Fitness Destinations

By Steve Edwards

Welcome to the Beachbody News Roundup, where we sit in front of our computers for hours on end seeking out the latest fitness and nutrition news so you don't have to!

Last month, we cited a number of studies showing how important exercise is when it comes to your health and longevity. This month, we're reminded that recovering from that exercise, as well as everything in your stressful lifestyle, is just as vital. Sleep was the headline of five different studies this month! (See the previous article.) And you can bet that none of them encouraged that you get less rest. Before we get to that, let's start with something encouraging—finally!—about the obesity epidemic.

1. Kids getting fitter? We may have finally turned the corner on the obesity epidemic. It looks as though all this yappin' everyone is doing (well, us anyway) is finally getting through. A study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has indicated that the percentage of American children who are obese has leveled off after increasing each year over the last 25 years.

   Even so, across the board, experts warned that it was premature to celebrate.

   "That is a first encouraging finding in what has been unremittingly bad news," said Dr. David Ludwig, director of an obesity clinic at Children's Hospital Boston, to the Associated Press (AP). "But it's too soon to know if this really means we're beginning to make meaningful inroads into this epidemic. It may simply be a statistical fluke."

   According to the study, roughly 32 percent of children were overweight but not obese, 16 percent were obese, and 11 percent were extremely obese. Those levels held steady since 2005–06 after rising without interruption since 1980. CDC data reported last year showed that obesity rates for men also held steady from 2003–04 to 2005–06, at about 33 percent after two decades of increasing. The rate for women, 35 percent, remained at a plateau reached in 2003–04. "Without a substantial decline in prevalence, the full impact of the childhood epidemic will continue to mount in coming years," warned Ludwig. That is because it can take many years for obesity-related complications to translate into life-threatening events, including heart attacks and kidney failure. Dr. Reginald Washington, a children's heart specialist in Denver and member of an American Academy of Pediatrics obesity committee, summed up the situation to the AP, saying, "We still have a long way to go."

   Source: Tanner, L. "Heart Disease Study hints obesity epidemic among US children has peaked." AP News Wire. May 28, 2008. JAMA: http://jama.ama-assn.org; CDC: http://www.cdc.gov.

2. Breakfast is back! The "most important meal of the day" is back, according to Dr. Daniela Jakubowicz, of the Hospital de Clinicas in Caracas, Venezuela. She conducted a study showing that those on a "big breakfast" diet lost weight better than those on a low-carb diet. In the study, two groups ate low-calorie diets and lost similar amounts of weight during the initial phase. However, the low-carb group participants gained most of their weight back over time, whereas those who at a large breakfast continued to lose weight.
   And according to Jakubowicz, women who ate a big breakfast reported feeling less hungry, especially before lunch, and having fewer cravings for carbs than women on the low-carb diet. It's important to note that the "big breakfast" was highly nutritious, well balanced, and not "big" by most people's standards, around 600 calories—about half the daily caloric consumption of each participant.

   Source: "Big, Well-Balanced Breakfast Aids Weight Loss." Reuters. June 20, 2008.

3. Fresh news for freshmen. The good news is that the "Freshman 15" is actually the "Freshman 5," according to a study released by the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. The bad news is that those who do gain weight during their freshman year tend to follow this road to obesity.

   "It's still alarming because that happened over six to seven months," Dr. Janis A. Randall Simpson told Reuters Health. "If young women going to university continue to put on weight at that rate it could be very problematic."

   The most interesting aspect to the study was that these women tended to neither overeat nor drink excessive amounts of alcohol. Most of the weight gain seemed to come from reducing their amount of physical activity. Simpson suggested that this may be because most girls play a sport or participate in PE in high school, while in college, they may spend this extra time studying.

   Source: Harding, A. "Freshman 5 may put young women on road to obesity." Reuters. June 16, 2008.

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By Joe Wilkes

It's almost summertime, which means you should fire up the grill and enjoy the great outdoors. It all sounds pretty healthy, until somebody shows up with a bowl of mayonnaise and potatoes, which, without a trace of irony, they'll announce as a salad. It's like calling a stick of butter a nutrition bar. A few side dishes like this, combined with some fatty hot dogs, hamburgers, potato chips, and ice cream, and bathing-suit season can become caftan season before you know it. But if you only invite the neighbors over for celery sticks and tofu kabobs, you can count on getting the stink eye from everyone next time you're out mowing the lawn. The secret to throwing a great barbecue is to find ways of eating healthily without making it seem like last call at fat camp. Fortunately, with so many great foods available during the summer months, it's easy to plan a menu that will taste great and let you keep your figure.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when planning your outdoor culinary excursions, so you can picnic without the pounds, still enjoy good food, and keep you and your family and friends healthy.

