A damaged metabolism?

The truths and fallacies of ‘metabolic damage’

There’s a lot of discussion in the fitness industry about whether crash dieting can cause metabolic damage. This separate fact from fiction and also teach you exactly why crash diets might be linked to struggling to maintain your weight in the future.

Despite working out consistently and intensely, plus eating carefully, you’re not losing weight (or not losing it as fast as you’d like or expect).

Or you were losing weight consistently… until recently. Now you’re stuck — even though you’re working as hard as ever.

Or when you were younger, you were super fit. Maybe you did some crash diets. But now, even when you put in the same effort, you just can’t seem to get as lean.

“Is my metabolism damaged?”

Clients ask this question all the time.

Can months or years of dieting do some kind of long-term harm to the way the human body processes food?

Not exactly.

But gaining and losing fat can change the way your brain regulates your body weight.

To understand this answer let’s explore how human metabolism actually works. Then we’ll talk about whether the metabolism can actually be damaged.

Energy balance: The laws of physics still apply.

You need a certain amount of energy (in the form of calories) to stay alive, as well as to move around. You can get this energy from food, or you can retrieve it from stored energy (e.g. your fat tissue).

In theory:
If you eat less energy than you expend, you should lose weight.

If you do the opposite (i.e. eat more energy than you expend), you should gain weight.

In other words:


*We use the term “body stores” deliberately as it represents the tissues available for breakdown (fat, muscle, organ, bone, etc) and excludes water (which can change body weight independently of energy balance).

This relationship between ‘energy in’ and ‘energy out’ is called the Energy Balance Equation, and it’s the most commonly accepted model for calculating a person’s energy balance and how much weight they’ll lose or gain over time.

While the Energy Balance Equation determines body weight, it doesn’t tell us much about body composition, which is influenced by things like sex hormone levels, macronutrient intake (especially protein), exercise style / frequency / intensity, age, medication use, genetic predisposition, and more.

Understandably, people get really frustrated and confused with the Energy Balance Equation when the numbers don’t seem to add up, or their results don’t match their expectations. (This is a good lesson, by the way, about the importance of adjusting your expectations to match observable reality.)

And it’s a fair frustration. Most of the time, the numbers don’t add up.

Importantly:

This mismatch between expectations versus reality is not because the Energy Balance Equation is wrong, or a myth. Nobody’s body defies the laws of physics, even though it seems like that sometimes.

It’s because the equation is more complicated than it sounds.

Many factors affect the Energy Balance Equation; they aren’t mutually exclusive. What you do to ‘energy in’ affects what happens to ‘energy out’. And vice versa.

“Eat less, move more” is a good start. (Most of us could probably benefit from eating a little less and getting a little more daily activity.)

But that advice alone isn’t enough. It doesn’t take all of the complex, intersecting factors into account.

Let’s take a look at some of these factors, starting with the ‘energy in’ part of the equation.

‘Energy in’ is trickier than you think.

Reason 1: The number of calories in a meal likely doesn’t match the number of calories on the labels or menu.

This might sound hard to believe, but it’s true… the way companies (and even the government) come up with calorie and nutrient estimates is incredibly complex, rather imprecise, and centuries-old. As a result, food labels can be off by as much as 20-25 percent.

And even if those food labels were correct:

Reason 2: The amount of energy a food contains in the form of calories is not necessarily the amount of energy we absorb, store, and/or use.

Remember that the food we eat has to be digested and processed by our unique bodies. The innumerable steps involved in digestion, processing, absorption, storage, and use — as well as our own individual physiological makeup — can all change the energy balance game.

So, for instance:
We absorb less energy from minimally processed carbohydrates, and fats, because they’re harder to digest.

We absorb more energy from highly processed carbohydrates and fats, because they’re easier to digest. (Think of it this way: The more “processed” a food is, the more digestion work is already done for you.)

For example, research has shown that we absorb more fat from peanut butter than from whole peanuts. The researchers found that almost 38 percent of the fat in peanuts was excreted in the stool, rather than absorbed by the body. Whereas seemingly all of the fat in the peanut butter was absorbed.

In addition:
We often absorb more energy from foods that are cooked (and/or chopped, soaked, blended) because those processes break down plant and animal cells, increasing their bioavailability.

When eating raw starchy foods (like sweet potatoes), we absorb very few of the calories. After cooking, however, the starches are much more available to us, tripling the number of calories absorbed.

Interestingly, allowing starchy foods to then cool before eating them decreases the amount of calories we can extract from them again. (This is mostly due to the formation of resistant starches).

Finally:
We may absorb more or less energy depending on the types of bacteria in our gut.

Some people have larger populations of a Bacteroidetes (a species of bacteria), which are better at extracting calories from tough plant cell walls than other bacteria species.

Here’s an interesting example of this whole process at work. Recently, USDA researchers asked test subjects to consume 45 grams (about 1 ½ servings) of walnuts daily for three weeks.

What they found was that, on average, people only absorbed 146 of the 185 calories in the nuts. That’s 79 percent of the calorie content on the label.

In similar research, people also absorbed only 80 percent of the calories in almonds, and 95 percent of the calories in pistachios.

Beyond the average, there were individual differences: Some people absorbed more of the energy in the nuts, while some absorbed less (likely due to the differing populations of bacteria in their large intestines).

In the end, by eating a diet rich in whole, minimally processed foods, the number of calories you absorb can be significantly less than what you expect. Plus they require more calories to digest.

Conversely, you will absorb more calories by eating lots of highly processed foods, plus burn fewer calories in the digestive process. (In addition, highly processed foods are less filling, more energy dense, and more likely to cause overeating.)

Since the number of calories someone thinks they’re consuming could be off by 25 percent (or more), their carefully curated daily intake of 1,600 calories could really be 1,200… or 2,000.

