Is Your Metabolism BROKEN?

If you've ever said, "I think my metabolism is broken," you're not alone. For most adults, especially those balancing jobs, families, and nonstop obligations, it feels like no matter how dialed in your diet is or how many hours you log on the treadmill, fat loss just won’t budge. At SOTA Personal Training, we hear this phrase all the time. And we're here to unpack the truth: Your metabolism isn’t broken—it’s just misunderstood.

What Is Metabolism, Really?

Metabolism isn’t just about burning calories, it’s the sum total of all the chemical processes your body uses to keep you alive. It’s complex, but at its simplest, it boils down to how your body converts food into energy.

There are four key components of metabolism, often referred to as the "buckets" of Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE):

1. Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): How many calories your body burns at rest, just keeping you alive. This is largely determined by your genetics and lean body mass.

2. Thermic Effect of Food (TEF): The energy your body uses to digest, absorb, and store food. Protein has the highest TEF of all macronutrients (20–30%) [1].

3. Exercise Activity: The calories you burn during structured workouts.

4. Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT): The calories burned from all other movement (walking, standing, fidgeting).

Why “Broken” Feels Right (But Isn’t)

Feeling like your metabolism is "broken" is valid but, in most cases, it's not a clinical condition. True metabolic disorders (like hypothyroidism or Cushing’s syndrome) exist, but they are relatively rare. What's far more common? A slowdown due to lifestyle factors.

• Sedentary living: Most Americans sit for over 10 hours a day [2].

• Chronic stress: Elevated cortisol levels can impair fat loss and promote fat storage, especially around the midsection [3].

• Poor sleep: Just one night of sleep deprivation can reduce insulin sensitivity by up to 33% [4].

These lifestyle choices create the illusion of a sluggish or "broken" metabolism.

Want a Faster Metabolism? Focus on What You Can Control

You might not be able to change your genetics or your age, but there are three major areas where you can make a real impact:

1. Move More (NEAT > Everything)

Increasing your daily step count—even by 2,000 steps—can have profound effects. Walking just 10,000 steps can burn around 300–400 calories depending on body weight and pace [5].

Even more importantly, moving more boosts energy, lowers inflammation, and improves glucose regulation.

2. Lift Weights (Muscle = Metabolic Engine)

Strength training is your best bet for a long-term metabolic boost. While each pound of muscle burns roughly 6–10 calories per day at rest [6], the real win is that strength training improves insulin sensitivity and reduces age-related metabolic decline.

Think of cardio as paying rent and strength training as building equity—it’s an investment.

3. Sleep Like It’s Your Job

Chronic sleep deprivation wreaks havoc on metabolism. It increases hunger hormones like ghrelin, decreases leptin, and impairs recovery [7].

Aim for at least 7–8 hours of consistent sleep per night. Your metabolism will thank you.

The Real Takeaway

Your metabolism isn’t broken—it’s just waiting for the right inputs. Don’t get lost in the weeds of calorie calculators and metabolic myths. Instead, return to the basics:

• Move your body every day.

• Build strength through resistance training.

• Fuel your body with nutrient-dense, whole foods.

• Get consistent, quality sleep.

At SOTA Personal Training, we help real people make real changes. No fads. No gimmicks. Just science-backed coaching that gets results.

References:

[1] Halton TL, Hu FB. The effects of high protein diets on thermogenesis, satiety and weight loss: a critical review. J Am Coll Nutr. 2004;23(5):373–385.

[2] Diaz KM, et al. Patterns of Sedentary Behavior and Mortality in U.S. Middle-Aged and Older Adults: A National Cohort Study. Ann Intern Med. 2017;167(7):465-475.

[3] Purnell JQ, et al. Elevated cortisol levels, stress, and weight gain. Obes Res. 2004;12(12):2018-25.

[4] Spiegel K, et al. Impact of sleep debt on metabolic and endocrine function. The Lancet. 1999;354(9188):1435–1439.

[5] Tudor-Locke C, et al. How many steps/day are enough? For adults. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2011;8:79.

[6] Wang Z, et al. Resting energy expenditure: systematic organization and critique of prediction methods. Obes Rev. 2000;1(2):141–156.

[7] Nedeltcheva AV, et al. Insufficient sleep undermines dietary efforts to reduce adiposity. Ann Intern Med. 2010;153(7):435–441.

Want help dialing in your metabolism the right way?
Book a free consult with our expert coaches today at sotafitness.com.

6 Reasons Your Posture Stinks (And How to Fix It)

Let’s face it—most of us spend nearly every waking hour hunched over our laptops, peering down at phones, and slouching on couches like we're trying to become one with the cushions. And it’s wrecking our posture.

But here’s the good news: improving your posture isn’t as complicated as you think. Here are six common reasons your posture looks more like a croissant —and what to do about it (backed by both clinical insight and real-life coaching experience).

1. You’re Living in “Upper Cross Syndrome”

This is the classic “tech neck” and slumped shoulders combo. Thanks to all the time we spend at desks and on devices, our chest and upper trap muscles tighten, while the deep neck flexors and mid-back muscles become weak and overstretched.

Fix it: Strengthen your postural chain; everything from your upper back to your hamstrings. For the upper back, look up Y-T-W exercises, grab a light set of weights (2-10 lbs), and focus on higher repetition ranges and time under tension versus heavy weight. Posture is all about muscular endurance, not max strength.

Additionally, place a strong emphasis on horizontal pulling movements like rows. We recommend a 2:1 pulling to pushing ratio for optimal shoulder, hip, knee, and back health.

🧠 Research tip: Janda’s Upper Crossed Syndrome remains a foundational model for understanding postural imbalance in clinical settings【PubMed ID: 12701520】.

2. Your Glutes are Asleep on the Job

Lower Cross Syndrome is the other half of the equation. An anterior pelvic tilt (think: lower back arch, belly out, and hips dumped forward) means your glutes and core are underactive or weak. At the same time, your hip flexors and low back muscles are working overtime, often causing pain and discomfort without proper strength in those areas.

Fix it: For your lower body, incorporate exercises like glute bridges, hip thrusts, and clam shells to reset your pelvic tilt and bulletproof your back and knees. Train your core with both anti-rotation and traditional movements to reinforce pelvic stability and decrease back pain.

🧠 Research tip: Glute medius strengthening has been shown to reduce patellofemoral pain syndrome in runners and general populations【PubMed ID: 22419487】.

3. You Sit… a Lot

It’s not just that we sit—it’s that we sit for hours at a time in the same position. Over time, this leads to feeling stiff, weak, and tight in our hip flexors, setting the stage for low back pain and poor mobility.

Fix it: Use your warm-up as a time to focus on improving hip and shoulder mobility. Incorporate mobility movements like the couch stretch and doorway stretches to combat the effects of prolonged sitting. Bonus Tip: engage the antagonist muscle group (opposite side) during these stretches to tap into reciprocal inhibition, which helps relax certain muscles and get a deeper, more effective stretch. For example, when doing chest stretches, try to squeeze your shoulder blades together and engage your upper back muscles to force your chest and shoulder muscles to relax. For your lower body, squeeze your butt muscles during a quad/hip flexor stretch to deepen.

🧠 Research tip: Prolonged sitting has been linked to spinal flexion and altered lumbar mechanics that increase the risk of low back pain【PubMed ID: 26761386】.

4. You’re Training Only the Mirror Muscles

We’ve all seen it: the gym bro who benches five times a week but can't touch his toes. When we overtrain the front of our body and ignore the back, we reinforce postural imbalances.

Fix it: Aim for a 2:1 ratio of posterior-to-anterior exercises. That means two pulling or posterior chain exercises (like Romanian deadlifts, glute bridges, hip thrusts, rows, and upper body pulling movements) for every pushing movement like the bench press or squats.

5. Your Core Training is One-Dimensional

If you’re only doing crunches, you're missing most of your core. Your core includes deep stabilizers (like the transverse abdominis and spinal erectors), obliques, and the glute-lower back complex - everything from your hips to your armpits (or “axillae” in medical terminology). Side note: if it’s a six-pack you’re after, direct core training is actually the LAST thing you should be focusing on. Increasing muscle definition or “toning” is more about your nutrition, strength training, sleep, and stress habits— especially if we’re talking about the midsection.

Fix it: Incorporate anti-rotation work (like Pallof presses), planks, bird dogs, and back extensions. Isometric strength and endurance are critical for long-term posture improvements.

🧠 Research tip: Core endurance, especially in spinal stabilizers, is a better predictor of low back pain than raw strength【PubMed ID: 15277279】.

6. You Never Move Through A Full Range of Motion

Fun fact: You don’t actually need to stretch at all to improve your posture. Do it if it feels good, of course, but if better posture and mobility are what you’re after, you can accomplish both while you strength train. Focusing on the full range of motion during your strength training will improve your flexibility and mobility just as well, if not better, than static stretching. Incorporate both to feel your best!

Additionally, trying to keep your back from bending and twisting can do more harm than good. If you never train your spine through flexion and extension, you’ll be more vulnerable when life inevitably forces you into those positions (ie. winter shoveling).

Fix it: Once you're strong and stable, start integrating safe, controlled back extension movements like toe touches, supermans, and back extension variations. Build up your capacity for spinal movement, just like any other joint.

Research tip: Gradual exposure to flexion exercises may improve mobility and reduce fear-avoidance in chronic low back pain populations【PubMed ID: 26176454】.

Final Thought: Posture is a Habit, Not a Trait

You’re not doomed to “bad posture” forever. It’s not a character flaw—it’s just a side effect of how you move (or don’t move) every day. The antidote? Frequent movement, smart training, and strengthening the stuff you’ve been neglecting.

If your posture stinks, it’s time to fix it—one glute bridge and one row at a time.

P.S. Ready to get some help? Click here to talk with a trainer!

Are You Underestimating Your Calorie Intake?

Whether you are on a structured eating plan or just doing your best to eat healthy, it is extremely beneficial to have a good idea of how many calories you are consuming on a daily basis. Odds are that unless you are paying for a meal plan or you have a scale out and are preparing all of your own meals, there is going to be some sort of guesswork involved with figuring out just how many calories you are taking in on a daily basis. Unfortunately, we are not nearly as good at making caloric estimations as we tend to think we are.

Here’s what the science suggests:

Discrepancy between self-reported and actual caloric intake and exercise in obese subjects.

Lichtman SW1, Pisarska K, Berman ER, Pestone M, Dowling H, Offenbacher E, Weisel H, Heshka S, Matthews DE, Heymsfield SB.

Some obese subjects repeatedly fail to lose weight even though they report restricting their caloric intake to less than 1200 kcal per day. We studied two explanations for this apparent resistance to diet--low total energy expenditure and underreporting of caloric intake--in 224 consecutive obese subjects presenting for treatment. Group 1 consisted of nine women and one man with a history of diet resistance in whom we evaluated total energy expenditure and its main thermogenic components and actual energy intake for 14 days by indirect calorimetry and analysis of body composition. Group 2, subgroups of which served as controls in the various evaluations, consisted of 67 women and 13 men with no history of diet resistance.

RESULTS:

Total energy expenditure and resting metabolic rate in the subjects with diet resistance (group 1) were within 5 percent of the predicted values for body composition, and there was no significant difference between groups 1 and 2 in the thermic effects of food and exercise. Low energy expenditure was thus excluded as a mechanism of self-reported diet resistance. In contrast, the subjects in group 1 underreported their actual food intake by an average (+/- SD) of 47 +/- 16 percent and overreported their physical activity by 51 +/- 75 percent. Although the subjects in group 1 had no distinct psychopathologic characteristics, they perceived a genetic cause for their obesity, used thyroid medication at a high frequency, and described their eating behavior as relatively normal (all P < 0.05 as compared with group 2).

CONCLUSIONS:

The failure of some obese subjects to lose weight while eating a diet they report as low in calories is due to an energy intake substantially higher than reported and an overestimation of physical activity, not to an abnormality in thermogenesis.

N Engl J Med. 1992 Dec 31;327(27):1893-8.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1454084

This does not necessarily mean that you are destined to be terrible at estimating calories consumed and energy expended, but it is something to keep in mind if you are not necessarily getting all of the results that you had hoped for when you started your fitness journey.

10 Excuses Every Parent Makes—And How to Break Them

Being a parent is a full-contact sport. There are elbows to dodge, snacks to prep, tantrums to referee, and laundry piles that rival Everest. So it's no surprise that fitness sometimes falls off the back burner and onto the floor altogether.

But here's the truth: You don't need 90-minute gym sessions or total life overhauls to get strong, feel good, and model healthy habits for your kids. What you need is a mindset shift—from all-or-nothing to always-something.

Here are 10 of the most common excuses we hear from parents—and exactly how to punch holes in them:

1. "I don’t have time to work out."

• Tactic: Stack your habits.

• Borrowing from James Clear's Atomic Habits, find existing parts of your day to tack movement onto. Playing at the park? Do push-ups on the bench. Brewing coffee? Squat while it drips. Bonus: Your kid might join in. Built-in accountability buddy.

2. "My schedule’s too unpredictable."

• Tactic: Use micro workouts.

• No one said it had to be a full-hour sweatfest. Ten-minute "workout snacks" throughout the day can still move the needle—and research backs it. (Shoutout to the Journal of the American Medical Association for showing that short bursts of movement reduce all-cause mortality.)

3. "Everything else comes first."

• Tactic: Put workouts on the family calendar.

• Soccer practice, dentist appointments, birthday parties—they all make the cut. Why not your workout? Block the time. Set the tone. Prioritize your oxygen mask so you can show up better for everyone else.

4. "My partner doesn’t prioritize fitness."

• Tactic: Leverage social support.

• Have the conversation. Swap childcare. Align your goals. If you can sync your Netflix shows, you can sync your squat sessions. Be teammates.

5. "I’m not motivated."

