(Note: If you’re having trouble viewing this video, please try watching it directly on my YouTube channel and see if that helps)

Another real benefit of having strong glutes, is that it protects your low back.  In fact, many of the people that suffer from low back pain have a diminished use of their glutes.  They have what I call, “butt amnesia”.  Their butts don’t know how to work.  It’s been dormant for such as long time that when it’s called upon to do work, it doesn’t know how to and ends up passing the work along to other muscles…mainly your low back muscles.  Eventually your low back can’t take the excess work and it ends up getting strained. 

One reason for “butt amnesia” is a simple case of too much sitting.  Sitting for long periods of time tightens and shortens your hip flexor muscles.  Your hip flexor muscles are large powerful muscles that originate from your low back vertebrae and attaches to your upper thigh region.  Since your hip flexors are much larger and stronger than your low back muscles, when it plays tug a war, your low back muscles lose every time.  Ironically, the muscles that’s strong enough to counter act your hip flexors…your glutes…get shut down when it’s needed the most.  When your hip flexors are tight and over activate, it inhibits your glutes from being activated…go figure?  So what can you to do?

Before trying to wake your butt up (no pun intended), you need to deactivate your hip flexors.  And the best way to do so is to stretch them out.  Stretching your hip flexors for 30 to 60 seconds prior to exercising your glutes will help enhance your ability to activate and “wake up” your glutes from it’s dormancy.

Now that you know how to deactivate your hip flexors, you can take advantage of it and really work your butt!

Take a look at the video above for a simple, but very effective glute exercise that you can do to start strengthening your butt to help you alleviate low back pain, increase athletic performance and of course get you that tight and toned backside. 

Try this exercise and let me know how your butt feels.

Do you notice that your glutes get activated more after you stretch out your hip flexors?

P.S.  Just another reminder…I’m doing my first MAX Workouts Transformation Contest!  I’m giving away $1000 for the top prize winner, $500 for the second prize winner and $250 for the third prize winner.  And all of the winners get a 1 year free membership to my online fitness club.  I’m super excited about the contest and I can’t wait to see the results in a few months from now.  So if you haven’t had the chance to sign up yet, go to MAX Workouts and sign up today.

Let me know what you think?  Please post your questions/comments below

So what’s the best way to lose weight?

Intermittent fasting? Counting calories? High protein diet? High fiber diet? 

The answer depends on who you ask, and the truthfully, if it’s a legitimate diet - and when I mean legitimate, I mean none of these ridiculous diets, like the banana diet which apparently was huge in Japan for a while (go figure!) - most diets work…to a certain degree. 

The difficult thing about diets is that everyone is different and we all respond differently to foods…so there really is no one size fits all.  However, one thing is certain, you are what you eat and eating the right foods can make your weight loss efforts much easier.  Here are a few tips that can make your diet a success.

It’s hard to see past the billion dollar marketing lies that our food industries throw our way, but the best way to bypass all the false hype and gimmick is to stick to real foods that don’t have labels on the them.  If you can stick to eating real foods, you’re going to be significantly better off than 95% of the people out there.  Because here’s the thing, no matter what diet your on, all successful diets have two things in common - reduce calorie intake and provide ample nutrients to your body.  And the best way to do that is by eating real foods and avoid processed foods that have hidden calories and poor nutritious values. 

Now even though I mention calories, don’t get me wrong…I HATE counting calories!  And for the most part, it’s unnecessary if you’re eating the right foods.  But, I do think that initially, if you’re coming off of a poor diet, knowing what foods have how many calories is a good thing.  What is important is knowing how much of each macronutrient you need to consume on a daily basis.  Macronutrients are the protein, carbohydrates and fat contents in you food.  Much like counting calories, it first it’s a bit of work, but once you figure out how much protein, carbs and fats you need…it becomes a piece of cake to maintain.  More importantly it allows you to know what you’re putting into your body, so you can take full control of your diet.

So how much of each macronutrient do you need to eat in a day?

I discussed the benefits of protein and how much protein you need to consume in a day, along with how to calculate your lean body weight, in a previous article, but here’s a another quick look at the general guidelines:

• Sedentary - 0.35 - 5 grams per lean body mass
• Moderately - Active 0.6 - 0.8 grams per lean body mass
• Active - 0.8 - 1.0 grams per lean body mass
• Very Active - 1.0 and higher per lean body mass

Now in caloric terms, protein has 4 calories per gram.  So, as an example let’s say you weight 170 lb and have 20% body fat.  That calculates to 136 lb of lean body weight.  And let’s assume that your very active, perhaps doing the MAX Workouts program…hint hint…that would mean that you should be eating about 1 gram of protein for each pound of lean body weight, which would be around 136 g of protein a day.  This equates to 136 g x 4 cal/g = 544 calories in a day.  (Not much considering one Big Mac has roughly 580 calories…just to puts things into perspective.)

Personally, I feel that the biggest culprit of weight gain is due to excessive carbs.  Now, before I get brushed off as another low carb guy…let me explain.  First of all not all carbs are bad.  In fact, unrefined carbohydrates such as vegetables and fruits are great for you, since it provides tons of nutrients and fiber.  It just so happens that majority of the vegetables and some fruits happen to be low in sugar content and low in calories as well.  So by default, if you eat mostly vegetables and some fruits for your carbohydrates, you end up eating a low carb diet.  It’s grains and grain products that really ramp up your carb intake. 

Whole grains have many health benefits, but unfortunately most grains on the market are not whole grains….they’re processed grains.  Processed grains are in pretty much every product imaginable, from breads, pasta, rice to baked goods, packaged snacks and even healthy snacks.  Grains are dense in calories and packed with sugar, and so when ingested it really increases your insulin activity.  Insulin hormone is like the gate keeper to your fat storage, and since it acts as a storage hormone, it loves to store excess sugar as fat.  So the less you get your insulin involved the better, both for you and your fat.  And the best way to do so is by eliminating refined “grains” carb intake and make sure that your carbohydrate content mainly comes from unrefined carbs like vegetables and fruits. 

So how many carbs should you eat?

Much like protein, it varies with each individual and their activity levels, but here are some ranges you can use as a general guide: 

• At 200 - 300 grams per day you’re likely to steadily gain weight, especially if you’re sedentary or only moderately active.
• At 150-200 grams per day, you’re at the cusp of gaining weight and maintaining your weight is going to depend on your activity levels.  You’ll more than likely need to participate in longer duration “cardio” based activities in order to maintain your current weight.
• At 100-150 grams per day, you should be able to maintain your weight, by being moderately active.  However, if you participate in short duration but higher intensity activities (aka. MAX Workouts), you should be able to lose weight, while building lean muscle.
• At 50-100 grams per day, you should be able to lose weight steadily if you’re moderately active.  And if you participate in short duration high intensity activities, as mentioned above, you should be able to accelerate your weight loss process.
 
• At 0-50 grams per day, your body starts to metabolize fat for fuel, so you’ll burn fat and lose weight more quickly.  However, it’s not recommended for long term.  It’s an effective initial start up phase, utilized by many low carb diets.  The phase is usually 5 days to 2 weeks in length.

Again, these are just general ranges and it will vary according to each individual.  And if you’ve been eating high amounts of carbs, you shouldn’t cut out carbs immediately.  Instead, you’ll need to slowly ween yourself off of carbs until you get to the appropriate ranges.

Eating low carbs isn’t difficult if you’re eating the right kinds of foods.  If you stick to eating unrefined carbs (ie. vegetables and some fruits), you shouldn’t have any trouble keeping your carb intake within ranges of 50 - 150 grams per day.  It’s only when you start to include grains into your diet that you get into trouble.  As mentioned earlier, grains are too high in sugar content and readily activates your insulin, making it harder to lose weight and easier to gain weight. 

