The Calorie Burn Myth

Dear Health-Conscious Reader,

One of the worst myths I hear is that if you want to drop weight, you have to first cut calories. If the first thing you do is restrict calories, your body will fight you every step of the way, and you’ll never see results.

Your body is an intelligent system. I think of changing my body as a coaching job. I don’t try to force it. I try to get it to cooperate.

This means that instead of depriving yourself, the first thing is your body needs to be in a safe and plentiful environment. Then, the natural metabolism we evolved with for thousands of years will begin rebuilding the naturally lean body you were designed to enjoy.

I’ve spent over 25 years researching this topic, studying the science and history behind metabolism and weight gain. I’ve been able to apply what I’ve learned at my clinic on both myself and thousands of my patients.

I feel fortunate that my books and videos have helped thousands of people in the real world. Yet I’ve been able to have a kind of success working individually with clients that I haven’t always been able to get through books and DVDs.

You see, when I work with clients I can tell them what to do first, and then what to do next. The order you do things in matters if you want to coach your body to make changes you need to maintain your ideal body weight and shape.

Doing things in order lets what you do first have its effect, and sets up the environment so that what you do next can benefit you more. Over time, teaching people what to do first, second, third and so on, has reinforced my theory about the benefit or sequencing. It turns out that the sequencing addresses the underlying environmental issue very effectively.

Go back to the “cutting calories first” myth as an example (this is the first time I’ve revealed this sequence to anyone but my clinic patients).

Remember I think of my approach as coaching my body? Now consider what effects the modern, Western diet has on your body. The modern diet mimics starvation, and teaches your body it needs to store fat.

And you’ve been warned that you have to stick to this diet that mimics starvation. And the harder you try to follow it the more your body is convinced that it needs to slow down metabolism, shut down repair and store body fat.

And every choice you were given in our Western diet came from misinformation born of ignorance.

Your entire life you’ve heard that steak and eggs are bad, and bread and cereal are good.

That’s a radical departure from thousands of years of humans eating.

What’s worse is that the newest directives from nutritionists and dieticians want you to depart even further from our native way of eating. Today, you’re told that the healthiest things you can eat are nutritionally worthless and processed grains, corn and soy.

The problem is, your body is designed to treat these foods as more evidence that you’re starving.

And when you’re starving, your body thinks it has to store fat.

To reverse this process, you have to show your body that its environment is stable and plentiful. You see how this brings up the issue of doing things in the right sequence. Then, your body will cooperate in your effort to become lean. In fact, it will take over, and you’ll see how easy it becomes. Because your body is simply rebuilding its naturally lean and fit state.

Notice how this has nothing to do with counting calories. If you take the typical American diet and you restrict calories, you convince your body that the problem has worsened.

It then puts everything you have into storing fat. You’ll direct all systems toward building fat at the expense of everything else.

That’s why restricting calories from the beginning will make you feel tired, and shut down repair functions, your antioxidant system, your immune system, and long term maintenance.

You need to precede eating fewer calories by telling your body that the environment is good – that the hunting is good and that it doesn’t need to store fat.

So how do you convince your body that the environment is good? It’s simple. Your body knows how to interpret macronutrient intake so it knows whether there is famine or feasting because of thousands of years of past evolutionary experience.

So the most important thing you can do is increase your protein first. Because eating excess protein helps throw that metabolic switch and tell your body times are good.

If you restrict calories after you’ve given your body excess protein, it interprets it differently because your body now knows that the environment is good.

Remember the coaching analogy: You’re leading your body to make the right “decision.” Why would your body need fat if you’re going to eat well tomorrow?

Your body will then melt stored fat instead, so you can accomplish things like repair, long term maintenance and immune surveillance.

The second thing you need to do in order to return your body to the strong, lean-muscled state you were designed for is to change the way you exert yourself.

Most people will do your typical boring “cardio” exercise routines, throw in a little weight training focusing on individual body parts, and grunt away with some crunches to help their “core.”

They think this does something useful for their body. Then they become frustrated because they’re getting no results, and wonder where they went wrong.

The problem here is the long-duration workouts like “aerobics” and cardiovascular endurance exercise. Your body was not designed to plod away slowly for hours at a time. In your native environment, that kind of exercise would have been the exception.

It would send the signal that there’s trouble… that you have to go very far from home because the environment isn’t good. Long duration exercise sends the same signal to your body as the unnatural modern diet does: “Store more fat.”

Long periods of exercise like aerobics also make your body use fat as fuel. This reinforces that same message to store fat. And you can be sure that your body is going to store plenty so you have it for the next grueling “cardio” workout.

What you need is the opposite. You have to get your body the message that what you need is not stored body fat.

PACE works in sequence because you first progressively increase the intensity of the challenge you give your body in small steps, teaching your body to rebuild itself. And when you accelerate, or shorten the time it takes to reach that challenge, you coach your body to store energy in your muscles not fat.

