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Metabolism – What it is & How you can make it work for you Part 4

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Welcome back!!

Today – Factors affecting the Thermic Effect of Food

Harnessing the Power of TEF
TEF can be affected in four ways

  1. Overeating
  2. The composition up of the foods we eat
  3. When we eat
  4. The number of times that we eat
  5. Exercise

Overeating:

Your TEF can be raised by simply overeating as the body has to use more energy to digest a larger amount of food. This means that even if you ate 3500 calories (the number in a pound of fat) you still would not put on that pound as your body would use some of the calories as TEF. How strong the TEF effect on the 3500

calories would be depends upon what they made out of. If it was high GI, high processed carbs or fat your store more as fat than if it was made up of protein and low GI unprocessed carbs. Bottomline is that you would still put on fat, so overeating is not recommended.

NB There is no such thing as a ‘negative calorie’ food. Even celery requires less energy to burn that it contributes to your calorific intake.

The composition of the foods we eat:

As we have seen the different macronutrients all have a different thermic effect when we eat them. In order to maximise our fat burn and to increase our metabolism we should be eating protein with every meal, keeping fats generally low, avoid processed carbohydrates and eat un- / low processed, low GI, Low GI load carbs. The up coming Lose 20 in 30 Fuel manual explains all of this in greater detail.

It is important to note though that research has shown that that just upping your protein intake whilst severely reducing your overall calories does not produce enough of an increase in your TEF to offset the overall metabolic reduction such calorie restriction cause. Research has also shown that adding spices such as chilli and curry to your food increases your metabolism overall, but particularly your TEF.

When we eat:

Our TEF is higher (average 16%) in the morning than in the evening (average 11%) according to the American Journal of Nutrition. The variance is not huge but we should harness this to work for us. Every little bit helps when it comes to altering our metabolic set point.

You should also try to eat the majority of your carbs in the morning as your body is coming off the enforced ‘fast’ we call sleep. Carbs early gets your metabolism moving and research shows that carbs eaten earlier in the day are less likely to be stored as fat.

The number of times we eat:

Eating more often increases our TEF. But research has shown that the number of meals consumed has to be consistent from day to day for this to have maximum metabolic effect.

Research from Queens University has shown that eating in an irregular daily meal pattern (three meals one day, four the next, then two, then six then…) results in a significantly lower TEF than that found in folk who eating to a regular meal pattern. The TEF is even more enhanced in those who eat six meals per day. (Again don’t think of plates of food, but rather 3 main meals and three ‘snacks or top ups)

Food calories that are in excess of our body’s immediate needs tend to be shunted towards fat storage and are far less likely used for either energy, muscle growth / tissue repair or storage as glycogen. This is why eating 5 or 6 times a day not only increases your metabolism by the thermic effect of food but it also means that meal sizes are smaller and there is less chance of an ‘on the spot’ overload of calories.

Exercise:

Yep exercise. People who regularly perform exercise that is has a high metabolic cost actually have a higher TEF that that of sedentary people. This remains true even if you compare two groups of people that have similar fat free masses. Even more interesting this increase in TEF is not age dependent which means that the natural age related decrease in metabolism can be positively affected by challenging exercise.

Challenging exercise has also been shown to increase the TEF of carbs when they are ingested in the 45

minute post-exercise fuelling window. This means that not only is your insulin sensitivity heightened after exercise, but you burn more energy to digest the carbs and they are less likely to go into fat storage.

This means that you can give your TEF a ‘nudge’ every time you exercise and that you increase the efficiency of your post-workout fuelling.

So in summary we can affect the TEF in several ways:

  • Eat more protein and eat it at every meal
  • Eat hot spicy foods for example foods containing chilli, horseradish and mustard.
  • Eat more carbs in the AM than PM
  • Eat less fat
  • Eat a consistent number of meals each day – 5 or 6 is best
  • Exercise more

Maximising your TEF is important but it is only one part of the overall metabolic picture.

Take Away: Eat more in the AM than PM, eat often, and become familiar with the ‘burn’ rates of your food so you can maximise the TEF of your Fuel.

How you can fix a Broken Metabolism Part 1

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How can you fix a Broken Metabolism? Part 1

If you are more than 20lbs (10 KG) overweight the chances are your metabolism is slowing and may even, in terms of fat loss, be broken.

The next 4 Blog posts will look at the four main areas that not only affect fat loss but which we can influence to achieve a leaner, fitter body in the most efficient manner.

Let’s be clear everything we do, every process that takes place in our bodies, is an output of our metabolism. There are some areas where we can effect changes to it and the area we are most interested in is the area of fat loss.

Great way to recondition your metabolism…

Here is a quick overview of the various factors you need to strategically combine to recondition a flagging metabolism so that it is more efficient at creating fat loss…

  • Food types that:

o   Boost Metabolism

o   Blunt Metabolism

  • The Hormonal Affects of Food:

o   Fat Storage

o   Fat Sparing

o   Fat Burning

  • The Thermic Effect of Food:

o   Macronutrient ‘Burn rates’

o   Food timing

o   Meal Frequency

  • Exercise:

o   Weight bearing – lean = Higher metabolism

o   Cardio – work long or work hard can’t do both

o   Metabolic Circuits – HIIT, drive metabolism up and keep it up for up to 30 hours after

o   NEPA – non-exercise physical activity move more!!

Any attempt to shed body fat and to become leaner & fitter is at least 80% diet. But the diet

This’ll rev up your metabolism…

part of the equation is not as simple as the old fashioned ‘just cut calories’ approach. This is not only outmoded but leads to poor results. As we saw in an earlier post ( http://bodyshapeshiftersonline.com/?p=100)  a calorie is NOT just a calorie except as a way of measuring energy.

We now know that certain foods can increase our metabolism, these are Metabolic Fuels.

Metabolic Fuels tend to be low in sugar, lightly or un-processed and closer to nature than many of the foods you eat at the moment. These are nutrient dense foods that promote feelings of fullness, provide metabolism supporting vitamins & minerals and amino acids. They increase our metabolism by requiring more energy to process (see the upcoming part 3 for TEF), by providing essential vitamins, mineral, fatty acids and proteins for body repair & growth and by keeping blood sugar levels (see Part 2 – hormones) steady.

Metabolic Fuels:

  • Any lean type of lean protein – including whey protein powder
  • Eggs.
  • High fibre complex carbs like Oatmeal
  • Fibre rich vegetables like cauliflower, broccoli, bok choy, cabbage, and brussel sprouts.
  • Dark green leafy vegetables like Kale, spinach.
  • Tomatoes.
  • Blueberries and other whole fruits.
  • Cherries.
  • Beans – any type
  • Nuts – especially Walnuts
  • Omega 3 & 6 fatty acids from fish oil
  • Healthy Fats like Olive Oil, Coconut oil
  • Greek style Yogurt.
  • Green tea.
  • Ice water. It costs your body around 9 calories to warm up ice water to body temperature – 25 calories per glass instead of 16.
  • Dark Chocolate: Lots of antioxidants at the 70% or higher cocoa level. Just don’t eat the whole block you only need a square or 2.
This does as well….

