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..

Can Laughing Help You Lose Weight?

I recently ran across a very neat research article in Diabetes Care on the power of laughter.

Japanese researchers took a group of type-2 diabetics and healthy subjects for two days:

Day 1 – they ate a 500 calorie lunch and attended a “monotonous lecture (40 min) without humorous content.”

Day 2 – they ate an identical 500 calorie lunch and attended a 40min comedy show where “the subjects laughed.”

(Funny excerpt: “The subjects estimated their laughter level on a scale of 0–5, and most of them considered that they laughed well (level 4 or 5).”  Leave it to a scientist to take the fun out of a comedy show!)

Researchers monitored the subjects bloo d glucose levels for two hours after the and in the people who attended the comedy show glucose levels where significantly lower .

“Negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, and sorrow are known to be factors that elevate the blood glucose level.”

Why Does This Matter To You?

Elevated blood sugar (glucose) levels require that your body secretes insulin to bring them back down.  The more insulin you secrete the more your fat cells grow.  Anything you can do to reduce your insulin levels (high intensity exercise, low-carb eating) will help to make you leaner.

Apparently, its not just what you eat, but how you eat.  If you eat in a stressed out state, that can make your healthy lunch less healthy.

So, lighten up!  Pass gas and blame it on somebody else at lunch.  Make sure that you are having fun every day – even at work.

You can read the whole article in Diabetes Care right here for free:
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/26/5/1651.full

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.

What If Low Carb Is Wrong? Does ASP Prove That Insulin Doesn’t Matter and That Its Calories That Really Count?

So there I was on the forums of t-nation.com answering questions about my recent interview piece with Gary Taubes when I started to wonder if this low-carb thing was legitimate after all.  “Have I been giving bad advice the whole time?  Should I just be telling people to ‘eat less and exercise more?’  But that’s never worked…  What I do now works like clock work… But all these posts keep telling me how ‘retarded’ me and Gary are…’”, I worried to myself.

What’s not authoritative and intimidating about being insulted over and over again by anonymous people on a forum?  If they can type it on a forum it must be well researched and true!  Right?

I did come to my thin-skinned senses eventually, BUT the folks on the t-nation forums did leave me with one question that I wasn’t entirely sure about:  Is ASP the overlooked flaw in low-carb dieting?

There were a lot of posts saying in effect: “What Tuabes and the rest of the low-carb community don’t like talking about is a little compound called acylation stimulating protein (ASP) which stores dietary fat in the fat cell with ZERO rise in insulin levels.”

I started doing some digging and found statements like these in peer reviewed research (I’m paraphrasing to make them readable and concise):

#1.  “ASP is far more powerful than insulin in stimulating the creation of new body-fat.” (1)

#2.  “ASP is released in response to an oral fat load.” (2)

Did I Get Served On A Forum?

I started really getting into ASP research at about 10pm on a Saturday night, and by the time I found the above statements in peer reviewed research I started sweating and my stomach was twisted up in knots.  I tried to let it go and hang out with my fiancé, but I just had to know – “What’s the deal with ASP!?  Is this something the debunks low-carb?”

So I spent the next 6 hours combing everything that I could get my hands on about ASP, and every time a paper made on of the above statements (#1 & 2 above) I noted the paper they cited.  (By the way, my biochemistry textbooks were no help at all.)  Pretty soon it became clear that those two statements were pretty much built off of two papers published in 1989:

•    Statement #1 above was pretty much built off of a paper titled “Purification and characterization of acylation stimulating protein”, but let’s call it “ASP trumps insulin” for this article.

•    Statement #2 above was built off of a paper titled “Metabolic response of acylation stimulating protein to an oral fat load,” but let’s call it “ASP is released in response to fat, not carbs.”

Does ASP Trump Insulin?

For the “ASP trumps insulin paper” the researchers grew fat cells in cultures (outside the body).  It is true the addition of ASP REALLY accelerated the creation of new fat (triglyceride) – it was faster than insulin.

HOWEVER, both the ASP and the no-ASP cultures had insulin and carbs added to them.  So the water is very muddy:

Could the ASP be a way in which insulin accelerates its activity?  Maybe the super deadly combo a high-fat and high sugar meal?  Maybe the only thing to learn from this study is that frosting is more fattening than candy?  Why not test ASP without insulin and carbs if your goal is to see what the difference between them is?

