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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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.

© Aaron Potts - visit Fitness Destinations for more great information about weight loss, health, and overall fitness!
Fitness Destinations is proudly sponsored by the incredible products and services provided by Team Beachbody!

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.

© Aaron Potts - visit Fitness Destinations for more great information about weight loss, health, and overall fitness!
Fitness Destinations is proudly sponsored by the incredible products and services provided by Team Beachbody!

- 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 gidgets 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.

© Aaron Potts - visit Fitness Destinations for more great information about weight loss, health, and overall fitness!
Fitness Destinations is proudly sponsored by the incredible products and services provided by Team Beachbody!

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.

© Aaron Potts - visit Fitness Destinations for more great information about weight loss, health, and overall fitness!
Fitness Destinations is proudly sponsored by the incredible products and services provided by Team Beachbody!

It’s Not Your Fault You are Fat! 

That’s what the British Government will have you believe.

It’s not a lack of exercise or what we eat, but society that is the cause of our obesity. Here’s the story (thanks to Zach Even-esh for the link)

MSNBC Story

Call me old-fashioned but I think they are wrong. Is a changing society making it much harder to stay fit? Yes — not question about it. But it still comes down to personal responsibility for your health.

You are responsible for what you choose to eat. You are responsible for your lack of exercise.

I am really getting worried about this lack of responsibility and how quick people are to point fingers and blame others for problems.

Taking responsibility is a key component of integrity. And without integrity, you cannot live a life of greatness or even mediocrity.

It’s Really Simple

I get a lot of heat from other fitness professionals about exercise and nutrition. They try to overly complicate health and fitness. They think my view of getting healthy is too simplistic – but it really does come down to what you are eating and your nutritional habits. That’s it.

Do you want to change the health of society? It’s really simple;

Spend 10 minutes a day of high intensity exercising with your kids (if you have any). Otherwise you can workout at home, at a gym, etc. Heck, follow my 4 minute workouts.

Do strength training (bodyweight, weights, kettlebells, medicine balls, etc.)

Stop eating foods with sugar, high fructose corn syrup or any crappy processed carbs.

Eat about 1/2 of the food you receive in a restaurant. Portion size (especially in the US) is out of control.

Drink only water as your beverage of choice (not juice, ice tea or even diet soda = but plain old water)

Stop over-complicating things, stop blaming others and start taking responsibility.

If you are ready to start taking responsibility for your level of health and fitness, check out Ryan Lee's WorkoutPass Network and his Nutrition Generator software. 

© Aaron Potts - visit Fitness Destinations for more great information about weight loss, health, and overall fitness!
Fitness Destinations is proudly sponsored by the incredible products and services provided by Team Beachbody!

Before finally getting into a discussion of the different dietary approaches out there, I want to address one of the bigger points of contention in the dieting literature: is a calorie a calorie? Simply put, the debate comes down to this: all that matters is caloric balance (calories in versus calories out) or do the source of those calories matter?

As usual, both sides of the argument can bring lots of data to the table in support of their contentions. Frequently, as you'll see below, they end up arguing slightly different issues. In looking the topic, I want to look at three distinct data sets, each of which generates slightly different results (part of the confusion comes from comparing data from dissimilar studies).

Studies varying protein intake

Most commonly, when folks want to argue that 'a calorie is not a calorie', they will use studies comparing higher and lower protein intakes. With very few exceptions, dietes providing adequate protein intake (for dieters 1.5 g/kg lean body mass or higher would be a minimum) to lower intakes find better results than diets with lower protein intakes. This is especially apparent under dieting conditions with any number of studies support the need for higher protein intake to support muscle growth.

That is, given an identical caloric intake, the group that gets sufficient protein will generally show better muscle mass maintenance than the lower-protein group. As well, since weight losses are typically similar, that means that slightly more fat is lost. Other studies show that protein blunts hunger better (meaning it's easier to reduce calories) than carbs or fats and a recent study showed better blood glucose maintenance in the diet containing higher protein. Aha, folks say, the source of the calories do matter!

