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We have been told time and time again that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, yet nearly one-fifth of all adults choose to pass on the Wheaties. What is the big deal about breakfast? Can a solid breakfast really make or break your fitness goals? Read on as I answer your most pressing questions on this popular subject…

Why eat Breakfast?
Let’s dissect the word ‘breakfast’. When you take it apart you find two words with an all-important hidden message. Break – Fast. I can hear your wheels spinning on this one! That’s right, breakfast is the meal that breaks the fast that your body goes into each and every night when you sleep.

When breakfast is skipped, your body continues to fast until you eat later in the day.

This is a problem for two reasons.

Problem #1: Your brain needs fuel to function at its peak. This fuel comes in the form of glucose derived from food and is needed to walk, talk and perform all other activities. When you skip breakfast your brain is forced to work extra hard in breaking down stored carbohydrates or to turn fats and proteins into usable forms of glucose. Eating breakfast has been proven to improve concentration, increase your problem solving capabilities, enhance overall mental performance and even boosts your memory and mood.

Problem #2: Your metabolism will go into ‘famine’ mode. Three to four hours after you eat, your metabolism shuts down and acts as if it needs to store food. This is a great function to have if a famine were to break out, leaving you without food for days. Since this is likely not the case for you, it is pretty annoying when your body starts packing on the pounds in an attempt to protect you from starvation! Eating breakfast communicates with your body the fact that you are healthy, well fed and not in need of extra fat storage.

What about the cut calories?
“Skipping breakfast is how I cut calories out of my diet.” I can’t tell you how often I hear this response when I encourage people to eat breakfast. What these “calorie cutters” don’t realize is that they are the ones who turn to snacking later in the day in an attempt to ward off low energy levels. Allowing your body to become over-hungry leads to distorted satiety signals, and leaves the door wide open for overeating later in the day.

Start your day with breakfast and then continue to eat smaller meals and snacks throughout the day for optimal calorie burning.

What’s for Breakfast?
Now that you are convinced that breakfast is worth your time, it’s time to decide what to have! A recent study done by FoodWatch, a Minnesota-based consulting firm that watches food trends, revealed that most people are basically eating dessert for breakfast, due to the high quantities of on-the-go breakfast foods that are processed, packaged and pumped full of refined carbohydrates. Another study recently proved that high fiber, low fat breakfasts promote healthy weight control much more effectively than highly refined breakfast foods.

Try the following On-The-Go Breakfast Selections for a blend of hearty carbohydrates, protein and fat and experience optimal morning energy.

• Low Fat Yogurt with Fresh Fruit
• Low Fat Cottage Cheese and a Cherry Oatmeal Muffin (see recipe below)
• Hard Boiled Egg and Whole Wheat Toast
• Scrambled Egg White on Half a Bagel
• Whole Wheat Tortilla rolled with Scrambled Egg Beaters and Salsa
• Soy Milk with Whole Grain Cereal and Fresh Fruit

CBS had a great story about the personal training industry. The reporter went online, took a test from a company in India and was certified as a personal trainer. Scary.

I talked about this issue in a previous post titled: What to look for in a personal trainer.

Look for national certifications from one of three organizations: 1) NSCA – The National Strength and Conditioning Association. 2) ACSM – The American College of Sports Medicine or 3) ACE – American Council on Exercise.

Enjoy,

A good strength training program is based on a principle called progressive overload – which calls for progressively placing greater-than-normal demands on the muscles you are working.

When you lift weights, you do a little bit of damage to your muscles. For a couple of days after the exercise, your body recovers and repairs the damage you did to it. And when the muscle repairs itself, it makes it bigger and stronger than before.

So you are breaking down the muscle, so your body can build it back up.

 

Today’s edition of the Washington Post Express newspaper has a wonderful article about your blogger, me, Nick Irons.   It is a great story entitled “Health Monitors: People Pump It Up with Online Personal Trainers.“ 

 The link above will take you to a PDF of the entire print edition of the newspaper.   The Health section starts on page 37.

 If you are inspired by what you see and want to try online personal training for yourself, please take a look at the online personal training section of this website or contact me.

Everywhere you turn,  people are telling you to exercise. You doctor tells you to exercise, George Bush tells you to exercise, now even McDonalds is telling you to exercise.  Why should you do it?  What should you exercise?  Here are the top 10 reasons to exercise.  

1)To look Better
Face it.   You look better when you are in shape.  You look better in clothes and you look better naked. 

2)To feel better
Exercise is addicting, because it improves your mood and the way you feel about yourself. Researchers have also found that exercise is likely to reduce depression, anxiety and stress.

3)To make more money
Studies have shown that you are more productive when you exercise.  One study found that 80 percent of employees believed their exercise program was helping them become more productive at work, and 75 percent thought regular exercise was helping them achieve higher levels of relaxation and concentration.

4)To reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke
Daily physical activity can help prevent heart disease and stroke by strengthening your heart muscle, lowing your blood pressure, raising your high-density lipoprotein (HDL) (good cholesterol) and lowing your low-density lipoprotein (LDL) (bad cholesterol), improving blood flow, and increasing your heart’s working capacity.

5)To lower your blood pressure
Regular physical exercise can reduce blood pressure in those with hypertension. Physical activity can also reduce body weight and body fat which contributes to high blood pressure.

