The 21-Day Weight Vest Diet

T_Nation · June 12, 2023, 6:00am

by Chris Shugart

Lose a Pound a Week Without Dieting

Science says this will help you lose a pound of pure fat per week without changing your diet, but it's a little weird.

Years ago, I had this crazy idea. I was reviewing a weighted vest for our “Stuff We Like” section. After putting the vest through its paces in the gym, I thought, “Hey, I wonder if I could wear this thing all day, burn more calories from carrying around that extra weight, and turn this 4-pack into a 6-pack?”

So I did it… for a few days. Then I noticed the vest was pulling my shoulders down awkwardly, causing my traps to get angry. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have loaded the vest up with 65 pounds.

Yeah, that was dumb. But maybe the idea itself wasn’t. Swedish researchers conducted a similar study, and their findings are pretty interesting.

The Study

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg wanted to see if wearing around a weight vest during normal daily activities would result in the loss of body weight, particularly fat mass. So they gathered up 69 mildly obese Swedes and instructed them to wear the vests for 8 hours per day for three weeks.

A control group wore vests weighing just about 2 pounds.
The other group wore vests weighing just over 24 pounds.

The Results

The group wearing the 24-pound vest lost an average of 3.5 pounds during the 21-day testing period without changing their normal diets. They also retained all of their previous muscle mass. (The control group participants dropped about half a pound of fat.)

How Did That Happen?

The answer seems obvious: increased energy expenditure, right? The study’s participants simply burned more calories while doing their normal daily activities like making flat-pack furniture, eating meatballs smothered in sour cream, and dancing to Ace of Base. (Sorry, I don’t know much about Sweden.)

Well, maybe. But the researchers had another theory.

They think the results might have something to do with your body’s energy balance system – that tricky biological machination that works to keep your body weight fairly constant.

They call it the “gravitostat” because they’re Swedish and therefore like to make up weird words, but you can think of it as your body weight set point. This homeostasis takes place in part via appetite signaling. Then there’s DNA, gene expression, and, well, it gets complicated.

Basically, the scientists theorized that wearing the weighted vest 8 hours a day makes your body say, “Whoa, that’s weird! I’m 24 pounds heavier all of a sudden and that ain’t right! I’ll just drop some fat to get rid of it.” That’s a smidge oversimplified, but you get the gist.

How to Use This Info

Losing 3.5 pounds of fat in three weeks may not seem like much, but remember that the folks in this study didn’t change their diets or adopt a special training program. They just lived life.

If you want to replicate the study and don’t mind looking like you’re wearing a bulletproof vest while grocery shopping, just wear a 20-25 pound weight vest for 8 hours a day for three weeks. (This one (Buy at Amazon)) doesn’t look so intimidating and tactical.)

I’d skip it during workouts because that could throw off your training progressions. But definitely keep it on during sex because you need to keep things spicy.

If the gravitostat idea is true, maybe you could combine the vest-wearing with a sensible reduction in daily calories – like 200 a day below maintenance – and experience even faster fat loss while protecting your muscle mass.

Just don’t use a 65-pound weight vest and assume you’ll lose fat even faster. Only a dummy would do that.

Reference

Ohlsson C et al. Increased weight loading reduces body weight and body fat in obese subjects – A proof of concept randomized clinical trial. EClinicalMedicine. 2020 May;22:100338.

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mc11 · June 12, 2023, 8:58pm

Thank you - worth noting perhaps that the weight vests were based on proporition to an OBESE person’s body weight " Subjects were either treated with a heavy (=high load; 11% of body weight) or light (=low load; 1% of body weight) "

also - “set point” in phyisiology is not really used for weight (see for example Variable setpoint as a relaxing component in physiological control - PMC) a psychologist proposed this concept for weight, and perhaps like Tabbata cycles done without reference to power loads and % of Vo2Max - this concept has been somewhat misappropriated - i’m suggesting this is important as if a person says well that’s my set point; i can’t really lose fat beyond that" - and we all see it in clients - then that’s not good.

This paper from 2023 overviews it - crucial point, last line:

The set point theory was arguably the most influential and debated theory of body weight control. It suggests that like temperature in a room controlled by a thermostat, body weight (or body fat) is controlled by an equivalent device (ponderostat, adipostat) residing in the hypothalamus. Borrowing from the engineering vocabulary, this device receives feedback input from the controlled parameter (room temperature, body weight or body fat), and generates an error signal in a comparator if this feedback signal is deviating from a preset reference value (set point). The error signal is used to turn up or down any mechanisms that determine the level of the controlled parameter (heat production or dissipation in the case of room temperature, metabolizable energy-in or energy lost in the case of body weight/adiposity). The problem with this simplistic explanation lies in the identification of the feedback signal. Although the idea of pressure gauges sensitive to one’s own weight has been abandoned even by the most avid defenders of the set-point hypothesis, they still believe in a signal that essentially tracks body weight. Leptin was first thought to fit this description, but it appears now that leptin alone is relatively weak in defending the upper body weight/adiposity level [103]. Obesity is widespread, but only a handful of obese patients with mutated leptin or leptin receptor genes have been identified [52]. Leptin resistance has been used most often to explain this discrepancy [220]. However, an equally plausible explanation is that the major pressure to evolve this hormonal signal may have come from the need to guarantee high levels of energy intake and conservation, allowing early reproduction in a low abundance food environment, and not to curb appetite or waste energy as in luxus consumption [84]. Thus, the simplistic set-point idea has been largely abandoned, and is no longer advocated in modern textbooks [270].
----eof-----
so we may ask:
What’s the point of homeostasis across all systems in the body? to be as metabolically effective and efficient under the circumstances - to adapt to what’s happening. It’s unlikely that more load is having this effect; and would be really surprised to see the same kinds of results in non-obese, buff gym rats as per the communities here. Why? because we already regularly challenge our bodies to adapt to loads, eat reasonably and also when not working out are focusing on quality recovery. There’s also likely more in here about the inflammatory response of fat cells/relation to resolvins etc that may also be dropping this hammer in high body fat participants.

Thoughts?

thank you for sharing this work
m.c.