Think of the thousands of products you’ve seen on TV, the Internet, in the stores, the newspapers, the classified, eBay, and more. All have their merits. Some are effective, some are bunk, and others are just great marketing. The real key to losing weight however is simply you must burn more calories than you take in. It’s that simple.
Previously, I have posted an RMR calculator to help you determine your metabolic intake. I’ve also recommended you go to Livestrong.com and begin a food journal. Here let me suggest some simple tips which will provide a nutritionally sound base to go into caloric deficit.
If you’re hungry too often you’re not eating frequently enough (every 2-3 hours) but if you’re full after a meal you’ve eaten too much. If you become in tune with your body, you will know if you’re losing or gaining weight.
One final word on appropriate caloric deficit. If your doing all of the above, and your diet is balanced and includes daily vitamin supplementation, you may want to go to a second workout, even if it’s just walking for 15 minutes. You will find that this second session makes a tremendous difference when done on a daily basis.
First, I’ve noticed positive results personally when using creatine, in both strength results and in muscle size, but does it REALLY work or is it a “placebo effect?” Is it safe, or are there potentially negative effects? Does it help with strength only or endurance as well?
These questions and more are answered in the following article, which I have re-produced in full, published online by the National Council on Strength and Fitness. I love the NCSF, by the way. Even though my certification is currently NASM, I highly recommend the NCSF as well.
By: NCSF on: Jul 7 2010
Clients often ask personal trainers what supplements or nutritional modifications might serve to provide the extra edge in attaining their goals. Misconstrued data and anecdotal based supportive claims are commonly encountered when an individual attempts to review supplement usefulness via the internet or other easy-access sources of information. Thus, the personal trainer should be aware that supplement companies are not regulated; company claims founded in “independent research” are not the same as peer reviewed research and the government does not require evidence of the proven efficacy or purity of any dietary supplements and herbs. To protect clients from the marketing of bogus supplement products a personal trainer must become aware of these facts and educate clients on the safety and proper use of them.
Of the numerous supplements used for ergogenic purposes, creatine is one of the most examined in peer reviewed literature and as such, its effectiveness is commonly inquired by personal training clients. In the form of phosphocreatine (PC), phosphorylated creatine has an essential role in immediate energy metabolism. It is naturally produced in the liver, kidneys, and pancreas from non-essential amino acids at a rate of 1-2 grams per day. It can also be obtained from dietary sources such as meat, poultry, and fish – Eskimos consume about 4-6 g from fish each day. Commonly sold in supplement form as creatine monohydrate, creatine supplements are used to enhance natural phosphocreatine stores in the body for improvement in high force actions. Studies have shown that supplementing 20-25 grams per day for 5-6 days (commonly recognized as a loading phase) can increase intramuscular creatine stores by approximately 20%. After the loading phase, it is common to maintain elevated creatine levels by consuming approximately 5 grams per day. Once supplementation discontinues, muscle creatine concentrations tend to return to baseline levels in about 4 weeks.