6)To prevent type II diabetes
By reducing body fat percentages, exercise can help prevent and control adult-onset diabetes.

7)To prevent osteoporosis.
 Weight-bearing exercise promotes bone formation and may prevent many forms of bone loss associated with aging (especially in women).

8)To prevent obesity
Exercise helps reduce body fat by building muscle mass, burning calories, and improving metabolism. When physical activity is combined with proper nutrition, it can help control weight and prevent obesity, a major risk factor for many diseases.

9)To reduce lower back pain
By increasing strength and endurance and improving flexibility and posture, regular exercise helps prevent back pain.

10)To improve your confidence and self-esteem.
Studies have shown that exercise brings about significant increases in confidence and self-esteem.

 

So you have been working out for a while, seeing great results and loving the difference you see and feel in your body. But what happens if, for some reason — injury, vacation, burnout, or something else — you have to stop for a while.

What happens?

Well first, let me tell you what doesn’t happen. Your muscle does not turn to fat. That would be like saying if you stop driving your car, your tires will turn to marshmallows. You may lose muscle mass and gain some fat, but your muscle does not turn to fat.

Here is what does happen:

• Cardio: You begin to lose aerobic endurance in as little as two weeks.

• Muscular Strength: Studies have shown that muscular strength will return to pre-exercise levels after four to 12 weeks off.

• Muscular Size: Muscles will shrink after 4-12 weeks off.

• Metablism:  As your muscles atrophy, your metabolism will slow.  This means that if you eat the same amount, you will gain weight. 

When is the best time to workout?  

Many popular diets insist that the best time to exercise is first thing in the morning, before you eat breakfast.  The theory is that your body doesn’t have the fuel it needs to complete the exercise, so if goes to the only source of energy it has…your stored body fat.  There are two problems with this theory…

1)All that matters when it comes to weight loss is total caloric intake.  Are you eating less than you burn. If so, you will lose weight…simple as that.  Your body can’t tell time.

2)You need energy to exercise.   And to have that energy, your body needs food.  If you exercise before eating, you will not perform as well and your workout will suffer. 

 So what is really the best time to exercise?  The simplest answer?  Whenever you will do it.   Are you a morning person? If so workout in the morning.  Are you a night owl?  If so, you are better off exercising at night.  If you need to do it on your lunch break, do it the.  Do whatever works for you.

I could, but I don’t think I need to!  Congratulations, what you are doing is working for you. You have already lost the majority of the weight you wanted to lose. The key is to keep going. Keep exercising, keep eating right, and keep losing. Right now, the best thing you can do is reconnect with why you are losing the weight in the first place.

• Are you exercising for better health?

• To reduce your risk of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, colon cancer, high blood pressure?

• Do you want to look better in your clothes?

• Or, better yet, do you want to look better without clothes?

Whatever the reason, it helps to find your motivation, because there will be times when you want to quit. There may be times every day when you want to quit. Without something powerful to keep you going, in good times and bad, you’ll find any excuse to say “enough.” You may have to constantly remind yourself why you are working so hard to lose the weight.

So you go to a personal trainer for weight loss and he or she wants you to lift weights.  Sounds counterproductive doesn’t it?  Why are they having you lift weights?

 Simply put, because they’re evil.  No, I’m just kidding. It sounds like your trainer knows what he’s doing. There are a few reasons why I have clients lift weights, especially when they’re trying to lose a few pounds:   

• Weight lifting turns you body into a calorie burning machine – It’s simple, muscle burns more calories than fat.  So adding muscle speeds your metabolism which allows you to eat the same amount of food and still lose weight.

• Lifting weights also reminds you to eat right — When you lift weights, you are probably going to be sore.  And soreness in your muscles is a great reminder to eat right.  Why waste two days of soreness for one doughnut?

• And finally weight lifting shapes your muscles so you look wonderful when you lose the weight.  I look at the big picture, so I get my clients bodies ready to look good when the weight comes off.

Oh, the dreaded cardio.  People either love it or hate it.  It seems there in nothing in between. 

 Do you still have to do it?  It depends on what your health and fitness goals are.  You can lose weight and lose excess fat through weight training and a calorie-reduced diet alone.  But, if you are trying to improve your health, reduce your chances of disease and improve your changes of living a long and happy life, I would suggest doing cardio.  Here’s why: 

• Cardio strengthens your heart.  Your heart is a muscle – a very busy muscle, beating 101,000 times a day and nearly 3 billion times in your lifetime.  And like any other muscle you can build it and make it stronger.  The stronger your heart is, the more efficient it is, the better it works and the longer it will last.   

• Cardio increases your lung capacity and reduces your risk of developing disease.  With regular cardio exercise you are able to transport more oxygen through your body.  This means you will be able to do more work before feeling “winded.”  It also lowers your chance of getting hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, chronic respiratory disease, osteoporosis, obesity, anxiety, depression, and breast and colon cancers.

• And most importantly cardio makes you feel good.  When you do cardio training, your body releases hormones called endorphins – to reduce your pain.  Endorphins are nature’s pain killers and are responsible for the famous “runners high.”  They affect the same part of the brain as opium and heroin.   So, now there is no need to share dirty needles in a back alley to feel good…just go for a run.

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