It’s also important to note that your body has the ability to make up to 200 grams of glycogen (stored glucose) a day from proteins and fat.  Much of that glycogen is stored in your muscle (and some in you liver) to be used for physical activities.  So, even with low to zero carb intake, your body can make enough glucose to keep your glycogen levels in your muscles full for fuel. 

Now in caloric terms, carbohydrates has 4 calories per gram.  Using the same example as I did in the protein section…let’s say your goal is to lose 25 pounds by the end of the program, which would be 145 lb.  That’s about 2 lb a week, since the program is 12 weeks long.  And let’s say that you decide to cut down your carb intake to a range of about 100 grams per day.  This equals to 100 g x 4 cal/g = 400 calories a day. 

So far, your total calorie intake is 544 calories from protein and 400 calories from carbs for a total of 944 calories

There are a few ways to calculate how many calories you need per day in order for you to achieve your goal weight.  Some calculations require you to plug in your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate), and some also require you to plug in your lean body weight, and you can use any of these calculations, but a quick, easy and reliable method, is to multiply your goal weight by 10.  So for this example, it would be 145 lb x 10 = 1450 calories a day.  And since the total calorie from protein and carbs is 944 calories, the amount of calories left is 1450 - 944 = 506 calories.  And this last amount of calories should come from fat.  Fat has 9 calories per gram, so that equals 506 cal / 9 cal/g = 84.3 g of fat.  So that means you can consume up to 84 grams of fat and still be within your weight loss caloric intake.

Now…fat is the most misunderstood macronutrient out of them all.  I think it’s because of the name.  Who wants to eat fat when they’re trying to lose fat…right?  But here’s the key to eating fats and still lose weight.  As long as you’re eating the right amounts of macronutrients - protein and carbs - eating fat actually increases you body’s ability to burn stored fat more effectively! 

Fats can be divided up into these following categories:

• Saturated Fats - Stable fats found in foods like animal fats and coconuts.
 
• Monounsaturated Fats - Moderately stable fats found in foods like avocado and in many healthy oils such as olive oil, flaxseed oil, sesame seed oil, sunflower oil, corn oil and peanut oil.
• Polyunsaturated Fats - Least stable of the three main fats, making polyunsaturated fats very susceptible to going rancid quickly when heated.  It’s found in grain products, soybeans, peanuts and fish oils.

You can include any or a combination of all of the fats mentioned above in your daily diet.  The only type of fat that needs to be avoided at all costs is trans fats.  It shouldn’t even be considered fat, since it’s not natural.  It’s chemically manufactured and is added to food to extend shelf life.  However, when ingested, it causes serious damage to your body.  Long term exposure to trans fats have been associated with obesity, diabetes, atherosclerosis, and chronic inflammatory diseases, just to name a few. 

It’s important to note, that when you’re deciding to go on a diet, the total amount of calories you choose to eat in a day depends on your goal and how quickly you want to get to your goal.  But here are some key points to keep in mind before you decide:

• Be realistic about your goals and approach it like a marathon slow and steady is the best and healthiest solution
• Cutting out too many calories is a sure way to cause you to rebound by over consuming afterwards, getting you on the infamous yo - yo dieting roller coaster
• Look at your diet as a long term goal and not something you want to achieve today.
• Calories are important, but it’s just as important (if not more so) to watch what you eat.  Not all calories are created equal.  Each food you ingest triggers hormonal responses that can either be helpful and healthy or negative and unhealthy.
• Weight loss should come as a result of a combination of both healthy eating and an effective exercise plan.

In order to figure out how many calories you need a day, you need to find our how much of each macronutrient you should be eating.  And to help you do that, you can go to www.caloriecount.about.com to find out the nutrition content of each food.

So here’s a summary of the tips you can implement to help you succeed in your diet and weight loss efforts.

• Eat real foods and avoid all processed foods, so you can avoid hidden calories and poor nutrition
• Knowing your total caloric intake initially is a good way to have an idea of how much food you should be eating
• Know how much of each macronutrient (protein, carbs and fats) you need to eat
• Cut out refined carbs, especially grains and instead eat unrefined carbs such as vegetables and fruits
• Eating fat helps you lose weight as long as you’re eating the proper amounts of protein and low carbs
• Avoid trans fats at all costs
• Combine healthy eating with an effective exercise program to maximize weight loss

 
P.S.  If you haven’t heard already, I’m doing my first MAX Workouts Transformation Contest! 

I’m super excited about the contest and I can’t wait to see the results in a few months from now.  So if you haven’t had the chance to sign up yet, go to MAX Workouts and sign up today.

Please excuse the poor sound quality of this video…the A/C kicked in while filming the video and I wasn’t aware how loud it was!

(Note: If you’re having trouble viewing this video, please try watching it directly on my youtube channel)

This is a great finisher after a high intensity circuit training workout!

Try it out and let me know how your abs feel. 

Were you able to progress into the more difficult levels of the exercise?

I’d love to know what you think.  Please post your comments below.

Now doing this ab exercise alone won’t do the trick, but when you combine it with a clean diet (no refined carbs, no processed foods, no refined sweets) and an effective fat burning workout program, you’ll finally be saying “so long” to your lower belly pooch.

(Note: If you’re having trouble viewing this video, please try watching it directly on my YouTube channel and see if that helps)

Try this lower ab exercise out let me know how your abs feel. 

Do you think this anti-movement works your lower abs better than regular ab exercises?

I’d love to know what you think.  Please post your comments below.

Your spine is strongest at it’s neutral position, which is a natural “s” curve.  And since your spine houses your spinal cord, it would make sense to have it in a position that can provide maximum support at all times.  This is why excessive flexion, extension and rotation is not recommended, since it compromises your spine’s ability to protect your spinal nervous system.

So, how do you work your abs? 

(Note: If you’re having trouble viewing this video, please try watching it directly on my YouTube channel and see if that helps)

Well “working” your abs doesn’t always have to come from movement.  In fact, trying to prevent your spine from moving is a great way to stimulate your abs and functionally it’s what your abs were designed to do.  Your abs protect your spine from excessive movements like flexion, extension and rotation. 

Now if you’re doubting that anti-movement patterns can work your abs, better than your traditional sit ups and crunches…try this ab exercise out and see for yourself.  This particular exercise involves anti-extension.  So your abs have to prevent your spine from extending.  And believe it or not, this simple exercise actually activates more abdominal muscles than crunches, twists and lateral bends combined.  Just a few reps of this exercise and you’ll feel like you got sucker punched in your gut the next day.

To help you in your quest for ripped abs, I decided to do a 3 part series of simple but very effective ab exercises.  This is part 1 of 3.  Combine these ab exercises with potent fat burning workouts like the ones in my MAX Workouts program and you’ll start shedding excess belly fat while tightening your stomach  

Try this one out and let me know how your abs feel. 

Do you think the anti-movement works your abs more than regular crunches and sit ups?

I’d love to know what you think.  Please post your comments below.

What do you think of first when you see the word cholesterol?  Heart disease…?  We’ll you’re definitely not alone.  Cholesterol and heart disease have been synonymous since the 70’s when a scientist named Ancel Keys (1) published a major study, spanning seven countries on how diet affects the heart. 

Key’s conclusion:  Cholesterol causes heart disease and saturated fat increases cholesterol and hence saturated fat causes heart disease.  This began the fat free craze that literally swept the nation…fat became nationally demonized as the cause of heart disease (along with weight gain).  And the high carb, low fat diet became the face of the “healthy heart” American diet.

