Ingredients (32 oz or about 1 liter):
2 Tea Bags
6 level teaspoon sugar (24 grams)
A pinch of salt (0.5 grams)
2 oz lemon juice (about 55 grams)
30 oz boiling water
Contains:
100 calories
500 mg Sodium
60mg of Potassium (from the lemon juice)
Caffeine varies, est 100mg-200mg caffeine (depending on the tea used and infusion duration)
Estimated Cost:
Lemon juice: $0.10
2 Tea Bags: $0.06
Sugar, Salt, water, etc: negligible
Compare to 32 oz Gatorade:
200 calories
440mg Sodium
120mg Potassium
No caffeine
Cost: $1.29
Fat Burning Basics
The Basics of Burning Fat
If you're trying to lose weight, knowing how your body uses calories for fuel can make a difference in how you approach your weight loss program. We get our energy from fat, carbs and protein but. Which one our bodies draw from, however, depends on the kind of activity we're doing. Now, most people want to use fat for energy, which makes sense. We figure, the more fat we can use as fuel, the less fat we'll have in our bodies. But, using more fat doesn't automatically lead to losing more fat.
Understanding the best way to burn fat starts with some basic facts about how your body gets its energy:
The body primarily uses fat and carbs for fuel. A small amount of protein is used during exercise, but it's mainly used to repair the muscles after exercise.
The ratio of these fuels will shift depending on the activity you're doing.
For higher intensity exercise, such as fast-paced running, the body will rely more on carbs for fuel than fat. That's because the metabolic pathways available to break down carbs for energy are more efficient than the pathways available for fat breakdown.
For long, slower exercise, fat is used more for energy than carbs.
When it comes to weight loss, it doesn't matter what type of fuel you use. What matters is how many calories you burn as opposed to how many calories you take in.
This is a very simplified look at energy with a solid take-home message. When it comes to weight loss, what matters is burning more calories, not necessarily using more fat for energy. And, the harder you work, the more calories you'll burn overall. Think about it this way: When you sit or sleep, you're in your prime fat-burning mode. But, you've probably never contemplated the idea of sleeping more to lose weight, as lovely as that thought is.
The bottom line? Just because you're using more fat as energy doesn't mean you're burning more calories.
The Myth of the Fat Burning Zone
One thing we know is that exercising at lower intensities will use more fat for energy. This basic premise is what started the theory of the 'fat burning zone,' or the idea that working in a certain heart rate zone (around 55 to 65 of your maximum heart rate) will allow your body to burn more fat.
Over the years, this theory has become so ingrained in our exercise experience that we see it touted in books, charts, websites, magazines and even on cardio machines at the gym. The trouble is that it's misleading. Working at lower intensities isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it won't burn more fat off your body unless you're burning more calories than you're eating. One way to increase your calorie burn is to exercise at higher intensities.
Does this mean that, if you want to burn more fat, you should avoid low intensity exercise? Not necessarily. There are some specific things you can do to burn more fat and it all starts with how and how much you exercise.
Fat Burning Tip #1: Incorporate a Mix of Low, Medium and High Intensity Cardio Exercise
You may be confused about exactly how hard to work during cardio. You may even think that high intensity exercise is the only way to go. After all, you can burn more calories and, even better, you don't have to spend as much time doing it. But having some variety can help you stimulate all of your different energy systems, protect you from overuse injuries, and help you enjoy your workouts more.
High Intensity Cardio
For our purposes here, high intensity cardio falls between about 75 to 85 of your maximum heart rate (MHR) or, if you're not using heart rate zones, about a 6 to 8 on this perceived exertion scale. What this translates to is exercise at a level that feels challenging and leaves you too breathless to talk much. You're not going all out, as in sprinting as fast as you can.
There's no doubt that some high intensity training work can be helpful for weight loss as well as improving endurance and aerobic capacity. For example, a 150-lb. person would burn about 225 calories after running at 6 mph for 30 minutes. If this person walked at 3.5 mph for that same length of time, he would burn 85 to 90 calories. But, the number of calories you can burn isn't the whole story. If you do too many high intensity workouts every week, you risk:
Overuse injuries
Burnout
Inconsistent workouts
Growing to hate exercise
Not only that but, if you don't have much experience with exercise, you may not have the conditioning or the desire for breathless and challenging workouts. And if you have some kind of medical condition or injury, forget about doing high intensity training (or any kind of training) without checking with your doctor first.
