Week one

Juice plus sports - We were just notified of an upcoming event about "Living Life to the PLUS" with Dave O'Brien. Have you ever heard of him? He will be speaking at the Gwinnet Place Marriott Hotel on Monday August 15th at 7 pm. We have a few complementary tickets for anyone who might like to attend. All tickets must be accounted for since this will be a large event.

He has run over 400 races and appeared on two TV survival shows and he ran four dessert races (155miles each- Chile, Gobi, Sahara, Africa. His mission is to show the world what the body can do with good nutrition. The neat thing about him is he was never an athlete and just started running a few years ago. He is currently 58 and passing up all the younger, more fit kids who had much more training and experience running.

WEEK ONE

Monday - Old School Basic Training on Campus
Tuesday - Fitness Test plus diagonals
Wednesday - Beltline
Thursday - Jason's combinations
Friday - Garden Hills
Sat - Open Workout

American Medical Association: 60 minutes of exercise EVERY day


Written by Ilana Katz MS, RD, CSSD on March 30, 2010

American Medical Association: 60 minutes of exercise EVERY day or you will gain weight. Yikes! That bulletin was all over the news recently. If you are not excited about 60 minutes of exercise EVERY day – read this article thoroughly.


My first reaction was “that isn’t news, that study was published years ago”. I was surprised to see this bulletin “AMA: 60 minutes of exercise EVERY day “ on every news channel recently so I did a bit of investigation on your behalf.

The recommendation for 30 minutes of exercise a day we have become accustomed to is the amount needed to prevent disease and obtain other health benefits. The recommendation of 60 minutes of exercise a day I recalled is from a 2002 report by the Institute of Medicine which suggests 60 minutes of exercise a day are needed to prevent weight gain. In fact the recent study that made the news resulted from researchers questioning the 2002 report.

So what is the real scoop?

First, note that these recommendations are aimed at women who want to avoid weight gain but are not willing to change their diet.

Avoid weight gain by understanding the science behind energy balance.

The number of calories you eat and the number of calories you use each day controls your weight. Calories are a measure of energy. A calorie is loosely defined as a measurement of the energy needed to increase the temperature of a gram of water by 1 °C.

In your body stored calories are stored energy. Energy stored above and beyond what you need to get through the day we call fat.

1.If the calories you ingest EQUALS the calories you burn, your weight will stay the same. NO stored energy.

2.If the calories you ingest ARE GREATER THAN the calories you burn there is an increase in stored energy and you will gain weight. (Positive energy balance).

3.If the calories you ingest ARE LESS THAN the calories you burn there will be a decrease in stored energy and you will lose weight. (Negative energy balance)

So, to lose weight you need to take in fewer calories than you use.

You can lose weight by:
•becoming more physically active or
•by eating fewer calories.

Your choice.

Exercise or Diet?

To lose one pound of fat, you need to “burn” 3500 calories. (Roughly because it would take 3500 calories of heat energy to dissipate a pound of fat.) Do you know how many calories you burn running a mile? About 100.

What is 3500 / 100?

Thus, based on the energy equation, if you reduce your calories by 500 calories per day (3500 calories in a week) you can lose one pound of fat in that week. Or if you run 5 miles a day, you can burn the equivalent of 3500 calories in a week.

Conversely, if you eat an extra 3500 calories, you will gain one pound of fat. The equation is not that simple but it works as a base of measurement for you to reach your goal of losing weight.

Weight Loss success makes weight loss harder to maintain.

Weight loss studies have shown that when we diet, the weight we lose is on average 75 percent fat and 25 percent muscle. This is bad news, because the less muscle we have on our body the fewer calories we need to maintain our weight. So just when we have adjusted to a certain calorie intake we need LESS CALORIES just to maintain our weight!

The good news is, you can reduce this muscle loss by adding resistance or strength training to your regular exercise routine. Hence the recommendation by the AMA to do at least 60 minutes of exercise a day.

Most people have a hard time digesting this amount of exercise per day, and if this is just to maintain weight, imagine what it takes to then lose weight. Who has time for all the extra working out?

How much exercise do I need?

Now there are some flaws to this overly general recommendation from the AMA today.

The intensity level in the AMA study was defined as moderate, but what if the intensity were high, very high in fact, like in the interval training work outs I provided to you recently. Would the duration still need to be 60 minutes a day?

Other than initial weight and intensity, other complexities that would need to be accounted for in determining “how much” exercise is enough include age, lifestyle (many people start an overall healthy program and thus incorporate a healthy eating plan simultaneously), history (for example an eating disorder history could play havoc on an individual’s metabolism, and it may take a lot more exercise to burn calories than average), etc.

Men have it easier when it comes to losing weight

An important point to note is that men do not have to do as much exercise as women to get the same weight management results. This too has a science factor behind it. Men have larger muscle groups and carry more weight on average for stature, than women. Therefore a women’s initial body weight would also add a factor into how many calories she burns per hour. Larger and leaner bodies burn more calories than smaller and or less muscular bodies.

So… What Do I DO?

There is so much variation on individuals and their metabolic rates, that stating 60 minutes of exercise is the magic number, seems somewhat out there. However, the take home message is solidified in science and that is that one does need a calorie deficit to lose weight. Whether the caloric deficit comes from:

1.Finding out your individual calorie requirements based on body composition goals as described in the Metabolic Boost program to raise your metabolism

2.Move intensely for a shorter duration by seeing how to burn fat

3.Move less intensely for a longer duration

As long as you take action, you can lose weight. Read what these people did to lose weight. Remember, nothing changes if nothing changes.