1. Veg out. The cookout doesn't need to be a celebration of the weather being so good that we can now eat the unhealthy foods we used to eat in front of the TV in the backyard. It's summer, after all—the time of year when all the best fruits and vegetables peak. And grilling vegetables is a great way to get tons of flavor without adding tons of calories. Delicious on their own or as complements to another dish, grilled veggies are must-haves for a healthy cookout. Use them in salads, on burgers, or by themselves. Check out what's fresh at your local farmers' market.

   Good veggies for grilling include peppers, asparagus, artichokes, eggplant, zucchini, squash, scallions, and onions. Just brush them with a little olive oil, some fresh herbs, and a pinch of salt and pepper, and you're serving something healthy that you and your guests can load up on—guilt free.

2. Herbal remedies. Only the worst chefs need to rely on fat and salt for seasoning. Now's the time to stock up on fresh basil, oregano, tarragon, dill, rosemary, thyme, cilantro, etc. Or even better, grow your own. Oftentimes, a pot of living basil from the nursery costs less than a handful of leaves from your produce section. Use fresh herbs liberally in all of your recipes, and you can replace fat with flavor.

3. Hold the mayo. Nothing lays waste to the best-laid plans for a healthy barbecue like mayonnaise. A main ingredient in such picnic staples as potato salad, macaroni salad, and coleslaw, mayo loads up enough fat and calories to make the fact that the dishes stay out in the sun long enough to cause salmonella poisoning your only hope of weight loss. Try substituting healthier ingredients like yogurt or low-fat ricotta cheese for mayonnaise, and adding fresh herbs and other ingredients. Instead of mayonnaise, use yogurt and fresh dill in your potato salad. Make a whole-grain pasta salad with cherry or grape tomatoes, fresh basil, and balsamic vinaigrette.

4. Don't be so starchy! There's no law that says every picnic "salad" needs to begin with potato or pasta. There are plenty of salad recipes out there that are so delicious, no one will miss their starchy, fatty counterparts. How about making that old-time favorite, three-bean salad? Or if you want something a little heartier, lentils, mixed with a light vinaigrette, a little onion or garlic, some fresh herbs, and a sprinkling of feta cheese, will fill you up and give you enough energy to play more than horseshoes and lawn darts later.

   Make some simple fresh vegetable salads. Slice up some tomatoes or cucumbers, and toss them with a bit of vinegar, olive oil, lemon juice, fresh herbs, and onions or garlic. You'll have a refreshing side dish that will fill you up without filling you out.

5. Know your cuts of meat. It's not just a game on Letterman. While of course, substituting your rib eye with skinless chicken or fish would be the BEST nutritional decision, we know you're not made of stone. Sometimes it doesn't feel like a barbecue without the scent of grilled steak or pork in the air. But not all cuts are created equal. For beef, the best rule is to look for cuts with the word loin or round. Other great lean cuts are flank steak, skirt steak, tri-tip, and London broil. With pork, the leanest cuts are the tenderloin and loin chops.

   With both pork and beef, try to avoid anything involving the ribs, which have the fattiest cuts of meat, including rib eyes. And those baby back ribs will make you look like you're having the baby. Because of their low fat content, most of the lean cuts will need to be marinated for a couple of hours before grilling. Read on for marinade ideas.

6. Lay off the (store-bought) sauce. One of the main ingredients in most store-bought barbecue and teriyaki sauces is high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Even the most casual Beachbody® reader knows how we feel about HFCS. Instead, bust out those herbs you bought or grew in tip #2, and make some gourmet marinades and sauces that won't send your blood sugar into a tailspin. By using ingredients like fresh herbs; citrus juices; olive, sesame, and canola oils; wine; low-sodium soy sauce; and various vinegars, you can liven up your meat dishes and save the sugar for dessert. And when you're planning your marinades . . .

7. Go global. Since the U.S. is one of the most obese nations in the world, maybe it's worth checking out what those in slimmer nations are grilling. How about a Cuban marinade with citrus juice and garlic for your chicken or pork? Or Indian tandoori-style skinless chicken thighs marinated in yogurt and spices like turmeric, curry, or cardamom? Try making your own Japanese teriyaki with sesame oil, ginger, soy sauce, and honey, and skip the corn syrup of the store brands. Try out Greek kabobs, Korean barbecue, or Jamaican jerk-rubbed meat—whatever catches your eye or your taste buds. And throwing a barbecue with an international theme sounds a lot more appetizing than a barbecue where the recurring theme is "we're watching our weight."