This means:







As you can see, there’s a big margin of error for energy input, even if you’re a conscientious calorie counter. This doesn’t invalidate the Energy Balance Equation.

It just means that if you want an accurate calculation, you probably have to live in a fancy metabolic lab.

‘Energy out’ varies a lot from person to person.

‘Energy out’ — again, energy burned through daily metabolism and moving you around — is a dynamic, always-changing variable.

There are four key parts to this complex system:

1. Resting metabolic rate (RMR)
RMR is the number of calories you burn each day at rest, just to breathe, think, and live. This represents roughly 60 percent of your ‘energy out’ and depends on weight, body composition, sex, age, genetic predisposition, and possibly (again) the bacterial population of your gut.

A bigger body, in general, has a higher RMR.

For instance:
A 150-pound man might have an RMR of 1583 calories a day.
A 200-pound man might have an RMR of 1905 calories.
A 250-pound man might have an RMR of 2164 calories.

Crucially, RMR varies up to 15 percent from person to person. If you’re that 200-pound guy with an RMR of 1905 calories, another guy just like you on the next treadmill might burn 286 more (or fewer) calories each day with no more (or less) effort.

2. Thermic effect of eating (TEE)
This may surprise you, but it takes energy to digest food. Digestion is an active metabolic process. (Ever had the “meat sweats” or felt hot after a big meal, especially one with lots of protein? That’s TEE.)

TEE is the number of calories you burn by eating, digesting, and processing your food. This represents roughly 5-10 percent of your ‘energy out’.

In general, you’ll burn more calories in your effort to digest and absorb protein (20-30 percent of its calories) and carbs (5-6 percent) than you do fats (3 percent).

And as noted before, you’ll burn more calories digesting minimally processed whole foods compared to highly processed foods.

3. Physical activity (PA)
PA is the calories you burn from purposeful exercise, such as walking, running, going to the gym, gardening, riding a bike, etc.

Obviously, how much energy you expend through PA will change depending on how much you intentionally move around.

4. Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT)
NEAT is the calories you burn through fidgeting, staying upright, and all other physical activities except purposeful exercise. This, too, varies from person to person and day to day.

This means:





Each of these is highly variable. Which means the ‘energy out’ side of the equation may be just as hard to pin down as the “energy in” side.

So, while the Energy Balance Equation sounds simple in principle, all these variables make it hard to know or control exactly how much energy you’re taking in, absorbing, burning, and storing.

Here’s the entire equation:




When you try to outsmart your body and it outsmarts you back.

Even if all the variables in the final equation above were static, the Energy Balance Equation would be complicated enough. But things get crazy when you consider that altering any one of the variables causes adjustments in other, seemingly unrelated variables.

This is a good thing, of course. Our human metabolisms evolved to keep us alive and functioning when food was scarce. One consequence:

When ‘energy in’ goes down, ‘energy out’ goes down to match it. (You burn fewer calories in response to eating less).

Not in everybody. And not perfectly. But that’s how the system is supposed to work. That’s how our bodies avoid unwanted weight loss and starvation. It’s how humans have survived for 2 million years. The body fights to maintain homeostasis.

Likewise, when ‘energy in’ goes up, ‘energy out’ tends to go up too. (You burn more calories in response to eating more).

To illustrate this point, here’s how your body tries to keep your weight steady when you take in less energy and start to lose weight*.

Thermic effect of eating goes down because you’re eating less.
Resting metabolic rate goes down because you weigh less.
Calories burned through Physical activity go down since you weigh less.
Non-exercise activity thermogenesis goes down as you eat less.
Calories not absorbed goes down and you absorb more of what you eat.

*This response is particularly modest at first. But the adaptation really ramps up as you lose more weight. (Or if you’re starting out lean and trying to get super-lean).



Check out what this looks like:


In addition to these tangible effects on the equation, reducing actual calories eaten also causes hunger signals to increase, causing us to crave (and maybe eat) more.

The net effect leads to a much lower rate of weight loss than you might expect. In some cases, it could even lead to weight re-gain.

To add insult to injury, a rise in cortisol from the stress of dieting can cause our bodies to hold onto more water, making us feel “softer” and “less lean” than we actually are.

Interestingly, this is just one example of the amazing and robust response to trying to manipulate one variable (in this case, actual calories eaten). There are similar responses when trying to manipulate each of the other variables in the equation.

For example, research suggests that increasing Physical activity above a certain threshold (by exercising more) can trigger:
Increased appetite and more actual calories eaten
Decreased calories not absorbed as we absorb more of what we eat
Decreased RMR
Decreased NEAT

In this case, here’s what the equation would look like:



In the end, these are just two of the many examples we could share. The point is that metabolism is much more complicated (and interdependent) than most people think.

Understanding energy balance means setting better expectations about body change.

It’s important to note that if you have lots of body fat to lose, many of these adaptations (i.e. lowered RMR, PA, NEAT, etc) don’t happen right away. But, as you become leaner, this “adaptive thermogenesis” kicks in.

It’s also important to know that how your metabolism reacts to changes in energy balance will be unique to you.

How much you can lose or gain will depend on your age, your genetic makeup, your biological sex, if you’ve had relatively more or less body fat and for how long, what medications you’re taking, the makeup of your microbiome… and probably a whole lot of factors we don’t even know about yet.

But let’s try to simulate how this could work.

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health have studied the data from people who have lost weight, and created a mathematical model that represents how weight and fat loss actually happens in the real world.

Let’s start with a 40-year-old male, with a starting weight of 235 lbs and a height of 5’10”. We’ll call him Frank.

Frank works a desk job, and is only lightly active outside of work. This calculates that he needs 2,976 calories of energy per day to maintain his current weight.

By knocking off 500 calories per day, his intake drops to 2,476 calories daily. And he doesn’t plan on changing his physical activity.