Spicy Metabolic Fuels:

Chillies, curries, and other spices – many of these contain a substance called capsaicin. Capsaicin can fire up your metabolism (some studies have shown a 50 percent increase in metabolism for 3 hours after eating capsaicin), act as an anti-oxidant and assist in stabilising blood sugar.

Here are some of my favourite metabolic & flavour enhancing spices:

  • Cayenne pepper
  • Chilli powder
  • Black pepper
  • Turmeric
  • Cinnamon
  • Ginger
    • Garlic Coriander / Cilantro

 

This is not a complete list by any means but the rule of thumb here is the closer to nature a food is, the more beneficial it is for reconditioning your metabolism.

On the other side our culture is full of highly processed denatured, nutrient sparse foods that blunt & slow our metabolism.

These foods lack fibre, are quick to be processed by our bodies, convert easily to sugar and often need vitamins & minerals added back to them to give them some nutritional value after processing.

Food Like:

  • Sugars – fructose, sucrose, dextrose, maltodextrin, to name but a few varieties
  • White Flour & white flour products like white bread, cookies, & biscuits
  • White Rice, rice crackers
  • Noodles
  • Semolina
  • Most pastas
  • Soda Pops
  • Cakes & Baked Goods
  • Commercial Fruit Juices
  • Most commercial yoghurts – especially low fat varieties (this usually means high sugar!!)
  • Virtually any packaged product that screams ‘Low fat’

The rule of thumb here is if it contains ‘white carbs’ (think flour, sugar & rice) it is best

Years of a broken metabolism at work…

avoided or at least eaten sparingly. If it promises to be ‘low fat’ – check out the sugar content because high sugar is worse than saturated fat for your metabolism. If your Grandmother would not easily recognise it as food think twice.

Mum was right lots of leafy vegetables and fruit along with lean protein is the best way to eat.

Foods can also elicit a hormonal response from our bodies based upon calorie numbers and the quantities and types of macronutrient present. These responses can be either fat burning or fat storing.

Simply put look to move towarss food swith the fewest number of ingredients on the label. Generally fewer ingredieints means less processed and less processed means more nutrition and less calories…

Next time we’ll look at the Hormonal Affects of Food

  • The Hormonal Affects of Food:

o   Fat Storage

o   Fat Sparing

o   Fat Burning

I hope you found the information above of interest. We’ll be backnext week to look at Hormones & Fuel.

The Surprising Truth about Saturated Fats & their place in a Healthy Lifestyle.

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The misconceptions and outright lies about saturated fat and your health.

Hi Welcome Back!!

As you know I believe that there is a mountain of evidence (growing larger daily) that shows that processed carbs are the underlying cause of obesity and that a simple way to drop body fat and shift your shape is to cut them out of your diet.

Surprisingly research says you should too...

A few people have written in and asked ‘What about saturated fat? Doesn’t it cause hear t attacks and obesity?’

Here is the first of several posts on the truth about saturated fat. What I have to tell you will surprise you. It may even make you angry.

For decades we’ve been told that saturated fat will clog up our arteries and kill us. Most health professionals will tell you that fat is bad for you, that it raises the bad cholesterol (LDL), causes obesity and is a major contributing factor to heart disease & stroke. The media also pushes this line and rolls out dietician and nutritionist one after the other who agree.

The trouble is that no-one has ever proved it.

You read that right – NO-ONE HAS EVER PROVED IT!

There is better proof for these than the Lipid hypothesis

What has become Politically Correct Nutrition is based on the assumption that we should reduce our intake of fats, particularly saturated fats from animal sources. Fats from animal sources also contain cholesterol, which is presented as the other main cause of heart disease and is seen as an evil part of the a ‘civilized’ diet.

I’m here to tell you that this is a false perception. And a deadly one.

Simply put saturated fat is a normal, natural part of the human diet and has been literally from the time the first Neanderthal took a bite of animal…

Fats are essential to our health – without them you would sicken & die.

Why?

Well fats from animal and vegetable sources:
• Act as a concentrated source of energy in the diet;
• They provide essential parts of the building blocks for cell membranes
• They provide a wide variety of hormones and hormone-like substances.
• They act as carries for all of the fat soluble vitamins like A, D, E,& K
• They assist with mineral absorption
• They are an essential part of the processes involved in converting carotenes into Vitamin A
• Fats slow down absorption of food if part of a meal so it takes longer for us to feel hunger again.
• Fats are a part of what keeps our skin in condition
• Fats are involved in…
You get the picture – fats are essential to our health.

The cause of this demonization of saturated fats is a thing called the ‘Lipid Hypothesis’. (fat theory).

Now according to this fat theory there is a direct relationship between the amount of saturated fat and cholesterol in someone’s diet and their incidence of coronary heart disease. This was proposed by a medical researcher in the 1953 whose name was Ancel Keys who believed that there was a connection between fat intake and mortality from heart attacks in 6 countries: Japan, Italy, England, Australia, Canada, and the USA.

His research has called the anti-fat tune for over 40 years...

What he reported was that the US had the highest heart attack rate and the highest fat intake whilst Japan had the lowest fat intake and the lowest rate of heart attacks. The other countries neatly fitted into the 2 extremes, again based on reported fat intake and heart attack incidence. Keys called this a ‘remarkable’ relationship and went public with the idea that eating fat causes heart attacks. He was quite a natural publicist and was soon on the cover of TIME gravely warning that people were ‘eating themselves to death’.

In 1970 he then said that new research had shown that it was not all fat, but rather the amount of animal fat eaten could be used as an accurate predictor of someone’s likelihood of suffering a heart attack. He also noted that there was a strong link between cholesterol and heart disease. His hypothesis was that the saturated fat derived from animals raised cholesterol and this lead to heart disease. Most Doctors and even the Heart Foundation believe this to this day – 40 years after the theory was proposed.

Thing is there are major flaws & problems with Keys & his research.
In numerous subsequent studies over the last 40 years his data and conclusions have been brought into question. For example the data he used to draw his conclusions came from only six countries – which represent only a small portion of the countries where data was available on fat consumption versus heart disease death rate.

When subsequent researches have gone back and used data from the same era, but from a greater range of countries, even with a bias towards the ‘western diet;’ they found that there was no link between fat consumption and heart disease deaths.

Read that again – NO LINK!!

So Keys’ conclusions were actually false.

Next is the fact that even in the 1950’s it was recognised that there were a number of factors that caused heart disease but Keys chose to consider only one potential factor – fat intake. He gave no consideration of other factors such as smoking rates, stress factors, sugar intake, exercise frequency etc etc.

Guess Keys forgot about these & heart disease...

It is unfortunate that his faulty research was coupled with a flair for promotion and the beginnings of the food processing industry because this confluence of factors has seen Keys study cited for over 5 decades as proof of the “fact” that saturated fat is bad for you.

