NAFC Presents
Fitness Article Library:
Nutrition I
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NAFC Presents Fitness Article Library:Nutrition I
|
by Pam Germain
There is a wonderful and complex process that occurs in your body that directly relates to your fitness. Metabolism is the word used to describe the chemical and physical processes in the body that provide energy for the maintenance of life.
Energy is neither created nor destroyed; rather, there is a transfer. You can think of your body as a bank, an efficient investment system. Many transactions are made each day.
Food is the initial investment you bring to your bank. It provides a continuous supply of energy for the body cells, but it is not used directly. Digestion breaks down the carbohydrates, fats, and proteins into the simple forms of glucose, fatty acids, and amino acids, and these are deposited into different “accounts” in your body “bank.” Some glucose is processed and used quickly for energy, like paying cash for a purchase. The remaining glucose becomes glycogen and is stored in the muscles and liver, part of your body’s bank.
This is similar to a checking account that you can get funds out of whenever you need them. Fatty acids are long-term investments, similar to a savings account. They are not meant to be “cashed in” immediately.
Protein provides amino acid building blocks for growth or repair of body tissues and to synthesize enzymes and hormones. It is used as an energy source only during periods of starvation at the expense of other needed functions. Your body bank thinks of using protein to prevent going bankrupt but at the expense of other important functions in the body.
When your body bank cashes in some of the saved glycogen or fatty acids, they release energy to form a compound that is abbreviated ATP. This is the “currency” that is used to buy your body’s activity. All biological work requires that ATP be broken down or spent. The body cashes in its savings and produces ATP either anaerobically or aerobically.
Aerobic production of ATP is for activities requiring sustained energy at a slower pace. Your body bank cashes in either glycogen or fatty acids over a long period of time, similar to cashing in a savings bond and spending it slowly. Because of the negative publicity excess body fat gets, it’s hard to realize that from your body’s point of view, fat is the gold standard for potential energy.
Carbohydrates provide four calories of energy per gram. It is stored in the body as glycogen in sufficient quantity for a 10-mile run or about 1200 calories. Fat, which provides 9 calories per gram, is stored in almost unlimited abundance. A woman who weighs 120 pounds with 25 percent of her weight stored as body fat has enough stored energy to run 1000 miles.
The comparison of your body to a bank is a very simple way to explain the complicated process of energy use, or metabolism. As it pertains to exercise, the anaerobic and aerobic energy systems are not mutually exclusive. They can work together or the body can alternate between them. The intensity of an exercise period dictates the fuel, whether mostly glycogen or fatty acids are used.
People who love to exercise for fun and fitness can appreciate how effective the metabolic systems operate to allow the enjoyment of activity. If you need to decrease your energy investment and lose some body fat, go on a spending spree!
If your found a genie in a bottle who granted you three wishes would one of those wishes be instant weight loss? Many people believe that the cleverly marketed fat burning products for sale today are that genie who will grant their wish when they use their credit card to open the bottle. Especially when well known TV, radio, and media personalities promote the products.
One person who is very close to me bought into the marketing hype of a product claiming to increase metabolism and produce the instant weight loss, despite my advise not to. After 3 weeks he was noticing his hands were numb. The second symptom was a racing pulse. A week later he had migraine headaches three days in a row. The doctor told him to throw that weight loss supplement (the doctor used the work “crap”) away before he seriously hurt himself. Now my friend is following my suggestions for losing weight.
I read the labels of several miracle metabolism boosters. Here are some of the most popular ingredients, what they claim to do and what they really do.
Chromium supplements are claimed to help you burn body fat and build muscle. There is no real scientific evidence that indicates that chromium aids weight loss, however there is some evidence that chromium (as chromium picolinate) may cause cancer.
Ginseng has been used for over 4000 years in the Orient as an "energy booster". Today many people take ginseng products to boost their own energy levels and increase the ability to exercise, thus burning more fat. In double blind placebo controlled studies of ginseng the researchers concluded that oral ingestion of ginseng for 7 days prior to exercise did not improve exercise performance when subjects rode an exercise bike.
Ma Huang, ephedra, or ephedrine mimics the effect of stimulating hormones like adrenaline in the body Ephedrine is a drug that is widely used in over the counter cold and asthma medications and is also found in weight loss products even though there is no substantial evidence that it is an effective weight agent in obese individuals. Ephedrine is known to elevate one's blood pressure and heart rate and may also result in restlessness, headaches, dizziness and insomnia, psychosis, memory loss and muscle injury. If you are currently using an ephedrine containing product for weight loss throw it away right now!
Pyruvate has ballooned into one of the biggest selling weight loss products on the market today. Pyruvate is a molecule formed during the breakdown of sugar (glucose) for energy. Unlike the vast majority of weight loss products on the market today, pyruvate does have actual scientific studies in reputable scientific publications backing up it's claims.
However closely analyzing the results of those studies makes one wonder if it really works in the miraculous way that is claimed by weight loss product manufacturers. Increased metabolism is one promise from proponents of pyruvate. This claim that combinations of pyruvate and the substance dihydroxyacetone result in greater metabolisms is based solely on studies using rats, not humans. The most recent human study found that those using pyruvate and dihydroxyacetone actually had lower metabolisms at the end of the study than those who did not use them!
Enhanced weight loss is the biggest claim from using pyruvate and the few studies investigating pyruvate’s role in enhancing weight loss say that it works. However, the subjects in the studies were extremely obese (200 lbs overweight), the subjects were on very low calorie diets (500 calories per day), and the increased amount of weight lost in the group using pyruvate was only an average of 1.5 - 2 lbs per person more than the control group. So there is no evidence that pyruvate would aid weight loss in the average individual.