The study became so engrained that an entire new national program was developed, the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP).  NCEP’s objective is to help educate people of the dangers of high cholesterol and how to best prevent heart disease.  Now, that seems like a great program…right?  I mean our tax money is actually going toward something that helps the general public and as supposed to some major private conglomerate that uses our money to increase their pay checks.  Well,  there’s only one problem.  The “landmark” study, which all dietary recommendation for a health heart was based on, was found to be flawed.

Not too long after Key’s study came out in 1970, an English doctor named John Yudkin, a professor of nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College in London College wrote a book, “Sweet and Dangerous” in which he re-analyzed the data from Key’s study and found the study to be flawed.  He specifically noticed that Key’s hand selected the countries that showed positive correlation between fat and heart disease, while conveniently leaving out other countries that didn’t fall nicely into his hypothesis.  According to Dr. Yudkin, the data showed a much stronger correlation between sugar consumption and heart disease, than fat/cholesterol and heart disease.

Interestingly enough, thirty years after Dr. Yudkin’s critical analysis of Key’s data, Dr. Georg Mann (associate director of Framingham Study) arrived at the same conclusion.  This prompted him to take it a step further and investigate the relationship of cholesterol to heart disease.  And not surprisingly, according to his team of researchers which included many notable scientists and doctors, they found little correlation between fat/cholesterol and heart disease.(2)  After the study was concluded Mann stated that the notion of fat/cholesterol causing heart disease is “the greatest health scam of the century”

Here are more significant studies (4) that have since clearly dissociated the relationship of fat/cholesterol and heart disease:

In 1994, Journal of American Medical Association published a study that completely dissociates cholesterol level to heart disease morality for people over 70 yrs old.

A well known study in France called the Lyon Diet Heart Study (3) followed 600 people that have already have at least one heart attack.  They were all sedentary and in poor shape.  The group was divided in to two groups.  One group ate a commonly recommended high carb, low fat (low cholesterol) diet and the other group ate a diet a “Mediterranean Diet” high in healthy fats and oils along with fruits and vegetables.  The result was nothing short of amazing.  Halfway through the study the group on the “Mediterranean Diet” had a 72% decrease in coronary event and 56% decrease in mortality without any changes in their cholesterol levels.  The results were so impressive that halfway through the study, they switched everyone over to the “Mediterranean Diet”.

Possibly the most famous study came out in 2006.  It was a study about a cholesterol lowering drug called Vytorin.  The case was controversial because the study was finished two years prior, but wasn’t made public until two years later, because the results were horrible.  The drug lowered cholesterol better than other cholesterol lowering drugs like statin, but it also increased plaque build up and increased arterial wall thickening.  Both major contributors for heart disease.

Medical evidence shows that half of all people that have heart disease actually have normal cholesterol levels, and many people with a healthy heart have an elevated cholesterol level.

So now that we know that fat/cholesterol just got a real bad rep for no good reason.  The next obvious question is what really causes heart disease?  The answer depends on multiple factors which includes genetics, lifestyle, stress factors, but from a dietary stand point the biggest causation seems to be sugar and insulin. 

It’s not your imagination…sugar and insulin seems to be the culprit for pretty much everything that’s wrong with our dietary health.  Your insulin hormone can be looked at as the gate keeper to your health.  Insulin is a hormone secreted by your pancreas and it’s job is to maintain an even blood sugar level.  This is vital, since elevated blood sugar levels cause serious havoc to your body and can lead to many illnesses, including obesity, diabetes and heart disease.  The more your insulin is involved, the more likely you’re going to have health issues. 

So here’s what happens in your body after you have a meal. 

Let’s say that you just ate a typical carbohydrate rich meal with some pasta and bread.  When you eat, each food (macronutrient) gets broken down into their respective digestible components.  Protein into amino acids, carbohydrates into sugar and fat into fatty acids.  All components go through your liver first.  Your liver decides what to do with your basic components.  So, after a meal high in carbohydrate foods, your going to have a lot of sugar going to your liver.  And before it gets there, it passes by your pancreas where insulin is secreted.  The more sugar there is the more insulin is secreted by your pancreas.  And interestingly, the amount of insulin secreted allows your liver to make the necessary decision on what to do with all the sugar.  When sugar enters the liver it has three choices. 

1 - Get directly transported for immediate energy use (ie. brain)
2 - Get converted into glycogen for storage in muscles and some in the liver
3 - Convert all other excess sugar into triglycerides (fat)

As the liver is metabolizing sugar, the stimulation of insulin also triggers another metabolic process that produces cholesterol.  The cholesterol being produced is then combined with the triglycerides, made from excess sugar, to make Very Low Density Lipoproteins (VLDL).  When the triglycerides get dropped off the VLDL becomes Low Density Lipoproteins (LDL), commonly known as the “bad” cholesterol.

LDL is commonly associated with plaque build up in your arteries.  But that’s not the entire story.  LDL actually has two types, one is harmless and the other can be harmful depending on the circumstances.  Without getting into too much detail, the LDL only becomes harmful if it’s damaged through oxidation and then exposed to excessive amounts of sugar.  Again, it comes down to too much sugar.  So, if you’re cholesterol level goes up and you see you have an elevated LDL, you need to know which type of LDL is elevated.  If it’s the harmless type, you have nothing to worry about, and if it’s the other type, just make sure that your sugar consumption is low so that it doesn’t become harmful.

According to Harvard Medical School research headed by J. Michael Garziano. (5) The most significant indicator of heart disease is the ratio of triglycerides to HDL.  Their study showed people with the highest ratio (triglycerides to HDL) had sixteen times greater risk for heart attack than people with the lowest ratio.  So keep your triglycerides low and your HDL’s high, to ensure a healthy heart.

Just to clarify, since I really haven’t talked too much about fat, consuming dietary fat (except trans fat) does not increase your level of triglycerides.  And, in fact eating saturated fat is completely fine for your health, as long as you’re consuming low amounts of sugar.  But I’ll get into the whole fat subject on another day.

Sadly, even with all the studies and information indicating that fat/cholesterol isn’t what causes heart disease, and that sugar consumption is the real culprit. The NCEP is still spreading false information.  Political and financial reasons are probably the main reason behind this.  The makers of cholesterol lowering drugs sell approximately 20 billion dollars annually.  And these powerful pharmaceutical lobbyists practically own the politicians.  Even worse, the American Academy of Pediatrics is now recommending cholesterol screening for kids as young as 2 years old and treating kids with statin (cholesterol lowering drugs) as young as 8 years old. (6)

So, if you’ve been stuck on lowering your cholesterol by eating low fat foods to keep your heart healthy…it’s time that you stopped worrying so much about fat/cholesterol and start watching your sugar intake.  Since all carbohydrates break down to sugar, your best bet is to eliminate or “really” limit refined carbohydrates (grains) and stick to unrefined carbohydrate foods (vegetables and fruits with low sugar contents) that has much less impact on your insulin as well as having lower sugar content.

So here’s how sugar and insulin can increase your risk of heart disease:

• Carbohydrate foods = sugar
• Sugar increases insulin
• Insulin stimulates cholesterol
• Sugar increases triglycerides
• Cholesterol + triglycerides = VLDL
• VLDL - triglycerides = LDL
• Excess sugar can damage (possible harmful type) LDL , and initiate plaque build up
• Ratio of triglyceride to HDL is the best indicator of heart disease

And here’s the best way to prevent heart disease:

• Control your insulin levels by limiting your sugar intake to minimize triglycerides
• Limit (or eliminate) refined carbohydrate foods and consume unrefined carbohydrates instead

Did your doctor put you on a low fat, restricted diet to keep you cholesterol in check?

