Fat Loss, Pain & Metabolism

Posted on October 8, 2011 by jghethe

Welcome back!

If you’re a regular reader of this blog then it’s a sure bet that you are either looking to take back control of your body or are at least pursuing a leaner, more toned body.

It also means that you know that I believe that reconditioning or at least elevating your metabolism is the keyto achieving this.

Body Weight works well...

There are many definitions of metabolism the one I like is: “Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that happen in living organisms to sustain life.”

However if you are carrying too much body fat, or want to develop more muscle and become stronger and fitter, not to mention healthier – then simply sustaining life isn’t the goal to aim for. Just surviving shouldn’t be your standard. Changing how you look & feel, what you eat, how (& how often) you move basically moving past mere survival towards thriving, growing, exceeding, and surpassing – this is a worthy goal.

It is in fact a life goal.

Becoming fitter & leaner is as simple (& as complex) as the fact that the higher level your metabolism functions, the better become your results as far as fat loss and maintaining a slim, trim body. Notice I didn’t say the more efficient your metabolism becomes…(although it will of course do so)…in many ways we want our metabolism to stay somewhat irregular because once your body become efficient at anything homeostasis sets in and your body fights against change…

It is better to think in terms of elevating your metabolism by manipulating the components of it that we can exert influence over. Of course once you’ve achieved your desired fat loss / lean body then keep doing what got you there and create a new metabolic set point – this way you co-opt your body’s desire for homeostasis to work for your goal, not against it…

Metabolism is complex (& simple)

So let’s revisit some of the strategies that you can utilise to make your metabolism work at a higher rate for you…

Human metabolism can be broadly broken down into two parts: catabolism and anabolism. Catabolism is concerned with tearing things down – it is the burning of calories, the digestion of food, the breaking down of body tissues for energy or as a precursor to rebuilding (think sore muscles after a hard work out – for the sake of simplicity the muscle soreness you feel is associated with catabolic processes). It is essential the processes whereby your body fuels your cells with energy by breaking down available fuel sources.

Without the catabolic part of metabolism we would not have the energy to provide the energy to our muscles that is needed to stand, sit, move, breathe and generally create movement. It is often talked about in a negative sense but without catabolism we would just be inert sacks of chemicals & minerals.

The other side of this simplified metabolic coin is Anabolism. The anabolic side of the equation is the building part of our metabolism. Cell repair, muscle, hair, & nail growth are all anabolic processes. Basically anabolism takes energy and uses it to link / bind chemical compounds together to make larger molecules & cells.

In order to use these processes in your quest to become less fat, stronger & healthier you need to maximise both of them. For catabolism this means challenging, regular exercise that causes your muscles & other energy pathways to burn fuel like fat, carbohydrates, and sugars. For anabolism it too means challenging exercise coupled with protein and nutrient rich foods. The more intensely that you

Tabata protocol using KBs works both sets of muscles & burns fat...

train the more your metabolism elevates and more opportunities your body gains to shed fat and gain lean mass.

As we’ve seen intense training is not long duration training and more importantly training that uses protocols like Tabatas or HIIT tend to work a lot of muscles – and this is important for overall fitness, well being and fat loss.

Muscles are the furnaces that burn fat in your body. Muscles are numerous and together they have 2 general roles to play – mobility & stability. You know by now my preference for whole body workouts that use compound movements. Compound movements are important because they not only use the large muscles but they also activate and exercise the stabilising muscles. Stabilising muscles are an often overlooked component of movement & fat loss.

The larger muscles (think quadriceps, deltoids, pecs & lats) are called ‘prime movers’ and allow your body to move with what is called ‘Dynamic Mobility’– which is another way of saying through a full range of motion.

The stabilising muscles tend to be smaller, less obvious (even when developed) and lie deeper in the body & closer to the joints. Their role is to do as their name suggests – to stabilise. Stabiliser muscles like your shoulders rotator cuff, like your deep abdominals, like your infraspinitus and spinal multifidi all work to keep our bodies ‘together’ whilst it moves. Whether walking, pitching a ball, skiing a slope or sitting in a meal these muscles stop the actions of the prime movers from pulling us apart as we move dynamically. They are in use all of the time and as such are major (but oft times unsung) users of energy.

Working both types of muscles is important for another reason – if the Prime Movers become too strong &

Stress releases cortisol - belly fat anyone!!??

overwhelm the stabilising muscles then we begin to collect injuries – often chronic ones. Or if the stabilisers become weak then the Prime Movers have to pull ‘double duty’ and act not just as movers but also as stabilisers. This type of overload can lead to joint dysfunction and pain. Note I mean pain, not the soreness that accompanies a good workout, but deep lasting hurt!

Pain is read by your body as a source of stress and causes it to release stress hormones like cortisol which not only blunts anabolic metabolism but also directs fat storage to the belly area.

Chronic muscle imbalance = Pain = more belly fat.

So in order to avoid this you’ve got to move often, move intensely, & move well. This means using compound movements (think Olympic style lifts) with activities like sprinting and walking.

To get the most out of your metabolism, both in terms of catabolism & anabolism your training should involve training intensely in a way that is without pain. Chronic Pain will constantly undermine the effectiveness of your workouts and pull your metabolic levels down.

See you next week.

Fructose, but not glucose, knocks your metabolism backwards!!

Posted on October 1, 2011 by jghethe

Welcome back – A short sharp post this week…

Glucose & fructose are both types of sugar and they are both the ones most often mentioned in a negative health context. Fructose, particularly in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup, continues to gain a (deservedly in my opinion) reputation in both nutruitional & medical circles.

Brown suagr - just one of the many forms of this carb that abound in our diets...

It has been linked in numerous (and a growing number of) studies with a wide range of preventative illnesses. Obesity, type 2 diabetes, increased whole body inflammation, deranged insulin processing, altered liver function, increased risk of heart disease and is now being considered an adictive substance.

A recent study . namely: Cox CL, et al.Consumption of fructose-sweetened beverages for 10 weeks reduces net fat oxidation and energy expenditure in overweight/obese men and women. (Advance online publication European Journal of Clinical Nutrition on 28 September 2011)

In this study glucose & fructose were lined up head to head for 10 weeks. Overweight and obese men and women were fed glucose or fructose sweetened drinks for this time period. The sugar content was designed to represent 25% of the daily energy requirements of these folk. (If they normally eat 2400 calories a day then the sugar content was 600 calories – about over 150grams.

Whilst there were a whole lot of measurements were taken of the participants the two of real interest to us are: Metabolism after eating (measured fat oxidation) and measuring theiur BMR (basal or ‘at rest’ metabolic rate)

The resulting measurement of these two areas showed that the consumption of high amounts of fructose (let’s face 25% of your daily calroes as fructose, or glucose or any other sugar IS a lit!) led to significant reductions in both measures. Inother words it slowed down the participants metabolisms both after eating (where you would expect in usual circumstances at lease a small spike upwards due to the Thermic effect of food) and at reast. Don’t forget we burn most of our calories at rest.

Fructose in fruit = good, as corn syrup = BAD!!

What was surprising was that these reductions were not seen with the same level of glucose consumption. Based on this it would be correct to assusme that on a gram for gram basis, fructose carries a much larger potential for adding fat to your body than does glucose.