This is where the sequence of not only what you do but when you do it makes all the difference. That’s why, at the same time you’re signaling your body to dump fat by eating protein, you start to apply the concepts of my PACE program to your workouts.

A PACE workout reinforces the “dump fat” message. Progressively increasing the intensity of your exertion, while keeping the duration short, tells your body it’s okay to get rid of stored fat.

Its 12 minutes of total exertion time, and a workout time of no more than 20 minutes. Any more than 20 minutes, and your body starts to use fat for fuel, and that’s exactly what you have to avoid. Instead, PACE trains your body to store energy in your muscles rather than storing it as fat, making you lean, and keeping you that way.

Let me show you what I’m talking about.

In one study, they put cyclists in Spain on a PACE-like exercise program – short duration, high intensity workouts with recovery periods in between. When tested after only two weeks, the people were able to increase energy uptake into their muscles by over 30%, and had significant increases in maximum oxygen use and exercise capacity.1

In another study out of Denmark, researchers had people train using a high intensity program on one leg and low-intensity exercise on the other leg.

They found that PACE-like exertion over a few weeks increased muscle mass by 4% in the high-intensity trained leg. The low-intensity “aerobics” trained leg lost 1% of its muscle mass.

Also, during training, the high-intensity leg had better blood flow and increased oxygen uptake, while aerobics-style training did not have this effect on the other leg.2

And remember that these studies weren’t even about PACE. They were simply looking at higher intensity for short periods vs. lower intensity for longer periods. If they would have tested for PACE, there would have been even more dramatic differences.

Because PACE not only employs intensity, but also progressivity and acceleration. When you progressively increase the challenge you give your body by a little each time, you’re rebuilding your native fitness. And when you add acceleration, that’s how you get your body to store energy in your muscles instead of as fat.

PACE lets your body choose building muscle over storing fat. And, you get the added benefit of metabolic changes that help you turn repair and rebuilding signals back on. This is the “afterburn” effect. It allows you to use up even more stored fat for energy as you replenish oxygen and rebuild your muscles.

This is just one example of the results you can achieve by doing the right thing in the proper sequence. There are dozens of other examples from patients at my clinic where we’ve learned things just like that.

And because I’ve found that this concept is true in a lot of different individual health applications, I’ve given it a name. I call it biosequencing.

It means addressing your biggest issue first in a way that is going to be effective. So it works with your body to give it the right message and move you in the direction of transforming your body.

If you eat protein, but do the wrong exercise, your body will get confused. And confusing your muscles and your brain is a horrible idea. How can you benefit by confusing your body?

Biosequencing is how you keep your body from being confused. Signaling your body to build muscle and dump fat have to be done together, at the right time, through what you eat and how you exert yourself.

This kind of reinforcement, by doing things in the right order, helps you accomplish the goal of transforming your body. Biosequencing works because it unlocks the secret of your body’s own power to transform itself.

If you follow biosequencing the way I lay it out for you, you WILL transform your body. This is not guesswork… it is a proven system that works time and time again for my patients who apply the information in the right order.

Biosequencing through my progressive series of workouts, food choices, and instructions will trigger the right changes in the right order. It’s a detailed blueprint that naturally recreates the strong, lean, fat-free bodies our ancient ancestors enjoyed.

Apply biosequencing, and the results will come. It’s really that simple.

It’s for that very reason that biosequencing is the foundation for the natural evolution of my PACE program.

I call it POWER Fit. And you don’t need any previous PACE experience. You’ll be able to simply watch, read and follow along. That’s it.

The sad reality is most weight-reduction and fitness programs simply don’t work. The proof is that 90% or more of those people who drop pounds when they diet or follow an exercise plan will regain it all – and in some cases, even more – within 5 years.

But biosequencing works because it gives your body the right nutrients and the right challenges in the right order. It’s the formula that let’s your body transform itself naturally.

I’ll take you by the hand and personally show you the EXACT sequence that I use with my patients that I’ve never put in any book. That way, there’s almost no way to fail.

In the coming weeks, you’ll be hearing more about my exciting new POWER Fit program.

You’ll see testimonials from people just like you who have already used POWER Fit for incredible results. And you’ll get personal coaching from me and my staff of trained PACE experts. Plus I’ll reveal more about biosequencing, and show you how to use it to unlock your body’s unique ability to transform itself.

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1 Rodas G, Ventura JL, Cadefau JA, Cussó R, Parra J. “A short training programme for the rapid improvement of both aerobic and anaerobic metabolism.” Eur J Appl Physiol. 2000 Aug;82(5-6):480-6.
2 Peter Krustrup, Ylva Hellsten and Jens Bangsbo. “Intense interval training enhances human skeletal muscle oxygen uptake in the initial phase of dynamic exercise at high but not at low intensities.” The Journal of Physiology, August 15, 2004;559, 335-345.