Or, for that matter, why not just test ASP in actual people instead of cultures? (1)

Is ASP Released In Response to Fat, Not Carbs?

For the “ASP is released in response to fat, not carbs.” The “lipid meal” or “oral fat load” that was used to induce the ASP response was cream + one tbsp table sugar (sucrose) + one tbsp nonfat dry milk.

That mixture is 25% carbs by weight!  So, that really doesn’t tell us anything at all.

Why not just have people drink olive oil or melted butter instead of cream plus a bunch of sugary stuff?

Take It Home Gary

I shared my research with Gary Taubes and he had this to say:

“Nice to know you’re suitably obsessed Josef.

“One thing to keep in mind in all this is the need to explain the observations, not just work with possible mechanisms that can’t explain anything. So one of the observations is weight loss on a high fat diet — the Atkins diet.

“So if ASP was good at sequestering dietary fat away in the fat tissue without carbs being needed, why would people lose weight when they ate an Atkins diet?

“Another observation we’re trying to understand, as I point out in lectures, is the obesity in poor populations eating low-fat, high carb diets. So there ASP would be irrelevant. Now if we had obesity in populations eating low-carb, high-fat diets, that would be telling and a reason to invoke ASP, but, as far as I know, no such populations exist.

“So maybe ASP plays a role in obesity in rats that are fed high fat diets, but we’re not all that interested in rats.”

Epilogue – Falling Asleep At A Wedding

My obsessive researching kept me up ‘till 4am, but I had to be up at 8am to workout, shower and be at a friend’s wedding the next day.  I couldn’t put off my workout and sleep in because I had deadlines to meet that night.  So, while everyone else was watching the cake cutting and dancing, I passed out, face down on the table.  Even though I woke with drool on my cheek I felt a lot better.

Josef Brandenburg is an award winning Washington, DC weight loss expert and author of The Body You Want.  He specializes in helping normal, busy people create the bodies they want in the time they actually have.  You can pick up a FREE copy of his new CD “Why ‘Eat Less and Exercise More’ is The Worst Advice Ever” right here.

References

#1.  J Biol Chem vol. 264, Jan 5, 1989, p.426-430

#2. J lipid res vol 30, 1989 p. 1727-1733

Are you in the club?

There’s a club that you can join that will give you a serious edge in getting and keeping the body YOU want while on the road – vacation or work travel.  It can help keep you motivated, energized and focused, and give you a serious boost when it comes to saying “no” to all of the junk food that is sure to tempt you.

Do want to know more about this free club?

Its called club G.Y.M., as in Get Your ass Moving and go workout while you’re traveling.  Sticking to any kind of effective workout program while you’re on the road will do absolute wonders for the rest of your life – especially your eating.  If you wake up 20min early to get your interval workout in, it’s hard to go to breakfast and eat pancakes.

And if you get started off on the right foot with breakfast – bacon and eggs, then you’ve got tons of momentum going into the rest of the day.  This momentum is both physiological and psychological.

In your head you are proud of yourself for doing the right thing (especially so much so early in the day) and want to keep it going.  And, in your body you are controlling your blood sugar and insulin levels so the cravings, the hunger pangs and the fatigue won’t be there provided you make healthy snacks available to yourself.

If you’re going someplace where there won’t be a gym that’s no problem.  You don’t need anything to get a great interval workout.  (Try this one, with just your body weight.)  And you can fit a complete gym in your bag that is cheap, light weight and won’t take up much room.  All you need:

#1.  Valslide
#2.  Gymboss
#3.  Resistance bands
#4.  Jump rope
#5.  A massage ball (tennis ball, softball, lacrosse or base ball)

If you’re pressed for time a smart workout won’t require more than 20-30min per day while on the road.  Anybody can wake up a little earlier to get that in before the day starts.  Then you’ll be in club G.Y.M.

Oh, club G.Y.M. memberships come with free passes to L.G.N. and M.P.F.  That’s “looking good naked” and “my pants fit!”

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.

