Exercise for Menopausal Women: Less is More

"I'm getting a muffin-top for the first time in my life."

This wasn't the first time a 40-something female client lamented her unexpected weight gain, so I asked a few questions.

She hits the gym hard nearly every morning, early, taking only the rare day off.

Sleep? Maybe six hours a day.

I didn't even have to ask about her diet. I prescribed immediately:

"Stop!"

She looked at me, confused. She was doing what she had been told: work out hard and you'll get the shape you want. And here I was telling her something very, very different.

New research has revealed that the harder peri-menopausal and menopausal women work out, the more likely they are to not reach their weight goals. They're not gaining extra muscle and they're not losing extra fat.

Here are a few recommendations for women who have hit a plateau at that stage of their lives:

• Sleep, sleep, sleep. Adults need at least seven to eight hours of sleep every day. Any less than that, your body has lulls during the course of the day and your metabolism comes to a screeching halt. Your body needs more rest and recovery so you can reach your fitness goals.
• No high-intensity cardio. Keep your heart rate elevated but steady. Do not look for an extra-high heart rate to make extra gains because it won't work.
• Take time off. Work out no more three to four times a week. Make sure you have two consecutive days of rest after a workout.
• Add weight training. It helps increase bone density and burns more calories over the course of the next couple of days after a workout.

Don't forget your basics:

• drink enough water (aim to drink a glass of water when you wake up, a glass when you go to bed and a glass with each of your small meals) 
• eat five or six small meals rather than three big ones (but keep your total calorie count the same as you would for the bigger meals)

Be sure to check with your trainer if you have questions, or send me an e-mail.

Step Up to the Calorie Counter: Warm Lemon Water

Lemon water, the latest water craze, is worth the buzz.

Squeezing fresh lemon into a glass of water puts natural lemon juice in pure water (including the pulp). No additives or preservatives.  Just vitamin C and citrus goodness.

But don't put it on ice, especially after a workout. Your body absorbs room-temperature or even warm (not hot) water better than cold water.

Eat First

I am taking a continuing education course on male body sculpting. The test will be based on a book written by a gentleman with an MD after his name.

The author had a recommendation for weight loss: if you work out in the morning, do not eat beforehand so you lose more fat.  He states that the body has to burn fat for energy in order to fuel the workout.

This is not a good idea.

I don't pretend to be more knowledgeable than a doctor. However, after a decade of personal training, I cannot vouch for that recommendation.

I never have to wonder if my early morning clients have eaten before their workout. I have had clients turn gray, get dizzy — one person even vomited. Each time I would say,  "Let me guess: you didn't eat this morning, did you?" In every instance, I got a nod of admission.

My experience has shown me the body cannot properly fuel a workout without nutrition. (There are a few exceptions to the rule, but very few.)

Even if you do manage to get through the workout, your not going to have enough intensity in the workout to get the full benefits you seek.

A study from Britain suggests there is only a difference of one-tenth of a pound between working out before breakfast or eating first. For that little a difference, don't risk illness and low energy.

Eat first: you will feel better. Even if breakfast is only a piece of toast and a banana.

Why We Don't Lose Weight (in TIME)

This article from the August 2, 2009 issue of TIME Magazine, was sent to me by a client.  

It discusses, in part, why we do not lose weight when we exercise.  I do agree with the author, to some extent, that some people do eat more after working out.

However, in my opinion,  the article falls short by failing to explain that we need to cross-train and add intensity to our workouts for best results.

Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin
by John Cloud
Time Magazine 

The findings were surprising. On average, the women in all the groups, even the control group, lost weight, but the women who exercised — sweating it out with a trainer several days a week for six months — did not lose significantly more weight than the control subjects did. (The control-group women may have lost weight because they were filling out those regular health forms, which may have prompted them to consume fewer doughnuts.) Some of the women in each of the four groups actually gained weight, some more than 10 lb. each.

What's going on here? Church calls it compensation, but you and I might know it as the lip-licking anticipation of perfectly salted, golden-brown French fries after a hard trip to the gym. Whether because exercise made them hungry or because they wanted to reward themselves (or both), most of the women who exercised ate more than they did before they started the experiment. Or they compensated in another way, by moving around a lot less than usual after they got home.(Read "Run For Your Lives.")

The findings are important because the government and various medical organizations routinely prescribe more and more exercise for those who want to lose weight. In 2007 the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association issued new guidelines stating that "to lose weight ... 60 to 90 minutes of physical activity may be necessary." That's 60 to 90 minutes on most days of the week, a level that not only is unrealistic for those of us trying to keep or find a job but also could easily produce, on the basis of Church's data, ravenous compensatory eating.

It's true that after six months of working out, most of the exercisers in Church's study were able to trim their waistlines slightly — by about an inch. Even so, they lost no more overall body fat than the control group did. Why not?

Church, who is 41 and has lived in Baton Rouge for nearly three years, has a theory. "I see this anecdotally amongst, like, my wife's friends," he says. "They're like, 'Ah, I'm running an hour a day, and I'm not losing any weight.'" He asks them, "What are you doing after you run?" It turns out one group of friends was stopping at Starbucks for muffins afterward. Says Church: "I don't think most people would appreciate that, wow, you only burned 200 or 300 calories, which you're going to neutralize with just half that muffin."(Read "Too Fat? Read Your E-mail.")

You might think half a muffin over an entire day wouldn't matter much, particularly if you exercise regularly. After all, doesn't exercise turn fat to muscle, and doesn't muscle process excess calories more efficiently than fat does?

