It's been a while since we featured some nutrition content on EricCressey.com, so today, I've got a guest post from Sohee Lee, whose last contribution here was a big hit. It's very timely, as her new resource, Reverse Dieting, was just released and is on sale this week. Enjoy! -EC

Dieting necessarily implies some form of restriction – normally starting with some sort of calorie suppression. The truth is, most dieters take the restriction a little too far – a combination of too few calories and too many foods on the forbidden list.

It should go without saying that resorting to extremes when it comes to fat loss will rarely end well. Yet perhaps due to the mentality that working harder should yield better results, this crash dieting phenomenon refuses to let up.

What’s ironic, however, is that the United States is the single most diet-obsessed nation in the world, but we’re also the most obese. This is no coincidence. The National Weight Control Registry reports that we spend a grand total of $20 billion a year on the diet industry (books, drugs, products, and surgeries), with approximately 108 million people on a diet in the U.S. at any given moment.

While there are a multitude of socioeconomic, technological, and environmental factors that contribute to this alarming rate, the truth is that when it comes to fat loss, we humans are fighting an uphill battle from the get-go. Our bodies were not designed to subsist on a food-deprived state. By embarking on crash diets, then, we fire up the biological and psychological mechanisms that protect against starvation and incline us, ultimately, to more weight gain.

Here are four common mistakes that you might be making with your diet.

1. You don’t consume enough protein.

Of the three macronutrients – protein, carbohydrates, and fats – protein is the most important when it comes to muscle retention while on a diet. Dietary protein is considered muscle sparing, meaning that it increases protein synthesis, and it can also be utilized for the synthesis of glucose, or glycogenesis. Additionally, protein is considered an "expensive" molecule to be used as energy, so to speak, and consequently has a thermic effect.

When it comes to dietary consumption, people tend to fall in two camps: the first camp, mostly the general population, doesn’t consume nearly enough, while the second camp, consisting primarily of athletes and bodybuilding aficionados, perhaps consumes more than necessary. The majority of people tend to fall in the former category.

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found that the average American male ingests 102 grams of protein per day and the average American female consumes 70 grams. Is this too much or too little?

The reality is that the body is actually highly efficient at absorbing amino acid, the constituents of protein. The small intestines and liver use a good portion of these amino acids for their own energy and protein synthesis before the remaining gets shuttled into the bloodstream – and at that point, they are further utilized by other tissues, including your heart and skin. Only after all of this happens do the amino acids get used in muscle building.

As for the myth that high protein intake is damaging to the kidneys, those whispers can be laid to rest. A number of studies and reviews suggest that “there is no reason to restrict protein in healthy individuals” and have found no adverse effect with an intake up to 1.27 grams per kilogram of bodyweight per day (1). In fact, those same studies make one question whether low protein intake may actually be a cause of renal function decline.

What happens when you’re in a caloric deficit with insufficient protein, then, is that you lose lean body mass. Which, when you think about it, is not desirable, because the ultimate goal is fat loss, isn’t it? With loss of muscle mass, you become a softer, doughier version of your former self – not anymore defined or chiseled. And ultimately, your relative bodyfat actually increases, which thereby increases your bodyfat percentage as well. Doesn’t sound so great, does it?

We can then flip the question to: if a high protein diet is not harmful to my health, then how much is optimal? More specifically, how much should be consumed per meal when dieting?

The general rule of thumb is to aim for your body weight in grams of protein each day. So if you weigh 150lbs, then you should be consuming approximately 150g protein. Obviously the exact number is going to vary from one individual to the next based on age, exercise regimen, dieting history, level of leanness, and other factors, but it’s a good starting point.

2. You go too hard, too fast.

It’s true that we live in an obese nation, consisting largely of folks who eat way beyond their bodies’ caloric needs. Sitting on the opposite end of the pendulum, however, are those who grossly undereat in an effort to shed fat faster.

Ah, you might be saying, but clearly the more I undereat, the faster progress I will make.

To that end, you swear off all your favorite foods, and exercise all of a sudden becomes your part-time job. You swap out burgers and fries for spinach and dry chicken. You’re convinced that if you push yourself to the extremes, you will reap extraordinary rewards.

The thinking is logical enough. Work hard, do well; work harder and do even better; work the hardest you possibly can and achieve the best body of your dreams. Right?

