Calories and Macronutrients

Calories and macronutrients play an important part of any fitness goal, as they are required to fuel your body and nourish your muscles. So what are they? Which ones and how much should you be eating? I’ll start off going over what calories and macronutrients are, then give some tips to determine how much of each you need.

Calories are, scientifically, a unit of energy. In the nutrition sense, a calorie is the amount of energy you will get from food. Over the course of a day, you will burn a certain number of calories just for your body to survive, this is your Basal Metabolic Rate. This means that, even if you slept all day long, you still burn calories. Moving around and doing your daily activities will burn even more calories. So, you burn calories on a daily basis, and just like a fire, you need fuel to sustain this burn. That is where food comes in. The calories listed on nutrition labels are the estimated amount of calories you will gain from consuming that food. I say estimated because the amount is calculated in a lab, and the human body is  more complicated than a controlled experiment. That being said, it’s still a good estimate to use the nutrition labels on food. The basic breakdown of how many calories you should eat is dependant on your goal. To lose weight you need to consume fewer calories than you burn. To maintain weight you should consume the same amount of calories that you burn. Similarly, to gain weight you need to consume more calories than you burn. Each person burns a different amount of calories depending on their metabolism, gender, age, weight, and other factors.

The calories in your food can be broken down into three macronutrients; carbohydrates, protein, and fat. The primary purpose of any macronutrient is to provide energy. The breakdown calories into grams for the macronutrients is as follows

Macronutrient (1g)	Calories
Carbohydrates	4
Protein	4
Fat	9

Let’s take a closer look at each macronutrient.

Carbohydrates bring to mind starchy food, like bread and potatoes; but they are actually defined as sugars. Aside from bread and potatoes, carbohydrates are also in fruit, milk, and anything sweetened. Carbohydrates are used for long term energy and for fueling your brain. Due to the use of carbohydrates throughout the day, a person should typically consume a lot of them. The recommended amount of carbohydrates in a person's diet is 45 - 64 % of total calories.

When you picture protein you will often think of meats, but nuts, beans, and dairy are also high in protein. Protein is used as the building blocks of our body and are broken down into amino acids for use in growth and repair. If you don’t have enough carbohydrates to fuel your day, protein will step in and be used to sustain you. It is not ideal to have your body run off of protein since it is needed elsewhere. The general recommendation for protein intake is 0.8g for every kilogram of body mass. This number will change depending on your fitness and dietary restrictions. For example, someone who is looking to build muscle and lifting a lot of weights may need as much as 1.7g for each kg of body mass.

The third macronutrient is fats.Fats are in pretty much everything and, despite their bad reputation,are an essential part of your body’s metabolism. Fats are your energy reserve. While you burn carbohydrates throughout the day and protein goes to repairing your body, fat gets stored for future energy burns and are essential during hard and long exercise sessions. Fat does not immediately get stored as body fat. An excess of calories, regardless of the macronutrient, is what causes body fat storage. Fats also are a source of fatty acids which are important in transporting nutrients throughout your body. The tricky part with meeting your fat intake is ensuring you choose good fats. Fats are divided into trans, saturated, and unsaturated fats. Unsaturated fats are the ideal fats and can be found in avocado, nuts, seeds, and cooking oils. The recommended intake of fats is 20 - 35% of your daily calorie intake.

Your required calorie intake will be unique. Work with a nutritionist to accurately determine your calorie intake and macronutrient amounts. The following two links can be used to get an idea of your calorie intake and macronutrient breakdown.

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/macronutcal.htm

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/macronutrients_calculator.htm

References

http://www.livescience.com/52802-what-is-a-calorie.html

http://www.innerbody.com/nutrition/macronutrients

Weight Training: High vs Low Reps

Let’s talk weight training. If you aren’t doing it, you should! Weight training is an important part of any healthy lifestyle. There are typically two types of weight training people think of: heavy weights with low repetitions or light weights with high repetitions. Which should you be doing to meet your goals? Unfortunately it’s not that clear cut.

Weight lifting can be broken down into three zones: high reps, mid reps, and low reps. Using the below chart, we can talk about what type of weight lifting you should do to meet your goals.

Weight Training Type	Training Effect	Reps per Set	% 1RM
Low Reps	Strength	1-5	80-90
Mid Reps	Hypertrophy	6-12	60-80
High Reps	Endurance	15+	40-60

Strength Continuum

1RM stands for 1 Repetition Maximum, or the amount of weight you can lift once. It is the basic unit used to determine strength. Here’s an online tool to help you calculate your 1RM (http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/other7.htm).

First, weightlifting and losing fat. In a previous post, I talked about cardio for fat loss and the link to heart rate. The ideal range of your heart rate to maximize fat loss is 70% - 85% of your maximum heart rate. While that article was about cardio,  The same principle applies to weight training for fat loss as well. How does that translate to high vs low reps? The truth is, it doesn’t matter. The important thing to do is get your heart rate up. My personal suggestion is to do mid to high reps in a circuit of 4-6 moves, taking little to no rest between sets. That being said, the exertion it takes to do heavy weights will also bring your heart rate up. It is harder to maintain a higher heart rate, but the benefit is still there.