Tangentially, I suspect that folks reporting better results from low-carb diets compared to higher-carb diets is related to this. Because of the reliance on meat, it's nearly impossible NOT to get sufficient protein intake on a low-carbohydrate diet; folks on high-carbohydrate diets frequently overemphasize carbs to the extent that protein intake gets shorted.

But look, I've been driving the point home for a good portion of this book that adeuqate/sufficient protein intake is an absolute requirement and I'll be the first to point out the results of the above studies: sufficient/higher protein intakes almost always produce better results than the converse.

However, this point doesn't apply to any of the diets I'm going to describe in this book. To get ahead of myself, after setting calories, my first priority is to set protein intakes at the proper levels (in the range of 0.8-1.5 g/lb depending on needs). The question then changes slightly: given adequate protein intake to begin with, does the source of the other calories (carbohydrates versus fat) affect anything or is it simply a calorie in versus calorie out issue. In adressing this, I want to describe two other data sets.

Studies where calories are rigorously controlled

The first set of studies, which tend to be in the minority are those studies where subject's caloric intakes are strictly controlled. These are usually the studies that the 'a calorie is a calorie' folks use to support their argument.

These studies are typically done by locking subjects in a hospital type of situation and measuring their food intake or by giving them pre-made food packets to use at home. Sometimes, studies are done in hospital patients being fed through a feeding tube. As you might imagine, these studies are hellishly expensive (especially if they are done over more than a few days) and, for that reason, aren't being done as often anymore. There is also the question of whether or not they have relevance to the real-world but that's a separate issue. I should also mention that frequently very short-term studies (looking at a single meal or a day or two of intake) sometimes find differences for different diets but these have no bearing in the real-world where you're looking at intakes over weeks or months.

However, in those studies, you generally see minimal (if any) differences in terms of the amount or composition of the weight lost when you vary the different nutrients. Studies have compared high to low-carbohydrate diets and even varying low-carbohydrate diets. With minor slop (maybe a pound or two here or there), any differences in the total amount of weight loss or the composition of the weight lost (again this assumes adequate protein intake in the first place) are very minor. Rather, the majority (easiliy 90% or more) of the change can be attributed directly to the caloric intake of the diet. Macronutrient composition makes a tiny, approaching negligble difference.

I should mention that studies comparing high to low-carbohydrate diets typically show greater weight losses in the low-carbohydrate group but this can generally be attributed to greater water losses. One or two studies have shown a slight trend towards greater fat loss in the low-carbohydrate group but it's rarely huge.

Of course, athletes and bodybuilders will retort that few studies are done in very lean individuals and this is very true. It's possible that an athlete trying to get to single digit bodyfat levels might find a given diet to produce superior results (I'll mention a few possible situations in the next chapter) but it's poorly studied.

On that note, I have had the benefit of receiving endless feedback from athletes and bodybuilders who have compared various diets at the same calorie level. In general, differences in terms of fat loss (or muscle mass maintenance) tend to be small and highly variable. Occasionally, you'll find someone who loses 2-3 lbs more fat (and thus keeps 2-3 more pounds of muscle) on a cyclical ketogenic diet compared so something like the Isocaloric diet (moderate carb/moderate fat) but you can just as readily find folks who report the opposite: more muscle loss and less fat loss on the ketogenic compared to the carb-based diet. It could be genetic difference or something else causing the difference. As you'll learn in the chapters on partitioning, factors unrelated to diet or training control the majority of what you lose on a diet in the first place.

I want to mention that relatively fewer studies have been done comparing different sources of carbohdyrates or fat. There are studies looking at the impact of sucrose (table sugar) vs. starch within the context of strictly controlled caloric intakes and they usually show no difference. That is, given an identical caloric intake, the source of the carbohydrates shows minimal differences. Similar studies have been done with dietary fat, typically showing similarly small differences. This is especially true when calories are restricted.

