Your Best Body Ever

5 Oct 2009

October is Vegetarian Awareness Month!

I bet most of you probably didn’t know this – the month of October is dedicated to celebrating a plant based diet and making people aware about its benefits.

I myself have been mostly a vegetarian for many, many years. I do eat fish, but no poultry or meat. There are different kinds of vegetarian eating, the most common probably being the lacto-ovo vegetarian, which allows milk and egg products into the diet. A total vegan diet doesn’t include any animal products at all, including things like honey. It’s a very strict diet and can be hard to follow, as well as get all your essential nutrients. But it can be done, you just have to work very hard to have a balanced diet.

The benefits of a vegetarian diet are many. Regarding your health, this kind of diet can help reduce your risk of heart disease, strokes, and certain kinds of cancers, as you’re eating less saturated fat and cholesterol. It can also help you lose weight, as you’re mostly consuming lower calorie vegetables and fruits. Studies have also shown that vegetarians live longer than meat eaters, approximately 7 years longer.

But that’s not all. You’ll spend less at the grocery store, as produce costs less than meat. You’ll also protect your bones, as eating meat (and we eat more protein than we should, which I recently wrote about) can leach valuable nutrients from your bones as your body. The average bone loss for a 65 year old vegetarian is about 18 percent, for a meat eater the same age, it’s double that. Pretty amazing, right?

Going vegetarian can also help you avoid toxins in meat, such as hormones and steroids. It will also help you avoid food-borne illnesses, as most of these are found in meat products.

And let’s not forget the benefits to planet Earth! Going veggie helps prevent global warming, as cows, goats, and other animals emit methane, which is a huge destroyer of the ozone layer. Less demand for meat means fewer animals in the world. It also helps prevent deforestation for animal grazing. Water preservation is also affected. One pound of beef requires 2,500 gallons of water, whereas one pound of wheat takes only 25 gallons.

You can also help reduce world famine. Currently, 72 percent of grains grown in the US are fed to animals raised for slaughter. It takes 15 pounds of feed to produce one pound of meat. But if these grains were given directly to the world’s people, famine would all but be eradicated.

So have I convinced you enough yet? And if you’re thinking that a vegetarian diet is bland and boring, think again! There are plenty of wonderful and tasty recipes out there to try, and it’s anything but boring. It’s also a lot easier than you think, as there are a ton of products now available at the grocery store (some even taste like real meat, if you really can’t go without…) and most restaurants also offer vegetarian options.

Tomorrow, I’ll go over some great recipe ideas to get you started. I’m trying to convince my clients at the Diversified Health and Fitness gyms to give up meat for just this month, so I am giving you the same challenge. Think you can do it?

11 Sep 2009

“Eat to win. The high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet that everyone should be eating for good health can actually help improve your athletic performance.”
— University of California, Berkeley. 365 Tips for Better Health.
Tags: diet. health.

13 Aug 2009

How long should you exercise to lose weight?

The question of how long you should work out to lose weight comes up often in my training sessions. After all, we’re all pressed for time, and many people find long workouts tedious. It’s hard enough as it is to find the time to workout with a packed schedule, and it can be tough to get to the gym every day.

While a lot of people who have been sedentary for a long time will typically see a decrease in their weight with even some exercise and dietary changes, to keep the weight off and see even more pounds drop, a significant amount of weekly exercise is needed. Recently, the American College of Sports Medicine released the results of their latest study, which recommends that people wanting to lose weight need to be exercising at least 250 minutes a week. That breaks down to about 50 minutes of exercise, 5 days a week, which can seem daunting when you’re trying to lose weight.

“In the midst of a genuine crisis inn Americans’ health relate to what we eat and how little we move, these guidelines are meant to provide an understanding and clarification of the role of physical activity and its relationship to weight,” Joseph E. Donnelly, a chairman of the writing committee, says in a written statement. “Now that we have the latest information on how much physical activity is part of the equation, we can continue the educational process to help people who struggle with their weight.”

If you’re just trying to maintain your weight, the ACSM recommends that you exercise for at the minimum, 150 minutes per week. That works out to be a half hour a day, of moderate intensity physical activity. Obese and overweight adults, however, are more likely to reach their weight loss goals when they do reach the 250 minute goal, along with dietary changes.

Sound like a lot to you? It’s important to remember that your 50 minutes of exercise can be done in stints, so you might not be spending almost an hour of your day in the gym. For example, take a brisk 20 minute walk in the morning before you go to work, another 20 minute walk on your lunch hour, and then hit the gym for a quick workout on the way home. You might be surprised at how quickly you’ll reach your 50 minute goal, without even realizing it.

Most gyms, including the ones I work at, offer classes that are typically at least 45 minutes long. Even more top out at an hour. If working out for 50 minutes on the treadmill or other machine starts to be very boring, give a new class a try. Most classes are fun and fly by without you even noticing it!

31 Jul 2009

Fitness Myths: Does not eating anything before your morning workout help you burn more calories and fat?

This is a common and generally misunderstood concept. And if you workout in the morning, it’s probably something you face all the time: Eat and workout? Or workout now and eat later?

The physiological basics behind the idea are this: Your body uses carbohydrates for its’ easiest and most readily available energy source. Carbohydrates are stored in your body as glycogen, and when you wake up in the morning, your glycogen stores are fairly depleted. Your body will then turn to generating energy from other sources, mainly from your stored fat and protein reserves.

However, your body doesn’t start tapping into its’ fat reserves until after about 20 minutes into your workout. That means protein is turned to first as an energy source, and the main way the body will garner protein is by burning up your muscle tissue. So while you’d have a small fat burning advantage for a short while, when you’re trying to build up your lean muscles, this is definitely the wrong way to go!

The same goes for your caloric intake. Studies have repeatedly shown that exercising on an empty stomach doesn’t burn any more calories than if you eat a small snack before your workout. You’ll also start to feel tired and worn out not too long after you start, which is likely to make you stop exercising sooner, and it can lead to unpleasant issues such as overexertion, dizziness, and dehydration. Also contrary to popular belief, working out on an empty stomach doesn’t give your metabolism a jump start, and you’re more likely to eat a greater amount post workout as your blood sugar is lower, creating ravenous hunger. In addition, if you’re doing a weight training workout, doing so on empty reserves will result in your muscles not working properly. Clearly, the negative issues you’ll face while exercising on an empty stomach far are not worth the small fat burning gain.

So now that I’ve established how important it is to eat something before your morning workout, what should you be eating? You don’t have to eat much - the best snack to have before exercising should be something light (100 – 300 calories), and something containing carbohydrates and protein. Yogurt mixed with some low fat granola, whole wheat toast with some peanut butter, or egg whites with half an English muffin are all excellent ideas. Fruit smoothies are another great source of energy, and often liquid foods are processed more easily in the stomach. Keeping the meal to a smaller size will give you the energy you need, as a larger meal might create stomach cramping issues while the body is digesting. It’s a great idea to eat this small snack about a half hour before you plan to exercise to give your body time to process it and be ready to get up and go.

So give yourself a boost and don’t run your tank on empty – your car can’t run like this and neither should you! Your body will be grateful.