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Mindfulness is a bit of a buzz word in the health and fitness industry. It’s thrown around loosely, recommended always, and is thought to be a silver bullet for overcoming all of the rather crummy eating habits that we have adopted as status quo in our modern day lives.

And the truth is – mindfulness as a solution to the problem of over eating and under moving is a really great option when implemented properly. Today we’re going to talk about that solution, and specifically, the habits that help us to get there to create and maintain mindfulness over our lifetime.

First lets qualify – why do we need mindfulness, and what is mindless eating?

• The act of eating without intention and with distraction.
• Eating for reasons not hunger related or eating without awareness of why you are eating.

Why is this a problem?

• Keeps us disconnected from the sensations of hunger.
• Leads to over eating and an excess and unnecessary intake of calories.

We know why we need to eat. We eat to maintain our energy needs – so that we can perform both physically and mentally at our best. Food as fuel, really understanding that relationship, is paramount to creating mindfulness around why we need to eat.

But why do we actually eat?

• To cope and deal with: boredom, happiness, sadness, anxiety, etc.
• Family, traditions, social reasons.
• Because we think we should at certain times.
• Occasionally because we are hungry.

There is a large disconnect between our physiological need to eat, and our desire to eat. Modern life has set us up to have energy(food) in abundance. Everywhere we look, there is energy waiting for us to consume. Never before has energy been easier to come by for the modern person. It’s truly remarkable! But so much so, that eating has become a hobby, a past time, a thing that we do for fun and a coping mechanism. Now, I’m not here to tell you to not enjoy your food. I personally love food! Food can be used as all of the things mentioned above(without judgment, might I add), but the problem is that, too much of it, too often, and it actually becomes the opposite of fun and enjoyable, and the effects of that over consumption becomes a burden, and a source of illness and anxiety.

Another important thing to consider is that we did not evolve to have all of this energy in such abundance, and so readily available. Even as little as a couple hundred years ago, for the average person, our resources for food was far lower and/or much harder to come by. We had to grow our food, go out and hunt or fish our food, or, that food came at a price and was only able to be obtained at certain times of the year, depending on where you lived. The modern notion of ‘eat 6 times a day so you never find yourself hungry’ is so far from how we as a species has eaten for literally thousands of years, that its no wonder we have a hard time creating mindfulness around food. The little cave man or cave woman in our head is constantly telling us to eat, eat, eat! We may not have another chance! Make that easily available food extra palatable(hello fast and highly processed food!) and it’s a recipe for a mindless eating disaster!

It is clear that we are disconnected from hunger and that we are set up to eat for reasons other than our actual fueling needs. What is hunger anyway?

Hunger is a physical sensation that begins and develops below the neck that signals to us that we need to eat soon. I describe this as below the neck to distinguish it from a ‘craving’ – where in we think about a food, we want a food(regardless of hunger cues).

What are the physical sensations of hunger?

• Growling stomach.
• Empty stomach feeling.
• Shakiness – a feeling of a drop in blood sugar
• Headache, loss of focus, feelings of ‘hangriness’.

 When Hangry Meets Craving!

What is not hunger?

• Craving – a thought and urge to eat something because you thought about it and decided that it sounded good and that you’d like to eat it (hunger should at least originate below the neck).
• An easy way to tell if you are truly hungry or not – if you are willing to eat a junk food because you are ‘hungry’ but not an apple, you are not actually hungry.

  Now that we know what hunger is, lets talk about modern diet culture and how it really throws a wrench in our ability to develop mindfulness around food. Modern diet culture tells us that we need to eat less, move more and to use ‘will power’ to get us through from one low calorie meal to the next. Given that most ‘diets’ have a high long term failure rate, we know that this actually does not work.

What are the contributing factors of hunger? How much does will power matter when it comes to over coming hunger?