Personal trainers should be aware of the evidence regarding creatine supplementation published in periodicals from a variety of studies and clinical research:
* Creatine supplementation has been shown to provide improved short-term performance of intense exercise, and may aid athletes that rely primarily on the anaerobic energy systems such as power lifters, sprinters, and football players * Creatine supplements taken for several weeks using both loading and non-loading phases have shown to improve PC storage * Creatine supplementation has been shown to improve PC resynthesis during rest intervals * Creatine supplementation has been shown to be associated with an increase in body mass, potentially due to increases in lean mass mainly via cellular fluid retention * Creatine supplementation has not been shown to aid in long-duration endurance training or aerobic-dominant activities * Creatine supplements have demonstrated ineffectiveness in some individuals (labeled nonresponders) * Acute creatine supplementation has not been shown to enhance an acute bout of explosive/strength training (single dosage just prior to training session) * Caffeine ingestion with creatine may negate or reduce the supplement’s ergogenic effects (equivocal data)
Although creatine supplementation has demonstrated levels of effectiveness for improved performance in short duration, high force activities, personal trainers should be aware of the potential side-effects of ingesting the supplement. In the case of creatine, anecdotal reports suggest side-effects including abdominal cramping and bloating, acute bouts of diarrhea, muscle cramping, stiffness, and strains. No controlled studies have documented any significant side-effects however, so a causal relationship between these effects and creatine supplementation has not been established. A newer form of creatine has become popular as it supposedly reduces the gastrointestinal distress associated with creatine monohydrate and was alleged to be more easily absorbed and therefore have greater bioavailabity. An article published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (Feb 2009) suggests otherwise. The 7-week study examined the combined effects of different forms of creatine supplementation with resistance training on measures of body composition, muscle mass, muscle strength and power, serum and muscle creatine levels, and serum creatinine levels in 30 non-resistance-trained males. Using a double-blind method participants were randomly assigned to a maltodextrose placebo (PLA), creatine monohydrate (CRT), or creatine ethyl ester (CEE) group. The supplements were orally ingested at a dose of 0.30 g/kg fat-free body mass or approximately 20 g/day for a five day loading phase followed by ingestion at 0.075 g/kg fat free mass or approximately 5 g/day for 42 days. Following the treatments researchers concluded when compared to creatine monohydrate, creatine ethyl ester was not as effective at increasing serum and muscle creatine levels or in improving body composition, muscle mass, strength, and power. Therefore, the improvements in these variables can most likely be attributed to the training protocol itself, rather than the supplementation regimen.
Personal trainers should recognize supplementing creatine will only provide ergogenic aid for individuals with goals in-line with gaining strength, lean mass, or power. Since most clients are not performing near maximal lifts with long rest intervals it is likely not a key ingredient to personal training success. Likewise, the supplementation of creatine will not directly aid a client striving to enhance functional improvements, weight loss, improved aerobic performance or muscular endurance. Creatine happens to be one of the few supplements shown in numerous studies to be relatively safe and presumably effective for most individuals; but personal trainers should remain cautious when recommending ergogenic aids to clients (even if they are considered effective) as recommendations create potential liability.
According to a current posting on Livestrong.com, a web site I highly recommend, “A pound of weight is equivalent to 3,500 calories, so to lose pounds you must create a calorie deficit. Physical exercise, particularly cardiovascular work that makes your heart beat faster and that utilizes the large muscles of the body, is recommended to help you create a greater daily calorie burn. An hour of swimming for a 160-lb. person burns about 500 calories, per the Mayo Clinic.”
However, it is important to maintain and even increase muscle since muscle burns fat, so weight lifting is critical along with adequate nutrition and rest. If you’re really interested in looking good fast for the Summer, try two-a-days involving 40 mins. of lifting in the morning, and swimming or running in the afternoon or evening. You’ll be amazed at how fast the weight will melt off if you lay off of the refined sugar and white flour in your diet at the same time!
Ever do anchored sit-ups or leg raises? The problem is that if the femur is moving much, you are really working your hip flexors. Anchoring your legs during sit-ups, placing your legs further out, or even doing leg raise types of abdominal exercises increases hip flexor activity and may cause disc compression. It also increases risk for low back pain aggravation.
So what’s a better way to work your abs? Abdominal curl-ups, especially if done on an exercise ball, can more effectively activate the abdominal muscles. Abdominal curl-ups place the majority of the resistive stress in the rectus abdominis. Rollouts also are effective for engaging the trunk musculature without hip flexion.
Additionally, consider this: Almost every lift you do, from squats to standing alternating dumbbell curls, activate your abdominals in one way or the other. I’m not a subscriber to the theory that you shouldn’t work your abdominals, but if you are exercising and doing daily resistance training, you are indirectly working them all the time! What this leads to is that if you can’t see your ab muscles, you are probably packing too much body fat and should adjust your diet.
Summary: Choose ab exercises where the femur is largely anchored and not flexed in, and reduce calories to reduce body fat.
There are many important principles to bodybuilding, losing weight, getting fit, that you just can’t ignore if you wish to “cut up” and get fit. Key among them is the principle that you just can’t lose body fat until you are in caloric deficit, but while maintaining adequate proteins, carbs, and all other important nutrients while in the deficit zone.