If you're doing several days of cardio each week, which is what is recommended for weight loss, you would probably want just 1 or 2 workouts to fall into the high intensity range. You can use other workouts to target different areas of fitness (like endurance) and allow your body to recover.
Some examples of high intensity workouts:
A 20-minute workout at a fast pace
You can use any activity or machine, but the idea is to stay in the high intensity work zone throughout the workout. You'll find that 20 minutes is usually the recommended length for this kind of workout and most people wouldn't want to go much longer than that.Interval Training
A great way to incorporate high intensity training without doing it continuously is by doing intervals. Alternate a hard segment (e.g., running at a fast pace for 30 to 60 seconds) with a recovery segment (e.g., walking for 1 to 2 minutes). Repeat this series for the length of the workout, usually around 20 to 30 minutes. You can learn more in my Interval Training Workouts.
Moderate Intensity Cardio
There are a variety of definitions of what moderate intensity exercise is, but it typically falls between about 60 to 70 of your MHR (a level 4 to 6 on this perceived exertion scale). The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) often recommends this level of intensity in its exercise guidelines. The lower end of this range usually incorporates the 'fat burning zone.' That means can carry on a conversation without much difficulty and you feel pretty comfortable with what you're doing.
Moderate intensity workouts have some great benefits such as:
Comfort -- Hard workouts are, well, hard. It takes time to build up the endurance and strength to handle challenging exercise. Moderate workouts allow you to work at a more comfortable pace, which means you may be more consistent with your program.
Better health -- Even modest movement can improve your fitness while lowering your risk of heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.
More choices -- High intensity workouts will usually involve some kind of impact or, at the least, a fast pace. But, you can usually get up into the more moderate heart rate zones with a variety of activities, providing you work hard enough. Even raking leaves or shoveling snow, if you do it vigorously enough, can fall into that category.
For weight loss purposes, you would likely want the majority of your cardio workouts to fall into this range. Some examples:
Walking 10,000 steps a day
A 30 to 45-minute cardio machine workout
A brisk walk
Riding a bike at a medium pace
Low Intensity Activity
Low intensity exercise is considered to be below about 50 to 55 of your MHR, or about a level 3 to 5 on this perceived exertion scale. This level of intensity is no doubt one of the more comfortable areas of exercise, keeping you at a pace that isn't too taxing and doesn't pose much of a challenge. This, along with the idea that it burns more fat, makes this a popular place to stay. But, as we've learned, you can burn more calories if you work harder, and that's what you want for weight loss.
That doesn't mean that low intensity exercise has no purpose. It involves the kind of long, slow activities you feel like you could do all day and, even better, activities you usually enjoy such as:
Taking a stroll
Light gardening
A long, slow bike ride
A gentle stretching routine
This doesn't have to be a structured, scheduled workout, but something you do all day long by walking more, taking the stairs, doing more physical chores around the house, etc.
Fat Burning Tip #2: Exercise Consistently
It may seem like a no-brainer that regular exercise can help you burn fat and lose weight. But, it's not just about the calories you're burning. It's also about the adaptations your body makes when you exercise on a regular basis. Many of those adaptations lead directly to your ability to burn more fat without even trying. When you exercise regularly, your body:
Becomes more efficient at delivering and extracting oxygen -- Simply put, this helps your cells burn fat more efficiently.
Has better circulation -- This allows the fatty acids to move more efficiently through the blood and into the muscle. That means fat is more readily available for fueling the body.
Increases the number and size of mitochondria, also known as cellular power plants that provide energy for the body.
And, don't forget, regular exercise will also help you manage your weight. The more activity you engage in, the more calories you'll burn, and the easier it is to create the calorie deficit needed to lose weight.
Tips for Consistent Exercise
Schedule some exercise time every day, even if it's just a few minutes.
Split up your workouts. You can get the same benefit from short workouts spread throughout the day as do with continuous workouts.
Change daily routines to incorporate activity. Park at the edge of the parking lot at work to add more walking time, or add an extra lap at the mall when shopping. Integrating more activity into your usual routines will help you stay active, even if you don't have time for a structured workout.
Make exercise your focus and schedule the rest of your day around it instead of trying to squeeze it in when you can. If it's not a priority, you won't do it.
Exercise Resources
Fat Burning Tip #3: Lift Weights
Adding more muscle by lifting weights can also help with burning fat, especially if you're also dieting. Lifting weights:
Preserves muscle mass -- If you diet to lose weight, you actually risk losing muscle as well as fat. Muscle is metabolically active, so when you lose it, you also lose the extra calorie-burn muscles can provide.