So what do we conclude from this? That glucose is good & fructose is bad? That we should therfore eat glucose laden foods with abandon and at the same time forgo all fruit?

No. The amounts of sugars in this experiment were large and hopefully way above anything you or your loved ones consume. What this does show though is that high amounts of fructose can harm health, and can be viewed as being more damaging than glucose.

So still eat fruit but cut down on if not entirely eleiminate ay processed food with Fructose (especially in the HFCS form) to protect your health & stay a bit leaner.

See you next week.

Metabolism – What it is & How you can make it work for you Part 3

Posted on July 23, 2011 by jghethe

Welcome Back!!

Today we look at the 4 components of metabolism and how you can manipulate them to drop fat…

The Four Components of Your Metabolism:

Human metabolism is basically made up of four parts which combine to become our metabolic rate.

In any 24-hour period, our bodies ‘burn’ a given number of calories – this is called TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) or TEE (Total Energy Expenditure) – and this calorie / kilojoule burn is a measure of our body’s metabolic rate.

Your body’s metabolic rate (or TDEE) can be divided into four components:

Broadly speaking this is our metabolism...

Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the number of calories your body burns while sleeping. Many factors can affect your BMR, including your age, health, stress level, and even the temperature of your environment. Your BMR, like all of your metabolic elements, decreases as you age. This means that it is harder for your body to burn calories and harder for you to lose fat the older you get. Increases in BMR are possible but this increase comes about through the actions of the next three components.

Your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) is a measure of the amount of calories / kilojoules your body burns at rest just to maintain it. The RMR accounts for 50-80 per cent of the energy we use doing ‘nothing’ whilst being awake.

In reality even when lazing around or just chilling out watching DVDs our body’s metabolism is still active. The total lean mass of our body, especially muscle mass, is largely responsible for the RMR.

So, anything that reduces your lean mass will reduce your RMR. RMR is the largest part of our total metabolism and accounts for 50 – 80% of the calories burnt in a day. This is why it’s so important to preserve lean tissue mass when you are working at shedding fat – your RMR is your main metabolic ‘furnace’. This means that exercise that encourages the preservation or growth of muscle is a must if we are to get the RMR working for us.

Your RMR is also affected by the simple act of eating which leads us to…

The Thermic Effect of Food (TEF) – this is covered in depth in the Lose 20 in 30 Fuel Manual but essentially TEF is a measure of the energy that your body uses to eat, digest and metabolise food.

Really it is the second law of Thermodynamics at work – converting energy from one form to another is never 100% efficient. This means that to release the energy in food we need to expend energy to ‘fuel’ this process.

TEF accounts for about 5-10 per cent of our energy use. Our RMR rises after we eat because of the energy

Maximise your TEF by eating lean proteins with low GI, high fobre carbs...

we use to eat, digest and process the food we’ve just eaten. The rise occurs soon after we begin to eat and peaks two to three hours later. The RMR rise can range from between 2-3 per cent to up to 25-30 per cent, depending on the size of the meal and the types of foods eaten.

For example:

Fats – generally raise the RMR about 4 per cent
Carbohydrates – can raise RMR up to 6 per cent
Proteins – usually raise RMR up to 30 per cent

Unfortunately, since our body can store excess dietary fat pretty much directly as body fat, there is no need to convert it, so eating fat generates virtually no thermic effect at all.

Another factor that affects your TEF is your body composition. Basically the leaner you are the higher your TEF is. Columbia University ran a trial with a group of lean individuals and a group of obese ones and then tested their TEF at rest, during exercise and after exercise.

Compared to the obese group the lean group TEF was:

70% Higher at rest
316% Higher during exercise
175% Higher after exercising.

This is proof that shedding fat helps to recondition your metabolism which in turn helps keep you lean.

The Thermic Effect of Activity (TEA) – this is the amount of energy that we use during physical activity – and for in a ‘normally’ active person, this accounts for 15 – 40 per cent of our daily energy use depending upon the type of activity and its metabolic ‘cost.’ The range in effect is because of the variance in the amount of and type of activity we can indulge in.

This will up your TEA no end!!!

TEA includes all physical activity whether conscious exercise, climbing stairs, brushing your teeth, shivering in the cold or even fidgeting. At rest, by themselves, our muscles can account for about 20 per cent of our total energy expenditure. Not too shabby but during strenuous exercise, our rate of muscular energy expenditure can increase 50-fold or more. During heavy physical exertion, our muscles can burn through as much as 3,000kJ per hour. This is the only type of energy ‘burn’ that we can directly control – the energy used during conscious exercise.

After food intake, movement and conscious exercise are the final keys to fat loss and a reconditioned metabolism.

It is here where we can have the greatest immediate effect on our metabolism. The metabolic effects of food work hand in glove with conscious exercise, but nothing revs up your metabolism in the short term as much as vigorous exercise. The intensity, type, frequency and duration of any activity will have an effect on metabolism. We need to choose wisely and use those which have the highest metabolic cost and the create the strongest afterburn.

I can’t stress it enough – the effect of your TEA on your metabolism will vary depending on your individual activity level each day. The more you move the more you burn. The smarter you move the even more you burn.

A sedentary person will require fewer calories to maintain their current body composition than a busy worker on a construction site or someone who uses metabolic resistance training at least 3 times a week.

Of these 4 metabolic components we are most interested in and most able to directly positively affect the TEF & our TEA. Once get these 2 components working for us, our RMR & BMR will both rise, and our set points can be altered. More importantly our body composition can shift.

Okay so how do we use these components? That’s the subject of the next post…

Take Away: By raising your RMR we can become leaner and stay that way – the 2 ways we can do this most easily are by manipulating our TEA & the TEF.

Metabolism – What it is & How you can make it work for you Part 2.

Posted on July 16, 2011 by jghethe

Welcome back…

A lot of fitness writers rattle off all sorts of terms and don’t realy either expalin what they mean or use them in ways that are, well… dubious at best.

Here is the most common terms used in conjunction with metabolism and what they really mean!!

Some Terms to know:

Metabolism: The various ways the cells, organs and tissues in our bodies use and handle the fuel derived from the food we eat.

Homeostasis: The term was coined in 1932 by Walter Cannon from two Greek words meaning’ to remain the same’. In particular it refers to the body’s preference to remain as it is today. Your body does not like to change – especially quickly, and it resists our efforts to alter it from where it is today.

keeping things dead level is what homeostasis means - hard to do though!!

The thing is the way your body is today as you read this just did not happen overnight – it arrived here by a gradual slowing of your metabolism, the accretion of bad exercise & food habits and so forth. Your body accepted these gradual, incremental changes to its composition and metabolism until they became a part of what your body now considers ‘normal’.

Homeostasis is the desire of your body to stay the way it has been gradually conditioned to consider normal.

If you are fat, and have been for some time, your body will consider this ‘normal’ and fight to stay that way. This is particularly true in times of calorie restriction.

Basically our bodies were designed to store fat against future food scarcity and are very good at it. Too rapid a fat loss can threaten what your body considers to be ‘normal’. Even if you are overweight! Your body is trying hard to keep what it considers your normal weight within a narrow margin.

The good news is that your body accepts changes to its composition and metabolism when they are repeated. The Lose 20 in 30 Program uses this fact to ‘reset’ your homeostatic trigger point.