• Tactic: Train with purpose, not just for aesthetics. Forget chasing abs. Think about playing soccer with your kids without gasping for air. Think about dancing at their weddings. Anchor your workouts to a deeper why.

6. "I missed my routine, so I skipped it."

• Tactic: Go for 'good enough.

• Perfection is a trap. One set is better than zero. Five minutes is better than none. Show up. Check the box. Momentum matters more than mastery.

7. "I’m too tired."

• Tactic: Improve your sleep hygiene.

• Yes, you're tired. Welcome to parenthood. But if you're regularly skipping sleep to scroll TikTok after bedtime, we need to talk. Screens down. Magnesium up. Go to bed like your gains depend on it—because they do.

8. "I can’t find childcare."

• Tactic: Include your kids in your workouts.

• Fitness doesn’t need to happen in isolation. Let them crawl through your plank. Race them up the stairs. Play Lava Monster (a.k.a. agility training). Let them see movement as normal, not punishment.

9. "I don’t have time to meal prep."

• Tactic: Automate your nutrition.

• Keep it simple. Keep it boring. Have go-to meals on autopilot. Rotisserie chicken, eggs, fruit, and frozen veggies go a long way. If all else fails, protein shakes and frozen meals can fill in the gaps.

10. "I don’t know if what I’m doing is working."

• Tactic: Track something simple.

• Forget weight and measurements for a sec. Track frequency. Did you move today? Did you check the box? That’s progress. That's winning.

Final Thoughts:

Parenting doesn't destroy your fitness goals. It just rewrites them.

You might not train like you did in your 20s—but you’re not that person anymore. Now you have the chance to model consistency, resilience, and health for your kids. And guess what? They’re watching.

So let's reframe. It's not about perfect workouts. It's about showing up, stacking small wins, and building momentum.

Because strong parents raise strong kids. Period.

Build Your Booty: 7 Keys to Stronger Glutes (Especially If You’re Over 30)

Let’s get real — stronger glutes aren’t just about aesthetics. They help you move better, lift more, and stay pain-free as you age.

But if you’ve been training hard and your backside still isn’t showing up for the party, chances are you’re missing one (or more) of these 7 key ingredients. Whether you’re in your 30s or pushing 50, here’s what you actually need to build stronger, better-functioning glutes.

1. Lift with Purpose — Not Just for the Burn

Glutes are big, powerful muscles. They need real strength training to grow — not just booty band workouts or high-rep fluff.

That means:

• Focus on compound lifts like squats, deadlifts, hip thrusts, and RDLs

• Train them consistently 2–3 times per week

• Aim for 8–15 reps per set with moderate to heavy weight

• Use progressive overload — slowly increasing weight, reps, or control over time

You don’t need 10 different glute exercises. You need 3–5 you do well — and do often.

2. Prioritize Progressive Overload

If you’re using the same dumbbells every week, doing the same number of reps… you’re not building. You’re maintaining.

Muscle growth happens when you increase load, volume, or intensity over time. Even one small change each week adds up.

3. Train in the Right Rep Range

High-rep band workouts can give you a burn — but they won't build long-term shape or strength. Instead, hit the 8–15 rep range with enough weight to challenge you.

This is where hypertrophy lives.

4. Eat Like You Mean It

Your glutes can’t grow without fuel.

Here’s what we tell our clients:

• Eat at least at maintenance calories (not in a constant deficit)

• Get 0.7–1.0g of protein per pound of body weight

• Don’t forget fiber — it keeps your digestion and appetite in check

Want to lift your butt? Lift your fork.

5. Sleep More Than You Think You Need

If you’re not getting 7–9 hours of sleep, your body isn’t recovering — and muscle isn’t growing.

Sleep is when:

• Growth hormone is released

• Muscle tissue repairs and rebuilds

• You replenish glycogen for your next training session

A 2010 study showed people who slept only 5.5 hours lost 60% more muscle and 55% less fat than those who slept 8 hours. Let that sink in.

6. Stop Doing Too Much (or Too Little)

If you’re training your glutes every single day, you’re not giving them time to recover. No recovery = no growth.

On the flip side, once a week might not cut it either. Most people will benefit from 2–3 focused lower-body sessions per week, with 12–20+ total sets of glute-focused work.

Quality over quantity. Every. Time.

7. Be Consistent, Not Perfect

Hard truth: Glute growth takes time.

Like any meaningful transformation, it doesn’t happen in 30 days. But give it consistent effort for 3–6 months — with the right workouts, food, and recovery — and your jeans will start fitting different. In the best way.

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Ready to Build Stronger Glutes — and a Stronger Body?

We help adults in their 30s and beyond build strength, lose body fat, and feel better in their bodies — for life.

If you want coaching that’s backed by science (and not just social media trends), we’ve got you.

Click here to book a free discovery call and see if we’re a good fit to help you out!

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Why Motivation Runs Out—and What to Do About It

Let’s be honest—if motivation alone were enough, most of us would already be in the best shape of our lives.

Yet here we are, in a world flooded with motivational TikToks, Instagram quotes, and fitness influencers shouting at us to “grind harder”… and somehow, we still struggle to get off the couch.

When we asked our SOTA community what they wanted us to cover on our podcast, the #1 request wasn't about nutrition, workouts, or even sleep—it was motivation.

So we took a deep dive into what actually keeps people going, especially when life gets busy, messy, and exhausting.

Here’s what we uncovered:

1. Motivation Isn’t Magic—It’s a Skill 🔥

People often think motivation is some magical force that either shows up or doesn’t. The truth? Motivation is a result of action, not the cause. Don’t try to get motivated to go to the gym; instead, go to the gym first, and the motivation will follow. If you wait until you feel like it, you might never start. Take a small action and let the feeling follow.

2. Activation Energy: The Spark That Starts It All ⚡️

In chemistry, activation energy is the initial input needed to start a reaction. In fitness, it might be putting on your sneakers or driving to the gym parking lot. Once you're there, momentum takes over. Lower the barrier to entry. Don’t aim for the perfect session—just focus on getting started.

3. Intensity Kills Consistency 💣

If every workout feels like a beatdown, your brain will associate the gym with pain, dread, and soreness. No wonder motivation drops. Don’t treat every workout like a final exam. It’s okay to have 60% days. They still count.

4. Toxic Motivation: It Works... Until It Doesn’t 🚨

We’ve all seen it—the tough-love influencers who call you soft if you miss a day. For some, that kind of shame-based push can spark action. But it rarely leads to long-term change. Motivation built on guilt and insecurity can get you moving, but it usually burns out fast— and leaves scars.

5. Consistency beats Intensity all day 📆

A single epic workout feels good in the moment. But what changes your body and health? Showing up, even on the days when you don’t feel like it. Progress comes from frequency, not ferocity. 80% effort, consistently, will beat 100% effort once a month—every time.

6. When in Doubt, Lower the Bar 🎯

Not every day needs to be a PR day. On tough days, the goal is simple: do something. A walk, 15 minutes of mobility, a quick bodyweight circuit—it all adds up. Perfection is not the goal—progress is. Lower the bar, and keep moving forward.

7. Systems Over Goals 🛠

Setting goals is great. But without a system to support them, goals are just wishes. Want to work out 3x/week? Block it on your calendar. Prep your clothes the night before. Create a checklist. Systematize the success. When life gets chaotic, your system is what saves you, not your willpower.

8. You Don’t Have to Love It—You Just Have to Do It 📌

Here’s the honest truth: not every workout will be fun. And that’s okay. Fitness is like brushing your teeth—some days are boring, but you do it because it matters. You’re not chasing thrills. You’re building a life that feels better, one session at a time.

9. Motivation Loves Company 👯

Community matters. If no one notices when you skip the gym, it’s easier to skip. But when people expect to see you—when you’re part of something—showing up becomes easier. Find people who care. It’s harder to quit when someone’s in your corner.

10. Willpower Is Overrated—Build Habits Instead 🔁

Willpower fades. Stress, fatigue, and life will drain it fast. But habits? They run in the background. Build routines that support your goals, so that on hard days, you don’t have to think—you just do. Set up your environment and schedule to do the hard work for you. Future-you will thank you.

Final Thoughts

Motivation will always rise and fall. That’s normal. What matters is whether you’ve built the systems, habits, and support to keep moving when motivation dips.

And if you're not sure where to start, start small. Start simple. Start now.

We dive deeper into all of this on the latest episode of the SOTA Personal Training Podcast.

🎙️ [Listen to the full episode here]

20 Popular Fitness Trends: Overrated or Underrated?

Fitness trends come and go, but the struggle of knowing which ones are worth your time, money, and effort never seems to end. Here’s a list of 20 popular fitness trends and whether or not they can be useful in helping you reach your health and fitness goals based on current research:

OVERRATED:

1. BCAAs (Branched-Chain Amino Acids)

   BCAAs are unnecessary if you’re already getting enough protein from food (Wolfe RR, 2017). Most complete proteins (meat, eggs, dairy) contain BCAAs in optimal ratios.

2. Hip Bands / Booty Bands

   They’re difficult to scale progressively and lack foot-ground contact, which is critical for full posterior chain activation. While hip bands increase glute EMG activity, they often train in a very short range of motion and are less effective than compound lifts like squats or lunges (Contreras et al., 2015).

3. Fasted Cardio

   Fasted cardio does not lead to more fat loss than fed cardio when calories are matched (Schoenfeld et al., 2014). It’s as simple as that.

4. Sweating During Workouts

   Sweat is a measure of thermoregulation, not effort or fat burn. You can burn just as many calories without sweating—especially in cooler climates or with lower-intensity strength work. Sweating is not linked to fat loss (Gavin TP, 2003).

5. Ab/Core Circuits

   Visible abs are primarily about low body fat, not endless crunches. The spot reduction doesn’t work; abdominal fat is lost through full-body fat loss (Vispute et al., 2011).

6. Cold Plunges Post-Workout

   While there are certain undeniable mental health benefits, cold exposure can blunt muscle growth if used immediately post-training. Cold water immersion after resistance training attenuates gains in muscle mass and strength (Roberts et al., 2015).

7. Mind-Muscle Connection

   While useful for some isolation work, it's not necessary when using proper technique, and some compound lifts activate target muscles regardless of “feeling it.” Mind-muscle focus increases activation, but it does not always improve performance or hypertrophy (Calatayud et al., 2016).

8. HIIT Classes (as mass-marketed)

   HIIT is powerful but often misused—too much intensity, too often, without proper programming. Excessive HIIT can increase injury risk and cortisol, and offer diminishing returns without proper periodization (Alkahtani et al., 2013).

9. Burpees

   Burpees are high-impact with low hypertrophy value and carry an elevated risk of shoulder and knee strain. You don’t have to do burpees to see progress - you’re welcome.

10. Soreness (DOMS)

    Muscle soreness is not a reliable indicator of workout effectiveness, and DOMS is more correlated with novelty and eccentric loading, not adaptation or gains (Cheung et al., 2003).

11. Detoxing

    The liver and kidneys already detox your body effectively, and most detox products are unregulated nonsense. No evidence supports detox diets for toxin elimination or sustainable weight loss (Klein & Kiat, 2015).

12. Testosterone Boosters

    Most OTC products are ineffective, underdosed, or contain unproven ingredients and misleading claims (Clemesha et al., 2020). If you’re going to waste $50, do it on something you actually enjoy!

13. Workouts Over an Hour

    After ~45–60 minutes, energy dips, risk of poor form rises, and returns diminish. Volume is important, but excessive duration often leads to junk volume and less effective hypertrophy stimulus (Haun et al., 2018).

UNDERRATED:

1. Creatine Supplementation

   Creatine has been widely studied to be safe and to improve strength, power, and cognitive function, which is important for older adults (Forbes et al., 2021).

2. Weighing Your Food

   Tracking intake improves weight loss outcomes significantly compared to non-trackers (Burke et al., 2011). It’s not obsessive—it’s precision. Especially during fat loss phases.

3. Resistance Training for Longevity

   Most people associate cardio with heart health and aging, but strength training has equal if not greater benefits for long-term health. Resistance training is associated with a 21% lower risk of all-cause mortality (Westcott, 2012) and improves metabolic function, bone density, and quality of life as we age.

4. Walking (Especially Zone 2 Cardiovascular Training)

   Walking is often overlooked because it's “too easy,” but walking in the zone 2 heart rate range improves mitochondrial function and metabolic health. Low-intensity exercise like walking at a moderate pace for 7,000-10,000 steps per day has been shown to reduce cardiovascular risk, improve insulin sensitivity, and significantly reduce the risk of death in adults over 40 (Paluch et al., 2021; Mandsager et al., 2018).

5. Eccentric Training (Negatives)

   While people focus on concentric lifts (e.g., pushing up in a bench press), eccentric (lowering phase) is where much of the muscle damage and hypertrophy signal occurs. Eccentric-focused training results in greater muscle hypertrophy and strength gains compared to concentric or isometric training alone (Douglas et al., 2017).

6. Unilateral Training (Single-Limb Movements)

   Most gym-goers skip single-limb exercises, but they build balance, joint health, and reduce injury risk—especially with aging adults. Unilateral training significantly improves functional performance and muscle symmetry, which are critical for fall prevention and rehabilitation (Zemková et al., 2017).

7. Isometric Training

   Holding positions (e.g., planks or wall sits) increases time under tension and is effective for tendon health and joint stability. Isometric training is particularly effective in reducing pain in patellar tendinopathy and improving neuromuscular control (Rio et al., 2015).

8. Grip Strength Training

   Grip strength isn’t just for powerlifters—it's a predictor of overall health, frailty, and even lifespan. Lower grip strength is associated with higher all-cause and cardiovascular mortality (Leong et al., 2015).

9. Tempo Training (Controlled Rep Speed)

   Slowing down your reps, especially the eccentric phase, increases time under tension and can lead to better hypertrophy and form. Manipulating tempo can significantly increase muscle activation and hypertrophic stimulus, even with lighter weights (Schoenfeld et al., 2015).