There ain’t much in the way of facts here…

Since that time, numerous other studies have been conducted trying to link saturated fat intake to heart disease. The majority of these studies have failed to correlate ANY risk at all from saturated fat. A couple of them made feeble attempts at linking saturated fat to heart disease, however, it was later shown that in those studies, the data was flawed as well.

This is actually good for you...

I’ll be back with the Whys & Wherefores of the good things about saturated fats and how eating them can actually be better than good for your health…

I’d love to hear from you – so Tweet this, Face Book like this or leave a comment!

54 tips to lose fat

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Welcome back!

This week some quick but useful tips to help you lose fat (you’ll notice a lot are food based – remember you can’t out train a bad diet!!)

  1. Be clear on your fat loss goal:  Know the amount of fat you want to lose. You’re your time frame. Tell others to invoke accountability. Write in all down in an exercise book or a journal. Be clear.
  2. Have a pair of skinny jeans ready for ‘success’ day. Or a jacket o blouse or bathing costume – whatever. Just have this on display where you can see it every day. It’ll help keep you on track.
  3. Take your ‘before’ pictures. Stick them in a book with your weekly measurements next to your clear goals. (Waist, upper arm, mid-thigh, belly, chest)
    No don’t keep these ones, keep the SKINNY ones where you can see them!!
  4. Don’t weigh yourself every day.  Weigh yourself the same day at the same time every week. Take your measurements at the same time. Write them down in your book. (Don’t have a fat loss journal – get one – any old exercise book will do.) The best 2 ways to judge your progress is how your clothes fit and how you look in the mirror. Muscle weighs more than fat so you have your weight go up yet be losing fat. Be wary. “
  5. Understand that it’s not all or nothing; if you fall off the fat loss wagon, dust yourself off, don’t beat yourself up and get right back into it!! This is a journey of inches not miles…
  6. Be honest. With yourself— The only person that you fool by sneaking food or eating ‘off reservation’ is yourself.
  7. Eat breakfast.  Simply put those that ate a protein heavy breakfast ate less during the day, had more energy and less body fat. It can be eggs & bacon, a protein smoothies, nuts & yoghurt – so long as it is protein plus unprocessed carbs you’re be on the right track.
  8. Drink tea. Lots of research suggests that drinking tea (any tea EXCEPT herbal teas) stimulates your metabolism, works on body weight re-partitioning and lowers your body fat – especially belly fat.
  9. Drink more water.  2 glasses before a meal helps you feel fuller and interacts with fibre from vegetables to bulk them up. Water also helps shift fat by helping your kidneys & liver to function properly. 8 Glasses a day is good rule to follow.
  10. Get at least 8 of these bad boys into each day!

    Drop the store juice and sodas: Change to low or no-calorie drinks. Home- made iced tea, Coke Zero, diabetic sodas – all are good alternatives.

  11. Eat more veggies. Calorie sparse, nutrient dense they fill you up, without loading you up with too many calories.  Avoid the high fat/high calorie dressings.
  12. Eat eggs.  Every day.  Forget the cholesterol BS – eggs don’t raise bad cholesterol and are nature’s perfect fast food.
  13. Get enough fibre.  Think of fibre like a sponge; it absorbs water and makes you feel full. Focus on fibre, not carbs.
  14. Eat more fruits: No one ever gained weight from eating more fruit even the so called “high sugar” fruits, like bananas, melons and others.
  15. Eat more protein.  Lean protein helps satiate you, and increases your metabolism, through the thermic effect of food.
  16. Eat protein at every meal & snack.  This maximises the effects of #10
  17. Eat less Grains. Increasingly it seems that grains and grain based foods are not good for us and predispose us to fat gain and a number of debilitating diseases like arthritis. Try to cut down on them. Besides most grain based foods are highly processed and that’s definitely not good for you.
  18. Start meals with soup or a salad.  Either will help you feel full more quickly so your
    Prefer Chicken? Either is right!!

    calories at the meal will be less. E sensible with your soup and dressing choices.

  19. Steak & Salad Rules. Best way to get your veges & lean protein have a steak & salad meal at least once a day.
  20. Add cayenne pepper to your meals.  A study published in the British Journal of Nutrition showed that when compared to placebo, capsaicin (the active ingredient in cayenne) increased fat burning. Spice up your meals!!
  21. Watch your portions.  Each meal try for a palm sized portion of protein and 2 fists of non-processed carbs. Don’t Supersize.
  22. Bake, don’t fry. Slow cook in the oven or quick stir fry on the stove top. Both are healthier than pan frying.
  23. Switch to smaller plates; visually your plate looks fuller and you’ll eat less.
  24. Use a Barbeque or a grill.  Less fat, more flavour. Marinade your meat overnight to cut down on the potential of carcinogens from naked flame cooking. Don’t cook or eat well done.
  25. Keep it out of your house – or at least out of sight!!

    Keep your house crap free. Chips and Cookies and cakes and banana bread and …you can’t eat them if they’re not in the house. For those of us with families – have less of these in the house and keep them out of sight – in the garage or back shed. Studies show that the food we see more of we eat more of.

  26. Have a big bowl of fresh fruit in plain sight. See above
  27. Don’t grocery shop when you’re hungry.  Recipe for disaster. Have a meal or grab a  handful of nuts first then go shopping for food otherwise you’ll fill the trolley with all the self-control eroding processed foods you’ve been conditioned to love & want.
  28. Become a nutrition label guru: If you have to eat packaged foods check the labels and put back those with heavy sugars, Trans fats or HFCS.
  29. Decrease/eliminate processed carbs wherever possible.  They do nothing for you outside of creating a favourable environment for gaining fat
  30. Eating out? Swap side dishes with steamed veggies.  Restaurants will often allow you to switch the fries or chips with steamed veggies; all you have to do is ask.
  31. Order dressing on the side, dip the fork in dressing, and then in the salad. 
    Ready for what?? Not ready to support health or fat loss…

    This saves a ton more dressing than if one was to order it on the side, then poor the entire cup on the salad anyhow.  Less calories equals less weight.

  32. Skip buffets.  These are a trap to overeating. Don’t.
  33. Skip the Designer Coffees.  Great way to get up to an extra 500 calories in one hit. Have black coffee or a tea instead.
  34. Don’t socialise around the food tables at parties; Grab some food and move away from the table otherwise you’re more likely to pick, and eat mindlessly even though you’re not really hungry.
  35. Try to eat slower.  It takes approximately 15-20 minutes for your stomach to sense it’s full.  Eat too fast and you’ll shovel in more than you need to.
  36. Stay away from the alcohol— I‘ve written on this before – just drink sensibly – 1 or 2 a night is okay but any alcohol will put a dent into your fat loss efforts. Remember your body stops burning fat to deal with alcohol first. Plus having alcohol lowers your inhibition so you overeat other calories too – kebabs at 3 AM anyone??
  37. Take a brown bag lunch. Do this as often as possible – not only will you control what you eat but you’ll save money.
  38. Keep some healthy snacks on hand — like nuts — in your bag, your briefcase or your glove box so you’re prepared at all times. Swap them out regularly so they are always fresh
  39. If you’re working this hard today – carbs aren’t going to be a problem…

    Match your carb intake to your energy output. You need fewer carbs on the days you aren’t working out hard than the days when you are. Up the protein on non-workout days to support recovery and satiety.