If you are following the dietary principles set forth at fittransition.com, I have a recommendation which will make the calorie game more scientific. Livestrong.com is a fantastic web site which will allow you to enter your daily intake, calculate your caloric needs, and your caloric burn due to exercise. It makes the fat loss game much more accurate and easy to do.
For example, one day I stopped at a convenience store and indulged myself with a breakfast burrito from Rico. On a whim I typed it into my account on livestrong.com and was delighted to see the product was there, complete with the number of calories, grams of fat, protein, carbs, and milligrams of sodium. Of course, that particular indulgence cost me about 587 calories - yes it’s a fat burrito - and taught me the value of not buying them very often.
Livestrong.com even tracks how many glasses of water you drink per day. Also instructive to note is the number of calories that you burn during exercise. I’m a two-a-day-er, and it would be easy to guess my actual caloric burn. With Livestrong I now know that I am burning over 1000 calories a day with my exercise routine, so I need to carefully monitor my protein intake and meal frequency to ensure I’m feeding my NASCAR (my body) properly.
By the way, I’ve driven a NASCAR, and wow what a thrill! I can’t imagine pulling up to the local Chevron to fill it up. It runs on special fuel. Similarly, run your body on special fuel. Livestrong.com will help you to do this!
Every body builder, athlete, and serious weight loss participant knows that you have to eat 6 smaller meals per day to lose weight, gain muscle, be more healthy. Walnuts are a great source of protein that can be eaten with other complex carbs to produce one of such meals. I’m eating a handful as I write this, because I’m hungry!
What I’m getting with just a 1/4 cup is omega-3 oils, which have been shown to lower cholesterol, protect heart, arteries, (and many other things), 3.81 grams of protein, dietary fiber and many other vitamins, minerals and nutrients, such as copper, manganese, and tryptophan.
Below is a link to the California Walnuts web site, particularly to a delicious-looking tuna salad which has walnuts in:
http://www.walnuts.org/walnuts/index.cfm/all-recipes/a-smarter-tuna-salad/
Enjoy!
If you were to pull up to the pump in a NASCAR and fill it with standard unleaded gasoline, it wouldn’t run very well. NASCARs use 100 octane fuel! Similarly, your bodies need proper nutrition to function optimally. That is the first secret to getting ripped.
The second secret - although the same thing - is percentage of body fat as it relates to nutrition or caloric intake. If your abs are buried below a layer of fat, you’ll never see them no matter how hard you work out! Gauging your caloric expenditure, workout expenditure, and caloric intake however is difficult. Lance Armstrong’s site, Livestrong.com makes this easy! I highly recommend it!
At Livestrong.com, you can create a free account called the Daily Plate. Here you enter your food choices and before you’re done typing, dozens of options are coming up on the screen. So if you buy a breakfast burrito at the local gas station, and it’s made by Rico, it’s there! If you down a Minute Maid pomegranate juice, it’s there. It will tell you how many calories per serving and the serving size, how much sodium, protein, carbs, and this by grams, milligrams and also percentages. It makes the science of thermodynamics a snap!
Remember, you can’t really get ripped until you lose the body fat covering your muscles, and you can’t lose it if you don’t know whether you’re in a nutritionally-sound caloric deficit. That’s my tip - go to Livestrong.com and take a few minutes every day to see how you’re doing nutritionally. You’ll be glad you did!
I have many clients, male and female, who puzzle over why they are not losing weight. Many of them work very hard in the gym when I work them out. I always know when they’ve been cheating on their diet. Of course, if they think about it as “a diet,” then it’s not permanent and they will always and forever remain fat!
One lady said to me, “Do I really need to give up sugar?” Of course I responded not totally - that’s what your cheat period is for - but I asked her if she really wants to look like every other average North American woman over 30 for the rest of her life - and most North Americans are obese, not only according to statistical data but visual. That gave her cause to think.