10. Breathwork and Nasal Breathing During Exercise

    Often neglected in fitness programming, nasal breathing and structured breathwork during exercise can improve performance and recovery. Nasal breathing promotes diaphragmatic function and increases CO2 tolerance, improving endurance and reducing fatigue (Dallam et al., 2018).

MIXED:

1. One Rep Max Testing: Mixed; useful for strength benchmarking but may carry injury risk.

2. Protein Shakes: Context-dependent; useful for convenience, but whole foods preferred.

3. Mobility/Stretching: Mixed; stretching is useful, but strength training through full ROM is just as effective.

4. Artificial Sweeteners: Mixed; safe in moderation, but excessive use not ideal.

5. Pre-Workout Supplements: Mixed; depends on quality and ingredients.

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Stay informed and keep pushing, friends!

The Longevity Blueprint: 10 Key Habits to Live Longer and Maintain Your Quality of Life

Staying strong and active is critical to our vitality as we age. However, most people only attribute this idea of longevity to their total number of years, which currently sits at between 75 and 80 for the average American. But what about the quality of those later years? Are they spent traveling, playing with grandkids, and enjoying hobbies? Or are they spent in a long-term care facility, hostage to a plethora of illnesses and medications?

This brings us to the idea of our “healthspan,” or the quality of those last few decades of life, and if you want to maintain your quality of life into those years, it doesn’t happen by accident. Thankfully, research has provided us with several longevity strategies you can actively practice to stay ahead of the game. Below are 10 key habits for increasing longevity - where do you stack up? Tally your total number at the bottom; 8 or more means you’re ahead of the curve, and 5 to 7 means there’s some work to do. If you score 4 or less, let me or your coach know so we can get you on the right track!

1. You get around 80% of your diet from whole, unprocessed sources. Think lean proteins, fruits, veggies, and healthy fats, which have been linked to reduced risks of cardiovascular diseases and overall mortality.

2. You have less than two alcoholic beverages per week. Excessive alcohol consumption is linked to liver disease, heart disease, certain types of cancer, and brain damage. It can also exacerbate mental health issues and lead to dependency.

3. You get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week. Regular exercise has been shown to significantly reduce your mortality rate and improve heart health.

4. You get 7-8 hours of sleep per night on a regular schedule. Good sleep hygiene is linked with lower risks of major chronic diseases and mortality. For all the party animals, don’t forget about those weekends.

5. You practice journaling, meditation, or mindfulness. Mindfulness and meditation have been shown to reduce stress and inflammation, which are critical factors influencing longevity and health.

6. You complete regular health screens with your doctor. Research shows that general practice-based health checks are effective for the early detection and management of diseases.

7. You maintain strong social connections or time with loved ones. Strong social connections are associated with reduced mortality rates, highlighting the vital role of social engagement in promoting longevity.

8. You regularly stimulate your mind. Engaging in cognitive activities has been shown to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease and maintain cognitive function.

9. You actively avoid toxins. Reducing exposure to alcohol, tobacco, drugs, etc. has shown significant benefits in lifespan and reduced disease risk.

10. You supplement (as needed). Studies have shown potential benefits from supplements like vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids, particularly in reducing total mortality among those deficient in these nutrients.

So, how do you stack up?

If you're thinking, "I know this stuff already... I just haven't started working on it yet..." I get it. But that doesn't change the fact that we can always do something to stay ahead of the things that try to kill us—and it's never too early (or late) to start improving our quality of life.

If you need help putting together a longevity program, click here to book a call with me, and we'll see how I can help.

- Phil

Good Stress, Bad Stress: Finding Your Sweet Spot

Too much stress, or the wrong kind, can harm our health.

Yet stress can also be a positive force in our lives, keeping us focused, alert, and at the top of our game.

It all depends what kind of stress it is, how prepared we are to meet it — and how we view it.

• There’s also a cool visual guide. Check out the infographic here…

People often think of stress as a dangerous and deadly thing.

Yet stress is simply a normal physiological response to events that make you feel threatened or upset your equilibrium in some way.

When you sense danger — physical, mental or emotional — your defenses kick into high gear in a rapid, automatic process known as the “fight or flight” response, aka the stress response.

The stress response is your body’s way of protecting you.

When working properly, the stress response helps you stay focused, energetic and alert. In emergency situations, stress can save your life or that of others — giving you the extra strength to lift a car off your child, or spurring you to slam the brakes to avoid an accident.

The stress response also helps you rise to meet challenges. Stress keeps you sharp during a presentation at work, increases your concentration when you need it most, or drives you to study for an exam when you’d rather be out with your friends.

But beyond a certain point, stress stops helping and starts damaging your health, your mood, your productivity, your relationships, and your quality of life.

Stress and the allostatic load

Grab a piece of paper and write down all the things in your average day that could possibly be a stress on your body, mind, and emotions.

We’d guess your list probably looks something like this:

• Boss yelled at me

• Rushing around to see clients

• Worrying about money

• Commuting

• Crummy weather

• Kid woke me up early

• Girlfriend/boyfriend snarked at me this morning

• I think I might’ve eaten some bad shrimp salad

If you’re like most people, you’re a camel carrying a big load of straw with these combined life stresses.

Now imagine what could happen if you start piling on more straw with worrying about your body image, with physical stress from your workouts, or with restricting your food intake. Eventually… snap.

The pile of straw — the cumulative total of all the stuff in your life that causes physical, mental, and/or emotional stress — is known as your allostatic load.

Good stress, bad stress

Some stress is good stress (also called eustress). Good stress pushes you out of your comfort zone, but in a good way. Good stress helps you learn, grow, and get stronger.

For example, riding a roller coaster is fun and exciting. It lasts a short time, and you feel exhilarated afterward. (That is, if you like roller coasters.)

Exercise can be another form of good stress. You feel a little uncomfortable, but then you feel good, and after an hour or so, you’re done.

Good stress:

• is short-lived

• is infrequent

• is over quickly (in a matter of minutes or hours)

• can be part of a positive life experience

• inspires you to action

• helps build you up — it leaves you better than you were before.

But let’s say you ride that roller coaster constantly or lift weights 4 hours a day, every day. Now it doesn’t seem so fun, does it?

This is bad stress, or distress.

Bad stress:

• lasts a long time

• is chronic

• is ongoing

• is negative, depressing, and demoralizing

• de-motivates and paralyzes you

• breaks you down — it leaves you worse off than you were before.

One key feature that distinguishes good from bad stress is how well the stressor matches your ability to recover from it.

The stress “sweet spot”

Since stress affects the mind, body, and behavior in many ways, everyone experiences stress differently.

Each of us has a unique “recovery zone”, whether that’s physical or psychological, and our recovery zone depends on several factors.

Just as important as the stress itself is how you perceive and respond to it.

Some people go with the flow and can adapt well to what others would perceive as highly stressful events. Other people crumble at even the slightest challenge or frustration they encounter.

There are many things that affect our tolerance to stress, such as:

• Our attitude and outlook — People with optimistic, proactive and positive attitudes are more stress resistant. And people who view stressful events as a challenge, and realize that change is simply a part of life, have a far larger recovery zone and are far less vulnerable to stress.

• Our life experience — Past stress can build us up or break us down, depending on when the stress happened and how powerful it was. Moderate stress at a time when we can handle it generally makes us better and more resilient. However, stress at a time when we’re already vulnerable (such as during childhood, or piled on top of other stressors) can actually leave us worse off.

• Our genetic makeup and epigenetic expression — Some of us are genetically more “stress susceptible” than others, especially if we meet environmental factors that then epigenetically “switch on” or “switch off” those crucial genes. For instance, one study found that older people carrying a certain gene polymorphism suffered major depression only if they had something bad happen to them in childhood. The folks with the genetic variant who had normal childhoods were fine.

• Our perception of control — Stress becomes most traumatic when we feel trapped. If we’re able to successfully fight or flee, we tend to recover better. But if we feel unable to change the situation, we’ll go to the next-stage stress response, the “freeze” response. This is when we feel helpless, hopeless, and paralyzed. We may also get more stressed if we’re “control freaks” — constantly trying to grip, grab, and grasp everything tightly.

• Our natural personality type — If you have confidence in yourself and your ability to influence events and persevere through challenges, it’s easier to take stressful events in stride. People who are more vulnerable to stress tend to feel like they have no ability to influence the events around them. They might also be highly empathetic and thus feel “pushed” and “pulled” by the needs and wants of others.

• Our support network — A strong network of supportive friends and family members (which can even include pets) is a powerful buffer against the stress of life. Conversely, loneliness and isolation worsens stress.

• Our ability to deal with our emotions — If you can’t calm and soothe yourself when feeling stressed or overly emotional, you’re more vulnerable to stress. The ability to level out your emotions will help you better handle adversity.

• Our environment — Natural environments (e.g. outdoors, spaces with lots of windows and natural lighting, etc.) calm us down, as do secure and safe environments (such as your comfy living room). Industrial environments full of stimuli (e.g. noises, machinery, artificial lights, threats coming at us quickly, etc.) amp us up and put us on edge. We also feel more relaxed in environments we think we can control, such as our homes; we’re more anxious in environments we think we can’t control, such as large public spaces or most worksites.

• Our allostatic load — The larger the allostatic load (in other words, the more stuff we’re dealing with at once), the more it wears down our resilience, and shrinks our recovery zone. How we respond to stress is critical, but the cumulative load of excess stress can wear down even the most resilient and positive person.

Generally, the “recovery zone” looks like this:

If the stressor is too low — not enough to cause a reaction — then nothing will happen. You’ll go along the same as before, no better or worse.

If the stressor is too high — too strong, and/or lasts too long, outpacing your recovery ability — then you’ll eventually break down.

If the stressor is within your recovery zone — neither too much nor too little, and doesn’t last too long — then you’ll recover from it and get better. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!

Balance the demands

We want enough “good stress” to keep a fire under our butts, but not so much that we break down and burn out.

(This applies to our own exercise and nutrition as well as our family lives and overall workload.)

That optimum zone depends on your allostatic load, as well as how you perceive and respond to it. Remember, this is your individual stress zone — nobody else’s.

And remember that the allostatic load is everything: mental, physical, emotional: that email from the boss… your hangnail… the weird paint smell in your office… your shockingly high phone bill… everything goes on to the “stress pile”. So, consider this holistically.

If your existing pile of straw is already heavy, then it’ll take only a few more straws to break you. And if you view your pile of straw as being too large and heavy, regardless of its actual size, then again it will only take a few more straws to break you.

Thus to manage stress, we must do two things:

• learn to balance our life demands, workload, and exercise/nutrition responsibilities; and

• view these responsibilities as an achievable challenge or an interesting problem to solve, rather than some insurmountable obstacle.

Manage your allostatic load

To lead a healthy, productive, and fulfilling life, you must manage your allostatic load.

Here are some activities you can do immediately to boost your body’s happy chemicals, activate your “rest and digest” nervous system, and start building your stress resilience.

• a relaxing walk (especially outside);

• being out in nature;

• getting moderate sunshine;

• listening to relaxing music;

• mindfulness practice and meditation;

• massage;

• deep breathing;

• laughing;

• snuggling a loved one or pet;

• yoga, gentle mobility, and/or slow stretching exercises;

• gentle swimming or water immersion (such as a hot tub);

• relaxing in a sauna;

• having sex (seriously);

• physical, non-competitive play;

• moderate, occasional drinking — 1-2 drinks for men, and 1 for women… enjoyed slowly and mindfully;

• drinking green tea.

In other words, think of de-stressing as purposefully chasing relaxation.

By the way, some recreational activities don’t count, such as:

• watching TV or movies;

• playing video games; or

• surfing the internet.

Electronic stimulation, while fun, is still stimulation. So, anything involving a screen is out.

Let’s dig a little deeper into a few of these.

Meditation

Meditation is one of the best stress-relievers.

Research on regular meditation shows how incredibly restorative it is, as it:

• lowers blood pressure;

• lowers heart rate;

• lowers stress hormones;

• lowers inflammation;

• boosts immune system;

• improves focus, mental clarity and attention, even when not meditating;

• improves mood; and

• improves sleep.

Being chronically over-stressed can negatively rewire your brain, increasing your risk for anxiety and depression.

Fortunately, meditation is like magic. When done regularly, it can rewire your brain in the opposite direction, to do all kinds of awesome stuff.

For example, meditation can contribute to:

• neurogenesis (growth of new neural connections and brain cells);

• emotional regulation (in other words, your ability to manage your feelings);

• memory and recall;

• development of the brain’s gray matter (even after only a few weeks); and

• our ability to regulate our body clock.

So how do you actually go about doing it?

While people sometimes think of meditation as an arcane practice best suited to adherents of the Hare Krishna sect, it’s actually pretty easy to do, and you don’t have to look or act like an aging hippie to benefit from it.

1. Find a comfortable, quiet, private place.

2. Sit or lie down, whatever seems most convenient. The position doesn’t matter, as long as you’re relaxed.

3. Get a timer going. Set a timer for 5 minutes, and then forget about counting down how long it’s been. That’s your timer’s job. It’ll take care of you.

4. Close your eyes.

5. Start with a quick 30-second “body scan”. As you scan down your body from head to toe, think about consciously relaxing each muscle. Let everything sink downward. In particular, let your face droop.

6. Now, focus on your breathing. Breathe in through your diaphragm, pushing your belly in and out. Observe how the air moves in and out.

7. Count 10 breaths, observing each one.

8. Let thoughts drift in and out. Let them wander in, then shoo them away. They’ll be back. You don’t need to hold on to them.

9. Observe only. Don’t judge. There is no “should”. If you think of something, no worries. Don’t fret. If you hear a noise, or have an itch, simply think, There’s a noise or I have an itch. Make a note of it; then move on.