• Physical activity makes us more hungry – you may notice if you are working out more that you are going to both want to and technically need to eat more. This can make getting into a caloric deficit when you are working out a lot very difficult. Add to this a tendency to over estimate the amount of calories we expend(and a propensity for justifying eating more calories after a workout)…. You can’t outwork your caloric intake.
• Skipping meals or not eating at regular enough intervals will make us more hungry in between meals.
• Relying on low calories meals/non fat or low fat foods to sustain you.
• Eating foods that are general lower in nutritional value – your body will continue to seek what it’s not getting if you’re only putting sugar/refined carbs/not enough protein and high quality fats in.
• At the end of the day, when you are just straight up really hungry, there is not enough will power in the world to help you get over that feeling because….

There are too many factors that are beyond our control that contribute to mindless eating. Our modern life is set up in a way for us to over consume energy at every turn.

Add to that, we have a faulty hunger and ‘feelings of satisfaction script’….

• We believe that we are supposed to eat until we are full, or, to the point where we don’t want to eat anymore.
• We have come to expect to feel fully sated, or satiated after a meal.
• We go into meals with a predetermined expectation of how much we are going to eat, regardless of whether we are actually hungry or in need of that amount of food.
• We use food to help us cope and reward, and eat for emotional reasons ranging from anxious eating, to celebratory eating.

Why are we so disconnected from hunger and fullness cues? Mostly, because of influences that we are wholly unaware of….

• Abundance of food – we have pantries and fridges full of food at home, office back rooms with piles of leftover and baked goods, snacks in the inner console of our car, very easy to access junk food and fast foods and even very high quality foods of all kind.
• Food FOMO. You are not hungry, but someone brought delicious homemade brownies into work to share. What if you never get the chance to eat brownies ever again?!?!
  
• We model after other people(whose needs are different from our own). We are also impacted by ‘how’ those other people eat their food(if they eat fast, you are more likely to eat fast, too).
• We allow restaurants/fast food/packaging/diet prescriptions to let us know how much to eat.
• We try to outsmart hunger with strategies that don’t work.
• DISTRACTION – think for a moment, how often are you truly present? Phones, computers, commutes, TV screens, conversations, chores, we have so much stuff that we need to fit into a day and on top of that we need to find time to eat and take care of ourselves…

The common denominators of Mindless Eating, – Stress, Abundance and Distraction – are big ones to overcome. There is no one perfect diet or method of eating that is going to cure these large, modern problems. It’s a combination of mindfulness and solid habits that are not so much a silver bullet, but an arsenal of tools to help you ‘notice and name‘ the problems so that you are able to identify what you need to change to overcome the mindless eating trap.

What is Mindfulness? 

Mindfulness is described as a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment. When this awareness is developed, you can calmly acknowledge and accept your feelings, thoughts, and physical sensations. I call this ‘noticing and naming’.

How do we start to work on mindfulness around eating and food? What are the steps?

NOTICE IT – >  you pay attention to when you are over eating, or eating really fast, or are really distracted. You will notice any emotions or feelings or body sensations that you have when you are in that moment. Find the relationship here and ask ‘if this happens, then what?’

NAME IT – > call it what it is! Name where you are, time of day, who are you with, what are the set of circumstances that put you in this mindless eating trap? What are the environmental factors at play?

TAKE ACTION!  Will Power IS NOT ENOUGH. What are concrete steps, things within your control, changes that you can make, so that you can stop falling down this particular hole. How can you divert or reroute yourself from this common pitfall?

Here’s how this works in an example situation:

Notice IT (find the relationship)

EXAMPLE: When I get home at the end of the work day, I am ravenous.

Name IT – > (name the environment and factors)

EXAMPLE: When I get home at the end of the work day, I am ravenous. I ate a very small breakfast and wasn’t able to make time to eat my full lunch.  There is a bag of chips on the counter in the kitchen when I first walk through the door and I will inevitably crush that bag when I walk through the door’

TAKE ACTION – > Divert/Reroute/Make a different choice  Will Power is not an option – but thoughtful, helpful habits, are. You can break the chain of mindless eating if you are willing to take some action, and do a bit of reverse engineering.