8. Good dogs. Of course, not everyone is going to be keen on vegetables and treats from foreign lands. Kids, for example. So you're probably going to need some kind of hot dog for these less adventurous eaters. Pretty much anything can end up in a hot dog; but in most cases, hot dogs are tubes full of fatty meat and carcinogenic nitrates—yum! This is where it really pays to read the label. A regular hot dog runs over 200 calories and 18 grams of fat. A turkey frank has half of that. The fat, calorie, and sodium contents of numerous brands and types of dogs vary wildly, so choose carefully. For the less fussy, there are also several varieties of chicken and turkey sausages with gourmet ingredients that are delicious and low in fat and calories.

9. Better burgers. A friend of mine who is highly phobic of meat-borne illnesses like E. coli and mad cow disease had a great idea of asking the butcher to grind up a piece of sirloin or top round that she selected from the meat case for hamburgers. This limits your exposure to contaminants, as there's only one cow involved in the making of a steak, where there could be hundreds involved in the making of a package of ground beef. This also allows you to control the fat content that's in your hamburger. If you have a decent food processor, you could even grind your meat at home and blend in spices, garlic, or onion to enhance the flavor.

   If all this talk of cows and contaminants has put you off beef, you might give a turkey burger a try. But again, read the label. Many packages of ground turkey contain ground skin and other fatty pieces, resulting in a fat and calorie content not much better than ground beef. Try looking for extra-lean or all-white-meat ground turkey. And if you're worried about the bird flu, it might be worth giving veggie burgers another try. If you haven't had one in a few years, you may remember them as I do—some sort of reconstituted cardboard patty that smelled like feet. But there have been great strides in veggie burger technology. In fact, there are a couple of brands a vegan friend of mine refuses to eat, because they taste too much like meat. Try a couple of different brands. You may be surprised.

10. Topping it off. When you're putting together the topping trays for your grilled delights, you can also save a few calories. The traditional lettuce, tomatoes, and onions are great, but skip the cheese, mayonnaise, and corn-syrup-laden ketchup. Instead, try using some of those same grilled veggies from #1 on your burger or chicken breast. Or add a slice of avocado if you miss the creaminess of melted cheese. Put out a variety of mustards, hot sauces, and salsas, which are low in calories, fat, and don't usually contain corn syrup. Don't forget to look for whole-grain buns for your dogs or burgers, or try eating them open-faced or bunless, if you're trying to cut carbs.

11. Just desserts. Well, you've behaved admirably during the rest of the barbecue, so you deserve a little summer treat. Have a little bit of ice cream (although frozen yogurt would be even better, and plain yogurt better yet!), but heap a bunch of fruit on it instead of a dollop of fudge or a side of pie. After all, what we said about vegetables goes for fruit too. This is the time of year during which you can get your hands on the best fruit, at the lowest prices. Indulge in berries, peaches, oranges, melons, and all your favorite seasonal fruits. Make a huge fruit salad, or blend fruit with yogurt and ice for a smoothie. Or for those with ambition and an ice-cream maker, try making your own fruit sorbet. You may decide to skip the ice cream after all!

Hopefully, these suggestions will help make your summer barbecue a huge success. And in the worst-case scenario in which you end up being forced to partake in your neighbor's annual Salute to Mayonnaise, you can always use Beachbody's 2-Day Fast Formula® to minimize the damage before the next pool party! And, of course, you can also use Hip Hop Abs®, Turbo Jam®, Slim in 6®, or one of our varied programs to suit your post-mayo pounds.

If you'd like to ask a question or comment on this newsletter article, just email us at mailbag@TeamBeachbody.com.

By Steve Edwards

It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams. —Gabriel Garcia Marquez

As summer nears, the lure of sunshine, warmth, and poolside idleness becomes tempting. This is especially true if you've just spent the spring working on looking good in your bathing suit. But, keeping your toned physique through the summer months involves another challenge. As the temperatures soar, heat exhaustion becomes more a likelihood than a concern. Let's take a look at how to stay cool so you can ramp up your workouts, whether it's P90X® or Power 90®, even as the mercury rises.

What is heat exhaustion?