Did you know that cholesterol level has little to no bearing at all on the health of your heart?

What did you think about the article?  I’d love to know what you think.  Please post you comments below.

P.S.  Much of the information of this article came from the book “Living Low Carb” by Jonny Bowden Phd. CNS.  Which I highly recommend.  If you want to know how nutrition affects your body, this book is a must.  Please note that I’m not affiliated with him or the product in anyway, it’s just my own personal recommendation.

References:

(1) “Coronary Heart Disease in Seven Countries”, Circulation 41, suppl. 1 (1970): 1-211
(2) Coronary Heart Disease: The Dietary Sense and Nonsense - London:Janus, 1993
(3) Michel de Lorgeril, et al., “Mediterranean Diet, Traditinal Risk Factors, and the Rate of Cardiovascular Complications After Myocardial Infarction: Final Report of the Lyon Diet Heart Study,”  Circulation 99 (1999): 779 - 785
(4) “Living Low Carb Life” - revised edition, Jonny Bowden PhD, CNS
(5) “Fasting Triglycerides, High Density Lipoprotein and Risk of Myocardial Infarction”  Circulation 96 (1997): 2520 - 2525
(6) Stephen R. Daniels, Frank R. Greer, and the Committee in Nutrition, “Lipid Screening and cardiovascular health in childhood,” Pediatrics 122, no. 1 (July 2008):198 - 208

As the saying goes…you are what you eat.

There are 3 major categories that all foods can be divided into.  These are also known as macronutrients.  Macronutrients are your proteins, carbohydrates and fats.  We eat a combination of all three on a daily basis, but did you know that only 2 are needed for you to survive and they also happen to be the most effective in helping you lose weight?  And one in particular is absolutely necessary if you want to burn off your stubborn fat and transform your body.  Unfortunately, most of us have been gravely misinformed about how each macronutrient affects our body, which is why weight gain has become such a perpetual problem.

Each macronutrient provides something to your body.  Protein provides structure for your cells, carbohydrate provides immediate energy for activities and fat provides long term energy for physical activities as well as energy to run all of your metabolic processes.  But protein and fats are the only two macronutrients essential for your body’s survival.  This is why when you’re trying to lose weight and cutting calories it’s vital that you take in sufficient amounts of protein and fat. 

In particular, it’s vital that you consume enough protein on a daily basis in order for you to sustain (or build) a lean body while trying to lose weight.  A minimum daily protein intake is between 0.35 - 0.5 grams per lean body weight, and that’s just enough to keep your present “structural” integrity…if you will.  And that’s for a sedentary individual. 

As your activity level increases so should your protein intake.  The reason being that the more active you are the more muscles you breakdown and repairing it requires you to have more protein.  It’s like building a house, if something happened to the house while your building it and some of the structure was damaged, you would need more material to fix the damage.  Without the necessary building material, you wouldn’t be able to fix the house. 

The same principle applies to your body.  This is especially the case if you’re doing activities that require more force and hence more muscle recruitment, like lifting weights, jumping and sprinting.  More muscle you use the more protein you need to repair it. 

So how much protein do you need?  The exact amount will vary according to each individual and their activity levels, but below is a general rule of thumb for your protein consumption. 

In order to calculate the amount of protein, you need to consume, the first thing you must do is get your lean body mass.  Your lean body mass is your body fat (weight) subtracted by your current bodyweight.  And in order to get that, you need to calculate your body fat percentage. 

There are a number of ways to get your body fat percentage.  The most accurate being the hydrostatic weighing, where you’re required to submerge your entire body underwater for a given amount of time, repeated 4 - 5 times.  The obvious downside to this is that it’s not readily available for everyone. 

The next common method is the skin calipers.  The downside to this method, is that the accuracy of the result is directly correlated to the person administering it.  And again, not everyone has access to it. 

The next method has recently gained in popularity, simply because of the ease of use.  It’s electrical impedance.  This is a machine where you either hold on to it or stand on it with your bare feet and it sends an electrical pulse through your body to figure out how much body fat you have.  The downside to it, is that the accuracy depends on the machine.  Some machines are quite accurate, where as many of the portable units that are sold in stores have a much less accurate reading.  The range of accuracy is too wide (at least for now) to make it a reliable source. 

Last, but not least is the military calculation method.  This was developed by Hodgdon and Beckett in 1984 and later updated by Hodgdon and Friedl in 1999 at the Naval Research Center.  The equation was developed using their large statistical data in order to help develop uniforms, weapons and other related equipment.  The equation requires you to measure your height, waist and neck circumference for men and height, waist, hip and neck circumference for women.  The equation is given below.  It’s a complicated equation, but according to the study, the equation was chosen because the outcome closely represented that of the hydrostatic weighing.  For those of you that can’t be bothered with the equation, you can check out the chart here where you can look up your body fat percentage according to your height and the calculated circumference value**.  Note: The chart does not give fat percentages for men under 9% body fat and for women under 19% body fat.

**Circumference Value = waist circumference + hip circumference – neck circumference (in inches)

**Circumference Value = abdomen circumference – neck circumference (in inches)

The equation:

Men: % body fat = 86.010 x log10(abdomen - neck) - 70.041 x log10(height) + 36.76

Women: % body fat = 163.205 x log10(abdomen + hip - neck) - 97.684 x log10(height) - 78.387

After you find out what your body fat percentage is calculate your body fat mass by multiplying your weight with the body fat percentage.

Eg. body fat percentage is 19% and your current body weight is 140 lb.  140 x 0.19 =  26.6 lb of body fat.

After you get your body fat mass, you can take that value and subtract it from your current body weight to get your lean body mass.  140 - 26.6 =  113 lb (round up or down to the closest whole number)

So let’s assume that your lean body mass is 113 lb.  Here’s the break down of your recommended daily protein consumption according to activity levels.

• Sedentary - 0.35 - 5 grams per lean body mass: 113 x (0.35 to 0.5) = 40 to 57 grams of protein a day
• Moderately - Active 0.6 - 0.8 grams per lean body mass: 113 x (0.6 - 0.8) = 68 to 90 grams of protein a day
• Active - 0.8 - 1.0 grams per lean body mass: 113 x (0.8 - 1.0) = 90 to 113 grams of protein a day
• Very Active - 1.0 and higher per lean body mass: 113 x (1.0 or higher) = 113 grams or more protein a day

These are just ball park figures and each individual amount will change depending on their situation, but it’s definitely a good place to start.

Since we’re talking about proteins, and why it’s so important to your body…let’s take a closer look. 

Protein is composed of a chain of amino acids.  There are probably more than a hundred different amino acids that are available on this planet, but only 20 are necessary for our body.  These amino acids are classified as essential and non-essential amino acids.  There are 10 non-essential amino acids which are amino acids that your body can make on its own and there are 10 essential amino acids which are ones your body can’t make.  The following is a list of essential and non-essential amino acids:

Essential
Histidine
Isoleucine
Leucine
Lysine
Methionine
Phenylalanine
Threonine
Tryptophan
Valine

Non-essential
Alanine
Arginine
Asparagine
Aspartic Acid
Cysteine
Glutamic Acid
Glutamine
Glycine
Proline
Serine
Tryosine

The essential amino acids has to come from protein in your diet, and the best source is animal protein that come from foods such as red meat, poultry, fish, eggs and dairy.  These foods provide “complete” proteins since all 10 essential amino acids are available.  Plant proteins on the other hand do not provide all of the essential amino acids (with the exception of soy).  These are also known as “incomplete” proteins and are found in foods such as vegetables, legumes, brown rice, nuts and seeds. 

