Exercising More Did Not Bring About the Desired Results

This year I thought I would do a little experiment.  A couple years ago, I remember cycling 25 or more kilometres every day for 30 days in a row.  I thought that I would drop a few pounds.  It didn't work.

When I went to see my doctor, I brought up my frustration.  She told me that my body was extremely efficient stocking fat.  In other words, I have a thrifty metabolism.  She went on to say that I would have to give up most carbs.

Thanks a lot doc.  I think that I would rather stay heavy.

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Sooner or Later We Discover that We Can't Train Our Way Out of a Poor Diet

Well this year, I thought I would try something different.  I had already cut back on a lot of carbs.  I was avoiding bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, and pastries.  Moreover, I was cycling again, around 100 kilometers per week.  This was over and above, the 10 kilometers a day I was walking.  Taking into consideration, the calories in, calories out prescription, the pounds should have melted off me.

No such luck.

I must say that I did let a few carbs slip back into my diet, a third of a cup of oats in the morning and some flavoured yoghurt (I know that the yoghurt has sugar added).  But hey, with the amount of exercise I was doing, that shouldn't have impeded my progress.

But it did.

Before hopping back on my bike, I had already reached a plateau concerning my weight loss -- I had lost 30 pounds in the previous 6 months.  I could rationalize and say that the additional exercise produced more muscle mass that negated the weight I lost from losing fat.

Maybe, just maybe there was something else at work.  Indeed, perhaps the whole calorie in, calorie out approach is a sham.  In fact this is the claim made by Jonathan Bailor in his wonderful book, The Calorie Myth: How to Eat More, Exercise Less, Lose Weight, and Live Better.  I highly recommend that you give it a read.

Bailor asserts that our bodies are not calculators, adding and subtracting calories incessantly.  Instead, our bodies are genetically programmed to seek homeostasis and to maintain our body set weight.

Try as we may, our bodies will fight off any attempt to lose body fat that simply focuses on eating less and exercising more.  Losing weight? Well let's just lower the basal metabolic rate to compensate for the reduced caloric intake.  And if that's not enough, let's increase the production of the hunger hormone ghrelin and lower the effect of the hormone leptin, which tells you that you are full and to stop eating.

For Bailor, it's not about calories in and calories out.  It's all about the hormones, and in particular, it's 90% about what we eat and how it affects our endocrine system.  In summary, if you want to lose weight and keep it off, you are going to have to undo the damage, otherwise known as metabolic syndrome, that your bad eating habits have brought about.

Essentially, you need to change what you eat and how you exercise, focusing on quality instead of quantity.

What do you have to lose? Give it a try!

I have and in the first five days of adopting Bailor's suggested regime, I lost two pounds and broke through the 255 pound barrier for the first time.

At the moment, I am concentrating my efforts on eating very well, more protein and non-starchy vegetables.  I am refocusing my energy so that I am even more disciplined regarding what I eat, knowing that pressing on this lever brings about better results than increasing the distance that I cover on foot and on my bike.

So far, so good.  You know that I will keep you posted.

Welcome to Winnipeg Homeboy

Well, I made it.  Two thousand, one hundred and twenty-four kilometres later, I can say that since the beginning of the year I have walked the equivalent of the distance from Ottawa to my home town of Winnipeg.

Over and above having achieved my first SMART goal of the year, I have also cycled just over 1000 kilometres, mostly to and from work.  As you can imagine, I'm getting pretty fit and am experiencing some of the benefits that getting into decent shape can bring.

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Walking to Winnipeg

Walking to Winnipeg: Welcome to Wawa

For instance, during my trip to New York City, I was able to explore the city first hand, walking more than 15 kilometres a day in the heat of summer.  As well, upon my return I dug out a 12x12 foot space for my future stone garden by myself with just a shovel and a wheel barrow.  It was tough slogging because I had to excavate about 5 cubic yards of compacted earth.  Not bad for someone who will be celebrating his 57th birthday later this year.

