How Much Protein Do I Need Per Day?

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Zane

Protein SupplementsProtein shakes, protein bars, protein diets, protein, protein, protein!  Protein has become the rock star of the fitness and weight loss industries over the last 30 years.  Protein supplements make up a multi-billion dollar market with your choice of egg, soy, hemp, casein and the ever popular whey protein.  And not just whey, but your choice of whey concentrate, isolate and hydrolysate!

You’ll find thousands of articles and marketing pieces (often the same thing) that will tell you why one kind of protein is better than the others, or better at certain times in relation to your workout.  I agree that protein is important, whether you want to gain muscle or lose weight, and should be a primary component of anyone’s diet. There are just so many messages flying around that it’s really hard to know what the truth is.

How Much Protein?

The best source I have found on how much protein we should be eating and how it effects muscle building is an e-book by Brad Pilon called “How Much Protein?”.  Brad is a graduate level nutritionist who was formerly employed in the supplement industry, but once he discovered the truth about protein, and supplement marketing in general, decided he could no longer be a part of the false claims and questionable research.  He has compiled reliable research to write “How Much Protein?”, as well as “Eat Stop Eat”, a book about the benefits of intermittent fasting for weight loss.

Brad’s career in supplement research and marketing gave him the experience to sift through the research and determine how much protein our bodies really need on a daily basis.  I won’t be digging into the research in this post, but if that interests you, I highly recommend “How Much Protein?”  It even includes research about a supplement that has been shown to be even more effective at building muscle than protein- but you’ll have to read it to find out.  I don’t want to steal his thunder:)

Daily Protein Requirements

Brad found that range needed to build muscle was 70-120 grams per day for most people, depending on size and activity level.  This is a bit more than the RDA of 40-60 grams and much less than 1.5-2 grams of protein per pound of body weight that you will hear from the bodybuilding world.

He also shows that this amount of protein can be eaten in one meal or in several and is really an average to get over the course of weeks.  This is in opposition to the 30-40 grams per meal maximum spouted in the bodybuilding and fitness magazines. Our digestive systems can adjust to a change in protein intake over the course of a few days.  If you decide to jump from 30 grams to 70 grams of protein in a single meal, your body would learn to assimilate it, though you may be a little gassy in the process.

Protein does not have a dosing effect on muscle building.  More protein does NOT mean more muscle.  Building muscle has much more to do with your workout, and recovery, than the amount of protein you’ve eaten that day.  However, eating more protein than required to build muscle is not bad for you since our bodies can convert excess protein into fuel.  If you’re on a high protein, low carb diet, then its likely you will eat more than 120 grams per day but your muscles won’t get bigger because of it.  Protein is not a drug.

Post Workout Protein

Brad also po1950's bodybuilderints out that post workout protein has not been proven necessary for muscle building, despite all of the marketing to tell you otherwise.  Our bodies just aren’t that fragile.  Most of the studies on post workout protein show positive effects of protein intake within 24 hours of the workout.

As long as you’re getting 70-120 grams of protein each day, on average, you will have all of the protein your body needs to build muscle.  More is fine, but don’t expect it to turn you into Biff the wonder stud.

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How Often Should I Eat In One Day?

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Zane

How often we should eat each day is a question that has become so confused by the marketing efforts of the fitness and food industries that most people really don’t know what to believe.  Should we stick to the conventional 3 meals a day or eat 5 to 6 small meals each day?

6 Meals or 3 Meals, Which One Is It?

Unless you are a bodybuilder, or maybe a full on endurance athlete who just can’t eat enough calories to keep up with your workouts, there is no benefit to eating 6 meals a day.  In fact, it just may keep you from losing weight.  If you read all of the fitness magazines, you’ll see the preferred meal frequency is 5-6 meals a day to “keep up your metabolism” or so your body doesn’t go into “starvation mode”, none of which is based on scientific research, but does help sell a lot of snack food and supplements.

The 6 meals a day concept really came out of the bodybuilder world where they are trying to get bigger all the time and are trying to take in large amounts of protein and carbs.  The only people who can really turn above maintenance level calories into more muscle are those in their late teens and early twenties because of their juvenile growth hormones and those who are doing some form of steroids.  Both of these groups have large amounts of growth hormone in their bodies which speeds their recovery from exercise and helps shuttle nutrients to their muscles.  The rest of us just turn excess calories into fat.

