Eggs...The Health Benefit

Eggs used to have the reputation as a major contributor to heart disease...however current research is stating that "this is just not true!" Here are a few myths that the research pointed out is not true....
Myth number 1: Making egggs a regular part of your diet leads to heart disease.
Fact: Eating one egg per day barely effects your risk of heart disease, while factors such as physical inactivity and obesity increase it as much as 40%, according to a recent study. The American Heart Association, however, does recommend keeping cholesterol to less than 300 mg a day-- so limit yourself to one whole egg daily(the yolk contains approximately 213mg).

Myth number 2: Egg yolks aren't healthy.
Fact: The yellow center is a rare source of vitamin D; just one has 20iu as well as vitamin B12 and choline, among other nutrients. To keep cholesterol intake down, make your omelet with one whole egg and two whites, and watch the cholesterol at the rest of your meals.

With these myths and facts, I think it is safe to assume that eating eggs in moderation is not only healthy, but safe.

Protein shake or Meal Replacement

Any assumption about a protein shake
before sleep is correct.

As for post-workout, this is not entirely true. There is no sudden burst of muscle-making after a workout. Building muscle tissue is a 24-hour process, so getting adequate protein throughout the day is far more critical than the window after a workout
. You simply need a few grams of protein to replace what was burned as energy and you're good to go. The most important nutrient after a workout is carbohydrate. While muscle rebuilding takes place over 24 - 72 hours following a workout, there is a window of a few hours where your muscles are "primed" to take in carbohydrates that were depleted during training. For this reason, you'll find the more superior-formulated post-workout shakes (i.e. Top Form Meal Replacement) contain about a 2:1 carb-protein ratio to supply just enough protein but plenty of carbohydrate to refuel your muscles.

Aside from perhaps extra protein (and again, getting it from whole food sources is superior, but if you are having trouble consuming adequate protein from whole foods, then supplementing is certainly fine) a quality multi is beneficial, not a topic for this thread, if you search, you'll see tons of conversations about this (Men's and Woman's Mutlivitamin).

For your protein before bed, I do Top Form Only Whey combined with some sort of fiber or high quality fat. You want something slower-relasing, like a whole food protein or if you get a shake, a blend that contains some casein, perhaps hydrolyzed beef plasma, etc. We use a brand from Top Form Nutrition Supplements, a top quality blend that tastes incredible.

What Is Spot Reduction?

The question often arises with clients about losing fat in a specific part of their body. They want to know if they do crunches will they lose belly fat? The answer is maybe but unlikely. You see spot reduction is not real. Working certain muscles will not burn fat around those muscles. Your body burns fat where it is going to burn fat...meaning genetics will determine where on your body you burn the fat from. We know however that large muscle groups like your legs, chest, and back will burn a lot of overall calories which in turn means burning fat. This is why it is important to use large muscle groups in a fat loss program. Working small individual muscles is fine, but you need to make sure your foundation to your weight training is the large muscle groups!

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Why is drinking water important for losing fat?

Oxidation of fat creates waste products. You need water to help flush them. The reaction that uses fat for fuel also involves water, so if you are dehydrated, there is a chance you won't burn as much fat. When you train, you deplete your muscles of glycogen.

The only way for glycogen to get back into the muscle is through glucose bound to water, so without enough water, you won't get the fuel to your muscles that need it. Water is what the body uses to manipulate the charge inside and outside of the cell to drive nutrients and and waste products out.

Without water, you are potentially not delivering the nutrients your body needs to burn fat
.

Should I stop lifting heavy when my goal is to burn fat?

Two things happen when you lift heavier - you burn more calories and you burn more calories longer after the lift. In other words, lifting 200 pounds 5 times will burn more calories than lifting 100 pounds 10 times, even though the workload is the same. This is because of the way your anaerobic system is taxed, changes to your heart rate, the way the body accumulates what is known as "oxygen debt" and how the body pays off that debt using EPOC (exercise post-oxygen consumption).

So if your goal is to burn more calories, a super-circuit at a quicker pace will actually burn less calories. Lifting hard and heavy will burn the most calories during the lift and keep your metabolism elevated the longest.

What Exactly Is Cardio?

Cardio is really a modern term that has grown to replace aerobic exercise. To avoid the stigma of the aerobic craze of the 70s people switched to cardio when discussing it relative to fitness and strength-training programs to disassociate with the aerobics-only phenomenon.

Cardio is short for cardiovascular exercise which means really any exercise that benefits the heart. This used to be mainly aerobic training but now research suggests that weight lifting also benefits the heart - this is an example of a phrase that became popular before science could really validate it.

Aerobic exercise is any sustainable activity that utilizes oxygen (ergo the burning of fat) for a primary source of fuel. Weight lifting that is intense and in short duration will primarily use stored glycogen and the ATP-CP pathway (intramuscular energetics with creatine phosphate that - adenosine triphosphate or ATP is broken to adenosine diphosphate and this releases energy. To rebuild ADP to ATP, the CP is split, lending the extra phosphate moelcule needed for ADP to become ATP and thereby fuel another reaction).

Now, this definition is muddied because you can have weight training i.e. longer sets that actually use oxygen and are therefore more aerobic (take circuit training, for example, when people aren't using a heavy load). You can also have what is traditionally thought of as cardio i.e. sprints that can be anaerobic depending on the rest. If the heart rate is allowed to lower between the intervals followed by maximum output then you are more in the anaerobic/glycolytic range. If you are only doing intervals but the heart does not drop substantially then you are going to be in more of a cardio range.

