Myths

Is BMI and accurate way to assess your health?

I’ve often been heard bemoaning the use of “BMI” (body mass index) to quantify health for people, and I get asked why. After all, doctors use BMI to determine health of children and adults alike. It’s including in scientific studies about obesity and overall health. How bad can it be?

Really, really bad.

First, let’s look at how you calculate your BMI. Find a happy little calculator and input your height and weight (sometimes age and gender) and it will spit out a number. You then compare this number to a pre-set list of other numbers that tell you if you’re underweight, just right, overweight or obese.

The calculator did not take into account: body fat percentage, lung capacity, VO2 max, etc.

You see where I’m going with this? Let me use some great examples.

This website lists people at all heights, genders and weights with their pictures. Browse around. Look at someone your height and weight – do any of them look anything alike? Nope. Do they look like you? Nope. So, if people of the same height and weight look drastically different, how can a calculator using only these two figures determine health?

It can’t.

 At my lowest weight my BMI put me at “healthy,” despite eating every other day or eating 500 calories a day. My highest weight puts me near the overweight category, despite having run a few 5k’s and being able to squat almost twice my body weight. BMI is a horrible indicator of anything – health, weight loss, fitness, life, etc.

July 4, 2012 Fat Loss, Myths, Read more >

Egg Yolks vs. Egg Whites

Why do people skip the yolk?

-Egg whites are lower in calories

-Taste/texture – some people find the yolk disgusting, especially if not fully cooked

-Perceived threat of high cholesterol

-Concerns about high fat

Why You Should Keep the Yolk

The threat of high cholesterol from egg yolks is greatly a myth. Studies have shown that dietary animal based cholesterol does not directly raise blood cholesterol. Blood level cholesterol is made in the liver and pumped into the blood when it’s needed. Studies have indicated that the response to dietary cholesterol is highly individualized and complex, and reports of increased LDL (the “bad cholesterol”) have been reported as few and far between. Additionally, these increases were not large enough to cause a concern. Cholesterol is also a building block for our steroid hormones – such as sex hormones.

The egg yolk contains all of the fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K) in the egg. These hormones are important in boosting immune function, keeping your bones strong, healthy teeth and hair, thyroid, etc. Other nutrients found almost entirely in the yolk include zinc (99%), calcium (90%) and folate (95%). The yolk also contains 43% of the total protein in the egg.

Lutein and zeaxanthin are high in the yolk as well, and have been toted to lower the incidence of cataracts and age-related macular degeneration.

If you like the taste, don’t say no to the egg yolk! If you’re counting calories, make sure you’re taking into consideration the micronutrients you’re losing when you skip the yolk. If you are still on the fence and want to stick to egg whites alone, don’t buy them prepackaged. You save money by buying a carton of eggs and tossing the yolks.

*Values in the picture are based on 1 large egg (55g whole egg, 30g egg whites)

July 4, 2012 Myths, Nutrition Read more >

Is green tea really as great as everyone makes it out to be?

Green tea is toted to be a miracle food by pretty much the entire fitness community. You don’t have to go far to find someone claiming it cures cancer, helps you to lose weight, prolongs your life or a slew of other facts. Are these supported by science or just a bunch of teaholics?

The polyphenols found in tea have shown to delay onset and/or lessen severity in men with prostate cancer.

A recent (June 15th 2012) review of a shit ton of studies found that drinking 10 cups of it a day can delay cancer onset, as well as be part of tertiary cancer treatment

It can improve symptoms of menopausal overactive bladder 

Rats fed a high fat diet and green tea had lower transcription of obesity related genes, as well as inflammation, etc. than just the rat fed high fat diets

Green tea’s antioxidant capabilities can help fight oxidative stress caused by neutrophils in cancer patients

It’s shown to decrease the rate of muscle loss in rats with muscular dystrophy

It can help control sodium balance in people who’ve had an ovarioectomy

No, it doesn’t cause low birth weight in babies, that’s a myth

No, it doesn’t effect drug metabolism

There’s no evidence that green tea pills can cause a serious loss of weight (read: no pill is going to magically make you shed 50 pounds) but it can be used in conjunction with a healthy lifestyle

So it’s true – a lot of the claims about the health benefits of green tea are there. Make sure you read the caveats though: green tea alone won’t cure cancer, make you lose weight, destroy your allergy symptoms, etc. But the health benefits of green tea have been shown in countless studies over a broad spectrum. Some of these studies would be the equivalent of drinking 10 cups of tea a day to get the benefits shown. Like everything, when used in conjunction with a healthy diet and lifestyle green tea can be an amazing addition to your diet.

July 4, 2012 Myths, Nutrition Read more >

When losing weight, what food groups should you avoid?

I get this question a fair amount, so I thought I’d do a lovely post on what foods one should ABSOLUTELY avoid when trying to lose weight. I’m talking about the type of food that can single handedly sabotage your diet, make you pack on the pounds and set back all the progress you’ve made.

Ready for it?

They don’t exist.

There is no one food (peaches, candies, steak, cake) or one type of food (alcohol, dairy, meat) that will cause any sort of setback in your diet.