Simply put homeostasis is your body using a host of internal feedback mechanisms in an attempt to remain the same. It is what makes it easier to gain body fat than it is to shed it. But we can make homeostasis work for us by creating a new ‘norm’ that it will fight to preserve.

Metabolic Set Point: The metabolic set point is an inbuilt survival mechanism, and is a major part of the homeostasis systems used by your body to resist changes to its composition. Your metabolic set point acts to ensure that there is adequate body fat for survival in the event food becomes scarce. Our bodies are

It's not easy but you change your 'set point' & alter homeostasis...

great at fat storage. Unfortunately, in modern times, with food in abundance, our body cannot easily distinguish between what is a real famine and what is an attempt by us to get leaner. Certainly our bodies cannot differentiate between a crash diet and a strategic approach to body recomposition. This makes altering this metabolic set-point difficult.

Not one of us has the same metabolic set point; your body composition is as individual as you are. What is the same though is that it can be hard to shift this set point because your body likes stability. In fact, as we saw above in ‘Homeostasis’, your body will fight hard to maintain what it has come to accept as your normal amount of body fat and lean muscle mass. But, again, we can make this work for us. Once reset, this survival mechanism becomes our supporter, not our adversary.

Metabolic rate: Your metabolic rate is a result of a combination of your activity levels, caloric intake, the types of foods that you consume and the way your hormones react to this. Sudden changes to your calorie intake or sudden weight loss can trigger a defensive reaction which manifests as a slower metabolism as your body tries to maintain what it has come to view as your ‘normal’ weight.

Metabolic Cost: The amount of energy consumed as the result of performing a given work task; usually expressed in calories / kilojoules. In the Lose 30 in 30 Exercise manual we use a program that creates a high metabolic cost to really burn calories and recondition our metabolism.

EPOC: Formerly called Oxygen Debt, excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) refers to the body’s continued need for higher amounts than normal (ie non-exercising) of oxygen after metabolic, cardiovascular exercise or weight training. It is closely tied to Metabolic Cost and you could almost consider it the ‘follow on’ effect of the exercises used the Lose 20 in 30 Exercise program. Often it is referred to as the ‘Afterburn’ effect.

Because your body will experience a heightened metabolism after our strategic exercise programs, it will continue to burn fat for hours after the exercising is completed – this is EPOC / Afterburn and is an important part of your fat loss and metabolic reconditioning tool kit.

One way to up the metabolic cost of exercise - add a weighted vest...

Metabolic Conditioning: A type of exercise protocol that creates both an enormous metabolic cost and a strong EPOC that is the most effective way to burn fat and reconditions your metabolism. A strategic mix of cardio, and resistance training performed using an interval training protocol. This is covered more fully in the Lose 20 in 30 Exercise program, and is the best way to rev up your metabolism and burn fat through activity.

Hypothalamus: this is the main organ responsible for regulating your metabolism. The hypothalamus is located on your brain stem. Its chief functions are:

The control and integration of the activities of your autonomic nervous system (ANS)
- The ANS regulates the contraction of both smooth muscle and cardiac (heart) muscle, along with the secretions of many endocrine organs such as the thyroid gland – which controls many of your hormone levels.
- Your hypothalamus uses feedback from the ANS to regulate activities such as your heart rate, the movement of food through your gastrointestinal tract, and the contraction of your bladder.
The control & regulation of your body temperature
The regulation of food intake, through your feeding centre:
- The feeding centre or hunger centre is responsible for the sensations that cause us to seek food.
- When sufficient food has been eaten and leptin is high, then the satiety centre is stimulated and tells your feeding centre that no more food is needed at this moment.
- When insufficient food is present in the stomach and ghrelin levels are high, receptors in the hypothalamus make you experience hunger.

Taken together, the functions of the hypothalamus form one of your body’s survival mechanisms that enable us to sustain the body processes that make up your BMR and RMR.

Well a bit dry this wekk but important nonetheless…. Back to more fun stuff next week when we look at making your metabolism work for you…

Be well.

Metabolism – What it is & How you can make it work for you Part 1

Posted on July 9, 2011 by jghethe

The next few posts on this blog will be all about giving you a solid understanding of what your metabolism is, what affects it and how you can make it work for you.

The information here will give you a better working knowledge of those parts of your metabolism that you exert some direct control over, those you can exert some indirect control over and those you just have to live with!

Having a fast metabolism means more than exercising...

If you have ever felt like you’re fighting a losing battle to shed pounds, in a sense you are.

Metabolism is NOT just about energy in versus energy out.

In our primitive past our bodies evolved so that we could store energy as fat in times of plenty (feasting) so that we are able to survive in times of scarcity. In these modern times we feast and then feast again without ever really enduring times of scarcity where food becomes rare and starvation looks likely. So this survival mechanism keeps storing energy as fat against hard times that frankly most modern humankind will never experience.

That creates problems for us because our bodies are basically fat storage machines. Very efficient ones.

The Body Shape Shifters philosophy is based around the idea of reconditioning your metabolism through a strategic mix of exercise, diet and hormone manipulation. A high metabolic rate means that we use the nutrients from our food more efficiently, maintain healthy body composition (lower fat and higher muscle levels) longer, feel better, think clearer and live healthier lives overall

What is Metabolism?

Beginning with birth and ending at death, our body receives the energy it needs to fuel itself through the processes of metabolism.

Yep - it can appear complex...

Metabolism is an umbrella term that covers the non-stop chemical processes that operate to keep our bodies functioning. Your Metabolism is primarily 2 things:

1) The rate at which your body uses energy to support all of the basic functions that are essential to sustain your life,

2) Plus all of the energy requirements for needed for additional activity and digestive processes.

Think of it this way – just being alive requires energy so when we talk about Metabolism it includes standing, sitting, sleeping, running, jumping, breathing, eating, digesting, having a beating heart, growing new cells, hair, skin, muscle and bone. So when we talk about our metabolic rate we are talking about the rate at which our bodies are burning the calories / kilojoules we have stored and that we get from food.

Your metabolism burns calories / kilojoules all the time, whether you’re just sitting on the couch or you’re jogging around the block. Even while we sleep our metabolism is working.

Every process that takes place in our body ultimately gets the energy to do so from the food we eat. The food we eat is broadly made up of Carbohydrates, Fats or Proteins with some micronutrients in the form of vitamins & minerals. (More detail on the effect that different nutrients have on our metabolism in later posts.) The amount of calories your body burns at any given time is regulated by your metabolism. In other words, it’s not just about burning up the food we eat, but about how the various nutrients from that food are used to help us maintain a healthy body.

There are two primary metabolic processes that take place in your body:

Catabolism – this is the breakdown of food components such as carbohydrates, proteins and fats into

No! Not that sort of anabolism!!

their simpler forms, where they are then used to create energy which can be turned into heat or burned up by your cells. This can also mean the breakdown of body tissue like muscle in the absence of other fuel sources. Catabolism is the destructive phase of metabolism, and the critical partner to anabolism, as they rely on each other to do their specific jobs. Digestion is a catabolic process that breaks your food down into smaller particles that can then be used in anabolism.

Generally characterised as ‘bad,’ catabolism is an essential part of our metabolic processes.

Anabolism – means growth or storage so energy is stored as glycogen in the liver & muscles, in fat cells (once the glycogen stores are full) or used to help build and repair structures of the body. It is most often associated with muscle growth. Anabolism is the constructive phase of metabolism, as it produces all of the substances needed in our body for it to grow, maintain and repair itself.

