Aerobic Cardio Makes You Fat

If you’ve ever wanted to lose weight, chances are one of the first things you added to your fat loss program was cardio.  Traditional thought has told us, if we put in our time on the road, treadmill, bike, or whatever means we choose that we will expend enough calories to lose weight.  So off we go, 30 to 45 minutes later we’ve burned through hundreds of calories and are feeling great.  We keep this up 3+ times a week for month after month.  At first we’re losing weight and feeling good.  Then it happens.  The weight loss stops and frustration sets in.  Why can’t I lose weight?!?!  Maybe I need to do more cardio to burn more calories…so off we go again.  60 to 75 minutes later we’re feeling accomplished again.  But why isn’t the scale changing?  I haven’t lost a single pound after weeks of doubling, maybe even tripling my cardio!  I lost weight at first, why isn’t it working anymore!?! 

It may be true that aerobic cardio can help you lose some weight when you first start exercising.  But plenty of research has been developed over the years to show that the more efficient you become with repetitive aerobic exercise (i.e. running) the LESS calories you expend per minute while exercising, requiring you to run further and longer to get the same calorie burning effect.  Even then as you increase your mileage again and again over time, unless you’re a professional endurance athlete who carefully plans their life around training, your body will reach a tipping point where the stress from overtraining will eventually lead to burnout or possibly even an injury. 

A 2006 study showcases this effect.  Over 12,000 runners were followed for 9 years.  A majority of these runners gained body fat and waist circumference over the years.  The ones who gained the most fat were the runners who dropped their mileage, primarily due to the unavoidable injury that occurs from a repetitive and unbalanced training program.  But the real highlight of this study was that even the runners who maintained or slightly increased their mileage saw an increase in body fat.  The body adapts to regular aerobic exercise by using less oxygen and energy to perform the most amount of work possible.  This increase in efficiency may help performance, but it doesn’t help your waistline.  At the same time, regular aerobic exercise will also create a catabolic affect in your body, breaking down muscle tissue from the stress effect of repetitive, long duration exercise.  Since a pound of muscle burns up to 10 times more energy then a pound of fat, this drop in muscle mass will decrease your resting metabolic rate.  Not only are you burning fewer calories during exercise, but now you’re burning less at rest.  Thus, you complete your recipe for weight gain.

Don’t get me wrong, there are benefits to aerobic activity, but not that many in the realm of long term weight loss.  Stop eating less and doing more cardio to lose weight.  Take a smarter approach to maximize your results.  With the proper dietary choices and a progressive exercise plan, you will become a fat burning machine.  Make sure to include weight lifting in your training routine at least 3 times a week and as many as 6 days a week depending on your training age.  Weight lifting has been shown to provide just as much heart healthy benefits as aerobic endurance training when performed properly.  Weight lifting will also help you to preserve your muscle mass, thus maintaining and possibly even increasing your metabolic rate at rest.  In addition to lifting weights, include anaerobic interval training to improve cardiovascular conditioning and maximize calorie expenditure over the long haul.  Interval training in general terms is defined as a short burst of work followed by a recovery period usually 2 to 4 times as long as your work period, repeated for a set amount of time.  This could include sprints of any distance or even demanding metabolic movements like burpees and kettlebell swings.  I would recommend starting with 15-20 minutes of interval conditioning directly after your weight lifting session or on days in between weight lifting.  This style of training will improve your metabolism and increase the release of fat burning hormones as well, leading to greater fat loss over time.

References:

Williams, P. Wood. The Effects of Changing Exercise Levels on Weight and Age-Related Weight Gain. International Journal of Obesity. 2006. 30)3), 543-551.

http://www.poliquingroup.com/ArticlesMultimedia/Articles/Article/1049/Three_Incredible_Lies_in_Mainstream_Training_Nutri.aspx

For more Fitness, Nutrition, and Wellness advice contact Paul Wantuck or stop by the Fitness Center to schedule a consultation and get started on the path towards a healthier you!

How Daily Inactivity Can Hinder Results

           

           We all know that working out is a big part of a healthy lifestyle.  Indeed, if you want to maximize your health there is no way around it, you will have to exercise.  But what happens during the other waking hours of your day can have just as much impact on your health and wellness, if not more.  Most individuals believe themselves to be active during the day, but when measured up against the recommended level of daily activity for adults, only 5% of the population meets this mark.  That means all that “activity” that we claim to be performing is really just a busy and stressful lifestyle.  Running errands, dropping off the kids, picking them back up, buying groceries, etc. You may be on the go, but are you active?  

  Health and fitness experts recommend achieving at least 10,000 steps a day to maintain an active lifestyle and improve your health.  That’s the equivalent to roughly 5 miles of walking.  This level of activity in itself, can burn just as many calories as 1 hour of exercise in the gym.  Not only will moving more throughout the day help to burn some excess calories, but it will also help to decrease stress levels in the body and improve many health stats such as blood pressure, glucose and lipid levels. From a mental health perspective, achieving over 10,000 steps a day also results in a 50% decreased risk of developing depression.  To hold yourself accountable to achieving 10,000 steps a day I would recommend investing in a pedometer or activity tracker.  If you don’t measure it, you’ll be less likely to achieve it on a consistent level.  