Now, you’ve probably heard somewhere that a pound is equivalent to 3,500 calories, which means that if we take away those 500 calories from Frank every day, he should lose 1 pound per week (500 x 7 days = 3500 calories).

He should end up at 183 lbs after one year of consistently eating 500 fewer calories every day. (According to this math, then, he would weigh 0 lbs within 5 years, which should raise some red flags.)

But we know it doesn’t exactly work this way in real life.

At the end of a year, Frank gets on the scale. He’s 205 lbs.

What the hell?

That’s 22 pounds more than I should be!

Frank rages to his wife Maria, who smiles knowingly. She’s 40 too, and has been trying to lose weight since having two kids in her mid-30s.

Tell me about it, she says. I’ve lost and gained the same 10 pounds over and over, even though I’ve been exercising and eating pretty healthy.

Then they both think:

Maybe I should try that juice cleanse after all. My body is obviously broken.

Nope, nobody is broken. Don’t hit that juice cleanse just yet.

Instead, Frank and Maria could both benefit from a clear understanding of how weight loss actually works. Then they can set appropriate behavior goals, and have realistic expectations for their progress.

So, does dieting damage the metabolism?

Despite what you may have heard:

Losing weight won’t “damage” your metabolism.

But because of the adaptations your body undergoes in response to fat loss (to prevent that fat loss, in fact), ‘energy out’ for those who have lost significant weight will always be lower than for people who were always lean.

Rather:

Losing weight, and keeping it off, is accompanied by adaptive metabolic, neuroendocrine, autonomic, and other changes.

These changes mean that we expend less energy — around 5-10 percent less (or up to 15 percent less at extreme levels) than what would be predicted based on just weighing less.

Unfortunately, because of this adaptive response, someone who has dieted down will often require 5-15 percent fewer calories per day to maintain the weight and physical activity level than someone who has always been that weight.

(Or even less, potentially, because as we learned in the very beginning, the RMR of people of the exact same age/weight/etc. can still vary by up to another 15 percent.)

This means someone who was never overweight might need 2,500 calories to maintain their weight, while someone who had to diet down to that weight may need only 2,125-2,375 calories to hold steady.

We don’t know how long this lowered energy expenditure lasts. Studies have shown that it can hang around for up to 7 years after weight loss (or more, 7 years is as far as it’s been studied). This likely means it’s permanent, or at least persistent.

This is extra relevant for people who have repeatedly dieted, or for fitness competitors who may repeatedly fluctuate between being extremely lean and being overweight in the off-season.

I don’t have data to back this up (to my knowledge no one has studied it), but adaptive thermogenesis seems to react more strongly or more rapidly with each successive yo-yo of extreme body fat fluctuations.

All of this explains why some people can feel like they’ve “damaged” their metabolism through repeated dieting. (And why some experts suggest “metabolic damage” is a real thing.)

But nothing really has been “damaged”.

Instead, their bodies have just become predictably more sensitive to various hormones and neurotransmitters. Their metabolic rates are understandably lower than predicted by various laboratory equations.

So, where does this leave us?

Body change is going to be harder for some people, and easier for others.

That can mean all physiological changes: weight loss or gain, fat loss or gain, and muscle loss or gain.

But even if your body might defend against weight loss, you can still lose weight, gain muscle, and dramatically change your body.

What to do next: Some tips ….

The physiology of weight loss is complicated, but the best strategies for losing fat and keeping it off don’t have to be.

1. Eat plenty of protein.
Protein is essential when losing weight / fat for a few reasons.

Protein helps you keep that all-important lean body mass (which includes connective tissues, organs, and bone as well as muscle).

Protein significantly increases satiety, which means you feel fuller despite eating less. (And eating more protein often causes people to eat less overall.)
Just by eating more protein you burn more calories, because of the increased thermic effect of eating.

For example, if you’re eating 2,500 calories daily, 15 percent from protein, 50 percent from carbs, and 35 percent from fats (roughly average for US adults), you’re burning approximately 185 calories per day through digestion.

Maintain your total calorie intake but increase protein to 30 percent, drop carbs to 40 percent, and whittle fat to 30 percent, and your TEE goes up to roughly 265 calories per day.

For most active men: 6-8 palm-sized servings of protein per day. For most active women: 4-6 palm-sized servings per day.

2. Eat a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, quality carbs, and healthy fats.
Vegetables are loaded with vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, water, and fiber to help you fill up during meals, stay full between meals, keep you healthy, and recover from your workouts.

Recommend - 6-8 fist-sized servings per day for most active men, and 4-6 fist-sized servings per day for most active women.

The carbs will fuel training, boost leptin (a super important hormone), keep up sex hormones, and prevent feelings of deprivation.

And the fats also keep up sex hormones, boost the immune system, suppress excess inflammation, and make food taste really good.

For most active men, this would be 6-8 handfuls of quality carbs, and 6-8 thumbs of healthy fats per day.

For most active women, 4-6 handfuls of quality carbs and 4-6 thumbs of healthy fats per day.

3. Adjust your intake as you plateau, or to prevent plateaus.
As your weight loss progresses, you will need to lower your calorie intake further to continue to progress, as your smaller body will burn fewer calories, and your body is adapting to your diet.

Be ready, willing, and able to adjust portion amounts by removing 1-2 handfuls of carbs and/or 1-2 thumbs of fats from your daily intake. Then reassess and continue to adjust as needed.

However, one study found that weight loss plateaus have less to do with metabolic adaptations and more to do with “an intermittent lack of diet adherence”. In other words, not actually sticking to a nutrition plan consistently.

Research shows that we usually think we’re eating less and exercising more than we truly are. So do an objective review of your actual energy in and out before assuming your body is blocking your efforts.

4. Understand that this is complex.
So many things influence what, why, and when we choose to eat.

Too often, eating and body size / fatness are blamed on lack of knowledge, lack of willpower/discipline, or laziness. In reality, food intake and body composition are governed by a mix of physiological, biological, psychological, social, economical, and lifestyle influences, along with individual knowledge or beliefs.