Meal Frequency Has No Effect On Metabolism

If weight loss is your goal and you’re trying to cut calories, then eating 6 times a day could make that difficult by increasing your blood sugar and putting you on an insulin roller coaster which stimulates feelings of hunger as soon as it comes down.  A New York Times article on meal frequency from 2010 highlighted research with people on a low calorie diet in which one group was fed 3 meals a  day and the another group 6 meals a day, but they all ate the same amount of calories for 8 weeks.  The results showed no difference in weight loss between the two groups so there was obviously no decrease in their metabolism, nor was anyone going into “starvation mode” causing the body to hold on to fat.  The best study on this subject was done in 1997 (yes, that long ago) where they tested meal frequencies from 1 meal a day all the way up to 17 meals a day and found no effect on metabolism.

Other studies have shown health benefits to eating fewer meals and fewer calories that would seem to help weight loss.  Lower meal frequency and a higher protein intake reduced feelings of hunger in obese men in one study.  Other studies have shown that calorie reduction and intermittent fasting improves resistance to oxidative stress (free radicals) on the nervous system, including the brain.

Fewer Meals Won’t Cause Metabolic Drop Or “Starvation Mode”

Eating less will not cause your metabolism to drop to the floor or put your body into a starvation mode.  There is some evidence of muscle wasting and metabolic slow down after a 60+ hour fast because the liver holds about 60-72 hours of glycogen which your body uses to regulate blood sugar, etc.  This would not happen even if you fasted every other day, so unless you’re going more than 2 days without taking in any calories, you’ve nothing to fear.

With no benefit to eating several times a day but several health benefits to fewer meals, and even intermittent fasting, it would appear that eating fewer meals is the better choice.  Not to mention that it’s a lot easier to cut calories and lose weight if you’re eating less often.

 

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Work Out Before Breakfast To Burn More Fat

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Zane

Do You Workout To Lose Weight and Burn Fat?

The concept of working out before breakfast, or fasted training, is actually controversial in the fitness world, with the controversy stemming from the goal of the workout.  The first question should be are you working out for weight loss and fat burning or are you working out for improved performance?

If your goal is to lose weight and specifically burn fat, then a fasted training session before the first meal of the day is the superior choice.  After 8 hours or more of not eating, your insulin and blood sugar levels are very low and body fat will be the preferred source of fuel.  If you have eaten recently, then your blood sugar will be higher providing a ready fuel source for your exercise, other than body fat.  You will first burn the sugar and dietary fat running through your veins and the glycogen stored in your recently fueled muscles.  Also with your insulin high, your body won’t release body fat for fuel, primarily because it doesn’t NEED to.

Exercise Before Breakfast: Fasted Training For Fat Loss

The New York Times “Well” blog highlighted a study on “The Benefits of Exercising Before Breakfast” which was published in The Journal of Physiology.  The study took 28 active and healthy men and fed them a diet of 50% fat and about 30% more calories than they had been eating before for a 6 week period.  They divided them into three groups: the first didn’t exercise at all, the second exercised after breakfast and the third exercised before breakfast, but all ate the same amount of daily calories.

The first, non exercising group, gained an average of 6 lbs in the 6 week period and started storing fat in their muscles.  They also developed insulin resistance, meaning that their muscles weren’t responding to insulin and weren’t removing sugar from the bloodstream as efficiently.  These symptoms are considered precursors to diabetes.

The second group who ate before exercising gained an average of about 3 lbs.  They also became more insulin resistant and were storing more fat in their muscles.

More Efficient Fat Burning for Fasted Exercise Group

The third group who exercised before breakfast gained almost no weight and showed no signs of insulin resistance. The quote from the study was “exercise training in the fasted state is more effective than exercise in the carbohydrate-fed state to stimulate glucose tolerance despite a hypercaloric high-fat diet.”  This group actually burned the fat they were eating more efficiently.  They also showed an increased level of a muscle protein which improves insulin sensitivity.

Basically, working out before breakfast counteracted the pre-diabetic effects of a hi fat, hi calorie diet AND kept them from gaining weight.  I’m convinced.

If athletic performance is your primary goal and losing weight is not a concern, then fasted training probably wouldn’t be the best choice for you.  But if burning fat and/or losing weight is your reason for exercising, either cardio or resistance training, then a workout in the fasted state will help you with your weight loss goals and even help counteract the effects of a not so perfect diet.

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Can You Lose Weight On “The Twinkie Diet?”