Next, what if your goal is to build muscle? It’s commonly thought that lifting heavy weight with low reps is the only way to build muscle.. Studies on the best way to build muscle do not all point to low reps. It seems the most benefit comes from lifting weights until failure or fatigue. So how do you decide which is right for you? It’s going to depend on your experience and time. Doing a low rep workout until failure will be a shorter workout than a high rep workout until failure. The best way to maximize your muscle growth is to mix it up every few weeks. Lift big for a week or two, then switch to low weights.

If your goal is to improve your athletic performance, weight lifting should be an important part of your workout routine. As with cardio, you want to mimic your sport and target the muscles you will be using. If you are in a sport that requires you to be a brick house, like football or rugby, you want to work on muscle growth and strength, so stick to the high weight with low to mid reps. If you are in a long distance endurance sport, such as running or cycling, stick to low weight with high reps. Weight training for endurance sports doesn’t give the body the same simulation as the actual sport itself, but it’s important to have the increased lean muscle to get full power in each stride or push. And lastly, if you are in a power sport that requires you to do quick bursts of action, such as hockey, sprinting or roller derby, you will want to do explosive training. For explosive training, I recommend being in the mid to high reps range, do your movements quickly to simulate the sudden energy you will require in sport.

One last tip. If you are new to weightlifting, start in the high reps range with light weights. Have a friend or a trainer spot you to make sure you are using proper form.

Happy lifting!

References

http://www.builtlean.com/2012/07/19/high-reps-vs-low-reps/

http://www.bodybuilding.com/content/high-reps-low-reps-which-rep-scheme-is-best.html

http://www.trainingscience.net/?page_id=301

http://www.sport-fitness-advisor.com/strengthtraining.html

Cardio for Fat and Weight Loss

The age old idea of low impact cardiovascular exercises to burn fat is no longer holding up to new research and fitness testing. While low impact cardio is still good for you and will help in weight loss, it is no longer deemed to be the best and fastest method. So what is? What should you be doing to target fat burn, and how often should you be doing it? Let’s take a look at cardio intensity and how much you should do.

First, let’s look at some math. The chart1 below shows your Heart Rate (HR) percentage of your maximum HR (HR max), and how much fat you will burn. A quick and easy way to calculate your HR max is to subtract your age from 220. For some other methods to calculate your HR max, check out this website http://www.brianmac.co.uk/maxhr.htm. The best way to determine your HR max is to work with a trainer and do physical testing.

HR % from max	% fat burned from total calories burned
65 -70 %	60 %
70 - 75 %	50 %
75 - 80 %	35 %
80 - 85 %	20 %
85 - 90 %	10 %
90 - 95 %	5 %
95 - 100 %	0 %

The chart above just shows the percent of calories that is burned from fat, the remaining calories are mostly burned from carbohydrates. Note, it is not recommended to workout at 100% of your maximum heart rate.
Looking at the chart, it appears that the low impact HR zone burns the most fat, and thus should be the best one to do. What it isn’t showing you, is the increase in calorie burn. As you increase your HR, you will burn more calories in a shorter period of time. There is of course a limit. If you are training above 85% of you HR max, then you significantly decrease your fat burn percent. This is due to the high intensity of the training, which becomes anaerobic instead of aerobic. These intensities are also very difficult to sustain, so the amount of calories burned will be lower. This range of exercise should be done during athletic training, and not for fat burning. Summarizing the chart above, it appears that a mid-range of intensity is the best for burning fat quickly.

What exactly should you be doing in the mid range? How much should you do? The goal you should be aiming for is about 70% of your HR max. Make sure this is a sustainable range for you, you want to maintain this HR during your entire exercise. If you are struggling reaching 70%, then lower your goal to 60%, and keep going until you get to a rate that you can sustain. If you are just starting to workout, you may find that you need to start at a lower HR in order to complete the workout.
Now, how often should you do cardio? Start with 3 days a week for 20 minutes. As that gets comfortable, gradually increase by 5 or 10 minutes until you can do 45 minutes. Once you can do that, increase your intensity, you may also need to decrease the total time. Work your way back up to 45 minutes! Keep repeating this until you reach 85% of your HR max. Once this is comfortable, it is time to move on to other exercises, which will not be covered in this post.

I want to quickly go over some of the benefits of the lower range of cardio workouts, 50 - 70 % HR max. Below are a few reasons that you will want to start in this range, or even stick to this range of intensity.

• You are new to cardio exercises
• You have breathing problems
• You have joint issues, this range will have low impact activities, although there are some activities you can do to increase your HR that will not impact your joints
• You have a lot of time to exercise
• It includes activities you enjoy

In summary, using any cardiovascular exercises to burn fat and lose weight will be beneficial. In order to get the most benefit from your cardio exercise, increase your intensity but keep it at a sustainable rate. Cardiovascular exercise to lose weight should also be combined with weight training and a well balanced diet in order to maximize results. The best way to get started is to find something you enjoy and stick to it!

References

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/drobson178.htm

https://www.verywell.com/cardio-for-weight-loss-1229851