercise in short bursts, you burn much more fat during the recovery period. And by doing this repeatedly, you teach your body that it needs more energy stored in muscle for fast access. And you teach it that storing energy as fat is inefficient because you never exercise for long enough to make good use of the fat during the exercise.
You can use a wide variety of exercise tools. The only rule is that the activity gives your heart and lungs a bit of a challenge. I like bicycling and swimming because they avoid overuse injuries. What you choose will depend on your level of fitness. The important thing is to advance gradually through time. Here are tips on getting started:
• Perform a light warm up and stretch before each exercise session.
• Start with 20 minutes every other day. (This averages to only 10 minutes per day).
• Start easy and increase gradually.
• As your endurance improves, increase the intensity of each session.
• Begin breaking those 20 minutes into shorter “mini-intervals” of exercise.
• Use briefer episodes of gradually increasing intensity.
• A light activity “cool down” for a couple of minutes can reduce muscle soreness after exercise.
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. But as that level of activity gets easier, you will focus on increasing the level of the activity rather than the duration. This is the basis of my PACE® program.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
PS. Over the long run, remember the first principal of PACE® is Progressivity or “incremental change through time”. So, to keep the momentum of your fat-burning program going for months, you can use sets as your progressive change and gradually work up to 5 sets.
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1 Udani J, Hardy M, Madsen DC. “Blocking carbohydrate absorption and weight loss: a clinical trial using Phase 2 brand proprietary fractionated white bean extract” Altern Med Rev. 2004 Mar;9(1):63-9