If only it were that simple.

Unfortunately, the body is incredibly complex – far more than we tend to give it credit for. We fool ourselves a la the Dunning-Kruger effect (2), which is a cognitive bias by which people tend to overestimate their competence in any given task.

We are equipped with a number of psychological and biological mechanisms that work to ensure that fat loss does not occur.

Don’t think of a pink polar bear.

Don’t do it.

Anything but a pink polar bear.

Don’t!

Hard to resist, isn’t it?

From a psychological standpoint, we do not fare well with being told that we cannot do something. In fact, research has shown that being forbidden from something actually increases our desire for that very thing (3). Why? Simply because it focuses our attention onto that specific matter instead of away from it, and all of a sudden, that’s all we can think about it.

Moreover, crash diets rely heavily on willpower – which might seem like a good thing at first glance, but willpower is incredibly exhaustible. What’s more, self control when it comes to work, family, relationships, dogs, and diet all rely on the same willpower storage (4). So if you’re facing a good deal of work stress, that will deplete your willpower, leaving less room to adhere to your strict diet. Eventually you’ll reach a point at which it’s impossible to say no to those cookies, and you’ll find yourself scarfing down everything but the kitchen sink.

There are a number of physiological changes that take place as well. A reduction in energy intake leads to the body’s anti-starvation mechanisms kicking in; they include decreased thermogenesis and increased appetite due to reduced levels of leptin and a spike in ghrelin, the hunger hormone (5). These, coupled with an increased in metabolic efficiency, make it exponentially more difficult to lose fat – and the more drastic the measures, the more extreme these biological responses.

What does this mean? You’re hungry, cranky, and fatigued, and all you can think about is your favorite chocolate cake that you’ve deemed off-limits. That, to me, doesn’t sound like a recipe for success.

3. You’re impatient.

Ah, but you want results yesterday.

And who’s got the time to patiently wait three months, six months, or even a year?

Is it really necessary to be diligent for that long? Can’t you just take a pill, tap your shoes together, and wake up the next morning to a new-and-improved you?

I wish there were an easier way. But the truth is, consistency is the name of the game.

Most people will give a diet program maybe five days – two weeks if they’re lucky – before they jump ship onto the next cool fad. From Atkins to Zone to Paleo, they can’t seem to make up their minds.

The truth is, most of the popular diets out there do work, to some extent. The key, however, is actually sticking with the program long enough to elicit the desired results.

Does it provide you with sufficient protein? Adequate calories? Abundant food choices? If so, then you’re probably fine.

Just because you “only” lost one pound this past week does not mean that it’s not working. In fact, it’s a sign that it’s working just fine. So, instead of throwing in the towel or lamenting the time that you’ve supposedly wasted, might I suggest a radical idea: keep going.

4. You don’t have a plan for after the "diet" is done.

Nine times out of ten, here’s what happens with fat loss: in our angst to get to the final destination as soon as possible, we overlook the fact that there’s going to come a time when the diet is over. And when that happens, we need to be just as, if not more, prepared with a plan of attack.

Assuming that you can simply go back to your former lifestyle of potato chips and drive-throughs and easily maintain your results is a naïve yet common train of thought. But what many fail to appreciate is that oftentimes, weight loss maintenance is perhaps more difficult than the actual weight loss itself.

Why? Because the body is not static. It continues to respond to external stimuli. Meaning that if you all of a sudden consume calories in gross excess, the body will react by storing that extra energy in the form extra body fat and lean mass.

There are a number of routes to entertain at this point. One, you can continue to stay in a caloric deficit on the same diet program and keep up the intense training regimen – though from a longevity standpoint, I doubt that sounds very enticing. Two, you can bump up your calories slightly and enjoy the fruits of your labor for the time being. This also means you can slowly dwindle down any conditioning or cardio you may have been performing.

Lastly, if you’re interested in reverse the negative metabolic adaptation that occurred during fat loss, you may want to consider reverse dieting. This is a process by which you slowly and methodically increase your caloric intake in an effort to increase metabolic capacity and build some muscle while keeping fat gain at bay. This is a proven system in which people have been able to more than double their daily caloric intake while experiencing exponential strength gains.