EXAMPLE: I’ve noticed that I am starving when I get home and that I tend to eat several handfuls of chips as soon as I walk in the door. I am going to choose to take the following steps:

• I’m not going to buy chips anymore, or at the very least, I am going to store them somewhere that is not that easy to get to in my house.
• I am going to start to eat a larger, more protein packed lunch and will make sure that I am including a high quality dietary fat in that meal.
• I am going to pack for myself a small handful of almonds or a piece of fruit to eat at the end of my work day so that I do not come home starving.
• I am going to practice sitting and dealing with my hunger and I am going to remember that hunger is not an emergency.
• I will have a plan for dinner at night so that I know that although I am hungry when I get home, I have a set plan for what I am going to eat.

  The above is just one common example of mindless eating, but there are many places where we get jammed up with distraction, hunger, and emotions. In the above example, we break down how to identify the problem and how to be proactive in creating a better environment and setting up a better set of circumstances for yourself to avoid falling into the same trap over and over.

There are lots of ways to build mindfulness around food, here are some of my favorite tried and true habits to helping you slow down, stay focused, and feel more in control of the what, how and why of your eating habits…

• Slow down your meals. Stretch meals to last 20 minutes, this will allow your brain to catch up with your stomach in terms of fullness cues and will help you avoid second helpings.
• Practice leaving something on your plate or using much smaller serving plates.
• Eating to 80% full – stop eating when you feel like you can still eat more food. Do not wait until you get to the point of being full.
• If you think you are hungry, do a full body scan. Is your hunger originating above or below the neck? Are you equally as enthused to eat something healthy as you are to eat something that you are ‘craving’.
• Stay hydrated! Before you eat, if you are questioning your hunger, drink some water.
• Be honest with yourself and start to notice and name habits and patterns. Keep track with a journal how you feel when you eat, why you ate what you ate, why you ate as much as you ate, etc.
• Practice sitting with your hunger, and reminding yourself that it is not an emergency.

Create an environment for success!

• Take control of your environment, both at home and at work. If we see food we are likely to eat it. If we keep foods around that are highly palatable or that we tend to over eat, we will eat it.
• If you must keep certain things in your house, keep them somewhere it is hard to reach. Do not leave in an easy to access place.
• If you buy foods in bulk – separate the food into portioned out amounts before you store it.
• Use smaller plates and portion out your meal and put the rest of the food away as soon as possible.
• Do not eat directly out of containers, always place on a plate/in a bowl.
• Create a diversion where necessary. If you find that you always feel the need to stop for a particular treat on your way home, consider finding a new route home to avoid the temptation.
• If you find that the first thing you do when you walk in the house is go for food, consider a routine for when you first get home that keeps you from mindlessly snacking.
• Change of scenery – if stress at work typically tends to send you into a snack frenzy, go for a walk instead. If you tend to find that you overeat a lot at particular restaurants or in particular places and this is something that bothers you, consider how much you need that place in your life.

I hope that you find these tips helpful, and that you may find some relief in knowing that a lot of us all struggle with mindless eating and developing mindfulness!  The first step is awareness, so if you’ve read this post, you are already well on your way to being more thoughtful about your choices, and it’s clear that you are working towards self improvement.

If this resonates with you, or if you have any questions, subscribe to this blog and/or reach out! I can be reached at hryan@bostonnorthfitness.com. If you are local to the Danvers, MA area, check out our club, Boston North Fitness Center. In addition to our one on one, small group and large group functional training programs, we provide help with developing mindfulness and improving your nutrition to help you better reach your health and happiness goals.

Checked out http://www.bostonnorthfitness.com to find out more!

 

Author: Hannah Skillin

Recently, I’ve had a couple of people ask me “how many times should I work out during the week?” It’s a really good question! In answering that question, I will address the problems both of not working out enough and also working out too much. Both of these are problems. On both ends of the spectrum, you won’t see the results that you want, and on the other end you can burn yourself out and even cause injury!

This graph represents progressive overload, which is how we talk about the adaptation of your body to exercise. When you go through a tough workout, you’re essentially damaging the tissues in your body. That effect is shown in the graph by the downward sloping lines. The muscle tissues in this phase get broken down and experience many many microtraumas. Don’t get nervous about that, though! Those microtraumas are actually a positive thing if you can leverage them properly.