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Zane

Can you lose weight on the twinkie diet?  Mark Haub, professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University says yes- and he did!  For 10 weeks, he ate a diet of snack cakes, chips, cookies and sugary cereals.  Why would a professor of nutrition do such a thing?  To prove that when it comes to weight loss, calorie counting is the only thing that matters, “not the nutritional value of food”

Apparently his Twinkie diet paid off because he lost 27 pounds in 10 weeks, from 201 to 174.  His BMI went from 28.8 to 24.9 and his body fat percentage dropped from 33.4 to 24.9.  Besides his weight, his lipid profile also improved.  His LDL dropped 20%, his HDL increased 20% and his triglycerides dropped 39%.  Not only did he lose weight, but by those numbers, he was statistically healthier and reduced his risk factors for heart disease.  Not bad for eating junk.

Reduced Calories Caused Weight Loss

So what was the diet?  He limited himself to eating 1800 calories or less per day, which for his size, was a lot less than he was burning.  He also took a multivitamin, ate 1-2 servings of canned, frozen or fresh vegetables and a protein shake each day to get his basic nutrition while on his “weight loss diet” but about two-thirds of his diet came from junk food.

He only exercised 1-2 hours per week- yes per week!  This was the same amount of exercise he was doing before he started the diet.  He determined how many calories he needed to eat to lose weight for his body weight and current activity level and stayed below it.

He was eating a healthy diet before the twinkie diet that consisted of whole grains, fruit and veggies, with only a small amount of “bad” food.  To reduce calories he cut out whole grains, fruit and meat.  He said, “There seems to be a disconnect between eating healthy and being healthy.  It may not be the same.  I was eating healthier but I wasn’t healthy.  I was eating too much.“  It was his weight loss that improved his lipid profile and made him feel better, not what he was eating.

You can follow Professor Haub’s Diet Experiments on his Facebook page.  He seems to appreciate questions and comments.  What a great professor!

The obvious point of his experiment was that eating healthy food doesn’t necessarily mean you will lose weight or even be healthier.  Weight loss is an issue of calories in vs. calories out.  Neither Mark Haub, nor I, recommend that two-thirds of your diet come from junk food but it’s good to know that as long as you track your calories and eat less than you burn, you can still enjoy some of your favorite, not so healthy foods and keep losing weight.

 

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Eat Your Veggies!

Posted on July 30, 2011 by Zane

 

Jolly Green Giant

Who says your Avatar has to be blue?

Green Giant Veggie Valley Fresh Steamers are a great way keep veggies available to make good choices for quick meals.  Whether you’re on the go or just too tired to cook at the end of the day, prepping and cooking a healthy meal just isn’t going to happen, which means that a quick, and usually high calorie, meal will be the convenient choice.

Wouldn’t be great to have some low calorie, high fiber veggies conveniently waiting in your freezer that you could just pop in the microwave for a quick and healthy meal that won’t blow your diet.  The Green Giant Veggie Steamers have several varieties of vegetables, some are higher in calories than others but they all still beat your typical frozen dinner or whatever you might get at the drive-thru.  The Garden Vegetable Medley only has 80 calories in a 3/4 cup serving.  If you have room for more calories, there are also some Steamers with corn, rice or red potatoes.  You could also just add a protein to make a complete, low calorie meal.

Some of my clients have made the Veggie Steamers a regular part of their diet.  One of my clients keeps them in the freezer at work for a quick lunch that he knows won’t send him over his calorie count.  Another client routinely has a Steamer for dinner, often with some grilled chicken or with just a protein shake for dessert.

Low Calorie, High Fiber

Vegetables are a great way to satisfy your appetite because they are high in fiber but low in calories.  The fiber helps your stomach feel full AND because they are so low calorie, you can eat more than one serving and let them replace a starch.  They are also much more nutritious than any starchy food like pasta, cereal or bread.  Eating 3-4 servings of veggies a day will help to keep you from feeling hungry while achieving your weight loss goals.

Negative Calories Don’t Exist

While they are very good for you, vegetables are not a magic food as some would have you believe.  They will not take away from a high calorie meal you ate or create negative calories.  As always, you need to figure out how many calories you should be eating to lose weight and logging everything into an online food journal like myfitnesspal, sparkpeople or livestrong.  Many online food journals will have the calorie counts for the Veggie Steamers and other frozen veggies already in their databases so you just have to enter how much you ate and they will fill in the blanks.