Foods with “incomplete” proteins contain different combinations of essential amino acids and if you combine the right types of (plants) foods, you can get all of the necessary 10 essential amino acids.  However, that being said, the bioavailability of these plant proteins are not nearly as good as animal protein and so unless you’re a vegetarian, it’s best to get your essential amino acids from foods that provide “complete” protein like red meat, poultry, fish, eggs and dairy. 

Benefits of protein

Outside of providing muscular development and supporting other structural integrity in your body, protein plays a major role in losing weight as well.  Consuming enough protein suppresses your hunger.  That’s one major reason why high protein, high fat and low carb diets work so well when it comes to losing weight (at least initially).  It’s much harder to over eat protein rich meals, since it makes you full faster and keeps you full longer, there by reducing your total caloric intake.

Consuming sufficient protein combined with ample healthy fats allows you to curb your (refined) carbohydrate intake as well.  Consuming refined carbs is the biggest reason for gaining weight along with a slew of other health problems.  I won’t get into the details in this article, but it basically boils down to insulin.  The more refined carbs you eat, the more your insulin rises and the fatter you get…it’s as simple as that.  You can cut out refined carbs and replace it with unrefined carbs like vegetables and fruits.  These foods have much less impact on your insulin, so it won’t increase your fat accumulation.

The flip side of replacing refined carbs with unrefined carbs is that they are very low in calories, which is a good thing from the stand point of losing weight, but calorie deficit also makes your hungrier.  Uncontrollable hunger is the number one reason why diets fail.  So satiety is a must if your want to stick to eating healthy unrefined carbs, and this is where protein can really help.  You can shift some of the caloric deficit by consuming more protein, which should also increase your satiety, since protein suppresses hunger and keeps you full longer.  In addition, digesting protein takes more energy (process known as thermogenesis) than digesting (refined) carbs.  Therefore, you burn more calories, curb your appetite and control insulin levels all by eating protein.

As mentioned earlier, your body technically does not (technically) need carbohydrates to survive.  Remember, carbohydrate provides energy, but our body has an amazing ability to turn fat and even some protein into the same basic components, that carbs breakdown into, to provide energy.  The process is called gluconeogenesis, and it converts other non-carbohydrate food sources into energy in the absence of sugar, and the best part about this process is that it forces your body to burn fat as the primarily energy source instead of sugar, so you can burn more calories from your stored fat.  Now don’t get me wrong, I believe that unrefined carbohydrate is vital to a well balanced and healthy diet, but the benefits from the foods like fruits and vegetables don’t necessary come from their sugar content, but rather from other micronutrients, like vitamins, and anti-oxidative qualities that they provide instead. 

Needless to say it’s important to consume enough protein (and fat, but I’ll get into that in a separate article) if you want to lose weight, stay lean and have a healthy diet. 

So here’s the quick summary:

• Protein is made of a chain of amino acids which are essentially building blocks for your body
• Protein is necessary to build lean muscle
• Protein and fat are both essential for survival (Technically, carbohydrates are not)
• There are 20 amino acids that your body needs for survival - 10 essential amino acids and 10 non-essential amino acids
• Your body can make the non-essential amino acids, but it can’t make the essential amino acids.  Therefore, all essential amino acids must come from dietary sources
• The best source of protein comes from animal protein, since it provides all 10 essential amino acids - also know as complete protein
• Plant protein does not provide all 10 essential amino acids - also known as incomplete protein - however, you can still acquire all 10 essential amino acids by combining the right types of (plant) foods
• You should consume 0.35 to 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass, depending on your activity level
• Diet rich in protein and fat allows you to reduce or eliminate (refined) carbohydrate consumption, thereby helping you control insulin levels and lose weight
• Protein helps suppress hunger
• Protein burns more calories through digestion (thermogenesis)

Are you consuming enough protein in your diet?

Did you know that consuming protein can help you lose weight?

I’d love to know your thoughts on the article.  Please post your comments below.

There really is nothing better than a good nights sleep!  After you wake up from a deep restful sleep, your mind seems clearer, your body feels better and even your day seems to go better.  Well, your not just imagining it…it’s true.  Your body’s chemistry is greatly affected by sleep.  In fact sleep plays a vital part in managing your body’s hormones…the same hormones that also control your metabolic processes responsible for weight loss.  Believe it or not, sleep plays a huge part in weight loss.  Numerous studies have found a direct correlation between weight gain and lack of sleep.  Depriving yourself of adequate sleep can alter your hormones and make losing weight much more difficult than it should be. 

“Sleep loss disrupts a complex and interwoven series of metabolic and hormonal processes and may be a contributing factor to obesity,” says John Winkelman, MD, PhD, medical director of the Sleep Health Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

The major hormones disrupted by sleep deficit are leptin, ghrelin, cortisol, insulin and growth hormone.  All of these hormones play a key role in weight loss and maintenance through controlling appetite, cravings and dictating metabolic rates of sugar and fat. 

Here’s a brief summary of the role each hormone plays in your body and how lack of sleep can negatively affect you. 

(1) The most significant hormone of all may be leptin.  Leptin is commonly known as the appetite suppressing hormone.  It’s found in the fat cells of your body and communicates with your brain, specifically your hypothalamus, which controls your hunger, core body temperature and other important metabolic functions.  The mechanism of leptin is quite complicated and not completely understood, but research indicates that one key function of leptin is that it senses the size of fat cells and when it reaches a certain size it sends a signal to your brain to initiate fat metabolism.  So, in normal situations the amount of leptin in your body correlates to your hunger.  Lower leptin levels trigger hunger and higher leptin levels suppresses hunger. 

Studies have indicated that lack of sleep is one way your leptin levels can drop.  Lower leptin levels causes you to get hungry, regardless of how many calories you’ve consumed.  And in addition it increases cravings for refined carbohydrate foods like baked goods, bread, pasta and sweets.  We already know that overconsumption of highly refined carbs can make your body more susceptible to becoming insulin resistant but it also has the same effect on leptin as well.  Especially dangerous are highly refined sugars such as high fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup has been shown to promote leptin resistance.  When your body becomes resistant to leptin, it causes you to overeat since your body needs more leptin before it sends a signal to your brain to suppress hunger.  And since leptin is produced from your fat cells, more fat cells are needed to produce more leptin, causing a vicious cycle of overfeeding and over accumulation of fat.  For this reason, obese people have a significantly higher level of leptin than normal. 

(2) Ghrelin is another hormone that controls your appetite.  Similar to leptin, ghrelin is also produced outside of the brain, mostly in the stomach.  Before you eat it’s level increases and sends a signal that triggers hunger.  After you finish eating the level drops which ceases your appetite.  Hence, controlling ghrelin levels can help control your appetite levels and aid in weight loss.  Believe it or not, one way to do is by getting enough sleep.  Studies have found that lack of sleep increases ghrelin levels, making you hungrier and more susceptible to over eating.  Another way is to eat plenty of protein. 

According to Dr. Karen Foster-Schubert of the U of Washington School of Medicine.  “Protein consumption resulted in the greatest suppression of ghrelin over a long period and, interestingly, consumption of carbohydrates resulted in strong ghrelin suppression initially, although subsequent ghrelin levels rebounded well above baseline.”

