The Petite Advantage Diet (26 page)

Moreover, excessive cardio decimates your immune system. Now, to be fair, twenty to thirty minutes of cardio can enhance your immune system, but anything over that leads you in the wrong direction. Why do you think so many marathon runners get sick after a race? A drop in immunity is the only logical explanation.

And what about posture? If I see one more person hunched over running or, better yet, hanging on a stair stepper, treadmill, or spin bike, I will explode. Why do they think that performing that activity makes them look good when it doesn’t? Is your goal to have hunched-forward shoulders with a neck that juts out and a puffy stomach with matching thighs? I hope not–but that’s what you get from all the mindless, posture-destroying cardio.

Posture is critically important to you as a Petite. You need every possible eighth of an inch so that you can optimize the height you have been given. That is why my exercise program specifically enhances your posture. When you follow my plan, you will perform two exercises for the back of your body for every one exercise for the front. That will result in great posture and you will love the way you look and feel. Right now, just take a look at yourself in a mirror as you pull your shoulders back and down. That’s what you will look like all the time.

Cardiovascular exercise can also potentially damage your heart. A very recent study in Britain looked at the hearts of marathon runners versus more sedentary men. What they found through magnetic resonance imaging was a great deal of damage called fibrosis in the hearts of the marathoners. Fibrosis is scarring within the heart muscle, which, if severe, can lead to thickening or stiffening of some portions of the heart. This can contribute to irregular heartbeat and, in some instances, heart failure. Researchers found that the more the men in the study ran, the more they showed evidence of scarring, or fibrosis.
²
Why then, would anyone of sound mind and body lace up a pair of running shoes to perform a marathon or any excessive amount of cardiovascular exercise? It just doesn’t make any sense. And remember, your delicate, smaller stature gets hit that much harder by various behaviors and activities. For Petites, excessive cardio can lead to tragic outcomes.

Cardio also destroys muscle. No, I am
not
kidding. After twenty to thirty minutes of cardio, your body starts to chew up its precious muscle–and you know my opinion of anything that burns up muscle! Along with the muscle goes your metabolism and any desire to live in “The Land of the Lean.” I go into far more detail in
The Cardio-Free Diet
about this critical issue, so take a look at it if you have the opportunity.

But wait! I want to be clear. There is one thing that cardiovascular exercise doesn’t destroy–
your appetite
! Research has shown this for years. When
Time
magazine’s August 17, 2009 cover story appeared with the title, “Does Exercise Make You Fat?” I never felt so vindicated. Yes. The research shows that cardiovascular exercise is a disaster when it comes to weight loss, as all it does is make you hungry. In fact, you quickly eat up the few calories you did manage to burn performing cardio–and then you eat lots more!

There is so much research to cite that we can’t consider it all here, but let me give you just a tease. Danish researchers published a weight-loss study in 1989 that took a group of nonathletes and trained them for eighteen months to run a marathon. Upon completing the training, the men had lost five pounds, but the women had lost nothing–zip, nada–although they had trained for eighteen months as well.
³
What does that say about cardio for weight loss? I think it says it doesn’t work. In fact, there is other research that shows that cardio can lead to weight
gain
.

The
Time
article highlighted two behaviors that are directly attributable to two flawed beliefs:

•
“I exercised, so hey, I can eat!”
At Jim Karas Personal Training, we call this “playing for the tie.” It doesn’t work and most people continue to gain weight. And once you’ve injured yourself with all that cardio, which is all but inevitable, you will really start to pile on the pounds as you continue to eat with reckless abandon. I know many people who literally “treat” themselves with 800-calorie snacks (FYI, that’s a classic cappuccino and a muffin) after burning 250 calories. It’s easy to see that that’s not going to lead to anything but weight gain when you plug it into the balance of energy equation!

•
“I exercised, so hey, I don’t need to move around as much for the rest of the day! I can just sit around all day.”
We already know the evil of sitting when it comes to your health and body weight. Also, remember my favorite research on the Seven Behaviors of Successful Weight Loss. People who successfully lost weight were active for ninety minutes each day. If you perform useless cardio for thirty minutes and burn next to no calories, then sit around for the rest of the day, you are truly destined to getting bigger and bigger.

And I want to chime in with one more point about cardio: you
do
get hungry. Where do you think the phrase “working up an appetite” comes from? Cardiovascular exercise will never lead to weight loss. Go back to the weight-loss equation:

Calories In - Calories Out

Sure, you do burn a few calories performing cardio (and FYI, all the machines lie about the amount of calories you are burning, so don’t believe them). But if you then overeat on the “calories in” part of the equation, you’ll never get to a caloric deficit, which is what weight loss is all about. You actually have the perfect equation for a long-term caloric surplus–AKA, weight gain.

Okay, we agree, cardio is out, but, you absolutely
must
exercise or I wouldn’t call it your BFF.

Let’s go back to the beginning.

I stated that weight loss is 75 percent eating and 25 percent exercise. But, without the style of exercise prescribed in this chapter, your likelihood of success is minimal. No, I will go so far as to say that your likelihood of long-term weight loss is near zilch and there is no way you will experience a “recomposition” of your body.

