How I lost 88 grams of belly fat
in 48 hours doing a BionicGym
“ultramarathon” (don’t try this
without medical supervision)
The Setup
The Channel 4 series How to Lose Weight Well contacted me to ask if BionicGym
could help someone lose weight over a couple of months. I said I could show fat
loss over a couple of days… and much more importantly lose belly / visceral fat… and
that this could be captured and measured by DXA scan (a special x-ray that can tell
you how much fat you have, and more importantly where it is).
This would be a fun experiment to try and show something dramatic, important and
perhaps never seen before.
[Please note, this is a case study and does not constitute medical proof, nor are we
making any medical claims].
What I did is a li+le extreme and should not be done without medical permission /
supervision.
Also, this was really tough!
The Theory
I had a theory that BionicGym, used in a particular way, could act as a ‘body-hack’ to
preferentially remove Visceral Adipose Tissue.
Visceral Adipose Tissue (VAT) has a bad reputation.
It is also known as organ fat / intra-abdominal fat and even just ‘belly fat’. It is
associated with many health problems – more so than just having a high level of
body fat overall. It is a better predictor of mortality [death] than just weight or body
mass index (BMI) or waist circumference. A lot of obesity related problems are
linked to it, including type 2 diabetes and hypertension.
The mechanism
BionicGym exercise uses sugar as its energy source… which is what may be needed to burn
off VAT.
BionicGym mimics high intensity exercise even when used at low levels. That’s
because it uses glucose/sugar as its energy source, producing a lot of CO2 - much
more than would be expected at ‘equivalent’ levels of voluntary exercise.This use of
glucose is characteristic of high intensity exercise.
Intense exercise has been shown to lower VAT more than low intensity exercise
(e.g., walking to burn equivalent calories).
Would BionicGym preferentially burn these fats in certain circumstances?
Because BionicGym burns sugar, we could rapidly deplete most of the sugar
reserves in the body (from the muscle and liver).
The Experiment
The experiment was simple. And it was also tough. It was like a BionicGym
“ultramarathon”.
1. Use BionicGym as much as possible over a 48 hour period to deplete the sugar
reserves of the body and keep sugar “demand” high. Perform semi-continuous
exercise (25-30 hours over the 48 hours).
2. Fast 48 hours so that the sugar reserves aren’t being replenished.
Drink plenty of water; replace the salt lost through sweat (and other electrolytes and
micronutrients).
3. Add coffee as this is thought to help convert fat to sugar.
VAT is the most metabolically active fat. So when sugar is being demanded by the
muscles and needs to be generated in a hurry, this fat will be used in preference to
regular fat. This will show up as a drop in VAT on a DXA scan and a
disproportionately large drop of fat in the android region (android region = belly area,
between the ribs and the crest of the pelvis).
Study recap
0 hours or Baseline: DXA scan.
IntervenHon: BionicGym exercise ~30 hours at varying intensities.
+ Fasting (with water and salt and micronutrients)
+ Coffee (strong and often)
48 hours : Repeat DXA scan.
Analysis
I got some interesting results from the experiment.
My body fat % decreased from 13.1% to 11.5%.
There was a slight decrease in lean mass. But my % of lean mass increased from 83.4%
to 85%.
My waist to hip raHo improved, from 0.71 to 0.58.
My VAT decreased from 90g to 2g. Meaning I got rid of almost all of my visceral fat.
The DXA specialist wrote in his report that my Visceral Adipose Tissue “more or less
disappeared.”
Professor Reid of Harley St. has over 20 years experience evaluating DXA scans.
For your reference, you see DXA scan values for
Reference values are in https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/
journal.pone.0180614
These are for ~200 females and ~200 male Europeans in their 20’s (VAT increases
with age).
Using a similar device (GE) with the same software, my measure was less than any
of the 400, 20-30 year olds.
Conclusions
The experiment supported my hypothesis that BionicGym could be used to target
and reduce Visceral Adipose Tissue by causing whole body sugar depletion and
drawing on metabolically active visceral fat stores for energy. The post-intervention
DXA scan showed that I’d lost approximately 88g of VAT within about 48 hours.
While this N=1 experiment might seem seem like a convincing reason to go do your
own BionicGym fas8ng ultramarathon, I need to reiterate that you should work with a
medical doctor and get medical permission and supervision before attempting anything
of the sort.
From my own experience, I know that I can reduce my visceral fat in a targeted way
by using BionicGym. That’s good to know, given the positive health outcomes
associated with having less visceral fat.
I hope you enjoyed learning about this experiment. While reducing “belly fat” might
come across as vain or silly, it has real health benefits.
Want to learn more?
If you’d like, you can learn more about how BionicGym works and then check out the
community of everyday people who are making changes in their lives with
BionicGym.
Wishing you all the best.
- Dr. Louis Crowe