Why? Because food is not the enemy. Treating food items or food groups as horrible fiends that trick you into craving them with their addictive additives and their easy accessibility gives them way too much power. It’s an item, composed of macro and micro nutrients, with assorted tastes, flavors and sensations. That’s all. Some are enjoyable, some aren’t.

Furthermore, eating fruit or not eating fruit isn’t going to make or break your diet. Weight loss, specifically fat loss, comes down to energy balance. If you put yourself into a deficit (either by diet or by exercise) you will lose fat. If you put yourself into a surplus (either by diet or lack of exercise/activity) you will gain fat (and/or muscle, depending). That’s it. If a food has 200 calories it has 200 calories. Done. There’s no further discussion from a weight loss point. (Before I get 1,000 asks talking about how 200 calories of veggies and 200 calories of cake are not the same, save it. For weight loss they are, for health they’re not. Go away. You’re annoying and redundant and clearly can’t read.)

Let’s set up a scenario. Say that your TDEE (the amount of calories you burn a day as an active human being) is 2,100. Maybe you’re trying to lose weight, so you put yourself at a 300 calorie deficit every day and eat 1,800 calories a day. Awesome. It’s about 5pm and you’ve had your meals for the day but there’s something extra you’re craving – like a piece of cake. You’ve got about 350 calories left for the day and your mom just brought home a delicious cake – Cheesecake. Your favorite. Turns out the calories for the entire piece add up to 400 calories and she wants to split it right down the middle.

But cake! That’s bad food! It’s always listed on that “DO NOT EAT” diet sheet! Guess what – you’ve got plenty of room to eat that cake. And you know what? It’s your favorite. You’ve worked hard. You have the space for it in your meal plan. You’re still hungry and you WANT this cake.

So eat it. Those 200 calories you just ate of cheesecake isn’t going to suddenly morph into 800 calories in your stomach, then grow to 3,500 calories in your intestines and set back all that great progress!

Say you don’t have any extra calories left for the day but you want the cake and you eat it. You’ve eaten 2,000 calories that day. 2,100 calories will keep your weight. 3,500 calories + 2,100 calories will make you gain a pound.

Take this same advice with any food. No, adding milk to your cereal isn’t going to make you gain weight. Adding milk to every item you eat all day, causing you to go over your calorie limit, will. See how that works?

Instead of obsessing over “good food” and “bad food” focus on how food makes you feel. If you really love a type of food, find a way to incorporate it into your diet in a healthy way. Find recipes that make a smaller serving size so you aren’t plagued with an entire cheesecake going bad in your house. Split desserts with your friends, get rid of the “bad food/good food” dilemma. Food is food.

What you shouldn’t focus on is the food, but the feeling. Do you find that chicken makes you feel full longer without putting you into a food coma? Does too much dairy make you gassy and uncomfortable? Do certain carbs make you retain water like crazy? Are you highly reactive to sodium or cholesterol? These cues are SO much more important than the good food/bad food dichotomy because these experiences are highly personal and can’t be generalized like this.

My take? There’s no such thing as bad food, but there is such a thing as too much food. Moderation moderation moderation!

July 4, 2012 Fat Loss, Myths, Nutrition, , Read more >

High Reps and Low Weights vs Low Reps and High Weights: which is better?

This is an argument that you read a lot of Tumblr. We all decry the “20 reps, 5 lbs, LETS GO!” method of working out, especially for women, for many reasons. Some will say it’s sexist, it doesn’t work, it takes forever, etc. The current Tumblr Train is to lift heavy and love it.

You know I was going to throw some SCIENCE at you.

There’s a recent study that says both are equally effective at increasing muscle mass.

NOT SO FAST! This is where your critical thinking skills come into play.

The study design is this: using leg extensions, measure short-term elevations in protein synthesis and the cross-section of muscles with high reps at 30% of max vs. low reps at 90% of max. So if your max leg extension is 100 lbs, you’re going to do 30 lbs for high reps or 90 lbs for low reps. Here’s the kicker: you do them to fatigue. That means you’re going to plus away on that exercise until you can’t squeeze out another rep.

Problems: Leg extensions are kind of a horrible exercise for this because it’s not a compound exercise, it’s an isolation one. Using the trifecta (squat, dead, bench) may have been a better option to really assess how this plays out. Additionally, short-term protein synthesis isn’t the ONLY factor in determining muscle growth. It’s just a small frame in a very long, complex movie.

So how can we interpret this?

Say we accept that this is true – that doing 30lb leg extensions until you can’t any more and doing 90 lb leg extensions until you can’t anymore will build the same amount of muscle. Why should you stick to the heavier weight?

Time.

How long do you think it takes to get to fatigue repping out 30 pounds versus repping out 90 pounds? I personally don’t see the point in sitting on the same machine for 20 minutes when I can get the same results in a shorter span of time. While I do enjoy spending a lot of time at the gym (it’s my heaven) it seems silly to machine hog for 10-15 minutes when I can do something else.

Yeah, you can wash your hair with a spray bottle, but just hopping in the shower will get the job done just as well in a shorter amount of time.

Take home message: As long as your train to fatigue it doesn’t matter what weight you’re using. However, using a heavier weight means less time spent for the same results.

July 4, 2012 Exercise, Myths Read more >