These two processes are carefully monitored by our body to make sure they remain in balance. However our diet, our environment and our type & amount of daily activity can all affect them both.

Ultimately our metabolism is controlled by hormones (think chemical messages that trigger processes) and by our nervous system. Hormonal problems, our physical environment and genetic disorders can all affect our metabolism. Whilst we cannot control our metabolism per se, we can make it work for us.

In part, Hormones determine how much of each of these you have...

Studies conducted by Spennewyn in 1990 found a number of strong correlations between lean mass and metabolism based on indirect calorimetry measurements. Spennewyn discovered that lean tissue in men and women required approximately 16 calories per pound per day. This means that once a person’s lean mass is known then it can be multiplied by 16 to reveal ball park daily caloric needs based on the activity level of the individual. This method has been used in many gyms, health clubs and dietician settings to determine daily caloric needs. It is not perfect.

Where is the energy used?

Energy expenditure for your body is roughly broken down like this:

Liver 27%
Brain 19%
Heart 7%
Kidneys 10%
Skeletal muscle 18%
Other organs 19%

To shift our shape by getting rid of fat we need to understand the ways & the speed with which we burn the calories from the food we eat. We cannot necessarily speed up all of your metabolic processes but we can make them more efficient.

Well that’s the basic stuff out of the way – next week we get into some terms to know and then the 4 components of your metabolism & how you can affect them for your benefit.

Be well.

Simple Way to Shed Pounds and Decrease Tiredness – Stop Eating This

Posted on July 2, 2011 by jghethe

Welcome back –

Here is a post from Dr Mercola’s site that I think everyone who loves bread should read.

I’ll be back next week with more of my own research & findings….

Simple Way to Shed Pounds and Decrease Tiredness – Stop Eating This

Posted By Dr. Mercola | June 30 2011 | 31,338 views | Disponible en Español

In 1911, the bread which made up 40 percent of the diet of the impoverished people of Britain was blamed for widespread poor health. Modern nutritional science confirms the accuracy of this assessment.

Refined white flour contains almost no natural minerals and vitamins. In particular, vitamin B deficiency from poor diet resulted in a range of illnesses that the Victorians called ‘wasting diseases’. And white flour at the time was usually laced with alum, which made bad flour look whiter.

According to the Daily Mail:

“[In modern times], the Real Bread Campaign, a non-profit pressure group, claims that bread has actually gotten worse since 1911 in terms of secret adulterants — enzymes that do not have to be declared on labels — still being smuggled into it. Today, despite the modern fashion for healthy eating, ‘nutritionally empty’ white bread accounts for more than 50 percent of what we buy.”

Sources:

The Daily Mail June 15, 2011

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

It’s truly astounding—100 years ago, low-quality bread made up about 40 percent of the average Briton’s diet (and the situation was likely similar in the US as well), and today, even lower quality bread makes up nearly 50 percent of the average diet!

Back in 1911, white bread was identified as a primary culprit for the declining health of the British population, which led to a massive campaign to revert back to more wholesome bread. At the time, wholegrain bread was considered a sign of poverty, so people from all levels of society sought after white, refined flour bread.

The campaign spearheaded by The Daily Mail was eventually successful. But it didn’t last long… White bread was actually banned during World War II in the UK, and as a result, Britons were said to be in better health by 1947 after subsisting on limited rations of wholegrain breads for eight years.

However, at the end of the war, white bread was rendered legal once again, and today, more than 60 years later, our grocery shelves are stocked with breads and grain-products that are of even lower quality than 100 years ago… And, as in 1911, white processed bread is a major contributor to rampant obesity and poor health.

Do You Know the Chemicals Lurking in Your Bread?

As illustrated in The Daily Mail, the quality of bread has gotten far worse rather than better over the years. Back in 1911, salt, cheap fats, alum, lime powder, and bleaching constituted “bad” bread. Today, there’s a whole new breed of health-harming ingredients to contend with in your typical store-bought bread, including:

Processed salt	High fructose corn syrup	Trans fats (hydrogenated oils)
Soy	Treatment agents (oxidant chemicals)	Reducing agents
Emulsifiers	Preservatives	Enzymes (typically from fungi or bacteria)

Many of these ingredients are hidden, as they’re not required to be listed on the label. I’ve written numerous articles on many of these ingredients. For more information, simply follow the links provided. But hidden and potentially harmful ingredients aren’t the only problem with modern bread. Today we have such things as Wonder Bread, and it’s a wonder that anyone even considers it to be “bread” in the first place…

Refined Foods are Devoid of Nutrients

It’s important to realize that when food is refined, vital nutrients are destroyed. In some cases it’s questionable whether what remains is even fit to be considered food… at least if the term “food” implies something of nutritional value. In terms of bread, once you remove the most nutritious part of the grain, it essentially becomes a form of sugar.

Consider what gets lost in the refining process:

Half of the beneficial unsaturated fatty acids	50 percent of the calcium	80 percent of the iron	50-80 percent of the B vitamins
Virtually all of the vitamin E	70 percent of the phosphorus	98 percent of the magnesium	And many more nutrients are destroyed — simply too many to list.

How Processed Grains Can Deteriorate Your Health

The end result of the excessive consumption of white bread and other processed forms of grain products can be seen all around you in the form of:

Obesity	Diabetes	Heart disease
Allergies and asthma	Gluten intolerance and Celiac disease	Vitamin deficiencies and related health problems

Vitamin B deficiencies in particular contribute to a wide range of illnesses, and vitamin B deficiencies are pervasive around the world. For example, an estimated 25 percent of American adults are deficient in B12.

We’ve also seen an extraordinary rise in digestive illnesses, such as gluten intolerance and Celiac disease, and modern industrial baking methods are likely a major contributor to these widespread problems. The rise in asthma and allergies may also be related to our modern food processing and manufacturing practices. For example, one of the enzymes commonly used in modern bread making is amylase, which is known to cause asthma.

Many also forget that most commercial wheat production is, unfortunately, a “study in pesticide application,” beginning with the seeds being treated with fungicide. Once they become wheat, they are sprayed with hormones and pesticides. Even the bins in which the harvested wheat is stored have been coated with insecticides. These chemicals all contribute to increasing the average person’s toxic load, which is a contributing factor to virtually every possible disease imaginable. I can’t think of any illness that is not made worse by frequent toxic exposure, such as what we get through conventionally-grown foods and unfiltered water.

Whereas old time mills ground flour slowly, today’s mills are designed for mass-production, using high-temperature, high-speed steel rollers. Next, it’s hit with another chemical insult–a chlorine gas bath (chlorine oxide). This serves as a whitener, as well as an “aging” agent. Flour used to be aged with time, improving the gluten and thus improving the baking quality. Treating it with chlorine instantly produces similar qualities in the flour (with a disturbing lack of concern about adding another dose of chemicals to your food).

The resulting white flour is nearly all starch, and now contains a small fraction of the nutrients of the original grain. Additionally, the chemical treatments on the grain results in the formation of a byproduct, alloxan—a poison used in the medical research industry to induce diabetes in healthy mice. Alloxan causes diabetes by spinning up enormous amounts of free radicals in pancreatic beta cells, thus destroying them. Beta cells are the primary cell type in areas of your pancreas called islets of Langerhans, and they produce insulin; so if those are destroyed, you develop diabetes.