Keeps your metabolism going -- Some studies have found that a diet-only approach to weight loss could lower a person's resting metabolic rate by up to 20% a day. Lifting weights and maintaining muscle helps keep the metabolism up, even if you're cutting your calories.
Helps you burn extra calories -- If you lift weights at a higher intensity, you can actually increase your afterburn, or the calories you burn after your workout. As About.com Weight Training Guide Paul Rogers states in his article, Burn More Fat, "If you can get afterburn...that’s a bonus because you burn fat during the exercise and after you cease as well."
Strength Training Resources
There's no way around the fact that, when it comes to burning more fat, we have to work at it. There is no magic exercise, workout or pill that will do the job for us. But, the good news is that it doesn't take much activity to push the body into that fat burning mode. Try incorporating some type of activity every day, even if it's just a quick walk, and build on that over time as it becomes more of a routine. Do that and you're on the way to burning more fat.
Sources:
Kinucan, Paige and Kravitz, Len. "Controversies in Metabolism." www.drlenkravitz.com. Retrieved Oct. 3, 2007.
Kravitz, Len. "Fat Facts." IDEA Fitness Journal, Sept. 2007.
Thompson, D.L. et al. "Substrate use during and following moderate- and low-intensity exercise: Implications for weight control." European Journal of Applied Physiology and Occupational Physiology 1998; 78(1), 43-49.
Wt train to BURN MORE FAT
We all want to burn more fat for weight loss, body shaping, health and wellbeing or for sporting purposes. Trim that butt, waste that cellulite, smooth those love handles, bust that belly; it’s all part of the trim and slim exercise and diet activity many of us indulge in.
In this article you will see exactly how fat burning works and how to get the best out of your exercise program. Also, I'll outline a new weights circuit program I am developing to take advantage of new research on weight loss and exercise from Australian researchers at the University of New South Wales, which suggests interval training, alternating sprints and rest, is a breakthrough method of burning fat and slimming down.
The Basics of Fat Burning
Energy in, energy out. The body normally burns a mix of carbohydrate, as glucose, and fat for fuel. How much of either depends on your physical activity and if, or what you have eaten recently. When you use more energy than you take in from food and drink, the body burns stored fat and carbohydrates, and then even protein, to fuel your everyday activities even if you are not exercising
That’s what happens when people starve of course; the body starts to eat itself. Depending on your family history -- your genetics -- and the way you eat and exercise to create this energy deficit, your body may decide to get conservative and drop your metabolic rate to try to hold onto body weight. Some of us seem to have inherited this tendency more than others, the origins of which may be in the early periods of human evolution where 'feast or famine' was more or less the norm.
Glucose, fat and protein. Even so, starvation always works eventually and the body starts to break down its own tissue for fuel. Stored carbohydrate called glycogen is quickly used up, then goes the fat stored under the skin and around the internal organs. Protein in muscle is then broken down to create glucose to keep the brain working and you conscious.
Fat and glucose are the body’s two main energy sources. Fat you know well, glucose comes mainly from carbohydrate foods like rice and bread and potatoes and protein is supplied mainly by meat and beans and dairy products. The amino acid building blocks of protein foods can be converted to glucose in emergencies. Your body always burns a mix of fat and glucose except at very high intensities, and the ratio of the fat and glucose in 'the burn' varies with intensity and time of exercise.
Fat burning zone. You may have noticed that some bikes and treadmills at the gym have a setting that says “fat burning zone”, which implies a setting for intensity or speed. The reason for this is that the body burns a greater percentage of fat at a slow pace (or after about 90 minutes of exercise). The fat burning zone, a low intensity speed zone is mainly a gimmick, and here is the reason.
Even though you burn more fat going slowly, you still burn a percentage of fat at much faster speeds or intensity. It all boils down to how much energy you expend in totality. For example, if you compare exercising at a slow rate that burns 60 percent fat and 40 percent glucose and a higher intensity or duration that burns only 30 percent fat and 70 percent glucose, you may still burn more fat at the higher intensity.
A typical example. Exercise (1) is the slower 60/40 mix and exercise (2) is the faster, 30/70 mix of fat and glucose fuel.
Walking on a treadmill for 30 minutes -- 180 calories used -- 108 calories of fat burned
Running on a treadmill for 30 minutes -- 400 calories used -- 120 calories of fat burned
You can see from this example that the bottom line really is how much energy you expend -- and that is the ultimate fat burning measure. The theoretical fat burning zone is mostly a convenient myth.