Josef Brandenburg’s Article is “Retarded”

I had a interview that I did with Gary Taubes published on T-nation yesterday and here are a few of my favorite comments:

“This whole article is retarded… Look into a little something called ASP”

“This sh*t should be pulled from the site. Can’t t-nation/muscle/mag get a decent science editor?”

“Man this is so wrong on so many different levels.

“Anyone who buys into Taubes’ bullsh*t is clearly too feeble minded to grasp any rational argument to the contrary… What Tuabes and the rest of the low-carb community don’t like talking about is a little compound called acylation stimulation protein (ASP) which stores dietary fat in the fat cell with ZERO rise in insulin levels.”

“I agree that this article is completely retarded.”

“People like Josef Brandenburg who make ridiculous statements about eating all you want.”  (I really like this one because he spelled out my first and last name correctly.  You’re not important until you get trashed on an internet forum!)

So a lot of the criticism (a lot more than listed here) was aimed at the fact that ASP was left out of the interview, because the claim is that with ASP you can make fat without insulin and that is the “nail in the coffin” for low-carb.

So, What’s Up With ASP?

ASP (Acylation stimulating protein) definitely does regulate body-fat, if you have more then you’ll store more fat.  But, if you dig just a little deeper you’ll find this:

#1. Insulin increases ASP production 2 fold

http://www.jlr.org/…/reprint/38/1/1

J Lipid Res. 1997 Jan;38(1):1-11

#2. “ASP… secretion is regulated by insulin”

Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 2001 Jun;21(6):1034-9

http://atvb.ahajournals.org/…/full/21/6/1034

So, ASP seems to be related to insulin.

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.

The Truth About Splenda Part III – The Twist!

Its time to finally complete the 3 part Splenda series that I started the day before Valentine’s day.

If you missed part I or part II, check them out.

The Final Two Verdicts

#5.  Splenda has chlorine in it, and since chlorine is poisonous, Splenda must be poisonous.

Uh, your body has chlorine in it.  You’d be dead without it.  There are a LOT of very important things that go in your body that absolutely require chlorine!  Chlorine is in just about everything you eat every day and has been since food was invented.

They might be talking about elemental chlorine – like chlorine gas.   Chlorine gas is deadly and toxic.  You aren’t really going to get that off of a molecule of sucralose.   I’ve got to take you back to chemistry class again – sorry.

In chemistry the strongest bonds are “covalent” bonds, those are the bonds that are drawn with the straight lines between the black balls and the green balls.  That means that those two atoms are sharing a pair of electrons, so that bond will not be broken in your digestive system.

6.  Splenda is a no calorie sweetener and will not raise blood sugar or insulin levels.  (You’ll be surprised about the REAL answer to this one.)

The answer here is NO!  Actually a tablespoon of Splenda has 6 calories in it and its all carbs!  Splenda is so sweet that the amount needed to sweeten a cup of coffee could not fall out of a package – its just too small.  They have to put it into a carrier.  In this case they use maltodextrin.

It is still better than sugar.  A tablespoon of sugar has 46 calories and 800% more carbs.  But, go easy.  I know a lot of people trying to be low-carb who put mountains on their food.  A normal amount is OK, but a mountain on your yogurt or coffee is too much.  It defeats the purpose.

Josef Brandenburg is Washington, DC’s #1 fat-loss expert 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.

The Truth About Splenda – Part I

Some people say Splenda is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and other people say that it’s the spawn of Satan.  Who’s right?  Who’s wrong?  What is the truth about Splenda?

It’s hard to know who to believe because there is a LOT of money to be made on both sides.  Case in point:

*Visit www.thetruthaboutsplenda.com and you will come away thinking that Splenda is the most deadly chemical known to man, and that if you eat it while pregnant your baby will have 18 toes and resemble a lizard.

BUT, if you take a look at the bottom of the site, you will see these words:

“This website is part of an effort to educate consumers about the chemical artificial sweetener Splenda and is provided by The Sugar Association, which represents sugar beet and sugar cane farmers across America…”

It is very difficult to believe anything that the Sugar Industry has to say about one of their biggest competitors.

*Visit www.splenda.com and you will come away thinking that this is THE cure for diabetes and obesity.  It’s obvious who paid for that.