One of the simplest ways to make your decision processes easier is to create an environment that encourages good food choices and discourages poor ones. This can mean making changes to your daily routine, who you spend time with, where you spend time, and what food is readily available to you.

But remember that weight loss can and should be relatively slow, so aim to lose about 0.5-1 percent of your body weight per week.

This helps to maintain muscle mass and minimize the adaptive metabolic responses to a lower calorie intake and resulting weight loss. Faster weight loss tends to result in more muscle loss without extra fat loss, as well as a larger adaptive response.

5. Cycle calories and carbs.*
*Note: This is a higher-level strategy for fitness competitors and elite athletes who need to get very lean (i.e. ~6-9 percent body fat for men, and ~16-19 percent for women). It’s not something for the average person.

For folks who are trying to get quite lean, at some point you can’t just rely on linear dieting to get you there. By strategically cycling calories and carbs, you can help to limit how much the metabolism-regulating hormone leptin drops (or temporarily boost it back up) – attenuating the adaptive and hunger response.

6. Refeed periodically.**
**Note: This is a higher-level strategy for fitness competitors and elite athletes who need to get very lean (i.e. <6 percent body fat for men, and <16 percent for women).

When getting to extreme levels of leanness, even strategic calorie and carb cycling might not be enough. So take out the big guns, and employ some periodic re-feeds to temporarily boost leptin and insulin and keep fat loss going.

7. Do a mixture of resistance, cardiovascular, and recovery activity.
Resistance training helps you maintain vital muscle mass, burn calories, and improve glucose tolerance. Cardiovascular exercise improves the health of your cardiovascular system, helps you expend energy, and can improve recovery.

But don’t overdo either one.

Recovery work (e.g. foam rolling, walking, yoga) helps you maintain consistency and intensity with resistance and cardio training, making them more effective. And it helps to decrease stress (lowering cortisol), which also helps you lose body fat and keep it off.

Aim for 3-5 hours per week of purposeful activity.

8. Find ways to increase NEAT.
Get a stand-up or treadmill desk, fidget, pace when on the phone, take the stairs, park farther away from where you’re going, etc. These small increases in activity can make a big difference, and can account for hundreds of daily calories.

9. Develop a solid nightly sleep routine and manage your stress.
Sleep is just as important to your success as nutrition and activity levels. Don’t pretend that you can get by with less. It simply isn’t true.

Often, when people lower their stress, they lose a lot of body water. Then they also notice that they may have lost fat too. (Plus, they may discover that chronic inflammation goes down — another win.)

This includes mental and emotional stress. Research on cognitive dietary restraint (i.e. worrying and stressing out about food) shows that constantly and negatively fixating on what you eat (or don’t) can have the same unhealthy effect as actually dieting stringently.

Yet we need some stress to actually help with progress and growth, so find your stress sweet spot.

10. Have some self-compassion.
There are going to be meals or days where you don’t eat as you “should”. It’s OK. It happens to everyone. Recognize it, accept it, forgive yourself, and then get back on track.

Research actually shows that self-compassion and flexible eating is associated with lower BMI and a healthier body weight, lower self-reported calorie intake, less anxiety and stress, and a better relationship with food.

And make sure that the body you really want aligns with the life you really enjoy.

Understand what is required to reach different levels of body composition. Consider the impact that will have on your life, and choose accordingly.

Me on IG! Check it out! :)

Me on IG! Check it out! :)

A New Superhero Emerges....

Welcome to 2015!

 

It's a new year, a new day, a new start! 

Right? 

Today you can start becoming great or great-er! 

But why?

There is always so much hype about "The New Year" but honestly I don't get it.  What is different about today than yesterday?  What makes this Thursday different?  What makes your actions on this day forward different than your actions from last Thursday? 

In the fitness industry this is a huge time of the year, a time to capture all the New Year Resolution people!  In my mailbox yesterday I was shocked, no bills!!!!!!!!!!! Awesome... but it was loaded with fitness center mailers!!!  Yes, I get them too.  They all say things like "Grand Re-Opening" or "Join Now & Get Jan Free" or "No Gimmicks" or "Your 2015 Body Is Here" and all the other cool catch phrases and hooks.  (oh yeah, they all have that little *asterisk somewhere...) Come on, really?  Again, what makes this Thursday different? 

Ok, before you start cursing me out and calling me Bummer Bob or Debbie Downer, or anything else hold on, I'm not a total scrooge or naysayer at all.

I believe in hype, enthusiasm, excitement, and all those other awesome adjectives, but I more so believe in action. Ask anyone who knows me or who ever trained with me, action speaks louder than words.  I believe in enthusiasm and killer energy, but I'm not the rah-rah guy at all.  I can't give you drive, I can't give you determination, I can't give you focus, I can help by reminding you why to do "it" and how to do "it", but for Pete's sake dude and dudette, you have to want "it!"

So take action this year, don't half-ass it, don't make excuses, don't settle for anything less than becoming a SUPERHERO!

Define the Superhero that you want to become.  Write down what that Superhero means in your mind.  Yes, write it down, I'll wait for you to grab a pen and paper......................................

ok, good I see you have it. 

 



Here is what your paper should look like:

Superhero name: _______________________

What 3 things will make me a Superhero this year?
1. _______________________________________________
2. _______________________________________________
3. _______________________________________________
(maybe you listed a personal goal(s)? or a financial goal(s)? or a family goal(s)? or a spiritual goal(s)? or education goal(s)? or to fit into the Blue Tights and Red Cape?