The bottom line is, if you want to be lean like the Jolly Green Giant then you have to eat your veggies!

 

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What Can I Do To Lose Weight?

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Zane
Fitness RX

Eat More, Weigh Less?

It’s a simple question and it deserves a simple answer.  Millions (literally) of people are asking this and there are almost as many answers on magazine covers and in advertising making it difficult to really know how to lose weight.  Yes, I’m ranting again about the headlines telling (selling) people what to eat to lose weight or do these “fat burning exercises” like they have the secret to weight loss.

I’m not saying that some of those methods won’t work but it’s not a secret.  They work because in some way they create a calorie deficit.  Substituting lower calorie foods for high calorie foods will make it easier to eat fewer calories.  A harder workout that your body is unfamiliar with can cause more calories to be burned.  There are several great methods that help with weight loss but if you don’t know why they work, or don’t work, and if you don’t have a weight loss plan, then it’s like trying to find something in an unfamiliar room with the lights out.  It becomes a painful bout of trial and error.

Calories In, Calories Out.  Losing weight really is that simple.  I didn’t say it was easy to accomplish, but it is simple math  If you are hyperglycemic (high blood sugar) or borderline or fully diabetic and your fat cells have become resistant or less responsive to insulin then you may have to make subtle changes at first and it may take more time for your body to respond to consistent calorie restriction and exercise.

Mens Fitness

Is LL Cool J on that diet?

The first step is to determine how many calories you should be eating to lose weight and start tracking your calories.  Otherwise you are just trying to hit a target blindfolded.  I explain how to determine how calculate your caloric goal with more detail in the post linked above but you can plug your goal weight, height and age into the equation* and you will have an estimated RMR (resting metabolic rate) for your goal weight.  There are several online calorie calculators to help you track your caloric intake.  I usually recommend checking out these three and picking the one you like best: myfitnesspal.com, sparkpeople.com and livestrong.com. You just enter what and approximately how much you ate (6 oz. chicken breast, 2 cups of salad) and they will tell you how many calories it was, and even break down the amount of protein, carbohydrates and fat.

These calorie trackers are all great but somewhat different, so just use the one with the features that appeal to you.  For example, myfitnesspal.com has a smart phone app. for the iPhone and Droid that will allow you to scan a food’s bar code with your phone which will enter the nutritional information to your calorie tracker.  All of them allow you to enter your food intake from your phone so you can track your calories throughout the day.  This empowers you to know how close, or far, you are from your goal.  If you had a bigger than usual lunch one day, you can determine how much to scale back your dinner.  The calorie calculators also have many chain restaurant entrees stored in their databases so you can input the grilled chicken sandwich and it would just fill in the blanks.

Fitness

Beef and Carbs are EVIL!

The one warning I have about the calorie trackers is that they will allow you to add calories to your daily goal to offset any exercise that you did that day.  I don’t recommend doing this.  Any calorie deficit you can get is going to help you reach your weight loss goal.  Most of us under report our calories and there are always some calories sneaking in under the radar so take whatever calorie deficit you can get from your workout.  Just stick with the calories calculated by the RMR equation and get as close as you can.  If you are under one day, that’s GREAT!  Nothing bad will happen, in fact, just the opposite.  The less you eat, the more fat you’re body will have to burn.  Your metabolism will not crash or come to a screeching halt!  That’s just marketing mumbo jumbo to sell more supplements and food.

Please understand that it isn’t enough just to eat healthy.  Eating healthier food will make it easier to reduce calories, lose weight and get the nutrition you need but if you’re eating 500 more calories than you are burning, whether it’s chicken breast or twinkies, you’re still overeating and you will NOT lose weight.  Don’t be fooled.  There are no “Foods That Burn Fat” like you see in the magazines.  When you eat less than your body burns, you make up the difference with your fat stores.  It makes sense doesn’t it?

So if you’re serious about losing weight, calculate your daily caloric goal and start tracking your food.  The calorie calculators make it so easy to know how many calories your eating.  You will begin to see the relationship between how much you eat and how it effects your weight.  Best of all, you will have more control and be better equipped to hit your weight loss goal.

*The Mifflin equation for RMR:

  • For men: (10 x w) + (6.25 x h) – (5 x a) + 5
  • For women: (10 x w) + (6.25 x h) – (5 x a) – 161

w = weight in kg

h = height in cm

a = age

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Exercise for Weight Loss Part 2

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Zane

If you have not read Exercise for Weight Loss Part 1, please start there.

