Month: November 2015

You’re huffing and puffing and practically dying on the treadmill, using every tool possible to trick yourself into running longer and faster….when you notice a happy, sprightly woman, enthusiastically walking next to you. “Geez”, you mutter. “Why the hell don’t I just walk too? What’s the point?!” But you know it’s not the same. How could it be? You’re working your ass off, begging for a third lung, and this one’s singing show tunes as she steps contentedly along. Running’s GOT to be better for you. Isn’t it? After all it’s that much harder…

The long answer is mostly yes……but a little bit of no, as well. Here are the reasons why you should run, or walk.

Benefits of Running

1. Your burn calories like crazy.

Lap for lap running burns 2.5 times more calories than walking making it a more efficient exercise. Especially if you’re short on time. For example, for a 160-pound person, running 8 mph burns over 800 calories/hour compared to about 300 calories walking at 3.5 mph. It just takes that much more energy to propel your body forward, faster.

2. You’re less hungry.

Studies show that running curbs your appetite better than walking. Scientists think it’s because running increases levels of the hormone peptide YY, which in known to suppress appetite. In a study, after running or walking, participants were invited to a buffet, where walkers consumed about 50 calories more than they had burned and runners ate almost 200 calories less than they’d burned. Basically the runners picked while the walkers ate.

3. You lose more weight.

When equal amounts of energy were expended (meaning walkers walked the same distance as runners), one study found runners still lost more weight! The runners kept their BMI (muscle to fat ratio) and waist circumference the same- more than the walkers.

4. You’re healthier overall.

Runners have a lower risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and better cardiovascular health. In a study, runners reduced their risk of heart disease by about 4.5 percent by running an hour a day.

5. Your bones are stronger.

Bones are living tissue and any kind of weight-bearing exercise causes new bone tissue to form. The newly formed tissue combined with the push and tug against the bones cause your bones to get more dense and stronger.

Benefits of Walking

1. You’re EVEN healthier overall.

Studies show walkers (like runners) have a reduced risk of hypertension, high cholesterol and diabetes, and have strong cardiovascular systems. HOWEVER, shockingly, the study reports that walkers who expended the same amount of energy per day reduced their risk of heart disease by more than 9 percent. Double the amount of runners!

2. You have less injuries.

Unlike runners, whose repetitive pounding can cause overuse injuries like shin splints, runner’s knee and tendonitis, walkers get injured less often. And when they do, their injuries are less severe.

3. You get sick less often.

Long-distance runners, unlike walkers are more susceptible to developing infections, because the breakdown of tissue also breaks down your immune system. Basically when you push too hard, your chances of getting sick increase. Walking provides just the right amount of work to boost your immune system and help you win the fight against colds and infection, not lose it.

4. Your heart is the healthiest.

Even though running can help your cardiovascular system be stronger, excessive distance running can damage your heart. Researchers performed measurements of cardiac function in 60 recreational runners before and 20 minutes after the 2004 and 2005 Boston Marathon. What they found was that before the race, none of the runners had elevated serum markers for cardiac stress. After the race, 36 runners, or 60 percent, had elevated markers of proteins called troponin. Troponin is a major component of cardiac muscle but elevated levels of these proteins can lead to cardiovascular damage. Walkers get the heart boosting benefits without the stress.

5. Your joints are strong.

Excessive running, especially long distance, is good for your bones but bad for your joints. It can deplete the joint of the lubrication and slowly breakdown the cartilage- especially in your knees. Because walking creates less impact and those who walk tend to not rack up as much mileage as the runners, it causes less injury to the joints while still boosting bone density.

If I had a dollar every time I heard someone say they were entitled to a fattening, high-calorie food because they exercised, I’d have a lot more money than I currently do. Exercise is an important part of living a healthy lifestyle. But if you live under the assumption that exercise will offset a bad diet and help you lose weight, read on to see whether this is a myth or reality.

What Is A Bad Diet?

There are many definitions of a bad diet. Some people say that eating meat is a bad diet, others indicate that people who eat grains are choosing to eat a bad diet, and still others feel as though someone who eats processed foods is eating poorly.
Because there is no one definition of a bad diet, let’s just assume a bad diet is one lacking in nutrition, that provides you with calories above and beyond what your body needs, and makes it difficult to maintain or get to a healthy weight.

