G-Flux: Eat More, Exercise More to Increase Your Metabolism?
Is weight loss really all about creating an energy deficit by eating less calories than you expend? Dr. John Berardi has challenged that notion with what he calls G-Flux. This concept involves energy flux, and Dr. Berardi argues that you are better off eating more and exercising more to generate a caloric deficit. Essentially you influence your metabolic rate and ultimately increase your metabolism leading to a great number of calories burned than if you tried to simply eat less. On the surface, G-Flux is a novel approach that makes sense when viewed over the long term.
Increase Your Metabolism
What’s the easiest, most time efficient way to cut calories? Simply remove them from your diet, right? However, did you ever notice that your weight loss starts to level off as you get leaner and approach your target weight? You could even get to the point where you’re eating less than 1,000 calories per day but still not seeing any results. It’s at this stage that your metabolism may be adversely affected. Fortunately, this phenomenon can be reversed over time.
Don’t get me wrong, I think using aggressive dieting approaches can be successful in the short term (1-2 months max). However, over the long term you have to establish a baseline level of eating an adequate number of calories to ensure your body has the proper vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients to burn fat and maintain or build muscle (maybe 15x your body weight as a starting point). Therefore, if possible, it’s better to increase the amount of exercise you perform rather than decrease your calories too much. Done together, eating more and exercising more can lead to an increase in your metabolism and an overall better body.
Eat More, Exercise More
The fundamentals behind G-Flux are best explained through an example. Let’s say you have 3 different people all trying to generate a 500 calorie per day deficit. All 3 people burn 2,000 calories per day through their normal daily activities. One person decides that they will cut 500 calories from their diet and only eat 1,500 calories per day. Another person decides to burn 500 calories through exercise and eat 2,000 calories per day. The final person decides to burn 1,000 calories per day through exercise and eat 2,500 calories per day.
As you can see, all these people generate a 500 calorie deficit. Therefore they should all lose the same amount of weight. However, Dr. Berardi’s research has shown that the person who eats more and exercises more actually burns more calories because of the increased metabolic benefits. An added benefit is that your diet does not feel restrictive so you can keep this up for the long term. The downside is that you have to spend more time exercising.
You’ll find plenty of other fitness experts who agree with Dr. Berardi as well. Tom Venuto’s Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle involves burning fat through exercise while limiting the potential negative metabolic impact of highly restrictive diets through proper nutrition. Tom views the relationship between eating and exercising as synergistic and critical to gaining muscle and losing fat. He tackles his thoughts on metabolism in this article. You can also download this free report where he gives an interview that delves into further detail about his philosophy.
Joel Marion of Cheat Your Way Thin and the Xtreme Fat Loss Diet has touted Dr. Berardi’s advice as well. Joel’s approaches focus on keeping your metabolism elevated primarily through controlling leptin levels with regular re-feedings.
G-Flux Routine
The goal of a G-Flux routine is to find an appropriate energy balance that allows you to burn calories through proper training and nutrition. As a baseline, Dr. Berardi recommends 5 hours of exercise per week and a healthy diet that includes 12-18 calories per pound of body weight. Increasing your calories is easy, but ensuring that those calories are nutritious is critical. If you aren’t satisfied with your fat loss, then you could try increasing the amount of time you exercise. Generally, Dr. Berardi doesn’t think you need to go beyond 10 hours per week but he’s worked with plenty of professional athletes who exercise well in excess of that amount of time.
If you’re still not achieving your goals, then you can slowly take your calories down by 10-20% per week. The idea is to establish a baseline level of calories and exercise that allows you to lose fat without reducing your calories too far or overtraining. That should help you maintain or increase your metabolism. The bottom line is that you shouldn’t be afraid to eat more calories if you can offset them by exercising more. In the short term, you can certainly eat less and exercise more, but over the long term, consider the implications of G-Flux.
Related posts:
Posted in Best Fitness Tips
Sounds like my kind of plan! I’ve found the hard way that trying to cut back on the calories I eat never works for more than a week. I can only take so much starvation before I start chowing down on ice cream and hitting up the drive thru.
Very interesting. This may explain why athletes eat huge amounts of calories, yet stay lean by exercising for long periods of time. The question is how much is too much? I have always felt that if anyone maintains an active lifestyle as much as possible in a week will help you get lean.
-Sam
Ye this is what happened to me over the summer, I went into training too hard 5-6 times a week. Calorie deficit also quite high and eventually plateaued, I am working out just 3 times a week now to create “The Perfect Storm” as I am sure you must have read from Rusty’s writings and will kick up to 4,5,6 workouts a week when I want to get in super shape.
Very in-depth article. I’m familiar with this way of thinking but I gotta say that I still maintain to a certain extent, an individual’s metabolism is determined by genetics – at least partially.
I know people who look at a donut and gain 5 lbs. I just don’t know if you can seriously manipulate your metabolism to THAT extent. If you could, I’d have a much easier time putting some weight on IMO.
Of course, leading an active lifestyle and eating healthily do help but I think it’s a combination of the three – diet, lifestyle AND genetics – that ultimately determine how lean you can get.
Darrin,
This definitely reminds me of your philosophy. The psychological impact of restricting calories over the long term is difficult to overcome as well.
Sam,
You’re spot on about athletes…Michael Phelps comes to mind. Maybe it was exaggerated that he ate 10,000 calories per day but if he was doing intense swimming for 8 hours, it makes the case that he could have (and probably needed to) eat a ton of calories.
Michael,
I like the idea of staying in maintenance mode and then ramping things up to quickly cut body fat. I’m reversing the approach now since I’ve leaned down to my lowest level of body fat I can ever recall. I figure my body is now primed to quickly add mass with Visual Impact Muscle Building.