The interval training people will argue that high intensity intervals create a metabolic boost that lasts after the workout.  This is called an exercise afterburn or EPOC (excess post exercise oxygen consumption) and the effects are greatly exaggerated.    EPOC occurs when the intensity of the exercise goes above the aerobic level creating an oxygen debt which the body makes up for later.  This make-up or recovery of oxygen can cause an elevation of calories burned for up to approximately 36 hrs after the bout of exercise.  The amount of extra calories burned could be 20-130 cals depending on how untrained the person is and the intensity of the exercise.  The more untrained or unfamiliar with the exercise the person is, the higher the effect of EPOC.

Resistance training can also cause EPOC if intense enough but you will hear some claim that resistance training will always create a metabolic boost.  EPOC is dependent on the amount of oxygen debt created so if there is a lot of resting between sets then there is going to be less of an oxygen debt.  Circuit training can create more of an oxygen debt because there is generally less rest between sets.  The more you are huffing and puffing, the more of an oxygen debt you will create and the more calories you will burn in shorter period of time.

The real question is, does exercising at an intensity that causes EPOC mean that you will burn more total calories.  The answer is NO, at least not a significant amount.  The amount of total calories burned is dependent on workload.  If you walk, run or do high intensity intervals for 2 miles then the calories burned will be pretty much the same, no matter how long it took you to cover that 2 miles.  The walker will burn all of the extra calories during the workout, the steady state runner may have some extra calories burned for 30-60 minutes after the workout and the interval runner, depending on intensity, may have some of the extra calories still being payed back for the oxygen debt the next day but the total calories burned will be pretty much the same.  One of the biggest benefits to interval training is that the same amount of work is done in a shorter period of time. Obviously interval training for 45 minutes going from 4 to 6 mph will burn more calories than walking for 45 min at 3.5 mph because a greater distance will be covered in the same amount of time.

The same idea applies to the EPOC of resistance training.  How many extra calories you burn post exercise is dependent on the intensity but the total calories is still dependent on the amount of work performed.  Different workout obviously will have a different training effect on strength, endurance, etc but when it comes to calories, the same workload will produce the same results, eventually, no matter how fast you do it.

Our bodies are very efficient so as we get better and more familiar with a certain exercise, the fewer calories our bodies will burn when performing it.  Changing the rep range at which your working, either heavier or lighter, or the rest period between sets are good ways to change things up.  For cardio work, increase the incline, find different hills or increase the pace to keep your progress moving forward.  Since workload is based on how much weight (body weight)  you move over a certain distance, the more weight you lose, the fewer calories you will burn over that same distance or for that particular exercise.  So as you get stronger, develop more endurance and/or lose weight you will have to work harder to get the same calorie burning effect that you had when you started. Bummer!

As I mentioned, in part 1 of this post, the greatest benefit of exercise is the preservation of lean body mass- namely muscle and bone.  Most exercisers might burn 250-400 extra calories from a workout which can have a cumulative effect as long as calorie intake doesn’t increase as well.  Exercise also helps people stay committed to their weight loss goals and stick to the regimen.  The benefit I love to see is when people are able to do something physically that they know they could not have done before, whether that’s in the gym or out playing with their kids.  The sense of accomplishment is very motivating, knowing that their hard work is paying off and improving their lives.

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Exercise for Weight Loss Part 1

Posted on July 16, 2011 by Zane

“What are the best exercises to lose weight?“  This is a great question, especially since you’ll see headlines like “Fat Burning Workout” all over the fitness magazines, as if one exercise routine burns more fat than another.  You’ll hear different answers from weight loss professionals too.  Some will say resistance or weight training and others will say cardio.  Then there is the question of steady state cardio or cardio intervals.

When it comes to losing weight, the exercise with the highest caloric cost will give you the greatest potential for burning fat.  However, the caloric expenditure doesn’t matter if the diet isn’t managed.  In other words, if you burn off 300 extra calories during exercise but eat 300 extra calories because you’re hungrier after exercising, you won’t burn any body fat because you have eliminated the calorie deficit created by the exercise.

Of course as a trainer, I’m going to say that you should be doing both resistance/weight training and cardio exercise.  During weight loss, your body will lose both fat and muscle- it’s just the way it works but don’t freak out about it.  Preserving lean mass, muscle and bone, should be a primary function of exercise and you do this with resistance training.  Exercises that cause muscle fatigue at some point up to the 20th repetition will help preserve lean body mass, even during a low calorie diet.  You don’t have to do resistance training every time you exercise but 2-3 times a week should do it.  Cardiovascular exercise is a great way to burn off more calories and improve your cardiovascular system while letting your body recover from your resistance workout.

