Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Metabolism & Weight Loss

I recently attended a seminar on metabolism and weight loss and gathered some great information.  Here are some highlights:


Eating breakfast increases metabolic rate by 5% while skipping meals slows down metabolic rate.

Eating too little (=deprivation) triggers your body's survival mechanism, dropping your metabolic rate by an average of 15%. With consistent deprivation over time, the body becomes very efficient at storing body fat, i.e. a larger percentage of the food you eat is stored as fat.

Eighty to ninety percent of weight loss is due to how and what you eat; the remaining 10-20% is exercise.

Exercise is crucial to maintaining weight/weight loss.

The more fit you become, the more efficient you become at burning calories and fat; a fit person will enter the fat burning stage sooner in her or his workout than a non-fit person.

Trained v. untrained individuals use more fat at rest (saving glucose stores), burn more fat at any level of intensity, and mobilize fat sooner and more efficiently while exercising.

Weight training, when performed correctly, prevails as the higher intensity exercise over moderate aerobic exercise.  Studies show that more calories are spent during weight training, and more fat is burned during the recovery period.

An effective workout schedule (for those who have time): Five to six days a week for about 45 minutes; weight training three of those days and aerobic exercise the other three days.

The best combined workout: Research now shows that weight training first followed by aerobic exercise will give the best results. Yes--it's better to have a stronger weight training session and a weaker aerobic session than the other way around.  I suggest 30 minutes of weight training followed by 30 minutes of aerobic exercise.


Please remember that maintaining or increasing lean muscle mass increases your metabolic rate!

The thyroid controls metabolic rate by releasing the hormone thyroxin. For as many as 20% of women, thyroxin may be too low, reducing metabolic rate. This may cause weight gain as well as depression and high cholesterol. When the thyroxin count falls into the normal range, but is approaching outside of normal, doctors have started to prescribe medication with positive results. You need to keep track of your numbers; don't expect your doctor to do this.

Exercising for an hour a day with no other activity (sitting the rest of the day) will burn less calories than not exercising for an hour and spending the rest of your day actively. Bottom line: everyone should increase their activities of daily living.


Happy fat burning! -- Jeanie

4 comments:

Marguerite said...

Congrats on the blog! I had absolutely no idea that strength training burned more calories than aerobics. After reading portions of your blog, I am inspired to begin my training sessions at the gym!

Unknown said...

Hi Jeanie!
I really like your content. I agree with everything - as long as you never spoil dark chocolate for me!

Jeanie Simoncic, NSCA-CPT, IBNFC NC said...

I will never spoil dark chocolate for any of us!

Audrey said...

Hi Jeanie, I really appreciate the information you publish re: the proper way to exercise and tips on nutrition as I am a firm believer in taking responsibility for my own health and well-being, so thanks for facilitating my ability to do that. And keep publishing!