Conclusion

The above is the culmination of the lessons I’ve learned through years of making mistake after fat loss mistake, plus my observations from working with hundreds of fat loss clients. My hope is that I can save you a good deal of stress, time, and energy by laying out the fundamental mistakes made in dieting that backfire.

I’ve found that, for just about every individual, if they stick to the principles above, they will see sustainable results. And ultimately, that’s the goal, isn’t it – to get off the yo-yo dieting wagon and stay lean for good, once and for all?

You have all the tools you need to succeed. Good luck on your journey.

Note from EC: In Reverse Dieting, Sohee and Dr. Layne Norton created an excellent resource. If there is someone in your life who struggles with "yo-yo dieting" - the inability to keep bodyfat off after diets - then this would be a great read (and plan) for them, especially at the great introductory deal that's in place for the next few days.

Also, references for this article are posted as the first comment below.

About the Author

Sohee Lee (@SoheeFit) graduated from Stanford University in June 2012 with a Bachelor's of Science degree in Human Biology (Psychosocial and Biological Determinants of Health). Since completing an internship at Cressey Sports Performance in Hudson, MA, she has worked as a coach and nutrition consultant at Tyler English Fitness in Canton, CT as well as New York City's Peak Performance. She currently works as a fitness writer, coach, and entrepreneur. Sohee is a NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist.

Sohee faced anorexia and bulimia in the past, thus her main interests include eating disorders and the psychology behind relationships and decisions that we make as humans. She loves to talk fitness and admires those fit-minded people who can push and pull heavy weights. You can find her on Facebook and at her website, www.SoheeFit.com.

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Happy Monday, everyone; I hope you all had a great weekend. Here's this week's list of recommended strength and conditioning reading:

Reverse Dieting - Authors Sohee Lee and Layne Norton just introduced this resource, and I was fortunate to get an advanced copy to review. It's a great look at how chronic dieting can significantly damage metabolism and make it difficult to keep lost body fat off (or lose body fat in subsequent "dieting" efforts). Just as importantly, they outline a strategy for overcoming these challenges. I'd definitely recommend it if you're interested in nutrition, or have dealt with problems like this on your "physique journey." 

9 Training Concepts that Suck - While the title is unnecessarily harsh, this article from Ben Bruno is excellent.

Body Language and Leadership - I enjoy reading Gabe Kapler's stuff because he blends a successful background in baseball with a passion for training and nutrition. He also touches on everything from parenting to behavioral research and leadership. To that end, this is a great post for coaches and athletes alike. 

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I've already highlighted the top articles and videos I put out at EricCressey.com in 2013, so now it's time for the top guest posts of the year.  Here goes...

1. 7 Myths of Strength Training for Women - This post by former Cressey Performance intern Sohee Lee made me realize that we need to feature more female-specific content in 2014, as it was a huge hit!

2. Sleep: What the Research Actually Says - The good folks at Examine.com contributed this incredibly well-researched hit from 2013.

3. 6 Common Turkish Get-up Mistakes - CP coach Greg Robins walks you through the issues we find ourselves correcting most frequently with this complex exercise.

4. Pelvic Arch Design and Load-Carrying Capacity - Dean Somerset never disappoints with his creative topics and awesome insights on functional anatomy and corrective exercise.

5. 5 Indirect Core Stability Exercises for the Upper Body - Greg Robins gets his second hit in the top 5! There are some great video demonstrations here.

I'll be back soon with the top strength and conditioning features from 2013.

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The regular frequenters of EricCressey.com are typically more "hardcore" training enthusiasts and fitness professionals, but we also must recognize those among us who are newer to the iron game and may need to be brought up to speed.  Additionally, we all know a female in our life who can benefit from hearing about the virtues of appropriate training for women in spite of what the mainstream media tells them. With that in mind, today's guest post comes from former Cressey Sports Performance intern, Sohee Lee, who specializes in this realm. Please help spread the good word! -EC

This much I know is true: I’ve been strength training for six years now. I can rock out chin-ups, pull heavy weight off the floor, and squat more than some guys I know. I drink protein shakes almost daily and sometimes take creatine as well.

This much is also true: I’m still small. I’m still petite. Still lean. My muscles aren’t big and, when fully dressed, no one has ever asked me, “How much do you bench?” And I’ve never been called “too bulky” in my life.  