When it comes to intervals versus steady state cardio, it really depends on which is most appropriate for you or which you’re most likely to do.  The number of calories you burn is determined by how much weight you move over a certain distance.  The basic formula used is 1 calorie= 1 kilogram walking or running for 1 kilometer (1 kcal= 1 kg x 1 km).  Calorie burning is more about workload than time spent doing it.  You will burn approximately the same amount of calories walking 2 miles as you will running 2 miles.  Even though walking may take you 40 minutes and running may take you 20 minutes, if you move the same weight over the same distance, it’s the same workload.  Weight bearing exercises like walking and running do burn more calories than non weight bearing exercises like riding a bike over the same distance, but adding more miles will help equalize that.

People who argue that steady state cardio is better for fat loss say that staying in the aerobic zone, approximately 70-75% of VO2 max, is where you’re body burns a greater percentage of calories from fat.  This is true but not relevant for weight loss.  We actually burn the highest percentage of our calories from fat while we sleep but we wouldn’t consider sleep a weight loss activity.  The percentage of where the calories are coming from doesn’t matter but the total amount of calories does.  Whatever calorie deficit is created by exercise, your body will take from its fat stores.

This post is continued at Exercise for Weight Loss Part 2.

 

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Food and Metabolism, The Thermic Effect of Food

Posted on July 10, 2011 by Zane

On a monthly basis, you will see several fitness magazine covers with a story about foods that increase metabolism or a metabolism boosting diet.  Sometimes these are referencing the myth of eating more often to boost your metabolism and often the articles are promoting a high protein diet.  Both of these concepts can be linked back to the Thermic Effect of Food or TEF.

The Thermic Effect of Food is basically the energy expenditure used in the digestion of your food.  These calories expended for digestion have been re-interpreted into an increase in metabolism for marketing purposes.  A more accurate way of looking at TEF would be to say that a certain percentage of the calories eaten for a particular type of food are burned up in digestion process.

The average TEF of a mixed, or balanced, meal is about 10-15% of the total calories consumed but each type of food has its own thermic effect.  The TEF of protein is 20-30% depending on the type of protein.  It takes more calories to break down protein than any other type of food.  The TEF of carbohydrates is 5% and for fat its even lower at 2-3%.  Alcohol also has a high TEF at 20%.  Your body treats alcohol like a toxin and puts all other digestion, or food oxidation, on hold so it can process the alcohol as quickly as possible, increasing the chances that the food you have eaten will be stored as fat.

The difference in TEF of protein versus carbohydrates and fat contributes to the fat loss effects of high protein, low carb diets.  However, eating very high amounts of protein per meal has little additional effect over eating a moderate amount of protein per meal.  As an example, eating 120 grams of protein versus 40 grams of protein per meal wouldn’t create more than a 30 calorie difference over a 3 hour digestion period but you would have eaten 240 more calories in that extra 80 grams of protein.

The same is true for the TEF of any mixed diet.  The more you eat the less it goes up, like a law of diminishing returns.  Eating over 3000 calories a day may actually bring the TEF down to 7-10%.  The math just doesn’t add up for eating more to increase your metabolism or lose weight.  Even if you only ate protein and veggies with an average TEF of 20%, eating an extra 500 calories above what your body needs would use 100 calories for digestion and leave you with 400 calories which you don’t need.

You will also hear about certain raw vegetables like celery or cabbage that count as negative calories because you burn more calories digesting them than they give you.  Raw vegetables are great to eat if you want to lose weight but they are not negative calories.  Veggies help you feel full because of their fiber content while providing a small amount of calories and a lot of good nutrition.

There are no special fat burning foods that will boost your metabolism beyond the calories that you are eating.  Your body burns fat when you have eaten less than it needs and there is no way to “trick” it to do otherwise.  Weight loss is just calories in, calories out.  The most consistent method for weight loss is to estimate how many calories you should eat to lose weight and start tracking  your calories on a site like livestrong, sparkpeople or my fitness pal.  In the process of losing weight, you will also be training yourself to eat the amount of calories you need to maintain your goal weight, limiting the chances of a rebound toward your old weight.

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What Is Metabolism?