Weight Training Does it Better -- Or Does It?
Muscle burns more fat. Weight training is increasingly recommended as a fat-busting tool because some experts say extra muscle burns more energy than body fat at rest, so if you develop more muscle and have a higher muscle to fat ratio than before, you must burn extra energy and more stored fat as a result. This is true and has been shown in metabolic studies. However, the differences are not that dramatic; perhaps less than a few tens of calories per day for each pound of muscle increased, for most people.
Does that mean you shouldn’t worry about weight training? Certainly not, because weight training has many other benefits for health and performance, not the least of which is extra muscle. It’s just that this advantage has been somewhat overstated and we need to get this fat burning thing right in order to develop the best weight loss and performance programs.
Getting the afterburn. Okay, so extra muscle does not provide that much advantage, but what about the afterburn? The 'afterburn', or the amount of energy you use after you stop exercising, has been promoted as an important slimming idea. If you can get afterburn, which is really another way of saying your metabolism increases for several hours or longer after a particular exercise, then that’s a bonus because you burn fat during the exercise and after you cease as well. Will the fun ever stop!
However, this idea has recently been reconsidered as well. An article in the Journal of Sports Science in December last year reported that despite some promising early studies of this effect, the idea has not proven to be as useful as first thought.
Exercise scientists call this afterburn effect EPOC, which stands for Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption. The authors of that study say that the high intensities required -- greater than about 75 percent of maximum heart rate -- are probably beyond what most people wanting to lose weight can cope with in sustained exercise. So the afterburn advantage from lifting weights or running fast is there, but you need to be able to sustain that intensity, which means a lot of hard work. No secrets there, I'm sure.
Strength training has so many great things going for it that I'm a big fan -- increased strength, more muscle and body shape, better balance and bone density and improved functionality across all facets of human movement. But let’s be honest, we all need aerobic or cardio training as well. It has its own set of important functional benefits including general fitness, elastic arteries, increased heart and lung function and lower blood pressure to name a few benefits.
Lifting weights can easily move us into the high intensity exercise zone above the 75 percent effort required to get some afterburn, but it's only for short bursts. This is not consistent, steady-state effort and does not generally burn as much energy as a good run on the treadmill, cycle or row machine at moderate pace. For example, here are the energy expenditure calculations for weights versus cardio for one hour of exercise from the NAT Nutritional Analysis Tools web site. I've based this on a 150 pound person (just under 70 kilograms).
Running at 8 minutes a mile pace (5 min/km) -- burn 852 calories (kilocalories)
Weight lifting, vigorous, free weights or machines -- burn 409 calories (kilocalories)
I’ve tried to line these activities up for effort so that the comparison is worthwhile. Whenever I check these numbers it astounds me because I run and I lift weights, and sometimes I feel much fresher after a run than going for it in the gym with sub-10 RM (repetition maximum) and three sets of ten exercises. Nevertheless, the numbers always come out the same with any reputable energy calculator. Sustained aerobics always spends about twice the energy of weight training in a comparable comparison. You can see from this why cardio sessions are important for fat loss.
Should I Exercise Before Breakfast to Burn More Fat?
The answer is 'not necessarily', because even though you will burn more fat on an empty stomach, ultimately this will probably make little difference because your energy intake and expenditure and metabolism balances out, more or less, over the 24-hour period. What really matters is your total energy intake and expenditure, that is, how much you eat and how much you exercise and move in general.
However, stay tuned on this because until this is examined further scientifically, how much meal timing manipulation could help with fat loss is not certain. One thing that seems clear is that people who eat breakfast maintain weight better and lose fat quicker, so don’t skip breakfast.
The Best Strategy for Fat Loss
So where are we at with our fat burning project? Here is a summary.
Increase muscle with weight training. Extra muscle helps to burn more energy at rest, even if only a little. This is called the resting metabolic rate of muscle or RMR. Extra muscle will also burn more fat in active phase, the active metabolic rate if you like, or the AMR, so having more muscle will definitely help burn more energy and fat.
Lift heavier weights. What I suggest is that the weights workout should be vigorous, with the number of repetitions kept at the low to medium end of the scale between 8 and 12 RM. To remind you, the RM is the repetition maximum, which means the most weight you can lift for this number of reps before fatigue. The 8-12 is within a range that should provide strength and bigger muscle growth, which is called hypertrophy.