  40. Have fish oil – several grams a day.  Omega-3s have more benefits than possible to list in this short blog – but one is more Omega-3 = less body fat!
  41. Wake up and exercise; not only do you burn more fat but you’re more likely to exercise in the AM than at night after a day in real world.
  42. Lift weights. Heavy weights.  Build more muscle, burn more calories.
  43. Do complex exercises like squats, deadlifts, pull-ups, chin-ups, shoulder presses and push-ups.  The more muscles you involve in each exercise the more benefit you’ll get. Leave the triceps’ kickbacks to the folk who aren’t serious about getting leaner and stronger.
  44. Cut down rest time between sets.  Just because you’re lifting heavy does not mean that you take a 10 minute break between sets. Rest long enough for your breathing to ease and then do the next set. Repeat. This keeps your metabolism surging and those calories burning…
  45. Do intervals.  HIIT = Faster fat loss. Study after study continues to show intervals are more effective for fat loss (and in less time) than traditional cardio. Ditch the treadmill and the marathon runs – get down get dirty get lean!!
  46. Sprint twice a week. Sprinters have lower fat and more muscle.  Just look at the
    A sprinter. ‘Nuff said…

    body of a sprinter vs. the body of a marathoner.

  47. If you have a dog, take it for a walk—Aim to do this every day. Set it as a routine.
  48. Buy a pedometer and aim for at least 10,000 steps each day.
  49. At work set a timer. Most of us work at a desk so set a 30 minute timer like ‘Cool Timer’ and get up for a stretch every 30 minutes. Go for a brisk walk after lunch, but sit less and move more.
  50. Try not to use internal email. Whenever possible get up and walk to a co-workers desk.
  51. Eat standing up.  In tandem with the above have your snack or lunch at work standing up – you’ll burn more calories. Want quicker meetings? Have them standing up with no chairs in the room.
  52. A classic – Use the stairs, skip the escalator and the lift.  Tried and true every bit of additional movement helps you lose fat. Doing this by itself won’t have a huge impact but as a part of the overall effort to move more it helps.
  53. Even at work – move more sit less…

    Another classic – Fidget. In Australia the Gut Buster program has this as one of its mainstays – fidgeting. Move more and more often. Get thinner.

  54. Change who you hang out with.  If your friends are all overweight, don’t show an interest in getting leaner, eat pizza or other fast foods a few times or more a week then you need to change who you’re hanging with. Research has shown conclusively that the people we hang out with can either assist or undermine our efforts to lose fat and get healthier.

Be well – see you next week.

A quick Food Change That Will Lower Body Fat.

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Hi – Welcome back!!

Here is a quick food change that will lower your body fat:

It’s really quite simple – choose and eat more vegetables and fibrous fruits as your main carbohydrate sources and ditch the starchy foods.

Why?

Pizza sliced

Well every Carb you eat, no matter what type gets broken down to glucose (blood sugar).

So a slice of white bread, cup of rice, a pear , an apple a piece of broccoli or that iceberg lettuce all end up being processed by your body to end up as its’ preferred fuel source – glucose.

If this is the case then why is the type of carb we eat so important and how can it affect our body fat??

It’s really quite simple – different types of carbs are metabolised at different rates by your body. A couple of posts a go I referred to the Thermic Effect of Food and how different food types are processed at different rates by our bodies.

Processing food goes further than just macronutrient type though – different sub-types of macronutrients are processed at different rates. So with carbs some are processed more quickly than others.

This difference processing rate affects how quickly glucose is produced and even how much.
High Glycemic Index Carbs (ie those carbs that are closest to glucose already) are processed more quickly than Low GI carbs (the ones furthest away from glucose). The other way to look at these is processed versus lightly or un-processed carbs.

Processed carbs tend to be high GI and are processed rapidly whilst low GI carbs are digested more slowly.

So why does this matter? Well the quicker a carb is processed the quicker glucose is created and ‘dumped’ into the blood stream. This is handy for quick energy boosts. The slower carbs are digested, the slower glucose is released into the blood stream which leads to a more sustained the energy release.

Therefore complex carbohydrates should be your main choice for energy because they offer more of a sustained energy supply. Simple carbohydrates create a quick boost of energy followed by a rapid decline, almost like a “crash.”

Complex carbohydrates mainly come from those lightly or unprocessed foods which are high in fibre. Foods like nuts, broccoli, peas, and green beans.

Sidebar: Fruit is often called a simple carb – not true for all fruits. Those fruits with a significant amount of fibre are actually digested slowly. So yes grapes will be processed quickly but apples or kiwi fruit will not. On the other hand most types of breads are ‘quick carbs’ their lack of fibre means quick digestion, quick glucose release…

There are three reasons to switch from a diet full of starchy carbohydrates like bread, pasta, and rice to a diet with more fibrous, leafy ones like vegetables. First is the metabolism raising effect of eating more fibrous carbs – we’ve already mentioned the Thermic Effect of Food.

Fibrous vegetables

Add more of these to your diet...

Secondly is that by switching away from starchy, processed carbs we will see a drop in the number of calories ingested without (more likely an increase!) a drop in nutrients. Starchy carbohydrates like bread and pasta are more calorie dense than fibrous, leafy ones like vegetables.

The third reason to eat this way is the fact that sudden ‘spurts’ of glucose into the blood stream causes insulin to be released.

Insulin’s role in this case is to ensure that the glucose is shunted into storage as glycogen in the liver & the muscles. If the storage in these areas is full the glucose is stored in fat cells. Quick spurts of blood sugar are more likely to create this insulin response than slower sustained glucose release.

So what we want is to eat more of the foods that make us feel & stay full, that raise our metabolic rate, and at the same time giving us the nutrients that we need. Many processed starchy carbs are nutritional wastelands, quick to digest and do not promote feelings of fullness. Unprocessed carbs like fruit & vegetables are nutrient dense, fibre rich and calorie low – unless they are deep fried or drowned in margarine or butter..

I believe that for effective and permanent fat loss to occur it is important to choose foods that offer high fibre, high volume, high nutrient content, low calories and a sustained glucose release. Eating this way, you do not feel empty and because you are feeling full you tend to avoid developing the cravings that make staying on a change of diet so hard.

Look I know that you are thinking: ‘I can’t live without Bread / rice / pasta / biscuits etc’ Nor should you. But if you want to drop some fat and get your metabolism firing better you need to moderate the amount of High GI, starchy processed carbs that you eat. The sensible middle path to take here is to eat true multigrain breads, swap the white rice for brown and durum pasta for a more fibrous variety.