10. Keep coming back to your breathing. There’s no rush; just keep wandering back to it. What’s it doing now?

11. Repeat until your time is up.

12. Finish with 5 good belly breaths to “bookend” the session.

13. Open your eyes.

That’s it. Pretty easy right?

Green tea

You already know that drinking green tea has tons of health benefits. At PN we have been singing its praises for years. And now you can add one more benefit to that list.

A large study in Japan found that regularly drinking green tea lowered the stress levels of those found to have high levels of psychological stress. This is thought to be due to L-theanine, a non-protein amino acid in green tea (and, to an extent, in other teas).

L-theanine is a proven stress reducer and calming agent. It inhibits cortisol, which our body releases in response to stress, and also lowers your blood pressure and heart rate as it chills out your sympathetic nervous system. And it causes all of these actions in as little as 30 to 40 minutes after consumption.

L-theanine may even change your brain function. During most of your waking hours, your brain is producing beta brain waves, which can affect concentration and focus. Green tea consumption will actually stimulate your brain to emit alpha brain waves instead, creating a state of deep relaxation and mental alertness, similar to what you can achieve through meditation.

This may occur because L-theanine is involved in the formation of the inhibitory neurotransmitter gamma amino butyric acid (GABA). GABA influences the levels of two other neurotransmitters, dopamine and serotonin, producing the key relaxation effect.

Sipping a few cups of tea throughout the day can help to lower stress, increase focus (even more effectively than coffee), suppress appetite and improve your health. Not too bad.

L-theanine, found in green, is a proven stress reducer and calming agent.

Exercise

Regular exercise is a great tool to help you handle stress. Exercise often allows you to blow off steam, and exercising regularly can boost your stress-tolerance.

However, remember that all stress fits in one bucket — i.e. the allostatic load. If you have a super-stressed out life, training your ass off 6 times a week is only contributing to that, as training stress goes in the bucket too.

Instead, balance your exercise approach. It’s not all about high-intensity, high-volume lifting combined with high-intensity intervals all the time. Training intensely as your sole approach to exercise will continually jack up your sympathetic nervous system and compound your stress symptoms.

Instead, do a mix of intense weight training, some intense conditioning, and plenty of restorative exercise — exercise that leaves you feeling more refreshed and invigorated after doing it, not drained and exhausted. This would include activities like:

• walking outside in sunshine (BSP’s favorite, especially with the dog);

• yoga;

• gentle mobility, and/or slow stretching exercises;

• gentle swimming or water immersion (such as a hot tub);

• a casual bike ride; or

• a casual hike.

This exercise is meant to stimulate some blood flow, get you outside if possible (because sunshine and nature are proven to improve mood and lower stress), burn a few calories, and stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system.

Your parasympathetic nervous system is known as the “rest and digest” system (as opposed to the “fight or flight” sympathetic nervous system). Engaging your parasympathetic nervous system is key to lowering your stress.

There’s nothing wrong with kicking butt in the gym, but don’t let your only form of exercise be balls-to-the-wall high intensity training, especially if you already lead a stressful lifestyle.

Allow yourself some quiet and gentle exercise: You’ll lower stress, improve recovery, and — as a side benefit — you’ll also improve your intense lifting.

Other tips for stress management

• Establish a routine and some order in your life. While scheduling yourself too strictly can be confining, too much reactive spontaneity can be stressful as well. Find a balance between the two that works for you.

• Eat plenty of omega-3 fats. Eat fish, pasture-raised animals, flax seeds and chia seeds, and take fish, krill or algae oil.

• Know your limits. Know how much stress you can handle. While you can increase your stress tolerance and lower your stress by following the preceding tips, simply knowing that you can’t be everywhere at once, or everything to everyone, will also take some pressure off. Be reasonable about your individual capabilities and expectations. Remember that each person is different.

• Single-task. We often think that multitasking lets us do more work in less time. Research consistently shows the opposite: When we focus on multiple things at once, we do each of them less efficiently and effectively. Each time you interrupt one task, your brain takes about 15 minutes to get back to optimal processing speed and efficiency. Most of us don’t do anything for 15 focused minutes, so our brain never has any time to settle in and get ‘er done. Do one thing at a time, do it well, and then move on to the next.

• Unplug from the digital world. There’s constant electronic stimulation in our lives. Unplug from it once in a while. Turn off your phone. Close your computer. Go read a book, play games, and get social with other humans.

• Change your stress story. Drop the negative self-talk and work towards a more positive attitude. Telling yourself, and other people, how busy you are and how much you have to do only makes yourself feel busier, chaotic and more stressed. On the other hand, a positive attitude can actually lower stress levels. Simply telling yourself you can manage something can give you more confidence to manage it. This doesn’t mean that you can never be frustrated or sad, it simply means you shouldn’t wallow in it.

What this means for you

Don’t get stressed out by trying to incorporate all these tips. (Ha, ha.) Just focus on two key points:

1. All stress — life, work, family, financial, training, good, bad — fits into one bucket, creating your unique allostatic load.

To stay healthy, lean, and fit, you must manage this load. Find the strategies that work best for you, and practice them on a regular basis. And keep in mind that what works best for you at this particular stage of your life may not work for you in other stages. Be willing to evolve your strategies as your life, and allostatic load, evolve.

2. Just as important as your stress load is how you respond to it.

View stress as a challenge or an interesting puzzle to solve. Roll with the punches and have a Plan B (or C, or D). Stay open, flexible, and creative. This attitude helps you handle your allostatic load better, and mitigate the potential harm it could cause you.

If you need help finding your stress balance, don’t hesitate to reach out! As your coaches, we’re here to help you succeed. Schedule a free consultation with us by following this link!

——

Written by Krista Scott-Dixon, PhD and Brian St. Pierre, MS, RD, CSCS via Precision Nutrition

How Alcohol Can Affect Your Body Composition

If you begin a conversation about alcohol, you’re likely to get a chorus of varied opinions.

Your one friend swears that her daily glass of red wine will ward off cardiovascular disease, even if it’s at the expense of her six pack abs. Meanwhile, your gym buddy has a zero alcohol consumption policy in an effort to remain as lean as possible and avoid the dreaded “beer belly”.

Is it really possible to enjoy your social drinking and still maintain a healthy body weight and composition?

The answer is somewhat complicated and likely depends on your ultimate goals.

Let’s delve a little deeper into the relationship between alcohol and body composition.

How the body metabolizes food

In order to understand how the body metabolizes alcohol, we must first take a look at how the body breaks down different macronutrients. There are three major macronutrients: lipids, carbohydrates, and protein. For example, what happens inside your digestive system when a person consumes a typical mixed meal made up of carbohydrates and fat.

During digestion, carbohydrates are generally metabolized first in what we call the “substrate hierarchy.” As the body breaks down carbohydrates, insulin levels rise and cause fat oxidation to be suppressed.

When insulin levels drop, fat is released from the fat cells for metabolism. Dietary fat is stored temporarily in these fat cells, and fat storage is an ongoing process in the body with fatty acids constantly entering and exiting fat cells through the day.

The temporary delay in fat oxidation is not what causes fat gain; rather, it’s the caloric input and output that determines how many calories will be stored as body fat.

How the body metabolizes alcohol

Alcohol is made through the process of fermentation of starch, and traditionally has been classified as having 7.1 calories per gram. But once we take into account its rather high thermogenic effect (the amount of energy it takes to metabolize it), we find that it actually has closer to 5.6 calories per gram. This clocks in at a close second to protein.

However, you’ll often hear that calories from alcohol are defined as “empty”, which mean you do not receive any nutritional value.

Once we add alcohol to our meal, the metabolism of alcohol will take immediate priority. Essentially, fat, carbohydrate and protein oxidation is suppressed.

One study found that when participants were given four meals differing in carbohydrate, fat, protein and alcohol content, the alcohol-rich meal suppressed fat oxidation more than the carbohydrate-rich meal did. There was no difference in hunger or satiety sensations after the test meals.

So why does alcohol metabolism take priority?

The metabolic by-product of alcohol, a process known as microsomal ethanol-oxidizing system, is a compound known as acetate which is toxic to the body, thus your body prioritizes removing these toxins.

Once alcohol is converted into acetate in the liver, it enters circulation and only a very small portion can be converted to fatty acids. Basically, acetate is a poor precursor for fat synthesis. One study attempted to estimate fat synthesis after alcohol consumption and found that only ~3% of alcohol is converted into body fat. In this study what that found was that for every 24 grams of alcohol that was consumed, only 0.8 grams of fat was made in the liver.

It seems that alcohol and carbohydrates both suppress fat oxidation as the body works to first metabolize alcohol and remove it from the body and break down carbohydrate in the presence of elevated insulin. However, while carbohydrates eaten in excess of what the body can store as glycogen can be easily converted into fat, the same cannot be said for alcohol.

While alcohol is a toxin, it doesn’t seem that alcohol calories are converted at a higher rate to body fat than the calories from carbohydrates, fat or protein. Rather, excessive consumption of calories in ANY form is likely to cause fat gain.

Nutritional Differences between Different Types of Alcohol

We discussed the idea that alcohol calories are likely no different than calories from carbohydrates, fat or protein when it comes to weight gain. But what about when we look at different types of adult beverages. Are there nutritional differences between beer, wine, and spirits?

First, we need to take into account caloric content by volume but it’s also important to consider carbohydrate content as this will drastically influence the metabolism of your drink and whether it will be recognized by the body as “alcohol” or “carbohydrate”.

Beer

• Light beers typically contain ~100 calories and 5 grams of carbs per 12 oz serving

• Regular beers typically contain ~150 calories and 10.5 grams of carbs per 12 oz serving

• IPA’s typically contain ~240 calories and 22 grams of carbs per serving

Wine

• Dry red wines typically contain 150 calories and 4 grams of carbs per serving

• Dry white wines typically contain 125 calories and 3 grams of carbs per serving

• Dry Sparkling wine and champagne typically contains 110 calories and 2 grams of carbs

• For sweeter wines, you can assume that the carbohydrate content will be slightly higher

Spirits

• Spirits such as vodka, gin, whiskey, rum, and tequila will all contain close to 95 calories and 0 grams of carbs per fluid ounce

Keep in mind that when you mix alcohol with high calorie beverages and mixers, the caloric value and carbohydrate content changes. While 1.5 ounces of tequila may contain only 95 calories and 0 grams of carbohydrates, a margarita might contain somewhere closer to 400 calories and 65 grams of carbohydrates.

Effects of Alcohol on Caloric Intake

Aside from the potentially high number of empty calories alcohol can impair judgment and decrease inhibitions when it comes to making good food choices.

Indulging in alcohol prior to a meal (what is known as an aperitif) has been shown to increase caloric consumption. This is likely due to the increased activity in the brain’s pleasure centers, leading the drinker to overconsume appealing food.

Another factor is the restricted ability to monitor food intake and stay on your exercise routine when you have been under the influence the night prior. Calorie counting may very well fly out the window, and waking up with a hangover the day after a night of drinking is not always conducive to getting in an intense workout.

This all makes sense. But what about the drinker who consumes alcohol but does not then consume more calories from food and sticks with their regularly scheduled fitness routine?

One study of 19,220 women found that normal-weight women who consumed a light to moderate amount of alcohol actually gained less weight than non-drinkers and had a lower risk of becoming overweight or obese during 12.9 years of follow-up.

Moderate alcohol consumption can improve insulin sensitivity, although the mechanism behind this is still unclear. This would play a role in the way in which the body breaks down and stores carbohydrates.

Though this isn’t a reason to start drinking if you do not currently, it does seem to support the notion that alcohol calories might not be as bad as we once thought.

Side note: There is no strong research to suggest that excess alcohol is any more likely than excess protein, lipids or carbohydrates to cause weight gain independent of the fact that excessive alcohol consumption might also lead to increased food consumption.

Alcohol and Body Composition

It has been said that alcohol may decrease testosterone levels which may very well affect muscle growth, fitness performance and body composition, but research in this area is also not very strong.

A six-week study found that when men and women consumed 30-40 grams of alcohol per day, there was a mere 6.8% reduction in testosterone levels for the men and no change for the women. This means that even while drinking 3-4 adult beverages per day for three weeks, there was only a very small reduction in testosterone.

Thus, for moderate drinkers, testosterone reduction does not seem to pose a significant threat.

But what about consuming alcohol as a post-workout drink? After all, marathoners have been throwing back a pint or two at the finish line for decades.

One study looked at the hormonal response to alcohol consumption post-workout. Researchers gave participants the equivalent of an alcoholic drink after their resistance exercise and found that despite the significant alcohol consumption, there was no effect on testosterone and only a modest prolonged cortisol effect compared to the exercise-only group.

Another study looked at the effects of alcohol consumption before, during, 24 hours after, and 48 hours after a workout and found no significant changes in muscular performance nor any accelerated muscular damage.

Granted, some studies have found the opposite. For example, one study found that a moderate dose of alcohol may impair normal muscle recovery after exercise. However, this effect was found after very strenuous eccentric exercise that the average gym-goer is less likely to engage in. Another study found that when given very high doses of alcohol (1.5 g/kg of body weight) post-exercise, the ethanol acted as a depressant and was linked with prolonged secretion of testosterone.

In an alcoholic population, research has found that chronic drinkers suffered from reduced rates of muscle protein synthesis but the same cannot be said for a light to moderate drinking population.

So can you enjoy your martini and still reap the benefits of your workout?

The answer is yes, as long as you keep your drinking to a moderate level which may mean a few times per week for most exercisers. Serious athlete may want to think twice about regular bouts of heavy drinking, as alcohol consumption been linked to higher incidence of sports-related injury and even small drops in testosterone or increases in cortisol  which may pose a threat to their high-level fitness goals.

What’s the bottom line?

Can alcohol be included as part of a healthy diet without considerably deterring the drinker from achieving the body they want and work so hard for?

