The Dessert Study That Broke The Rules of Weight Loss

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Today’s Health Upgrade

• Instant health boost

• We were wrong

• The dessert study that broke the rules of weight loss

• Weekend boosts

Instant Health Boost
Drink Your Coffee (And Sleep Better Too)

If you want to maximize the upside of coffee and minimize the downside, your best bet might be avoiding the afternoon refill. 

Research suggests that coffee drinkers sleep less than non-coffee drinkers, but a slight adjustment could help you have the best of both worlds. 

Researchers examined adults who regularly consumed coffee and then randomly texted them when they should (or shouldn’t) drink coffee. The scientists then examined everything from sleep quality to heart health and blood sugar management. Overall, the coffee didn’t do much harm, and even slight changes — such as increases in heart rate or blood pressure —returned to normal after about an hour. 

However, consuming coffee resulted in about 40 fewer minutes of sleep per night. The nights with coffee tended to push people below 6 to 7 hours per night. If done repeatedly, research suggests that sleep deprivation is linked to an increased risk of multiple health issues. 

If you want to enjoy coffee and avoid sleep struggles, make sure your last cup is at least 9 to 10 hours before you sleep. 

Cutting off caffeine earlier in the day should allow it to leave your system, meaning you’ll get your energy boost and a better night of rest. The combination will make you less reliant on caffeine in several ways. First of all, afternoon caffeine can become a habit. You train yourself to expect the caffeine boost and learning not to expect it can help prevent your coffee cravings. 

Also, by cutting off caffeine, you’ll get more sleep and improve the quality of your rest, resulting in more energy the following day, fewer crashes, and less need to refuel with caffeine. 

Fitness
We Were Wrong: A Fresh Look At The Calorie-Burning Potential of Muscle

When we say our job is to get it right and not just be right, we mean it. So when we get something wrong, we’ll be the first to admit we made a mistake. 

A few months ago, we explained why a pound of muscle does not burn 50 calories per day but that each pound of muscle really burns six calories per day.

However, we missed something in the research and underestimated the total burn.

The calories you burn for each additional pound of muscle you add depends on your activity level and isn’t a static number.

Building muscle increases your non-active energy expenditure, which is most of your metabolism. This includes all the energy you burn to function as a human, such as powering your brain, heart, lungs, and other major organs, as well as the calories you burn when you metabolize food (known as the thermic effect of feeding or TEF). 

But your metabolism is more than just non-active energy expenditure — you also have to consider the calories you burn when you’re active (known as your active energy expenditure) — including things like resistance training, cardio, doing chores around the home, walking, and even standing instead of sitting or laying down. And that’s where we made the error.

When you add more muscle, you burn more calories from your non-active and active energy expenditure. Our original interpretation of the research only considered the non-active portion of your metabolism and not your active metabolism.

So, while it’s still nowhere as high as the 50 calories per pound that people have used for decades, it’s more than six calories and fluctuates based on your activity levels. 

If you are extremely sedentary, each pound of muscle you add might increase your caloric burn during activities by an additional one or two calories per pound. If you’re extremely active (think pro athlete), you could boost that by up to an additional 9 or 10 calories per pound (for a total of 15 to 16 calories burned per pound of muscle added).

As a rule of thumb, if you are decently active, you’ll burn about 9 to 10 calories per pound of muscle you add. So, if you add 5 pounds of muscle, you’re likely burning about an extra 50 calories per day (or 350 calories per week). At most, each pound of muscle will increase your metabolism by about 16 calories, meaning the more muscle you have, the more calories (and fat) your body will burn.

Nutrition
The Dessert Study That Broke The Rules of Weight Loss

Here’s a diet study that will make you question everything you know about nutrition and weight loss. 

Dieters who ate dessert for breakfast every day lost 35 more pounds than those who didn’t eat dessert and followed a low-carb diet. 

It’s the type of headline that makes you double-take, and the takeaway can help you enjoy more dietary freedom once you understand how the seemingly impossible results occurred. 

The study had two phases. In the first phase, everyone was on a calorie-controlled diet with strict supervision, weigh-ins, and guidance. Men ate 1,600 calories per day, and women had 1,400 calories. The difference: one group enjoyed a dessert at breakfast (think cookies, cake, donuts) alongside a high-protein option. The other group had a lower-calorie, lower-carb option. But both groups consumed the same number of total calories per day. 

After the first 16 weeks, the low-carb group lost 33 pounds, and the higher-carb (with dessert for breakfast group) lost 30 pounds. 

Both groups were very successful…and then things got interesting. 

For the second 16 weeks, the dieters were left to incorporate what they learned, had no weigh-ins, and were told to eat based on their hunger or cravings.

During that second 16-week period, the low-carb group gained back an average of 25 pounds, whereas the high-carb/dessert group lost another 15 pounds.

The researchers believe eating a small dessert helped reduce cravings and build more sustainable habits. From week 8 on, the dessert group was much better with compliance and had higher ratings for satisfaction and lower ratings for cravings and hunger.

The lesson: you don’t need to be perfect to see great results — you need to be consistent. And if that means eating a few small treats while still eating the amount of food necessary to improve your health, then so be it. 

Keep in mind that the higher-carb group lost 45 pounds over 32 weeks by eating dessert every day for breakfast. Yes, they still ate more protein, added fiber, and had fruits and vegetables. But, the flexible approach hopefully gives you hope that you can have your cake and be healthier, too.

Weekend Boosts

For A Limited-Time Only: If you ever wanted to use the same plates with Arnold’s famous 3/4 back pose that the strongest athletes in the world use at the Arnold Strongman Classic, we’ve got news for you. Rogue, who provides all of the equipment for the Arnold Sports Festival, has made these plates available in a limited run. We didn’t want those of you who have home gyms to miss out, so you can get them here.

What We’re Reading: Are We About To Unlock the Human Brain?
We’re not there yet, but some big advancements in brain science might change everything we know and lead to exciting breakthroughs.

“If we map things at a very high resolution, see all the connections between different neurons, and analyze that at a large scale, we may be able to identify rules of wiring,” says Daniel Berger, one of the project’s lead researchers and a specialist in connectomics, which is the science of how individual neurons link to form functional networks. “From this, we may be able to make models that mechanistically explain how thinking works or memory is stored.”

And that’s it for this week. We hope you all have a fantastic weekend, and remember that you have the strength to lift up the world!

-Arnold, Adam, and Daniel

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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger​

Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell