Beyond Metabolism

About the Author

Scott Abel has been involved in the diet, fitness, and bodybuilding industries for over four decades. His coaching specializes in physique transformation rooted in a mindset for longterm success.

This book is about your environment, your habits, and weight control and weight loss. The first section is about the biological and cultural factors that have overridden the wisdom of the body, and what causes unnatural, irresistible cravings, weight issues, and food issues.

The second section is about solutions.

How Your Brain, Biology, and the Environment Create and Perpetuate Weight Issues

…and What You Can Do About It

Scott Abel

Table of Contents

About the Author

Thank You + A Free Gift

BEYOND METABOLISM

Introduction

You, the Dieter — A Questionnaire

SECTION ONE

Your Brain, Your Body, and the Biology of Weight Control

Chapter 1. The Real Biology of Weight Control

Chapter 2. Your Brain’s Reward System

Chapter 3. Cues, Habits, and Your Emotions

Chapter 4. Neural Circuitry in the Brain

Chapter 5. The Emotions of Food

Chapter 6. The Food Industry vs. You

Chapter 7. Sugar, Salt, and Fat: The Ultimate Combination

SECTION TWO

Solutions

Chapter 8. Introduction to Solutions

Chapter 9. Reverse Your Unwanted Habits

Chapter 10. Understanding Cognitive Awareness

Chapter 11. Five Steps to Food Freedom

Chapter 12. Behaviour Modification

Chapter 13. Freedom (Conclusion)

References

Other Works by Scott Abel

Thank You + A Free Gift

Thank you for getting this book. As a free gift, you can download the Abel Starter Set, including The Mindset of Achievement and Intro to Metabolic Enhancement Training (MET) (yes, the entire books) completely free.

The Mindset of Achievementis about reaching goals and sustaining them and building on them. If you’ve ever achieved something (e.g. weight loss) only to find you couldn’t sustain the success, this book is for you. It has chapters on habits & routines, motivation, getting out of ruts, fear of failure, mastery and much more.

Intro to Metabolic Enhancement Training (MET) explains the methodology behind this unique metabolic training program, and includes two full 4-day programs for fat loss, hypertrophy, and metabolic enhancement.

Just go to scottabelfitness.com/starter to get your copies from the homepage.

Introduction

I spent over thirty years studying nutrition and diet, but up until the past few years I only researched these topics in the most accepted and conventional ways. In the last decade however, I learned a valuable lesson—the usual way we approach diet and nutrition is wrong.

This is why countless people search for diet and eating solutions in all the wrong places. They attack their issues symptomatically instead of causally, and this just makes things worse. If they only address the real causes of their struggles and perceived failures, they can succeed on their diets, eliminate food-related anxiety, and adopt effective dietary habits.

Many experts have written on this in terms of the biology of weight control, but far fewer have written about it with respect to the brain and our habits. That's where this book comes in.

You Are What You Eat (…sort of)

Everyone has heard the expression, You are what you eat.

I’ve known many coaches who parrot the expression to clients who find it difficult to stick to a diet.

Many of my own clients have heard me turn this phrase upside down and say, "As much as you are what you eat, your issues with diet are about what’s eating you."

But even this statement is incomplete. The truth of the modern diet situation is this:

You are what you eat.

You are how you eat.

You are why you eat.

With this in mind, if we all know what to eat, why don’t we just do it?

We know what foods are healthy and we know what to avoid. We know more about nutrition than at any other time in our history. And if we listen closely to our bodies we also know how much food is too much.

So where is all the food and diet stress coming from?

Why is there so much diet confusion?

Why can’t we stop snacking?

Why can’t we stick to a diet?

Confusion About Diet

The shelves of any bookstore are filled with books about diets and dieting. No other animal on the planet needs to be told what, when, why or how to eat, how to eat, and neither did we, until recently.

From internet gurus to lifestyle magazines to The Biggest Loser we are shamed, scolded and humiliated by proclamations that we need to extremely restrict our caloric intake in order to lose those unwanted, unsightly pounds, and are weak if we cannot comply. On the other side of that brittle coin, we are told by zealous vegans to eschew any animal product, by passionate paleo-dieters to eschew grain, by low-carbers to never let a grain of rice pass our lips. The truth is, with a protein shake, a multi-vitamin and a diet of Twinkies you can lose substantial weight and improve your blood lipid profile (as Dr. Mark Haub did), though I don’t advocate eating high-reward, addictive junk in order to control your weight.

Perusing the aisles of my local bookstore recently, it struck me that nearly all of the books are written about the diet itself—what, when, where, why and how you should eat. But we’re smarter than that, aren’t we? Deep down you know there is no magic diet. True victory over food and weight issues is not about the diet. It’s about the dieter—you.

It’s always been about you.

When you look at evolution, you’ll find that human survival was based on key neural developments and adaptations that made for a sharper mind. Like most animals, we pursue pleasure and avoid pain. The psychology of diet that comes with our evolved brain is now at odds with a world of modern food abundance and food stimuli.

In this book, we will examine how some people become susceptible to food or diet influences that eventually dominate their life. You will discover how your own brain is affected by our modern environment.  By addressing your brain, habits and environment you will overcome your weight and food issues. We will uncover the elements that magic diets fail to address, and highlight the underlying operating system you need in order for any diet to truly work. This is not about nutrient timing or any other complex diet regimen.

I will mention throughout this book one important message:

Almost all of these issues we will address are about the dieter.

…and they are non-metabolic issues.

Many issues we’ll look at affect your metabolism over the long-term, but they are not intrinsically metabolic. The underlying issues—the ones we need to address—have to do with your brain and your environment.

Abundant research suggests that modern food stimulates the reward circuits of the brain, driving people to overeat. The food industry has capitalized on this research to create and sell more and more indulgent foods. By contrast, the diet and fitness industries seem to ignore the research. Many fitness professionals will say you just need more willpower. The concept that you lack willpower is a tremendously damaging and false pronouncement that you may have experienced firsthand.

One of my clients, for instance, developed an eating disorder induced by her previous competition dieting strategies. She’d initially reached out to her former coach, confessing that she was unable to stick to her diet. She described what she was going through both physically and mentally. Her coach told her: Champions don’t cheat on their diets.

Micromanaging diets, nutrient composition and so on, are not solutions our food and diet issues but rather diet prisons we create for ourselves. Food and diet issues are psychological, biological and neurological issues. They are seldom metabolic issues.

Portion control and calorie counting result in short-term weight loss that invariably lead to long-term weight and food issues. This short-term fix causes long-term problems.

Psychology and Biology

What is important to understand and embrace is this:

Thought determines the experience of behaviour.

Look at the key words in the phrase:

"Thought" refers to the mental elements preceding behaviour.

"Experience" refers to the emotional consequences of that specific behaviour.

"Behaviour" refers to the actual physical act.

The mental, emotional, and physical elements of being are what I refer to as the ‘triangle of awareness.’  When discussing food issues, it’s impossible to effectively address one area without addressing the others, yet the diet industry has been doing just this for decades.

We need to stop looking at food and diet issues as external, objective solutions to problems that are more complex and multi-layered. A ‘diet’ is simply the object in the equation. The subject of the equation is you. How many diet books or diet articles have you read that talk about you—your experiences, feelings or thoughts?

If thought determines the experience of behaviour, you have to address the thought and the experience. Your own personal and individual mindset and feelings regarding diet, food and weight are subjective elements to understanding your modern diet or food issues. These subjective elements are being ignored, when they are actually the key components of the solution.

The combination of the biology of weight control (physical), personal experience and history (emotional), and the billion-dollar food, diet and supplement industries (environmental) all contribute to our food, diet and weight issues. Everyone’s diet dilemma will be unique, based on varying degrees of influence and individual characteristics. For people with very sensitive metabolic set-points, for instance, a single diet to lose weight can be a catalyst for a lifetime of food, eating, diet and weight issues.

Some of the environmental stimuli accosting us at every turn include:

The prevalence of food

Larger portion sizes

Endless selections of specifically engineered, hyper-palatable tastes and textures

Convenience of food

Marketing of food as reward

When we combine these with our present-day attitudes of entitlement and desire for immediate gratification, it’s easy to understand how any food issue can spiral out of control.

Indulgence

I have chosen the word "indulgence" to encapsulate the modern diet dilemma.

For the physical component of the equation I refer to indulgent foods, such as those which have unnaturally high levels of salt, sugar, fat or various combinations of each. These foods cater directly to the reward center of the brain and are engineered to do so.

For the