(3) Insulin is the hormone that controls your blood sugar levels by managing sugar metabolism.  A properly functioning insulin is vital for weight loss as well as achieving optimum health.  We’ve talked in length about the effects of high levels of insulin caused by insulin insensitivity, how it stimulates hunger, increases cravings for refined carbohydrates foods and increases fat accumulation…all leading to possible obesity, diabetes and even heart disease.  However, low levels of insulin can also cause negative effects, such as increased appetite, poor sugar metabolism and hypoglycemia.  Low levels of insulin can be brought on by sleep deprivation…although not severe…if repeated continually the large spikes and falls in your insulin can bring about insulin insensitivity.  But this can easily be avoided by getting plenty of sleep as well.   

(4) Cortisol is a typically known as the “stress” hormone.  It’s produced in response to acute or chronic stress.  It’s part of our survival mechanism and is vital in acute situations,  where your body needs to be ready and alert to protect yourself “fight” or escape “flight” from dangerous situations.  It does do by stimulating a cascade of metabolic processes needed in the fight or flight response.  Luckily for us, we aren’t faced with life or death situations anymore, but more often than not our stresses have become chronic in nature, like dealing with problems at work, financial situations, relationship issues etc.  In cases where   cortisol is constantly produced, it becomes detrimental to your health…and that includes weight gain.  Along with too much stress, not getting enough sleep, can also cause your cortisol levels to rise and result in increased fat deposition…especially around your belly. 

(5) Growth Hormone, as the name suggests, plays a key role in the “development” of muscles and bones.  It also helps control protein, fat and carbohydrate metabolism.  It helps breakdown protein into amino acids required to build lean muscles.  It also helps release stored fat to be utilized for energy and plays a supporting role in the complex metabolic process of glucose.  But for all intent and purposes growth hormone plays a major role in building muscle and burning fat.  Having sufficient amounts of growth hormone greatly enhances your body’s ability to gain lean muscle while burn fat.  There are many factors that influence levels of growth hormone including stress, exercise and nutrition as well as sleep.  Not getting adequate amounts of sleep can rob you of precious growth hormone and make losing fat much more difficult.
 
So, inorder to keep your hormones from spinning out of control, it’s important to get enough sleep.  How much sleep depends on each individual, but in general 7 - 8 hours is recommended.  One way to find out how much your body needs to sleep, is by not setting your alarm and see when your body wakes up naturally.  You’ll have to do this for a few days in a role and go to bed at approximately the same time each night in order to find out.  If you can’t afford to sleep as much as your body naturally needs, you can take naps during the day (20 - 30 minutes) or make up for your sleep deficit on the weekends.  Either way, if you want to maximize your health and weight loss potential, make sure you get enough sleep.

If you’re still sleep deprived and can’t seem to get enough sleep on a regular basis. Here’s a few additional tips you can implement to help you combat some of the hormonal disruptions.

• Avoid refined carbs, especially foods with high fructose corn syrup in them.  Instead, consume unrefined carbohydrate foods.  It’s best to combine it with some protein and fats in order to minimize insulin spike.
• Consume enough protein in each meal.  High protein meals have been known to suppress appetite and keep you satisfied longer. Exercise regularly, especially short duration high intensity exercises which help increase growth hormones production.  In addition exercise helps you sleep better and helps manage your stress as well.
• Learn to take time out for yourself.  Allow a little time each a day to implement some type of relaxation technique to manage your stress.  It doesn’t have to be anything extensive, it can be as simple as deep breathing.  Trying doing it for 10 mins, you’ll be amazed at how refreshed you’ll feel afterwards.

Lastly, if you have trouble sleeping here’s a few tips you can try as recommended by the National Sleep Foundation:

• Don’t go to bed feeling hungry, but don’t eat a big meal right before bedtime.
• Exercise regularly. However, do so at least 3 hours before bedtime.
• Avoid caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol in the late afternoon and evening.
• Establish relaxing pre-sleep rituals, such as a warm bath or a few minutes of reading.
• Create a pleasant sleep environment. Make it as dark and quiet as possible.
• If you can’t sleep, don’t stay in bed fretting. After 30 minutes, go to another room and involve yourself in a relaxing activity until you feel sleepy.

Are you getting enough sleep?

Do you think that your chronic sleep deprivation is affecting your health and weight loss efforts?

I’d love to know your thoughts.  So please leave a comment below.

Time may be the most important aspect in our lives.  It keeps ticking away no matter what we do.  It’s what we live by, it’s our guideline.  It keeps us organized and on schedule.  There’s 24 hours in a day, most of us work 40 hours (or more) a week, we divide our day up into hourly increments and so it’s no surprise that we judge things based on time. 

If someone worked 8 hours, you automatically assume that person did more work than someone that worked 4 hours…right?  The problem is, that assumption neglects a very important component…quality.  Quality can’t be defined by time…in fact, more often than not quality has an inverse relation to time.  You’re more likely to perform higher quality of work in a shorter amount of time.  And the longer you work, the more likely your quality declines.  And this holds true for fitness as well. 

It may come as a surprise, but working out longer isn’t always good for you, and it doesn’t mean you’re going to lose more weight either.  In fact, it can stop you from losing weight all together.  There’s reason to believe that your body wasn’t designed to exercise more than a certain amount a day and doing more can actually be more harmful. 

So if you’re still stuck in the mind set, that you need to workout out longer so you can burn more calories…you’ve been going down the wrong path and it’ll only lead you to more frustrations.

Quality over quantity.  Save precious time by learning to work with your body, so you can lose weight easier and more efficiently and achieve optimum health and fitness at the same time.  Believe it or not, it’s much easier than your think.

If you look at how our evolutionary “hunter and gatherer” ancestors lived, their bodies were used efficiently as possible…since they didn’t have any energy to waste.  Their days most likely consisted of a lot of walking, looking and gathering for food and intermittent spurts of high level activity in pursuit of an animal during the hunt or perhaps escaping from predators.  It’s highly unlikely that they performed moderately to highly intense activities for long periods of time, since it would require too much energy to be depleted.  And it’s interesting to note, that our energy systems are divided into three distinct levels which correlate directly to duration and intensity level of activities.

Here’s a simplified look at the different energy systems our body utilizes:

• Phosphate Energy System - This is what fuels our quick spurts of activity that require the largest amounts of energy in the shorted amount of time, such as sprints or lifting heavy objects.  The activity requires your muscles to produce as much force as possible in the shortest amount of time.  It’s the quickest source of energy, but only lasts 10 - 20 seconds at a time, before it gets depleted.  And It take 3 - 5 minutes before it gets replenished again.
• Glycogen Energy System - Glycogen is glucose stored in your muscles that’s used for energy during activities performed at moderate to high intensity activities.  The length of time glycogen can fuel your body, depends on the intensity level of the physical activity.  For instance an activity like the marathon can deplete your glycogen stores in 2 hours or less.  Once glycogen is depleted, your body will fatigue very quickly making it completely insufficient.  Many endurance athletes describe it as “hitting the wall”.  Once your body completely depletes the glycogen stores, it takes about 24 hours for your body to replenish normal glycogen levels from consuming carbohydrates to converting it into glycogen for storage.
• Fat Oxidation Energy System - The fat stored in your body is utilized to fuel your body.  This is done at low activity levels such as walking.  Since fat source is abundant, it’s your body’s primary source of fuel for all of your metabolic processes as well.  Unlike glycogen, where it can get replenished by consuming carbohydrates, fat doesn’t get stored from eating fat.  Fat accumulation occurs when there is an excess amount of energy that doesn’t get utilized by your body.