Unfortunately, overfeeding hasn't been examined in as great a detail in humans. There are studies comparing overfeeding of fat to carbohydrates (in the form of glucose, sucrose, or fructose) and, over the long-term gain in bodyfat are pretty much identical. The mechanism of the fat gain is different but, when the same number of calories are overfed, the same amount of fat is gained.

Studies looking at overfeeding of medium chain triglycerides (MCTs) or some newly developed dietary fats (diglycerols) also show some benefits in terms of decreased fat gain but the difference is typically small as well.

It's also conceivable that at the extremes of obesity, where all manners of metabolic problems are occurring, a difference might be seen for different macronutrient composition diets. Even there, studies where calories are rigorously controlled generally show little to no difference for varying macronutrient composition in terms of weight loss or body composition.

I should probably mention that, in studies of weight changes, there is quite frequently a large degree of variance in weight loss or weight gain given an identical number of calories. As it turns out, and as I'll disucss in the section on metabolic rate, this ends up being more an issue of individual metabolism and how it adapts than the diet itself. That is, some people's metabolic rate goes up (or down) more in response to over (or under) feeding. There is no evidence that the composition of the diet affects this to any significant degree; rather it's a genetically based metabolic effect.

To sum up this mini-section: for the most part, studies where protein is adequate (or at least close to it), varying carbs and fats within the context of an identical caloric intake tends to have a minimal overall effect. What effect is occasionally seen tends to be small and highly variable (some subjects do better with one diet than another but there's no consistent advantage). With the possible exception of extreme conditions (folks looking for super-leanness or folks who are super-obese), caloric intake is the greater determinant of results than the macronutrient composition.

Studies where calories are not rigorously controlled

As you might have guessed, these are generally the studies that the 'a calorie is NOT a calorie' folks refer to. In actuality, there are two different sets of studies in this group. The first is studies which are looking at nutrient intake on various diets. In such studies, subjects are simply given dietary guidelines (such as reduce fat to below 30% or reduce carbohydrates to 50 g/day or less) and intakes are examined.

Another data set of relevance to this discussion is studies comparing different diets (for example, recent studies have compared low-carbohydrate diets to the American Heart Association diet) under more real-world free-living conditions. Generally, in those studies, the subjects are given recommendations for the diet and let go. They typically report back to the researchers at some interval and frequently food intake is determined by means of self-reporting (which I've mentioned can be notoriously misleading). I want to look at each since both are illuminating to this discussion, as well as to how to choose a given diet.

The studies that look at average intakes given various recommendations are important because they often point to the real reason that a given diet works. For example, in studies where folks are told to reduce fat intake below 30% (or some other value), there is frequently an initial reduction in total caloric intake. That is, when they reduce dietary fat, their total energy intake generally goes down (at least initially). This is accompanied by weight loss. But this is not because of some magical effect of dietary fat, it's simply because they are eating less calories. Of course, longer term studies show that most people end up compensating, eating more of other foods, so the result is pretty short lived.

Studies of low-carbohydrate diets tend to show similar results. Tell folks to reduce (or even remove) all of the carbohydrates from their diet and they tend to eat less automatically without thinking about it. Usually a lot less. What typically happens in such studies is that folks keep their protein and fat intakes roughly the same. So, by removing a food category that might make up 50% or more of total calories, they can't help but eat less. Of course, this causes weight loss. But it's not because of the carbs (or lack thereof) per se; rather it's because they are eating less. There are other reasons, of course, such as decreased hunger (which not everyone experiences) and stable blood glucose that contribute to the reduction in calories but the removal of an entire food group is the main effect.

Tangentially, I should mention that many, many, many diet books rely on the rather simple prescription of 'reduce or remove food X' to lose weight. With X being something that contributes a lot of calories to the body, such as fat, sugars or highly refined carbohdyrates. But while such diet books typically use all kinds of pseudo-physiology to explain the effect, it's really quite simple: if food X contributes a lot of calories to your diet and you remove food X, you'll eat less total calories and lose weight. No magic, simple caloric restriction.

