Better Bodies In Training

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According to the Encarta Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language 2^nd Edition, “nutrition is defined as the science of food, the science that deals with foods and their effect on health”.  My own independent study and understanding of nutrition leads me to define it as the process by which living organisms acquire all the things that are necessary for them to survive and thrive.

Nutrition deals with both diet (ingestion) and metabolism (digestion).  To help understand this concept, think of it this way. What do I eat? How much do I eat? And how often do I eat?  From a personal development standpoint,  having intelligent answers to these questions and fully understanding nutrition and how foods positively or negatively affect our health are supremely important. What we put in our bodies, in what quantity amount, in what quality, and at what frequency rate, determine not just whether we survive as a living organism, but also the quality of that survival. In other words, whether we also thrive.

It has been stated in various ways,  but simply put eating well requires making good food selection and having good eating habits. In the ACE Personal Training Manual, 3^rd edition, Jacquline R. Berning, states that eating well is not difficult in principle. All that is needed is to eat a selection of foods that supplies appropriate amounts of essential nutrients and energy (p. 115).  Making appropriate food choices should be done with an eye on eating for good health.  It is this inability or unwillingness  that leads many of use to suffer from a lack of essential nutrients.

In the pursuit of our mission of inspiring and motivating you to achieve a better you, we are always striving to provide you with the resources and tools that you can use to make better nutritional decisions.  One such resource is the very insightful and sometimes controversial book by Dr. Earl Mindell entitled “Vitamin Bible”. Originally published in 1985 and having been updated and revised 3-4 times, this book is a treasure of researched back information on nutrients as a whole with a strong emphasis on  vitamins and minerals. It also includes other aspects like on deficiencies and toxicity of vitamins, minerals and how to treat certain abnormalities, sicknesses and diseases.

Because of its wealth of information and the ease of readable of its formatting, we highly recommend this book as a resources to assist you in better understanding nutrients and nutrition and in helping you make better nutritional decisions.

Source: http://www.teachnet.ie

What is metabolism?

According to Wikipedia, metabolism "is the set of chemical reactions that occur in living organisms to maintain life.… Metabolism is usually divided into two categories. Catabolism breaks down organic matter; anabolism, uses energy to construct components of cells such as proteins and nucleic acids”.

The process of metabolism determines the rate at which your body burns calories while at rest (Resting Metabolic Rate or Basal Metabolic Rate), in motion or during exercise (PAEE). Whether you are sleeping, sitting, reading, eating, working, exercising, the body and its bodily functions are constantly moving; these movements require fuel; some moments require more fuel than others. Nonetheless, these body and bodily functions use  of energy is called caloric burn.

What is my metabolism affected by?

It is generally accepted that metabolism is affected by both controllable and uncontrollable factors. The uncontrollable factors include:

1. Sex (men tend to burn calories at a higher rate than women);
2. Age: (metabolism naturally slows 5% per decade after age 40);
3. Hereditary.

The controllable factors include:

1. Amount of lean body mass;
2. Whether you exercise;
3. What you eat;
4. How often you eat;
5. Stress levels;

How to Increase my metabolism?

In weight management (weight loss or weight maintenace,) our concern with metabolsim is how to increase metabolic rate so that you burn not just calories while exercise but also the calories while resting (resting metabolic rate). There are many theories about just how to do this. Very few, it seems have been proven to effectively work for the long term. What has been shown to work for both the short and long run is the following 7 Steps.

1. Don’t skip meals; slows your metabolism causing your body to slow down and burn less fat (fat is the primary fuel source for metabolic activities and other bodily functions, when the body is not exercising).
2. Eat smaller meals; the body makes better use of the nutrients in smaller quantities than in large quanties, after all, anything in excess is either stored, primarily as fat, or excreted like water soluble vitamins.
3. Include a snack between each meal; this reduces the chances you will overeat at your next meal.
4. Eat often: if you eat more often, but in smaller quantities, you will be priming your metabolism to work at an optimum level; also, when there is too many hours between meals, your metabolism actualy slows down to compensate.
5. Increase your physical activity level; the total amount of calories you burn includes your resting metabolic rate and the calories expended in exercise. The more active you are, the more calorics you burn.
6. Include cardio in your exercise program; the fast pace and constant motion of cardio tends to burn more calories than weight training or any other anaerobic exercise.
7. Include Weight training; even though it does not burn as much calories as cardio while working out, you are building muscles which burn more calories throughtout the entire day.

