Wow - this is an explosive thread!!! Great efforts on both sides, but I don’t see as much scientific backing nor empirical (in-situ) results on the Lyle side?! I’m personally more concerned with the latter plus I think it’s very destructive to insult or berate any educated person or well supported idea.
I’d like to add a few very important concepts that were only briefly touched upon, in “Mufasa Style”, if you will.
I Believe the “cals in vs. out” is way too simplistic and a very poor argument. It can be blown apart by two main things, metabolic rate and basic physiology.
I know many over-fat people who eat or used to eat 1 or 2 HUGE meals with maybe 1 snack per day. Many of these people actually don’t eat severely over their caloric needs, and some amazingly probably eat under their needs! Why then are they fat? Two main reason is a very slow metabolic rate and spiking the ba-geezus out of insulin. Clients of mine that formerly ate like this actually used to eat FEWER calories on average than they do currently, as they now spread out their 5-7 meals and snacks in mostly P+F and P+C fashion. But, then why are they dropping BF, gaining LBM, without excessive cardio?
What does this (empirical/in-situ example) tell me: the 24 hour thermodynamic answer is not always true, and is often a grade school way to teach a college level class. If you starve your body for 8-15 hours at a stretch, then dump a large mass of calories on your slower-than-molasses-in-January metabolism, you can expect massive fat storage! It’s simply our bodies survival mechanism at it’s best. So, it ABSOLUTELY makes a difference if you eat your calories over 2 vs. 5-6 meals. Frequent feedings tell your body you are not in famine mode and therefore have less need to store calories as fat.
Now, let’s zoom in a bit closer, since I believe the thermodynamics of the body are based on feeding to feeding, not merely a 24-hour block. Let’s say we are eating hypercalorically for LBM gain. What happens when we eat a large meal where both carbs and fats dominate? Well, armed with basic physiology, our bodies want ATP. The fastest/most efficient way to make ATP is glucose. Therefore, most of the carbs from that large C+F meal will go toward energy production and/or glycogen resynthesis. Since our energy needs are now taken care of, the surplus fat from the C+F meal has no choice but to be stored in adipocytes!
I will admit though that this carb-preferred pathology to ATP can indeed happen with excessive calories from protein as well. Again, once energy needs are met, and all the needed amino acids are taken up to their respective posts (skeletal muscle, catalysts, liver, etc) the remaining calories from protein and carbs will be converted and stored as fat.
However, if one were to eat by pairing P+C and P+F AND ate smaller more frequent meals, I would think we could predict where each nutrient would end up. Since the metabolism is stoked (both from frequent feedings and boosted even greater by exercise) we would hope that proteins would go to their post, while carbs are fats were used as “protein sparing energy sources” and combusted. Since we are trying to eat hypercalorically, we would have to find just the right balance of calories to make this work. Otherwise, the cals in vs. out would trump our attempts at only LBM gain.
On the other hand if we were in hypocaloric mode, properly pairing nutrients, feeding 5-6 times a day, trainees could expect to retain and in some cases gain LBM, while dropping a considerable amount of body fat. That said, I will have to agree in part that P+C+F meals, eaten frequently in a hypocaloric style could ALSO result in positive composition changes, as I have seen that work as well. But, protein MUST dominate these meals to make this work. And, even then I still believe that carbs have to be limited toward the end of the day.
Bottom line: I believe there is a place for both schools of thought. The problem is that some of the arguments made to support it were as transparent as a wet white t-shirt on Pamela Anderson!
TopSirloin