In order to leverage your training, your body needs rest and fuel (aka food) to recover from tough workouts and to rebuild those damaged tissues. Ideally, when you get a tough workout, your muscles are broken down a bit and your ability to perform (lift heavy, run a long distance, etc.) will decrease. With proper sleep, nutrition, and active recovery, your body will repair itself and build itself up stronger! You can see this effect on the graph in the little swell of the line above the starting point. Ideally, this is when you work out again–when you’re at peak performance. Then you’ll damage the tissues again by training hard. Then rest, recover, repeat.

If you push yourself again too soon after working out, you’ll catch your body at the base of the slope again before your body has had a chance to adapt to the stimulus of working out. That effect is represented by the wavy line that trends continually downward on the graph. That’s a dangerous place to be, and it can lead to over-training and injury. If you suspect you might be working out too hard, check your heart rate right when you wake up in the morning, and if it’s elevated, you might need to ease up for a bit and get some extra rest.

On the other end of the spectrum is not working out enough. If you wait too long between workouts, you’ll level out at the place where you started and miss the window of adaptation that was described earlier. This is an equally bad place to be, because the whole point of working out is to get better, stronger, faster, leaner–whatever your goals are. If you’re constantly maintaining status quo, you’ll never improve.

Ideally, you catch the sweet spot where you continually improve! If you’re not seeing results from your workouts, check your schedule. Are you giving yourself enough time between workouts, or do you feel run down every time you go into the gym? Or are you taking three or four days or even a week between workouts on a regular basis? Does the same weight always feel heavy to you? A good rule of thumb is to wait two days before training the same muscle groups, which is why the Monday Wednesday Friday training schedule is so popular, especially for full body workouts. For the average person, it takes around 36-48 hours for your body to recover. If you want to work out on the off day, try some light, steady state cardio for 20 minutes or so. Or give yourself some TLC with a mobility and stretching session, like yoga. Hopefully, this helps you to reevaluate your workout schedule so that you can get the most out of your time in the gym and accomplish all your goals!

 

Getting in shape can be a big task.

I’ve done it myself (several times now) and have helped many a stranger turned great friend also get a handle on this whole getting healthy deal. There’s a lot of moving parts and components to consider. To do it well, and to achieve sustainable and maintainable results, is to realize and understand that it requires a multi faceted, nuanced approach. And everyone’s individual approach to greatness or just a little bit better is going to look a little(or very) different.

First and foremost, its important to understand that its more than just diet and exercise. Yes, these two things matter – but they only cover two variables. Other lifestyle factors really need to be taken into consideration in order for the whole diet and exercise thing to even work.

Recently, in a talk I gave to the training members of Boston North Fitness, I went over some of the essentials.  The talk was titled ‘The Big Rocks of Nutrition’ and in it I described the factors that I believe are the most important to consider when it comes to changing body composition and to leading a healthier, sustainable lifestyles.

What does BIG ROCKS mean?

This is a term that is commonly thrown around as a way of talking about bang for your buck essentials – paying attention to the big picture things in your diet or general lifestyle that will make a big difference over sweating the small stuff. If you don’t have the BIG ROCKS down, the little stuff doesn’t matter because they won’t add up.

SLEEP

You’re useless without it. Simply put, your body needs that time while asleep to recover from whatever hell you put it through the day before(whether that being physical or mental stress). The implications of not having this basic factor down are huge and problematic.

Why does sleep matter? 

• Regular sleep cycles are crucial to tissue repair, recovery and balancing hormones.
• Recovery and repair is where we get stronger.
• Too much stress as a result of poor recovery habits can lead to heightened levels of cortisol, which is linked to retention of fat around our organs(the dangerous kind)
• Not enough sleep, poor recovery and heightened stress have an impact on hormones like grehlin and leptin – the hormones that signal and regulate hunger. This, plus the fact that lack of sleep leads to more brain fog and poorer decision making means a higher likelihood of over eating and or picking up bad, unhealthy, compensatory habits.