So let's look at the second set of studies within the context. As I mentioned above, typically such studies look at the effect of different diets under free-living conditions. Similar to the results above, such studies frequently find that a given diet approach generates greater weight (or fat loss) but the effect is almost always due to differences in caloric intake. For example, a study comparing a low-fat (but calorie uncontrolled) diet to a higher fat (calorie uncontrolled) diet will frequently see more weight/fat loss in the low-fat trial becuase the subjects ate less calories. The same goes for other comparisons. And while a few studies have shown drastically differential effects (such as greater weight loss at higher caloric intakes for a given type of diet), the methodology leaves a good bit to be desired. As I mentioned above, most use self-reporting of food intakes which tend to be notoriously inaccurate.

I should mention that, very frequently, the variance in weight loss tends to be humongous, as do reported caloric intakes. What this would tend to suggest is that, sometimes a certain diet type will reduce (or increase) food intake and sometimes it won't. Individuals variance and food preferences can play a role as much as anything else.

Explaining the discrepancy

So now, perhaps, we have a little bit better handle on why two totally different arguments about whether or not 'a calorie is a calorie' can come out of the resarch. The problem is that, most commonly, folks are referring to different data sets in making their argument.

As mentioned in the first section, there's no doubt that studies comparing varying protein intakes almost always find better results with the higher protein intake. As you'll see next chapter, all of the diets described in this book are based on adequate protein intake so these studies, have no relevance here. From the standpoint of this book, the real debate comes out of studies which keep protein constant and vary carbohydrates and fat and there are two data sets in this regards.

On the one hand are the studies were calories are rigorously controlled, where the subjects are provided their daily food intake. In those studies, differences in weight loss or body composition changes tend to be small and highly variable (some people do slightly better on one diet versus another but there's no consistent pattern). This is the pattern I've observed in the real-world as well: some people do report slightly better results on one diet versus another but there's no consistent superiority of a given approach.

On the other hand are studies examining spontaneous food intakes on various diets, typically examining a single diet such as low-fat or low-carbohydrate. Such studies frequently find that spontaneous food intake goes down or up given certain macronutrient intakes. For example, when fat intake is reduced below a certain point, claoric intake frequently goes down. The same occurs when carbohydrate intake goes below a certain point. Diets high in both fat (40% of total calories) and carbs frequently show higher spontaneous caloric intakes.

There is also a set of studies looking at changes comparing different diets to one another, using self-reported intakes to estimate caloric intake. While such studies frequently show differences in terms of weight loss, it's generally related to caloric intake: if a given diet causes people to reduce calories more than another (through whatever mechanism), those people lose weight.

Is a calorie a calorie?

So is a calorie a calorie? Yes and no. Based on the data, my general feeling is this:

1. A sufficient protein intake will always beat out an insufficient protein intake, no matter what you do. Since all of the diets described in this book are based around sufficient protein, this is a non-issue.

2. Assuming caloric intake can be controlled (and protein is adequate of course), shuffling of carbs and fats tends to have a minor, approaching negligble effect.

3. There might be exceptions at the extremes (folks going to single digit bodyfat or extreme obesity) but that doesn't apply to the majority of folks.

In this respect, given adequate protein, it seems to matter very little what diet is chosen. From a weight or bodyfat standpoint, high carb should be as good as low-carb. Right? Well, no. The problem is that there's a HUGE assumption built into statement #2 above: that calories can be controlled under a given set of conditions. As has been found repeatedly in the real-world, this simply isn't a safe assumption.

Put a little bit differently, it might very well be possible to lose all the weight/fat you wanted on a calorie controlled junk-food diet with some high quality protein source. The problem that would probably arise is that most people wouldn't be able to control their hunger or appetite on such a diet and they'd probably end up eating more in the long run. In eating more, they'd either lose less weight/fat or even gain it. Even if a given dietary approach appears optimal for some reason, if you can't control your caloric intake, and end up eating more because of it, it won't produce results.

Meaning this: you'll frequently see folks make comparisons along the lines of 'well, it's easier to eat 300 calories from food X than from food Y, therefore a calorie isn't a calorie'. They may be generally correct but this criticism is tangential to the main issue. This is why I divided the data sets into studies where calories are controlled (usually in a highly artificial fashion) and where they are not (having more real world application).