If you go higher than this, say 15 to 20 repetitions to a set, or more, you are getting into the range where you would probably be better off doing cardio because the return on effort, the energy burn, is better spent jogging, cycling, stepping or rowing. At that number of repetitions you won’t build much muscle either, so very high-repetition training with weights has minimum value in my view.
Do aerobic exercise. Considering how much energy you would use in an hour of either type of exercise, weights or cardio, you must do some consistent aerobic or cardio work to burn fat.
Try high-intensity cardio. Remember the study from the University of New South Wales that we started with? High-intensity exercise, even if only in short bursts, may rev up the metabolism and get that fat mobilized. Do some high intensity as well, but don’t overdo it, because burning the fat is a long-term project and you don’t want to get ‘burned out’. A group exercise program such as a solid cycle spin class might match this requirement. In fact, I highly recommend group cycle spin classes where you are encouraged to go fast, yet with the option to slow down if you need to.
The Weights and Cardio Circuit Training Program
Combining weights and cardio in a circuit interval session may be the best approach of all. The weights circuit I propose is based on the idea of mixing high and low-intensity weights and cardio in a circuit. This idea is not new, but what I've designed uses simple equipment: one set of dumbbells, an exercise step platform and five carefully chosen basic exercises.
Check it out and let me know if it works for you.
References
Owen O. Resting metabolic requirements of men and women. Mayo Clin Proc 1988;63:503-510.
LaForgia J, Withers RT, Gore CJ. Effects of exercise intensity and duration on the excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. J. Sports Sci. 2006 Dec;24(12):1247-64.
Diet Myths!!! *weight loss*
Losing weight – and most if it should be fat – is important for people who are overweight, in terms of body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference. It is also important for athletes, bodybuilders and recreational body shapers who want to get rid of those last few pounds.
With weight loss, it seems as if everyone has an angle, but most strategies are useless or insignificant.
Weight Loss Basics
What works for weight loss is to burn more calories in physical activity than you consume in food calories -- an excess of energy used compared to energy consumed. If you doubt this in any way, consider what happens to people on starvation diets in prison or who’ve been lost at sea or in the wilderness for many weeks or months with insufficient food. The body eventually uses all stored forms of energy, including muscle, to support itself for as long as possible. Then you die, mostly in a skeletal state.
But during weight loss (intentional or not), the body does try to prevent this happening — and this is a survival mechanism developed over several millions years of human evolution — by lowering its energy-burning rate in response to low-calorie consumption. The human body makes changes in all sorts of ways to adjust to changing circumstances. This is called “homeostasis.”
Variations exist in how much weight individuals can lose in response to diet and exercise, but in the end, changing energy balance is the only major thing that matters. I make this point because trivial approaches such as drinking green tea or eating chili peppers or drinking coffee (caffeine) or taking some herbal supplement or other may have a very small effect on fat loss that could easily be negated by the body adjusting to that challenge over time by altering its metabolism. Consistent deficits in energy intake and expenditure over months and years is what you need to concentrate on.
Here are 10 weight loss approaches that could waste your time:
1. Eat According to Your Metabolic Type
The origin of this idea in the modern diet business can be traced to The Metabolic Typing Diet by William Wolcott and Trish Fahey. The general idea dates from the 1970s and perhaps even before that.
The premise is that we all have a “metabolic type” — an individual metabolism that can be manipulated by dietary choices. According to this, we all fall into three metabolic types. And how do you know your metabolic type? Usually, the practitioners of metabolic type diets ask you a range of questions about your body shape, natural food choices, energy levels and many other things. Some may charge for blood or urine tests.
No doubt, you will soon be offered a genetic test that is supposed to identify your best nutrition and training habits based on your genes, which, presumably, create your metabolic type. Already similar services are being promoted to health and fitness enthusiasts — for a fee of course.
There is no evidence that metabolic types have any validity for weight management or fitness training, including weight training. Our genes can influence how our bodies works, but genes are not faultless determinants of physical function — or behavior for that matter. Genes interact with the environment, in this case, with food and physical activity. The idea that we have a metabolic type that reacts rigidly to diet in a certain way because of a genetic component is false, or at least only partly true. Food and exercise are just as likely to change the way these genes function as genes are to demand certain foods for health, perhaps even more likely.