What 3 things will stop me from becoming Superhero this year?
1. _______________________________________________
2. _______________________________________________
3. _______________________________________________
(maybe you listed not spending time with the family? or not going to the gym 3-4 days a week? or not getting up everyday and working your ass off? or not reading and studying? or eating with impulse rather than logic? - (hint no Blue Tights and Red Cape)


Take ACTION this year, in fitness, in life, in everything you do!

Happy TODAY,
Greg

 

 

Without Sleep You Destroy Your Brain

 

Everyone knows that drugs and alcohol can damage the brain, but all the clean living in the world may not keep your cranium perfectly healthy. You probably have no idea how much damage lack of sleep is doing to your brain.

If your body is in a state of rest, it’s possible for your muscles and other parts of your body to regenerate even if you are not asleep. This is not possible for your brain, which stays in a state of alertness the entire time you are awake. Your brain can’t refresh itself through ordinary sleep, either. You must reach certain stages of sleep before your brain can even begin to get the rest that it needs. If you consistently don’t get enough sleep, and give your brain enough time to recharge itself, you’re doing a colossal amount of damage to yourself. 

That word colossal isn't being used lightly here. Lack of sleep will affect your behavior, your judgement, and your overall health. It can even be deadly. 

Without proper sleep, the cerebral cortex does not regenerate. This area of the brain is integral in processing language. In tests among sleep-deprived subjects, there was a noticeable lack of activity in the cerebral cortex. This manifests itself as slurred speech.

The frontal lobe experiences a lot of function loss in sleep-deprived brains. This section of the brain is used for creative thinking. Sleep-deprived people show a noticeable difficulty in thinking creatively. They do not have the ability to react to changes as a result. They cannot quickly come up with a decision, and have difficulty focusing on multiple tasks at once. 

Creative thinking isn't even the half of it. The frontal lobe of the brain is also responsible for functions like attention, visual association, judgment, and impulse control, like binge eating….

 

In hand-eye coordination tasks, people who are suffering from sleep deprivation performed just as poorly, or even worse, than those who were intoxicated. By the way, sleep deprivation makes the effects of alcohol much worse. Driver fatigue results in about 1,500 deaths every single year. 

Lack of sleep will cause behavioral changes. Sleep deprived brains experience impaired memory function, an inability to concentrate, irritability, and coordination difficulties. 

 

 

Depriving yourself of sleep can also cause fine lines and other symptoms of aging, because collagen doesn't have adequate time to replicate itself. Sleep deprivation also correlates to an increase in hunger. Not only does it give you an appetite, lack of sleep makes you crave high-carb and high-fat foods. In a brain that does not get enough sleep, metabolism stops functioning efficiently. 

Parts of the brain that help control emotions and social interaction experience greatly reduced activity in sleep-deprived people. 

In time, prolonged sleep deprivation can create hallucinations because brain activity is so impaired. These visions are caused by tired, overused neurons that create fictional images. Extreme sleep deprivation can even lead to temporary insanity.   Depriving the brain of sleep will also aggravate mental illness. It can cause depression and even a psychotic state of paranoia. Sleep deprivation can trigger manic episodes as well. 

Over time, the brain begins to deteriorate.

 

Brains that continue to go without sleep will die. Without sleep, the immune system becomes weak. White blood cell count decreases. The body stops producing enough growth hormones. This weakens you physically and compromises your ability to heal. In some studies, sleep deprivation nearly doubled the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Most adults require about 7 to 8 hours of sleep per night to maintain good health, though pregnant women require more. Caffeine can’t alleviate the effects of severe sleep deprivation. 

Have you got a sleeping problem? Pay attention to your behavior. Notice if you feel drowsy or fall asleep during the day. Pay attention to whether you fall asleep within the first five minutes of lying down. If so, you could have a sleep disorder and likely have severe sleep deprivation. 

Getting six hours of sleep a night, or less, is not healthy. Because of the way it affects your brain, you can easily convince yourself that you’re fine. You may feel that you’re used to sleep deprivation, and that you've adjusted. But that’s your brain exhibiting poor judgment—one of the hallmarks of sleep deprivation. You must stop, now, and start getting some sleep. 

Diet Mistakes - Women

 

Here's what you need to know...
•  TV weight loss plans and "pretend" health foods keep women in the dark about sustainable healthy eating habits. It's time they take control of their own diets.
•  Most women diet by using methods that slow their metabolisms. Instead they need to train and eat to support muscle retention and growth. Muscle and metabolism are intimately connected.
•  Women sometimes go to extremes with carbs and dietary fats, often avoiding one like the plague while overcompensating with the other. Athletic women need the right kinds of both, and more than anything they need quality protein.
•  Women often attach much more meaning to food choices than men. They need to realize this, then lighten up on the self-judgment to take back control of their eating habits.
 

Tis' the season for dumb diets, detoxes, and quick fixes. Here are ten common mistakes women make with their diets. If you know someone who can relate, now's your chance to guide them back to sanity.

1. Adopting a Diet Program Advertised on TV
"Lose five pounds your first week! You can even have pizza and pancakes and cake! You just eat your prepackaged meals or point allotment of foods and the pounds come off. No critical thinking required.” To any female aching to lose fat, these TV gimmicks sound tempting. Too bad these plans have about a 97% failure rate over the long term.
 

Why the dismal results? Well, the low calorie approach these diets must take in order to guarantee fast results makes women rebound in weight once the diet is over. Sustaining a very low calorie diet is a surefire way to lose muscle mass, slow their metabolism, and experience caloric compensation once their appetites catch up and they've run out of microwavable pasta bowls. And since these diets are aimed mostly at women who don't train with weights, they not only gain the fat back, they gain a few bonus pounds too thanks to the loss of that metabolically active weight we call "muscle."

Sure, any female who's allotted a point system or given a micromanaged selection of TV dinners will succeed, but only as long as she's paying up and being spoon-fed. Once she starts thinking for herself in the kitchen, those same vices she wrestled with before become problematic again. The celebrity spokespersons for these programs – who never seem to stay thin despite being paid to diet – are evidence of this.
 