The answer is yes!

For optimizing weight and body composition, research shows that it is more important and beneficial to keep overall caloric intake under control.

When consuming alcohol, try to remember the following:

1. The metabolism of alcohol DOES affect fat metabolism but likely not more than other macronutrients like carbohydrates. That said, try to avoid consuming excessive calories to avoid fat storage and if drinking regularly, be sure to account for alcohol in your usual caloric intake.

2. If you’re trying to maximize your time spent in the gym and minimize the effects that a six-pack might have on your six pack, you might want to limit sugary mixers and cocktails and when choosing beer, stick to lighter versions.

3. Keep calories in check by opting for these lower calorie spirits but also being sure to consume ample amounts of lean protein to promote satiety (remember, alcohol does not have a satiating effect so to avoid overeating while drinking, fill up on protein!)

4. Stay hydrated and get to sleep on time. This way, you won’t have to skip your workout in the morning!

5. And last but not least, always remember to drink responsibly! Excessive levels of alcohol is never healthy!

**

Alix Turoff MS, RD, CDN, CPT is a Registered Dietitian and NASM Certified Personal Trainer. She sees patients privately and also works as a freelance consultant and writer.

https://inbodyusa.com/blogs/inbodyblog/how-alcohol-can-affect-your-body-composition/

Acute aerobic exercise helps overcome emotion regulation deficits

ABSTRACT

Although colloquial wisdom and some studies suggest an association between regular aerobic exercise and emotional well-being, the nature of this link remains poorly understood. We hypothesised that aerobic exercise may change the way people respond to their emotions. Specifically, we tested whether individuals experiencing difficulties with emotion regulation would benefit from a previous session of exercise and show swifter recovery than their counterparts who did not exercise. Participants (N = 80) completed measures of emotion response tendencies, mood, and anxiety, and were randomly assigned to either stretch or jog for 30 minutes. All participants then underwent the same negative and positive mood inductions, and reported their emotional responses. Analyses showed that more perceived difficulty generating regulatory strategies and engaging in goal-directed behaviours after the negative mood induction predicted more intense and persistent negative affect in response to the stressor, as would be expected. Interactions revealed that aerobic exercise attenuated these effects. Moderate aerobic exercise may help attenuate negative emotions for participants initially experiencing regulatory difficulties. This study contributes to the literature on aerobic exercise’s therapeutic effects with experimental data, specifically in the realm of emotional processing.

KEYWORDS: Emotion regulation, aerobic exercise, depression

We are surrounded by messages encouraging us to exercise. Blog posts, advertisements, doctors, and peers all affirm the emotional and physical advantages of working out. Beyond colloquial wisdom, research shows that in both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric populations, regular exercisers tend to report greater emotional well-being and fewer depressive symptoms than people who are sedentary (Harris, Cronkite, & Moos, 2006Harris, A. H. S., Cronkite, R., & Moos, R. (2006). Physical activity, exercise coping, and depression in a 10-year cohort study of depressed patients. Journal of Affective Disorders, 93, 79–85. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2006.02.013[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Tordeurs, Janne, Appart, Zdanowicz, & Reynaert, 2011Tordeurs, D., Janne, P., Appart, A., Zdanowicz, N., & Reynaert, C. (2011). [Effectiveness of physical exercise in psychiatry: A therapeutic approach?]. L’Encéphale, 37, 345–352. doi:10.1016/j.encep.2011.02.003[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). Although the physical health advantages of aerobic exercise likely contribute to emotional well-being, the psychological impact of physical activity is not entirely explained by these changes. Furthermore, results for clinical interventions targeting exercise have been inconsistent in their results (e.g. Blumenthal et al., 2007Blumenthal, J. A., Babyak, M. A., Doraiswamy, P. M., Watkins, L., Hoffman, B. M., Barbour, K. A., … Sherwood, A. (2007). Exercise and pharmacotherapy in the treatment of major depressive disorder. Psychosomatic Medicine, 69(7), 587–596. doi:10.1097/PSY.0b013e318148c19a[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Krogh, Videbech, Thomsen, Gluud, & Nordentoft, 2012Krogh, J., Videbech, P., Thomsen, C., Gluud, C., & Nordentoft, M. (2012). DEMO-II trial. Aerobic exercise versus stretching exercise in patients with major depression-a randomised clinical trial. PloS One, 7(10), e48316. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0048316[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]) and many trials suffer from the potential confound that voluntary engagement in exercise habits may reflect recovery or stable mood rather than be the source of positive change. Given the numerous studies that have shown general positive associations between exercise and mood, more research is needed to understand the nature of these effects. This work would help develop more targeted, consistently efficacious interventions. To this end, we hone in on individual sessions of exercise and their effect on emotional experiences.

One hypothesis holds that aerobic exercise relieves depressive symptoms by accumulating recurring mood enhancements. Hence, if a bout of exercise boosts affect, chronic exercise should foster long-term mood elevation. This is how many people think about exercise in their own lives; when they feel upset, they go for a run or head to the gym to feel better. And this approach can work, for some people, some of the time. However, though some studies have found post-exercise mood improvement (e.g. Yeung, 1996Yeung, R. R. (1996). The acute effects of exercise on mood state. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 40(2), 123–141. Retrieved fromhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8778396doi: 10.1016/0022-3999(95)00554-4[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]), others have not (e.g. Rejeski, Gauvin, Hobson, & Norris, 1995Rejeski, W. J., Gauvin, L., Hobson, M. L., & Norris, J. L. (1995). Effects of baseline responses, in-task feelings, and duration of activity on exercise-induced feeling states in women. Health Psychology: Official Journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association, 14(4), 350–9. Retrieved fromhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7556039doi: 10.1037/0278-6133.14.4.350[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]); moreover, others have even found post-event declines in mood, and that exercise can be aversive for beginners, at too high intensities, or in competitive contexts (Salmon, 2001Salmon, P. (2001). Effects of physical exercise on anxiety, depression, and sensitivity to stress: A unifying theory. Clinical Psychology Review, 21(1), 33–61. Retrieved fromhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11148895doi: 10.1016/S0272-7358(99)00032-X[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). Yet, despite variations in session-to-session mood effects, in the long-term regular exercisers usually enjoy overall mood benefits from consistent activity.

Alternatively, aerobic exercise may change the way a person responds to emotional events. Everyone becomes upset at times. Although some people can smoothly shift their attention away from this distress when it arises, thereby recovering quickly, others cannot. This latter group is vulnerable to chronic difficulties with emotion regulation, persistent negative affect, and at the extreme, depression and related psychopathology. Physiologically, physically fit individuals return to pre-stress levels more quickly than do nonfit ones following a stressor, and for individuals with greater baseline physiological reactivity, exercise training improves their ability to weather stress (Blumenthal et al., 1988Blumenthal, J. A., Emery, C. F., Walsh, M. A., Cox, D. R., Kuhn, C. M., Williams, R. B., & Williams, R. S.(1988). Exercise training in healthy type a middle-aged men: Effects on behavioral and cardiovascular responses. Psychosomatic Medicine, 50(4), 418–433. Retrieved fromhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3413273doi: 10.1097/00006842-198807000-00009[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Calvo, Szabo, & Capafons, 1996Calvo, M. G., Szabo, A., & Capafons, J.(1996). Anxiety and heart rate under psychological stress: The effects of exercise-training. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, 9(4), 321–337. doi:10.1080/10615809608249409[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). This effect may apply to emotional stress as well, though research is limited (Salmon, 2001Salmon, P. (2001). Effects of physical exercise on anxiety, depression, and sensitivity to stress: A unifying theory. Clinical Psychology Review, 21(1), 33–61. Retrieved fromhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11148895doi: 10.1016/S0272-7358(99)00032-X[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). We hypothesised that physical exertion could help individuals who would otherwise exhibit delayed returns to their emotional baseline to rebound from distress more quickly. In this way, regular aerobic exercise could help prevent the onset or worsening of depressed mood for individuals with limited emotional flexibility (e.g. Strawbridge, Deleger, Roberts, & Kaplan, 2002Strawbridge, W. J., Deleger, S., Roberts, R. E., & Kaplan, G. A. (2002). Physical activity reduces the risk of subsequent depression for older adults. American Journal of Epidemiology, 156(4), 328–334. Retrieved fromhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12181102doi: 10.1093/aje/kwf047[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]).

In the present pilot study, we examined the acute effects of aerobic exercise for emotional processing. Specifically, we tested how a bout of moderate aerobic exercise altered the emotional effects of subsequent exposure to a sadness-inducing film clip. Theoretically, a bout of physical activity could facilitate flexible coping by boosting a person’s regulatory ability, perhaps through increased self-efficacy or executive control. We chose to examine the specific, potentially protective relationship between exercise and persistent self-reported negative affect. This framework implies that exercise before a negative experience should mitigate consequential emotional responses. However, as noted above, not everyone struggles to regulate negative emotions. In a brief, experimental paradigm like this, we would expect a ceiling effect such that some people naturally follow a smooth, quick course back to baseline over the study period. For these people, any regulatory boost that aerobic exercise, or any other intervention, could provide may not be evident. Yet this enhancement should be evident for people struggling to regulate their emotions, and hence have room to improve. We therefore asked participants to report on a broad, though non-exhaustive, range of emotion regulation difficulties to test for an effect as a prelude to identifying mechanisms.

We hypothesised that all participants would report increased negative affect in response to a stressor and that regardless of condition – exercise or no exercise – some would emotionally recover more quickly than others. For those participants experiencing difficulty with regulation in the moment, such as feeling stuck in the induced mood state or overwhelmed, a previous session of exercise should foster recovery compared to their counterparts who did not exercise. Therefore, we administered repeated measures of state affect as well as measures of baseline mood symptoms and state emotion regulation difficulties following the stressor.

Method

Participants

Participants (40 women, 40 men, Mage = 22.3 years, SD = 15.4, age range: 18–58) completed the study between 2014 and 2015.11. Prior to examining data, we excluded 11 participants who experienced technical difficulties and were therefore unable to complete the mood inductions and subsequent questionnaires.View all notes The ethnic/racial composition of the final sample was 62% Caucasian, 11% African-American, 18% Asian, 9% multiracial or other, and 10% identified as Hispanic or Latino. They were recruited from the Harvard University Study Pool and by flyers posted in the community. Participants included students, university employees, and community members. Harvard University’s Committee on the Use of Human Subjects approved the study protocol, and participants provided informed consent prior to initiation of any study procedure.

Eligible participants were at least 18 years of age, were able to read and sign the consent form, and reported regular exercise, defined as at least three days per week of moderate activity for 30 minutes, as recorded on the International Physical Activity Questionnaire: Short Form (IPAQ-S; Besson, Brage, Jakes, Ekelund, & Wareham, 2010Besson, H., Brage, S., Jakes, R. W., Ekelund, U., & Wareham, N. J. (2010). Estimating physical activity energy expenditure, sedentary time, and physical activity intensity by self-report in adults. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 91(1), 106–114. doi:10.3945/ajcn.2009.28432[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). Exclusion criteria were pregnancy, possible pregnancy, or failure to answer the question concerning possible pregnancy. Additionally, we excluded participants who endorsed any question on the 7-item Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (PAR-Q; Adams, 1999Adams, R. (1999). Revised physical activity readiness questionnaire. Canadian Family Physician Médecin de Famille Canadien, 45: 992, 995, 1004–1005.[Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Thomas, Reading, & Shephard, 1992Thomas, S., Reading, J., & Shephard, R. J. (1992). Revision of the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (PAR-Q). Canadian Journal of Sport Sciences = Journal Canadien Des Sciences Du Sport, 17, 338–345.[PubMed], , [Google Scholar]) or scored above the clinical cut-off (>24) on the 6-item Exercise Addiction Inventory: Short Form (EAI; Terry, Szabo, & Griffiths, 2004Terry, A., Szabo, A., & Griffiths, M.(2004). The exercise addiction inventory: A new brief screening tool. Addiction Research and Theory, 12(5), 489–499. Retrieved fromhttp://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/The_Exercise_Addiction_Inventory__A_New_Brief_Screening_Tool.pdfdoi: 10.1080/16066350310001637363[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). The PAR-Q assesses diagnosed or perceived contraindications to participating in aerobic exercise and the EAI assesses risk for exercise addiction, as respondents indicate how much they agree with each item (e.g. exercise is the most important thing in my life). These pre-screening measures were used for participant safety and to avoid potential confounds of extreme attitudes towards physical activity.