Perhaps, the biggest payoff from having made significant changes to my lifestyle -- which I could sum up with the simple phrase: move more and eat better -- is that I will be wearing my favorite tailored suit that I haven't been able to wear for ten years as I attend my step-daughter officially being called to the Bar, the culmination of her many years of hard work to get through law school.

I think that we both can be proud of what we have accomplished.  I also know that to reach my destination of being fit and slim I too will need to sustain my efforts and show perseverance in order to achieve a most worthy goal.

To Reap the Benefits From Your Workouts You Need To Be Moving Throughout the Day

Now that summer is upon us and I have been on my bike for a few weeks, I am reminded how important it is to be physically active on a daily basis.  Specifically, we need to be moving throughout the day not just when we make it to the gym or play our favorite sports.

As we grow older, the North American lifestyle takes it toll, especially for those of us who are raising kids and holding down a full-job.  On the one hand, we spend a great deal of time driving to and from work, the daycare or school, and ferrying our kids to their organized activities.  On the other, we our glued to our computer screens during the day and then add on extra hours using our portable devices or crashing out on the couch watching HD TV.  To say the least, this is a sedentary lifestyle.

If you where a tracking device, it doesn't take long to realize that a so-called normal day means taking about only 3000-4000 steps.  For me that means burning somewhere around 2300 calories for the day.  Adding in two or three workouts is not enough to counterbalance the lack of physical activity as I carry on during the week.

Say that I work out twice and burn an extra 700 calories per session, add some extra calories burned after the workouts due to an increase in my metabolic rate, but minus the extra calories I consume due to my increase in appetite.  All in all, I would estimate that the workouts bring about a very modest calorie deficit of only 1000 calories.

In other words, with such a low baseline of daily activity, the two workouts will have a negligible effect if any on my body weight and composition.

However, if I increase my activity level to taking 12,000 steps a day, I now burn about 3400 calories a day.  In this scenario, my workouts now create a significant calorie deficit.

For example, going to and from my work is about 28 kms.  This works out to be an extra 850 calories burned each day that I commute by bike.  In the best case scenario, weather permitting, I commute five times during the week while maintaining the same number of steps taken daily.  On these days, I burn well over 4000 calories each day.

Of course, it is imperative not to significantly increase calorie consumption, and I am able to do this but sticking to a slow carb regime that severely limits my intake of high glycemic carbs contained in bread, rice, potatoes, sugar, and refined flour products.  Instead, I fill up with about 7 to 8 portions of fruit and vegetables per day in addition to the two portions of protein that I consume.

So far so good and I am looking forward to getting back to you by the end of the summer with a portrait of my results.

Falling Into the Fat Trap

This week we saw some startling figures concerning obesity rates around the world.

Researchers found more than 2 billion people worldwide are now overweight or obese. The highest rates were in the Middle East and North Africa, where nearly 60 per cent of men and 65 per cent of women are heavy. The U.S. has about 13 per cent of the world's fat population, a greater percentage than any other country. China and India combined have about 15 per cent.

So, in other words, if you are feeling like a fatso, you are not alone; you are a member of the 2billion person club.

Given the incredible advances in science, how come we aren't able to help people maintain a healthy weight?

In a nutshell, for most of the last century, our understanding of the cause of obesity has been based on immutable physical law. Specifically, it’s the first law of thermodynamics, which dictates that energy can neither be created nor destroyed.

When it comes to body weight, this means that calorie intake minus calorie expenditure equals calories stored. Surrounded by tempting foods, we overeat, consuming more calories than we can burn off, and the excess is deposited as fat. The simple solution is to exert willpower and eat less.

 

The problem is that this advice doesn’t work, at least not for most people over the long term.

 

According to Dr. Mark Hyman, the average person gains five pounds for every diet that they go on.  Even worse, when the lose weight, they lose muscle and fat.  When they regain the weight, they gain back all fat.  And since muscle burns seven times as many calories as fat, their metabolism is slower than when they started the diet.  The cruel fact is that they need even less calories to maintain their weight.

