This study finds that several short (<10 minute) bouts of moderate intensity physical activity may reduce cardiovascular disease risks. Check out a better wright up at drbriffa.com.
This seems to be good news for those of us short on time. We can spread out the exercise and still get positive results. Couple this with a good diet and our health will improve.
Yes, you can. I have done it myself. There are several ways to gain muscle and lose fat. Remember, fat loss is not the same as weight loss. In this article I will be concentrating on strategies to change your body composition (i.e. gain muscle lose fat). The easiest time to accomplish this dual goal is when you are in what has been termed the “novice stage”. Once you pass the novice stage you will need to decide which of the two goals is the priority: gain muscle or lose fat.
The novice stage is a magical period where you can with comparative ease gain muscle and lose fat. The novice stage is the period when you first start resistance training to build muscle. This also applies if you use to train but have not in a while. During this stage you can make strength gains between each workout, if you are on a good program. Your muscles should be adapting and growing at a rate that will use up more calories. You should be able to eat at a level above what was maintenance before and still lose fat. Depending on your past history, age, and the quality of the program (also how will you stick to the program), you could be in the novice stage anywhere from a few months up to a year! A novice program should contain three full body workouts per week on nonconsecutive days. The novice stage ends when you can no longer recover in time to make gains (even small ones) in the next work out.
Now it is decision time, do you want to keep making strength and muscle gains or do you want to reduce your fat? In this next stage you will not be able to do both build muscle and lose fat effectively. You can build muscle while losing very little or no fat or lose fat while building a little or maintaining your muscle. Another choice is to build muscle without regard to fat or the reverse. Whichever way you choose your diet is the key to success.
If you truly need to worry about gaining muscle and losing fat then you will most likely qualify for the novice stage. If not then you will need to make your decision and follow a nutrition and exercise program that will support that goal.
For more on nutrition aspect check out gain muscle lose fat. Finding the right program can take a lot of time and energy. The best overall program, combining all the physical nutritional and metal parts of gaining muscle and losing fat is at losefat-online.com.
C-reactive protein (CRP) has been brought to the for front by the JUPITER study. CRP is a marker for inflammation and risk of cardiovascular events.
The question it brought to my mind is “Can the reduction in CRP be accomplish without the expensive side effect laden drug?”
The answer is yes it can!!!
Check out this post by Dr. William Davis Cardiologist and author of the book, Track Your Plaque at his blog The Heart Scan Blog.
The steps are simple, but not necessary easy. Here are a couple:
I have talked about vitamin D before. But it continues to make news. Seems the Canadian Pediatric Society has seen the light and is boosting their recommendations to 2000 IUs per day for women who are pregnant or breast-feeding.
The Vitamin D council recommends 5000 IUs for anyone who regularly avoids sunlight exposure. Please go to their website it is very informative.
The best way to lose fat is to build strength or burn it off. If it has been a will since you have done regular exercise you can actually lose fat and gain muscle. Remember losing fat is not the same goal as just losing weight. They are similar but in weight loss that is what your focus is on. With fat lose your focus should be on maintaining your muscle and strength while reducing your percentage body fat.
Is it possible to gain muscle and lose fat? Yes it can be done. I have managed to accomplish this, but it not something that can be done over a prolonged period. As a matter of fact, the more weight you need to lose and the longer it has been since you have exercised the easier it will be.
The best way to get rid of belly fat
is not a pill, or some plan to restrictive to maintain. If you are
looking for some pill or restrictive diet plan, you will not experience
the forever part. Research has shown maintaining weight loss long term
requires that you develop the proper diet and exercise habits.
Just for confusion: This is an acutal study on:
The conclusion:
This is am example of a controlled study which should be given more weight than the study based on questionaires, like the on in my previous post.
ScienceDaily (2008-10-27) — About 5 million people in the United States suffer from heart failure (HF). While some reports indicate that changes to diet can reduce HF risk, few large, prospective studies have been conducted. In a new study researchers observed over 14,000 participants for more than 13 years and found that whole grain consumption lowered HF risk, while egg and high-fat dairy consumption raised risk. Other food groups did not directly affect HF risk.
Why am I posting this story? The study seems opposite of the low carb approach I have taken. First I do want to stay open minded, being closed to any inputs that are counter to your own views limits the view of the whole problem and reduces the likely hood of you finding the answer you seek. This brings to mind the old story of 2 blind me describing an elephant, one feels the leg and descibes it as like a tree. The other feels the trunk and descibes it as a power snake. Each is right about what they have felt, both are wrong in what the elephant is. In many ways that is where we are in the study on obesity in America.
This is also the type of study to be careful of because it has many varibles that are hard to account for.
By Tom Venuto
ANSWER:Many other factors are involved, including the type of saturated fat,
individual genetics, current health status, exercise and the big
picture of what else is consumed in the rest of the diet.
Research Says Eggs Are Not Evil
Recent research has been showing that the cholesterol in eggs is
handled by most people’s bodies in a way that doesn’t cause heart
disease and that dietary cholesterol does not necessarily translate
to increased blood cholesterol or an unfavorable ratio of HDL to LDL
cholesterol.
After a recent study published in The Journal Of Nutrition, Dr. Robert
Nicolosi at the University of Massachusetts said, “Our data shows that
eating an egg a day is not a factor for raising cholesterol.”