If you put your mind to it this is surprisingly easy and the Bread etc becomes not only less important on a daily basis but more enjoyable when eaten less often.

I’ll be back in a couiple of days – in the meantime why not leave a comment, Tweet us or visit our Face Book Fan Page???

Fat Loss & Alcohol – It’s not all bad news…

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Welcome back!!

This week I want to take a look at the effect of alcohol on fat loss. A couple of friends of

This Decorated Soldier no doubt enjoys a brew or two but he earns it!!

mine (both good Personal trainers) were discussing this and disagreed on the path to foloow with alcohol. One was for totally foregoing it until you had achieved your desired fat loss and the other felt that if you factored it in as something that you did not overindulge in then it was no probelm.

This made me stop and think. Pretty much I have been in the first camp – alcohol = no fat loss or at least a severe blunting of progress but…

I’m a strong advocate of a balanced lifestyle and very anti-processed foods. I am pro-exercise and protein and veges and fruit and damn it I like a drink. Or two…

Don’t get me wrong societally alcohol has been a disaster for many cultures and has caused and continues to cause untold heartbreak for many people. Yet consumed responsibly alcohol is more than a socilal lubricant it can have health benefits. in fact I  believe that alcohol can be part of a flifestyle that is healthy and active.

Okay but where does this leave the fat loss?

What you need to know about Alcohol and Fat Loss –
Alcohol is a calorie laden poison.

No getting around the fact that this is so…
Alcohol and calories

Scary isn’t it…

If you are seriously working to lose body fat then you know that you have to ingest fewer calories than you use as a major component of achieving this.

o you need to consider the calorific load of what you eat and drink and the way that what you out in your mouth is processed by your body.

Alcohol carries a seven calorie per gram load, fat contain 9 and protein and carbohydrates contain only four.
This puts alcohol right up there in terms of the potential to add calories….

But that’s not the problem – the problem lies in the foods we eat with the alcohol, and the liquids we mix it with..
If you like Bundy & Coke, or a Gin & Tonic or a scotch & Dry you are likely to be adding over 300 calories per serving to your intake. Per serving. Have 3 ot 4 and you’ve come close to taking in the equivalent of half a pound of fat calories-wise.

It’s even worse for cocktails.. But okay you use Coke Zero and the diet versions of mixers – problem fixed – right? Wrong!

When we have a drink or two we tend to be drawn towards unhealthy foods like potato

Alcohol ignites cravings for the wrong foods…

crisps, fat laden burgers or pizza – basically alcohol stimulates our cravings for the wrong type of food and these cravings are powerful things to ignore…So we drink to be sociable varous flavour receptors get switched on, some hormones are stimulated and suddenly you find yourself eating deepfried Mars bars or tacosor corn chips!

BOOM! Becuase of the add on effect of alcohol you’ve just eaten an entire day’s worth of calories (and from poor food choices! in one evening…Guess what that does to you fat loss…

But, I hear you say,  I don’t drink spirits or mixed drinks I have a brew, a beer or a wine.

More bad news – beer is associated with the release of the belly fat storing hoemone cortisol (a beer gut is often just that – a belly caused by cortisol stimulated from too much

The classic beer gut…

ale…) The calories in a glass of beer can run from under 80 to over 230 depending upon type…Red wine (in a 5 ounce serving) has about 125 calories, white wine (depending upon type – the sweeter the higher the calories) has about 100 calories and sparkling & fortified wines get into the high 100s. A nip of Scotch has 54 calories.

Processing Alcohol

I’ll go with the short version here.. Alcohol is processed in the liver, and in large quantities it places a big strain on this organ. It is viewed & treated by our bodies as a poison. It is not a coincidence that alcoholics suffer from a range of liver diseases as their alcoholism progresses.

Thing is whilst we are young our liver can handle alcohol reasonably well but over time – especially if we binge drink (try to fit a week’s worth of alcohol into one night) or drinks lots – our liver processes the alcohol less & less well. It is NOT a case of the older liver taking more time to do the same job – it just can’t do the same job. period.

But here’s the kicker becuase our body views alcohol as a poison it pretty much halts

Too much for way too long…

everything else it does to process the alcohol. A lot of fat is broken down in the lvier – this stops..the entire fat burning process throughout your body stops until the ‘poison’ has been dealt with.

The processing of alcohol require large quantities of the B group vitamins so these get depleted.and becuase they are involved in the burning of fat your fat loss gets hit from this direction as well.

Recovery and Alcohol
Alcohol – again in large amounts – will hinder how well and how fast your body recovers from your work out program. Again it is liver related but also endocrine system as well – simply processing alcohol taxes your system and depletes it. It also stops protein synthesis. remember muscles grow after exercise in response to stress. In order to repair & grow after the level of intensity required to burn fat your body neeeds to process protein.

You won’t be doing this after a big night out..

Big night out = long time before you can recovery from exercise. Which of course puts you behind in terms of momentum and… you know the rest

So just don’t drink – right?

Wrong. nearly all of the negative effects of alcohol come from having too much and from having the wrong types. Red wines at the rate of no m ore than a glass or a night will not only keep you sociable but the calorie load they’ll add, the cravings they’ll trigger and the processing they’ll require will all be much less than spirits, cocktails, beers, fortified wines or even sparkling ones. The less sweet varieties of white wine are also reletivel low impact if drunk responsibly – not as good for your health as red but still better than most of the rest. A Rose` is a good compromise.

Again though – moderation is the key. Even at 2 glasses a night your liver will have to work, your fat burning and protein synthesis will stop and you’ll need to keep an eye on your vitamn B levels. Of course if you are eating the high lean protein, high unprocessed carb and low grain diet espoused here with littl or no sugar, transfats or HFCS then the effect on your health & fat burning will be even less.

If you want rapid results in terms of fat loss then don’t drink any alcohol until you get to

All good sources if B group – but a supplement won’t hurt…

your desired level. If you want to get there but remain sociable and are not in a burning hurry then a few drinks durng the week of a decent red won’t set you back too far…

An occasional drink won’t keep you fat, but be careful heart friendly or not, antioxidant rich or not (red wine at least) if you are taking in more than a sparse couple of alcoholic drinks then you will definately hit your progress on the head. Hard…
Personally, here in Oz with Winter upon us (such as it is) I think that I might still have a glass or two of red with a roast dinner; but overall look at foregoing the alcohol until daylight savings rolls around again for Summer – that way maybe I’ll keep the winter belly under easier control…

How about you?

See you next week….

 

Top 5 food rules for fat loss

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Welcome Back!!

Tear up the processed carbs!!

Short & sharp this week – how to get on track to shed kilos of body fat with these diet rules.

If you are following a program of challenging work outs then  following these five food tips consistently will have you dropping the bodyfat kilos quicklly and get you feeling like a Million Bucks!! Plus you’ll LBN**

1 Cut Your Calories

Half a kilo of fat (about 1.25 lbs) is 3500 calories – so although the process is NOT as simple as counting calories the inescapable truth is that you have to cut calories, create some sort of energy deficit so that you’ll lose fat.