What can you do? Look at your turn down routine. Start to get into bed earlier. Turn off electronics an hour before bed time, and resist the urge to fall asleep to the tune of the TV. Make sure you are not drinking caffeinated beverages too late in the day. Alcoholic beverages will make you sleepy, but will not lead to an overall better nights sleep(you will likely wake up, dehydrated, once your blood sugar crashes).

Take out the distractions that are holding you back. If you are finding that you are spending an extra hour each night playing candy crush on your phone as you lay in bed waiting to fall asleep, you may have discovered your problem.  And if you can’t fall asleep because you are having some kind of a health issue, or because of hormonal changes during menopause  – don’t ignore it. Be proactive, talk to your doctor, find some solutions! This stuff is important.

Preparedness, Ritual & Routine

So if you slept well the night before, good chance you’re going to have a better shot of being proactive in your daily life, instead of being reactive. Part of your turn down routine may be to set out your clothes for your workout in the morning. Maybe you had enough energy this afternoon to do some food prep so you have your breakfasts and lunches all squared away days in advance.

Your ritual or routine is how you ensure that you consistently hit your BIG ROCKS of nutrition and lifestyle change.

What are some ritual & routine actions taken that ensure that we’re able to accomplish all the good habits?

• having the right foods at the ready with a routine food shopping schedule
• a weekly, biweekly, or daily meal or ingredient preparation routine
• meal timing – do you eat consistent meals at consistent times? What prevents you from doing that? Is there a way that you can change your schedule to allow for more routine or consistency?
• morning routine? Night time routine? Do you have a  similar formula that you follow that allows you to feel successful, put together, and not rushed?
• going to bed at the same time each night and waking up at the same time each morning
• consistent workouts at regularly scheduled times if and where possible

Managing Stress

Ritual and routine goes hand in hand with managing stress. When there is a semblance of a plan in place, things are more likely to happen.  When things happen, and we meet a set of expectations of how we’d like our life and day to go, we tend to be less stressed and we experience more positive outcomes.

Why does this matter? Sleep, recovery and stress management all greatly impact how successful our fitness endeavors are at making us stronger and leaner. You also just straight up feel better, and are probably a more enjoyable person to be around. Everyone wins.

What are some stress management rituals that you can put in place?  Again, ritual, routine and a certain amount of daily predictability can be truly beneficial. Exercise, whether intense or just a simple walk around the block is known to be a great stress reliever. Spending time in nature, with animals and children and loved ones, doing things that you enjoy(even if only for short periods of time) and hobbies are all known stress relievers.

Bottom line – carving out a little bit of time for yourself to do something that you enjoy, that makes you happy typically does the trick. If you feel like you don’t have the time to do that, closely examine your rituals and routines to see if you can find and make that time for yourself.

Nutrition

Duh! Nutrition is huge. I was very close to putting it at the top of this list, but then realized that all of the other things before it need to be fine tuned in order for any kind of consistency or focus to happen with your nutrition.

Consistency is key. Its the most important thing. For one, its the only way to know if your nutrition plan is working. For whatever it is that you are hoping it is going to accomplish – be that fat loss, lean muscle gain, improved energy – whether you are trying an elimination diet, etc.

What are the BIG ROCKS of nutrition?

• The right stuff, the right amounts – are your meals balanced?
• 1 to 2 palms protein, 1 to 2 cupped handfuls of carbs, 1 to 2 thumbs of fat, 1 to 2 fists of veggies at every meal 3 to 4 times a day depending on goals.  (1 of everything for most women, 2 of everything for most men)
• Minimally processed, whole foods at every meal
  • Perimeter shopping at the supermarket
  • Foods that are perishable, that will go bad quickly
  • Minimal ingredients lists, the less the better
  • Minimal added sugar and sodium content

How you eat matters 

• eat slowly it takes your brain 20 minutes to catch up with whether or not you are full. Chew slowly, chew more, put down fork between bites, eat without distraction,  drink water in between bites, enjoy your food.
• eat off of smaller dishes, be aware of your portions.
• stop at 80% full, be mindful of when, where and why you eat beyond the point fullness. What are the contributing factors? (stress, distractions, where you are eating, who you are with, what and how you ate prior to that meal, etc.
• Pay attention –  what works for some likely won’t work for all, and what works for you may work for no one else at all!
• Journal your food – keep track of what you are doing, what’s working and note what is not. You don’t have to do it for ever and always, but even just a short amount of time with this kind of feedback can be beneficial.
• Focus on big picture, don’t get lost in the small details.