 

But what, as was pointed out in a recent NY Times article, we’ve confused cause and effect? What if it’s not overeating that causes us to get fat, but the process of getting fatter that causes us to overeat?

 

This is what I call the fat trap, a percentage of body fat that alters significantly a person's metabolism, rendering the person metabolically inefficient, a downward spiral in which the person gets fatter and fatter.

 

According to this alternative view, factors in the environment have triggered fat cells in our bodies to take in and store excessive amounts of glucose and other calorie-rich compounds.

 

Since fewer calories are available to fuel metabolism, the brain tells the body to increase calorie intake (we feel hungry) and save energy (our metabolism slows down).

 

Eating more solves this problem temporarily but also accelerates weight gain. Cutting calories reverses the weight gain for a short while, making us think we have control over our body weight, but predictably increases hunger and slows metabolism even more.

 

In other words, once you have fallen into the fat trap, it is extremely difficult to get out.  Quick fix solutions like diets only make things worse.  It's as if once your fat cells reach a critical mass, they take over, forcing you to feed them so they can multiply over and over again until you can no longer see your nether regions.

 

Alas, all hope is not lost, but if you are going to climb out of the fat trap, it is going to take a major transformation of your lifestyle.  Counting calories is not going to work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walking to Winnipeg: Welcome to Wawa

Half Way There!

For anyone who has driven across Ontario, the town of Wawa with its massive Canada Goose statue is often a welcome site because it is more or less half way.  As a result, there are probably more motel rooms per capita there than any other town in Canada.

Having received my 1000 kilometer badger from Fitbit today tells me that I've made it to Wawa.  Not bad for three months of walking.  Since the beginning of the year, I have averaged just a little over 10 kilometers a day. 

Now that I'm about half way to Winnipeg, I am pretty confident that I'll make it there in a few more months.  One thing that will slow my progress is that with Spring arriving, I'll be commuting to work on my bicycle, which will means less distance covered on foot.

At the moment, I'm looking at my options for tracking my distance by bike.  It would be nice to know at the end of the year how many kilometres I covered on two wheels and on two feet.

Just in case your wondering, I've dropped 8 pounds since I began my trek.  Hopefully, I can continue to shed more by the time I reach my goal of arriving in the Paris of the Prairies.

Is Walking Just as Good as Running?

I thought I would share this article that I came across in the US News, Health and Wellness section.

A May 2013 study by researchers in the Life Science Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory looked at data from 33,000 runners and nearly 16,000 walkers to compare the relative health benefits of each activity. From the outside it might seem like running – which is considered a vigorous intensity exercise – must be better for you than walking, a moderate form of exercise. But the results bore out differently, with walking taking a slight edge in the end. But there's a big if, so keep reading.

To be sure, both walking and running had positive effects. When the researchers checked in with participants six years after the start of the study, they found that running significantly reduced the risk of high blood pressure (by 4.2 percent), high cholesterol (4.3 percent), diabetes (12.1 percent) and cardiovascular heart disease (4.5 percent), for every MET h/d, which is a standard measure of metabolic energy expenditure. Great news, right? Well, it gets even better.

Participants who walked regularly saw even better results. Walking decreased risk by 7.2 percent for high blood pressure, 7 percent for high cholesterol, 12.3 percent for diabetes and 9.3 percent for cardiovascular heart disease. The more someone walked or ran, the greater the benefit.











  

Breaking Through A Weight Loss Plateau

Eventually, it happens.  After a great start, where the pounds are shed easily, our bodies react and the weight loss tails off or stalls altogether.

In my case, after losing about 25 pound in about 12 weeks, I hit a plateau,  I've been stuck there for about 4 weeks.  In short, my weight, taken once a week, would fluctuate between 258 and 262 pounds, in what seemed to be a random fashion.  It wasn't as if I was periodically binging out and that some bad food choices were causing me to gain weight during one week or another.  My exercise regime was the same and I stuck to my new way of eating.

