High on metabolism

BY BARBARA RUSSI SARNATARO

SPECIAL TO THE DEMOCRAT

Posted on Monday, July 7, 2003

link to article

During his body-building days, Philip Goglia would drive by his favorite frozen yogurt place in Venice Beach, Calif., on his way home from the gym every Friday night. Unable to resist the temptation and feeling like he deserved it, he’d pull in, order himself a large vanilla yogurt and smile through every bite. Shortly after, he says, he’d be in "absolute digestive hell. I’d cramp up, I’d have to unbutton my pants. I knew I was going to be miserable for the rest of the night." Speaking from his California office, Goglia says he did then what we all tend to do. "Everybody wants to act like a kid when it comes to rewarding themselves," he says. Whether or not he could digest the yogurt, he knew it would taste good going down and that was what he cared about.

Goglia has gotten wiser. He founded Performance Fitness Concepts in Santa Monica, Calif., and is now a nutrition and fitness guru to celebrities and executives among others. He has written a book, Turn Up the Heat: Unlock the Fat-Burning Power of Your Metabolism (Penguin, 2002), based on his theory that people are one of three different metabolic types. "Only when people eat and exercise for their own metabolisms will they see remarkable and permanent results in the areas of weight loss, energy levels, and overall health," he writes in the introduction to his book. Whether it’s yogurt or pasta or fried calamari that doesn’t work for you, you should know it and most people don’t, according to Goglia. One-size-fits-all diets, Goglia says, don’t work in the long run. Neither do reduced calorie diets, he says, which cause your metabolism to "cool down to a point at which you stop utilizing calories efficiently. The cooler your metabolism becomes, the less efficiently it can utilize nutrients, causing your body to hoard fat as a protective survival mechanism."

Practices such as skipping breakfast one day and eating it another create erratic heat patterns in a person’s body, he says. "People are attaching real negative connotations to food," says Goglia. "They’re so fearful of food choices that they eat very inconsistent patterns. The body becomes very vulnerable; it senses the inconsistency and hoards fat. Ultimately these people are all exercising as well. As they undereat and exercise, they can’t repair muscle tissue and muscle tissue wastes. One day, bend over to pet the cat and their back goes out."

His premise: Everyone utilizes fats, proteins and carbohydrates with differing efficiency. If you are fat and protein efficient, as, according to Goglia, 74 percent of the population is, you shouldn’t be dining on pasta and bread. Likewise, if you have a carbohydrate efficient metabolism (23 percent of the population), you easily break down and utilize carbohydrates and have great endurance capacity. Goglia identifies a third metabolic type — dual — that can digest fats, proteins and carbohydrates with equal ease. "The metabolic typing has been around for years," says Goglia, "in the relaxed conversational form of a doctor telling a patient, ‘Your cholesterol is too high, you need to back off the fats and proteins’ or ‘ Your triglycerides are through the roof, what are you doing, eating pasta for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Back off the carbs. ’"

Using a blood work profile and a questionnaire based on family history, Goglia can determine a client’s metabolic type and design a food plan that works best for his type. Fat and protein efficient types can easily metabolize fats and proteins but are carbohydrate sensitive. Ideally, they should have 50 percent protein, 25 percent fat and 25 percent carbohydrates in their diet. The carbohydrate efficient person digests carbohydrates easily and should eat 20 percent protein, 12 percent fat and 68 percent carbohydrate. The dual can digest all equally and therefore should try to eat one third each of their daily diet from fat, protein and carbohydrates. "Everybody has specific chemistries, you just have to eat for your own specific nutrient pattern," he says.

Eating according to your metabolic type, Goglia says, will continually fuel the metabolic furnace, thereby decreasing weight, improving fat to lean muscle ratio, increasing energy levels and reducing risk of disease.