On the flip side, sitting and not moving throughout the day can lead to serious health problems including increased insulin resistance, decreased metabolism, increased fat stores and a decrease in bone density just to name a few.  All of which are counterproductive to the goals of your workout program. Research has shown that people who moved for just a few minutes every 20 minutes or so had lower insulin and glucose levels. Lower insulin and glucose means the body is burning fat better and regulating energy levels better. When your muscles and cardiovascular system go without use, say when you sit down for 20 minutes at the computer, they become less effective. That’s why an active break every 20 minutes like walking around your office building can have a positive effect on your health and help improve oxygen flow throughout your system. In addition, chronic sitting negatively impacts the range of motion of your hips, hamstrings, back, shoulders and other muscles. Over time, it can lead to poor posture, back and knee problems and decreased muscular function. 

Avoid the idea that a workout by itself can help you achieve optimal health. Get to the gym to workout, but don’t forget to move and be active for the remainder of the day as well. Unless you train as a professional athlete, an hour’s workout is not the only activity you should be focused on in order to avoid the effects of a sedentary lifestyle.

For more Fitness, Nutrition, and Wellness advice contact Paul Wantuck or stop by the Fitness Center to schedule a consultation and get started on the path towards a healthier you!

Do Artificial Sweeteners Create Artificial Expectations?

We make decisions everyday that will either help or harm our health.  Many of those decisions revolve around what we put in our body.  Whole milk or skim milk? Regular eggs or cage free? Butter or margarine? Sugar or artificial sweeteners?  With the abundance of health and wellness information that is available to us online, on TV, from our local gym and fitness professionals and more, it is important to ask ourselves what we are basing our decisions off of. The food industry has a way of highlighting just the right benefits to create buzz and demand for their product, while leaving out some critical information that could destroy their profits along with your health.  One such piece of knowledge that everyone should be aware of is that the artificial sweetener Aspartame is believed to be carcinogenic and accounts for more reports of adverse reactions reported by the FDA than all other foods and food additives combined.¹

Just because the packaging states it to be “sugar free” doesn’t make it good for you, and may not even be better for you as compared to its sugary filled counterpart.  Your body is not fooled by these zero calorie sweeteners.  Studies have confirmed that artificial sweeteners appear to cause even greater weight gain then calorie based sweeteners².  You don’t gain weight by eating too many calories and not exercising enough to burn off those excess calories.  You gain weight because you eat the wrong kind of calories which in turn negatively affect the hormonal and chemical balance within your body.  Even though is no sugar in artificial sweeteners, your body still responds to it’s consumption by releasing insulin into the blood stream in order to regulate blood sugar levels as interpreted by the brain upon consuming aspartame. Long story short, when insulin is abundantly present in the blood stream it is impossible for your body to burn fat. 

One other major explanation as to why you might gain more weight when consuming aspartame, is that any food with aspartame included in the ingredient list will further stimulate your appetite, specifically your cravings for carbs.  When your body digests something sweet without the calories to go with it, you disrupt your appetite control mechanism and increase your body’s need to eat more food in order to satisfy the demand for energy as interpreted in the brain.³  So that “harmless” calorie free diet cola that you sip through to spare yourself 180 calories, is actually teaching your body to eat more over the course of the day and at the same time store more fat. 

Besides the effect of aspartame on your waist line, it can also be life threatening.  According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s (CSPI) Executive Director Michael F. Jacobson “Aspartame has been found to cause cancer - leukemia, lymphoma, and other tumors - in laboratory animals, and it shouldn’t be in the food supply.” Aspartame is primarily made up of aspartic acid and phenylalanine. The phenylalanine has been synthetically modified to carry a methyl group, which provides the majority of the sweetness. When digested, the methyl group on the phenylalanine breaks off and forms methanol. Methanol is a serious neurotoxin and is converted into formaldehyde within the tissues of your body, which wreaks havoc on sensitive proteins and DNA. All animals except humans have a protective mechanism that allows methanol to be broken down into harmless formic acid and excreted from their body.¹ If aspartame has cancerous affects on lab animals even given their protective mechanism against its dangerous affects, imagine what it can do to us humans who carry no such protection...

 To determine if you are experiencing any adverse reactions to artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, perform the following steps:

 

·         Eliminate all artificial sweeteners from your diet for two weeks to detox your body.

·         Then, reintroduce your artificial sweetener of choice about three times daily.

·         Avoid other artificial sweeteners during this period.

·         Do this for one to three days and notice how you feel following the detox as compared to before.

For more Fitness, Nutrition, and Wellness advice contact Paul Wantuck or stop by the Fitness Center to schedule a consultation and get started on the path towards a healthier you!

References:

1.        http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/06/29/sweet-misery-documentary.aspx

2.        http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/08/28/soda-aspartame.aspx

3.        http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18298259