By Tina Paymaster, Nutrition Specialist and Lifestyle Coach Shelby Stoner, Exercise Physiologist

CONQUERING THE FIT BUT FAT SYNDROME

Are you exercising regularly for hours every week, eating healthier, and yet have not achieved your ideal body weight? It’s not your fault! Most exercise classes and workout plans are not conducted at the appropriate intensity to establish a fat burning metabolism, and often times result in unwanted body fat (Hint: It may be time to think twice about your daily spin or boxing bootcamp classes). On top of that, many of the most popular approaches to diet and nutrition are also misguided. So how do we combat this paradox?

Rest assured that science has the answers to your weight loss dilemmas, and it’s not as daunting as you may think.

The best and most effective way to shed those stubborn pounds is through exercise and nutrition programs that are tailored towards your own personal physiology and designed to create a healthy metabolism.

At PHASE IV, our work with athletes who must compete at specific weight limits has emphasized the importance of developing a healthy metabolism year round that will support weight loss and optimal athletic performance.

The vast majority of popular weight loss approaches today are based around high intensity workouts coupled with calorie-restricted diets. It may seem like a fool-proof plan, but in reality, this weight loss technique is unsustainable. When we eat too little and practice a steady diet of high heart rate exercise, it creates hormonal havoc and after about 8-10 weeks the subsequent high levels of a stress hormone called cortisol will crash our metabolism and rebound weight gain occurs. The key components to our weight loss efforts is to mitigate high cortisol levels associated with exercise and maintain a healthy metabolism that burns a lot of calories all day and night.

ARE YOUR WORKOUTS RIGHT FOR YOUR GENETICS?

We all know that person who can eat whatever they want, rarely work out, and somehow maintain a great physique. Why is that? These people are genetically programmed to burn more calories every minute, it is said they have a fast metabolism. What we get from our parents largely determines if we have a fast or slow metabolism. Unfortunately, we can’t change what qualities we inherit from our parents but with a science based approach to nutrition and exercise we can all speed up our metabolism.

What IS metabolism anyway? Metabolism is the sum of all the processes that turn the calories we eat and drink into energy. Simply put, it is how the body uses the food we eat as fuel. Even in resting conditions like sleeping or watching TV, we are constantly burning calories just to sustain normal bodily functions, this is known as our Resting Metabolic Rate.

In addition to the calories spent when we are at rest there are those we burn during daily activities and exercise. The true key to sustainable weight management is to increase the Resting Metabolic Rate. The calories we burn during exercise is actually inconsequential to our body weight. Most of those calories have to be replenished or we would be too fatigued for our next workout. Instead, it is the effect our workouts have on our metabolism and our resting calorie burn rate 24/7 that will result in permanent weight management.

To be effective for weight loss, our workouts must be performed at intensities that transform our metabolism to burn more calories all day and specifically to burn more fat for energy. Our bodies naturally prefer to burn carbohydrates as fuel because they are easily accessible and easy to break down. From both weight loss and athletic standpoints, we want to train our metabolism to prefer fat as fuel. Fat is a much more efficient energy source and provides more energy than carbohydrate.

Phase IV science-based testing protocols, such as the RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate) and VO2 tests, allow us to get a deeper look into each person’s physiology to determine their most productive exercise intensities and how much they need to eat in order to reach their ideal body weight. This data is then translated into nutrition and training programs designed to optimize metabolism year round.

We will teach you when to exercise and when to rest to keep cortisol levels in check with a healthy work-to-recovery ratio. We will teach you the most productive fat burning exercise heart rate and how many calories you need to keep your metabolism burning hot 24/7!

As a last note, we are not just what we eat. We are what we eat, digest and assimilate. If food is fuel, then we need to make sure your body is efficient at assimilating the food you eat by creating a healthy digestion system that would otherwise slow down your metabolism down and cause inflammation and disease. Addressing digestion, hydration, nutrient timing and other lifestyle factors such as sleep and stress also play vital roles in the fat burning and athletic performance equation.

Join PHASE IV Exercise Physiologist, Shelby Stoner, and Nutrition Specialist & Lifestyle Coach, Tina Paymaster at Performance Bicycle in Santa Monica Wednesday January 31 at 7pm for a more in-depth discussion of the science of sustained fat burning and performance.

This free lecture is open to the public, it is very well attended and seating is limited, so please RSVP for VIP seating Call 310-582-8212 or reserve your spot here.