Procedure and materials

After completing the informed consent process, participants answered a battery of self-report questionnaires embedded in an online survey. Participants completed the pre-screening items (IPAQ-S, PAR-Q, and EAI) and provided information about their demographics, emotion response tendencies, and mood. To verify that the groups did not differ at baseline in emotion response tendencies that could influence their reactions to the stressor, we included trait measures of emotion regulation. We asked participants to complete the Affect Intensity Measure – Simplified (AIM; Bryant, Yarnold, & Grimm, 1996Bryant, F. B., Yarnold, P. R., & Grimm, L. G. (1996). Toward a measurement model of the affect intensity measure: A three-factor structure. Journal of Research in Personality, 30(2), 223–247. doi:10.1006/jrpe.1996.0015[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Geuens & De Pelsmacker, 2002Geuens, M., & De Pelsmacker, P.(2002). Developing a short affect intensity scale. Psychological Reports, 91(2), 657–670. doi:10.2466/pr0.2002.91.2.657[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Larsen, 1984Larsen, R. J. (1984). Theory and measurement of affect intensity as an individual difference characteristic. Dissertation Abstracts International, 85, 2297B. (University Microfilms No. 84-22112). [Google Scholar]), Emotion Regulation Questionnaires (ERQ; Gross & John, 2003Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 348–362. Retrieved fromhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12916575doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.348[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]), and Ruminative Responses Subscale of the Response Style Questionnaire (RRS; Treynor, Gonzalez, & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2003Treynor, W., Gonzalez, R., & Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2003). Rumination reconsidered: A psychometric analysis. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 27(3), 247–259. Retrieved fromhttp://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1023910315561doi: 10.1023/A:1023910315561[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]) before randomisation. The AIM is a 20-item scale measuring the strength of a person’s emotional experiences, with good validity and reliability (Geuens & De Pelsmacker, 2002Geuens, M., & De Pelsmacker, P.(2002). Developing a short affect intensity scale. Psychological Reports, 91(2), 657–670. doi:10.2466/pr0.2002.91.2.657[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). The 10-item ERQ captures how respondents think or behave in order to manage or change their emotions in various situations; we examined the six items constituting the cognitive reappraisal subscale, which has good reliability and validity (Gross & John, 2003Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 348–362. Retrieved fromhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12916575doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.348[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). The 22-item RRS has good internal consistency and moderate to high test-rest reliability, and it assesses two factors of rumination: reflective pondering and brooding. We also included baseline measures of mood and anxiety symptoms, as related pathology can influence the intensity and duration of emotional experiences. The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales, 21-item (DASS-21; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995Lovibond, S. H., & Lovibond, P. F.(1995). Manual for the depression anxiety stress scales. Psychology Foundation of Australia, 56. doi:10.1016/0005-7967(94)00075-U [Google Scholar]) was used to evaluate participants’ mood during the past week. This measure distinguishes between depressive, physical, and psychological arousal or tension, and agitation, and shows internal consistency and concurrent validity (Antony, Bieling, Cox, Enns, & Swinson, 1998Antony, M. M., Bieling, P. J., Cox, B. J., Enns, M. W., & Swinson, R. P. (1998). Psychometric properties of the 42-item and 21-item versions of the depression anxiety stress scales in clinical groups and a community sample. Psychological Assessment, 10(2), 176–181. doi: 10.1037/1040-3590.10.2.176[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). This measure yields three subscales: depression, anxiety, and stress.

Eligible participants were then randomly assigned to the aerobic exercise or no exercise (stretching) condition and completed the experimental session. Randomisation was blocked by gender. To avoid demand characteristics, we told participants that they would be engaging in low-to-moderate physical activity during the study, but we did not tell them that there were two conditions. Participants were also instructed not to exercise on the day of the session.

At the beginning of the experimental session, a participant’s resting heart rate was manually measured twice. Participants then used an affective circumflex measure to report their affect (Barrett & Russell, 1998Barrett, L. F., & Russell, J. (1998). Independence and bipolarity in the structure of current affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(4), 967–984. Retrieved fromhttp://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/74/4/967/doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.74.4.967[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Nezlek, 2005Nezlek, J. B. (2005). Distinguishing affective and non-affective reactions to daily events. Journal of Personality, 73(6), 1539–1568. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2005.00358.x[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). They indicated how much they felt each emotion at that moment on a visual analogue scale ranging from 0 to 100 (positive: happy, excited, content; negative: sad, angry, anxious/worried). Immediately thereafter, the exercise group jogged for 30 minutes at a moderate pace. The exact pace was dictated by the participants themselves, for comfort and ecological validity, but guided by the experimenter with the following parameters: during moderate exercise you should notice an increase in breathing, you should still be able to speak without difficulty, and on a scale from 0 (sitting) to 10 (breathless, running as fast as possible), your effort exerted should be 5. Participants randomised to the no exercise group were led through 30 minutes of stretching. The stretching served as a control condition to isolate the effect of exercise, as it does not involve aerobic exertion, but it is physically active. Both activity conditions took place in an indoor track. Study staff monitored participants’ adherence to the instructions.

After the aerobic exercise or stretching, the mood inductions and remaining measures were delivered and completed through an online survey that took approximately 20 minutes to complete. A participant’s heart rate had to return to within 10% of his or her baseline average before he or she began the final survey. Affective ratings were repeated and then immediately followed by a negative mood induction in which all participants watched a brief clip from the movie The Champ. This clip reliably induces negative emotion, namely sadness (Gross & Levenson, 1995Gross, J., & Levenson, R. (1995). Emotion elicitation using films. Cognition & Emotion, 9(1), 87–108. Retrieved fromhttp://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02699939508408966doi: 10.1080/02699939508408966[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). Participants then completed affective ratings and measures of emotion regulation. Emotional clarity and regulation were measured with a modified version of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS; Gratz & Roemer, 2004Gratz, K., & Roemer, L. (2004). Multidimensional assessment of emotion regulation and dysregulation: Development, factor structure, and initial validation of the difficulties in emotion regulation scale. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 26(1), 41–54. Retrieved fromhttp://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/B:JOBA.0000007455.08539.94doi: 10.1023/B:JOBA.0000007455.08539.94[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). This self-report measure included three sections of the DERS (difficulties engaging in goal-directed behaviour, limited access to emotion regulation strategies, and lack of emotional clarity). Similar to the adapted scale used by McLaughlin, Mennin, and Farach (2007McLaughlin, K. A., Mennin, D. S., & Farach, F. J. (2007). The contributory role of worry in emotion generation and dysregulation in generalized anxiety disorder. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45, 1735–1752. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2006.12.004[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]), this questionnaire asked participants to rate how much each statement applies to them right now rather than in general, thus serving as a state measure. Higher scores indicate more difficulty with regulation and less clarity. Finally, coping self-efficacy was assessed with the 26-item Coping Self-Efficacy Scale (CSE; Chesney, Neilands, Chambers, Taylor, & Folkman, 2006Chesney, M. A., Neilands, T. B., Chambers, D. B., Taylor, J. M., & Folkman, S. (2006). A validity and reliability study of the coping self-efficacy scale. British Journal of Health Psychology, 11(Pt 3), 421–437. doi:10.1348/135910705X53155[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). Participants are asked to rate how much they believe that they could perform various behaviours related to coping on a scale from 0 (“cannot do at all”) to 10 (“certain can do”). Scores range from 0 (no self-efficacy) to 260 (maximum self-efficacy). After a 60-second delay, the six affective circumplex ratings were then repeated three more times, each at 60-second intervals between which participants sat quietly and waited for the next set to appear. Lastly, all participants engaged in a positive mood induction, watching a brief clip from the film When Harry met Sally. This clip reliably induces positive affect, especially amusement or happiness (Gross & Levenson, 1995Gross, J., & Levenson, R. (1995). Emotion elicitation using films. Cognition & Emotion, 9(1), 87–108. Retrieved fromhttp://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02699939508408966doi: 10.1080/02699939508408966[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). The clip was followed by a final affective circumflex rating.

Statistical analysis

Descriptive data for the final sample are presented as means with standard deviations (SD) for continuous variables and counts with proportions for categorical variables. We conducted chi-square analyses to evaluate group differences in gender, race, and ethnicity, and independent sample t-tests to evaluate group differences in age, trait measures of emotion regulation, depressive, anxious, and stress-related symptoms, and baseline measures of state affect. We also used t-tests to confirm that before the mood inductions began, participants in the exercise group experienced a significantly greater increase in heart rate from baseline than did participants in the stretching group, as intended by the manipulation. Pearson correlations corrected for multiple comparisons were computed for baseline DASS scores, baseline state affect reports, and DERS scores, given known associations between mood symptoms, emotion regulation, and affect. Multivariate regression analyses were conducted to examine the unique and interactive effects of group assignment and state measures of emotion regulation on state levels of sadness immediately following the negative mood induction and at the end of the study, and happiness immediately following the positive mood induction. Clinical measures (DASS scales) were also included as current mood symptoms frequently occur with on-line regulatory deficits and heightened negative affect. To examine changes in affect across time points, we conducted mixed effects regression analyses, with group assignment serving as a between-subjects predictor and time as a within-subjects factor. Reported analyses satisfied assumptions of linearity and normality of residuals. Furthermore, we applied the Benjamini–Hochberg procedure for multiple comparisons to control the false discovery rate, which was set to .05, and only report surviving effects (Benjamini & Hochberg, 1995Benjamini, Y., & Hochberg, Y. (1995). Controlling the false discovery rate: a practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B (Methodological), 289–300. Retrieved fromhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2346101[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]).

Results

Baseline characteristics of the sample are presented in Table 1. Prior to testing, participants in the stretching and exercising groups did not differ in age, t(50.15) = 1.37, p = 0.18, gender, χ2(1) = 0.0, p = 1.0, or baseline trait measures of affect intensity (AIM), t(77.74) = −1.0, p = 0.32, rumination (RRS), t(74.60) = .45, p = 0.66, reappraisal (ERQ-Reappraisal), t(68.07) = −.50, p = 0.62, depressive symptoms (DASS-Depression), t(72.41) = .79, p = 0.43, anxious symptoms (DASS-Anxiety), t(77.80) = −.15, p = 0.88, or stress (DASS-Stress), t(75.46) = .43, p = 0.67. Before and after 30 minutes of stretching or exercising, the two groups did not differ in their reports of sadness, t(70.36) = .01, p = 0.99, t(63.11) = .34, p = 0.74, happiness, t(77.84) = .43, p = 0.67, t(78.0) = −.08, p = 0.94, overall positive affect (feeling excited, happy, or content), t(77.92) = .20, p = 0.84, t(77.86) = .10, p = 0.92, or overall negative affect (feeling anxious, angry, or sad), t(71.75) = .16, p = 0.87, t(67.05) = .14, p = 0.89. Groups also did not differ in their emotional responses captured in the repeated measures of sadness, happiness, or overall negative or positive affect after the negative film clip: sadness post-negative clip, t(72.79) = .31, p = 0.76, sadness post-positive clip, t(60.16) = .98, p = 0.33, happiness post-negative clip, t(74.50) = .38, p = 0.70, happiness post-positive clip, t(77.98) = −.64, p = 0.52, negative affect post-negative clip, t(74.70) = .15, p = 0.88, negative affect post-positive clip, t(61.51) = 1.31, p = 0.19, positive affect post-negative clip, t(76.61) = .11, p = 0.91, positive affect post-positive clip, t(77.66) = −.50, p = 0.62. See Table 1 for a summary of these reports. Finally, there were no group differences in reported coping self-efficacy (CSE), t(77.94) = −.39, p = 0.70 or emotion regulation (DERS-goals, t(77.56) = −.51, p = 0.61, DERS-strategies, t(76.11) = −.17, p = 0.86, DERS-clarity, t(77.77) = −1.13, p = 0.26) scores after the negative mood induction.

Table 1. Demographic and affect self-report variables.

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Mixed effects analyses served as a manipulation check; as expected, there was a significant increase in reports of sadness following the negative mood induction, t(390) = 8.48, p < 0.001, B = 23.63, and a significant increase in happiness following the positive mood induction, t(390) = 3.07, p = 0.002, B = 9.65, regardless of group assignment. Additionally, as expected, participants in the exercise group exhibited a reliable increase in heart rate after running, whereas participants in the stretching group did not; groups did not differ in baseline heart rate, t(76.92) = −1.39, p = 0.17, but differed both in post-activity heart rate, t(73.90) = −4.02, p < 0.001, and change in heart rate, t(56.31) = −4.41, p < 0.001. See Table 1 for descriptive summaries.

Significant correlations emerged between baseline symptoms of depression (DASS-depression) with baseline sadness and overall negative affect, as well as limited access to regulatory strategies (DERS-strategies) and difficulty engaging in goal-directed behaviour (DERS-goals) following the negative mood induction. Baseline symptoms of anxiety (DASS-anxiety) were similarly associated with baseline feelings of sadness, overall negative affect, and DERS-strategies scores. A summary of baseline associations is included in Table 2.

Table 2. Correlations between baseline symptoms of depression and anxiety, baseline reports of affect, and difficulties with emotion regulation.

CSVDisplay Table

Given baseline correlations between baseline state reports of affect, mood symptoms, and state emotion regulation measures, we controlled for baseline sadness in the multivariate multiple regression analyses. Although models did not show main or interactive effects of mood symptoms (i.e. DASS-Depression, Anxiety, and Stress subscales), all ps > .05, they revealed significant findings for patterns of online emotion regulation. Multivariate analyses first showed that reports of more limited access to regulatory strategies (DERS-strategies) following the negative mood induction predicted more sadness at the end of the study, and revealed a significant interaction effect with group assignment, F(4, 75) = 22.36, p < 0.001, R2  = .54. Although higher DERS-strategies scores were associated with more persistent sadness, B = 2.43, p < 0.001, a significant interaction with group showed this effect to be weaker among exercisers B = −1.69, p = 0.001. Second, reports of difficulty engaging in goal-directed behaviour after the negative mood induction (DERS-goals) predicted the degree to which sadness persisted at the end of the study, and there was a significant DERS-goals by randomised group interaction F(4, 75) = 17.16, p < 0.001, R2 = .48. Specifically, more difficulty (higher DERS-goals scores) predicted more persistent sadness, B = 2.27, p < 0.001, even after the positive mood induction. Significant interactions showed this effect to be tempered in the exercise group as compared to the stretching group, B = −1.76, p = 0.004. Figure 1 depicts significant interactions. Results did not show a significant main, B = 0.78, p = 0.1, or interaction effect, B = −0.13, p = 0.84, for emotional clarity (DERS-clarity), F(4,75) = 8.88, p < 0.001, R2 = .32.

Figure 1. DERS by group effects on residual sadness. Note: 95% confidence intervals shown. DERS, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale.