These TV plans wouldn't continue to profit if women learned how to address the behaviors that made them gain weight in the first place. They certainly wouldn't continue to profit if their clients became autonomous healthy eaters, built a bit more muscle, and stoked the metabolic furnace. That would mean losing them as repeat customers. Programs with point systems or premeasured foods keep women in the dark about permanent change, and by setting them up for weight fluctuations and long term failure, they increase the odds that former customers will come right back whenever they want a quick fix in weight loss.
 

Finally, most of these plans are nutritionally antiquated, still warning against those "evil" saturated fats while including some very questionable ingredients like corn syrup in their "approved" foods or frozen meals.
 

Solution
Women will have greater long-term success if they invest some time making sure their own nutritious meals are ready to go and easy to assemble. They'll need to accept some responsibility, put in some footwork, educate themselves about nutrition, and stop being dependent on diet plans that D-list celebrities can't even stick to.

2. Ignoring the Obvious

Females will often look for an obscure missing component in their diet rather than zeroing in on the glaring behaviors causing the real problem. Many would rather find out what Dr. Oz's secret fat loss formula is than put a stop to obvious bad food choices. Nah, can't be margarita night, sodas, or ice cream! Must be a deficiency in Amazonian koo-koo berry juice!

It's easier for some women to rationalize what they're eating because they'd rather believe there's some way around it that'll help them reach their goals. Boozy weekends that make them uninhibited around unhealthy food; constant grazing on sweets between meals; liquid-dessert coffee drinks; and even too many semi-healthy snacks made of dried fruit and nut butter – these are all examples of blunders women overlook while searching for the secret to instant weight loss. Most of the time women do have an idea of what their vices are, but without someone saying, "stop eating that" they'll keep the junk in their diets and scale back on the portion sizes. For some reason, petite-sized servings of crappy food make women think they'll achieve a petite-sized body.
 

Solution
Women need to take an honest look at their eating. A food journal can help. What are they eating, when are they eating it, and how does it makes them feel? Are they snacking, almost unconsciously, throughout the day? Are they eating their kids' leftovers? What seemingly innocent snacks are actually trigger foods that lead to overeating an hour later? How many calories are actually in that frappuccino? A food log will clue them in. As a bonus, a journal will teach them that eating larger portions of healthy foods always works better in the long run than portion-controlling junk. No koo-koo berry juice required.

3. Eating Fake Health Food

When health conscious women hear that they need more protein or fiber, many will go to the store and load up on fortified packaged foods. More often than not, these fake health foods are appetite-inducing sugar bombs. What many women don't realize is that sugar is listed under a ton of different names and they all do about the same thing in the body, even earthy sounding ones like coconut crystals and organic agave nectar syrup. Likewise, fat free, sugar free, high fiber, organic, and gluten-free foods can still make you fat.
 

And because these products appear healthy, they're easier to rationalize eating in excess. I've worked with clients who've found it difficult to have just one bowl of Kashi Go Lean cereal or just one Fiber One bar. Why? Because these things generally make people crave more instead of satisfying their appetite. They're insubstantial, and they don't serve a purpose other than giving the consumer the impression that they're being good dieters by trading Snickers for soy-filled treats.
 

Ensure, Boost, Slim Fast, Carnation Instant Breakfast, Special-K protein shakes and protein cereal, Kashi cereals and cookies, Kind Bars, Fiber One "protein" bars: These are the most insidious forms of junk food because they masquerade as nutritious.
 

Solution
Women looking for protein at the grocery store need to stick with meat and eggs, and then get their fiber from Mother Nature. Then if they want to supplement with protein or workout nutrition, they'd be wise to get it from a place that doesn't also sell motor oil and toothpaste.

4. Obsessing Over Fat Loss and Not Eating for Hypertrophy

Some women always seem to be "on a diet." Which is strange because these same women always seem to be a little overweight. If she's been on six diets in two years, shouldn't she be lean by now?

Here's the problem: Most women who continually make fat loss a priority don't realize that they'd become more efficient at burning fat if they simply had more muscle. Eating to weigh less will make women smaller, which will require them to eat less in order to stay smaller. Muscle is lost, metabolism is sluggish, calories have to be lowered again and again, and the downward spiral eventually spirals out of control. Soon, these women proclaim that "dieting doesn't work!" and begin to identify as fat girls with "bad genetics." If a female has been on six diets in two years, shouldn't she be lean by now?
 

Unless they're dangerously overweight, most women would do better by trading the smallness and fat loss game for muscle growth and permanent leanness. Continually chasing fat loss in unproductive ways will eat away at their muscle more than women know. If they made hypertrophy a greater priority than fat loss, the fat loss would eventually happen – slowly at first, but steadily, healthfully, and permanently.
 

Sure, most fat loss strategies work at first. But then the body adapts, plateaus, and regresses as muscle is catabolized. This is bad news, especially in the midst of lots of strenuous exercise because a loss of muscle just leads to a skinny-fat body and a handicapped metabolism. So the best way for women to not adapt to fat loss strategies is to make their bodies more efficient at burning fat – then if they must use a diet, it will only take a small and temporary tweak to get back on track. Women who are perpetually playing the fat loss game are either doing it wrong or they're emaciated.
 

Solution
How can women get to a place where they don't need to diet? By building more muscle and eating as though they want more muscle on their bodies. This doesn't mean eating crap; this means fueling up for workouts in order to work harder, pump nutrients into muscle cells, and feel muscles working.
Then when they get to the gym, they'll need to actually try to build muscle. How? By lifting weights that are heavy enough to challenge them and by seeking the muscle ache and tightness that indicate work is being done. It's a lot different than just going through the motions with pink dumbbells while running on the fumes of their 100 calorie breakfast. It requires focus and an actual desire to build.