2. Don’t Eat Carbohydrates Because They Turn to Fat
This one still persists, even after all the debunking that has been done. It is a persistent myth of misplaced emphasis that derives from the low-carb diet movement. First, some carbohydrates can be converted to fat and stored, but this is only significant if you overeat. Fructose in corn syrup and cane sugar is more likely to do this than glucose from starches, such as grains.
Second, even if some carbohydrate turns to fat, it is not permanently enshrined in some fat larder on your hips, legs, belly, arms and butt until the end of history. Mostly, you can burn it off just like you can burn off dietary fat that is eaten and stored. What matters is the total calories you consume and the energy calories you expend.
3. Eat Foods that Boost Metabolism or Decrease Appetite
While it is true that chemical substances, such as amphetamines, boost metabolism so that you burn more calories and this helps you with weight loss, amphetamines are powerful substances and few naturally occurring herbs or extracts have this type of effect. Or, if they do, products, such as ephedra, may not be safe for casual consumption. The FDA says ephedra is unsafe.
Other plant-derived substances touted as useful weight loss supplements are caffeine, capsaicin (chili), green tea, hoodia and many others sold as natural remedies. Some, such as hoodia, are supposed to be appetite suppressants.
The main issue with these weight loss solutions is that they aren’t solutions. Some may provide a small benefit, but mostly they cost you extra money and distract from the main game, which is getting your food intake and exercise plan working for you over the long term. There’s no harm in consuming coffee, chili and green tea as part of a normal diet. Spending big on supplements or exotic herbs for this purpose is bound to disappoint you if you don’t address the major factors in weight management.
4. Negative Calorie Foods Can Help You Lose Weight
This one is only for the very naïve. The idea that certain foods use more energy in digestion than they contain in calories is not to be believed, especially when lists of such foods includes fruits that contain significant calories in natural sugars.
If you eat a diet of green leafy vegetables and fruit, you probably will lose weight, but that’s because, overall, you will have reduced your calorie intake substantially. Try the Calorie-Count database to see how many calories are in various foods.
5. You Can Spot-Reduce Body Fat
This one is easy. No, you can’t. Spot reducing means targeting a particular body region for preferential fat removal, for example, doing crunches to rid your abdominals of extra fat. What you feel when you are doing crunches is muscle contraction and fatigue. The effort (energy expenditure) to create this is distributed across the body by increased heart rate, blood distribution and lung activity.
6. You Should Do Low-to-Moderate Intensity Exercise to Burn Fat
Low-intensity exercise burns more fat than glucose (blood sugar) as a percentage of total energy, and high-intensity exercise burns more glucose than fat. Even so, the total energy expended for a given time period is more important, because you can still burn fat at high intensity, even though the percentage of the total may be lower.
In addition, when you burn glucose doing high-intensity exercise, such as running fast or hard weight training, you empty your blood, liver and muscles of glucose, which then stimulates fat burning when you’re not exercising. You don’t have to exercise at a low-intensity to burn fat. Fat-burning “zones” were invented to sell treadmills and stationary cycles with electronic displays.
7. Low-Carb Diets Have a Metabolic Advantage
Just about all well-designed scientific studies on low-carb diets say that there is no such thing. Theoretically, diets with more protein should have a slight advantage, because protein makes you feel fuller, and it also takes a bit more energy to digest. This is a modest advantage, though, and likely to be insignificant in the long term, which is what 12-month comparison studies of low-carb diets have shown.
Low-carb diets may indeed be more effective for some people in the short term, but it will be because they impose calorie restriction on the dieter rather than providing any special fat-burning advantage.
8. Eat Many Small Meals Rather Than Three Big Meals
Many small meals, as opposed to three main meals, is supposed to enhance weight loss by making you feel full for longer. In a technical sense, this is supposed to prevent blood glucose from dipping low in between meals, which may cause you to become hungry and overeat during the next main meal.
Like many of the myths about fat loss, there is strong acceptance of this premise on many health and fitness sites. Weight trainers and body builders tend to be strong supporters of this idea. The problem is, there is no substantial evidence that it works. Even though a few early studies reported benefits, more recent evaluation has not found solid evidence to support this idea.
In fact, increased meal frequency may lower the “thermic effect of food,” which is the energy required to digest food. This would theoretically result in just the opposite of the outcome anticipated by the “small meal” supporters, showing a comparative increase in weight.
Even so, this idea is not as outlandish as some of the others, and more research may make the picture clearer. For now, though, you should not consider smaller, more frequent meals for weight loss as providing an advantage.