There are a myriad of myths regarding females and strength training – too many to count. Yet despite the growing number of women out there slowly converting to lovers of iron and ditching their cardio bunny ways, there are even more women who still believe that strength training is for men only, and that no proper lady would touch anything more than a pretty pink dumbbell.

I don’t blame them, really. We have certain celebrity trainers touting their 3lb dumbbell hour-long workouts to develop long, lean muscles – and others claiming that squatting with a barbell will make your thighs explode overnight. The celebrities themselves rave about these special methods - and we believe them, naturally.

My job today is to convince you amidst all the buzz that the grass is truly greener on the other (strength training) side. At best, I’ll talk you into getting under that barbell today. At worst, I hope to plant a single inkling of curiosity and that you will soon find yourself venturing over to the heavy weights.  

Below I crush a number of the most common myths out there surrounding females and training.

Myth #1: You should steer clear of heavy weights because it will make you look like a man.

Ah, this is the King (or Queen) of all myths and is one that I am convinced will unfortunately never effectively die out.

There are a number of biological differences stacked against us as women. First and foremost, we only have approximately 5% of the of testosterone men possess. This means that the average male has twenty – twenty! – times as much testosterone than the average female. And given that testosterone is the hormone primarily responsible for muscle gain, we’re facing a major uphill battle if we are truly striving to look like The Hulk (1).

But, you claim, last time I lifted heavy for a month and I got thicker and looked gross! The culprit is very likely inadvertent increased caloric consumption that came along with the new change in exercise. What I mean is that typically, the culprit is increased bodyfat – not necessarily increased muscle mass – that is responsible for what many women call the “big and bulky” look. Often, increased bodyfat “coated” on top of muscle is mistaken for muscle mass, which turns many women away. Can you honestly tell me, though, that when you began lifting weights, your caloric consumption didn’t spike?

There’s this notion out there that after a tough workout, we need to fuel our muscles – which is true, but not to the tune of one large pizza and three protein shakes. It’s too easy to convince yourself that your body is all of a sudden devoid of nutrients and that you have to feed it at all times of the day. But when your body takes in more calories than is needed to maintain your current bodyweight, that’s when weight is gained in the form of fat mass and/or lean mass, depending on how you go about it.

If you can dial in your nutrition while simultaneously lifting hard in the gym, what will result is a leaner, tighter, stronger version of your former self. 

Myth #2: Women can’t do pull-ups.

The word “can’t” implies that all females, regardless of how hard they try, are physically incapable of performing a single pull-up. But while it’s true that women tend to have less upper body strength relative to that of males, that doesn’t mean that all is lost. So what do you do when you have a weakness? You work on it to turn that weakness into a strength.

Simply put, the solution to weak(er) upper body strength is to improve it. In the gym, upper body pulling movements will help: think row variations (barbell rows, cable rows, inverted rows) as well as pullup variations (band-assisted, negatives, chin-ups). Working on your grip via farmer’s walks and the like will also help in this regard. In the remaining 23 hours of each day, work on nailing your nutrition, as decreasing bodyfat will help increase your strength proportionally.   

Pretty soon, you'll be banging out not just one rep, but possibly even double-digit reps, just like the First Lady of Cressey Performance does here (in office attire, no less):

Myth #3: Protein powder is bad for women because it will make them huge.

There’s this idea floating around in mainstream society that protein powder is only for meathead bodybuilders who want to get yoked. So when a lady comes around and plops a five-pound tub of protein powder on the counter at Vitamin Shoppe or GNC, eyebrows are raised. She might as well be shooting steroids into her veins, huh?

As much as I wish this were the case (as it would make my job a whole lot easier), there’s nothing inherently magical about protein powder. It’s simply a portable, tasty way to get in some protein. Its biggest perk? Convenience. And perhaps taste.

But really, the average scoop of protein powder will yield 20 to 25 grams of protein. 

I will say this, however: protein powder is typically ingested in liquid form. Since liquid calories are much easier to take in than solid food, the calories can quickly add up – so you need to alter the rest of the day’s nutrition to account for the calories you’ve already taken in with these shake(s). Just like any other food, if protein powder is consumed in excess, then yes, it can make you gain weight.

Myth #4: All the fitness models and fitness competitors are on steroids; the average woman could never achieve that look.