So to lose fat, you have to gradually decrease your calories by eating less and cutting out fat depositing foods like processed carbs – yep bread, pasta, cakes, cookies, biscuits, most foods from a box these are the real culprits when it cpmes to putting on nd keeping on the fat.

2 Increase your Protein

To speed up your metabolism you have to increase your lean body mass – specifically your

Hard to beat – BBQ’s Chicken and fresh salad…

muscles. in order to support the growth and thr maintenace of muscle tissue you have to increase your protein intake.

This is a good thing as eating protein increased the thermic effect of food (you need to burn more calories to process protein than fat or carbs0 and that eating more protein leaves you feeling fuller for ;opnger meaning that you eat less (see #1 above!)

In other words, eat more lean meat, chicken, fish or eggs.- whatever lean protein source you choose. These foods help speed up your metabolism, keep you feeling full and provide important amino acids for body repair and hormone production.

3 Choose your carbs wisely

Carbs are not and never have been the enemy. Well the right types of carbs that is – vegetables and fruits are the right kinds of carbs to have – they promote fullness, provide fibre, do not cause fat storing insulin spikes,  and more importantly a host of vitamins, minerals, co-factors and phytonutrients and flavonals AND anti-oxidants. In other words as close to unprocessed as possible is the way to go. (NB frozen fruits & vegetables are just

The best source of carbs – forget the grain based, processed ones!!

fine to have – they may lose a litle vitamin C in the freezing process but have been shown to have the same if not higher nutrient content of fresh Fruit & vegetables!)

So which carbs are the one to avoid? Simple pretty much any carb that is grain based. So if it is baked or comes out of a box avoid it. Avoid heavily sugared foods and especially soft drinks / sodas.

In other words, eat less sugar and starches, such as processed grains. Eating too much of these foods can wreak havoc on your bloodstream, increasing the hormones – especially insulin –  that lead to fat gain.

4 Dose Up on Your Veges

Replacing processed, grain based carbs in order to get healthier and to lose fat is pretty challenging – grains are cheap to grow and have for over a century provided the big food companies with a way to create low cost products with a high sales value. We hav,e in a nutshell been brainwashed to view bread  biscuits, cake and cannolis are healthy or at least a part of a healthy diet.

You look like this if you get off the processed carb roundabout!!

If you are serious about re-conditioning your metabolism then you need tp support your body while you wean it off the sugar laden, infalammation causing processed carbs that you’ve been eating most of your life.

The way to do this is to increase your intake of vegetables and decrease the processed carbs. You’ll get more fibre, more nutrients and fell a lot better for it.

5 Tips to Boost our Metabolism

To support your metabolism, gradually replace bad fats with healthy fats. Adding things like olive oil, avocados, nuts, seeds and fish oils to your diet will help speed up your metabolism and lose bodyfat.

There you go – move more, eat less processed carbs and lose that fat.

**LBN = Look Better Naked

See you next week

4 Ways to Speed Up a “Slow” Metabolism

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Welcome back!

How my friend wants to go back to looking like…

I was talking a friend of mine the other day who is trying, to lose weight. (Long term readers will know that I consider this ‘wrong thinking’ we should be focussed on losing fat, not weight…)

The amount of weight in question is only 7 kilos (about 15lbs) so my friend is not obese yet she has been struggling with this same 7 kilos for years now…losing most if not all of them only to have them come back often with extra  ‘friends’…I’m sure that this sounds familar to many of you – it was certainly my experience in the past.(For my story and why this happens to so many of us sign up for the free report at the top right of this page)

You know the situation Lose 5kg.  Gain 4. Lose that 4.  Gain 6. And so on.

From our chat it was obvious that this pattern had been repeating over & over since her early 20’s. Having 3 kids in her late 20’s may have made it a bit worse, but nonetheless this weight has become a decade long issue. Her husband, a big athletic ex-kickboxer has also been fighting the same fight since he hit his late 30’s. This is not just a female or male only issue – we all want to look and feel healthy and the older we get the harder it becomes to get into and then stay in shape.

This is because our metabolism becomes de-conditioned. It is just not a matter of it slowing down – it actually becomes less efficient in a whole lot of areas all of which impact our health & well being.

This how we want see ourselves – lean & fit…

Now my friend & her husband are example so this. They get in shape about once a year through an all out campaign of huge exercise increase and dietary restriction. They drop weight (though not necessarily fat) look slimmer for a period of time and then the slow (or not so slow) weight regain happens and they end up being the same size as before if not larger. Even worse it takes more & more effort to get into shape each year and once there they are staying ‘slim’ for shorter & shorter periods of time.

Accepting a future of becoming ‘comfortably chubby’ is on the cards as far as they are concerned…My friend is concerned about this and wanted to know how she can speed up a slowing metabolism.

So how do you speed up a “de-conditioned” metabolism?

The bigger you are the faster your metabolism will be – this is simple fact. However if you took 2 people the same size and weight – the one with the lower body fat would have the faster metabolism and the easier time of it when it came to losing fat and getting healthier.

Why? Well because muscle – lean tissue – does increase metabolism more than fat, so less fat and more lean tissue keeps your metabolism running faster. A faster metabolism burns more calories and this means decreased fat.

Build muscle. The more muscle you have the faster you metabolism, the lower your body

Lift weigths, move more – get your metabolism reconditioned…

fat and the better you look naked – pretty good reasons to strive to get more lean tissue onto your frame don’t you think!!??

Muscle is more metabolically active at rest and when moving. Now some folk will tell you not to get too excited about this because for every 1 lb (500 grams) of muscle, research shows its only about a 9-15 calorie/day increase in metabolism. But as you know losing fat and looking better and being healthier is a game of synergy  and incremental gains What you eat, when you eat, how often you eat; when & how you work out, how much sleep you get, your stress level, your DN – all of these things work synergystically for or against your fat loss. So in the scheme of things burning an extra 9 or so calories a day at rest is not exciting BUT fat loss is a game of increments not huge differences!! It all adds up – so while 1 lb of muscle doesn’t offer a huge calorie benefit, adding on more muscle than that does.  Plus working out to gain that muscle has a ton of other health related benefits – including better calorie burn! If you work out properly you can be burining extra calories for hours afterwards.

Eat More.Unprocessed carbs and protein that it. It sounds contradictory but the other way

Eat more often & eat more protein with unprocessed foods…

to speed metabolism is to eat more. I have spoken about the Thermic Effect if Food (TEF) here: Metabolism-what-it-is-how-you-can-make-it-work-for-you-part-6

When you eat, especially if you eat protein and fibrous vegetables & fruits, your body has to use energy to digest & process your meal so your overall metabolism increases.  Protein, of course, does more to boost metabolism than either carbs (even unprocessed ones) or fats because it takes more energy to break it down & process it.  So make sure each meal includes a little protein — fish, eggs, chicken, turkey – skip the nuts, beans or soy their protein is not complete (they have to be eaten with foods containing a complete amino acid profile – ie flesh based protein) are less bio-available and does not have a) the same thermogenic affect and b) confer fewer health benefits.