I would love it if there was a genie in a bottle who would grant your wish for weight loss miracles. But there is no such thing. I mentioned that my friend who tried one of these fake genies in a bottle is now following my recommendations for losing weight. Here are the suggestions I gave him for effective metabolism boosting and fat burning:
1. Set a goal and commit to achieving it. Measure yourself. Set a goal for losing 1-2 lbs a week or ½ - 1 inch per measurement each month. Re-measure every 4 weeks, then reset your goal.
2. Do strength training exercise. Lift weights or use resistance bands. Muscle is metabolically active tissue, so increasing it will help your body burn more fat. When a person does regular resistance workouts it can increase the metabolism up to 8.3%.
3. Do regular aerobic exercise. Condition your heart and burn calories. Your metabolism can increase up 3.5% if you do an aerobic workout 5 or 6 times a week. (Add that to 8.3% from lifting weight and you have a total metabolic increase of 11.8%!)
4. Exercise daily with strength training, aerobics, or both. Keep that body moving every day. Think of it as your "metabolic optimizer" workout, spreading your efforts over all 7 days of the week.
5. Eat 4-6 smaller meals a day. Every time you eat, you increase your metabolism. It takes energy to digest your food. When you go for long periods without eating, you shut your metabolism down, most often resulting in overeating at your next meal. Keep your metabolism high by spreading your calories out.
6. Drink 8-10 glasses of water minimum per day.
by Pam Germain
How do you treat yourself? Like a prized Ferrari sports car or like a beat up Volkswagen Rabbit? Do you give your body the best fuel so it can perform in the manner you wish, or do you fill up with the “cheap stuff?”
Looking at food from a different angle, do you view food as enjoyable or as medicine? Can we have fun eating and still maintain low bodyfat?
Many women eat too little, instead of too much, out of fear of gaining weight. Many normal women think they are fat because of society’s obsession with thinness. The semi-starvation food habits of these women make them vulnerable to nutritional deficiencies, more so than men. It is a woman’s right to concentrate on healthy eating rather than starving oneself to produce a body size you were never genetically programmed for. It is a woman’s right to ban diets, throw away the scale and make being healthy the important factor.
Even without resorting to a fad diet, chronic dieting by severely restricting calorie intake can produce unfortunate side effects.
Food becomes and enemy and mealtime the battlefield. Fatigue is also related to poor eating patterns.
You are encouraged to focus on fitness, not fatness, by developing eating and exercise behaviors that will lead to good health. This includes an eating plan you can live with forever. Eating awareness is a lifetime of providing your body with the necessary nutrients it needs: protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals, and water.
How many calories are needed for health and fitness? An easy way to figure this is:
This may seem like a lot of calories, but this higher caloric intake offers adequate energy to function and contributes to successful long term weight (fat) loss. One note: This calorie intake may not work for someone who has dieted for extended periods throughout life or who keeps her weight abnormally low.
The next question is “What to eat?”
Carbohydrate rich meals and snacks with some protein and a little fat will energize your body. A good food plan never eliminates an entire food category and the food can be found at the grocery store, not just at specialty food stores.
A food program that encourages making changes in eating habits one small step at a time can be simple and comfortable, as well as very effective.
by Pam Germain
Anyone who has ever felt the need to lose weight also has wanted the fastest results with the least effort. The desire for instant gratification in a no-fail weight loss method can spur you into trying products that promise "miracle" weight loss. Among them are diet pills, vitamin supplements, herbs, and "thigh creams." These products are advertised in the pack pages of magazines, on radio and on television. The sale of them is a million dollar industry.
There are some obvious advertising claims that signal a weight loss product is a fraud. Beware if a product promotes:
Diet gimmicks continue due to the common belief that ad claims must be true or the products wouldn't be around. But even with common food, there are a lot of weight loss myths. Some of these follow:
You can dismiss quick fix thinking and food myths and use a permanent approach to weight management. You can eat foods you enjoy, lower body fat, and keep it off. Moderate, achievable goals for weight management include:
If there was one simple step that I would recommend to improve most people's nutrition it would be VEGETABLES. In fact, one of my personal daily goals is to make sure I include 3-4 servings of veggies in my daily food intake. (Even us "experts" need to work on changes, too.) Here are some ideas to add plant life to your food without noticing them as much:
by Pam Germain
The Food Guide Pyramid is a major diet plan that fulfills the recommendations of good nutrition. This diet method emphasizes overall health, focuses on the total diet, and is user friendly. No one food group is more important than another in the Food Pyramid and its use allows for flexibility with food substitutions.
This pyramid is divided into sections:
The Food Guide Pyramid was designed to depict variety, moderation, and proportions. The size of each section reflects the number of daily servings. Many people use the Food Guide Pyramid for tracking their food intake because of its simplicity.
Using the Food Guide Pyramid does have its drawbacks.
A person can use the Food Guide Pyramid wisely if they remember the goals of a nutritious diet:
Here is my personal experience with using the Food Guide Pyramid:
While I have great exercise habits, I tend to avoid any monitoring of my food intake, mainly because I love to eat! My excuse is that all the exercise is plenty to stay at the fitness level I want. despite the fact that I teach a nutrition course! So after noticing that I was starting to look and feel a bit less than my peak, I decided to bite the bullet and take a hard look at my eating habits. I used the Food Guide Pyramid, focusing on low fat choices. I drew pyramids on pieces of paper, and sectioned them off for the contents: Complex carbohytrates as the base, veggies and fruits on the second level, meat and dairy third,and the "other," fats and sweets, on top.
Some of my mental dialog:
In two weeks - visible changes! The muscle tone is once again showing
at a preferred level.
The moral: It takes a 50/50 relationship between food and activity for
best performance and fitness (appearance, too).
© 2003 by I-NAFC/BodyBasics, Inc. All rights reserved.