Catecholamine Honeymoon

[Jane Michel]

What do you think of this article?

http://180degreehealth.blogspot.com/...honeymoon.html (WFS)

Martin Berkhan has written a bit about catecholamine but only in relation to metabolism increasing and not decreasing during a fast because of increase in production of catecholamine.

He has an ebook prescribing protocols to address this but I haven't had the time to read it yet.

[Donald Lee]

I just had a cursory look, but it doesn't look like he knows what he's talking about. That's just my opinion. He knows about everything, but doesn't understand everything.

For example, he says the cheesecakes that Martin Berhan eats helps with fat burning because it's part of the refeed. That is not true at all. Martin doesn't eat cheesecakes when he's in a cutting cycle. He hasn't been in a cutting cycle for 2 years, so he's able to eat cheesecakes and do damage control the next few days.

He says you can build muscle through carb cycling and refeeds, as if body recomposition (building muscle and losing fat) is easy.

He also states, rather glibly, than he suspects the benefits of the Leangains approach lies in eating 3 meals a day and not in the fasting period.

In that article, he treats a lot of the topics rather smugly. He does not support his smug treatment of the dieting approaches he talks about with any science. He just talks about his own theory of adrenal fatigue and catecholamines or whatever. If he's going to bring up adrenal fatigue and catelcholamines and treat other people's work like junk, he should do so with hard science or at least with more depth than he did.

If you want to learn more about catecholamines and fat loss, you should give Lyle's UD2 and/or Stubborn Fat Solution a try. Practically, it doesn't really matter that much. Unless you're already pretty lean, catecholamines, insulin, low fat, low carb, etc. don't really matter for the majority of people. Dietary compliance is the biggest problem with most. With people on these forums, other psychological issues like OCD are bigger problems as well.

[Brandon Oto]

Ironically people die from refeeding syndrome.

[Garrett Smith]

I do think the negative effect on the adrenals of low-carb, IF, and/or Zone over time play a huge role. One of the first things I do with adrenal fatigue folks is get them to eat more carbs in general and ditch the IF. This can have them feeling significantly better within a week.

Brandon, you're being a bit glib by including "refeeding syndrome" in this context...unless you know of an IFer or low-carber dying from a refeed day.

[Brandon Oto]

Originally Posted by Garrett Smith

Brandon, you're being a bit glib by including "refeeding syndrome" in this context...unless you know of an IFer or low-carber dying from a refeed day.

Oh, no. Just thought it was funny. Modern Day Fitness Gurus love to coin terms and this time it happens to be an actual disorder. Still waiting for someone to start prescribing Cancer Complexes.

[Garrett Smith]

Got it.