9. Weight Training is Superior to Cardio for Weight Loss
Generalizations such as these mean very little unless you measure the energy expenditure related to each activity. High-intensity activity will burn more energy than low-intensity activity during and also after exercise — the afterburn effect. High-intensity cardio would burn more calories than low- or moderate-intensity weight training. Actually, cardio generally burns more calories per unit of time, because the activity is constant, whereas weight training is intermittent, even though usually of higher intensity for short periods of time.
The best strategy is to do both cardio and weight training.
10. You Can Burn More Fat Exercising on an Empty Stomach
You probably can burn a lot of fat this way because fat is a preferred fuel when blood glucose is low after you have not eaten for a while. You will then go home, though, and eat a large meal to refuel, and you will burn less fat, because glucose will be replenished in the blood and liver. Over the course of 24 hours, you will have periods of preferential fat and glucose burning for energy, in different proportions. It balances out.
Blood glucose is low on an empty stomach when fasting -- first thing in the morning for example -- but you still need some glucose when you exercise. If you don’t eat before a workout session, you risk muscle protein being converted to glucose to maintain a critical level of blood glucose. It’s best not to do hard training on an empty stomach. A piece of toast or energy bar or fruit juice or sports drink is probably enough to give your blood glucose a little boost before you work out, which should prevent you using muscle for energy and still allow good workout energy expenditure.
Sources
Bellisle F, McDevitt R, Prentice AM. Meal frequency and energy balance. Br J Nutr. 1997 Apr;77 Suppl 1:S57-70. Review.
Foster GD, Wyatt HR, Hill JO, et al. A randomized trial of a low-carbohydrate diet for obesity. N Engl J Med. 2003 May 22;348(21):2082-90.
Tai MM, Castillo P, Pi-Sunyer FX. Meal size and frequency: effect on the thermic effect of food. Am J Clin Nutr. 1991 Nov;54(5):783-7.
Taylor MA, Garrow JS. Compared with nibbling, neither gorging nor a morning fast affect short-term energy balance in obese patients in a chamber calorimeter. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2001 Apr;25(4):519-28.
how to build mass by knowing neuromuscular activation _varies by exercise
Which bodybuilding exercises are the best ones for increasing lean muscle mass gains? This is one of the most common questions that I get asked on almost a daily basis.
In bodybuilding, there is a variety of exercises that one can choose from to sculpt the body of your dreams. Results in bodybuilding are generally measured in body composition changes; increased muscle mass or tone, depending on the goal, along with decreases in body fat. The speed at which such changes are acquired depends on the bodybuilding routines being used, the diet plan followed and the amount of sleep that the trainee gets.
In order for a training protocol to work at peak efficiency, not only must it be periodized or cycled but it also must include exercises that give you the most stimulation in the minimum amount of time.
Different exercises provide different levels of stimulation. Exercises like the leg extensions, while excellent for sculpting the lower part of the quadriceps, produce less of a stimulating effect than an exercise like the squat.
What Is Neuromuscular Stimulation?
The efficacy of an exercise really depends on the exercise's ability to prompt the nervous system to activate the maximum amount of muscle fibers possible in each repetition. How many muscle fibers get activated refers to an exercise's ability to provide Neuromuscular Stimulation (NMS}. Therefore, if we want maximum results in the gym from the time we invest, we must ensure that the exercises we choose have the highest NMS potential.
NMS is of crucial importance as it is the nervous system that ultimately sends a signal to the brain requesting to start the muscle growth process. Knowing how much NMS each bodybuilding exercise provides will allow you to make smart exercise choices when it comes time to design your own bodybuilding routines. Now, how do we determine what the stimulation factor of each exercise is? Such will be the topic of the next section.
NMS Classes
In order to rate what the NMS of each exercise is, I borrowed the Class rating system used for classifying the speed of DSL systems (technology used to achieve high speed connections to the Internet through your phone line) and tailored it to fit my purpose. In this system a Class 1 technology has lower speeds than a Class 2 technology.
Therefore, in our exercise rating system composed of four classes, a Class 1 exercise yields the lowest NMS (this class is composed of variable resistance machine type of exercises) while a Class 4 exercise yields the highest NMS and is therefore the hardest but most stimulating one. In each class we may also have subclasses such as Class 1a and Class 1b. A Class 1a exercise will yield less NMS than a Class 1b.
Class 1a
Class 1a exercises are composed of isolation (one joint) exercises performed in variable resistance machines (such as Nautilus) where the whole movement of the exercise is controlled. These type of exercises provide the least amount of stimulation as stabilizer muscles do not need to get involved since the machine takes care of the stabilization process. An example of such an exercise would be the machine curl.
