Why Weight Training

Why does Time for Change Fitness promote resistance training?

Many people focus on calories alone. The slash and dash mentality develops destructive patterns, like extreme calorie cuts and/or excessive aerobics. This sets off an alarm-state in the body where the body sheds muscle tissue to lessen energy demands, and stores body fat as a survival response. Once this physiological state is reached, it becomes nearly impossible to lose any more weight no matter how many calories you cut or how much aerobic work you add. What you end up with is a person who is on a starvation level calorie count and performing excessive exercise, yet is still flabby.

The calories burned during an exercise session are relatively small compared to the amount burned during the other 23 hours of the day. Most fat oxidation occurs between training sessions, not during. This means your exercise sessions should primarily be geared towards building muscle and boosting your metabolism.

After a strength training session, the metabolic rate raises (the after-burn effect) for longer periods of time than after aerobic work (up to 48 hours). This is because all of the steps involved in the recovery process from strength training (satellite cell activation, tissue repair, protein synthesis, etc.) require energy (calories).

Thursday, May 9, 2013

"Fat Free" Creamer?

Sorry Nestle Original Fat Free Coffee-mate, but I need to make an example out of you.

Do you like to put creamer in your coffee? Why hold back if it's fat free? Nestle Original Fat Free Coffee-mate, for example, is only 10 calories per serving. The catch: it's only "fat free" unfortunately. According to food labeling rules, a product with less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving can be labeled as zero fat. This rule is exploited by using ridiculous serving sizes. The serving size for this particular brand is 1 non-heaping teaspoon. 1 teaspoon couldn't make your coffee as creamy as the picture on the label, even if it were only an 8 oz "short" from Starbucks.

If you pour, say, 6 teaspoons - 2 tablespoons - into your 16 oz mug, you're up to 50 calories and 1.5 grams of fat; 1.4 of them saturated. That is because Coffee-mate is mostly corn syrup and partially hydrogenated soybean oil (both of which are most likely genetically modified). But you'd never know that, because if you multiply the "0 grams" of fat or saturated fat on the label by 6, you get zero.

This is worth sitting down with a cup of coffee and thinking about.
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