Nutritional Foods

Metabolism

Does it often seem that some people just have an easier time keeping weight off? Some of that is due to metabolism. The Webster dictionary definition is  “the sum of the processes in the buildup and destruction of protoplasm specifically : the chemical changes in living cells by which energy is provided for vital processes and activities and new material is assimilated. Regular exercise can help to increase your metabolism”.

Researching other references on metabolism such as the Mayo Clinic, reveals that there is no magic bullet such as dietary supplements that are advertised to increase your metabolic rate. In fact some studies reveal that some of these are not approved and can actually be harmful. The simplest explanation for keeping your weight in check is to burn more calories than you consume.

At GPT, our personal trainers educate students on proper diet and then introduce them to HIIT.

STEP 1 – DIET AND NUTRITION

The quantity and quality of the food you put in your body will always be the most important factor of any weight loss program. This is because it’s much easier to cut calories than it is to burn them off. “You can’t out work a bad diet.” One quarter pounder with cheese is over 500 calories. This means you would have to run over 4 miles to erase the burger you had for lunch.

At GPT, we design custom meal plans to ensure our clients stay within their caloric and macronutrient guidelines. By doing so, we can take a scientific, data-based approach to weight loss. Most people we encounter have no idea whatsoever how many calories, or how many carbohydrate grams they consume daily. We can’t determine how many calories to burn if we don’t know what your intake is. It’s also difficult to determine how much to decrease your food intake since we don’t know where we’re starting. We also encourage our clients to utilize the thermic properties of food by eating as frequently as possible. Our meal plans allow clients to eat 6-8 times per day while staying within their caloric and macronutrient guidelines. Every time you consume food your body must convert that food into energy, which gives a jolt to your metabolism. We can manipulate this into additional fat loss by eating controlled portions every 2-3 hours and keeping our metabolism peaked all day.

STEP 2 – STRENGTH TRAINING

A proper strength training regimen is the best way to simultaneously add lean muscle, lose inches and decrease body fat. Primarily because of muscle’s impact on your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). A pound of muscle burns 3-4 times more calories per day than a pound of fat. The metabolic demand of muscle is significantly greater than it is for fat, therefore the amount of energy (calories) needed to maintain that pound of muscle is higher than that of a pound of fat. Muscle is constantly being broken down, recreated, and synthesized, and all these processes require energy. The more muscle you have, the more energy required. So, by building more muscle, you’re stoking the fires of your metabolism and increasing your resting metabolic rate. By burning more calories at rest, you’re now increasing your caloric deficit, which will stimulate weight loss. The more muscle you have the more calories you burn throughout the day. Plain and simple.

Another useful side effect of strength training in creating a caloric deficit is the EPOC effect. EPOC, or the “Afterburn Effect”, refers to the increased number of calories your body burns after a workout as it recovers from the stress placed on it during training. When your body recovers from exercise, your oxygen consumption and calorie burn are elevated for up to 24 hours. This is because after exercise your body must work harder to repair muscle damage and restore cellular function to their pre-exercise levels. The more intense and physically demanding the workout, the greater the EPOC will be. A 30-minute treadmill walk is going to elicit a significantly less post workout calorie burn than a 30 min HIIT training session.

At GPT, we specifically design our fat loss training programs to maximize the metabolic boosting forces of muscle mass, both in the immediate and long term. Every strength training session is designed to optimize muscle hypertrophy, functional strength, and caloric output, both during and after the workout.

STEP 3 – METABOLIC CONDITIONING

At GPT, we advise our weight loss clients to move away from traditional cardio and focus instead on metabolic conditioning. Traditional cardio training refers to the workouts you see most people doing at the gym. Walking on the treadmill, coasting on the elliptical, riding a recumbent bike while reading, etc. Traditional cardio is aerobic rather than anaerobic, moderate rather than intense, steady state rather than intervals, and focused on duration rather than intensity. These days everyone has an Apple Watch or Fitbit to track their daily steps and calories burned. While it is encouraging to see people taking pride in being more active, these devices are flawed tools if the goal is weight and fat loss.

We know a caloric deficit is the requirement for weight loss, but did you know that only 15% of your daily calories are burned through physical activity, while 75% are burned by your natural resting metabolism? So, what is a more efficient approach to maximize our caloric output throughout the day – to focus on the 15% or the 75%? Burning calories during our cardio is great, but we can create a much more impactful effect on our overall caloric output if we boost our resting metabolism in the process.

This is why GPT clients, are taught to do metabolic conditioning rather than traditional cardio. Examples of this would be HIIT training (high intensity interval training), sprint interval training, strength circuit training, or max intensity distance cardio (example would be running 3 miles as fast as you can, rather than pacing yourself in order to run 4-5 miles). All of these methods are designed to maximize the calories burned both during and after the session. By prioritizing intensity over duration our clients increase their resting metabolism for up to 24 hours post workout. When metabolic conditioning is used in combination with a well-designed strength training program, and proper fat loss diet, the results on body composition are truly amazing. Contact the GPT team, and begin your weight loss journey today!!

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