Was this my dreaded body set weight that would doom me to remain at an unsatisfactory weight?  If so, it would have been a major defeat.

Fortunately, I took a close look at what has worked previously and what had changed since then.  Most probably, I had let enough calories sneak back into my diet thereby negating my daily calorie deficit.  The culprits?  Too many mixed nuts and my power oatmeal breakfast supplemented with coconut oil and whey protein powder.

To remedy the situation, I decided to change my snack from mixed nuts to natural, unsalted almonds and to go back to eating Greek yogurt with berries and a few walnuts for breakfast.  At the same time, I continued to walk about 70-80 kilometres a week and to do one strength training session and one metabolic training session per week.  This way, I would know whether it was the change to my diet that affected any change in weight.

Sure enough, I started to drop more weight, falling from 258 to 255.  Although this might not seem like a lot, after four weeks of being stuck on a plateau, it brought welcome relief and definitely picked up my spirits.

Now that spring has finally arrived, I plan on sticking with my recent changes to my diet and adding a cycling regime to my exercise habits.  In the past, I have been able to control my weight by commuting to work on my bike.  Yet, I have never combined being very physically active with a slow carb approach to eating.  Previously, I always used exercise to give me a carte blanche with regard to my food choices.

As you could probably imagine, I'm looking forward to getting back on the saddle to see where this new combination can take me.

Walking to Winnipeg

Depending on who you talk to, people will tell you that it is important to set goals, especially when it comes to fitness: how much weight, how much time, how often, how far, etc.  I tend not to do this because, for the most part, it isn't that big of a deal for me to get to the gym, hop on my bike, or go for a walk.  For me, the challenge is much more about what type of food and how much I eat.

Nevertheless, now that I am monitoring the distance that I walk each day with my Fitbit and look at the bar graphs detailing my data concerning steps taken, distance covered, calories burned, and active minutes, I have a very good idea on what would be a challenging but achievable goal.

At the end of March, it will have been three months that I have tracked how far I walk each day.  Last week, I passed the 500 mile mark, which means that by the end of the month, I will have walked about 1000 kilometres -- not too shabby at all.

Doing the math, if I maintain this rate, by the end of the year I will have walked approximately 4000 kilometres, which is the equivalent of walking from where I live, on the Quebec/Ontario border, crossing the entire province of Ontario, to arrive in my hometown of Winnipeg and back again.

Last summer, we drove from Gatineau to Winnipeg to attend my niece's wedding -- two very long days of driving just to get there.  As a result, no one in the family ever wants to do that it again.  Next time we'll fly.

So, when I tell my family that I'm walking to Winnipeg, they think I've flipped.  That's a hell of a long way.  Then, I tell them that I am going to walk, over the course of the year, the equivalent of walking the round trip one step at a time, day in day out, wherever I find myself.

They get it.  They can make the connection between the total distance covered on foot over 12 months and the hellish experience of driving across Ontario, the land of what seems to be endless rocks and trees and bogs and lakes.

I also tell them that along the way, I am not going to be stopping at Tim Hortons, MacDonalds, or anywhere for pizza.  No way.  Yogurt and berries for breakfast, salad for lunch, and either lean meat or fish with vegetables for supper.  No bread, rice, potatoes, or pasta.  Nothing with added sugar or refined flour.  Plenty of fruit, nuts, coffee, some dairy, and the occasional bar of dark chocolate and a glass of red wine.

Along the way, I am going to stop at a gym to work out twice a week, one workout lifting heavy weights, another doing high intensity intervals.

Finally, now that I am middle-aged, I'll be taking vitamin D, fish oil, and alpha lipoic acid to combat inflammation.

I like to imagine my efforts to reach my destination of being physically fit sets me out on a return voyage back to my home town -- back to a place and time where in fact I was slim and fit before leaving to seek my fortune.

I hope I can recapture that part of my past.