Exercising

A big mistake us nutritionists often hear from our clients who work out is that they believe that they should completely cut on carbohydrates (bread, rice, potato, pasta) and just live on proteins (meat, tuna, eggs) to gain muscle or that they should not have dinner after exercising. This is very wrong! And it’s actually the contrary that is true and will give you the results you opt for.

It is very important to have a healthy, balanced and varied diet with 5 frequent small meals to always keep your energy up and help restore fuel to your muscles. Glucose that comes from carbohydrates is stored in the muscle and if your muscles are depleted from it, you will feel very weak at the start of the exercise and you won’t be able to continue your training, so there’s no point in cutting on carbs!

After sports the muscles start to recover and the body needs a new stock of carbohydrates and protein. This is why it is so important that your meals contain the two: pasta with chicken, tuna with bread or potato and meat both at lunch and dinner. Always have a source of protein: fish, meat, chicken, and eggs with a source of carbohydrate like a slice of bread or some side rice. Salad alone is not enough!

If you are exercising late afternoon, have a snack 1 hour before composed of milk, cheese, and toast and don’t forget to drink 8-10 glasses of water all day long to hydrate your body!
For optimum burning of fat, you have to be exercising within your Fat Burning Zone. In this zone, the cardiovascular system is exercised and fitness levels are improved.  

1. First calculate your Maximum Heart Rate (BCMax) of the heart frequency zone: 220 – your age
2. Find the low end and high end of the heart frequency zone calculated as 60% – 70% of the maximum heart frequency zone.

For example, a person of 30 years has a 190 (220-30) Maximum Heart Rate. The fat burning Heart Rate Target Zone would be between 114 (190 x 60%) and 133 (190 x 70%) heartbeats per minute.
If you don’t have a heart monitor you can find your heart rate per minute by:

Placing the tips of your index, second, and third fingers on the palm side of your other wrist or place the tips of your index and second fingers on your lower neck and press lightly with your fingers until you feel the blood pulsing beneath your fingers. You might need to move your fingers around slightly up or down until you feel the pulsing.

Using a watch in the second hand and count the beats you feel for 10 seconds then multiply this number by six to get your heart rate (pulse) per minute.

If it’s between 114 and 133 (like in our example for a 30 years old person) then you are in the right way to burning fat!

It is dangerous to operate the heart at a rate above 85% of the maximum heart frequency, so never go beyond! ─ Just so you know, our normal heart rate at rest is between 60-100 beats per minute.

Finally, please remember that every person is physiologically different and this will reflect on the food and work-out program. Always check with your health care provider before starting an exercise program. Your health care provider, trainer or nutritionist can help you find a diet and fitness program as well as the accurate target heart rate zone that matches your needs, goals, and physical condition.

I hope this was useful to you! Have a great week!

Samia Khoury Dietitian

Accelerating Metabolism…Secrets to Losing Weight!

Hola amigos! After last weeks article on how to avoid over snacking and the consequent weight gain that ensues, I’m back this week with tips on how to burn more calories to eventually LOSE WEIGHT!!!

Metabolism, experts say, is the amount of energy or calories your body burns to maintain vital functions, or in other words metabolism is a complex network of hormones and enzymes that not only convert food into fuel but also affect how efficiently you burn that fuel. At every moment, be it sleeping, working or exercising, your body is constantly burning calories.

Not everyone burns calories at the same rate. Heredity plays a role as well as age ─ our metabolism is influenced by our age and it naturally slows at about 5% per decade after age 40; Sex ─ men generally burn more calories at rest than women; Proportion of lean body mass ─ the more muscle we have, the higher our metabolic rate tends to be; and Healthy living and correct eating

If our metabolism is slow, anything we eat per day more than what we burn will make us gain weight. Hereditary and gender characteristics, sadly we cannot control…but don’t get upset just yet! Secrets to increasing our metabolism lie in exploiting the later duo.

Here go some tips:

1-      Work Out:

Exercising, especially weight lifting, help us gain muscular weight, and the more muscle mass gained, the more energy we spend to maintain the muscle and the faster our metabolism gets. But without a balanced diet between consumption and energy expenditure, strength training offers no difference in weight loss.

2-      Drink lots of water:

Our body needs water for almost all its basic functions; with little water the metabolism takes more time to burn the calories.

3-      Don’t skip meals:

When we skip meals our metabolism is tricked into storing more energy in anticipation for the next meal. But when we acquire the habit of eating multiple meals throughout the day (small but frequent meals) our metabolism starts to burn more calories.

An important tip is to never skip breakfast because it’s the most important meal of the day. It is in the morning that our metabolism is faster and needs more energy, so if we don’t feed ourselves in the morning our metabolism will decrease the energy consumption throughout the day.

4-      Sleep Well:

When we don’t get enough sleep, our metabolism slows down to save energy. But if every night we sleep an average of 8 hours, our metabolism knows it can spend energy during the day since it will be recovered during sleep.

5-       Hormone Production:

In some cases, difficulty in weight loss might be due to decreased production of hormones by the thyroid gland, called hypothyroidism. Check with an endocrinologist to see if your hormone production is functioning properly and include foods containing potassium, calcium and magnesium in your diet! They help in the functioning of the thyroid gland:

- Foods that contain potassium are mainly fruits and vegetables like banana, pear, figs, peach, tomato, spinach and cabbage

- Foods that contain calcium like milk, yogurt, sardines, broccoli, sesame and cheese

- Foods that contain magnesium like walnuts, almonds, soya, cacao, dark green veggies, beans and whole wheat rice and grains

6-      Consume thermogenic foods:

They increase the internal body temperature thus speeding up our metabolism. Some foods like red pepper, ginger, green tea, omega-3 rich foods like salmon, tuna and flaxseeds are thermogenic! Ice water is also a thermogenic it will make the body burn more calories since your metabolism will burn more energy to warm the water to body temperature! Include more of these in your daily diet!

See you for the next hot topic about nutrition and healthy weight! Till then stay in peace and enjoy the end of summer!

Samia Khoury Dietitian