A graduate of Duke University with a master’s degree in nutrition, Goglia took part in a study while at Duke where subjects were fed a low-calorie, lowfat rice diet. Many of the subjects were sleepy and not losing any weight. "We assessed the lipids of the people that were eating rice and falling asleep and their triglycerides were through the roof. We gave them fatty fish and peanut butter and they started losing weight like crazy."

That was what first led him to hypothesize on different metabolic types.

Dr. Joel Fuhrman, a New Jersey family physician and author of Eat to Live, who specializes in preventing and reversing disease through nutrition, doesn’t buy it. "There’s no metabolic type that is immune to the effects of a high saturated fat diet," Fuhrman says. "There are lots of hooks and gimmicks out there. There may be a mixture of some factual information but mainly it’s false science."

Everyone is equally at risk of developing arterial sclerosis, Fuhrman says, and the more we increase nutrient-rich natural foods, the more we make our bodies resistant to disease. The best way to lose weight and decrease risk of diabetes, cancer and heart disease, he says, is to eat large volumes of nutrientpacked food. "The difference from one to another in terms of metabolic type is very slight. I’ve never had a metabolic type [this way of eating] didn’t work on," he says.

Truth or gimmick, it’s working for Goglia’s clients, one of whom could be the poster child for his eating program. Brendan Fraser’s taut physique in George of the Jungle while swinging from vines in a loincloth is the result of working with Goglia. He has also helped celebrities Gillian Anderson, Owen Wilson, Jeff Goldblum and Kim Delaney lower their body fat and develop leaner physiques, generally by increasing their caloric intake and giving them food plans with what he says are the right foods for their metabolic type. Brian Wry, a television producer in Los Angeles, is a client of Goglia’s. "I’ve never been in better shape before I hooked up with Phil," he says. "I’m leaner, I’m more muscular. I’m 42 and I feel like an 18-year-old. I have a better body at 42 than when I was 18." Using Goglia’s plan for a fat and protein efficient metabolic type, Wry dropped from 23 percent body fat to 9 percent in three months.

Turn Up the Heat contains instructions on how to interpret a blood profile, family history questionnaires, 12-week food programs for each body type, a quick start plan for faster results and metabolism-based workouts to follow.

Though each food plan varies, there are similarities: eat often and drink copious amounts of water — an ounce for every pound of body weight. The diets all consist of fruits and vegetables, lean protein (fish and chicken) and complex carbohydrates (potatoes). "I always tell people," he says, "keep your proteins light (chicken, fish, soy) and your carbs bright (vegetables and fruits)."

He also suggests avoiding foods with yeast, like breads, saying that it requires the body to work even harder to utilize fats, proteins and carbohydrates.

Amy Lanou, director of nutrition for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington, says metabolic type is an interesting concept, but as of now, that’s all it is.

Goglia’s premise "that you can tell what type of metabolism a person has by [his] blood lipid levels is thoroughly untested," she says.

Still, Lanou thinks Goglia’s book offered some good advice. "Eating often is a good way to stimulate the metabolism. And he focuses a lot on vegetables, which is good. I do think he’s on track with [that]. It’s more responsible than some of the books out there," she says, particularly the ones condoning a 1,200-calorie-a-day regimen, which she says is too few.

From a strict nutrition standpoint, she is comfortable with the food plans Goglia designs for two types, the carbohydrate efficient and dual efficient metabolisms. Lanou says these are closely aligned with current nutrition requirements. "The fat and protein efficient metabolism is not," she says, and she is a bit more wary of that plan. "I’d watch the third type very closely."

Lanou believes Goglia’s premises are worth testing. "Mr. Goglia is on to something to a degree," she says. "Different people respond differently [to the same diet]. It’s hard to know if it’s something to do with metabolism or physiological body type or the psychosocial factors that they brought from the course of their life."

Try eating for your metabolic type, says Goglia, and you’ll be amazed how easy it is to lose weight and body fat and improve health and energy. "This is really time tested," Goglia says. "Ultimately, this isn’t new nutrition, it’s old nutrition being discussed in a complete way."