It's obviously easier to overconsume calories from jelly beans or candy than from vegetable just as it's easier to eat 3000 calories from butter than from celery (no human alive could eat enough celery to get 3000 digestible calories). That matters hugely under conditions where folks are allowed to eat whatever they want. Quite in fact, many many diets are based around this simple fact: make people eat less of the foods that are easy to overconsume and/or make them eat lots of those foods that are tough to overeat and they will lose weight because they automatically reduce their caloric intake. I'll discuss that topic more in the next chapter.

But that only applies to the situation where calories aren't being monitored. When calories are being controlled rigidly, the source of calories (whether you're comparing carbs to fat, or even different sources of carbs and fat) matters to a much smaller degree.

Once again, my point is that if calories are being strictly controlled, the source doesn't appear to make a humongous difference in terms of body composition changes. As well, once you get protein intake to proper levels, fooling around with carbohydate and fat ratios (within the context of identical caloric intakes) don't seem to make a huge amount of difference either. The bottom line still comes down to calories in versus calories out; it's simply that it may be easier to affect calories in (food intake) or calories out (through activity) with different macronutrient breakdowns.

As well, the source of calories can affect other aspects of physiology beyond body composition. Health, energy levels, hunger/appetite and all the rest interact here. So while a calorie controlled diet of jelly beans, butter and protein powder might very well work to lose weight/fat, it probably wouldn't be as healthy compared to a diet of low GI carbohydrates, healthier oils and lean protein sources.

Understand me here? Issues such as hunger control, long-term adherence, individual variance, athletic performance, and a few others all go into the determination of what food might or might not be a better choice under a given set of circumstances. So while a calorie might be more or less a calorie under somewhat artificial conditions (where calories are or can be strictly controlled), it's a little more complex than that in the real world. Other issues interact.

For more great information about dieting, nutrition, and weight loss, check out Lyle McDonald's Rapid Fat Loss Handbook or his Guide to Flexible Dieting.

© Aaron Potts - visit Fitness Destinations for more great information about weight loss, health, and overall fitness!
Fitness Destinations is proudly sponsored by the incredible products and services provided by Team Beachbody!

After all, if a dieter is eating 2,500 calories per day and they decide to cut back to 1,500 calories per day – then obviously those extra 1,000 calories have to result in weight loss, right?

Well, actually this is not exactly true.

In fact, if you try to cut your calories too much (via starving yourself and skipping meals) then you'll quickly reach a dieting "plateau" (a point where the scale refuses to drop any lower no matter how little your are eating).

Firstly, let’s talk about how the average person begins a new diet…

The scenario usually sounds something like this…

One day you look in the mirror and see that your clothes are fitting tighter than normal, and you look more overweight than normal. …And on this day you get “angry” with yourself, you’re angry with what you see in the mirror – and you decide that you’re going to lose weight no matter what it takes.

You are filled with lots of motivation and anger on this day, and you feel determined to do whatever it takes to get slimmer.

So what's the first thing you do?

…You begin skipping meals and cutting way back on calories in an attempt to starve yourself thinner, since you're convinced that calories are the enemy.

Anyway, the above scenario is how you begin your “starvation diet.”

On the first day of dieting you feel so “motivated” to lose weight that you decide to skip breakfast.

Unfortunately, this motivation doesn't last for long, because after a few hours your hunger begins making you feel weak — because your body is not accustomed to "skipping meals" like this, and your body is not accustomed to being without calories for so long.

Anyway, by the time lunchtime arrives you’re so hungry (and weak) that you feel absolutely miserable — but yet you bravely tell yourself that you can handle this diet (because after all, you certainly don’t want to feel like a quitter).

So you perhaps have a piece of fruit for lunch (or perhaps another small food item instead), since you're still convinced that you can starve yourself thinner.

Finally, hours later when dinnertime arrives you’re so miserable and hungry that you have a major headache – and this is the moment when you finally begin to realize that starving yourself might not be such a good idea after all.