The glycogen energy system is an efficient system as long as you have carbohydrate foods to replenish your body.  Which leads me to the next question…how much carbohydrate foods were available to our “hunting and gathering” ancestors.  We can’t be sure, but we can speculate.  It’s safe to assume that all available carbohydrate foods during those times were unrefined carbohydrate foods.  Unrefined carbohydrate foods contain much higher fiber content and much less sugar content, which is why it’s so healthy - since it doesn’t affect your insulin.  But when you look at it from an energy (calorie) perspective, it’s not a very good source of energy.  In fact, the combination of fiber and low sugar content would make it difficult for them to consume enough unrefined carbohydrate foods to be able to replenish the necessary glycogen depletion, if they used too much glycogen. 

So it would make sense that if you don’t have enough readily available carbohydrate foods that would easily replenish your glycogen levels, you’d be better off conserving your energy throughout the day and only give the necessary extra effort when needed like hunting or escaping.  Which is what our “hunter and gatherer” ancestors seemed to have done.  Another possible reason that glycogen system may have been used more sparingly or perhaps only used for short durations, even if it was utilized on a frequent basis.

So if the glycogen system wasn’t frequently utilized by our “hunter and gatherer” ancestors, maybe it’s not designed to be used the way we’re using it?

Nowadays, the glycogen energy system is the most commonly used energy system in our body when it comes to exercising.  Why?  Because many of us are (still) under the assumption that working out for longer periods of time means more calories burned and hence more weight loss.  However, working out longer requires more energy (calories) from glycogen.  In fact, the more glycogen stores you have available, the longer and harder you can work out. 

Have you heard the term “carbo loading”?  It became popular back in the 70‘s when long distance running became hugely popular.  It requires you to eat lots of carbs, usually refined carbs like pasta and bread, to try and increase the amount of glycogen storage so you can have more energy to run faster and longer.  Not surprisingly, at the time the health professionals (doctors, nutritionists, fitness experts) in the U.S. were claiming that daily cardiovascular exercises done at moderate intensities along with consuming 6 - 11 servings of refined carbohydrate foods like bread, grains, pasta and rice per day was the best way to prevent heart disease, weight loss and optimum health.  So as a result everyone started running and doing other forms of long moderate cardiovascular exercises and hence “carbo loading” became a popular practice, especially prior to competition.

Interestingly enough, since that time, the incidence of heart disease has not decreased at all…in fact there are now direct correlations of heart disease to obesity and diabetes, along with the metabolic syndrome, which have all risen dramatically.  So much for healthy recommended consumption of 6 - 11 servings of refined carbohydrate foods like bread, grains, pasta and rice per day!...although the AHA (American Heart Association) would make you believe otherwise. If you want to know more about it, there are many more eye opening facts stated in a book called “Good Calories, Bad Calories” written by Gary Taubes, which I highly recommend.

So, is there a significant link between overuse of the glycogen energy system, long duration exercises and (refined) carbohydrate foods?  In my personal experience…I believe so.

Here’s another take on it. 

Long duration of moderately intense exercising uses glycogen almost exclusively as your energy source.  And when you train this way, you’re essentially making your body more efficient at utilizing and burning glucose for energy.  Which basically means that you’ll be able to perform the same amount of work with less energy as you get more “fit”.  That may be good from a performance perspective, but if your goal is to lose weight and get lean…it just means you’ll have to work harder and longer to burn the same amount of fuel (calories).  And let’s remember that your burning off glucose…not fat.

Since these types of workouts can significantly deplete your glycogen levels, you’ll need to consume carbohydrate foods in order to replenish it.  Now it’s best to consume unrefined carbohydrate foods, but as I mentioned above, the high fiber content and lower sugar content makes it difficult to consume enough food to replenish your depleted glycogen levels.  Now being a former endurance athlete myself, I can speak from experience that there’s no way that I could keep up my training by eating just fruits and veggies.  You need refined carbohydrates to be able to replenish your energy and recover adequately. 

Which brings me to the next important point that often gets overlooked…insulin reaction.  Consuming refined carbs will spike up your insulin.  No matter how much you workout or how “fit” you may be, if you eat refined carbohydrate foods, your insulin will spike and eventually can lead to insulin insensitivity.  Insulin insensitivity is the number one reason for gaining weight, obesity and diabetes, and as stated earlier, there are studies now that indicate insulin plays a major role in causing heart disease as well.  Now, you may be thinking that you’re not affected, because you’re not overweight, or perhaps you feel that you’re in good shape from all the training you do.  But what you’re not able to see is the havoc insulin spiking causes to all of your metabolic processes.  It’s what you can’t see or feel that’s often the most dangerous to your health.

So here’s what I see happening: 

• Working out longer at moderate intensity causes your body to solely utilize the glycogen energy system.
• As you get more fit, you become more efficient at burning glycogen for fuel, which means you can go longer without using as much energy.
• This perpetuates a vicious cycle of having to workout longer as you get more fit and lose more weight
• And the harder and longer you workout the more you need to consume refined carbohydrate foods to replenish your depleted glycogen levels so you can keep up your “fitness” regimen.
• The more refined carbohydrate foods you take in the more your insulin spikes and eventually can lead to insulin insensitivity.
• Insulin insensitivity can cause weight gain, obesity, diabetes and even heart disease.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that you stop doing long duration exercises at moderate intensities all together…just that you decrease the frequency and change up your durations, intensities and activities more often.  I think doing longer duration exercises once or twice a week is more than sufficient.  This way you have plenty of time to recover and replenish your glycogen levels without having to resort to consuming refined carbohydrate foods. 

I also recommend doing more short duration high intensity activities.  As I’ve written many times before, it’s the best way to burn fat and get lean.  Also, shorter duration prevents your body from having to dip into the glycogen storage as much, making it much easier to replenish after working out.  This will allow you to keep eating unrefined carbohydrate foods without worrying about not having enough energy to workout.  Highly intense short workouts also promotes more efficient fat utilization by increasing your metabolism, so you can burn more calories throughout the day. 

Lastly, instead of performing moderately intense activities, I would recommend doing more low level activities instead and switch your body’s emphasis from the glycogen energy system to the fat oxidation energy system to maximize your health and weight loss capabilities.  Walking is a great low level activity that utilizes your fat-oxidation energy system so you can burn more fat. The more low level activity you perform throughout the day the more fat you’ll burn.  As I wrote in last week’s article, just by implementing walking into your daily activity and minimizing sitting by 2 hours a day, you can burn an additional 350 calories a day or a pound of fat in less than 10 days.

Here’s a quick summary:

• Decrease the frequency of longer duration exercises to once or twice a week.
• If your body requires you to consume refined carbohydrate foods in order to refuel and keep up your fitness regimen, you’re doing too much.
• You should be able to eat unrefined carbohydrates and have plenty of energy to perform the activities/workouts.
• It’s better to workout shorter at higher intensities if you want to lose fat, get lean and achieve optimum health.
• Implement as much low level activity, such as walking, as part of your daily activity in addition to short intense workouts to really accelerate your fat burning capabilities.

Are you having to consume refined carbs to recover fully and keep up your activities?

Have you ever thought that what you’re doing may actually be doing you more harm than good?

What are your thoughts on the article?  I’d love to hear what you think, so please post your comments below.

There are many little things you can do to help improve your health and fitness.  And I’m not talking about just exercising and eating well…that’s a given.  I’m talking about small simple things, like taking the stairs instead of the escalator, or getting off the bus one stop earlier and walking the rest of the way to work.

Just simple things that take a little extra effort on your part, but it adds up to a lot, especially if you keep doing them on a regular basis. 

Well, just as important, there are little things that you need to avoid, that can add up to a whole lot of bad.  I’m not talking about things like avoiding sugars or fried foods.  I’m talking about even simpler things that can amount to a profound difference.

Well, there’s one thing in particular that you need to avoid and it’s quite easy to do.  The remarkable thing about it, is that studies have indicated that avoiding this one simple thing can help protect you from heart disease, help you burn more fat and increase your health and promote longevity.  As they say it’s the little things that count!