Eat breakfast.  Eating a good solid breakfast after what is effectively at least an 8 hour

A family favourite at our place….

fast gets the metabolism rolling in quick order. Again though it is protein and fibrous carbs that do the trick. That oatmeal, boxed muesli or buttered toast are marginally better than skipping breakfast entirely but only just.and is likely to be causing a lot of other less desirable health effects. (Mmm – insulin spikes for breakfast just what I need to stay fat!!)

The best breakfast to rev up your metabolism is eggs with spinach, mushroom, onions and capsicum as an omelette, along with some cheese, some fruit and a small handful of nuts. (Colby cheese and pear is one of Nature’s great duos – right up there with tomato and onion, bacon & eggs, cauliflower and cheese sauce..)

There’s now some solid data suggesting eating eggs in the morning boosts weight loss above and beyond choosing toast, cereal or a bagel.

Do HIIT for your workouts. I’ve said it before (Interval-training-the-1-not-so-secret-fat-loss-tool) – long, slow cardio sessions do next  to nothing in terms of creating a post

When you’re fit enough sprints are a great HIIT workout…

exercise calorie burn (EPOC) when the workout is done.  On the other hand, shorter, harder intensity exercise bouts cause a much longer increase in metabolism, even hours after your workout is finished.  In fact, a number of studies show s much as a 14+ hour increase in metabolism after a high intensity bout of exercise.  This boost burned an additional 190 calories!  Again it is a game of increments so this will add up.

There you have it — 4 simple strategies to boost a slowing metabolism. If you’d like to know more about speeding up and reconditioning your metabolism go here and read the series.  How-you-can-fix-a-broken-metabolism-part-1

PS My firend & her husband have adopted the above and in addition have gone ‘paleo’. They’ve never looked or felt better. I’ll write about Paleo soon.

See you next week – be well.

 

 

Top 7 Tricks To Keep The Weight Off For Good…

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Welcome Back!!

You probably already know that your lifestyle is the biggest reason behind why most folks can’t keep their body fat at lean levels. It is the reason why after dieting & working out or plain starrving to reach a particular weight (instead of focussing on how you look and your clothes fit…) getting there on the scales and then within weeks often end up back where they started… or even worse – fatter than before!  The reality is we tend to live unhealthy and fat storing lifestyles is because they are EASILY ACCESSIBLE to us.

Hungry?  There’s a fast food restaurant within a few blocks from almost wherever you are.

Thirsty? It’s soooo easy to crack open a can of sugar laden soda or chemical filled diet soda, isn’t it?

Exercise?  It’s too easy to just hop on the treadmill for a few minutes and casually jog or walk while watching TV and say to yourself, “Now I’ve gotten in some exercise”.

BUT HERE’S THE TRUTH:

Eating better, exercising better and living better isn’t much harder…it’s just that we have to figure out ways to make it just as accessible…just as easy as living in an unhealthy manner.

So here are my top 7 tricks to make living leaner and stronger a true lifestyle, so you keep that weight off forever:

1. Drink water from a water bottle, not from a glass. It may seem like a little thing, but simply switching to a 32oz. water bottle and refilling it 3 times (rather than having to refill an 8 oz. glass 10 times a day) can make a HUGE difference in how much water you drink. 

2. Use pre-cut fruits and veggies. How many times have you chosen to eat something pre-packaged over a fruit or vegetable because it was just easier?  Getting your fruits and veggies in ‘ready to eat’ form will have you getting more of the micronutrients that your body thrives faster than ever.

3. Keep your healthiest foods at eye level. Whether in your cupboard or fridge, what you see first is typically what you’re going to eat, especially at snack times.  Don’t hide the fruits and veggies in a drawer…keep ‘em in front of your face, where they’ll be saying, “eat me!”.

4. Keep junk food out of your house. While it is not a good idea to completely cut out some of your favorite treats, keeping them out of your house is!  If it’s constantly in plain sight, guess what, you’re going to eat it! A wise man once said it’s much easier to control your environment than to control yourself.  Keep your special treats for when you’re enjoying a night out every so often.

5. Have ‘go-to’ meals and snacks. You know that eating smaller meals every 3 hours or so is the best way to keep your metabolism going and preventing over eating…but make that process easy and accessible by having a list of 2 or 3 go-to meals or snacks you can prepare in 5 minutes or less. One of my favorites is a quick whey proten shake made with frozen mixed berries using a stick mixer…

6. Work out in the morning…before you do anything else. While it’s usually best to work out when you have the most energy, many people find that their day just gets away from them and they end up with ‘no time’ to work out.  Wake up a bit earlier and knock out 25 or 30 minutes of HIIT training…now you can get on with your day without having to worry when you’re going to find time to work out. Even better your brain will be in top gear and you’ll energised and terrific!

7. Get a home gym setup now. This is another way to make it easier on yourself…and you don’t have to try to recreate a commercial gym for it to be efffective. All that you need is some basic strength training equipment. This means a skipping rope, a set of dumbbells or a couple of kettle bells, a chin up bar and if you can a weighted vest. This way you can ad some extra resistance and variety to bodyweight exercises.

Alright, I know these 7 tricks will make living the lean body lifestyle EASILY ACCESSIBLE to you starting today, and every day!

Remember, it doesn’t have to be difficult to live the way you want to live…it’s quite simple once you make the easy choices the right ones.

How many of these tricks are you following right now?  Do you have any others to share with us? Post ‘em in the comments below…

HIIT, Burst & ignore the CDC’s exercise guidelines!!

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Welcome back!

Just how much time to exercise do you need to shift weight and to recondition your metabolism?

The Centre for Disease Control in the USA recommends a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate intensity cardio exercise per week for 18 – 64 year old adults in its Physical

Got 5 hours a week to spend on this??

Activity Guidelines for Americans1. On top of that, to the CDC’s credit, they also recommend at least 2 sessions per week of ‘muscle strengthening’ exercise. And that’s if you are not overweight.

This recommendation ups to 300 minutes+ of cardio and then more resistance training if you want to lose fat. That’s 5 hours a week of cardio and likely another 3 or 3 of resistance training. Say 8 hours a week. Out of the 168 hours a week that we have available to us 8 hours doesn’t seem like a lot – but let’s look a little more closely.

  • Sleep (@ 8 Hours per night) = 56 hours
  • Food preparation, eating & clean up = 15 hours
  • Hourly commute to work = 10 hours
  • Work itself = 45 hours (8 hours work + 1 Hour lunch & breaks per day, 5 days)
  • Showering, laundry, household chores = 16 hours
  • Exercise (as per the CDC) = 8 hours

That leaves 18 hours a week for shopping, TV, recreation, reading, loving etc etc or a little over 2.5 hours a day.

