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I’m sure by now you’ve heard all about the amazing health benefits of antioxidant rich foods in your diet. Not only do these free-radical fighting antioxidants help you look and feel younger by slowing down the aging process, but they also help to prevent cancer, heart disease, and loads of other degenerative diseases. But that’s not all. Antioxidants also help you to recover better from exercise…and that means more muscle and less fat on your body in the long run!

The function that antioxidants play in aiding your recovery from exercise is the inhibition of free radicals produced during exercise. Any time you workout, free radicals are produced in the body that damage muscle tissue. Having an adequate supply of antioxidants about an hour or so before your workout can greatly reduce the muscle damage caused by free radicals, hence, improving your muscular recovery from exercise.

Some of the most potent sources of whole food antioxidants are berries (blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, cranberries), cherries, acai fruit, various teas (green tea, white tea, black tea, and red tea - a.k.a. rooibos tea), nuts, seeds, red and black beans, purple potatoes, grapes, red wine, cinnamon, and dark chocolate or cocoa. Don’t be fooled by all of the intense marketing for expensive antioxidant supplement pills…remember whole foods are always better for you (and cheaper) than a pill.

My favorite pre-workout antioxidant-loaded snack is a piece of whole grain toast with almond butter, a small amount of blackberry jam, and topped with a pile of fresh blueberries or sliced strawberries. I wash it down with a glass of iced green tea or rooibos tea sweetened with just a small bit (about a teaspoon) of raw honey. This is literally a quintuple-whammy of potent anti-oxidants! The almond butter, blackberry, blueberries, raw honey, and the green or rooibos tea are all loaded with different varieties of muscle protecting, youth promoting antioxidants. I throw down this snack about an hour before my training. Give it a try for yourself, or be creative and come up with your own antioxidant-rich pre-workout snack based on your tastes.

Remember, your body is continually bombarded every day by free radicals (creating oxidative stress) from exercise, air pollution, smoke, sun exposure, junk food, exposure to chemicals, etc. To reap the full benefits of antioxidants, try to make sure that every meal and snack you eat has at least one or two sources of antioxidant rich foods. This will give you a continuous supply of antioxidants throughout every day to prevent damage from the free radicals you are constantly exposed to.

Antioxidants are just one piece to the puzzle of a healthy diet that will give you the lean, muscular, youthful, and disease-free body that everyone wants. To discover the secrets behind all of the other pieces to the diet puzzle that create a lean body (macronutrient profile, glycemic response, hormonal response, glycogen storage, muscle protein synthesis, the role of leptin, the insulin process, etc.), visit http://truthaboutabs.com

©2005 truthaboutabs.com

Michael Geary - NCSF CPT, AFAA CPT;
Author of “The Truth About Six Pack Abs” ©2004-2005
Visit http://truthaboutabs.com to discover innovative training and nutritional strategies for losing body fat and developing a rock hard body!

As yoga becomes more mainstream, among claims made by its many adherents is that it helps with weight loss. Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center set out to find out. 15,500 people between the ages of 53 and 57 were asked about their exercise, diet and weight histories. The results showed that those who practiced yoga lost ten pounds over a period of five years. Those that did not averaged a thirteen and a half pound gain during that same time period.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that its not necessarily clear whether the results of the study show a cause and effect between practicing yoga and losing weight. One of the co-authors of the study, Alan Kristal, believes that the weight loss cannot be attributed to the caloric burn of yoga practice.

“Except for very strenuous yoga practices, you don’t really burn enough energy to make any difference in terms of weight,” said Kristal. Rather, Kristal believes that by putting people more in tune with their bodies, reducing stress, and avoiding bad habits yoga helps them avoid overeating.

Another possible explanation is that fit, healthy people are more likely to take up yoga than those who are out of shape. If the group practicing group was in better shape to begin with, then the results of the study are what you would expect. More studies will be required to prove a causal link between starting a yoga program and losing weight.

However, just because there no proven link between yoga and weight loss does not mean that yoga isn’t beneficial. Just the stress reduction and increased flexibility associated with yoga can contribute to wellness. Not to mention the emotional satisfaction and enjoyment that comes from yoga. Yoga can certainly be a part of a sensible plan for health, but should not be relied on exclusively if weight loss is the goal. Healthy diet and a sensible aerobic exercise regime are still a necessary part of a balanced lifestyle.

(c) 2005 Yoga-Daily.com

J. Morgan writes regularly on health, fitness and weight loss. He also maintains and edits the popular yoga news and information website “Yoga Daily” at http://www.Yoga-Daily.com.

The one of the latest buzzwords in fitness and weight loss circles is High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT. This method of exercise has the potential to allow an exerciser to weight loss faster that any other form of “aerobic” exercise. Although interval training is not a new concept in the field of sports conditioning, it has recently become a popular exercise form for general conditioning and weight loss. This article provides some basic information on HIIT and explains why this form of exercise is so effective for weight loss.

The concept of power output

To fully understand the many benefits of HIIT it is important to first understand some basic physics and concept of power. Generally speaking, power is a measure of the ability to perform work per unit time (Work/time). Work is defined as the amount of force required to move an object a certain distance (Force x Distance). So power is defined by the following formula: Power = Force x Distance/time. If you recall that velocity (speed) is equal to distance divided by time (Distance/time), then it is easy to see that power is actually a measure of how fast you generate force.

