Plateau Help

If you're feeling frustrated that you've hit a weight loss plateau, you're not alone. Don't feel discouraged because hitting a plateau is a sign that you've been doing a good job.

While you've been working out and eating healthy, you have not only been losing weight, but your have made your body more efficient. This means that your BMR has decreased and your body needs less calories to keep it going throughout the day.

Congratulations. Good job. The bad news is, you now have to work even harder to subtract calories from your day. This is the time to re-evaluate your diet to see if there are even a few more calories you can subtract that way. Also, it's time to gear up your workout. Spend a few more minutes in the gym doing cardio and especially lifting weight so that you can continue burning calories throughout the rest of the day.

Once you treat that a plateau is a good thing, you will no longer feel defeated, but rather inspired to get past it and continue your fitness quest!

Exercise or Diet?

The last few posts have all been titled with a question. Well, there are a lot of questions when it comes to fitness and here at Everything Fit we try to give you some of the answers. And when there are no straight answers, we at least try to give you the facts so you can make an informed decision yourself.

This post's question is whether it is better to lose weight through dieting or through exercise, but let's break down why.

Dieting helps you create a caloric deficit. If you eat less calories than your body needs to stay alive (your BMR), then you will lose weight. Great, right? Well, not so fast. Very low calorie diets will actually slow down your metabolism so while you're eating less, your body learns to survive on less. And when you eventually start eating normally again you will actually gain weight because your body is used to surviving on less calories.

Exercise alone is a great way to lose weight, but there are drawbacks to this too. A lot of people assume because they're exercising that they can eat more than normal. It takes a lot of exercise to burn a pound of fat. That trail mix I gave up eating in my last post would take over an hour of jogging to burn off. What a waste of an hour.

Also, if you do too much cardio, you run the risk of burning muscle as well as fat, which will also slow your metabolism down.

So if you can exercise by doing cardio and weights and create a small caloric deficit that way every day (say around 500 calories per day) and you lower your food intake by about 500 calories a day, you would lose 1 pound a week without harming your metabolism in the process.

To Count or Not To Count

A lot of times we hear that if we want to lose weight we should count calories. As with all things, even this should be done in moderation.

Counting calories can be a pain. Who wants to pull out a notebook everytime they grab a snack? On the other hand, if you know you have to write everything down, you might not be as quick to grab that handful of trail mix. And studies have shown that people who write down everything they eat, actually do eat less calories.

Another bonus of writing things down is that most people grossly underestimate how many calories they're eating. So writing things down is actually an educational process. All those months of eating trail mix and thinking it was just a quick snack? Did you know that a cup of trail mix is almost 700 calories? That's more than half of my day's caloric requirements. Yikes.

A good compromise is to write down what you're eating for a few weeks. This will give you a good idea of how many calories most of your meals and snacks are. Once you have a better grasp on what you're really eating, you can lay off writing everything down.

All I know is there won't be any more trail mix in my cupboard.

Geek Fitness for Fitness Geeks

I’ve been pretty excited with all the latest developments that blend technology with fitness. I’m looking forward to Nintendo soon-to-be released WII Fit and Sega Toys has already released their Get-Fit Earphones that check your pulse via your earlobes.

Of course there’s also the Nike+ system that tracks your runs with the use of an IPod and a special chip in your Nike+ shoes. Well, now there’s news that Nike+ will soon be compatible with other cardio equipment including ellipticals and exercise bikes.

I’m pretty competitive with myself so the fact that I can use any of these items to push myself to work harder, whether I’m running outside or using the step-climber at the gym is pretty exciting for me.

Anything that can give me motivation, I say bring it on!

What's First: Cardio or Weights?

This is debated almost as much as “which came first: the chicken or the egg?”

There are benefits to doing both your cardio and weight-training workout first. Trainers argue that if your goal is to build endurance or speed or to train for a race, then cardio should be done first, before your muscles are fatigued from weight-training.

Similarly, if your goal is to gain strength or power, then it makes sense to do your weight-training first, before your muscles are fatigued from cardio. An intense cardio workout will burn both fat and carbs, and carbs are the key source of energy when weight training, so you may not be able to lift as much if you’ve already finished your cardio workout.

I’ve also previously posted that you burn your fat by increasing your lean mass, which will help you burn calories all day long. So it makes sense that weight training should also be a priority in your workout

A new study has found yet another reason to push weight training to the forefront. The Journal of Applied Physiology reports that participants who weight train before cardio have more heart-related benefits.

Researchers behind the study say lifting weights can increase blood pressure, which stiffens arteries. Doing cardio after weight training releases chemicals that cause the arteries to dilate and lower your blood pressure.

So there you have it, unless endurance performance is your main focus, it is probably a better idea to weight train before doing cardio.

Now if only we could decide if the chicken came before the egg!

No Time: No Excuse!

Just a few minutes of intense exercise ever day can produce the same results as traditional endurance training.

Authors of a study published in The Journal of Physiology followed 2 groups of college-aged students who performed 6 training sessions over 8 weeks. One group did 4-6 30 second bursts of all-out cycling separated by4 minutes or recovery during each training session. The other group did 90-120 minutes of continuous moderate-intensity cycling each day. Over 2 weeks, the short burst group spent 2.5 hours training, including recovery time, while the moderate-intensity group spent 10.5 hours training. Still, despite the difference in training volume, both groups showed similar improvements in exercise performance.

The authors pointed out that the training required to bring these results is very intense, but if you're generally healthy and you check with your doctor first, this may cut your time in the gym in half. And who can't use extra time in their day?

Eating Blue

A new study is suggesting that eating blueberries or taking blueberry extract may help people lose weight by reducing the intake of calories.

Researchers in the US and New Zealand fed blueberry extract to rats and found that the rodents gained 10% less body weight than rats who did not receive the extract.

The blueberry-fed rats also had an 85 decrease in food intake. Because of this, researchers are suggesting that blueberries and blueberry extract has a satiety effect (makes you feel full).

In addition to possibly helping you lose weight, blueberries are also a great source of antioxidants, which may help prevent or repair cell damage that could lead to heart disease, some cancers, Alzheimer's and other health problems.