Final Thoughts?

If you follow these 7 steps, I can guarantee that you will see amazing results in the total amount of calorics burn; which will result in losing that unwanted weight. So what are your thoughts? Do you now have a better understanding of nutrition and the two major components: diet and metabolism? What has been your experience with dieting? Do you find that you have a slow metabolism? What, if anything, have you done to increase its efficiency? Your thoughts, suggestions and questions are welcomed.

Source: http://www.mypyramid.gov/

What is nutrition?

Nutrition is defined as the science that studies the process by which living organisms acquire all the things that are necessary for them to live and grow. Nutrition deals with both diet (ingestion) and metabolism. To help understand these concepts, asks yourself these questions. What do I eat? How much do I eat? And How often do I eat? In this posting, I will touch a little on the diet component, which deals with the questions of what and how much do I eat?

My Diet?

Your diet is what you eat and drink, the solids and fluids your intake to satifsy the body’s nutritents requirment. In the fundamental sense of weight management, gaining control of your diet entails understanding what you consume or intake, but also how much you consume. To lose, maintain or gain weight, you need to pay attention to both factors. For example, if you eat all the right foods but in too large of portions, you will gain weight. If you eat the right amount of foods (total calories) but only eat a limited number of food types, then you will be lacking essential nutrients that the body needs.

What should you be eating?

The Federal USDA, has long established that individal need to be intaking foods from the 6 major foods grous. http://www.mypyramid.gov/pyramid/index.html. Depending on your age, weight, sex and other factors, the actual amounts will vary; but as a general rule, the following should be considered for:

1. grains vary from 3-11 ounces;
2. vegetables vary from 1-6 cups;
3. fruits varies from 1-4 cups;
4. milk and other dairy products vary from 2 – 4 ounces;
5. meats and beans vary from 2 – 8 ounces;
6. oils vary from 3-6 teaspoons;

Now, the actual caloric amount is another question.

How much should you be eating?

How much should you be eating is determined by your weight goal? If you want to lose weight, you should be reducing caloric intake; if you want to maintain weight, then you can keep your caloric intake constant; or if you want to gain weight you need to increase your caloric intake above what you are currently consuming. Whether is is decreasing, maintaining or increasing caloric intake, it is good to have an ideal of what your current caloric consumption is. At weight-loss-center.net, there is an online caloric intake calculator that estimates how many calorics you are consuming based on body stats and current exercise levels, click link to assess http://www.weight-loss-center.net/daily_calorie_calculator.html.

Once you have this number, you can either increase, decrease or maintain depending again on your weight goal. The general though is that if you are wanting to lose at least 1 pound a week via dieting alone, then you should subtract, or reduce your dailiy caloric intake by 500 calories a day. The reverse is the case if you want to put on a pound in a week, you need to increase you daily caloric intake 500 calories per day. You can alternatively use a few online calculators to make this detemination as well. For example:

For determining weight loss or weight maintenance

http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

For determining weight loss, maintenance or gain

http://www.hpathy.com/healthtools/calories-need.asp

A very important part of this nutrition component and understanding dieting and dieting control is the frequency of caloric consumption. This factor is one of the major factors that affect your metabolism (i.e.,. what happens after you intake that food/fluids into your body). Fortunately, this will be the focus of tomorrow’s posting.

Final Thought?

We at Better Bodies in Training, strongly believe that knowledge is power. Knowledge empowes you by giving you more options and informing your decisions. Our goal will this posting is to help you better understand that nutritional component to not just our program but to any effective weight management program.

As we stated in yesterday’s posting, weight loss or weight mangement can be very difficult, some more so than others, a truly effective program will tackle the problem many fronts. Tomorrow we will discuss the particular details of the metabolism aspect to the nutritional component. In that time, what are your thoughts about the points explored in the posting? Do you understand what nutrition is? What about the two major component of nutrition, diet and metabolism? Your thoughts, suggestions and questions are welcomed.