A study reported at the 2006 experimental biology meeting in San
Francisco made similar findings. The researchers discovered that
when people ate three or more eggs per day, the amount of low density
lipoprotein (LDL) in their bloodstream did in fact increase as
previously reported.
However they also found that the subjects actually made bigger LDL
particles which were less likely to enter artery walls and build up
as artery-clogging plaque.
As a result of these and similar findings, head researcher Christine
Green said that a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that
eggs should not be considered a “dietary evil.”
Whole Eggs Have “Super-Food” Qualities
Whole eggs have a lot going for them nutritionally speaking. The egg
yolks contain a highly bioavailable source of lutein and zeaxanthin
which are carotenoids that protect against cataracts and macular
degeneration.
Eggs are a great source of high biological value, complete protein and
the protein is split almost evenly between the yolk and the white. One
large egg contains 6.3 grams of protein with 3.5 grams in the white
and 2.8 grams in the yolk.
Although whole eggs appear to have been exonerated, it still may not be
wise to suggest that anyone can eat eggs in unlimited quantities, for
both health and body composition reasons.
Dr. Udo Erasumus in his book, Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill, said that
in 70% of the affluent populations of the world, increased cholesterol
consumption decreases cholesterol production in the body through a
regulating feedback system that protects them. The other 30% of the
population may not have adequate feedback, and are wise to limit their
dietary
cholesterol consumption.
Unlimited egg consumption is also not wise from a caloric perspective. In a fat burning program, you need to consider calories as well as nutritional value and health impact.
Whole Eggs And Fat Loss
Whole eggs are not low calorie foods - they’re
fairly calorie dense, while egg whites are extremely low in calories,
which is why egg whites are one of the top choices for lean protein on
fat loss and
bodybuilding diets.
Now that this news about the health value of whole eggs is starting
to become more widely circulated, bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts
have been criticized for their long held practice of throwing away the
egg yolks.
However, In all my years of training and consulting, even back
in the late 1980’s, and 1990’s I’ve never thrown away
all my yolks.
My menu plans typically contain one or two whole eggs with 8-12 egg
whites. I know that’s a lot, but that’s a man-sized
bodybuilder meal. For non-bodybuilders or people with lower calorie
needs, it might be one whole egg and 3-6 whites.
Why do I do this? Because this provides the high protein without so
many calories.
Take a look at this egg white - egg yolk comparison:
3 whole large eggs: 225 calories, 18.9 g protein, 15 g fat
8 egg whites & 1 whole egg: 211 calories, 34.3 g protein, 5 g fat
Do you see what was accomplished here? I didn’t remove egg
yolks because I’m afraid of cholesterol. I removed most of
the egg yolks because I was on a calorie budget and I was
on a higher protein diet and I wanted more protein with fewer calories. Make sense?
Another reason that bodybuilders use liquid egg whites
so often is for convenience. They can pour them from the carton right into the
fry pan and they don’t have to do all that shell cracking and
egg white separating.
Let me leave you with a funny story.
Whole Eggs - “Better Than Steroids?”
When I started bodybuilding as a teenager, I latched onto the
teachings of a bodybuilding guru trainer from North Hollywood
named Vince Gironda.
Gironda trained all the top movie stars back in his day including
Erik Estrada, Clint Eastwood, Tommy Chong, Carl “Apollo Creed”
Weathers and too many others to mention.
He was also the Trainer of bodybuilding champions such as Larry
Scott, the First Mr. Olympia, and believe it or not, he was Arnold’s first trainer when Joe Weider sent the budding young
star to America from Austria.
Gironda had been saying from day one (back in the 1950’s and 1960’s) that the whole egg was
“nature’s perfect food” and he compared them to “natural steroids.”
On some of his low carb “muscle definition” diets, he said
you could eat as many whole eggs as you wanted and even scramble
them in butter. He said that he had some of his champion bodybuilders
on up to three dozen eggs a day!
I didn’t really understand what a ketogenic diet was at the time,
but being an obedient, guru-following teenage bodybuilder, desperate for muscle, I did what he said. I ate up
to 3 dozen whole eggs a day for months on end.
Well, there was no miraculous steroid-like effect, and I didn’t
drop dead of a heart attack either.
One thing I did notice is that I DID NOT LOSE FAT like Gironda said I would.
The reason should be obvious: three dozen whole eggs is 2700 calories
(more if you use extra large or jumbo eggs). I was at nearly
maintenance calories from the eggs alone, and eggs weren’t the
only thing I was eating.
Gironda, like many other low carb gurus, did not place any
restrictions on calories, only on foods. Gironda was a genius, years
ahead of his time, but this was the flaw in his program. Even on low
carb diets, you STILL need a caloric deficit to lose body fat.
Thus, my approach changed and I started removing yolks to keep
me more easily within my caloric deficit without losing the quality
protein… but I never cut all the yolks because of their
nutritional value.
To this day, I still keep one or two yolks in my
omelettes and scrambles… sometimes more, as long as it
fits in my calorie budget.
Get crackin!
Tom Venuto
Fat Loss Coach
P.S. One last thing. Keep in mind that the
quality of the egg is only as good as the quality of the bird it came
from. This is why many health experts recommend free range eggs and/or
omega-3 eggs.
P.P.S. For more information about fat burning nutrition, visit: www.BurnTheFat.com
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