Progress in Progress

When deciding around how many calories will make up your diet, whether you plan on shedding pounds or bulking up, there is one clear ideology people of any political stripe must follow: ignore government derived guidelines for calories.

The reason to ignore them is simple. They are largely arbitrary and for some people can be truly harmful. The reason for this is simple math. There is an equation anyone can use to find out their resting metabolic rate (RMR) is. Your RMR is how many calories you will burn during a day by simply existing. To complete the equation all you need is a calculator and an ounce of patience.

 The equation you will use is called the Mifflin-St. Jeor Equation, created by someone I do not plan on researching. The equation is a reliable way to understand what your caloric needs are going to be each day. For men, the equation looks like this:

(9.99 x weight in kilograms) + (6.25 x height in centimeters) – (4.92 x age in years) + 5 = RMR

For women, the equation looks like this:

(9.99 x weight in kilograms) + (6.25 x height in centimeters) – (4.92 x age in years) -161 = RMR

Once you have found your RMR, there is one step left. Multiply your RMR number by one of these values based on your exercise level:

Sedentary (little to no exercise)= 1.2

Lightly Active (light exercise 1-3 times a week)= 1.375

Moderately Active (moderate exercise 6-7 times a week)= 1.55

Very Active (hard exercise 6-7 times a week)= 1.725

Extra Active (very active and have a physical job)= 1.9

Here is what my equation looks like:

 (9.99 x  71.36) + (6.25 x 177.8) – (4.92 x 24) +5 = 1,706 calories

 1,706 x 1.55= 2,644 calories.

So for a moderately active male who weighs 157lbs, is 5’10”, and happens to be 24 years old (aka- me), 2,000 calories per day would be a fine caloric target for weight loss but a terrible target for weight maintenance and an even worse target for weight gain. Keep in mind, whatever percentage of calories I want to get from carbohydrates, proteins, or fats is going to be different now than the percentage listed on food packaging as a 2,000 calorie diet is not what my body needs.

 If this is starting to feel complex, that’s because it is. Identifying your caloric needs with your exercise needs with your weight loss or gain goals with your timeline is hard, and it’s why so many people turn to systems and plans created by someone else. If you want information on what I recommend click on the “Ask Me Anything” link and check out next week’s entry for how to apply the concept from today.

Conversions:

1 inch= 2.54 cm

1 pound= .453 kg

Bryant, Cedrix X. and Gren, Daniel J. (Eds.). (2010). ACE’s Essentials of Exercise Science for Fitness Professionals. San Diego, CA: American Council on Exercise.

If I were to tell you about an exercise program available at every gym in the world that strengthens bones, strengthens ligaments and tendons, increases flexibility, and burns significantly more fat than most people do on a treadmill without losing any muscle, you might be tempted to ask how many installments of $19.99 are required (2). In reality programs offering these benefits and a host of others are available to any person with a gym membership and between 45-60 minutes each day, but few are aware of their existence. These programs are called weight lifting or resistance training, and among the non-athlete population in America, resistance training has been met with heavy resistance.

Some people do not know how to begin a weight training program (this space is too small to fix this problem, but Facebook me or click on the “Ask Me Anything” link if you want some direction). Many of these people never learn because they simply don’t want to. After scanning the magazine isle or watching commercials for EAS or other fitness related gadgets on ESPN, who can blame them if their reward for work is to look like Arnold Shwarzenegger (sans nanny)? Many people have the image of the muscle bound giant in a Speedo with a fake tan associated with weight training, which could not be further from the reality of resistance training results.

The truth is it’s hard to gain bulk through resistance training, doubly so for females due to biological design. To gain mass through weight training one needs a specially designed program including diet and an excess of free time. My good friend Kelly Myers is involved in this type of training professionally. At times he devotes up to 42 hours a week in the gym. This type of commitment is not possible for someone who struggles to find seven hours a week between work and child rearing and family life to spend in a gym.  

This misunderstanding comes at a price considering the spectrum of services resistance training offers.  Remember that plan I told you about earlier? What if I also told you it will get your heart rate beating faster than the majority of traditional cardio does, has been clinically shown to fight depression similar to Prozac without side effects, will speed up your metabolism (each pound of muscle developed burns around 100 extra calories every day), increases self-confidence, increases sensitivity of insulin cells to fight diabetes, boosts good cholesterol (HDL) while lowering bad cholesterol (LDL), and help you manage stress more effectively? (1, 2, 3).

The program is called circuit resistance training and it’s not found at a treadmill near you.  

Bryant, Cedrix X. and Gren, Daniel J. (Eds.). (2010). ACE’s Essentials of Exercise Science for Fitness Professionals. San Diego, CA: American Council on Exercise.