Basically, and this is a nutshell, oversimplifying because I've already gotten quite technical, there are primarily three systems that fuel energy. ALL energy systems are used to some extent, but various activity will use more of one or the other.

Anything lasting just a few seconds is going to be primarily anaerobic and use the ATP-CP system. This includes weight lifting, where the reps last a few seconds and are maximal bouts of output. Active rest occurs between the repetitions and then actual rest occurs between the sets. Shot-put, 50 yard-dash, weight lifting, olympic lifting, power-lifting are all examples of this.

Anything lasting a few minutes is primarily the glycolytic system where lactic acid is utilized to generate energy. This would be prolonged bouts such as sprints, longer weight lifting sets, etc. Basketball (run down court, then stay at the court = submaximal bout followed by active rest), and Soccer are examples of this.

Anything beyond that first few minutes must utilize oxygen turnover and therefore you are in the aerobic zone. This would be longer runs, rowing, hiking, etc.

Now, keep in mind there is no black and white with this - you still cross over into multiple systems. The reason why HIIT is more cardio than, say, a 20 minute weight training session, is that in HIIT on the slower intervals you are still performing work. Your heart rate drops somewhat but doesn't drop a lot and therefore is still elevated in its output - this means that oxygen must fuel the process. On the other hand, in typical weight training, you are resting between sets which allows adequate recovery for the heart rate to slow while the muscle energetics replenish themselves.
A long weight training session with short rest and a lot of supersets is going to be aerobic at the same time as being anaerobic during the sets - you are anaerobic to explosively move the weight but because you are not allowing your heart rate to drop significantly between bouts of work the entire workout becomes more aerboic. Dave Draper was a huge advocate of this method of training and felt you could build muscle and stay lean or even burn fat simultaneously by supersetting a lot. Looking at his physique I don't doubt there is some validity there.

Hope that helps - if you really want to dig into the details just search on ATP-CP or muscular energetics and you can get some good primers. Of course, then you might be forced to look into the Krebs Cycle and other pathways of metabolism and discover just why it is a gross oversimplification for people to say "this exercise burns muscle" or "if you exercise on an empty stomach your body is forced to burn fat"

A Real Client Post From Our Social Site

Well . . . I did it! I officially admitted to another live human being that I am NOT happy with my current state of health AND that I don't seem to be able to do anything about it by myself! As I drove to my appointment with Total Health & Fitness consultant Rick Plenert, I felt as if I was going to my own execution!

But I wasn't prepared for what actually did happen. Rick sat and talked to me about my current health (please note: I said "health" not "weight"!). Next he weighed and measured me, and believe it or not I wasn't embarrassed or ashamed! Don't get me wrong . . . it was a REAL reckoning to see my statistics IN black & white, ON paper. But as I sat there with Rick looking at numbers that seemed gargantuan to me, I noticed a smile on Rick's face.

No, it wasn't a smirk! It wasn't a put-down! Rick was smiling because, as he explained, my "current condition" happens to be something that can be dealt with and managed with real, positive results. As he explained, most people see their current weight or health as something depressing and defeating. But by working with Rick and THF on a health program designed just for me, I will begin to learn the skills and information to put myself in my best possible condition! Suddenly, I noticed something I hadn't felt for a long, long time . . . HOPE!

So I'm sitting here with my 0.5 cup of cottage cheese and my 1 sm tomato (which happens to be one of my favorite treats!) and a binder that contains the beginnings of a new life for me. I REALLY want this. I'm going to give it everything I've got. And if you don't mind checking in from time to time to laugh and cry with me . . . and giggle along the way, I'd love to have you see how it works for me. Let me know how it is working for you, or if you'd like to see how THF could work for you!

You know, this doesn't feel like an execution after all . . . it may even be the beginning!
~Tracy

View Tracy's Page - click here

Egg whites or whole eggs?

Both. The yolk contains some fat, but fat is not the enemy - fat has a stigma attached to it from the decades of "low fat" advice that basically allowed the obesity and overweight levels in the U.S. climb so you can see how effective that advice was. Eggs are often hailed for their high quality of protein, but few people realize that these tests are with the whole egg. It actually loses value when you only eat the yolk. The yolk contains nearly half the protein, fats, and healthy antioxidants such as Vitamin E. Eggs from free range or grain-fed chickens are superior in quality.

Traditionally, the yolk was shunned for cholesterol diet, another old myth that is dying hard - for more information on why you needn't worry about the cholesterol in egg yolks, read this:

Harvard Article

How do I lose fat without losing lean mass and still gain strength?

There is often some confusion about lean mass. Most people look to lean mass religiously as muscle mass, which it is not. It is everything that is not fat, and this includes water and other items. Fat cells are composed of some water, so if you lose a large amount of fat, you will lose lean mass - but not muscle, as most would think, simply water weight.

I'm sure all of you are focused on muscle mass. Provided you stimulate the muscles through resistance training and don't lose weight too quickly, you can retain or even gain muscle tissue. The issue comes when people are impatient and want to lose at some marathon pace ... your body can only process so much fat per week, so when you push the limit beyond about 1 - 2 percent of your weight each week, you risk losing muscle mass in the process.

Total Health & Fitness Online Community

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Click here to view and become part of our new online community. We'd love to see and hear from everyone.

What's the best way to get rid of "love handles?"

How to get rid of love handles? You need to lose weight. And twisting is not going to get rid of them. If anything, twisting will increase the size of your obliques, and make your love handles more pronounced.

The only way to get rid of love handles is to lose fat. There is no spot reducing. If you still have them, you still have fat to lose.

I know, I store fat in my love handles before anything else.

Fortunately, you've come to the right place to learn how to get rid of love handles.