Posted on July 9, 2011 by Zane

The word “metabolism” has been thrown around and oversold so much by the fitness and weight loss industry that it’s true meaning has become a mystery to most people.  It has become something to be manipulated by supplements, eating patterns and special workouts.  This has led to the notion that the obese have been cursed with a slow metabolism and the lean are blessed with a fast metabolism.

A good definition of metabolism would be all of the chemical reactions in the body that keep us alive.  The energy used by our body’s metabolism is called our metabolic rate.  The two terms usually associated with metabolic rate are basal metabolic rate (BMR) and resting metabolic rate (RMR).  BMR and RMR are estimates of how many calories the body uses at rest and do not account for activity.

A basal metabolic rate is measured in a dark room, with the person reclined right after 8 hours of sleep and a 12 hour period of fasting.  The Harris Benedict Equation is often used to estimate this without the lab visit.

  • For men: (13.75 x w) + (5 x h) – (6.76 x a) + 66
  • For women: (9.56 x w) + (1.85 x h) – (4.68 x a) + 655

A resting metabolic rate requires less preparation and is often calculated with the Mifflin Equation.  I personally use this one and input the goal weight of my clients to determine how many calories they should eat per day.

  • For men: (10 x w) + (6.25 x h) – (5 x a) + 5
  • For women: (10 x w) + (6.25 x h) – (5 x a) – 161

For both of these equations w= weight in kg, h= height in cm and a=age.  You may wonder why height is used in these equations but height is a factor because the taller you are, the more lean body mass, i.e. bones, organ size, you have adding to your caloric needs.

Your resting metabolic rate, whether asleep or awake, is responsible for about 60-70% of your total calories burned.  Again, this does not include activity and is just the amount of calories needed to keep your tissues regenerating new cells.  Your heart, liver and brain account for a large amount of these calories in addition to your digestive system, skin and other bodily functions.  Muscle burns about 6 calories per pound per day and fat burns about 2.5 calories per pound per day which is why the only way to increase your “metabolism” or RMR is to gain weight.  So when you hear that building muscle will increase your metabolism, that is true but to what degree.  If you are fortunate enough to build 10 lbs of lean muscle in a year, which is possible for a person who is new to weight training, your metabolic rate will increase about 60 calories per day.  Most trained lifters are fortunate to add 2-3 lbs of lean muscle per year.  A lot of the “bulking up” you’ll see from overfeeding is water and fat.

Movement makes up about 20-40% of total calories burned, depending on how much you move of course,  A very elite athlete may have 40% of calories burned from movement but for most exercisers it would be closer to 20%.  If you’re a total couch potato on a random day, it would be much less. If you’re RMR is 1800 cal/day then 20% would be about 360 calories.  Remember to subtract your RMR from the number of calories your heart rate monitor or treadmill says you burned during exercise.  With an RMR of 1800, that would be 75 cal per hour that you would subtract from the total calories of an hour of exercise to know what you burned from the bout of exercise.  Those estimates are based on the formula of 1 cal burned for every kilogram moved 1 kilometer, presumably on foot.  So a very heavy, even obese, person will burn more calories walking a mile than a person of average weight going the same distance.  Most obese people have a higher lean body mass and a higher metabolism that a person of average weight of the same height, and as they lose weight, their metabolic rate will come down because they have less fat and muscle to support.

Approximately 5-15% of your energy expenditure, or metabolic rate, is caused by the digestion of food, called the Thermic Effect of Food (TEF).  The estimate for a normally balanced diet is a 10% average.  The TEF of protein is about 20-30%, carbohydrates is 5% and fat is 2-3%.  The thermic effect of alcohol is about 20% believe it or not.  So if you do the math, you can see why eating more or more often to lose weight really doesn’t make much sense.  If you eat an additional meal of 300 calories and only use 10%, or 30 calories, for digestion then you are left with 260 additional calories that you don’t need.  Surprisingly the New York Times actually ran an article about this myth in March 2010.  It is a brilliant marketing ploy to get people trying to lose weight or stay thin (pretty much everyone) to buy more food and meal replacement supplements.

Hopefully you can see why your metabolism is not something that can be dramatically manipulated by a supplement or a particular diet.  Your metabolic rate is pretty much set by your height and weight and can be moderately supplemented by exercise.  Don’t be fooled by the “boost your metabolism” marketers.  There is nothing wrong with your metabolism, you just need to know how it works.

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