Relatively speaking, it takes a while to gain weight and lose that lean, fit body you used to have.  Those love handles and belly fat doesn’t come overnight.  It’s a cookie here and an extra beer there.  Just a little bit at a time and before you know it…one day you wake up and look at yourself in the mirror and you don’t recognize the person staring back at you.  The lean and fit replaced by the soft and plump.  How can I gain all this weight?  And the truth is it takes months, if not years for you to actually get this way.  You just don’t think about it, because in your mind nothing’s really changed.  And nothing significant has changed…it’s just an accumulation of little things.  Little things like sitting.  Maybe you sit at work a little longer, maybe you commute a little longer, which means you sit in your car, bus or the train a little longer, maybe you sit a little longer watching TV.  Whatever the reason may be, just sitting 2 - 2.5 hours longer each day can add up to a difference between being overweight and not being overweight.  At least, that is according to a study done by the Endocrine Research Unit from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN. 

Here’s what the study said.

Obesity occurs when energy intake exceeds energy expenditure. Humans expend energy through purposeful exercise and through changes in posture and movement that are associated with the routines of daily life [called nonexercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT)]. To examine NEAT’s role in obesity, we recruited 10 lean and 10 mildly obese sedentary volunteers and measured their body postures and movements every half-second for 10 days. Obese individuals were seated, on average, 2 hours longer per day than lean individuals. Posture allocation did not change when the obese individuals lost weight or when lean individuals gained weight, suggesting that it is biologically determined. If obese individuals adopted the NEAT-enhanced behaviors of their lean counterparts, they might expend an additional 350 calories (kcal) per day.

During the study, all the people involved were fed meals prepared by the clinic in order to maintain their current weight.  Each meal consisted of 45% carbohydrates, 35% fat and 20% protein.  All people involved were asked to maintain their normal daily activities.  So everything was identical between the overweight group and the lean group, except for their daily normal activities levels or NEAT.

NEAT, which stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis, is the energy expended throughout the day outside of purposeful activities like exercising.  This means standing, walking and anything that involves some type of voluntary muscle activation.  So technically, everything but sitting and sleeping is NEAT.

It’s amazing to think that just 2 hours of sitting a day can add up to so much.  And really, 2 hours isn’t much if you break it down through out the entire day.  That’s like an extra 15 minutes of sitting to and from work, which is an additional 30 minutes.  Add to that, an additional 1 hour of work…and maybe an additional 30 minutes of sitting in front of the TV winding down after a long day at work.  And there you have it, an additional 2 hours of being seated or 350 calories less that you expend. 

350 calories a day…that’s 2450 calories a week or 10500 calories a month.  There’s 3500 calories per pound of fat, which means if you’re expending 350 calories less per day, it’s equivalent to gaining 1 pound of fat every 10 days.  And if you keep it up, that’s 126000 less calories you burn per year or 36 pounds of fat you gain in one year!  Assuming everything else is kept even, you’re looking at an ever expanding waistline. 

These statistics go beyond just gaining weight as well.  Other studies have indicated that the more you sit the higher your chances are of getting serious diseases like diabetes, metabolic syndrome and heart disease.

The truth of the matter is that many of these extended sitting time, may be out of your control.  If you commute long distances, that’s something you can’t change.  You may not be able to change the long hours you work or the number of hours you spend sitting in airplanes traveling for work.  But what you can change is everything outside of that.  And the easiest and most effective place to start is by standing for longer periods of time.  Yep, you heard it right…standing!  I know it sounds odd, to think that standing makes any difference at all but hey…did you think that sitting 2 hours more per day would make you fat?

Here’s an interesting study done on lipoprotein lipase in rats.  LPL is a fat burning enzyme that helps dictate whether fat is deposited in your body or not.  According to this study, muscle inactivity suppresses lipoprotein lipase, but light voluntary muscle contractions like standing activates it.  So essentially, by sitting you’re not only expending less calories, but you’re also stopping the fat burning process at the same time…talk about a double whammy!

Another study suggests that standing should be promoted in order to combat obesity. Here’s their reasoning:

Obese individuals appear to exhibit an innate tendency to be seated for 2.5 hours per day more than sedentary lean counterparts. If obese individuals were to adopt the lean “NEAT-o-type,” they could potentially expend an additional 350 kcal per day. Obesity was rare a century ago and the human genotype has not changed over that time. Thus, the obesity epidemic may reflect the emergence of a chair-enticing environment to which those with an innate tendency to sit, did so, and became obese. To reverse obesity, we need to develop individual strategies to promote standing and ambulating time by 2.5 hours per day and also re-engineer our work, school, and home environments to render active living the option of choice

Definitely an interesting perspective.  I never thought of anyone having an innate tendency to sit.  But it does make sense.  I think being inactive perpetuates more sedentary behavior and so being active should (theoretically) promote more active behavior.  And so from that perspective, standing can promote less sedentary lifestyles and increase NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) so that people can expend additional calories through out the day.

There’s another important benefit to standing as well…and that’s posture and preventing low back pain.  I’ve mentioned in the past article about the negative effects of sitting on your low back, and by avoiding excessive lumbar flexion (bending of your low back) from sitting, you can significantly reduce the incidences of low back pain.

So by implementing standing more often, you can help maintain a healthy weight while preventing unnecessary low back pain.  Not bad for something so easy. 

So how can you implement more standing in your day? 

The easiest way is to stand at work.  I personally stand when I work.  I find it extremely beneficial for my posture, low back and it gives me energy.  It prevents me from slumping forward and falling asleep.  If you can change up your work station so you can stand when you work…it would be very beneficial. 

Now, if that’s not possible, then make sure to include frequent mini breaks at work so you can stand up and walk around as often as possible.  The more you can be upright on your feet, the better it is for your weight and health.

Another thing that you may want to do, is to stand more at home.  You can stand and work on your computer to answer emails, pay bills and even hang out and chat with your family.  You can stand by the kitchen counter talking or drinking tea while enjoying the company of your friend and family. 

You can also minimize TV time.  Nowadays, watching TV’s mostly a waste of time anyways.  Instead, do something more active like going for walks or I’ve even recommended doing a gentle stretching exercises or easy yoga movements to help your body wind down after a long day at work.  And, if you have a favorite TV show that you can’t go without, you can always Tivo it (or use any other commercial free recording mediums) and watch it in less time, so you don’t have to literally waste your time sitting through commercials. 

Lastly, as I stated in the beginning of this article, if you want to effectively lose weight…along with your daily workouts and your healthy eating, try and include as much walking into your day as you can.  Take the stairs instead of the elevator, or perhaps you can walk to do your errands, or arrive at work 10 minutes earlier so you can walk around the block a couple of times before going in.  There are plenty of ways to implement walking into your daily routine.

So here’s a summary of what you can do, to effectively help increase your calorie burn, lose weight and achieve better health.

• Minimize sitting.  The less you sit the better off you’ll be, to keep weight off, prevent low back pain and maintain optimum health.
• Replace sitting by standing.  Even light muscle contractions like standing can activate fat burning enzymes and help burn more fat.  If you can stand at work, even better.
• Walk as often as possible.  If there’s an opportunity to walk during the day…do it.  The more you can walk the higher your NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) and the faster you’ll lose weight, as well as helping prevent serious diseases like diabetes and heart disease.

Have you noticed over the years that you’re spending more time sitting?

Have you noticed a slow but gradual decline of daily activities in the last few years?

What do you think about the article?  I’d love to know your thoughts, so please post your comments below.