Before I go any further, I will qualify this point by emphasizing the fact that yes, there are very few people out there who are able to maintain a lean, stage- or photoshoot-ready physique year-round. I’ll also argue, however, that that’s not because it’s impossible. Rather, many choose to switch over into the offseason, during which time they likely intentionally put on some weight in an effort to make improvements to their physiques and dial even sharper than before come next season.

But all of that aside, here’s a cool fact: we all have abs. They’re there. That six-pack? Yes, you’ve been sporting it. The only thing separating them from showing themselves off to the world is a cozy coat of fat.

If you’re looking to achieve the look of a bikini competitor or fitness model, chances are good that you have most, of it not all, of the muscle mass necessary to start off. This is great, because all that means that is you have to lose bodyfat in order to unveil that coveted physique. Easier said than done, I’m aware, but think of it as an art. Over a period of several weeks and months, you’ll chip away at your body, slowly uncovering the sculpted arms and curvy legs you’ve been after.

Myth #5: When you work out, your fat will transform into muscle.

Oh.

Very creative.

Unfortunately, the body doesn’t quite work this way. What it can do, however, is shed and gain bodyfat, as well as strip away or pack on muscle. And while these two processes may be related, they are not one and the same.

Muscle is active soft tissue that is responsible for creating physical movement. Body fat, on the other hand, serves as an energy reserve for the body and helps cushion our joints and organs as well as maintain the integrity of healthy skin and nails.

So while it may seem as though fat magically turns into muscle when you begin training, the truth is likely more along the lines of, you’re losing bodyfat, or you’re putting on muscle (or both).

Myth #6: You should switch up your training routine every week to keep your muscles guessing.

I recommend a minimum of four to six weeks on any given training program before moving onto something different. By this I don’t necessarily mean utilizing the exact same exercises for the same reps and sets week after week. There are multiple ways to go about implementing progressive overload besides increasing the load on the bar: varying speed, shifting body position in relation to the load, changing stability, and so on.

With that said, sticking to the same program gives you time to become better at the prescribed exercises by providing more opportunities for repetition.

I know what you may be thinking. “But I need to confuse my muscles and keep them guessing!” Unfortunately, muscles do not get confused, nor do they participate in guessing games. And if you’re afraid you might get bored, then I ask you, what is so boring about making improvements from one workout to the next? What’s dull about going to the gym and lifting 10lbs more than the week prior or to mastering perfect technique? 

Myth #7: To lose fat, you need to crank up the cardio.

Actually, doing more cardio is the best way to… do more cardio. Doing it for the calorie burn will ultimately leave you disappointed, cranky, and tired.

This may be a hard pill to swallow, but steady-state cardio burns surprisingly fewer calories than you’d think. One study found that it takes an average of 86 hours’ worth of aerobic exercise to lose 1 whopping kilogram (2), and a meta-analysis revealed that steady-state cardio in and of itself is not an effective weight loss therapy (3).

I don’t know about you, but I can think of about a thousand other more useful things I could be doing with those 86 hours than peddling away on a bike.

Rather than steady-state cardio, then, interval training is the way to go. Other names for this include metabolic conditioning, circuit training, or high-intensity training. These short bursts of high intensity activity alternated with periods of active have been found to produce equal, if not better, results as traditional steady-state cardio with just “a fraction of the time commitment” (namely, 0.75 hours versus 13.5 hours [4]). This is likely due to the increased excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), or energy expenditure in the time following the workout.

Where do we go from here?

I hope I’ve demonstrated to you that women can lift heavy weights and perform metabolic conditioning workouts with great success.  And, as long as they dial in their nutrition, they can absolutely achieve a strong, lean look without bulking up.

Note: If the ladies in the crowd are looking for some direction on the programming front, I'd recommend Neghar Fonooni’s resource, Lean and Lovely, which is an outstandingly thorough option focusing on kettlebell techniques early on. An advantage of these workouts is their portability; you can do them just about anywhere, including at home – if you’re in a situation where you need to build some confidence and momentum before you head to an actual gym to train.  -EC

About the Author

Sohee Lee graduated from Stanford University in June 2012 with a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Human Biology. She now trains clients in New York City, and in an online context.  You can learn more on her website and Twitter.

Note: References will be posted as the first comment below.

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