Skinny Girl's Quest for Muscle

Skinny Girl's Quest for Muscle
Meal Plan - Take Four: The Farmer's Market Diet

After working off of a meal plan for a month, I've allowed myself to 'graduate' into the world of spontaneous eating again--based on the framework that I adopted in my planned meals. No, I'm not completely falling off the horse. After eating perfectly clean, well-timed, properly portioned meals for an entire month, it's now much easier to stick to the good habits that I built into the plan such as eating five to six small meals per day, filling up on vegetables and keeping an eye on protein levels (making sure I'm getting enough with each meal), eating good fats, and not skipping snacks or pre or post-workout meals.

Getting off the plan has some benefits as well. Since I'm a firm believer in variety, now I can throw in all kinds of new foods and am not stuck in a never-ending rut of sameness. While under the same framework, I'm just swapping foods: proteins for proteins, vegetables for vegetables, fats for fats, etc.

There is no better way to really take advantage of variety than with local farmers' markets. Each week local growers and producers bring their in-season vegetables, fruits, eggs, etc., to the market. The vegetables change with the weather, starting with cabbages and green onions in the spring to tomatoes and summer squashes, and finally the root vegetables of fall. While I'm there, I can pick up a dozen farm fresh eggs (with either brown, white or even green and blue shells), a locally made salsa, freshly baked breads from bakers who don't use ingredients other than your traditional flours, water, yeast, etc. Sometimes I can even find rarities such as local walnuts or popcorn.

The market strategy that I've used for the last two weeks includes bringing a twenty-dollar bill to the market and picking up a week's worth of food. Except for a few items: fresh fish from the fish market, canned or pouch tuna, Greek yogurt, bananas and avocados (can not be grown locally) and a few staples like rice wine vinegar from the grocery store. I have a large bag of rice and another of whole wheat berries, and some miscellaneous baking ingredients such as buckwheat flour, etc. From these, I can create rice dishes, pastas, etc. (note: homemade pasta is far superior to store bought.)

So far so good. Not only have I enjoyed new found variety in my meals, my meal costs continue to shrink along with the little inch of fat around my belly--maybe it's even less than an inch now.

Until next time, go do something athletic!

Skinny Girl's Quest for Muscle
Thermic Effect of Food -- Like Boxes in Storage

I recently wrote up this response to a message board -- I liked my analogy so much that I've posted it here as well:

Different macro nutrients (macro nutrients are: fats, proteins, and carbohydrates) are all processed differently in the body. This is a relatively new concept that suggests that a calories, is not a calorie, is not a calorie.

Some foods require much more energy to process than others. For example, fats you eat can be converted to body fat quickly and easily by the body. However, protein takes much more energy (therefore, you burn more calories when you eat protein than when you eat fat--because you burn more to convert the protein to fat storage.)

Think of it like this:

You have 3 boxes, they are all exactly the same size. One is "Fat" and it weighs nearly nothing (it's empty), the second is "Carb" and it's about 5 pounds, and finally the last box is "Protein". The "Protein" box weights 20 pounds. Even though each box is exactly the same size, it takes much more work to put the "Protein" box in the closet for storage than the "Fat" box.

For more reading on TEF, check out these articles/sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermic_effect_of_food

http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance_nutrition/harness_the_power_of_tef

http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v27/n5/abs/0802270a.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9356527?dopt=Abstract

Skinny Girl's Quest for Muscle
How Many Pounds Can You Lose in a Week? Probably More Than You Think.

Everyone wants to lose weight these days, and they all want to lose it right now, right away, or at least within just a few weeks. Traditional views of diets suggest that this isn't possible. Although, I'm not interested in weight loss--I have to ask why? Why only 1 to 2 pounds per week? Has no one watched recent episodes of The Biggest Loser (NBC), where one individual lost 28 pounds in one week? 28 pounds! in a week! The winner of Dance your Ass Off (Oxygen) lost 74 pounds in ten weeks. That's an average of 7.4 pounds per week for ten weeks.

Yes, these reality show stars were very heavy to start weighing more than 250 pounds. Certainly a large amount of weight (like 28 pounds) is a much smaller percentage of total weight, less than ten percent--for a large person than a small person where 28 pounds may be twice as much when calculating it as a percentage. And, an individual of 250 pounds or more holds a larger amount of water which is the main component in our bodies, and by far the heaviest in total. However, the individuals on these reality shows lost weight week after week, even when they thinned their bodies down to what we would consider weights within normal ranges (see chart from Wikipedia.) Week after week weight loss can not be attributed to "water weight".