Power output and energy expenditure

Obviously from the previous explanation, it should be clear that the amount of energy required to perform a task is directly dependent on the power required to do so. So if we now apply this concept specifically to human exercise, we recognize that muscles use chemical energy produced from the food we eat to generate power. Consider the muscle power required to walk 3 miles per hour and that required to run at 11 miles per hour. The muscle power required in each example is strictly dependent on the speed since the force (body weight) being moved changes very little and essentially remains constant (assuming sufficient hydration). It is possible however to regulate power output by other variables other than speed by manipulating the amount of force (wearing a weighted vest) or increasing the resistance to movement like increasing the gradient of a treadmill or running up hills.

What is HIIT?

HIIT involves performing bouts of high intensity running (1-3 minutes) separated by recovery periods of walking for about the 2-3 times the duration of the running bout. The work: recovery ratio should therefore be 1:2 or 1:3. The intensity of the running portion should be near your VO2 max (maximal oxygen uptake). Since most casual exercisers and those looking to lose weight rarely know their VO2 max, is may be helpful to use a perceived effort scale of 1-10 to regulate intensity; with 1 representing no effort, and 10 representing absolute maximal effort. Aim for about 8-9 on the effort scale. Note that HIIT describes what it is - HIGH Intensity Interval Training so before you begin such a regime it is advisable to have yourself cleared by a physician.

How do I begin HIIT?

There are no hard and fast rules to HIIT other than those mentioned above, so this article will not aim to provide a strict program of exact times and durations. The basic principle of HIIT is to manipulate intensity to increase power output and accelerate weight loss. Initially if you are just beginning HIIT, your work sessions may be much shorter than 2-4 minutes – work your way from whatever you can handle to the goal duration. As you become more conditioned, you may also start to increase the intensity of the sessions by aiming for the higher end of the perceived effort scale or reducing the recovery walking periods or both. If you plan on exercising on a treadmill or elliptical machine, an excellent way to perform HIIT is to choose an intense interval or hill program. If you prefer to get the session over quickly as possible (like me), you can manually adjust the speed and incline randomly depending on your perception of effort. If you are sadistically self-destructive however, you may try “running the hills and walking the flats” on a treadmill – this will greatly increase your power output and energy expenditure. Experiment with these techniques of manipulating the intensity of your workout and depending on your level of fitness (or patience!), the entire interval training session should last from about 10-20 minutes in duration.

How does HIIT allow for faster weight loss than traditional “aerobic exercise”?

HIIT is a big “bang for the buck” exercise modality compared to traditional extended duration aerobic exercise like walking, jogging and running. Walking requires a relatively low power output and high speed running simply cannot be sustained for very long periods of time. The great benefit of HIIT is that the low intensity walking bouts that separate the high intensity bouts allow for a much greater power output and caloric expenditure, providing much more “value for time”. Depending on the intensity of the session, it may be possible to burn the same number of calories in a HIIT session as a walking/cycling session many times longer in duration.

HIIT spares muscle mass and maintains metabolism

Recall from an earlier article on our website Spare Muscle Mass and Power, Lose the Fat where we discussed how HIIT helps avoid the muscle wasting effects associated with continuous low intensity exercise such as jogging and walking. HIIT helps spare valuable lean muscle mass which is a key determinant of your RMR or Resting Metabolic Rate. Simply put, a higher muscle mass will cause you to expend more energy even while you sleep! The technical term for this muscle wasting effect is “protein sloughing”, caused by extended periods of elevated cortisol levels. Cortisol is a hormone released from the adrenal gland during all forms of stress including exercise. Although cortisol is crucial for a person to adapt to stressful stimuli, a negative side-effect is its direct muscle wasting effect. Cortisol stimulates muscle protein breakdown in order to increase the amount of free amino acids (protein building blocks) in the blood. The majority of these amino acids are used for the remanufacturing of glucose (gluconeogenesis) in the liver to maintain blood sugar levels. While some personal trainers and exercise physiologists may argue that the increased exercise intensity (stress) of HIIT causes a higher increase in cortisol, the important factor to remember is that the duration that the hormone levels remains elevated is significantly shorter than in extended lower intensity aerobic exercise.

How can I lose fat when I’m burning mostly carbohydrates with HIIT?

Remember even though HIIT is a high intensity form exercise, relying heavily on the metabolism of carbohydrate, weight loss is determined by energy balance. In other words, if on a daily basis you consume less energy than you expend, you will lose weight regardless of the “primary fuel source” of your exercise bout. An HIIT session that decreases your carbohydrate stores (muscle and liver glycogen) simply means that more calories from subsequent meals will be will be directed toward replenishing glycogen stores, and less will be directed toward fat storage. It is only after glycogen stores have been replenished that excess calories can be directed toward the manufacturing and storage of fat. Also, caloric expenditure continues for several hours after a bout of high intensity exercise, as energy is required in the recovery process.

In conclusion, this article has explained and highlighted the benefits associated with the use of HIIT for weight loss. Other benefits such as faster fitness improvements and immune system maintenance associated with HIIT have not been covered in this article, but may be discussed in future articles on our site. Clearly if the goal is to lose weight fast and boost metabolism by sparing muscle, then HIIT is the ideal form of exercise.

David Petersen is a Personal Trainer/Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and the owner and founder of B.O.S.S. Fitness Inc. based in Oldsmar, Florida. More articles and information can be found at http://www.bossfitness.com

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