Given the raging epidemic of diabetes and other chronic diseases in this country, it may be unwise to be complacent about a toxin such as this in your bread, even if it is present in small amounts…

Why a High-Carb Diet Can be Disastrous to Your Health

Overconsumption of carbs is the primary driving factor for insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Unfortunately, the dietary establishment has unwisely been extolling the virtues of carbohydrates while warning you to avoid fats. But anyone who bought into the high-carb, low-fat dietary recommendations has likely struggled with their weight and health, wondering what they’re doing wrong…

The truth of the matter is that a diet high in grain carbs (as opposed to vegetables) and low in fat may be dangerous to your health, and if you want to shed excess weight and improve your health, the converse diet is what you’re looking for!

Why are high-carb diets so bad?

In a nutshell, overeating carbohydrate foods can prevent a higher percentage of fats from being used for energy, and lead to an increase in fat storage. It also raises your insulin levels, which in short order can cause insulin resistance, followed by diabetes. Insulin resistance is also at the heart of virtually every disease known to man.

Contrary to popular belief, eating fat does NOT make you fat—carbohydrates, such as sugar and grains, do. Your body has a limited capacity to store excess carbohydrates, but it can easily convert those excess carbohydrates into excess body fat. Any carbohydrates not immediately used by your body are stored in the form of glycogen (a long string of glucose molecules linked together). Your body has two storage sites for glycogen: your liver and your muscles. Once the glycogen levels are filled in both your liver and muscles, excess carbohydrates are converted into fat and stored in your adipose, that is, fatty, tissue.

So, although carbohydrates are fat-free, excess carbohydrates end up as excess fat.

But that’s not the worst of it. Any meal or snack high in carbohydrates will also generate a rapid rise in blood glucose. To adjust for this rapid rise, your pancreas secretes insulin into your bloodstream, which then lowers the levels of blood glucose. The problem is that insulin is essentially a storage hormone, evolved to put aside excess carbohydrate calories in the form of fat in case of future famine. So the insulin that’s stimulated by excess carbohydrates aggressively promotes the accumulation of body fat!

Too Much Wheat or Grain Converts Into Fat

In other words, when you eat too much bread, pasta, and any other grain products, you’re essentially sending a hormonal message, via insulin, to your body that says “store fat.”

Additionally, increased insulin levels also:

Make it virtually impossible for you to use your own stored body fat for energy
Suppress two important hormones: glucagon and growth hormone. Glucagon promotes the burning of fat and sugar. Growth hormone is used for muscle development and building new muscle mass.
Increases hunger: As blood sugar increases following a carbohydrate meal, insulin rises with the eventual result of lower blood sugar. This results in hunger, often only a couple of hours (or less) after the meal.

So, all in all, the excess carbohydrates in your diet not only make you fat, they make sure you stay fat. Cravings, usually for sweets, are frequently part of this cycle, leading you to resort to snacking, often on more carbohydrates. Not eating can make you feel ravenous shaky, moody and ready to “crash.” If the problem is chronic, you never get rid of that extra stored fat, and your energy and overall health is adversely affected.

Below is a list of some of the most common complaints of people with insulin resistance (IR). Many of these symptoms may occur immediately following a meal of carbohydrates; others may be chronic:

Fatigue. Some are tired just in the morning or afternoon; others are exhausted all day.	Brain fogginess. The inability to concentrate is the most evident symptom. Loss of creativity, poor memory, failing or poor grades in school often accompany insulin resistance, as do various forms of “learning disabilities.”	Hypoglycemia. Feeling jittery, agitated and moody is common in IR, with an almost immediate relief once food is eaten. Dizziness is also common, as is the craving for sweets, chocolate or caffeine.
Intestinal bloating. Most intestinal gas is produced from dietary carbohydrates. Sometimes the intestinal distress can become quite severe, resulting in a diagnosis of “colitis” or “ileitis.”	Sleepiness. Many people with IR get sleepy immediately after meals containing more than 20-30 percent carbohydrates. This is typically a pasta meal, or even a meat meal that includes bread or potatoes and a sweet dessert.	Increased fat storage and weight. In many people, the most evident sign is a large abdomen, or belly fat.
Increased triglycerides. High triglycerides in the blood are often seen in overweight persons. But even those who are not too fat may have stores of fat in their arteries as a result of IR. These triglycerides are the direct result of carbohydrates from the diet being converted by insulin.	Increased blood pressure. It is well known that most people with hypertension have too much insulin and are IR. It is often possible to show a direct relationship between the level of insulin and the level of blood pressure: as insulin levels elevate, so does blood pressure.	Depression. Carbohydrates are a natural “downer,” and it’s not uncommon to see many depressed persons also having IR. Carbohydrates do this by changing your brain chemistry—they increase serotonin, which produces a depressing or sleepy feeling. (This is a significant consideration for those trying to learn, whether at school, home or work.)

Does this sound like you?

One of the Fastest Ways to Dramatically Improve Your Health

The best suggestion for anyone wanting to shed excess fat and improve health is to moderate and normalize your insulin response by limiting (ideally, eliminating) your intake of refined sugars and fructose, and limiting all other carbohydrate intake as much as possible. (Proteins and fats generally do not produce much insulin.)

With the stress of insulin resistance eliminated, your body can finally be able to correct many of its own problems, and this is also why I keep reminding you that the underlying factor of most disease states that MUST be addressed is insulin resistance. Once you’ve normalized your insulin levels, your body actually has a phenomenal capacity for self-healing.

A Simple Swap To Lower Body Fat

Posted on June 4, 2011 by jghethe

Hi & Wecome back!!

This week’s post is relatively short because the message is simple – to lose body fat and get healthier alter the source & types of carbs you eat.

Regular readers will know that I am not anti-carb, but anti- processed, denatured, nutrient sparse carbs. Our bodies need carbs and the micronutrient that come with natural source carbs, so the whole ‘no

Swapping these for simple carbs...

carb’ thing does not make any sense to me except for specific and strategic short term use – but that is another post.

So here is the message short & sharp – replace starchy, processed carbs with vegetables and fruit. Yep just like your Mum & her Mum and her… used to say. They were & are right – fruit & veggies are the best sources of carbs and the co-factors and micronutrients that our bodies need for peak efficiency.

Vegetables should be the main type of carb you eat with fruit also essential but insmaller quantities because of the effects of fructose.(quick side note fructose from fruit is not a problem except in a society that add high fructose corn syrup to damn near everything – this creates a sensitivity to fructose that leads to various not so good halth effects. Fruit is good but in moderation…)

Here’s why you choose these natural sources:

Lots of carbs here - just not the ones that are good for you...

All of the carbs that you eat end up as glucose (blood sugar) after your body has processed them, taken out the vitamins & minerals, the antioxidants & co-factors; the fibre and leaves only its preferred energy source.

So after processing by your body; a piece of bread, an apple, a tomato, some potato or broccoli; a spoonful of sugar, a soda, a strawberry or even an Oreo are turned into your body’s main fuel source, blood sugar.

In other words – any carb, no matter its source, ends up in your blood stream as glucose.

What makes a spectacular difference to your health and body fat is the rate at which the carbs you feed your body are processed and metabolised.