The Estimation Issue

If you are like the majority of people, you probably overestimate the number of calories you burn when exercising. A 2010 study published in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness indicates that people tend to overestimate the number of calories they burn during exercise by three to four times. For example, if a participant actually burned 200 calories during exercise, the average amount they assumed they burned was 600 to 800 calories.
That’s a big difference.
If you do not accurately calculate the number of calories you burn while exercising, you can easily eat more than you should because you assume you burned more calories than you actually did. Doing so can lead to weight gain instead of weight loss.
To further compound the difficulty of exercising enough to lose weight without eating at a weight loss level, studies show that most people underestimate the number of calories they consume. It’s easy to do because calorie estimation is very difficult, especially when eating out.
That’s a double whammy right there.
If you underreport the calories you eat and overestimate the calories you burn, you are never going to lose weight. Taking this into account, you can understand why exercise alone is a poor way to lose weight.

A Common Scenario

A common scenario is a person who exercises regularly but cannot seem to lose weight.
She might go to the gym five days a week and work out out vigorously. However, because she overestimates the number of calories she burns, she eats too many calories throughout the week and either maintains her weight or gains a bit.
She is exercising but not losing weight.

Be Wary Of Exercise Calculators

It is almost impossible to correctly estimate the number of calories you burn while exercising without a professional’s help. Online exercise calculators vary widely and are generally not targeted to your weight, age, and level of exertion. There is even a wide variation in the calories burned between wearable fitness devices.
The fix is to look at an online exercise calculator or a wearable fitness device as a general tool rather than an exact measurement. I believe it’s better to underestimate how many calories I burned during my walk than overestimate them. Then I know that my 45-minute walk did not burn 800 calories and won’t totally make up for the piece of birthday cake I might eat later.

Knowledge Is Power

The only way that exercise alone can fix a bad diet and help you lose weight is if you are doing extreme amounts of exercise. Hours and hours of exercise a day will burn a lot of calories, but that type of exercise is not realistic for most people.
Acknowledge to yourself that exercise is meant to improve your health and not solely cause weight loss. Once you do that, you can combine a diet designed to lose weight with your exercise regimen and finally achieve success.
Stick with a reasonable amount of exercise that improves your fitness, move your diet from bad to good by eating the right number of healthy calories, and look at exercise as a single part of an overall healthy lifestyle.

I went shopping for a regular body weight scale the other day and was overwhelmed with options. It seemed most brands have added all kinds of features, including body fat measurements, but how accurate are they?

As a gym owner and personal trainer, tracking body composition is an extremely important aspect of fitness. That is why we purchased a state-of-the-art piece of equipment, the InBody, for our gym to track things like body fat and muscle mass for our clients.

Of course I have to raise an eyebrow when there is a $39.99 scale boasting it has some of the same features our high-dollar machine does. It took me years to pay for that machine!

While I had a good idea how these scales worked and what to expect, I decided to dive into the science behind body fat tracking devices to see if they really could track body fat accurately or if they were a big fat waste of money.

How It Works

Most of the scales and handheld devices on the market use the biolectrical impedance analysis (BIA) method to track body fat. BIA runs a light electrical current through your body, measuring the amount of mass impeding the current. Fat-free mass contains mostly water but fat contains very little water. As you know, water is a good conductor for electrical current. However, fat mass is not. The machine uses the data it receives from the impedance measurements to calculate body fat percentage.

Pros And Cons

The obvious pro of the new scales on the market is they are an affordable way to track changes in body fat. They are also easy to use. The problem with using these devices is the electrical current doesn’t go through the entire body, so it doesn’t measure the entire body.

Most of the units on the market only measure part of the body. For instance, the foot scales are only sending the current through one leg and out the other. Handheld devices send the current through one arm and out the other. Both miss the rest of the body entirely.

Also, an electrical current will only follow the path of least resistance. This means some of the tissue may be missed completely. So, not only are these machines not measuring the entire body, they aren’t even measuring all of the tissue in the part of the body the current is traveling though.

I was relieved to learn why our machine is so much more accurate. Not only does our machine have eight points of contact, connecting both hands and feet, it also uses multiple currents. Most scales only use one single frequency at 50kHz, while our professional body composition machine uses multiple broadband frequencies from 1kHz to 1,000kHz.