Heat exhaustion is one phase of hyperthermia, a condition that occurs when the body produces or absorbs more heat than it can dissipate. In its advanced state, heat stroke, medical attention is absolutely necessary because of the threat of death. Minor cases aren't life threatening and occur regularly, especially in warm weather, but should be treated seriously because heat exhaustion can quickly turn into heat stroke if allowed to progress.

The weather needn't be hot for hyperthermia to occur. Heat can be created artificially by drugs or medical devices or naturally through exercise or improper fueling of the body. But as the weather gets warm, your margin for error decreases, because your body temperature will increase without you doing anything active. This is especially true early in the year when you aren't used to the warm weather. Those coming off of a cold winter are particularly vulnerable.

By the numbers, it looks like this: Normal body temperature is around 97° to 98°F (36° to 37°C). Anything above 104°F is considered life threatening. At 106°F, brain death begins, and by 113°F, death is nearly certain. Since anytime you "feel hot" your body temperature is edging its way over normal, it's not hard to see that you don't have a large buffer before your condition may become serious.

Signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion

Sweating is your body's response to overheating. The process pulls heat from inside the body and pushes it out, where it will evaporate on the skin and cool the body further. So sweating is the first sign of overheating and should indicate that proper hydration strategies be adhered to in order to keep this process working.

When you're hot and stop sweating, your body is in serious trouble and aggressive measures (see daily strategies below) should be initiated. Prior to this, you would likely experience other warning signs. The most basic is feeling hot. This means that your sweating mechanism is being overworked or is not doing its job properly. The skin will then become red or flush. Headaches, stomach upset, feeling faint and/or an increased heart rate are all indicators that your condition is getting worse.

If not treated, your condition will decline further. Dizziness and/or nausea will likely follow. Your skin will change from red to pale or blue-ish. Feeling hot will be replaced by feeling chilled. Convulsions are a possibility. In this state, the body begins to fail and all priority should be placed on reversing the situation.

Thousands of people die from hyperthermia each year. A study, reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine, followed the progress of patients admitted to intensive care units for heat stroke and found that nearly half of the patients died within a year—28 percent died after their release from the hospital. This shows that the effects of heat stroke put long-term stress on the body. But it also shows, most likely, that those who experience hyperthermia probably do so by making daily mistakes on the prevention side. So let's look at how to avoid hyperthermia on a daily basis and what to do when we slip up.

Daily strategies

Hydration is the key. A properly hydrated body will not be hyperthermic. But hydration can be tricky, especially as outside conditions change. Reacting to weather changes requires more than consuming your recommend 6 to 8 glasses of water per day. This is because water is only one side of the equation. Body salts, called electrolytes, are the other side. The primary electrolyte is one of the more misunderstood nutrients on the planet: salt.

Staying hydrated requires that you keep a balance of water and salt. As we heat up, our requirements for both of these increase. The standard requirement of 6 to 8 glasses of water per day can change to per hour under extremely hot conditions when you're exercising. Salt can be even more confusing. The recommended daily allowance (RDA) for sodium is 2,500 milligrams per day. But a person sitting inside in cool temperatures may only need 500 milligrams per day, whereas someone exercising in the heat may sweat out 2,000 milligrams in 1 hour! This means that the RDA is a random number based on an average. How much salt you need is directly related to your lifestyle and the weather. The more you sweat, the greater your need for salt.

Too much salt and not enough water is a deadly condition that most of us are aware of, but too much water and not enough salt will kill you even more quickly. Since most of us have plenty of salt in our daily diets (and millions of us too much), we tend to focus mainly on water intake for staving off dehydration. But ensuring that you have a balance of water and electrolytes becomes vital as the temperature rises.

While confusing, this dilemma isn't all that hard to sort out. There is a great margin for error when it comes to hydration, and it's not vital to get it perfect, unless you're competing in a sport. For most of us, just being aware that we're drinking extra water and getting some salt in our diets as demands on hydration increase is enough. Sweating is an easy way to tell that you're getting this right. If you're sweating in the heat, you're doing something right. Beginning to cramp is a sign that you're out of balance one way or another and a simple solution is to add more of the one you've been consuming the least, be it water or salt. For most of us, it will be water, but if you exercise a lot or eat a low-sodium diet, it may be salt. This unscientific protocol is perfectly adequate to keep most of us functioning fine through the summer.

When it gets hot

We're pretty good at adjusting to heat over time. By far, we're at most risk when the weather initially changes. It takes around 5 to 7 days to adjust to living in elevated temperatures. During this period, your body undergoes a series of changes that makes continued exposure to hot conditions more endurable. If you handle the adjustment carefully, you're most likely set for the season, save for those times you choose to put yourself in an exposed situation.

