Morning Workouts Curb Your Appetite

If you needed a bit more motivation to get up early for a quick workout first thing in the morning, here it is! About 45 minutes of moderate to intense physical activity in the morning could keep your appetite under control and boost your metabolism for the rest of the day.

Learn about it on Greatist:

"Greatist News examines and explains the trends and studies making headlines in fitness, health, and happiness. Check out all the news here.

Photo by Aleksandra Flora

Exercise burns calories, but a morning workout may actually make us skip that delicious egg sandwich. A new study conducted at Brigham Young University discovered that 45 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous morning exercise actually reduced a person’s motivation to hit the fridge afterwards.

The Study

Researchers measured the brain activity of 35 women while they looked at 240 images — half were of food, and the other half flowers. The first measurement took place right after 45 minutes of brisk walking on a treadmill; a week later, the same neural activity was measured but without the exercise. The results found that the morning workout led to lower brain responses to the pictures of food.

Interestingly, scientists also found that participants ate roughly the same amount of calories on both days, regardless of exercise. The 45-minute workout also led to an increased amount of physical activity throughout the day."

Read more: http://greatist.com/fitness/workout-less-hungry-091812/

The Reason Why Dieting Hurts

Do you ever wonder why dieting is just so hard to keep up with? A little hormone called leptin is the culprit. It plays a key role in energy expenditure and intake, meaning it's behind your feelings of hunger and hinders with your ability to lose weight. Your body automatically responds to your attempts to eat less and lose weight with the perfect counter of making you crave the amount of food you used to eat and slowing down your metabolism to in an attempt to maintain your original weight. It works against all of your efforts with this vicious cycle, but it doesn't have to work this way. There are ways around it!

In fact, cheating on your diet every once in a while is a great way to get your metabolism revving and to keep leptin levels normal, making it possible to continue losing weight while not completely depriving yourself of the high-energy foods that you love! Carbs are actually your best friend for this. You can read about why this is on Laurens Fitness.

"OK, so I mentioned above that leptin levels drop dramatically when you diet, causing all sorts of problems that you don’t want. Basically making it near impossible for you to lose the pounds. The good news is, this is reversed really really quickly. It takes less than a day for leptin to get back to normal levels. With a fair increase in calories, your body will increase your leptin levels, thus your metabolism will go up and appetite will be suppressed. Great I hear you say, but then I am eating more calories and will just reverse all the good work I already did. Well, not if you are strategic about it.

If you cheat on your diet once a week (when we know that leptin can be at its lowest after dieting), you give your leptin and your metabolism a boost, setting and priming your body up for fat loss once you resume your diet. You can eat what you want for a day, try not to binge…it’s just not a good habit. Up your energy intake that day, get your metabolism firing. When you go back to dieting, you will be in a much better state than if you had simply let your leptin levels and metabolism hit rock bottom. It’s almost impossible to lose weight at this stage.

The best thing to eat is stuff that is full of carbs. There is a relationship between leptin, carbs and insulin. There has been research suggesting that upping your energy intake alone won’t really help. If you stuff yourself full of protein and fats, it won’t raise your metabolism and up your leptin levels as effectively as carbs will. So on you cheat day, concentrate on carbs."

Read more: http://laurensfitness.com/2007/12/28/dieting-why-is-it-so-hard/

The FAQ's: Episode Two - B.M.R

Q: What does BMR stand for?
Your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is the estimated minimum level of energy required to sustain the body's vital functions when at rest. The Harris-Benedict formula is used to calculate the BMR. Your basal metabolic rate (BMR), also known as basal energy expenditure (BEE), is the number of calories you burn per day just by being alive and laying around. BMR is based on weight, height, and age, but may change under different mitigating factors. BMR decreases with age and with the loss of lean body mass. Increasing
muscle mass increases BMR.



Q: How do I find my BMR?
There are two ways you can find your BMR. You can use one of the variety of online calculators available, or you can do the calculation by hand. The calculation varies slightly from Men to Women as their overall body masses are different in nature.Women generally have more fat, and men generally have more muscle, so there are two separate equations for the calculation. Be forewarned, the rate you calculate may not be entirely accurate. If you are very muscular, your BMR will actually be higher than the calculated rate because muscles use energy and burn calories even when they aren't doing anything. If you are overweight, your BMR will actually be lower than the calculated rate because fat cells store energy rather than use energy.


BMR Calculator: Discovery Health BMR Calculator

Calculate BMR Manually: (using the Harris-Benedict formula)

Women: BMR = 655 + (4.35 x weight lbs.) + (4.7 x height in.) - (4.6756 x age)

Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight lbs.) + ( 12.7 x height in. ) - ( 6.8 x age)


Factors to consider while Calculating:
To determine your total daily calorie needs, multiply your BMR by the appropriate activity factor, as follows:

1. If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2
2. If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375
3. If you are moderatetely active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55
4. If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725
5. If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9



Q: How can knowing my BMR help me lose weight?
When trying to lose weight, your ultimate goal is to burn more calories than you eat. This will force your body to use its fat reserve to make up for the calories you aren't eating. This is a delicate balancing act requiring patience and knowledge of your body. If you exercise, you actually burn more calories than your BMR calculation suggests. The more exercise you do, the more calories and fat you burn.
Exercise also increases your BMR (unlike dieting), so you'll burn more calories while you're just sitting than you would if you were dieting alone.


Q: How can I apply all this in my everyday life? It seems kinda complicated....
While it may seem a bit complicated, when applied practically, it actually makes quite a lot of sense and can help you keep a level of expectation on your fitness journey.

Let's make an example:
Say you are a 30-year-old woman who is 5'2" and weigh 200 lbs.
Your BMR would be 1673 calories/day. That's about 70 calories per hour.

Put that information together with your daily activities:
Let's say you also have a sedentary job where you sit behind a computer 8 hours a day. That sitting burns about 600 to 700 calories per day.

Now add it up:
That's 2273 calories per day burned by just working and living.

Now let's factor in exercise:
If you walked at a moderate pace for 30 minutes every day, you would burn an additional 150 to 200 calories per day. Now you're daily calorie burning is up to 2423.

Now for the diet aspect of it:
If you want to burn fat, you'll need to eat less than 2423 calories per day. If you wanted to lose one pound per week (3500 calories = 1 lb.), you would need to eat no more than about 1900 calories per day. If you want to eat more and still lose one pound per week, you'll have to add more exercise. If you want to lose two pounds per week, you'll need to eat 1400 calories per day or add enough exercise to burn 500 calories more per day. As a general rule, try to make it a point to add exercise as opposed to restricting your diet as it is more effective in helping you lose and maintain weight.

Sound Simple? That's because it is.

** Do you have an idea for an article, have questions or need advice? Please write us at elementfitnessny@gmail.com! Subject: Blog


References:
- http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/harris-benedict-equation/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolism
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate
- http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/guide/make-most-your-metabolism
- http://www.internetfitness.com/calculators/bmr.htm