It's true that it's tougher to gain muscle and lose body fat at the same time, but what women can do is build muscle so that their bodies eventually become better at burning fat even when they're not necessarily trying to. And if she brings up the old myth about "getting too big" with weight training, just have her read this.

5. Having Emotional Hang-Ups and Judgment
 

Newsflash: Women are, well, different. Anatomy and underwear selection aside, women and men think very differently about food.
 

If a male overindulges he'll say "whoops" and move on. But when a female overindulges, her identity and self-worth go into the toilet until she's able to punish herself and deeply regret what she did. Then her out-of-whack instincts will tell her to compensate for those dietary missteps with further dietary restriction or excess cardio, leading to overindulgence again. Females often find themselves in a constant ebb and flow of overeating and hyper-restriction. If they just moved on in the first place and stopped the self-judgment they'd be able to find stability.
 

Women attach too much meaning to food. During times when they're eating less, they're happier with themselves and more confident. When they're eating more they generally don't feel good about themselves. And there's usually a reason why they're overeating: Food is their go-to tool for taking the edge off stress, anxiety, sadness, frustration, or any other emotion.
 

Solution
If women stopped attaching their self-worth to their eating habits and dealt with emotions in productive ways other than "comfort food", they'd be more inclined to eat appropriately. A long walk will clear the head better than a row of cookies. A good bonk in the sack is more stress relieving than a pint of ice cream. And going back to number 4, overindulgence wouldn't be such a big deal if they sought hypertrophy instead of fat loss. Hypertrophy is about growth, not restriction, and that change in thinking frees women from the constant cycle of trying to eat like a supermodel and falling off the wagon.

6. Overeating at Night
Females who eat like birds all morning, especially those who may have worked out fasted, often cap off their nights with a couple thousand extra calories because they're making up for what they didn't get earlier in the day. Their bodies are screaming for nutrition. And those hours of lacking nutrition can lead to elevated cortisol for lengthy periods of time.
 

This combo of high cortisol, exhaustion from an insufficiently fueled day, and any other incidental emotions become a ticking time bomb for a pig-out. No person, male or female, wants to think about food prep when they're famished. And even fewer will want to commit to a specific allotment of macros or calories when their stomach feels like it's eating itself.
 

Solution
If women ate substantially during earlier meals and fueled up appropriately for workouts they wouldn't struggle so much with nighttime cravings and second helpings of dinner or dessert.

7. Not Eating Enough Protein
Most females, even the health-conscious types, have no idea they're not getting enough protein. Sure, they've probably heard that a gram per pound of body weight is a decent rule of thumb for lifters, but unless they've intentionally tracked their macros, they won't realize what that number looks like on their plate. And unless they're supplementing with protein, that intake is going to seem like a whole lot of meat.
 

If fat loss is their goal, then even more protein than the standard gram per pound of body weight would be beneficial. Why? Because protein satiates, preserves muscle, helps build muscle, and during digestion it's more calorically expensive than carbs or fat. Protein has a higher thermic effect than the other two macronutrients. But women would rather pick at kid-sized portions of meat so that they can save room for cookies and chocolate-covered crap later on. (This is called dietary displacement.)

They don't realize that extra protein doesn't just stave off hunger, it also prevents muscle atrophy. Ladies who are trying to lose fat by eating fewer total calories and doing extra workouts are at an even greater risk of catabolizing muscle, which is the one thing that'll make their bodies more efficient at burning fat.
 

Solution
Women need to calculate their protein needs and track their intake for a while to make sure they're getting enough. If they're struggling with body fat, a higher protein approach might have a major impact on their appetites and waistlines.

8. Going to Extremes with Dietary Fat
In recent years, most health conscious women have been getting over their fear of dietary fat. We've become avocado lovers, grass-fed beef and butter eaters, coconut oil connoisseurs, and heavy-cream-with-coffee drinkers. But in an effort to show disdain for fat-phobia many have let the pendulum swing too far.
 

No doubt, the saying "fat makes you fat" is outdated. We know there's more to gaining weight than that. But a lot of women are learning that nuts and full-fat cheeses actually do add up, and those who think their thighs are immune just because they're not spiking their insulin with "processed carbs" are misguided. There is a point at which too much dietary fat will make a person look like they're eating too much dietary fat.
 

On the other end of the spectrum are the health conscious women who still have an aversion of fat. Even though the 90's taught us that you can stay fat on a fat-free diet, some women still fear butter and egg yolks (but it's saturated!). Many don't realize that without fat and dietary cholesterol, the body will struggle to make the hormones necessary for a naturally fired up metabolism and sex life.

A traditional bodybuilding diet that appears clean and pristine with plenty of vegetables, lean protein, and oats can still be inadequate without some cholesterol-containing animal fat. And our hormones thrive when we get enough of it. These hormones can increase the amount of muscle women are able to build, the energy they're able to expend, and the amount of playtime women want to have in the bedroom. Females need to know that a fat-free diet doesn't automatically lead to a fat-free body.
 

Solution
Women need a variety of fats, including some saturated fat, and would benefit from prioritizing omega-3 fatty acids, which are the most beneficial for decreasing inflammation and promoting fat loss. But females also need to realize that cravings for copious amounts of fat are a red flag that they're getting inadequate amounts of one of the other macronutrients, like carbs.

9. Going to Extremes with Carbs
 

There's no doubt that our sedentary population would benefit from dropping the dinner rolls, cereals, and aforementioned obvious junk, but countless low carb eaters who had success at first have hit major plateaus.
 

The problem with low carb plans is that many weight-training females eventually get fatter while sticking to them. Athletic ladies who eschew starches tend to have an insatiable appetite for fat. Because their need for carbs isn't being met, they seek satiation from (excessive) fat-filled, calorie-dense foods. These high fat foods, healthy as they may be, aren't as effective as carbs at doing all the things their weight-trained bodies require.
 