Obviously, hydrating well during these periods is vital, but other methods of staying cool should also be considered. Covering exposed skin with light-colored, loose-fitting clothing is helpful, as is using sunblock liberally on all exposed areas. Nothing makes this transition more challenging than allowing your skin to get burnt on your first day in the sun. This is also hat season. Your scalp is susceptible, even if you have a lot of hair.

If you do get burnt, keep your skin bathed in lotion and out of the sun. If you're forced outside for hours on end, especially doing something physical, consider dumping water over your head or on your neck every so often. Continually exposing your body to something cold will keep your body core temperature low and cardiac drift (a state wherein you heart beats faster to keep up with a climbing body temperature) from occurring.

Dealing with acute situations

Once you've become overheated, you want to reduce your body temperature as quickly as you can. This has been debated over the years. In fact, during the 19th century, public pumps had warning signs stating that drinking cold water during excessive heat could kill you. Modern and recent studies have shown the opposite. First, that "it's quite difficult, if not impossible" to kill someone by cooling them quickly when they're overheated, and second, that the quicker you can cool someone off, the faster they will recover.

Cold-water immersion is the most effective way to lower a high body temperature. Of course, it's not always practical or possible but any step in this direction will help alleviate the situation. If nothing cold is accessible, use whatever is available. Warm water on the skin, or almost anything damp, will still create convection with the air and mimic sweat. Getting to the shade or covering all exposed skin helps, too.

If the situation is dire, or prolonged exposure to heat has occurred, medical advice should be sought out, even if the situation seems under control. Excessive exposure can cause trauma that's not always apparent, and some amount of medical support, like an IV drip of electrolyte solution, can keep the body from incurring any long-term damage.

Maurice Ndukwu, of the University of Chicago Medical Center, warns that heat stroke is more serious than it's often given credit for. In the Annals of Internal Medicine he states, "Classic heat stroke is a deadly disorder, more complex, more often fatal, and more permanently disabling than the literature on this order would predict. This [study] drives home the crucial importance of prevention and rapid diagnosis and treatment."

Source: Casa D. J.; McDermott, B. P.; Lee, E. C.; Yeargin, S. W.; Armstrong, L. E.; Maresh, C. M. "Cold Water Immersion: The Gold Standard for Exertional Heatstroke Treatment." Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews: July 24, 2007.

To find out more about heat exhaustion, check out this story from Beachbody Network News (BNN).

And for more health and fitness news stories, tune in to new episodes of BNN every Tuesday and Friday exclusively at TeamBeachbody.com.

You know you’ve got to exercise your brain just like your muscles. —Will Rogers

When it comes to reshaping your body, nothing is quite as effective as lifting weights. Cardio is great for your heart, Pilates will help you get stronger, and yoga will balance you out; but nothing compares with a well-designed resistance program for getting lean.

This is in contrast to our weight lifting cultural icons. Arnold, Hulk Hogan, and the WWE are who and what we tend to associate with pumping iron. It may be more accurate, however, to associate those massive bodies with anabolic steroids and turn our attention to the real cultural icon for weight training: Jack LaLanne. The guy who practically invented “lifting” as we now know it is well into his 90s and can still ace the fitness standard designed for a 30-year-old. Once considered a bodybuilder, his legacy has far more to do with his fitness exploits than his brawn. His feats include things like swimming with his hands and feet shackled and towing 70 people in 70 boats across Long Beach Harbor on his 70th birthday. The key to Jack’s success over all these years has been lifting weights.

In his intro to P90X’s Chest, Shoulders & Triceps workout, Tony Horton tells us, “It’s just good old-fashioned weight training that’s gotten lost in a lot of fancy gidgits and gadgets and things that don’t work.” But weight lifting is making a comeback. In a couple of months, Turbo Jam® creator Chalene Johnson will unveil her new program focusing on weight training as the path to a lean and healthy body. As scientists look for the latest way to halt a growing obesity epidemic, the research still leads them back to the same simple fact: resistance stimulates the muscles to work, which causes an effect throughout the body that keeps it strong, healthy, and lean. Let’s take a brief look at why.

The basics of body composition

The science of how our bodies work is complex. However, the basics of body composition, and why we get obese and out of shape, are very simple. Due to the former, we can see how it’s possible to believe that one magic nutrient, drug, or movement might transform us from fat to fit. But once we understand the latter, we see how this is highly unlikely, if not impossible.