Exercise & Movement 

Funny how this one ends up at the bottom? Well see, they all aid and promote adherence to one another. Each of these categories kind of blends into the other and it all becomes a bit of a chicken or the egg thing. Exercise on a regular basis will help you sleep at night. Being well rested will make it easier to prepare and organize your life and day. Exercise can help with stress management.  Being less stressed means you’ll hopefully eat better – more for nourishment than for fun or relief.  Eating to compliment your workouts will make your workouts feel easier and your goals more attainable – helping you to stay on track and to stick with your ritual.

Movement is important – not just purposeful exercise like the kind we do in the gym, but how many steps you take per day, relaxing and stress relieving type movement like walks outside, general activity throughout the day.

 

To wrap it all up – remember that when you are feeling motivated to make changes in your life, your first most crucial step is to take a moment to engage in a little self reflection. Take a look at how or whether your daily life is set up for rituals and routines to ensure that you can make these kinds of changes to your lifestyle in a meaningful and sustainable way. Start with a few small, realistic habits to give yourself the time and space to make these things happen.

And don’t forget – you got this! Being proactive is always the best course of action and leads to a snowball of energizing and positive lifestyle changes.  Get after it my friends!

I got my first gym membership when I was 19 years old. It was my first year of college and the pounds were slowly creeping on, as was an alarming sense of dread that appeared every time I had to climb the 5 stories worth of stairs to my freshman Intro to Oil Painting class.  For the first time in my life, an unusual feeling had come over me. A voice inside my head was telling me to work out. There’s a lot of ways in which I am an unusual candidate for being a personal trainer, let alone a fitness director.  First and foremost being that I did not play sports as a kid nor had a seeming athletic bone in my body until I was in the latter half of my twenties. But also the fact that I hadn’t even walked into a traditional gym prior to age of 19.

But age 19 proved to be the year that I WOULD step into a traditional gym.  Between January 05 and May 05 I had lost nearly 25lbs and was feeling pretty good about myself. It was just me, my headphones, and an elliptical. And like, 6 or 7 hours of dedication to that each and every week. No big deal. I would continue to lose another 10lbs over the course of another 6 months. I was indeed svelte.

Fast forward 13 years later and I am now a fitness professional, and in these past 4 or so years have learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t.  But, with nearly a decade of fitness mistakes under my belt, I’ve basically tried every thing under the sun both nutritionally and fitness related to try and improve, change or alter my body.  I am often asked the question about whether or not I think it makes more sense to do cardio over strength training to achieve fat loss.  And through both research, and personal experience, I have an answer for that very question.

 

Cardio will definitely have you burning more calories in an hour than an hour dedicated to strict strength training. If you train with us at BNF and you are connected to a MyZone, or any heart rate or intensity tracker than determines an approximation of calories burned, then you know this to be true. Cardio wins the calories burned game all day long.  However, cardio does not provide the same lasting change as strength training, and in many ways can create some serious metabolic issues if relied on too heavily as your only means of weight loss and maintenance. Now, lets go back to my story…

I would fight for the remainder of my college years to maintain this weight loss. Spending hours in the various gyms spread across campus, sometimes pulling two a day cardio workouts. I found over time that I had to eat less and less to maintain my weight, in addition to having to do more and more cardio. Without going into too much detail, lets suffice it to say I had gotten myself into a very bad situation for my health, and my mindset. Senior year of college hit, and due to one too many stresses on top of another, I ballooned right back up and had gained about 30 pounds. This wasn’t due to crazy binges, and in fact I had significantly improved my nutrition by becoming a vegan. My body was just done. It wanted to reset, no matter how hard I pushed back.