Class 1b
Class 1b exercises are compound (multi-joint) movements performed in a variable resistance machine. An example of such movement would be the incline bench press performed in a Hammer Strength machine. Since the movement is a compound one, more muscles get involved and therefore the neuromuscular stimulation is higher than that offered by a machine curl for instance. However, the fact that the machine takes care of the stabilization issues limits the growth offered by the exercise.
Class 2a
Class 2a exercises are composed of isolation (one joint) exercises performed with non-variable resistance machines. An example of such exercise would be the leg extension exercise performed in one of those leg extensions attachments that come with the benches that are sold for home gyms. These attachments lack the pulleys and the cams that would make the exercise a variable resistance exercise. Therefore, the muscles need to get more involved in the movement, something that as a result provides better stimulation.
Class 2b
Class 2b exercises are composed of basic (multi-joint) exercises performed with non-variable resistance machines. An example of such would be the bench press unit that is attached to the Universal type of machines or a leg press machine that contains no pulleys or cams that would make the exercise easier. Since there are no pulleys or cams to make the exercise easier as you lift the weight, the NMS is higher.
Class 3a
Class 3a exercises are isolation (one joint) exercises performed with free weights. An example of such exercise would be a concentration curl performed with a dumbbell. It is still not very clear whether a multi joint exercise performed on a machine offers the same amount or better NMS than the one offered by a free weight isolation exercise. However, for the purposes of this discussion, we will assume that the free weight isolation exercise provides more stimulation as stabilizer muscles come into play (especially if you do the exercise standing up).
Class 3b
Class 3b exercises, as you probably guessed by now, are multi jointed basic exercises performed with barbell free weights.
Class 3c
Class 3c exercises are multi jointed basic exercises performed with dumbbell free weights. The barbell exercises provide less NMS as the movement is more restrained as opposed to dumbbells where the weights can go in all types of directions unless all of your stabilizer muscles jump in and constrain the movement. Because of this, dumbbells provide the highest NMS in this category.
Class 4
Finally, Class 4 exercises, the king of exercises, are free weight exercises where your body moves through space. In other words, any exercise where your torso is the one moving, such as squats, deadlifts, pull-ups, close grip chins, pushups, lunges, and dips, will provide the most stimulation possible and therefore, the fastest results. Haven’t you seen at the gym how many people do great amounts of weights in a pulldown machine but have trouble doing pull-ups?
The reason for this is that in order for you to perform these type of exercises you need to be capable of not only carrying the added resistance but also involving your bodyweight as well. Therefore, many muscles are called into play in order to perform this feat. If you look at it, by performing dips, chinups, squats and deadlifts you are really hitting every single muscle in your body! These exercises not only give you fast results, but they also create functional strength; in other words strength that can be used for your daily activities.
If you are great at performing pull-ups and you go to perform a pulldown you’ll see how easy the task of performing a pulldown is. As a matter of fact, depending on your pull-up strength, you might be able to lift the whole stack in most pulldown machines. However, the reverse in not true. While you may be very good at performing pulldowns you may not be able to perform many pull-ups as the strength gained in the pulldown exercise is not as transferable as the one gained in a pull-up. Again, the reason for this phenomenon is NMS.
Conclusion
Now that you know what exercises are the ones that give you the most bang for your buck, then my recommendations are the following:
If you follow very low volume routines (3-7 sets per bodyparts), please choose only exercises in the Class 3b, 3c and 4 region.
If you follow a medium volume type of routine (8-13 sets per bodypart), stick mostly to Class 3b, 3c and 4 type of exercises but for those bodyparts where you perform 12 or 13 sets, you may want to incorporate 2 or 3 sets at either the beginning or at the end of the workout from one of the lower classes. This is especially true for legs in which a leg extension movement at the beginning of the workout is a great tool for pre-exhausting the quads or at the end of the workout serves as a great finishing movement.
For high volume routines (14-20 sets per bodypart) you can get away with having 1/3 of your routine composed of lower class (Classes 3a and below) exercises.
Remember, convincing your body to grow and develop muscle is not an easy endeavor. However it becomes an impossible one if you choose exercises that do not provide a significant NMS effect. Therefore, always choose exercises from the higher classes in order to show your body that you mean business.
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Naturopathic Wellness Clinic
Dr Celeste @ Fitness Rising