After this first day of starving yourself you feel horrible, but you’re determined to stick to your diet since you don't want to be a quitter so soon — so you’ll likely hold out for another few days on this diet.

Or, if you are particularly brave then you may even hold out for a week or two.

However, regardless of how long you actually hold out — you won't get any slimmer and the final result will still be the same.

You see, even after two weeks of starving yourself you won’t have achieved any serious weight loss at all.  In fact, your body will still look the same when you look in the mirror.

Why is this true?

This is true because most of the weight lost during a “starvation diet” is just water weight, and not real fat loss.

You must remember that any “water weight” lost during a starvation diet will be gained back immediately when you stop dieting and start eating normally again.

Also, whenever you starve yourself you cause a “hidden” factor to come into play…

You see, whenever you starve yourself your body will begin burning fewer calories each day.

For instance, let’s say that you normally eat about 3,,000 calories per day.

….But then you suddenly cut way back on calories — so that you're now eating only 1,000 calories per day.

Guess what happens?

Even though you’re eating 2,000 fewer calories per day your body will begin burning 2,000 fewer calories per day – so in reality your weight will remain the same even though you’re eating 2,000 fewer calories per day.

When this happens the scale will stop going down regardless of how little you are eating each day, and this is known as a weight loss “plateau.”

This is why most starvation dieters cannot make the scale go down anymore after just two weeks of dieting. They all hit a “plateau” where the scale just refuses to go down any further, no matter how little they are eating each day.

Now you know why you’ve always failed when trying to starve yourself in the past, since it’s just not possible to lose weight by starving yourself.

The truth is that “serious” weight loss can never be achieved by starvation dieting.

Serious weight loss can only be achieved by giving your body the right types of calories at the correct times each day, which is something that we talk about below…

Your body is actually like a big “engine” — and the truth is that your body needs all 3 types of calories (protein, carbs, and fat) to some degree.

To begin losing weight fast check out the new Idiot Proof Diet from Fat Loss 4 Idiots — because it does not require any calorie counting (it's one of the only diets in the world which forces fast weight loss without the need to count calories).

You can begin this new diet right here.

Related Content:

If you love exercise, consider getting a personal fitness trainer certification or a physical therapy degree. You can also help yourself and others get fit as a certified nutritionist.

© Aaron Potts - visit Fitness Destinations for more great information about weight loss, health, and overall fitness!
Fitness Destinations is proudly sponsored by the incredible products and services provided by Team Beachbody!

You can join all the support websites that you want to, you can research weight loss programs, and you can buy all of the neat workout toys that you can squeeze into your house, but in the end, you're going to have to get out of your chair and make it happen!

Now, all of that being said, the Internet is a GREAT place to find information and support for your weight loss efforts. To that end, here is a list of 6 tips on how to use the internet to lose weight:

1) Exercise Instruction

One of the biggest reasons why people fail in their fitness efforts is because they simply don't know what they are doing. However, there are numerous free resources on the Internet that teach you more than you could possibly need to know about exercise.

You can start right here at Fitness Destinations by checking out the Exercise Database category, click on over to e-Weightloss for a huge list of exercises and pictures, and then check out Bodybuilding.com for an easily searched database that even includes instructions. 

2) Tools and Calculators

There are a ton of online tools that you can use to measure or monitor your health, fitness, and nutritional status. The biggest problem is determining which tools are the most accurate. Some of the so called "experts" on the Internet may not know as much as they should in order to be dispensing advice in these matters.

For online calculators, I always turn to Chad Tackett and the great gang over at Global Health & Fitness. I've been using them and referring people to their site for years and I've never heard a bad thing about them. They've got loads of great information at their site, and here are direct links to some of the tools and calculators that they offer:

• Free Fitness Analysis
• Carbohydrate Calculator
• Protein Calculator
• Basal Metabolic Rate Calculator

3) Message boards/Discussion forums

There are numerous weight loss message boards or discussion forums that you can read through or participate in. In fact, there are far too many to list! Once again, however, the quality of the information and interaction that you are getting is more important than the actual amount of time that you spend there.