Tim Ferriss talks about ‘Fast’ & ‘Slow’ Carbs in his book the ‘4 Hour Body’ and diabetics (and savvy folk) are familiar with the Glycemic Index which lists carbs as being high ‘GI’ (fast to break down to glucose) and low ‘GI” (slower to break down to glucose).

Simple / Fast carbs are those with a high GI and tend be starchy carbs. They are easy to spot – they have been processed and often are white in colour (no not cauliflower – but white flour products, white rice, white sugar, etc etc – all processed, starchy high GI foods) Some fruits fall into this category as well – especially dried fruits. Simple carbs are converted more rapidly into glucose for a quick energy boost.

Only a little goodness here

Complex / Slow carbs are those with high levels of fibre, generally a low GI rating, can often be imagined as coming from a farm or an orchard and tend to come in many colours with green being the predominant one. Oats is an example of a processed carb that is low GI (Steel cut, NOT instant). Complex carbohydrates take longer to break down into glucose and therefore offer a more sustained supply of energy for your body.

This sustained energy supply is why you must choose complex carbohydrates as your main carb source. Blood sugar spikes from simple, fast carbs cause insulin spiking and fat storage. Slow carbs do not.

However this is a simplistic view – ‘Fast’ versus ‘Slow’ carbs, high ‘GI’ versus low ‘GI’ the truth is more complex than this. It always is when we begin to look at the processes of our bodies – they overlap & interact at so many levels that simplistic approaches can be dangerous at worst or just misleading at beast.

Why? Well take watermelon. It is a high GI food but eating it actually has a negligible effect on glucose levels – even in large quantities.

Watermelon may have a high GI, but compared to other carb foods you might eat, it doesn’t have as much carbohydrate because it is mainly water.

Hi GI or not???

There is a small amount of carbohydrate in watermelon. This amount is processed into glucose very quickly making it a high-GI food, but because there is so little of it, it just doesn’t have much of an effect on your blood glucose levels, so in terms of impact, it is very low. This impact of the amount of carbs in a food is called the ‘Glycaemic Load’.

This is an important point – it is the amount of carbohydrate in a food that matters, not just the speed at which it is processed into glucose. We know that all carbs are turned into glucose – so it follows that the more carbs in a food, the more glucose that will be produced from it. Again this by itself is not clear guide – what is needed is a method that takes into account the amount of carbs in a food and the speed at which those carbs are metabolised into glucose by our body. This measure is the Glycaemic Load (GL) which considers the amount of carbohydrate in a food as well as its GI. Both of these factors acting together determine the blood glucose response from any food.

To work out glycaemic load (GL), multiply the GI x the grams of carbohydrate, then divide by 100.

For example:

1 cup of watermelon: (GI of 72 x 9 grams carb) / 100 = 6.5.
1 cup of sweetcorn (GI of 37 x 32 grams carb) / 100 = 11.8.

Your body’s glucose response to the same amount of these 2 foods will be quite different because the amount of carb present in each. The differing amount of carbohydrate affects the glycaemic load. Portion size is another way to affect the glycaemic load of a food. For example, one cup of sweetcorn has a GL of 11.8 but half a cup only has a GL of 5.9.

What this shows is that using the GI by itself is okay as a rough rule of thumb, but it does not give you the full story. You need to also take into account the amount of carbohydrate in the food you are eating. For this reason, the GI is most useful when choosing between foods with a high percentage of carbohydrate and but becomes fairly irrelevant when foods contain a low percentage of carbohydrate.

However the carb content should be taken one step further – the amount of carbs in a food that comes from fibre also affects your body’s speed of metabolising carbs to glucose. The Atkins people introduced the idea of ‘Nett’ carbs years ago and this was arrived at by subtracting the amount of fibre in a food from its total carb count. The remaining amount is the ‘Nett’ carbs and you apply the GL to this.

This is important because foods with a high carb% that also contain a high fibre % will convert to glucose to more slowly than high carb / low fibre foods. This also highlights that when a food has a low GI it does not mean you can eat huge volumes of it.

Bottomline – fibre counts – big time! And fibre comes from lightly to unprocessed foods, not factory processed ones.

So when considering a low- or high-GI food we need to also take into account how much carbohydrate a food contains and how much of that is fibre.

Bread, rice, pasta and cereals are mainly carbohydrate so choosing low-GI varieties makes a difference – but only if they are high fibre varieties.

All fruit and vegetables are fantastic for health because they are packed full of antioxidants and nutrients. But some fruits are low in fibre but high in carb content and therefore should be eaten sparingly.

Go for lots of colours when you are getting your fibre...

The biggest reason to switch from a diet full of starchy carbohydrates like bread, pasta, and rice to a diet with more fibrous, leafy ones like vegetables is the calories involved.

By ‘swapping’ out starchy, fast, simple carbs and replacing them with slow, complex, fibrous ones you will create a significant drop in calories. To lose fat we know we need to create a calorie deficit so fewer calories with more stable blood sugar will certainly assist in leading to a significant drop in body fat.

Just like it’s wise to moderate fats because they are very calorie dense, starchy carbohydrates like bread and pasta are more calorie dense (and definitely more nutrient sparse!!) than fibrous, carb sources like vegetables in general and leafy ones in particular.

What you want to do is eat a lot of calorie sparse, nutrient dense foods that makes us feel full without over-doing it with the calories. (See my earlier post – February I think – on achieving healthy satiety)

For effective, permanent fat loss, I feel it’s important to choose foods that are in high fibre are nutritionally dense but low in calories. This way you do not feel hungry because you are full from the fibre of the carbs, you don’t feel too deprived as the improved nutritional impact will help you cope with any cravings that arise from a ‘fast’ carb withdrawal. You will still be eating a lot of food but you’ll be getting a lot fewer calories.

Vegetables & most fruits offer this luxury. You can eat a lot in volume, but you just don’t get a lot of calories in return. (Unless you deep fry them, drench them in honey or drown them in butter on a consistent basis…)

Increased Complex Carbs = Fat Loss

This high volume, low calorie luxury doesn’t exist with starchy carbohydrates.

A small serving of starchy carbs like pasta, bread, and rice is still high in calories.

For example, a 1/4-cup of rice has approximately 150 calories, but you can eat an entire bag of carrots or 8 or more cups of broccoli and still have ingested fewer calories than if you the 1/4 cup of rice.

Look I love bread as much as the next person, especially Sunday morning brunch with a fresh loaf from the local bakery, and I am not suggesting that you stop eating grains, pasta, oatmeal or rices. I am however suggesting that you eat less of them, swap them out for more vegetables, reduce their serving size at your meals and add some leafy green stuff!

Supplement smaller servings of simple, fast carbs with more vegetables.

Your body absolutely needs carbohydrates. Carbs are the body’s main source of glucose. Your brain cannot function without glucose; in fact, you’d die without blood sugar.

Cut down on these don't cut them out...

So to start cutting excess calories from your diet, start to limit the amount of starchy carbs like bread, pasta, rice, oatmeal, bagels, that you eat and swap them instead for more vegetables like broccoli, carrots, green beans, spinach. lettuce, peas, and so on.

You’ll lose fat. Your skin will improve and so will a lot of other health indicators.

Be well, see you next time.

Shock! Gasp! LipoSuction is NOT permanent…Guess Metabolism Wins after all!!

