New Research: Aerobic Exercise May Make You A Fat STORING Machine

New research suggests that doing exercise in your “fat burning zone” will actually reduce the amount of fat that your body burns for the rest of that day.  A new study in the Journal of Applied Physiology had participants do 1 hour of cycling at 55% of their aerobic capacity only to find that “24 h fat balance was significantly more positive on [the exercise day] compared to [the non-exercise day].”

Local fitness expert Josef Brandenburg says, “this is what I’ve been telling my clients for years – aerobic exercise makes you fatter.”  Brandenburg hypothesizes that the body responds to exercise based on the type of fuel it uses.

In high intensity exercise like sprinting and weight lifting the primary fuel is carbohydrate.  Your body responds to carb-dependent exercise by making it easier for your body to replace those carbs (increasing your insulin sensitivity), and increasing your capacity to store carbohydrates (called glycogen).

With low-intensity, aerobic exercise – like that done in the study and during most people’s workouts – the primary fuel is fat.  Brandenburg thinks that burning fat as the primary fuel during exercise is the signal to your body to become better at storing fat, hence the results of the study.

He says your body responds by doing the opposite.  At the end of a resistance workout you are smaller and weaker than when you started it, but your body responds by doing the opposite – building you up in preparation for the next time it is stressed.

“Research in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition shows that resistance training shifts your body to burn more fat for the 24 hours after your workout unlike with aerobics.  I think that since body-fat is fundamentally regulated by the hormone insulin, the intense, carb-dependent exercise like resistance training makes you burn fat all day long because it reduces your insulin levels and improves your carbohydrate metabolism,” says Brandenburg.

For free info about what to do with this click here

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, and author of “The Body You Want”. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here..

I’m worried because I’ve got too much energy!

That’s not something that you hear every day (or every life time – it makes most people happy), but the other week a client named Alyssa came in rather concerned because:

#1.  She was dropping fat too fast (she had dropped 2.5 inches off her waist in the first 2 weeks).

#2.  She had too much energy.

She was worried that maybe there was some kind of stimulant in the Atkins protein shakes that she had been drinking as mid morning and mid afternoon snacks.  I assured her that other than the coffee flavored ones, they have no caffeine whatsoever.

Low Energy & High Body Fat Are Actually Two Sides Of The Same Coin

Accumulating extra body-fat and having less energy are actually two sides of the same coin – insulin resistance.

If you are prone to gain extra fat, then you have at least some degree of insulin resistance.  Insulin resistance is when your cells can’t “hear” or don’t respond very well to insulin.  Usually this is only in your lean (non-fat) tissue.

Lets say that you had a healthy breakfast of bacon, eggs and spinach.  Your body will be running off of fat afterwards.  Then lunch rolls around and you have a sandwich.  The bread from the sandwich will unleash a flood of carbs into your bloodstream that must be dealt with.

In response your body will secrete insulin.  The insulin sends the fat that you were using for fuel before back to your fat cells for storage in an attempt to force your body to burn off the carbs because blood sugar is toxic if it gets too high.

The problem is that if your lean tissue (non-fat) has any level of insulin resistance then it doesn’t respond very well to the insulin and can’t do a very good job of taking in the carbs, so blood sugar remains elevated.

In this scenario your lean tissue is actually being starved by the act of eating carbs:  the fat that your lean tissue was burning is unavailable, and they can’t really do a very good job of taking in the carbs, so the lean tissue doesn’t have enough fuel.  Hunger is determined by how well your energy needs are being met.  So you are both tired and hungry.

Since your blood sugar levels remain elevated (because your lean tissue couldn’t handle the carbs), your body releases more insulin.  At this point the carbs (energy) gets sequestered away in the only tissue that can take them in – your fat.

Carbs make susceptible people fat, hungry and tired.

Josef Brandenburg is Washington, DC’s top personal trainer for busy people. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

Getting buzzed while getting buff: How to drink without ruining your progress

Over the past few years I have noticed something profound – most people like to drink.  (Well, it is profound to me since I think alcohol tastes like cat pee.  I was very young when I got my first cat.)  Even when people have hired me to help them drop a ton of body fat quickly they still really want to be able to drink.

Since I pride myself on being able to help normal people (vs. bodybuilders) get results in the real world I decided to figure this one out.  (By figure it out, I mean steal ideas from my clients.)