As a general rule, only hang out at weight loss message boards or forums where the entire website is dedicated to health and fitness. In other words, don't go to places like Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, etc. Those sites are huge and widespread, but they are also full of a bunch of people who are not fitness professionals. 

In order of preference, I would recommend:

Burn the Fat Inner Circle (membership site)

Fit Sugar (free site)

4) Weight Loss Articles

There is absolutely no end to the number of articles that you can find on the Internet that deal with weight loss, exercise, and physical fitness. No, really – there is no end! You could read all day, every day, and you would just end up more confused than when you started.

Once again, go with the wisdom of people who not only know what they are talking about, but have a clue how to get that information across to you in article format. Here is a list of articles that I have personally written and posted at Ezine Articles, and here is the link to the article database over at the Burn the Fat Inner Circle website. 

5) Nutrition Information

Please note that I am going to recommend that you check out high quality resources that tell what is in the food that you eat, rather than what foods to eat. All you have to do is pick up a different monthly edition of any given magazine that talks about health to hear the "latest" scientific data about what is good for you and what isn't.

What is funny is that a lot of that information is not only open to some serious interpretation, but a lot of it gets updated to the point where what was once good for you isn't anymore, and what was once bad for you is now okay (in proper proportions).

So, rather than point you to another place to find the "latest" research, I will instead just send you to my two favorite resources for raw data about nutrition, then you can make your own choices once you have some quality information:

• Nutrition Generator 
• Nutrition Data

6) Audio and Video Content

One of the great things about the explosion of both the interest in the Internet as well as the technology that powers the Internet, is that it has enabled some very easy and convenient ways for people to share audio and video content.

Obviously YouTube is a popular video website, and despite the less than professional nature of a lot of their content, there are also some great videos about exercise if you take the time to search around for them.

Another great video source is iTunes.com. There are numerous video podcasts that are dedicated to health, fitness, and empowerment, and there are also dozens of great audio podcasts there as well.

And finally, if you want to once again be sure that you are working with pros who know what they are talking about, the Burn the Fat Inner Circle gang also has an audio content section that is packed with great information available for download.

Long story short? Use the Internet as the wonderful tool that it is in order to get information, motivation, and support. After that, it falls to YOU to get up and actually make it happen!

© Aaron Potts - visit Fitness Destinations for more great information about weight loss, health, and overall fitness!
Fitness Destinations is proudly sponsored by the incredible products and services provided by Team Beachbody!

10 Easy ways to Make Exercise a Habit 

Let's face it: it's not all that difficult to start a fitness routine. After all, most of us have done it more than once.

The trouble, of course, comes with sticking to it. All too often, our initial enthusiasm and energy wanes, we get distracted by other things going on in our lives, or we don't think we're seeing results quickly enough – and we throw in the towel.

Yet many people do manage to hang in there, and would no sooner skip their regular workout than their morning shower. What's their secret?

A recent study by researcher Diane Klein, PhD, shed some light on the subject. Long-term exercisers (who had been working out for an average of 13 years) were asked to rank what motivated them to keep up with their regimes.

Their answers might surprise you. The exercisers were not as concerned with powerful pecs and awesome abs as they were with feeling good and being healthy.

Here's how the study participants ranked their motivators:

• Fitness
• Feelings of well-being
• Pep and energy
• Enjoyment of the exercise
• Making exercise a priority
• Sleeping better
• Feeling alert
• Being relaxed
• Weight management
• Appearance

So, once you have your priorities in the right place, how can you become one of the fitness faithful?

Compiled are 10 tips for making fitness a habit in your life:

1. Do a variety of activities you enjoy. And remember, there's no rule that says you have to go to a gym or buy equipment.

   "We've shifted our perceptions from regimented exercise to physical activity," says Klein, assistant professor of exercise, sports and leisure studies, and director of gerontology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

2. Having a variety of activities- weight lifting, walking, running, tennis, cycling, aerobics classes — will ensure that you can do something regardless of the weather or time of day.
3. Commit to another person. The social aspect of exercise is important for me," says Wanda Stevens, a stay-at-home mom in Austin, Texas. "I'll let myself off, but if I've agreed to walk with a friend after dinner, I won't let them down."