Yes, although the muscle-fat relationship is often misunderstood. According to calculations published in the journal Obesity Research by a Columbia University team in 2001, a pound of muscle burns approximately six calories a day in a resting body, compared with the two calories that a pound of fat burns. Which means that after you work out hard enough to convert, say, 10 lb. of fat to muscle — a major achievement — you would be able to eat only an extra 40 calories per day, about the amount in a teaspoon of butter, before beginning to gain weight. Good luck with that.

Fundamentally, humans are not a species that evolved to dispose of many extra calories beyond what we need to live. Rats, among other species, have a far greater capacity to cope with excess calories than we do because they have more of a dark-colored tissue called brown fat. Brown fat helps produce a protein that switches off little cellular units called mitochondria, which are the cells' power plants: they help turn nutrients into energy. When they're switched off, animals don't get an energy boost. Instead, the animals literally get warmer. And as their temperature rises, calories burn effortlessly.(See TIME's health and medicine covers.)

Because rodents have a lot of brown fat, it's very difficult to make them obese, even when you force-feed them in labs. But humans — we're pathetic. We have so little brown fat that researchers didn't even report its existence in adults until earlier this year. That's one reason humans can gain weight with just an extra half-muffin a day: we almost instantly store most of the calories we don't need in our regular ("white") fat cells.

All this helps explain why our herculean exercise over the past 30 years — all the personal trainers, StairMasters and VersaClimbers; all the Pilates classes and yoga retreats and fat camps — hasn't made us thinner. After we exercise, we often crave sugary calories like those in muffins or in "sports" drinks like Gatorade. A standard 20-oz. bottle of Gatorade contains 130 calories. If you're hot and thirsty after a 20-minute run in summer heat, it's easy to guzzle that bottle in 20 seconds, in which case the caloric expenditure and the caloric intake are probably a wash. From a weight-loss perspective, you would have been better off sitting on the sofa knitting.

Read the entire article in TIME Magazine.

The True Effects of Exercise and Weight Loss

Today, two of my clients gave me an interesting article: "Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin" by John Cloud (Time, August 9, 2009), in which the author states that weight loss usually does not occur when people exercise.

Needless to say, I take exception to this.

The author cited multiple medical studies in support of this conclusion. In a nutshell, the studies showed that weight loss was not typical for people in three different groups: sedentary people, fairly active people and those working with a personal trainer for an hour or more a day.

The author noted that, in many cases, people who regularly work out feel more hungry — which is true — and people who are hungry naturally eat. However, he concluded that if exercise makes you more hungry, you will eat more — and if you eat more, you won't lose weight.

This is not necessarily an accurate conclusion.

There are two important keys to weight loss the author did not seem to take into account:

• Calorie deficit — 3,500 calories equals a pound. You will gain one pound for every 3,500 calories you ingest above what you burn. Burn 3,500 calories more than you take in, you lose a pound.
• Raise your metabolism — eat five times a day, get enough sleep and drinking sufficient fluids.
  

I suspect the people in the studies were not monitored for sufficient sleep and fluid intake. They also probably ate three bigger meals, rather than five smaller meals. They might also have failed to eat light snacks after their workouts, which lowers the number of calories eaten at meals and cuts down on total daily calorie intake.

The author states that doctors recommended exercise to their patients for weight loss. With such dismal responses from the exercise study, why would doctors be so in favor of exercise for their patients? Drum roll please: because in addition to burning extra calories (remember that whole 3,500 calorie thing?), it's good for developing balance, building strength and improving overall daily living. In addition to recommending exercise to their patients, I am sure the doctors also discussed lifestyle changes and diet.

No doctor believes exercise alone is a prescription for weight loss. Even infomercials for exercise plans and fitness devices post disclaimers that include a nutrition plan and (subtly) remind viewers that the more fantastic results are not typical for most consumers.

In this Time article, the author correctly states that the people in the studies who filled out diet journals lost more weight than those who didn't keep a journal. Thinking about what you eat before you eat it definitely aids in cutting down on calories.

Trainers and doctors agree: exercise by itself is not the be-all and end-all to weight loss. (If it were, I am sure everyone would have gym memberships and personal trainers.) Without controlling calorie intake, getting enough sleep and drinking enough water, you most likely will not lose weight, no matter your exercise level.

Trainers assist you in this endeavor by providing more interesting and intense workouts than you would most likely provide yourself, which helps burn more calories and hopefully provides a calorie-deficit situation that allows for the possibility of weight loss. They also help you monitor your fluids and sleep, as well as other habits that might not be conducive to your goals.

In conclusion, the article was interesting, but misleading. Weight loss depends on multiple factors that need to all be considered for success.

Hydroxycut

Second in a series

In this blog, we are talking about supplements -- specifically, Hydroxycut.

I took Hydroxycut according to the instructions on the bottle, and I found that this product definitely raised my metabolism. I was so hungry 24/7 that on more than one occasion I thought I would eat my sneakers and socks. (My children will attest to what a hazard that would have been.)

I did not lose weight while using this product, but I discovered it does deliver on part of its claim. My workouts were a bit stronger. Hydroxycut did raise my metabolism -- enough to where I had a hard time balancing my calorie needs. I needed to eat more because my metabolism was in overdrive, but had I eaten as much as I had an appetite to, I would have gained weight.

While increased metabolism might seem like a good thing, the side effects can be a problem. Increased metabolism can increase a person's blood pressure and resting heart rate. I did not have these issues, but because these side effects could happen even to a healthy person, a trip to the physician before taking Hydroxycut is advised. (Frankly, visiting your physician before starting any new exercise program, diet or supplement program is strongly advised.)

A woman I work with swears by Hydroxycut, saying she said she has lost weight in a hurry while using it.

Bottom line: don't look for miracles. This product isn't that good. It may assist you in losing weight, but check with your physician. With as much as this product raises metabolism, blood pressure and heart issues may be a concern.

Next: protein shakes