Claims About Splenda

On both sides of the fence there are 6 basic claims made about Splenda:

1.  There have never been any long term studies on humans.

2.  Some of Splenda (sucralose) is metabolized into chemicals that have never been studied and are dangerous.

3.  Sucralose is stored in our fat and builds up over time.

4.  Sucralose is chemically similar to DDT.

5.  Splenda has chlorine in it, and since chlorine is poisonous, Splenda must be poisonous.

6.  Splenda is a no calorie sweetener and will not raise blood sugar or insulin levels.  (You’ll be surprised about the REAL answer to this one.)

The Verdicts

#1.  Is actually an outright lie.  There were 20 years of research on the safety of sucralose (Splenda) before it was released in the US.  The FDA reviewed 110 human and animal studies – there were long term studies done on both.  So, there really is no grey area on #1.  Either it was or it wasn’t.

If you’d like to bore yourself with the details (and it is really boring) check out the federal register on it.

#2.  Is also an outright lie.  98.5% is excreted within 6 hours of ingestion.  Some of the remaining 1.5% is broken down into two metabolites, BUT these metabolites have been studied for:

• Carcinogenic toxicity (do they cause cancer?)
• Genoticity
• Neurotoxicity (do they pose a threat to your nervous system?)
• Reproductive toxicity

No problems in either the short or the long term studies with ridiculously high doses.

Splenda also seems to be really stable, so very, very little ends up being metabolized.

“After ONE YEAR at 25ºC, there would be LESS than 1% hydrolysis at pH 3, and… no detectable loss of sucralose at pH 4 and 6.”
(emphasis added; Grice, “Sucralose – An Overview of the Toxicity Data,” Food and Chemical Toxicity)

Translation: At room temp (25ºC), and at a very acidic pH (3 is low and low is more acid) less than 1% of sucralose broke down over the course of an entire year.  We could not detect any breakdown of sucralose at a higher (more alkaline pH) if left in water for an entire year.  The human body is slightly alkaline (7.4 pH).

This will not be completely one sided.  Splenda is not perfect.

Tune in next week for parts 2 & 3 next week.

Josef Brandenburg is also the author of The Body You Want, and an award winning personal trainer in Washington DC.  Visit www.thebodyyouwant.com to find out about our 7-Day Free Trial.  Space is limited so act quickly.

Is Quinoa A Good Protein Source?

I get this one a lot:  “isn’t quinoa a good protein source?”

The short answer is “no”.  It’s a grain.  Grains are starchy foods.  Quinoa is probably the highest protein grain, but it’s still a grain, so it’s still a starch and will raise your insulin levels accordingly.  Which may or may not be a good idea for you.

It certainly beats white bread, but it can’t hold a candle to a chicken breast.

How To Tell If Something Is A Protein or A Starch

I definitely understand where that comes from – tons of magazines tout quinoa as a great source of protein.  But is actually?

Take a look at Quinoa’s nutrition info:

Nutrition Facts
Calories 127     (532 kJ)

Total Fat           2g
Total Carbs.      23.5g
Dietary Fiber     2g
Protein             4.5g     (1)

There are 4 calories per gram of protein and carbohydrate, so percentage-wise this works out to:

•    Starch:  23.5g x 4kcal/gram = 94kcal of starch (75% of the calories are from carbs)
•    Protein: 4.5g x 4kcal/gram = 18kcal of protein (14% of the calories are from protein)

Also, keep in mind that plant protein is roughly half as “complete” as animal protein.  So, you need about 2g of veggie protein to equal 1g of animal protein.  So the numbers for protein above should really be halved. (2)

On the other hand, lets check out the stats on a chicken breast:

Calories 142      (593 kJ)

Total Fat           3.1g
Total Carbs.      0g
Dietary Fiber     0g
Protein              26.7g      (3)

•    Starch: 0g x 4kcal/gram = 0kcal of starch (0% of the calories are from carbs)
•    Protein: 26.7g x 4kcal/gram = 107kcal of protein (75% of the calories are from protein)

References
1. www.calorieking.com

2.  Clark, Michael A. Corn, Rodney J. Parracino, Lenny A. Optimum Performance Training.  NASM. 2002. P.583

3. http://www.calorieking.com

Josef Brandenburg is also the author of The Body You Want, and an award winning personal trainer in Washington DC.