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Consistent findings emerged when average overall negative affect was the criterion variable. Again, significant interactions emerged between group assignment, DERS-goals, F(4,75) = 17.34, p < 0.001, R2 = .48, and DERS-strategies, F(4,75) = 19.01, p < 0.001, R2 = .50. Exercise attenuated the impact of difficulties with goal-directed behaviour, B = −1.51, p = 0.02, and with accessing regulatory strategies, B = −1.38, p = 0.01.22. All reported predictors had variance inflation factors less than 10, suggesting that multicollinearity was not a significant issue. Furthermore, the main effects predictors that were reported (i.e. DERS-strategies, and DERS-goals) consistently had variance inflation factors below 2.5, which are acceptable even under more conservative guidelines.View all notesAnalyses revealed no significant main, B = 0.66, p = 0.19, or interaction effect, B = −0.07, p = 0.92, for emotional clarity (DERS-clarity) as a predictor, F(4,75) = 8.59, p < 0.001, R2 = .31.

Group assignment was unrelated to reports of happiness or overall positive affect. Only baseline affect emerged as a significant predictor when happiness was the criterion variable for DERS-goals, F(4,75) = 9.72, p < 0.001, R2 = .34, B = 0.53, p < 0.001; DERS-strategies, F(4,75) = 7.45, p < 0.001, R2 = .28, B = 0.63, p < 0.001; and DERS-clarity, F(4,75) = 8.05, p < 0.001, R2 = .30, B = 0.58, p < 0.001. There were no main effects of group (DERS-goals, B = 3.97, p = 0.76; DERS-strategies, B = 2.90, p = 0.84; DERS-clarity, B = −0.81, p = 0.35) or interaction effects (DERS-goals, B = 0.16, p = 0.89; DERS-strategies, B = 0.18, p = 0.88; DERS-clarity, B = −0.02, p = 0.99). Similar results emerged when overall positive affect was included; only baseline affect was related to DERS-goals, F(4,75) = 10.0, p < 0.001, R2 = .35, B = 0.54, p < 0.001; DERS-strategies, F(4,75) = 9.13, p < 0.001, R2 = .33, B = 0.61, p < 0.001; and DERS-clarity, F(4,75) = 8.96, p < 0.001, R2 = .32, B = 0.57, p < 0.001. There were also no main effects of group (DERS-goals, B = 7.41, p = 0.53; DERS-strategies, B = −3.80, p = 0.77; DERS-clarity, B = −0.46, p = 0.55) or interactions (DERS-goals, B = −0.31, p = 0.77; DERS-strategies, B = 0.64, p = 0.52; DERS-clarity, B = 0.003, p = 1.0).

Discussion

Although acute aerobic exercise did not prevent an increase in sadness in response to a subsequent stressor, results suggest that it may help people recover. Participants who had difficulty generating regulatory strategies, endorsing items such as “my emotions feel overwhelming”, “I believe that there is nothing I can do to make myself feel better”, and “I believe that I will remain this way for a long time”, unsurprisingly experienced more intense and persistent sadness than did participants who did not endorse these items. Similarly, participants who struggled to engage in goal-directed behaviours after the stressor, such as reporting difficulties concentrating or thinking about other things, also felt worse across time than those who did not have this issue. However, those participants who had recently completed 30 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise were less affected by these initial perceived difficulties with emotion regulation as they reported less sadness at the end of the study than those who did not exercise.

Findings lend support to preliminary work suggesting that physical activity helps people weather emotional stress (Girodo & Pellegrini, 1976Girodo, M., & Pellegrini, W. (1976). Exercise-produced arousal, film-induced arousal and attribution of internal state. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 42(3), 931–935. doi:10.2466/pms.1976.42.3.931[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Salmon, 2001Salmon, P. (2001). Effects of physical exercise on anxiety, depression, and sensitivity to stress: A unifying theory. Clinical Psychology Review, 21(1), 33–61. Retrieved fromhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11148895doi: 10.1016/S0272-7358(99)00032-X[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). Acute aerobic exercise facilitated the down-regulation of negative emotions among participants initially struggling with this process on their own. These interaction effects are consistent with studies showing that regular sessions of aerobic exercise may protect against the onset, recurrence, or worsening of mood symptoms (e.g. Strawbridge et al., 2002Strawbridge, W. J., Deleger, S., Roberts, R. E., & Kaplan, G. A. (2002). Physical activity reduces the risk of subsequent depression for older adults. American Journal of Epidemiology, 156(4), 328–334. Retrieved fromhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12181102doi: 10.1093/aje/kwf047[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). Indeed, clinical depression is often characterised by an inability to repair or regulate one’s mood once it has started to decline. This dysregulation and proneness to experiencing negative mood states are known to contribute to the onset and relapse of depression (e.g. Joormann & Vanderlind, 2014Joormann, J., & Vanderlind, W. M.(2014). Emotion regulation in depression: The role of biased cognition and reduced cognitive control. Clinical Psychological Science, 2(4), 402–421. doi:10.1177/2167702614536163[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]). The present study models the experience of encountering emotional stimuli in everyday life that could precipitate compounding or cumulative negative effects on mood. In this way, a bout of moderate aerobic exercise appears to have helped those participants potentially more vulnerable to problematic affective dysregulation to be less susceptible to the impact or lingering effects of the stressor.

Acute aerobic exercise appears to have moderated the effects of poor state emotion regulation most strongly at the end of the study, when we would expect to see the greatest separation between those participants with and without regulatory deficits. This suggests that participants who exercised were better able to overcome or compensate for initial difficulties drawing on regulatory strategies and with goal-directed cognition and behaviour than were peers who stretched. Unlike the clarity subscale of the DERS, for which no significant effects were identified, both the goals and strategies subscales seem to relate to executive control, including items about concentration, changing one’s focus, perceived ability to change one’s experience, and feeling overwhelmed. Deficits in executive control are associated with maladaptive emotional responding and regulation, as well as mood symptoms and stress (e.g. Takeuchi et al., 2014Takeuchi, H., Taki, Y., Nouchi, R., Hashizume, H., Sekiguchi, A., Kotozaki, Y., … Kawashima, R. (2014). Working memory training improves emotional states of healthy individuals. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 8, 200. doi:10.3389/fnsys.2014.00200[Crossref], [PubMed], , [Google Scholar]). And recent work shows that self-reported attentional control is linked to more successful spontaneous emotional down-regulation after exposure to aversive stimuli (Morillas-Romero, Tortella-Feliu, Balle, & Bornas, 2015Morillas-Romero, A., Tortella-Feliu, M., Balle, M., & Bornas, X. (2015). Spontaneous emotion regulation and attentional control. Emotion, 15(2), 162–175. doi: 10.1037/emo0000016[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). Regular physical activity can strengthen cognitive control and flexibility (Guiney & Machado, 2013Guiney, H., & Machado, L. (2013). Benefits of regular aerobic exercise for executive functioning in healthy populations. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20(1), 73–86. Retrieved fromhttp://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-012-0345-4doi: 10.3758/s13423-012-0345-4[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]); even a single session of moderate aerobic exercise can yield post-event improvements in attention and inhibitory control in both healthy participants (e.g. Alves et al., 2014Alves, C. R. R., Tessaro, V. H., Teixeira, L. A. C., Murakava, K., Roschel, H., Gualano, B., & Takito, M. Y. (2014). Influence of acute high-intensity aerobic interval exercise bout on selective attention and short-term memory tasks. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 118(1), 63–72. doi:10.2466/22.06.PMS.118k10w4[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]) and depressed patients (e.g. Kubesch et al., 2003Kubesch, S., Bretschneider, V., Freudenmann, R., Weidenhammer, N., Lehmann, M., Spitzer, M., & Grön, G. (2003). Aerobic endurance exercise improves executive functions in depressed patients. The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 64(9), 1005–1012. Retrieved fromhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14628975doi: 10.4088/JCP.v64n0905[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). Cognitive control in the present study would be important for disengaging in mood-congruent or ruminative thoughts that maintain negative affect. Therefore, it is plausible that despite having similar early impressions of poor affective control, participants who had jogged experienced cognitive enhancements compared to their counterparts who stretched. However, this is just one possible mechanism. For example, alternatively, the effects may have motivational origins as much as cognitive ones. By engaging in an activity more rigorous than stretching, the runners may have experienced a boost in general self-efficacy that enabled them to deploy emotion regulation strategies with special vigour. Future studies should explore changes in cognitive function as a potential mechanism by which exercise facilitates better emotion regulation.

Our study has limitations. First, all participants were at least moderately active and not selected for clinical depression. Hence, it is unclear whether our results would generalise to sedentary individuals or to clinical populations. Second, we examined the effects of a single, brief session of moderate aerobic exercise over a relatively short period (<30 minutes). Whether our findings apply to other exercise intensities, types, or time durations is unknown. Third, it will be important for future studies to target other emotions beyond sadness. As different emotions bear different physiological and affective features, we cannot be certain that exercise will affect all negative experiences in the same way. Additionally, emotion measurements at the end of the study occurred following both film clips; therefore, follow-up studies should more thoroughly tease apart how exercise affects responses to negative versus positive experiences, as this separation cannot be made at present. Although stretching provides an active control against which to compare aerobic exercise, the absence of an inactive control could be conceived of as a limitation. For example, there may be important effects common to all types of physical activity (i.e. stretching and exercise) that would only emerge in comparison to a resting condition. Finally, all data were obtained via self-report. Psychophysiological measures may show important changes associated with exercise when concurrent behavioural measures yield null results (e.g. Kamijo, Nishihira, Higashiura, & Kuroiwa, 2007Kamijo, K., Nishihira, Y., Higashiura, T., & Kuroiwa, K. (2007). The interactive effect of exercise intensity and task difficulty on human cognitive processing. International Journal of Psychophysiology: Official Journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology, 65(2), 114–421. doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2007.04.001[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). Future studies could benefit from the inclusion of other types of assessment as well.

Still, results support the theory that aerobic exercise can improve emotional health by strengthening emotion regulation or recovery. Our study contributes to the literature on exercise’s therapeutic effects with experimental data, specifically in the realm of emotional processing. By staving off some of the consequences of impairments in emotion regulation, acute aerobic exercise could serve as an adjunctive therapy tool, beyond behavioural activation, to traditional cognitive and behavioural approaches. Integrating physical activity directly into psychosocial interventions could bolster therapies designed to improve emotion regulation, such as exposure therapy and cognitive remediation. Participants could benefit from more emotional flexibility to successfully engage in this work. Overall, research in this area has the potential to provide a deeper understanding of regulatory processes and to inform more targeted clinical prevention and intervention efforts for individuals with or at risk for affective dysregulation.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02699931.2016.1168284

EPOC - How Your Body Burns Calories Even After The Workout Is Over

7 Things to Know About Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC)

What happens to your engine at the end of a long car trip? It doesn’t require a degree in automotive engineering to know that once you’ve reached your destination, your car’s engine stays warm as it gradually cools to a resting temperature.

Here's a cool fact: The same thing happens to your body after exercise. Similar to how a car’s engine remains warm after being turned off, once a workout is over and you’re back in your daily routine, your body’s metabolism can continue to burn more calories then when at complete rest. This physiological effect is called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC. Also known as oxygen debt, EPOC is the amount of oxygen required to restore your body to its normal, resting level of metabolic function (called homeostasis). It also explains how your body can continue to burn calories long after you’ve finished your workout.

Your metabolism is how your body converts the nutrients you consume in your diet to adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the fuel your body uses for muscular activity. ATP is produced either with oxygen using the aerobic pathways or without oxygen relying on the anaerobic pathways. When you first start to exercise, your body uses the anaerobic energy pathways and stored ATP to fuel that activity. A proper warm-up is important because it can take about five to eight minutes to be able to efficiently use aerobic metabolism to produce the ATP necessary to sustain physical activity. Once a steady-state of oxygen consumption is achieved, the aerobic energy pathways are able to provide most of the ATP needed for the workout. Exercise that places a greater demand on the anaerobic energy pathways during the workout can increase the need for oxygen after the workout, thereby enhancing the EPOC effect.

Here are seven things you should know about EPOC and how it can help you achieve optimal levels of calorie burning from your workouts:

1. During the immediate post-exercise recovery period, oxygen is used for the following functions:

• Production of ATP to replace the ATP used during the workout

• Resynthesis of muscle glycogen from lactate

• Restore oxygen levels in venous blood, skeletal muscle blood and myoglobin

• Work with protein for the repair of muscle tissue damaged tissue during the workout

• Restore body temperature to resting levels

2. Exercise that consumes more oxygen burns more calories.

The body expends approximately 5 calories of energy (a calorie is the amount of energy required to heat 1 liter of water 1 degree centigrade) to consume 1 liter of oxygen. Therefore, increasing the amount of oxygen consumed both during and after a workout, can increase the amount of net calories burned.

3. Circuit training and heavy resistance training with short rest intervals require ATP from the anaerobic pathways, leading to a significant EPOC effect.

Strength training with compound, multijoint weightlifting exercises or doing a weightlifting circuit that alternates between upper- and lower-body movements places a greater demand on the involved muscles for ATP from the anaerobic pathways. Increased need for anaerobic ATP also creates a greater demand on the aerobic system to replenish that ATP during the rest intervals and the post-exercise recovery process. Heavy training loads or shorter recovery intervals increase the demand on the anaerobic energy pathways during exercise, which yields a greater EPOC effect during the post-exercise recovery period.

4. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is the most effective way to stimulate the EPOC effect.

The body is most efficient at producing ATP through aerobic metabolism; however, at higher intensities when energy is needed immediately, the anaerobic pathways can provide the necessary ATP much more quickly. This is why we can only sustain high-intensity activity for a brief period of time—we simply run out of energy. HIIT works because during high-intensity exercise ATP is produced by the anaerobic pathways; once that ATP exhausted, it is necessary to allow ATP to be replenished. The rest interval or active-recovery period during an anaerobic workout allows aerobic metabolism to produce and replace ATP in the involved muscles. The oxygen deficit is the difference between the volume of O2 consumed during exercise and the amount that would be consumed if energy demands were met through only the aerobic energy pathway.