OK so here’s the skinny on being skinny: How badly do you want it? If it’s not important to you, then keep your 30 BMI and enjoy your life with an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and a struggle to do the things you really want to do athletically or energy-wise. If that’s not the lifestyle you want however, you must make a radical and fundamental change to your nutritional behavior! No fad diet will do this!
You must follow the principles of healthy eating with roughly 60% of your diet coming from complex carbs, 30% from protein, and 10% from fats. Competition of various sorts will modify those percentages, but only temporarily. Once you have begun to change your lifestyle, you must realize that the law of thermodynamics applies to everyone, and you’re not immune. Although I’m not a complete subscriber to the “calories in, calories out” theory of losing weight (since some calories are nutrionless and others rich in nutrients) you better believe that this is true on the most fundamental level.
If your body is expending 3200 calories a day with 1 hour or more of working out, but you are eating 4000 calories, you will gain weight! One thing I told my client who asked about sugar was this - sugar-laden foods (which is about everything “processed” on the grocery store shelves) will spike your caloric intake faster than you can say, “Jack Robinson,” and will leave you with no nutrients and feeling hungry inside of an hour. Even if consumed with broccoli, chicken and asparagus, an orange glaze will add 50-100 calories potentially. Imagine if you eat only 4 meals a day, and with each meal you are eating an extra 100-150 calories because you’re not willing to “give up” sugar. That’s an extra 400-600 extra calories per day, and where’s it going to go? You got it - your belly, butt, thighs, underarms, back, or anywhere else where your body likes to deposit fat.
Now I’ve hit sugar hard. The fact is, 1 gram of fat yields 9 calories, so if you’re eating too much red meat, bacon, dairy, butter, or other high-fat foods the result will be the same. The only positive difference is that fats digest more slowly over time and don’t spike your blood sugar levels quickly then dumping you in Hungerville.
Measuring calories is not a favorite past tense, but at minimum use the palm of hand or fist rule, which is that for every meal, have a serving of protein the size of your palm or your fist, and a serving of carbs about the same, and you will start to lose weight if you choose complex carbs without sugar, berries, cinnamon and other good choices for sweeteners, and prudent servings of meats, dairy and veggies. If you’ve never kept a food journal before, try it - it’s very revealing!
The 10 Commandments of Nutrition are available in full at fittransition.com for your use.
So what percentage of carbs to protein to fats should I be eating? According to the National Academy of Sports Medicine, 50-60% of your diet should come from carbohydrates, 30-40% from protein, and 10% from fats.
Often, in caloric deficit, or in contest preparation, one will severely limit carbs or fats to temporarily lean out or to stimulate fat loss. However, long-term proper body functioning requires this ratio. Too little carbs or fats over an extended period of time can actually cause your body to dip into muscle stores to produce the fuel it needs for survival.
Be prudent when dieting and “leaning out”, ensuring that you return to a balanced ratio diet. Further, ensure that carbs are of the complex variety rather than comprised of white sugar and white flour. Such are “empty carbs” which provide calories and few nutrients, and which burn quickly causing a quick blood sugar high followed by a quick low.
Years ago it was fashionable to take Brewer’s Yeast with your protein shake. It was supposed to be good for you. Where is Brewer’s Yeast today? That’s the beauty of science, I guess, it’s always changing. The past decade has seen an increase in the popularity of creatine in various forms, with claims of size and strength gains. Does it really work? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a “definitive” study, but it does something when I’ve taken it in the past.
Here’s the reality of creatine as far as we know, however: ATP or Adenosine Triphosphate unlocks anaerobic power for the muscles. Creatine phosphate plays a role in the creation of ATP. The challenge is, can you get it into the blood stream and hence, the cellular level, to really make a difference in the ATP creation chain? While the debate may rage on for years, creatine does seem to be a safe and effective way to develop size and strength when used in appropriate cycles.
The downside is that some creatines over the years have reportedly contributed to liver damage, although more recent developments tend to point towards products which are “more easily assimilated” by the body, such as the patented KreAlkalyn product see http://www.kre-alkalyn.net/. You decide. The point? Whether a placebo or not, if you’re working out properly with the right amounts of nutrition, rest, and technique, it would appear that creatine does have an effect!