A simple overview of body composition looks like this. At the base is a skeleton that is held together with connective tissues. This encases most of your organs and circulatory system. Muscles surround the structure and enable it to move. Body fat protects the organs and joints. It’s all covered by your largest organ, your skin. We’re leaving out some obvious functionality but this is basically what makes up your body composition, which determines your shape.

While there are different body types, all of them look good when all of the above are in the correct proportion. We look worse when our body fat percentages exceed their intended uses. Excess body fat inhibits the body’s natural ability to function, and, hence, leads to myriad health problems. To correct this, we need to reduce the amount of body fat in our bodies. There are many ways to make this happen. Eating less, eating better, and exercising moves the process in the right direction. But the easiest way to do this is to add muscle. And the best way to add muscle is to exercise using resistance.

Weight training basics

Most weight training is what we call anaerobic. This means, simply, that the intensity it takes to do it exceeds your body’s aerobic (oxygen-carrying) capability. Anaerobic training relies on something called the Krebs cycle, which is a process in each cell that puts the body under stress. This stress forces your body to adapt and works nearly every human function we associate with fitness, including your body’s aerobic system. So, oddly enough, a well-crafted anaerobic workout program is all the work you need to have a perfectly healthy aerobic system. This is because recovering from anaerobic work requires your aerobic system to work. If you can understand this concept, it will be easy to understand why weight training is so vital.

The fat-burning misnomer

Many less intense programs, like aerobics and most “cardio” programs, focus on training in what some people call the “fat burning zone.” This term is misleading because what it really means is utilizing fat for fuel—not burning body fat. Well—wait—it does actually mean that. The process is a little complicated, but I’ll simplify it.

At low-level outputs, your body burns its stored fat as fuel. At higher outputs, it burns sugars that have been stored in your blood and liver, called blood glycogen. It’s important to do both, but targeting fat mobilization as your primary fuel source in your workout makes little sense, unless you’re training for endurance sports.

Your body has a limited store of glycogen—about enough for an hour or so of hard work. It attempts to save this for intense exercise (and brain function) and tries to do low-level tasks by burning body fat. Training at low intensity has a benefit, but it’s only a fraction of what high intensity can accomplish in the same amount of time. And even though you are burning stored fat instead of glycogen, you aren’t stimulating your muscles in the same way. This lack of stimulation means that you aren’t creating the same level of hormone release, organ function, or muscle growth. The result is that you get far less fitness improvement in a given amount of time.

The metabolic process

This is, at its most basic, the speed at which your body engine runs while resting. The more fit you are, the higher your metabolic rate is likely to be. Excess muscle on your body takes more energy just to keep it there. Body fat doesn’t have the same requirements. In fact, it sort of does the opposite, by gumming up the works and inhibiting the metabolic process. Remember that muscle is there so that the body can move and do stuff. Fat is there to protect the body, especially the organs. It is similar to having a spare tire sitting inside of you. It adds weight and slows you down but does nothing helpful for your metabolism. This means that the most effective way to burn body fat is to add muscle to your frame because it burns fat around the clock. That is precisely what Chalene Johnson’s new program will do—and you’ll be hearing a lot more about “muscle burns fat” in the coming weeks.

Why your scale is lying to you

Using the above body-composition basics, it’s pretty easy to understand why losing weight should not be your ultimate goal. Instead, you should focus on losing body fat, which means that you’ll get smaller at the same weight. By volume, muscle weighs far more than body fat. So much so that by adding muscle you can actually gain weight as you shrink. This isn’t true for most people, but many “skinny fat” people find that all of their health indicators improve as they gain weight.

This is especially important to consider if you’re highly de-conditioned, because not only do you have more fat on your body than you should, you probably have less muscle. As this ratio comes into balance, the scale may not be dropping, but your body can be making substantial changes. Furthermore, weight training can change your bone density. This does not increase the size of your bones but increases their weight and strength. For this fact alone, it’s recommended that everyone add some resistance training into their lifestyle as they age.

What to do if you want lean muscles instead of bulky muscles

The bad news is that there is no such thing as a lean muscle. The good news is that there is really no such thing as a bulky muscle. We use these terms to describe a body type, not a muscle. Lean muscle is also a term that means, well, muscle. All muscle is lean. Body fat is not lean. So the only non-lean muscle is one that has excess fat around it.