Real Adults have real world responsibilities…

Really for most of us finding 8 hours a week just for exercise (this does not mean sport or recreation just fat loss focussed, fitness maintaining exercise) is not really feasible for the average adult with adult responsibilities.

In a word the CDC’s recommendations are not real life practical.

Now if fat loss is an imperative in your life, if it is deeply held goal then you will find the time – but such an effort is unlikely to become a regular habit for most of us. We’ll do it short term to drop fat for an event like a wedding or a reunion, but sustaining this type of effort is just not realistic for most of us.

And let’s be honest if we were to follow these guidelines who wants  to spend 5 or so hours a week on an exercise bike, stair climber, treadmill or elliptical trainer?

Just ain’t going to happen, no where no how.

 To make matters even worse it appears that everything we have been told for years about exercising especially for fat loss has been wrong.

It is not about duration, nor about finding some mythical fat burning zone – studies from conservative sources like Harvard University indicate that the key to effective exercise for fat loss and overall health is all about intensity.

Here are some guidelines for judging your level of intensity using a PRE(perceived rate of

Stair runs – now that’s intense!!

exertion) protocol:

  • Level 1 = Warm-Up or Slow Pace
  • Level 2 = Medium (you can talk easily
  • Level 3 = Medium-High (you can still talk)
  • Level 4 = High (Talking is in short bursts
  • Level 5 = Hard as you can go (Talking is not possible)

These levels are based on your current level of personal condition.

The available data shows that the long, slow, constant-speed aerobics that we’ve all been inculcated to believe are so good for us is exactly the wrong thing for us to be doing.

 In fact I’d go as far as to say doing continuous cardio is a waste of time.

 Why?

Hmm…Cortisol and low intensity perhaps??!!

Long slow constant cardio doesn’t get your metabolism running faster, nor does it build your fat burning capability or even really condition your cardiovascular and respiratory systems. It does increase cortisol release – which is not a good thing as high cortisol is associated with belly fat accumulation.

Look I’ve posted before on the benefits to your metabolism (both reconditioning and improving), your fat loss and your overall health of HIIT (high intensity interval training).

There has been a heap of research showing that high intensity interval training is better than traditional, long, slow aerobics if you want to:

  • Recondition your metabolism
  • protect your heart
  • burn body fat
  • build lean muscle
  • boost your overall metabolism
  • reduce insulin resistance
  • decrease cortisol levels
  • increase levels of HGH
  • increase your energy levels
  • improve your sleep patterns
  • Not waste time

You can get faster results in a shorter time period using HIIT. And that was where we

The results of HIIT (and okay maybe some help genetically…)

came in – 8 hours a week of exercise for so-so results when you could do HIIT style exercise for 12 – 20 minutes three times a week, add in a couple of 30 – 45 minute resistance training sessions and you you’ve got more time and better results. (in fact if you combined the 2 into what is called metabolic resistance training then you’d get all the benefits in under 80 minutes a week! – more on MT and how to design a program next week)

This is just not me speaking – here are some results from recent studies:

Harvard School of Public Health: A study of over 7,000 people found that the more intense the exertion, the lower the risk of heart disease.

Physical Activity Sciences Laboratory, Laval University, Ste-Foy, Quebec, Canada: Compared to treadmills and hour-long aerobics classes, HIIT helps you burn fat more efficiently and quickly.

Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada: Moderately active women (not on their backside all day but not running marathons either…) lost an impressive amount of fat doing just two weeks of HIIT.

School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh, Scotland, UK: Young males who did HIIT / Burst Training substantially reduced their risk for type 2 diabetes.

Department of Kinesiology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada: For people with type 2 diabetes, HIIT Training can improve blood sugar levels and reduce risks for diabetes-related complications.

The next level of HIT is a thing called ‘Burst Training.’ Regular HIIT requires intense effort for fairly short periods of time interspersed with short rest periods. Now I have to go on record here and say that I think that Burst training is largely a marketing term– if you are

Either way – HIIT or Burst – this is time efficiant and fat burning to the max!!

hitting high levels of exertion in your HIIT training then you are already ‘Bursting.’

Why this term has come about is because I think that many people say they are doing HIIT when they are really only doing timed exercise. It’s Tabatas – most folk do 20 seconds on and 10 seconds off for 4 minutes and say they’ve done a Tabata.

Unless you worked so hard during those 4 minutes that you are lying on your back sucking air then you have NOT done Tabatas – you’ve done timed interval exercise which is nowhere near as challenging or stressful. Nor does it deliver the health benefits we are after in as short a period of time as true HIIT or Tabatas.

Make no mistake unless you are going ‘balls to the wall’ for short periods of time followed by short periods of rest then you are NOT performing HIIT or Burst training. You’re working out, likely getting some benefit but far less than if you go flat out.

Burst training involves short (20 – 60 second maximum) bursts at such a high intensity that the created oxygen demand is higher than your body can supply.

Think about doing sand dune sprints, prowler sprint pushes or where Rocky runs the Philadelphia stairs…

This is so much more time efficient than the CDC’s ‘moderate cardio’…

This ‘over demand’ for oxygen creates a high level of  metabolic “stress” in your body that it depletes your glycogen stores which requires your body to not only work harder to repay this ‘oxygen debt’ but means that it has to burn more fat.

The Health benefits of “burst training” are not dissimilar to that of HIIT and include…

  • Increased fat burning
  • Increased lean muscle mass
  • Improved cardiovascular health
  • Combined aerobic and anaerobic activity
  • Increased “feel-good” beta-endorphins
  • Increased human growth hormone (HGH)
  • Increased energy
  • Improved athletic performance
  • Reduced inflammation
  • Increased EPOC

If you really want to go for it then move to what is called “Threshold” intervals. These are insanely hard bursts of intense exercise that, unlike the shorter ‘burst’ style, last anywhere from 65 seconds all the way up to 2 or sometimes 3 minutes.

Now that is a HIIT and that will burn fat & recondition your metabolism like little else!

They are also so demanding physically & mentally that you can’t do this oftenwhich

Threshold training should leave you feeling like this…

means this training style should only be used on those days when you are feeling in touch with the Universe when a flow state is nigh and you want to up the ante a bit.

Few of us mortals can train this way on a regular basis – but if you can incorporate them once a week then:

1. Research shows that performing “Threshold” intervals is one of the best ways to accelerate glycogen depletion (which = faster fat loss).

2. Test subjects who regularly performed threshold intervals burned more fat when they performed steady state or higher intensity intervals.

In other words, using the Threshold system  develops your metabolism where it becomes more adept at burning fat in less time that either HIIT or Burst style training.

So forget what the politically correct exercise guidelines are – get HIITing, Bursting or jump over your Threshold!! This is how you can recondition your metabolism in record time, get leaner, get healthier and LBN.

See you next week – don’t forget to share this!!

1)      http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/everyone/guidelines/adults.html