Calorie Expenditure Throughout the Day; Are Exercising Calories all that Matters?

One common misconception is that the amount of calories you burn in the gym is most responsible for weight loss.  While not completely wrong, the amount of calories burned throughout the rest of the day (post-exercise) is equally if not more important ⁽¹⁾.  So the question is “why does this matter?”  It matters because choosing exercises that increase your expenditure throughout the day is what is going to help the most.  People usually think countless minutes on the treadmill, tons of reps in the gym, etc is what is going to help the most.  What helps the most is taking advantage of your time and eating correctly.  I’ll discuss a few tips on how to keep your metabolism up to help aid in your weight loss journey without sacrificing time.

            One area of being healthy that people take advantage of is nutrition.  They believe that if they shovel in copious amounts of protein that this will aid in muscle building or weight loss or both.  And while you do need extra protein to build muscle, an extraordinary amount will not keep adding muscle just because you’re taking it in.  There is a ceiling effect that takes place and you’ll basically be wasting money on extra meat or protein supplements.  The general RDA is around 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight (to get your body weight into kilograms take your weight in pounds, 180 for example, and divide by 2.2.  This would be 81 kgs for that same 180 pound person).  If you were 81 kg’s then that would equate to a protein intake of around 65 g/day.  This seems pretty low and you’d be right.  Keep in mind that this is the minimum amount for people who are sedentary, which you are not because you’re exercise…Right?!  Other research has been done to show that amounts up to 2.2 g/kg of protein (or about 1 g/lb of body weight) is the ceiling for muscle building.  In regards to weight loss one study found that protein timing plays a role in weight loss and resting energy expenditure ⁽²⁾.  Ingesting protein before your workout can actually help you burn more calories for the next 48 hours compared to a group who had carbohydrates only.  It’s important to have protein after your workout as well, but making sure you have protein throughout the day and before your workout is seen to be more important than originally thought. 

            Another way to keep calorie burning throughout the day is to try high intensity interval training (HIIT) ⁽³⁾.  By doing 3-4 all out, 100% effort sprints, you can actually lose similar amounts of weight and at times more than continuous aerobic exercise alone.  What’s great about HIIT is that it takes less time and has shown to be safe for most age groups and various health backgrounds.  And any safety concerns that arise are usually due to a lack of research in that specific group (I.e. elderly/cancer patients/etc).  Another great benefit to HIIT is that it can be done in the street as a traditional sprint (as long as no cars are coming), on a treadmill or a stationary bike.  So there really is no reason not to do them because any deficiency is covered within those various modalities. 

            Considering the info just spelled out, if you’re reading this then there is no reason not to go out and try some of these things out and try to get healthier!  Time is no longer an issue and you don’t necessarily need tons of protein so this will be easier on your wallet.

References

Melby, C., Eduwards, O., & Bullough, R. (1993). Effects of a Bout of Resistance Exercise on Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption and Resting Metabolic Rate. Journal of Applied Physiology, 75(4), 1847-1853.

Hackney, K., Bruenger, A., & Lemmer, J. (2010). Timing Protein Intake Increases Energy Expenditure 24 h after Resistance Training. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 42(5), 998-1003.

Gibala, M., & Mcgee, S. (2008). Metabolic Adaptations to Short-term High-Intensity Interval Training. Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews, 36(2), 58-63.

What's First; Weight loss or Muscle Building? An Opinion Piece

 Appetizer

Contrary to what I usually like to do, this entry will be more opinion based than anything.  What I write will be based in research, however, there will always be exceptions to a rule and people will always have “their way”.  The point of the entry is to get you thinking and exercise properly from the beginning instead of burning yourself out and stopping before you get started.  Don’t worry this will be short and sweet.

Main Course

So it’s your first week getting in the gym.  You want to “tone” up a bit, but notice there is a little bit of extra body fat that you want to get rid of before you start lifting.  Sounds like a fair argument and there is some solid research that states when body fat percentage is high then glucose utilization in the cell is impaired.  Basically what this means is that if the cell cannot use glucose (carbohydrates) then the remaining calories will be stored as fat, among other possible outcomes.  But how does this affect you and your exercise programming? Well, for most people they will get on the treadmill and sit on there for steady state exercise and not stimulate their body properly (check out past blog entries for some background to why this may be bad).  Besides the treadmill people will also join a fitness class or do lots of reps with less weight because that is how you “lean” out.  And what does this do? Does it burn calories? Sure, it does.  Will it impact your health such as hypertension, lipid profiles, etc? Yes, it will but technically speaking any movement will decrease these characteristics leading one to believe that any movement will help with health and that’s great.  But you want to look better on top of getting healthier.  So what these activities do is burn extra calories.  Burning calories sounds great, but it doesn’t build muscle.  Ironically it may not burn fat according to some recent research compared to other activities such as weight lifting and sprints (this will be out later this month).  In order to “look better” you must build muscle.  You will not be bulky.  You will not get “too big” because if that was the case then everyone would do one set of ten repetitions and wouldn’t be able to walk through the door the day after.  The body doesn’t work like that.  So get to lifting!

Dessert

“So, Matt what do I do?”  I’m pretty sure you know where I’m going with this if you’ve read any of my blogs… LIFT!  Use your time wisely and do what gets the most bang for you buck.  You need cardiovascular fitness and it’s very important, however, don’t ignore one in favor of the other.  Learn how to do both simultaneously and get the best workout possible for your goals.  I’ll update the next blog on ways to do this.