You can’t really change a muscle’s shape. It either grows, called hypertrophy, or shrinks, called atrophy. Weight training programs target muscle growth. All muscles are lean and shapely. To look lean and shapely, you want to build your muscles so that your metabolism increases and your body-fat percentage decreases.

“Bulky” (in quotes, because it’s a matter of opinion) is a term used for muscles that are larger than normal. These are much harder to get than most of us, especially women, tend to believe. Bodybuilders certainly wish it were a lot easier. But adding excessive muscle takes an almost obsessive amount of work. Due to gravity, our bodies don’t like to weigh too much and resist adding muscle. It’s easier to add excess fat because not much can be done about overeating. Adding bulk is so difficult that steroids have become a huge societal problem.

It’s also easy to control whether or not you become “bulky” through the number of repetitions (or time spent) doing resistance work. Sets that are longer than 12 or so repetitions (or about 30 seconds) self-limit the muscle’s ability to grow. Therefore, those looking for a “lean” look should target higher reps once they’ve decided that their muscles are large enough.

And the added benefit of antiaging

Finally, nothing helps you age more gracefully than weight training. There are other ways to stay lean, but using resistance training creates hormonal releases that offset the aging process better than anything else. Furthermore, you lose muscle as you age—about 1 percent or so per year beyond the age of 30. Antiaging medicine is often prescribed in the form of injections of the very same hormones that are released when you do intense resistance workouts. Weight training is a cheaper, and arguably more effective, alternative to spending a lot of money on doctors. Just ask Jack LaLanne. (And stay tuned for more information about our new weight training program . . . ChaLEAN Extreme!)

To find out more about weight training and overtraining, check out this story from Beachbody Network News (BNN).

And for more health and fitness news stories, tune in to new episodes of BNN every Tuesday and Friday exclusively at TeamBeachbody.com.

by Steve Edwards

A major health headline this week was a study dispelling the notion that you can be both fit and fat. Last fall, the wires were abuzz with citations about the dangers of being thin and fat (so-called “skinny fat”). With a national obesity rate of nearly 30 percent, we know that we’re overweight. But if thin isn’t the indicator of fitness, and you can’t be large and fit, how are we supposed to tell if we’re healthy? Let’s decipher what these studies indicate and sort through the murkiness about what it really means to be fit.

Can you be fit and fat?

The latest issue of Archives of Internal Medicine reported a study of 39,000 women that suggested that fitness isn’t the only indication of one’s risk for developing heart disease. The subjects were between 50 and 60 years old and were tracked for 11 years. Nearly 1,000 got sick. The study showed that overweight women had a 54-percent greater risk of developing heart disease than those with similar exercise patterns who were not considered overweight. It also concluded that women who exercised, heavy or not, were two-and-a-half times less likely to get heart disease.

However, the study wasn’t fastidious in its parameters. It relied on self-reporting and used the BMI (body mass index) scale, rather than actual fitness tests, to determine the subjects’ fitness levels. This is where the study becomes questionable.

We tend to like things that come in simple-to-understand terms. Therefore, the government decided that we’d use the BMI scale to decide how healthy we are. It simply assigns you a number based on your height and your weight, leaving out such trivialities as lean muscle mass, body fat, basal metabolic rate, and other medical parameters. You may surmise that we all come in different shapes and sizes, so something as simple as BMI could be inaccurate. Your hunch would be correct.

While BMI can be a decent indicator across similar groups of people, it doesn’t account for athletic body types. Using the BMI scale, almost every wrestler, bodybuilder, and NFL player would be classified as obese. And while heavier people, fit or not, induce more strain on their hearts, there are many other factors to consider prior to categorizing them as being vulnerable to health risks. Without knowing these other factors, it’s difficult to make hard conclusions, especially when you consider that those with lower BMI numbers may be “skinny fat.”

At least it was clear that those who exercised, whether heavy or not, greatly reduced their risk. The conclusions of the study seemed to miss out on something very interesting—a comparison between thin women who didn’t exercise and heavy women who did.

Can you be skinny and fat?

Trying to answer the above question, we’ll refer to a study from London’s Imperial College showing that those who appear skinny to the naked eye but are unfit are still at risk to a rash of health problems.

Since 1994, Dr. Jimmy Bell and his team conducted MRIs on nearly 800 people, creating “fat maps” that show where they store fat. As it turns out, people who don’t maintain their weight with a combination of exercise and diet keep huge fat deposits around their internal organs. The scientists theorized that excessive inner fat can confuse the body’s communication systems, leading to heart disease, insulin resistance, or type 2 diabetes.

