Weight: 222.8 (-8.4)
Fat: 34.6% (-4.7%)
Meals: Lunch, Early dinner, Fast 2 start 7pm
Exercise: Cardio (Treadmill 32:00 WL4 - 360 calories, 2.13 miles)
Pictures: Front/Side/Back/Flex

It's day 23, which means I've spent more than 3 weeks doing intense research about how I should go about losing weight. I've attended a boot camp, I've read several books on diet, exercise and I've always thought I had a fairly decent idea of how to pursue fitness. Having spent somewhere between 150 and 200 hours reading, studying and absorbing information, I should be enlightened. I know it's not like I've graduated with a degree in nutrition science, but human beings have maintained their weight fairly easily for thousands of years now. With the power of the internet, being able to read the advice of dozens or even hundreds of experts, I should know exactly what to do.

Sadly, this isn't true. For most of the past 3 weeks I've been terribly confused and increasingly frustrated. It's not just every idiot with a blog and an opinion, or unknowledgeable body builder who repeating myths ad nauseam, or even mainstream reporters looking for a more dramatic headline about a recently released study. Conflicting information comes from everywhere, including people who are far more qualified than I ever will be. Medical doctors, men and women who study nutrition and exercise for years to earn a degree, editors of fitness magazines and professional body builders all have opinions and advice that more often than not, conflicts with what another equally qualified doctor reports.

I've learned that I need to eat 6 meals a day to maintain my metabolism, and that I can fast for days at a time without slowing it down appreciably. I've learned that diet is more important than exercise when it comes to losing weight, and that the key to burning weight is lifting weights. I've learned that the best way to burn calories is to do long and grueling cardio workouts, and that cardio is a waste of time that is more likely to cause injury than help me lose weight. I've learned that fat is bad for me and I need to eat less of it, except when it's good fat. I've learned that fat doesn't matter and I should limit my carbs, except when they're not processed. I've learned that calories are the only important thing, but focusing on the right macronutrients will allow me to ignore calories.

Things that I knew when I started out like the importance of grazing instead of eating big meals is a myth perpetuated by well meaning people who don't really understand what they're talking about. Building muscle was supposed to burn a bunch of calories at rest, but the addition of a pound of muscle is easily offset by losing just a few pounds of fat. Eating more to keep my metabolism going isn't really necessary.

There are so many things that I've learned, unlearned and learned again that I'm not sure what is right and what is wrong any more.

And there's no one reason why people are passing around bad information. Sometimes it's pure marketing, a supplement company that wants to increase sales, or a charismatic author trying to push book sales. Other times it might be someone like myself who found something that worked for them and is now passing it off as gospel, without understanding why it worked for them, and failing to understand that it might not work for others. A few people are actually certified after learning out of date and sometimes wrong information, and pass it along in the belief they're helping folks. And then there are the doctors and scientists who sometimes focus on the wrong things, or are far enough outside of their real field of study that they're misinterpreting, or maybe they've found a study or two that was conducted poorly and based their opinions and advice on that.

Sorting out the good from the bad is hard work, especially for someone who knows so very little. I didn't go to school for this. I haven't read all the research, much less picked it apart. I can't even rely on reporters to act as a filter for this kind of information. To give you an example, a study published in 1998 in the New England Journal of Medicine comparing the weight loss of three popular diets (low-carb, Mediterranean and low-fat) resulted in the following headlines:

These were all released within 48 hours of each other and they all reference the study linked above.

How many people give up after being told so many contradictory things? How many people beat themselves up trying and trying to lose weight by following bad advice that just doesn't work for them? How much money have people paid out on books, workouts, gym memberships, nutrition experts and the like, only to keep gaining weight?

After almost throwing my own hands up in the air for the dozenth time, I've come up with a workable diet and exercise plan for myself. It will continue to evolve, both as I learn more information, and as my own body adjusts to the changes I'm making to my lifestyle. In the next few days I'll post those details and my reasoning behind them. I may be wrong about some things, but I promise that I'll do my best to sort out fact from fiction and to correct myself when I realize I've been wrong. I've got a number of books on my reading list, and I'll post more as I find more information, but I strongly encourage you to read any bit of fitness advice with skepticism and before you make big changes to your own diet/activities, do a bit of research. That includes anything you may read here.

P.S. Yes, I forgot to take my flex shot, so I just copied yesterday's. Oops.

Tags: experts, nutrition