Posted on May 27, 2011 by jghethe

Welcome Back!!

For years Liposuction has been the darling of the fat loss set – that part of it who could not be bothered with fixing their lifestyle & metabolism. It is equally as popular with Women & Men, and is very, very lucrative…

The traditional before & after fo Lipo ads with way too much fat being removed this way...

Quick, relatively painless with a hint of danger to spice it up Lipo has been the mode of choice for actors, actresses, body builders, matrons, aging gigolos, the rich the vain and in a very few cases those who needed it as a medical necessity.

The news is in though and it is not good for lovers of Lipo – the fat comes back … and where it comes back to is health threatening.

You can almost hear the shonky Plastic Surgeons weeping from here….(the good ones actually say that Lipo is NOT a get out of fat jail free card and that you will regain the fat if you don’t address factors like food intake, exercise and metabolism). Thing is Lipo along with rhinoplasty (nose jobs) and breast enlargement is one of the 3 most popular and profitable cosmetic procedures undertaken in the developed world.

The April 7^th 2011 edition of the journal ‘Obesity’ published the results of research, conducted by a team from the University of Colorado. This research not only assessed if the fat returned after liposuction, but where the body stored the returning sludge.

Invasive & potentially dangerous

You see Lipo actually ‘works’ by sucking fat cells out of the body – by removing them. Cosmetic Surgeons do this by inserting a canula through an incision in your body, pumping in a saline solution and then working the canula back & forth under your skin with the vacuum turned on…More modern approaches use lasers and vibration etc but the fact remains it is an invasive form of surgery that carries substantial risks.

The theory was that with these fat cells gone you would not only lose the fat vacuumed out but you would not regain the lost fat. Not true – you do get the fat back, just not in the same place… So you risk disfigurement, infection and at the very least several weeks of pain for a procedure that does not deliver as it has been advertised…

The researchers took a group of 14 non-obese women, performed some Lipo on their thighs and monitored them at six weeks, six months and one year after the surgery.
Women assigned to the control group did not have the Lipo performed on them.

The results found that after a year the fat not only returned but was now redistributed to the stomach area instead of the thighs. After 12 months there was no difference in bodyfat between the control and Lipo groups.

Lipo CAN fix this - but it won't last without other changes...

Although only a small study, and yes there is a lot of noise about that!!, the results support widely known anecdotal evidence from patients and Cosmetic Surgeons. The fat comes back if you don’t clean up your act – especially in the areas of diet & exercise.

So – the researchers found that a year after Lipo, that fat returned but not to the Lipo site – but to the belly. Lipo on the thighs resulted in increased stomach area fat 12 months after the surgery. This is a less healthy place to store fat.

Even worse – if Lipo was done on the belly, the fat gain after 12 months re-accumulated there, despite there being fewer fat cells. The existing ones just grew in size.

The fact that fat returns and goes to the belly is not really surprising as the belly is an area designed for fat storage in order to cushion, protect, insulate and provide quick energy to our internal organs. The real surprise is that people have undergone this dangerous procedure (Google ‘Liposuction deaths and injuries’ – just avoid the image search) and then kept the rest of their lifestyle as it was.

Not only can you NOT out train a bad diet, it seems you can’t out-surgery one either!!

So Lipo can give a quick cosmetic effect but for lasting body recomposition you need to live a lifestyle like the one we talk about here – eat a high protein, low processed carb, moderate fat diet; eat 6

Lipo only gives this if you also eat & exercise the right way...

times a day, exercise at 3 times a week using a HIIT / Interval protocol so you fire up your EPOC; go for a walk, hug your loved ones, do some stretching – move & have fun.

If you don’t the results of any quick fix – surgical or other will not last…

See you next time.

Lose Fat without a Gym to go to…

Posted on May 21, 2011 by jghethe

Welcome back!

Last week I showed some of my favourite ways to rip fat off at the gym, and let’s face it Gyms are great because of the equipment available. Thing is you can get as good results by working out at home. The truth is you don’t need a lot of machines or equipment to get results.

You can get results like this - via the Gym or at home!!

Now I happen to like using some of the equipment at the gym and it is great to have access to a full run of Kettle Bell and dumb bell weights but you don’t need it. At home I suggest you invest in a good chin up bar, a set of kettlebells (12,16, 18, & 20 kg) a basic barbell with about 30kgs of weights, a couple of dumbbells, a cheap ‘aerobic’ step, a skipping rope and a weighted vest. But even this is more than you need for results – you carry around your best fat loss weapon everyday – your body.

Bodyweight exercise is a great way to burn fat, recondition your metabolism and get a great workout no matter where you are.

Before we look at some routines some commonsense rules apply to this and all other exercise routines. One – check with your doctor or medical professionalism before starting any exercise routine especially if you have not exercised for some time, are overweight or

I love weighted vests...

over 40. Two warm up by skipping on the spot, doing some shoulder swings and moving around – it is important that you warm up your joints and muscles before stressing them. This does not mean do static stretches – save those for warming down at the end of your session when you muscles & tendons are nice & warm and able to benefit fully from stretching.

Here is a simple but effective routine you can do at the beach, in your living room, in a hotel room or at the park.

Jumping Jacks x 30
Push ups x 10 -2 20
Jumping Jacks x 30
Prisoner squats x 30 – 50
Jumping Jacks x 30

Do each exercise in a non-stop sequence with a rest after the third set of Jumping Jacks. Repeat 3 -5 times. You can swap out the Jumping Jacks for Burpees, or squat Thrusters knee lifts for some variety.

If you add a chin up bar to the mix then you can do my all time favourite:

Push ups X as many as you can
Rest for 1 minute
Chin Ups X as many as you can
Rest for 1 minute
Squats X as many as you can
Rest for 1 minute

Repeat for 5 rounds.

Push ups don't need any equipment & give great results!!

Not tough enough for you? Do the push ups & squats wearing a weighted vest…

For something that is really challenging try burpee ladders. The way this works is you do 10 burpees and rest, then 9 and rest then 8 and rest etc all the way down to 1 and then you go back up the ‘ladder’ to 10. Trust me this is a killer. Of course you can substitute any exercise for the burpees. Kettle Bell swings, like just about any exercise, take on a life of their own when ‘laddered’…

Speaking of kettle bells – and assuming that you have taken instruction so that you know how to perform a KB swing correctly – try doing 100 KB swings a day for 20 days. You will drop a lot of fat and tighten up your entire physique.

(NB – Kettle Bell swings if you are getting lower back pain when you do these you are doing them wrong and not ‘hinging’ correctly at the hips – an upcoming blog addresses how to do them properly.)

No longer trendy - just a home fitness essential in my opinion

My routine for last March:

Day 1

Kettle Bell Swings x 100 (done in sets of 20)
Medicine ball above the head throws X 12
Kitchen steps step up x 30 each leg

All done circuit style with a heavy weighted vest

Day 2

Push ups x 20, 15, 12, 10, 8
Chin Ups x 12, 11, 10, 10, 7
Squats x 50, 50, 50, 40, 20
Training bands shoulder mobility x 12

(Lighter weighted vest on the push ups & squats.) Done circuit style for 5 sets.

Day 3

Bike Ride (including hill climbs and a couple of sprints.)

Short of time?