Campbell, Adam. (2009). The Men’s Health Big Book of Exercise. New York, NY: Rodale.

Lamm, Steven. (2005). The Hardness Factor. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.

Selling people the premise of hard work is not a sport for the weak hearted. As attractive as it sounds to hear, “Come out, work your butt off, be covered in sweat,” few find this preferable to status quo maintenance.

The never ending search for optimal results at minimal effort has taken many would be exercise enthusiasts to the so-called “fat burning zone.” The fat burning zone is exactly what an individual foreign to the concept of accomplishment dreams of, or what an individual without enough easily allotted time would consider a simple fix. The premise is easy enough: if an individual does low intensity exercise over a long period of time (we’re talking months and years), maximum fat loss will ensue.

The most obvious issue presented by the fat burning zone is its denial of how truly simple fitness is conceptually. One needs little knowledge outside of the correlation between effort exerted to calories burned and calories consumed to calories burned to have an idea of what a fit person’s lifestyle should look like. Unfortunately, five minutes in McDonald’s constitutes the necessary research to see the chasm between conceptualization and application.

Which brings us back to the fat burning zone. The premise of the fat burning zone is that low intensity exercise is ideal for burning fat because it burns fat more efficiently than high intensity exercise. The Fat Burning Zone is around 60% of your maximum heart rate, or the heart rate most people achieve when walking a fifteen minute mile.  All one needs to do is spend a good amount of time doing not difficult work and soon enough the only difference between Michael Moore and Anthony Weiner is a few Twitter pictures and press conferences.

The sinister method of the fat burning zone lies in its truth. The truth is low intensity workout does burn fat more efficiently than high intensity workout from a calorie counting perspective. When doing low intensity workout around 50% of all calories burned will be from fat.

Unfortunately, this column does not end here. Fat calories burned is less than half the story needed to form an accurate opinion on best exercise choice. When the body works it is constantly burning a ratio of fat calories and carbohydrate calories. What is imperative to know about this ratio is it is a method of charting calories burned, but the amount of calories burned in totality is more important than what type of calories are burning. So while low intensity exercise does burn about 50% calories from fat, it does not burn a lot of calories in the end game. As exercise intensity increases, so does calories burned. When working out at around 80% of your maximum heart rate you will burn around 40% fat calories and 60% carbohydrate calories (1). Compared to low intensity work your total caloric expenditure will not only be greater, but the total amount of fat calories burned will be greater as well. Simply put, walking a fifteen minute mile for 30 minutes burns 240 total calories and 96 fat calories. Jogging a 9 ½ minute mile for 30 minutes burns 450 calories and 108 fat calories (2).   

Thus we are left with a choice. We can walk into The fat burning zone for a greater period (in terms of months and years), or venture to the less popular realm of high intensity work for a shorter, less comfortable stay. Physical limitations must be abided, but when options are available the guiding maxim is undoubtedly harder work yields better results.       

1. http://exercise.about.com/od/weightloss/a/The-Truth-About-The-Fat-Burning-Zone.htm

2. Bryant, Cedrix X. and Gren, Daniel J. (Eds.). (2010). ACE’s Essentials of Exercise Science for Fitness Professionals. San Diego, CA: American Council on Exercise.

It makes sense for me to give a little biographical information and what this blog is going to be about before I expect anyone to follow, so here it goes:

I am 24, a graduate of the University of Idaho with a B.A. in English, a personal trainer in training, a wellness coach in nutritional cleansing, a husband, a brother, a son, a musician in training, and pet owner. In a word, I am an adult with an adult life who prioritizes health. I have personal experience in orienting lifestyle for substantial gains and have had the privilege of working with people who have set and met health goals, both in weight loss and muscle gain.

This blog is not going to be my day-to-day stories about what workouts I am doing or exactly what foods I’m consuming. If you’re curious, click on the “Ask Me Anything” link at the top of the page. This is going to be topic oriented. This is going to combine cited research with my own opinion (backed by experience and research) about a health related issue. It will be updated about once a week considering research will be done on each post. You will not get posts insinuating without confirming, leaving you with more questions than when you began. You will read developed thoughts about questions related to health. The vision going into this venture was, “What would it look like if Christopher Hitchens (or Paul Krugman, or Charles Krauthammer) wrote about health?”

If you want to know, I will see you on the way.

-Brian

So obviously this is not complete. I’m spending the next few days fixing the appearance and getting some last sources of information taken care of. There should be a wild, extensive, not explicit post coming in the not too distant future letting everyone know what this is all about. I will see you when it’s there.

-Brian