Again, fat and active people had a much lower mortality rate than the skinny and sedentary. This means that, as far as your health is concerned, a fitness test is a much better indicator than a scale or what size dress you fit into. As Bell explained to the Associated Press, “The whole concept of being fat needs to be redefined.”

What does it mean to be fit?

Webster’s tells us that fitness is “the capacity of an organism to survive and transmit its genotype to reproductive offspring as compared to competing organisms”; Dr. Fred Hatfield, in his book Fitness: The Complete Guide, gives us a more layman’s view by defining it as: “Your ability to meet the exigencies of your lifestyle with ease and room to spare for life’s little emergencies.” Both definitions refer to functioning in the present as the main indicator, meaning that all these studies on heart disease in aging individuals probably aren’t even the best bases to use to make conclusions about an individual’s state of fitness.

Fitness is, in the simplest terms, your ability to perform in the world. We all have different goals and agendas and, in the end, we’re all going to die. But there are a few things that we all share, no matter what kind of life we lead. If we consider the eight parameters below, and if we can perform them decently, we can consider ourselves to be fit. And, more than anything else, a fit life is probably a lot more fun than a non-fit one.

1. Body-fat percentage. This is the percentage of your total body weight that is composed of fat. Ten percent to 14 percent is considered good for men, and 14 percent to 18 percent is considered good for women. Unless you’re a weight-dependent athlete or a fitness model, you don’t need to go to extremes, but all of us should strive to be within this range. Being far under it has health risks too but going above it is what most of us need to worry about—and what the obesity epidemic sweeping the world is focused on. Not only does excess weight put our bodies under extra strain, but excessive amounts of fat change our abilities to function properly. So far more than your weight, you should be focusing on keeping your body-fat percentage within this range.
2. Aerobic endurance. This is how efficiently your body transports oxygen. It’s a baseline fitness parameter that aids every more intensive fitness effort, from yard work to sex to running a marathon. Indicators of good aerobic fitness are a low resting heart rate and the ability to recover quickly after cardiovascular activity. You help increase this endurance by doing any type of activity but more efficiently when you do continuous low-level activity, like hiking or jogging.
3. Muscle mass. Like body fat, our bodies require a certain percentage of muscle to stay healthy. This varies per individual, but we all need muscle to meet the tasks of daily living. Above the age of 30, our bodies lose muscle mass each year, so it’s important to do resistance exercise to keep muscle mass. Besides aiding movement, muscle mass protects our organs and skeletal structures. To age gracefully, it’s vital to keep our muscle mass percentages high.
4. Flexibility. This isn’t the ability to do pretzel-ish yoga movements but simply your ability to move your body freely through a full range of motion. It’s important that we stretch our muscles because they contract during exercise and the daily rigors of living. Keeping your muscles supple gives you a buffer against being injured and is an indicator of overall fitness. It will help you age without as many complications.
5. Strength. Strength is the ability to use your muscles to generate force. It’s often defined in more specific terms, like limit, starting, or explosive strength, but they’re all a variation on the same theme—your body needs to be able to move stuff around. Most importantly, it needs to move you around. As we age, we lose muscle mass and strength. Mass protects your body. Strength moves it and keeps it from falling over. Furthermore, strength training requires short bouts of high-intensity outputs. These stimulate hormonal responses that also decline as we age. In a nutshell, strength training slows the aging process. The stronger you are, the slower you age.
6. Static balance. This is your ability to maintain control of your body’s center of gravity over your base of support. The importance of this ability is obvious, since life’s no fun if you’re always toppling over. It requires use of all of the aforementioned factors, and the best way to get it is to practice. What’s really important is that to stay in balance your body uses smaller muscles, called stabilizer muscles (the large ones you see are called prime mover muscles); and these help keep your joints tracking properly. A person with good balance has less chance of incurring an injury, especially an injury due to overuse.
7. Dynamic balance. This is the same as the above, except you control your center of gravity while in motion or in flight. The eccentric motions created in practicing dynamic balance not only stimulate hormonal responses but fire something called high-threshold muscle cell motor units. It’s important to train dynamic balance as you age and, symbiotically, training this action helps keep you young.
8. Agility. This is your ability to move dynamically in different directions quickly and randomly. It requires that you use starting strength, explosive strength, limit strength, and dynamic balance in combination, so all of those areas must be conditioned. Plyometric training, like that incorporated into Tony Horton’s P90X®, in combination with stretching, helps you stay agile as you age.