Wall squats / holds for 45 seconds
Prisoner squats x 30
Mountain climbers x 30

As usual do as a circuit but with only 30 secs rest between each one and 45 secs rest between each of your 5 circuits.

This is the type of home chin up bar to go for...

Bodyweight exercises are great, require little equipment, maintain & build muscle and burn fat. Not being able to afford a gym or a home gym is not a reasonable excuse for not getting lean.

Even better they are fun and with the right attitude can put us back in touch with that younger self who just ran & jumped and swung & played for the sheer hell of it!!

Love body weight!!!

Be well.

My Gym Program to Shed Fat – Fast!!!

Posted on May 14, 2011 by jghethe

Welcome Back!!

Last time I listed 30 something reasons to get in shape if you are over 30 and this time I want to look at the use of exercise as a major component of getting into shape – or staying there once you’re happy with how you look.

The first type of program uses barbells & dumbbells and pretty much needs a gym so you can access enough weight to really challenge yourself. If you are already set up at home so much the better….

But what if I don’t go to the gym I hear you ask? Don’t worry – I have info on how to use body weight workouts in the next blog post.

Not many of us can afford to set up a home gym with this much equipment

We all know that diet is 80 – 90% of fat loss and that you cannot out-train a poor one.

So let’s assume that you’ve reduced your calories and are eating nutrient dense but calorie sparse foods. That you are eating clean – lots of protein and low GI carbs, few processed foods, no transfats and you’ve come as close to eliminating High Fructose Corn Syrup from your diet as humanly possible. You’ve also added spices like cinnamon & capsicum to your diet, drink green tea and use protein shakes as a means to keep your body feeling full and also staying in positive nitrogen balance. In other words you’ve got your fat loss diet sorted.

Now we need to get the exercise part firing, this is one of my preferred routines.

Now as we have discussed in previous posts – once our bodies sense a cut in calories it immediately begins to preserve (and if possible) add to fat stores. It also begins to burn muscle for fuel once glycogen stores are depleted – result; a slower metabolism and more body fat.

You can combat this though – by convincing your body that it needs to maintain if not add to your muscle if it is to survive. And we do that by lifting heavy weights and then following this up with a Metabolic conditioning / HIIT style workout.

No more than hour is needed to get great results

The total workout should take no more than an hour with 30 minutes spent on the strength / muscle preservation side and the final 30 spent on reconditioning & firing up your metabolism with some HIIT circuits.

Your goal has to be to maintain lean muscle and to max strength when you are reducing calories. The best exercises to use for this are compound (ie multijoint) ones like Squats, Deadlifts, Overhead Presses and weighted Chin Ups. (You’ll note the absence of the bench press – this is deliberate as I & many others believe that it is not as effective as overhead presses, creates strength imbalances in the shoulder girdle and often causes shoulder injuries)

So in order to preserve your muscles and build strength you use this program:

1. Deadlifts paired with Overhead presses on Day 1
2. Squats paired with Pull ups (weighted if possible) on Day 2

The reason that pullups and deadlifts aren’t paired together is that they’re both challenging to your grip and will weaken it. A weak grip means that you can do fewer reps or use less weight so by splitting them apart your grip only gets ‘hit’ with 1 exercise each session. (Note – if you can’t do weighted chin ups don’t worry – do as many as you can in each set. Once you get strong enough to do 10 from ‘dead hang’ with good form then add some weight and drop your reps back to 3 or 4 and work back up)

On each day you do the following metabolic condition workout:

You WON'T be using any of these - they don't work!!

1. Dumbbell Squat and Presses
2. Jumping Jacks
3. Dumbbell Bench Step-ups with Bicep Curl (do reps for each side)
4. Squat Thrusts
5. Dumbbell Walking Lunges (do reps for each side)

Go through 10 – 15 reps of each exercise pausing only long enough to swap weights until you’ve completed one circuit. Rest long enough to get your breathing down ( 2-3 minutes) and repeat 3-5 times.

The goal of this style of training for the second 30 minutes of each workout is to get your metabolism really ramped up so that you create a strong EPOC and continue to burn fat as fuel for hours after the workout is done.

Execution:

Firstly warm up with some Jumping Jacks followed by walking lunges, then shoulder swings, some push ups and some body weight squats. Not a lot, just enough to get the blood flowing and the joints lubricated.

Then set up your barbells for the deadlift and the overhead press. Put enough weight on each bar so that you can only do 5 -6 fast reps of each exercise with good form.

Don't forget to warmup first

Speed is important as it engages more muscle fibres, fires up more mitochondria ( the fat burning furnaces in each cell) and builds more strength. Good form matters as injury will slow if not halt your progress. Always err on the side of caution.

Then do 3 – 4 sets in circuit fashion (3 reps of Deadlifts, rest long enough to get your breath back, then 3 reps of Overhead Press, rest long enough to get your breath back then back to Deadlifts again and repeat for 3-4 times)

That is the first part of the workout on day 1, next you move to part 2 which is the metabolic circuits.

For these you need to set up several sets of different dumbbells. You need different weights as you will be able to handle different ones depending upon the exercise. For example you can hold a larger weight for the walking lunges than you can curl on the step ups. Again aim for speed with good form.

Put your equipment back and go home and eat a meal high in protein, moderate carbs and low fat. Because you are trying to drop bodyfat you should NOT go the high carb route. That works when you are already lean and certainly enhances muscle growth, but if you are carrying body fat your metabolism is still primed to store carbs as fat…

Then you come back on day 2 and do the squats & Chin Ups followed by the same metabolic workout.

For best results, and if you are up to it you should workout 6 days a week, alternating Workout 1 with Workout 2.

Over a week it would look like this:

Day 1- Deadlifts & Overhead Presses + Metabolic Conditioning Exercises

Day 2- Squats & Chin Ups + Metabolic Conditioning Exercises

Day 3- Deadlifts & Overhead Presses + Metabolic Conditioning Exercises

Day 4- Squats & Chin Ups + Metabolic Conditioning Exercises

Day 5- Deadlifts & Overhead Presses + Metabolic Conditioning Exercises

Day 6- Squats & Chin Ups + Metabolic Conditioning Exercises

Day 7 – Rest

Follow this program for 6 weeks with a clean metabolism boosting diet and you’ll see great results. Make no mistake though – this is hard work and should be challenging!!

Results come to those who work at it!!

If however you are just starting out you should aim for working out 3 days a week with a 2 week program that looks like this:

Day 1- Deadlifts & Overhead Presses + Metabolic Conditioning Exercises

Day 2- Rest

Day 3- Squats & Chin Ups + Metabolic Conditioning Exercises

Day 4- Rest

Day 5- Deadlifts & Overhead Presses + Metabolic Conditioning Exercises

Day 6- Rest

Day 7 – Rest

Day 8- Squats & Chin Ups + Metabolic Conditioning Exercises

Day 9- Rest

Day 10- Deadlifts & Overhead Presses + Metabolic Conditioning Exercises

Day 11- Rest

Day 12- Squats & Chin Ups + Metabolic Conditioning Exercises

Day 13- Rest

Day 14- Rest

If you use the 14 day cycle aim to do it for at least 8 weeks then switch to the 6-days a week one foe another 4.

Well there you have it – follow this program with a clean diet and the fat will certainly disappear.

See next time when we’ll look at why bodyweight workouts can deliver excellent results – even without gym equipments.