Athletic women often don't understand the capacity a muscular body has available to store glycogen. Many carb-depleted athletic females walk around with flat muscles and assume that they're "carb intolerant" because when they eat carbs the scale goes up. But the reality is that when weight-trained women eat carbs they're just restoring glycogen to their flattened out muscles, and in turn they're making those muscles fuller and more effective at doing work.
 

The more muscle a body has, the greater its capacity for storing carbs as glycogen. And when women deplete their muscle glycogen, they're not actually burning fat, even though their bodies will appear smaller. They're just draining their muscles of usable energy and water. Muscular women can make the scale spike or plummet in a matter of days with carb manipulation. This doesn't mean they're gaining or losing fat.
 

Solution
Athletic females who want a lean and powerful body should make room in their diets for carbs, especially around their workouts. It'll make them more effective in the gym and better at building muscle. Sedentary women with little muscle would do well to rein carbs in.

10. Eating Sweets to be Sweet
A lot of women get stuck eating stuff they don't really want because they haven't mastered the art of saying "no thanks." Females are often more sensitive to the feelings of others, so in an effort to be polite they'll take food they don't want, even if doing so doesn't help them get any closer to their goals.
 

Solution
This one's not so cut-and-dry. The solution is different depending on the female's situation and the people shoving pastries in her face. If it's not a homemade thing that someone slaved over, then she'll need to be assertive and keep her peers from dragging her eating habits down with theirs. A female trying to change her eating patterns for good will need to get her friends and coworkers used to hearing her say "I don't eat that stuff." But if the food that's being offered is indeed something someone near and dear baked, she's got a few options. She can say "thank you" and set it aside until she figures out what to do with it; she can say "thank you" and delight her loved one by indulging; or she can say "thank you" and lie about having a piece later on. This one's a tough call. What do you think?

 

I'll have 2 slices of Pizza and Ice Cream........................... and 600 Burpees!

Burpee Equivalents:  Understanding Junk Food in terms of Your Favorite Exercise!

 

Occasionally people slip up with their diets and sneak in some junk calories. When they do, they have to pay the price…In Burpees!  Here is some research to quantify energy expenditure during the Burpee exercise.  Here is what was found:

	Calories (kcals)	Burpees for 130lb individual	Burpees for 180lb individual
1 large French Fries	500	524	349
1 low cal beer	195	204	136
1 Slice of Dominos Peperoni Pizza	260	272	182
1 8-ounce Bison Cheesburger	730	765	510
1 scoop of Ben Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice cream	270	283	189
1 12” Roast beef sub from Subway	970	1016	677
1 Cola soft drink	200	210	140
1 Fried Calamari Appetizer	700	733	489
1 Plain Bagel	320	335	223
1 Slice of Cheescake	1000	1048	698
1 Egg McMuffin Sandwich	300	314	210
1 Cadbury Creme Egg	59	62	41



First calculated was the amount of work being performed during the Burpee. Calculated work as:

-  Work (w) = force (f) x distance (d)
-  f = weight of the individual in kilograms
-  d = distance from the floor to the maximal height of the head during the jump in meters.

Example:

Male Athlete A:
-  Height: 71 inches (1.80 meters)
-  Weight:  180 lbs (81.8 kg)
-  Average Vertical jump during 5 minute Burpee test:  5 in. (.12 m)
-  Total vertical displacement from the floor to maximal jump height:  1.92 m (height plus jump height).
-  work = 81.8 x 1.92
-  work  = 157 kg/m
-  Given:  1kcal = 426.4 kg/m
-  Thus, 0.368 kcals of mechanical work per Burpee

External mechanical work or the work that is being performed does not equal the amount of work that is being produce internally, humans aren’t 100% efficient.  Efficiency during running and cycling is about 25%, thus for the body to perform 25 kcals of external work, it must produces 100 kcals of energy internally. That means that the body has to produce 1.47 kcals of internal energy to produce 0.368 kcals of external mechanical work per Burpee repetition.

Also calculated was energy production during the Burpee exercise by measuring oxygen consumption with metabolic cart.  Several athletes performed the Burpee exercise at a constant rate for 3 minutes while wearing a portable metabolic measuring system that continuously measured oxygen consumption.  The average Burpee rate was 10 Burpee repetitions per minute and average oxygen consumption during the last minute of exercise was 35 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute (ml O2/kg/min). We found the measured oxygen cost of a single Burpee repetition to be 3.5 ml O2/kg/Burpee.

To convert oxygen cost to energy expenditure:

Example same athlete as above:
-  Total oxygen consumed during a single Burpee is calculated as the product of body weight (kg) and O2 cost in ml/kg/.min
-  81.8 kg X 3.5 ml O2/kg/Burpee =  286 mlO2/Burpee or .286 liters (l) of O2/Burpee.
-  One liter of oxygen is equivalent to about 5 kcals.
-  0.286 l O2 X 5 kcals/l  = 1.43 kcals/Burpee.

As you can see , there is good agreement between the 2 methods (1.47 and 1.43 kcals/Burpee respectively).

2 slices of Domino’s pizza = 600 kcals or 419 burpees

Pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cookie Dough = 980 kcals or 685 burpees.

Use the chart below to figure out your Burpee equivalent of junk food calories.

Energy Expenditure During the Burpee Exercise (kcals/Burpee)
Body Weight (lbs.)	120	130	140	150	160	170	180	190	200	210
kcals per Burpee	0.95	1.03	1.11	1.19	1.27	1.35	1.43	1.51	1.59	1.67

Example – for a 140 lb person:

2 slices of Domino’s pizza = 600 kcals
600kcals/ 1.11 kcal per Burpee = 540 burpees
 
You can have your cake and eat it too, but be ready to pay in Burpees!

Yours in health,
Greg
www.lakesidefitnessclub.com