After observing client behavior and measuring client results over the past few years I’ve come up with these 3 simple rules that make everyone happy:

#1.  Beer makes you fat: Beer and fruity drinks like margaritas and daiquiris kill all progress, and can often reverse a week of hard work in the gym and kitchen.  The short explanation is that your body fat is fundamentally regulated by the hormone insulin.  And your insulin levels are fundamentally regulated by the quantity and quality of carbs in your diet.

In fruity drinks and beer the quantity is huge and the quality is horrible.  Drinking beer seems to be like drinking bread – it can actually help you gain fat while losing muscle.  The worst of both worlds.

Solution:  read tip #2, switch to light beer or something like Michelob Ultra, or use a sugar-free mixer like Crystal Light, seltzer or diet soda.

#2.  Hard liquor and wine are fine: Within reason (around 6 drinks per week) hard liquor and wine don’t seem to slow people down very much at all.  It seems like it’s the carbs in the drinks (tip #1), not the alcohol itself that is the big villain.

#3.  Get buzzed, not hammered: This should be common sense right?  If you get really drunk on a regular basis your progress will suffer if not disappear.  This is always worse if done with beer or fruity drinks.

Josef Brandenburg is Washington, DC’s top personal trainer for busy people. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

Why Does Interval Training Really Work?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should be pretty well aware that aerobic exercise is next to worthless for fat-loss.  You can put a woman on an 18month marathon training program and she won’t lose a pound! (1)  (If that sounds weird to you, then please read my piece from last week as the Washington, DC Weight Loss Examiner.)

While the most important part of a fat-loss exercise program is the metabolic resistance training, there isn’t a very good consensus on WHY metabolic resistance training and interval training work so well for fat-loss.

I used to think that it was because of this thing called EPOC – excess postexercise oxygen consumption, or the metabolic boost (elevation) that you get after intense exercise.  But, it turns out that EPOC probably isn’t big enough to account for the amount of fat-loss, and fat-loss doesn’t really work that way (calories in vs. calories out).

I have a new theory of why it works that I am reprinting here from my Monday post as the DC Weight Loss Examiner:

Interval training only consumes your stored carbs for fuel.  Body-fat is fundamentally regulated by the hormone insulin.  More insulin = more body fat and vice versa.  When you deplete your muscles carbohydrate stores (glycogen) you improve your sensitivity to insulin.  The more sensitive you are to insulin the less insulin you need to make to handle the same amount of food and/or carbohydrates.  The increased sensitivity to insulin is temporary, but if you do high intensity exercise like interval and resistance training you will appear to be someone with better insulin sensitivity (have less body-fat). (2-5)

That is the primary way that I think interval training creates superior fat-loss.

The secondary way is that intense exercise releases stuff called catecholamines.  These are chemicals like epinephrine and norepinephrine that stimulate the release of fat from your fat cells to be burned off.  The calories consumed by the workout are probably irrelevant.

I could be totally wrong, but that doesn’t matter.  it still works far better, in far less time and is more fun.

For more free info on how to do intervals click here.

Josef Brandenburg is Washington, DC’s top personal trainer for busy people. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

References:

1. Janssen, G. M., et al.  Food intake and body composition in novice athletes during a training period to run a marathon. International journal of sports medicine, May 1989; 10(1 suppl.):s17-21
2. Joslin. Elliot. Et al. Joslin’s Diabetes Mellitus. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. 13th edition, 1994
3. Nussey, Stephen. et al. Endocrinology: An Integrated Approach. Informa HealthCare, 1st edition, 2001
4. Kronenberg MD, Henry M. et al. Williams Textbook of Endocrinology. Saunders. 11th edition, 2008
5. Lehninger, Albert. Et al. Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry. W. H. Freeman. 5th edition. 2008

How Do You Make A Gladiator Fat on Demand?

According to Archeology magazine (by the Archeological Institute of America), it turns out that Gladiators were actually fat. They were fat on purpose:

“A fat cushion protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight.” Not only would a lean gladiator have been dead meat, he would have made for a bad show. Surface wounds “look more spectacular,” says Grossschmidt. “If I get wounded but just in the fatty layer, I can fight on,” he adds. “It doesn’t hurt much, and it looks great for the spectators.”

How Did They Get Fat (In spite of being VERY physically active)?

“A vegetarian diet rich in carbohydrates… and very little animal protein… Packing in the carbs also packed on the pounds.”

You can read the whole article right here.