So, why are we locked into the thinking that we can only lose one to two pounds per week when this may only be a small fraction of a percentage of total starting weight? Perhaps this starts with healthier individuals with lower weights and lower body fat percentages advising less healthy individuals--doesn't bias of personal experience rules in many thought processes. Or is it just solely based on a traditional idea that became "fact" over time and repetition?

Robert Huizenga, M.D., a leading obesity researcher and the medical mind behind The Biggest Loser has suggested that the 1 to 2 pound rule came from popular belief and the new rule is 1 to 2 PERCENT of body weight, not pounds.

Even at 125 pounds, two percent of my body weight is 2.5 pounds. I could lose two and a half pounds a week (if I were completely insane) and still fall within the proper percentage. With this in mind, couldn't someone of 180 pounds lose 3.6 per week? And, someone at 250 pounds shed 5 pounds per week and remain perfectly healthy?

Dr. Huizenga has also suggested that there IS a magic pill to weight loss. You've got to be kidding right? A magic pill for weight loss? And, coming from the health nut's blog? Yes, that's right. There is a magic pill. For everyone seeking the magic pill, here it is: two hours of exercise per day plus moderate caloric reduction. That's it, just get some exercise and eat right--no need to do any extreme dieting, take any funky chemicals, or starve oneself. Just get some exercise. You two could see the same absolutely stunning gains (well, losses really) seen on television each week. Think you can't do it? Think you're not healthy enough? Well, here's the kicker, Dr. Huizenga also states that even the morbidly obese can exercise at the same intensity of professional athletes.

Until next time, go do something athletic!


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references:
Where Did All The Fat Go, Robert Huizenga, M.D.

Skinny Girl's Quest for Muscle
High Intensity Interval Training

I recently picked up a copy of Muscle & Fitness Hers while on a Sunday shopping trip to the grocery store. It appeared to contain more in-depth articles than a lot of the other fitness magazine choices geared toward the female reader. One of the articles focused on something they called "Super Intervals"--training sessions comprised of high intensity 30 second intervals followed by 90 second lower intensity intervals--repeated several times. They suggested that this type of workout really skyrocketed (a word that they use plentifully throughout their articles) fat burning and human growth hormone production (this is a good thing.)

Upon further research, I stumbled across a few journal articles with similar findings:

Two weeks of high-intensity aerobic interval training increases the capacity for fat oxidation during exercise in women. (see abstract, link below, for list of authors)
In summary, seven sessions of HIIT over 2 wk induced marked increases in whole body and skeletal muscle capacity for fatty acid oxidation during exercise in moderately active women.
abstract url: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17170203?dopt=Abstract


A Comparison of the Effects of Interval Training vs. Continuous Training on Weight Loss and Body Composition in Obese Pre-Menopausal Women. King, Jeffrey Warren.
These findings show that high intensity interval exercise produces improvements in body composition, fitness, and acute RMR compared to low intensity steady state training.
abstract url: http://etd-submit.etsu.edu/etd/theses/available/etd-0412101-214442/


GENDER GOVERNS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EXERCISE INTENSITY AND GROWTH HORMONE (GH) RELEASE IN YOUNG ADULTS Cathy J Pritzlaff-Roy, Laurie Widemen, Judy Y Weltman, Rob Abbott, Margaret Gutgesell,
Mark L Hartman, Johannes D Veldhuis, Arthur Weltman.
In summary, the present study delineates that young women maintain a linear relationship between the magnitude of GH release and increasing exercise intensity. The inferred dose-response relationship is robust to standardization against either the lactate threshold or VO2 max. Moreover, gender comparisons establish that exercise-induced GH release is greater in women than men.
pdf url: http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/sciruslink?src=web&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjap.physiology.org%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F01018.2001v1.pdf


Sounds promising right?

Over the last few weeks I've given it a spin, adapting the program designed by Muscle & Fitness Hers to fit. I'm using running as my high intensity activity. Other suggested activities are: bicycling, cross country skiing, swimming, stair climbing, etc. So far, I've made it through about 5 workouts--working out either on weekend mornings or afternoons, and as a quick lunchtime workout during weekdays. Fortunately, I can burn through all of the exercises within a half hour so it fits my noon-hour lunch break from work.

The results have been promising. It's easier for me to make the entire 8 repeats and I'm seeing progress--my tummy is looking more like 6-pack abs than like single frosted doughnut.

So far, I'm hooked--getting a killer workout in only 30 minutes is a fabulous way to get a little exercise in during the workday or on a weekend when you'd rather do anything but work.

Until next time, go do something athletic!