When
The Cardio-Free Diet
came out in 2007, it shot to #2 on the
New York Times
bestseller list and caused a great deal of controversy. My biggest critics were doctors, who said, well, less than pleasant things about my theory. They said I was neglecting heart health. I have to laugh, as many of them were overweight, yet passionate about their belief that classic cardio is essential to weight loss and heart health. Talk about a flawed belief system! They attacked my theory on strength training, but didn’t read the book or even perform the exercises in it that produce such astonishing results. They just kept repeating: “You have to perform cardio for heart health, you have to perform cardio for heart health…”

Here is a bit of research that drives my point home.

Researchers at the Department of Human Performance and Applied Exercise Science at West Virginia University examined the effects of a very-low-calorie diet (800 calories a day, and we know that’s
low)
. They broke seventeen women and three men up into two groups for a twelve-week study:

• Group 1 consumed the very-low-calorie diet and performed cardiovascular exercise four times a week for one hour by walking, biking, or stair-climbing.

• Group 2 consumed the same very-low-calorie diet and performed strength training three times a week, increasing from two sets of eight to fifteen repetitions of ten exercises (with only one minute of rest in between) to four sets of eight to twelve repetitions (remember this number) by the end of the study.
⁴

By the end of the twelve-week period, oxygen consumption increased significantly but
equally
in both groups. That means that both groups got into better cardiovascular shape. That’s what all my critics failed to realize. Progressive strength training three times a week provided the same cardiovascular benefits as the cardio performed four times a week for one hour.
Both groups experienced the same heart-health benefits
. How can you neglect this research and claim that I am “anti heart health” when the research totally agrees that strength training achieves the same heart-health benefits as cardio? And this is only one research study. There are dozens more out there.

Moreover, group 1, the cardio group, experienced a significant reduction in lean muscle tissue and in resting metabolic rate.

Remember:

Muscle Down = Metabolism Down

Therefore, cardio plus a very-low-calorie diet resulted in muscle loss. This is precisely what I believe to be the major problem with long-term weight loss–with or without cardio. Both strategies result in a reduction in your lean muscle tissue and therefore a reduction in your metabolism. Unless you are committed to eating very little for the rest of your life (which is not what I recommend), you are doomed to gain all the weight back and then some–and it’s all going to be
fat
.

Moreover, without the strength training, you probably won’t even like what your body looks like at your lower weight, as you won’t have caused a “recomposition” to occur. Without a “recomposition,” your body will most likely be sagging, puckering, and out of proportion–not what you set out to accomplish–because you didn’t perform the results-producing exercise program in this book.

Remember from our earlier discussion of metabolism that when you
do
gain weight back after dieting, it will be all fat. You probably would have been better off never having lost the weight in the first place, as you now are at the same high weight with a decimated metabolism, just like turning your hair dryer or blender on
low
!

In the West Virginia study, group 2–the strength-training group–did
not
experience a decrease in lean muscle tissue or metabolism. This is very significant, given that the participants were only consuming 800 calories a day. On my plan, you are getting 1100–1600 calories a day. So this provides just one more example of the fact that you
can
go even as low as 800 calories and not affect your metabolism if you perform strength training. It’s almost mind-boggling, but the researchers were quick to point out that the participants in group 2 progressed (increased both the weight and the reps) in their strength-training programs. Thus they kept challenging their muscles. They noted that other case studies did not show an increase in lean muscle tissue for those performing strength training while on a very-low-calorie diet. They indicated, however, that those participants did not continue to challenge their muscles and their bodies by increasing both the weights and the reps. They just did a routine (which is a four-letter word when it comes to strength training) and didn’t increase the intensity as their bodies adapted to the exercise. Progression is essential, because:

Progressive Strength Training = Increased Lean Muscle Tissue

Increased Lean Muscle Tissue = Revved-Up Metabolism

Revved-Up Metabolism = Petites’ Permanent Weight Loss

Now let’s dive into your exercise program.

Intervals are the key to optimizing many things, including heart health. What irritates me about many doctors, therapists, and personal trainers who challenge me on my cardio-free position is that they don’t even attempt to perform the exercises I have outlined. If they did, they would realize that their heart rate really goes up when performing these programs and that exercising in intervals provides even more heart health than classic, steady-state, useless cardiovascular exercise. They ignore the research that shows that regular strength training, with one minute of rest between each set, provides just as much heart health as cardio.

Your interval-based strength-training program will also start with one minute of rest between each exercise. When you start to apply progression to this plan, you will perform these exercises with only thirty seconds of rest between each set. By doing that, you will derive even more heart health and even more post-exercise calorie burn.

Each exercise in this program requires approximately one minute to perform a ten-repetition set, followed by one minute of rest as you prepare for the next exercise. That one minute of exercise followed by one minute of rest constitutes the
interval
, as your heart rate will go up and then decline when you are resting. It’s a bit like a classic roller coaster that goes up and down, up and down.