   She is six weeks into an exercise program, thanks in part to her husband's support. Roy Stevens, who works as a management consultant, has become her "in-house personal trainer." They work out together every morning, doing a combination of aerobics, strength training, Tae Bo, and stretching. If he's out of town, he gives her a wake-up call, and she takes the dog for a walk.

4. Make exercise a priority. "It has to be a non-negotiable," says Roy Stevens. There's another advantage to making exercise non-negotiable. Friends and family members learn that it's part of your identity, and give up saying things like, "Why don't you take it easy today?"
5. Exercise first thing in the morning. With two preschool children, Wanda Stevens couldn't find time to work out except on a hit-and-miss basis. Any number of things could sabotage her good intentions to walk or go to Pilates class after dinner. But all her excuses vanished once she started getting up before the kids so she could work out.

   Experts agree that a morning schedule is best. If you go to a gym, it should be located between your home and work. Exercise, take a shower, and you're energized for the day.

6. Or, exercise on your way home from work. The next best thing to exercising first thing in the morning is to do it on your way home from work.

   Don't go home first. There aren't a lot of people who are so motivated that after they go home and change clothes will go back out again and exercise.

7. Exercise even when you're "too tired". Chances are, you'll feel better after exercising. It energizes. You breathe deeply, and your body makes better use of the oxygen exchange. You'll get an exercise-induced euphoria during the activity and for some time after.
8. Log your activity. Write down the things that are important to you. It could be how much time you exercise each day, how many steps you walked, how far you ran or cycled, what you weighed, etc.

   Some people make a game of it. You may have heard of runners calculating the miles it would take to run from their homes to Boston (home of the famous marathon), figuring how far they run in an average week and setting a target date for "arriving" in Boston.

9. Be aware of all the indicators of progress. It's great when your clothes fit better and you can lift heavier weights or work out longer without getting exhausted.

   But there are a slew of other progress indicators, such as:

   • Getting a good night's sleep.
   • Thinking more clearly.
   • Having more energy.
   • Realizing your muscles aren't screaming after you've helped a friend move furniture.
   • Seeing your resting heart rate drop over time.
   • Hearing your doctor congratulate you on improved cholesterol, blood pressure, bone density, triglycerides, and blood sugars.
10. Walk – with a pedometer (or a dog). "If you enjoy walking and haven't exercised for awhile, 10 minutes three times a day will give you 30 minutes," says Klein.

    Use a pedometer, and work up to at least 10,000 steps a day. "Nobody starts out with 10,000 steps," Klein says. Find out what your daily average is, and, the next week, strive to walk 300 extra steps each day. Increase your steps each week.

    "Better yet, walk the dog," Klein says. That's how she motivated her sister to exercise. "Twice a day she walks her dog, which is good for both of them and provides companionship."

11. Reward yourself. Are you telling yourself that you don't deserve a reward for something you should be doing anyway — or that once you can zip your jeans without lying on the bed, that will be reward enough? Well, honestly, how inspiring is that?

    Experts say that making behavior changes is hard, and rewards motivate. So decide on a goal and a reward, and work toward it. You might buy yourself a video you've wanted after you stick to your fitness plan for one month, or buy new walking shoes when you achieve 5,000 steps a day. Do whatever works for you.

Original Post: WebMD.com

SOURCES: American College of Sports Medicine's Health and Fitness Journal, March 2004. Diane Klein, PhD, assistant professor of exercise, sports and leisure studies; director, gerontology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Roy and Wanda Stevens, Austin, Texas. WebMD Weight Loss Clinic feature, "Conquer Your Fitness Fears."

© Aaron Potts - visit Fitness Destinations for more great information about weight loss, health, and overall fitness!
Fitness Destinations is proudly sponsored by the incredible products and services provided by Team Beachbody!