Toni,
I can’t point to any research that says how much of an influence genetics play in metabolism. Tom Venuto is one bodybuilder I actually trust and he seems to imply genetics plays a very small role so that’s the best I have to go on. You’re right though, putting all the factors together (diet, exercise, genetics) does determine how lean you can get and what your body looks like when it gets there!
Dave
I really liked that post. In kind of flies in the face of all the so called experts calling for a reduction in calories as the best way to lose weight. Burning calories through exercise isn’t as time efficient as just cutting out a couple doughnuts but that doesn’t take into account the metabolic increase that you get through exercise. Finding the right balance between exercise and the amount of calories burned is critical I believe.
Interesting Article Dave,
I’ve heard about the G-flux before from Tom Venuto. Looks like it could be a useful approach for a short period of time to break through a plateau.
With that being said eating low calories (20-30% below maintenance) has a host of benefits including life extension. Increasing your calories even with added exercises reduces these benefits.
I am also curious what form of exercise he recommends to add. I like to use low intensity cardio following brief intervals to create a larger defecit. I find sustained cardio (running) to be counter productive to muscle and power. As well I find it over stimulates the appetite.
Greg
Tim,
I think you’re spot on about finding the right balance between exercise and amount of calories burned. You obviously don’t want to spend your life in the gym but you don’t want your diet to be so restrictive that it slows down your calories burned either.
Greg,
Interesting thought on the life extension properties of eating 20-30% below maintenance. I’ve never heard that before so will look into it further. I haven’t looked at Berardi’s whole program but a sample routine I’ve seen advocates an hour of training per day for 6 days per week (upper body, lower body, low intensity recovery, upper body, lower body, high intensity conditioning, rest). He’s very cognizant of overtraining so I’d expect most additional exercise would be of the low intensity variety.
Dave
Dave,
G-Flux is a really interesting concept. I think if you have a lot of weight to lose, restricting calories is the best way to lose weight. However, once you get to your target weight, you should then work to increase your metabolism. The key is definitely finding a balance. You don’t want to overtrain. If you’re a beginner, you’ll need to work your way up to training 5-6 times a week.
Once you get there, the benefits of a higher metabolism are awesome. I still do a lot of calorie restriction, but I take full advantage of G-Flux to be more liberal during my cheat days. Overall, I’d say I eat about 10% more on average now than I did when I was working towards my target weight and even so, I’ve been able to maintain my target weight.
Alykhan
Very interesting concept. I have never heard about Gflux. I never really paid to strict of an attention my calories. I think eating right and exercising hard is the proper way to get the body you want.
Great article!
Bob,
Sounds like you’re doing things the right way. Eating well and exercising intensely go a long way toward getting a good body.
Dave
Nice explanation of a very interesting concept.
I guess my issue with it is the practicality for ordinary folks; I believe Mr Berardi’s background is in training elite athletes and I think his recommendations therfore aren’t really suited to most of us. 5 hours of exercise per week is a lot, 10 is huuuge! I don’t know many people who would commit to that.
Michael,
Excellent point about the limitations of this approach. 5 hours per week of exercise is about the max I ever do, but for athletes or bodybuilders (both of which I think Berardi trains), 10 hours may be doable. However, from a practical perspective, I still think it’s a good idea to increase the amount of exercise in conjunction with increasing calories to the extent you can.
Dave
Hi Dave,
Well, another very interesting post! I completely agree with the “In the short term, you can certainly eat less and exercise more” statement. This is great for “peaking” but the rest of the time you need to make sure your body is fuelled and burning similar amounts of calories to have the correct energy balance.
-Rick
Rick,
I like your thoughts on peaking and maintaining a good energy balance. Thanks.
Dave
Haha it’s funny, I read the name of your post and immediately thought of Venuto’s approach. This philosophy really works for me and I’m a big believer in it. Keep your metabolism revving through your diet and burn most of your calories off through exercise. Perfect when your fasting stage is fizzling a bit.
Like the new look of the site btw!
Josh
Josh,
It is very similar to Tom Venuto’s approach… I never heard him explicit call it G-Flux, but the concept makes sense over the long term.
Dave
Reading through the comments, I didn’t see too much of people putting their experiences down, so I thought I would.
Having tried both approaches, my personal choice is dependant on how quickly I want to affect my body;
If I want to hit it hard and fast, then a small deficit plus lots of exercise (I particularly like doing HIIT after training the way Rusty Blackbook recommends in Visual Impact) seems to be very effective. But its also really hard on the body. I can only last 2-3 weeks at that level of application.
The longer term approach, and therefore more sustainable, for me is to do Intermittent Fasting, Leangains style. Minimal cardio plus 3-4 weights sessions per week and a daily fast of 16 or so hours. I find that I must get my diet right with this, otherwise I simply don’t get enough nutrients and either get fatigued (and workouts suffer) or I get ill (and workouts suffer) or I get injured (and workouts suffer! Are we seeing a pattern here? >don’t feed your body properly, and it will stop you doing what you’re doing!)
I realise that this is entirely personal, but I also find that the IF way of doing things makes me focus more on the quality of my diet, and that’s only ever a good thing! A secondary bonus is that my posture improves when fasting, something I’m collecting data on at the moment and will post about soon…
Keep up the good work,
George
George,
Excellent insights. I’ve embraced the Leangains intermittent fasting style over the past couple months and really think it’s an ideal approach to those that can do it. I’d really love to do the full protocol by properly timing workouts, but I have some limitations based on my job and family life. Anyone who can incorporate all the Leangains strategies into their workout will be successful.
I’m interested to hear about fasting and your posture. I never really thought about a correlation between the two.
Dave