While I doubt you will go out and spend several thousand dollars on a professional unit to get accurate measurements, it is good to know the difference between a professional machine, like the InBody, and a retail device that advertises similar measurements.

Though the body fat scales on the market today are not very accurate, their measurements can still help track changes to some degree. For instance, if your first measurement says you are at 25% body fat and your second measurement says you are at 23% body fat, you know you are losing fat even if those percentages are not completely accurate.

It’s like weighing on an unbalanced scale. Even if your scale is not accurate, as long as it does not fluctuate, you can still track weight loss or weight gain pretty accurately.

Finally, in addition to these scale’s shortcomings, you yourself can throw the machine off even more by what you do or do not do prior to the reading. Hydration plays a big role in getting an accurate reading, even in high-dollar machines.

Remember, these scales are reporting body fat percentages. This means if you increase the percentage of fat-free mass, you are decreasing the percentage of fat mass. Even if you truly gain one pound of muscle, your body fat percentage can go down even if you haven’t lost one ounce of fat.

With that said, this is why eating and exercising before you weigh in matters. Body fat measurements can be lower if you measure yourself after a meal, which the machine may read as fat-free mass.

Exercise prior to your reading affects accuracy due to freshly trained, “pumped up” muscles. The temporary increase in muscle tissue throws the percentages off in the same way. Therefore, it is recommended you do not exercise, eat, or drink prior to measuring. You should also always measure your body fat at the same day and time each weigh in.

Fit Or Flop?

So, is it really worth it to upgrade your scale to one of these fancy high-tech scales? I say “no.” These body fat reading devices are a big fat flop. I would only consider purchasing one of these scales as a last resort.

You can get a more accurate reading at a local gym or doctor’s office. I spend your hard-earned money on accurate information instead. Most trainers offer body fat measurements with a skin calipers if they don’t have a professional body composition machine. One measurement per month is plenty to track changes in body composition to help you can reach your goals.

Recently, Annamarie Rivera opened up to Women’s Health Magazine about her personal journey to find a healthier, happier self. 

Rivera said she had been concerned about her weight since middle school, but never really did anything about it.

As she moved into her 20s, she began eating more fast food and developed a 48-can-a-week Diet Coke habit. The overeating was exacerbated by an emotionally and physically abusive relationship. The more stressed Rivera felt, the more she ate. She described it as a “vicious circle” that culminated with her weighing 401 pounds. 

But one day a switch suddenly flipped. 

Rivera told Women’s Health, “On my way home from work one day, I passed a gym near my office. For some reason, something just clicked and I thought, ‘I need to get a gym membership so I can try to change my life for the better.’ I did a U-turn, pulled into the parking lot, and signed up.”

It took awhile before Rivera was comfortable working out in the gym, though. First, she started a daily walking routine, adding more laps as her health improved. Eventually, she was walking three miles a day. 

However, an improved diet was probably the biggest lifestyle change. 

Rivera started researching the food she was eating and decided to cut out soda completely. Instead, she started drinking water, which was no easy task. “That was extremely hard for me. First off, I rarely drank water. Seriously, even when waiters would bring it to the table at restaurants, I wouldn’t touch it–and I sure wasn’t drinking it on my own.”

Soda wasn’t the only thing Rivera cut out.

She started cooking for herself, grilling and baking her proteins and loading her meals with produce. She stopped eating out all together for a period to avoid temptation at restaurants and the drive-thru. However, after getting her diet under control, Rivera started allowing herself a cheat meal every now and then. 

“I knew that if I didn’t indulge in the foods I craved in moderation, I would end up eating them anyway and going overboard,” she said.

The benefits of making healthy eating choices and exercising affected the rest of Rivera’s life, too. After about a month, she had the confidence and courage to leave her abusive relationship. She continued her weight loss journey and after two years lost 190 pounds.

Unfortunately, she was involved in a car accident that sidetracked her workouts for an entire year (although the healthy eating continued) and caused her to gain back 45 pounds. When her doctor cleared her to return to the gym, she lost that weight and more. Her transformation will continue when she has surgery to remove excess skin. 

You can follow Rivera’s Instagram account, which chronicles her weight loss and has amassed more than 20,000 followers.

She’s been a true inspiration!