Imagine being in total control of the way your body looks and feels.
What would it feel like to be in total control your weight?
How would your life be different if energy was steady and consistent all day long?
Today I am going present a very simple approach. One that will hand you the key to unlocking the vault to looking and feeling YOUR best. If you want to live in a leaner, healthier, more energetic body.... simply apply the following three elements.
1. Put the right nutrients into your body.
2. Performing some aerobic activity (intentionally raise your heart rate on a regular basis).
3. Challenge your muscular system with resistance.
Today I will focus on the nutritional aspect because I think of the three elements - that’s where most people are most confused. In 2004 I worked under the mentorship of America's Personal Trainer, Phil Kaplan http://www.philkaplan.com/. Phil taught me the simplicity of radical body transformation by simply combinig the right nutrition with adaquate physical challange. Kaplan uses the words SUPPORTIVE EATING when referring to the right nutrition.
Supportive eating teaches people to eat in a manner that will support their health, supports metabolism, supports a healthful body composition, and support energy. Supportive nutrition is built around the concept called thermic meals. Thermic relates to heat. Phil states: "When I say thermic, there is a word that everybody knows (especially those who have been on diets) that they may not really understand – that word is CALORIE. In fact everyone who has been on a diet can tell me how many calories they were eating when they were on that diet. However if I were to ask them to define a calorie, most don’t really know."
A calorie is a unit of heat, more specifically the amount of heat required to raise one kilogram of water, one degree Celsius. What you need to know is that a calorie is fuel for heat generation, and your body is a heat machine. Right now if we took your temperature, it would be right around 98.6 degrees. Every time you move your muscles contract and that generates heat. So a calorie is a unit of heat, your body is a heat machine and metabolism is really the speed with which your body takes the nutrients from the foods you eat and converts them into heat.
If the goal is to boost metabolism we want to try to consume thermic meals. By doing so you cause your body to generate a significant amount of heat from the act of digestion. I think most people know that anytime you move, anytime muscle contract, you are burning calories. Actually everything you do from exercise, to handling the TV remote, to blinking your eye has a caloric cost. What most people don’t know is that there is a caloric cost to eating and digesting a food. So you can eat a meal that causes your body to burn a lot of calories or you can eat a meal that causes your body to not burn that many calories.
When we look at calories, all calories are not created equal. In fact each macro nutrient fat/carb/prot/ all produce varying degrees of heat.
A calorie is a unit of heat, more specifically the amount of heat required to raise one kilogram of water, one degree Celsius. What you need to know is that a calorie is fuel for heat generation, and your body is a heat machine. Right now if we took your temperature, it would be right around 98.6 degrees. Every time you move your muscles contract and that generates heat. So a calorie is a unit of heat, your body is a heat machine and metabolism is really the speed with which your body takes the nutrients from the foods you eat and converts them into heat.
If the goal is to boost metabolism we want to try to consume thermic meals. By doing so you cause your body to generate a significant amount of heat from the act of digestion. I think most people know that anytime you move, anytime muscle contract, you are burning calories. Actually everything you do from exercise, to handling the TV remote, to blinking your eye has a caloric cost. What most people don’t know is that there is a caloric cost to eating and digesting a food. So you can eat a meal that causes your body to burn a lot of calories or you can eat a meal that causes your body to not burn that many calories.
When we look at calories, all calories are not created equal. In fact each macro nutrient fat/carb/prot/ all produce varying degrees of heat.
The lowest heat producer of the three (or least metabolic boosting nutrient) is fat. Your body really doesn’t have to do much work in the act of digesting fats. If you were to eat 100 calories of fat your body would only needs to burn 5 calories to do the work of digestion. So a high fat meal is not very thermic.
Next are CARBOHYDRATES. I know you have heard carbohydrates are bad, but I’m going to say BAD CARBS are bad. In fact carbohydrates are your bodies preferred source of fuel. Simple sugars, bleached, processed, and refined foods like white bread, donuts, and bagels really wouldn’t have a place in a supportive nutrition program. They prevent the body from releasing fat and are also easily converted to triglycerides and stored as fat. However, the complex carbohydrates, the starches like potato’s, yams, oatmeal, brown rice, and whole grains are great slow releasing energy substrates. They require the body to burn 10 calories in the act of digestion for every 100 eaten. Carbohydrates have a thermic effect of 10% or twice the metabolic boosting effects of fat.
Finally PROTEIN and an examples of a lean protein would be chicken breast, egg whites, turkey breast, or fish. For every 100 calories of protein that you eat, your body will burn off roughly 25 calories to do the work of digestion. Proteins are made of long chains of amino acids. In the act of digestion those chains need to be broke down, absorbed and reassembled. That is a great deal of work for the body. When you eat protein you are getting 2.5 X the metabolic boosting effect you get from carbohydrates and 5X the metabolic boosting effect you get from fat!
Ideally a thermic meal would combine a lean protein, a starchy carbohydrate, and a fibrous carbohydrate. Fibrous carbohydrates are most vegetables you wou
ld find in a salad. Simply divide your plate into thirds. Fill one third with a lean protein, one third with starchy carbohydrates, and one third with fibrous vegetables. By doing so you provide the amino acids for cellular growth and repair with your protein. You provide a steady supply of energy with your starchy carbohydrates. And the Fibrous Vegetables provides all the necessary vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, phytochemicals, and fiber to aid in moving nutrients through the digestive tract.Examples of this would be an egg white omelet and a side of oatmeal for breakfast. A whole-wheat pita with tuna and some spinach for lunch, and maybe a chicken breast, brown rice, and a salad for dinner. Ideally, make an attempt to get to a thermic meal every 3-3 ½ hours or 5 to 6 times per day. By doing so YOU can ABSOLUTELY use the power of eating to boost metabolism and increase energy!