Sumo Wrestlers AND Gladiators Have a Lot In Common

This sounds an awful lot like what the Sumo did when they wanted to get fat on purpose – cut back on the animal protein and pack in the carbs.

It is ironic that this is the same advice that we get from the food pyramid. Is that designed to make people fat too?

Low fat, and therefore high carb nutrition became dogma in the late 70’s, early 80’s, exactly when the obesity epidemic started.  Coincidence?

Josef Brandenburg is Washington, DC’s top personal trainer for busy people. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

Are Dieticians Trying To Turn You Into A Sumo Wrestler?

A funny thing about Sumo Wrestlers is that they do NOT accept fat boys into training because they don’t think that they have the discipline to stick with the rigorous training that it takes to become a Sumo.  In other words they have a specific system to take normal weight and/or thin boys and turn them into morbidly obese adults.

The best Sumo (the upper group) eat a diet that looks like this:
*57% carbs
*16% fat (1)

The purpose of this diet is to become a Sumo wrestler (very, very fat).

The ACSM, and The ADA (American Dietetic Association) recommend the following for athletes:
*no less than 60% carbs
*15-25% fat (2)

If the purpose of this diet is to improve athletic performance, then why does it look just like the diet that the Sumo eat to get crazy fat?

The only criticism a dietician could make was that the upper group Sumo was only at 57% carbs.  Maybe if we just had them eat more carbs then they wouldn’t be so fat.

Well, lets see.

The lower group of Sumo wrestlers eat a diet that looks like this:
*80% carbs
*9% fat (1)

They are the “lower group” because they weigh the same, but have even more fat, and less muscle.  So, it would seem that even more carbs means even more body-fat.

The Japanese figured out that the best way to make fat people was with a high carb, low-fat diet.  This was long before anyone had figured out what insulin was, or had done a controlled diet study to confirm their results.  Today we have 100 years of research saying that high carb, low fat diets make fat people fatter and make normal weight people fat too, but the ADA and ACSM still promote them.

Josef Brandenburg is Washington, DC’s #1 personal trainer for busy people.  He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have.  To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here.

References
1.  Nishiwaza, T. I., et al. Some factors related to obesity in the Japanese sumo wrestler. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Oct: 29(10):1167-74
2. http://www.usaswimming.org/USASWeb/ViewMiscArticle.aspx?TabId=436&Alias=Rainbow&Lang=en&mid=603&ItemId=520
(I normally think web sites make poor references, but USA Swimming references everything they put on their site, and the notion that the ACSM and ADA recommend low-fat, high carb diets to athletes is not really controversial in the slightest.)

A New Year, A New Body

Happy New Year!

You asked for it, you got it.  Many of you all have asked for:

• Help with motivation
• Help with energy
• Help with finding the time
• More samples of my programs
• More exercise guidance
• Help with dropping belly fat, arm fat, back fat, thigh fat, butt fat…

Here it is. With the good folks at Primer Magazine, I have laid out a complete 12-week, 3-phase program that addresses ALL of the above points and spells out the nutrition AND exercise program to get you MAXIMUM results in MINIMUM time.

For the ladies, yes, Primer is a men’s magazine, don’t worry about this.  This is a fat loss program NOT a muscle growth program.  While almost everyone will gain some muscle on this program, the women just won’t gain that much and what you do gain will be sexy and feminine.  It takes a lot of a different kind of work to turn into a she-man, and this isn’t that program.  (Not to mention that there really isn’t that much demand for the she-man look.)

There are only 2 differences between men and women when it comes to body-composition training (improving ratio of fat to muscle):

#1.  Women usually need fewer carbs.  So just eat more fruits and veggies and use a Whey recovery drink intead of a carb + protein one (i.e. Surge)

#2.  Sometimes women need extra cardio.  Occaisionally women need to add 10, 15 or 20min of hard steady-state work AFTER their intervals.

However, I don’t see this very often.  I have plenty of ladies in their late 50’s who look great without any steady-state work.

So, 1st follow the plan as written and track results.

2nd If results are not as desired, check that you are eating on-point and lifting heavy enough weight.

3rd, if #2 doesn’t fix (it almost always does), then tack on 15min.

Here is part one of the road map to a brand new you.

Josef Brandenburg is also the author of The Body You Want, and a Washington, DC based nominee for 2009 Personal Trainer of the Year from Personal Fitness Professional Magazine. Click here to find out more.