Over the course of the rest of my twenties I would rally a weight loss and regain, back and forth over and over. And it wasn’t until I decided to play a sport, and become a certified personal trainer, that I would really learn the answer to the important question posed above. Whats better for fat loss and weight maintenance, strength training or cardio?

First lets answer one question – What causes fat loss?  Fat loss is more or less determined by a caloric deficit created through a calories in/calories out equation. But, thats not the whole story. I instead like to think of calories as our energy currency – the fuel that keeps the machine working and chugging along.   You need a certain amount of calories in so that you can keep the machine working optimally. Fat loss happens as a result of all other systems firing properly, and then you factor in the caloric deficit, best done with a combination of diet and exercise.

I like to recommend shooting for a total(through both exercise and diet) caloric deficit that is equal to no more than 20 – 25% of your daily needs. Lets say you need 2400 calories a day just to maintain. Drop 200-300 calories from your daily diet, add in a workout that burns about 300 – 400 calories, and you could easily lose 1 to 1.5lbs a week. That’s safe, sustainable fat loss. Days where you don’t workout – feel free to eat less. Days that you strength train, you’ll need to eat more to get the results you are looking for.  Remember – if you start off by immediately taking away 40 to 50% of your needs, you leave yourself very little wiggle room when you plateau. There’s only so much food you can take away, and only so much more time you can spend trying to burn more calories each day.

 Next, lets look at what exactly happens when you engage in strength training. If it doesn’t burn as many calories, then why is this better for fat loss?

• Muscle works harder at rest. Just existing with more muscle on your frame will have you burning more calories at rest as its a more metabolically active tissue.  At rest, your body needs and burns energy to maintain itself. A pound of muscle may burn as many as 7 to 10 calories at rest where as a pound of fat will only burn 2 to 3 calories at rest. Therefore, working on building and maintaining lean mass will overall improve your metabolism.
• Strength training improves insulin sensitivity.  When we take in carbohydrate, our body turns it into glucose for either immediate use or for storage for later use.  The presence of glucose in our blood stream signals for the release of insulin, which will move the glucose towards storage in our muscle or in the liver (glycogen stores) for current or later use. If there is too much for either immediate use or for muscle or liver storage, it will be stored as adipose tissue(fat).  Muscle contractions signal insulin to move glucose into our skeletal muscle, improving our overall sensitivity to insulin. This allows us to build more lean tissue, helping us improve overall body composition.
• You will continue to burn more calories after a strength training workout than after a cardio workout. As soon as you are done with your cardio session, you are basically done burning that higher number of calories. After a session with weights your metabolism can stay revved for up to a full day or longer, meaning more overall calories burned and a higher metabolic rate.
• Strength training provides a lot of variety.  We all know how easy it is to get bored with doing the same cardio workout. With that variety also comes more progression. Strength training can almost always be varied and progressed to get different out comes and to push the envelope so to speak, equalling continued results. At a certain point, the only thing you can do to your cardio workout to get more out of it is to go for longer or to up the intensity. There’s really only so far that you can push those variables before you either get hurt or just get burnt out.

So what should I DO?!

I would never suggest to only strength train and never do any cardio – its not balanced, and I totally understand that some people just really enjoy the feeling of a sweaty cardio session(myself included). Cardio is good for mental stress relief, feels good, is great for improving work capacity and cardiovascular health, and is an important part of a well rounded fitness regiment.

That being said, the importance of strength training should not be overlooked and should be given priority in your programming. That is, if you are looking for fat loss, weight maintenance, aesthetically pleasing results, and improved strength among other things. My suggestion is for 2 to 4 days of strength supplemented by 2 to 3 short and effective cardio workouts. As always, it depends on your goals, it depends on what you have for time and what the rest of your life looks like. But the plan that is sustainable, and that allows for consistent strength training with consistent progression, is probably the one where you are going to have the most long term success.