Displacing Good Calories with Convenience-Food Alternatives

I Can't Drink All that Green Juice

GRAB & GO
MAKE & TAKE

I hear it all the time from my clients,"I can't get down all that vegetable juice. I can't finish it all. "We can chug down a 20-ounce big gulp and slam a pilsner of beer but we can't drink a serving-sized plastic cup of veggie juice...So why do you think that is?" I ask.

We spend much of our days rushing from here to there in the hopes of getting everything done and still workout in order to stay healthy, trim, and fit. 

Does this sound like you: Got to get to the gym early in the morning so I'm going to stop at Starbucks after my exercise class and grab a quick coffee and breakfast sandwich because I can't be late to work. Or is this you -- Taking a couple courses at school to further my education or get ahead in my career so I'm going to jump out and grab Chipotle so I can squeeze in a couple sets at the gym or catch that 5:45pm spin class. No, then perhaps this is you: The kids need to get picked up from daycare or aftercare, therefore, I'll just drive through the golden arches and grab a chicken wrap and then high-tail it over to karate. 

Rush, rush, rush. Many of us are in such a hurry that we think we only have time to grab something QUICK to eat and drink in order to stay on time for everything else we have to accomplish on any one given day and still get our exercise in somewhere. We've talked ourselves into believing that this is what we must do to get everything done and still have time to stay fit and healthy but what we are really doing is counterproductive to your goals and many of us are clueless. 

You are trying to get thin or stay weight stable but what you're actually doing is sabotaging your gains and weight-loss success by displacing the good calories you could be eating that are better for your body with other less-valuable food calories in the hopes of saving yourself some time and money. 

That stop at the Buck in the morning is costing you $8 and 20 minutes of your time. It is also simultaneously filling up your stomach with a quick source of energy (caffeine) along with a bunch of fat you don't need, some not-too-great overly-processed protein, and more carbs than your body needs to get four hours of work done before the lunchtime meal arrives. With that same eight bucks and fourth of an hour, you could juice five pounds of carrot and an entire package of celery. Yes, you really could. 

I have timed this same scenario out hundreds of times in front of the women and men I've worked with in order to show her or him that in the 20 minutes it takes for them to drive to their local coffee shop and throw down some cash, they could have juiced all that produce I just mentioned and wash their juicers, providing themselves with vitamins, minerals, anti-aging antioxidants, power-packed protein, easily burnt-off carbs, and the healthiest forms of essential fats in the same amount of time. 

The human adult stomach is only about the size of a medium-sized fist. Generally on average, the stomach has a volume of approximately one liter which is about a quart. However, the stomach does possess the capacity to STRETCH and hold more food -- up to about four liters or an entire gallon.

Whether your stomach can hold one liter or a gallon, SPACE is LIMITED. If you drink a large coffee with cream and sugar and chow down on a breakfast sandwich, there goes room for a 16-ounce green juice at your local juice bar. 

It doesn't take a nutritionist, dietitian, or a weight-loss specialist to tell you what you already know which is that a giant glass of fresh-pressed vegetable juice is healthier for you than a gigantic cup of Joe and 3-minute microwave egg and cheese biscuit. You will undoubtedly feel better, think more clearly, and have more energy to leap over tall buildings in a single bound if your FUEL of CHOICE is lean and green than black and comes in a sack.

In conclusion, do the mathematically computations and stopwatch your "supposedly-necessary" time saver you call breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner. When you take the few minutes to reflect on your behavior and decision making process, you may find out that what you thought was cheap and easy is actually expensive in respect to your healthy lifestyle and training program.

Thank you for your time and valuable support. You help me feel necessary in the overall scheme of things.

-Bell Gia

Nutrition and Fitness Expert

Maintenance Exercise Following Weight Loss -- Do I Have to Keep Working Out So Hard or As Often?

Maintaining Lean Muscle Mass After Losing Weight

You accomplished your goal of losing your unwanted weight. Congratulations! Losing weight isn't easy and if you've dropped 5, 10, or more pounds and kept it off. You should be extremely proud of yourself. I know that I am of you for it.

Now that you've gotten rid your additional weight burden supported by your knees, hips, and shoulders, you probably want to know IF you have to keep exercising at the same intensity level you were when you were dieting or do you have to exercise for the same duration or length of time? According to substantial statistical research, your weight maintenance depends upon you doing just that. 

The National Weight Control Registry is the largest prospective investigation of long-term weight loss maintenance, established in 1994. The NWCR reports on their website (www.nwcr.ws) that they are currently tracking over 10k individuals who have lost considerable amounts of weight and have kept it off for an extended period of time. This continued research study has over twenty-two years worth of diet and exercise questionnaires and annual follow-up surveys collected from both men and women over the age of 18 years who were once overweight but then dieted to obtain a BMI in the normal range (18.5 - 24.9). 

The average National Weight Loss Registry member has lost 33 kg or about 72.6 pounds and has maintained their weight loss success for greater than 5 years. To maintain their weight loss, NWCR registrants describe engaging in high levels of physical activity related as 60 minutes of exercise. If NWCR members are to be believed, 94% of them report increasing their physical activity above what they had previously done before losing their unwanted weight and 90% disclose that they engaged, on average, in about one hour of "exercise" per day. 

I have worked in the healthcare professional in one capacity or another for twenty-five years. Two decades of experience helping over 1,000 people lose weight, eat healthy, get physically fit, and either gain muscle or maintain what muscle they had has provided me with lots of statistical data of my own. I will tell you that the majority of my female and male clients had to continue to workout regularly "almost" as hard and nearly as lengthy in duration as they did while they were in the process of losing weight. In order to stay at their desired size, they needed to maintain about the same amount of lean muscle mass they had added to their bodies while they were dieting and their weight maintenance also required the continued caloric expenditure or calorie burn produced as a result of exercising or physically moving. 

Physical activity or exercise helps with weight loss due to its metabolism boosting effects and its caloric expenditure. Physical activity or exercise that requires an additional weight burden upon the body's musculature causes an increase in muscle size -- you build more muscle. A pound of muscle has more energy requirements THAN a pound of fat, therefore, the more lean muscle mass you possess, the higher your basal metabolic rate typically. The higher your BMR, the more calories you burn throughout the day and night. 

If a certain amount of movement or exercise enabled someone to lose their excess weight, it is scientifically unreasonable to think that about the same measure of physical activity isn't going to be necessary to keep off the lost weight due to that person's requirement of a higher basal metabolic rate to process AND USE UP the food they put in their bodies in the form of breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner as energy as well as to construct the molecular building materials for their cells and tissues.

I hope this post answered the maintenance exercise question. Thank you for reading.

Until next time,
Bell Gia
Nutrition and Fitness Expert