5. EPOC is influenced by the intensity, not the duration of exercise.

Higher intensities require ATP from anaerobic pathways. If the ATP required to exercise at a particular intensity was not obtained aerobically, it must come from the anaerobic pathways. During EPOC, the body uses oxygen to restore muscle glycogen and rebuild muscle proteins damaged during exercise. Even after a HIIT workout is over, the body will continue to use the aerobic energy pathway to replace the ATP consumed during the workout, thus enhancing the EPOC effect.

6. Research has shown that resistance training can provide a greater EPOC effect than running at a steady speed.

In an extensive review of the research literature on EPOC, Bersheim and Bahr (2003) concluded that “studies in which similar estimated energy cost or similar exercising VO2 have been used to equate continuous aerobic exercise and intermittent resistance exercise, have indicated that resistance exercise produces a greater EPOC response.” For example, one study found that when aerobic cycling (40 minutes at 80 percent Max HR), circuit weight training (4 sets/8 exercises/15 reps at 50 percent 1-RM) and heavy resistance exercise (3 sets/8 exercises at 80-90 percent 1-RM to exhaustion) were compared, heavy resistance exercise produced the biggest EPOC.

7. The EPOC effect from a HIIT or high-intensity strength-training workout can add 6 to 15 percent of the total energy cost of the exercise session.

High-intensity workouts require more energy from the anaerobic pathways and can generate a greater EPOC effect, leading to extended post-exercise energy expenditure. Heavy weight training and HIIT workouts appear to be superior to steady-state running or lower-intensity circuit training in creating EPOC (LaForgia, Withers and Gore, 2006).

Admittedly there is some debate about the significance of the EPOC effect for the average exercise participant because the high-intensity exercise required for EPOC can be extremely challenging. However, if you want results and are up for the challenge, increasing the intensity of your workouts by using heavier weights, shorter rest intervals or high-intensity cardio intervals may be worth the effort. While HIIT or heavy resistance training is effective and beneficial, remember to allow at least 48 hours of recovery time between high-intensity exercise sessions and try to limit yourself to no more than three strenuous workouts per week. If you do start increasing the intensity of your workouts to boost EPOC, consider adding these recovery strategies.

References

Bersheim, E. and Bahr, R. (2003). Effect of exercise intensity, duration and mode on post-exercise oxygen consumption. Sports Medicine, 33, 14, 1037-1060

LaForgia, J., Withers, R. and Gore, C. (2006). Effects of exercise intensity and duration on the excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. Journal of Sport Sciences, 24, 12, 1247-1264.

https://www.acefitness.org/education-and-resources/professional/expert-articles/5008/7-things-to-know-about-excess-post-exercise-oxygen-consumption-epoc

Negative Mood and Inflammation

Negative mood signals body's immune response

Marjorie S. Miller

December 20, 2018

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Negative mood — such as sadness and anger — is associated with higher levels of inflammation and may be a signal of poor health, according to researchers at Penn State. 

The investigators found that negative mood measured multiple times a day over time is associated with higher levels of inflammatory biomarkers. This extends prior research showing that clinical depression and hostility are associated with higher inflammation.

Inflammation is part of the body's immune response to such things as infections, wounds, and damage to tissues. Chronic inflammation can contribute to numerous diseases and conditions, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and some cancers.

This study, the results of which were recently published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, is what the researchers believe is the first examination of associations between both momentary and recalled measures of mood or affect with measures of inflammation, according to principal investigator Jennifer Graham-Engeland, associate professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State. 

Participants were asked to recall their feelings over a period time in addition to reporting how they were feeling in the moment, in daily life. These self-assessments were taken over a two-week period, then each was followed by a blood draw to measure markers that indicated inflammation.

The researchers found that negative mood accumulated from the week closer to the blood draw was associated with higher levels of inflammation. 

Additional analyses also suggested that the timing of mood measurement relative to the blood draw mattered, Graham-Engeland said. Specifically, there were stronger trends of association between momentary negative affect and inflammation when negative mood was assessed closer in time to blood collection.

This work is novel because researchers not only used questionnaires that asked participants to recall their feelings over a period time, they also asked participants how they were feeling in the moment, Graham-Engeland said. 

In addition, momentary positive mood from the same week was associated with lower levels of inflammation, but only among men in this study.

Participants were from a community sample generated from a housing development in the Bronx, New York, as part of the larger Effects of Stress on Cognitive Aging, Physiology, and Emotion (ESCAPE) study. Participants were socio-economically, racially and ethnically diverse.

The research was cross-sectional, Graham-Engeland said, and several analyses were exploratory and will require replication. These results inspire ongoing research to investigate how intervention in daily life can improve mood and help individuals cope with stress.

“We hope that this research will prompt investigators to include momentary measures of stress and affect in research examining inflammation, to replicate the current findings and help characterize the mechanisms underlying associations between affect and inflammation,” Graham-Engeland said. “Because affect is modifiable, we are excited about these findings and hope that they will spur additional research to understand the connection between affect and inflammation, which in turn may promote novel psychosocial interventions that promote health broadly and help break a cycle that can lead to chronic inflammation, disability, and disease.”

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, Penn State, the Czap Foundation, and the Sylvia and Leonard Marx Foundation.

Co-investigators included Joshua Smyth, professor of biobehavioral health and department of medicine at Penn State; Martin Sliwinski, professor of human development and family studies and director of the Center for Healthy Aging at Penn State; Christopher Engeland, associate professor of biobehavioral health; and Richard Lipton, Edwin S. Lowe Professor and Vice Chair of Neurology, professor of epidemiology and population health, and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Multiple other faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars at Penn State also were involved.

https://news.psu.edu/story/552547/2018/12/20/research/negative-mood-signals-bodys-immune-response

Mobility Explained - Michael Ray, D.C.

Rolling through Instagram or Facebook, we find narratives and interventions claiming to improve something called “mobility”. We can select from options including stretching, foam rolling / body tempering, lacrosse ball smashing, voodoo flossing, power tools converted to guns being sold as therapeutic, and the list goes on. The level of marketing would make even Donald Draper of Mad Men proud.

But are these implements doing what we think they are? Are we just hidden pliable versions of Gumby walking around, waiting for our supple potential to be released? Or, are we committing the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy? Before we decide, we must first define our terms and examine the narratives being given to validate these interventions.

So how do we define mobility?

In the research world and hospital setting, the word “mobility” is simply defined as the ability to move.1

In contrast, in the fitness and outpatient rehab world we now find the term being used to substantiate all sorts of bizarre narratives for perceived problems, which then require intervention to fix. We especially see the term tossed around when a person’s movement doesn’t meet the observing clinician’s/coach’s standards of perfectionism or idea of “normal”.

Movement has been dichotomized to “good” vs “bad” based on this idea of mobility, as if it is a pathological issue. As a result, it has generated numerous guru systems purported to treat these perceived problems. However, the real problem is clinicians’/coaches’ tendency to become anchored to our subjective view of how we think movement “should” look. This is usually based on our prior experience, and often has little room for the broad range of normal inter-individual variation.

This misuse of the word continues to perpetuate people’s search for magical tools to improve their mobility so that they may obtain the perfect qi of athletic performance. The search often comes at the expense (in terms of time, money, and effort) of more specific sport practice or training. But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

How do we assess movement?

We tend to assign non-qualified adjectives to movement. What is a “poor position”? “Poor movement”? We need to qualify such terms. Is it simply less visually appealing compared to what would be viewed as “better” movement? Or is the movement suboptimal for some metric of performance (meaning the person could complete more reps/sets/increased load/resist fatigue/etc.)?

This is also under the assumption that pain is not a variable in the process. But even if pain is a relevant variable: is the movement painful or injurious specifically because of the way it is performed, or is it more of a question of dosage/loading?2 Often, the extremes of biomechanical demands are where we can get into trouble here (like anything in life).

We also need to consider the impact of other contextual factors including fear-avoidance, catastrophizing, conditioning, and/or the narratives previously provided in these situations — in other words, what has this person been told before about pain and injury as they pertain to movement and mechanics?3,4

There certainly exist advantageous positions/movements from which to exert force based on physics and biomechanics – but these movement parameters are also broad and adaptable based on the individual and their prior training experience. Even at the highest levels of sport where maximal movement efficiency can differentiate winner from loser, substantial technical variability is readily apparent between competitors, rather than rigid adherence to an idealized movement “model” that might be predicted by physics alone.

Consider that spinal flexion in the deadlift, elbow flare in the bench press, or knee valgus in the squat, for example do not universally, automatically produce acute injury. Yet, when pain or injury does occur, athletes are quick to point to these often minor mechanical deviations as the singular cause of their symptoms, often because they have been told these things should be avoided at all costs.

Yet, we have data on inter-individual differences in preferred lifting techniques. Let’s use the example of spinal kinematics during lifting an object from the ground (deadlift).

Pavlova recently completed a study examining the curviness of participant’s lumbar spine and its effect on lifting an object from the ground during three different trials.5 The first trial the participant lifted “freestyle”, no cueing. The second trial the participants were cued to squat (“keep the back straight and bend at the knees”), and finally the third trial to stoop (“keep the legs straight and bend at the back”). The authors’ findings:

“In this study we have shown that the curviness of the lumbar spine is associated with the way in which individuals lift a weight from the floor. When no instruction was given, individuals with more lordotic lumbar spines preferred to stoop down to pick up the box, while those with straighter spines preferred to squat. Our results also suggest that these natural movement preferences are maintained when instructions are given, especially in individuals with curvier spines who prefer to lift by stooping. In changing between lifting styles, individuals adjusted their knee flexion while maintaining their preferred lumbar flexion range.”

These findings certainly question the forced constraint or “one size fits all mentality” rather than allowing for variability and a degree of subjective preference when completing a task.

The authors go on to conclude:

“These results could be important for a reassessment of lifting guidelines, one size does not fit all, and for training of athletes where a given task may place different demands on different athletes depending on their natural lifting technique, which may depend on the shape of their lumbar spine.”

Interestingly, it is often the coaches/clinicians working with athletes who drive this idea of perfectionism, defined as “… a personality disposition characterised by striving for flawlessness and setting exceedingly high standards of performance accompanied by tendencies for overly critical evaluations of one’s behavior.”6

Unfortunately, perfectionism tends to be counterproductive for progress. We now have emerging data suggesting that such an approach can contribute to injury risk (See Perfectionism predicts injury in junior athletes: Preliminary evidence from a prospective study).6

Movement Variability:

So we tend to have an ideal in our minds of what movement should or shouldn’t look like. We become Procustean arbiters of movement. The current evidence contradicts the purported benefits of aggressively reducing variability in movement, but instead suggests quite the opposite. Variability appears to enhance motor learning and provides the nervous system alternative pathways to complete a movement rather than “solidifying” or, better put, restricting it into set constructs of operation.

Here is an applicable article:  Temporal structure of motor variability is dynamically regulated and predicts motor learning ability by Wu et al.7

The initial question many researchers like Wu set out to answer: is the initial high variability of a new movement pattern an obstaclethat impedes effective performance, or is it facilitating the motor system’s ability to learn?

Wu went on to demonstrate that movement variability promotes motor learning.  His experiment studied subjects engaging in hand-trajectory motor learning tasks and tracking variability structure as a predictor of the rate of learning.  Studied participants were tasked with tracing shapes in four separate experiments.

The authors’ guiding principle was Reinforcement Learning Theory, which basically states that learning occurs via interaction with one’s environment through trial and error. Motor learning occurs by the consequences of one’s actions; in essence, exploitation of past experiences and exploration of new ones.

Participants received no error-based feedback and their behavior was only rewarded based on performance (tracked on a scale of 0 – 1000 based on similarity of shape traced), similar to a coach praising an athlete for completing a movement within the confines they deem acceptable. 

Overall the authors found:

“Remarkably, we found that individuals with higher task-relevant variability at baseline learned faster than those with lower baseline variability and that tasks associated with higher baseline variability in task-relevant dimensions elicited faster learning. Interestingly, we found that neither the inter-individual nor the inter-task effects of variability were specific to reward-based learning, as we also observed them in an error-based force-field adaptation paradigm. Taken together these results suggest a general principle whereby increased variability enables faster learning.”

If anything, this study tells us that a person with more total variability when learning a movement will achieve the desired outcome (task) faster than others with forced movement constriction. Even more intriguing, variability likely provides alternative avenues of completing a movement via the exploitation aspect of motor learning.

Dhawale did a recent review and came to similar conclusions as Wu:

“Although noise in nervous system function can often be detrimental to optimal performance, the studies we have reviewed here suggest that neural variability may also be conducive to motor learning, in line with reinforcement learning theory. Random fluctuations (or noise) in the activity of neurons could plausibly underlie such motor exploration, but recent findings suggest that the nervous system is more deliberate and sophisticated than that and may be regulating and shaping motor variability actively to augment learning.”8

So why do we get attached to these implements to improve this ill-defined term, mobility?

The instant gratification of things…..

Anything worth doing takes time and effort. Many of the “mobility implements” mentioned above may provide instant gratification from a temporary increase in range of motion, decreased perception of soreness, and/or decreased “tightness” (another nebulous term). However, this doesn’t mean the person can automatically utilize the new-found range of motion, that it meaningfully translates to performance, or that it provides any net positive impact over the long term.

More importantly, are we just wasting time while perpetuating false narratives? We should view this discussion through a lens of maximizing return on investment (ROI), which can be defined as:

ROI = (Gain from Investment – Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment

In our case, much of the data is qualitative. Our “Cost of Investment” is time, effort, and depending on the implement in question, money. Our potential gain would be based on the supplied narrative. The question then becomes: did the gains outweigh our cost? Our primary argument in the case of these implements is no.

With this in mind, we don’t want to oversimplify the investment of time, a commodity we can’t manufacture or get back once spent. So, if we are going to condition people to narratives and implements, we should have strong supporting evidence. Now, let’s break this idea down a bit more for each technique.

Stretching:

So what is stretching, exactly? There are three variations of stretching typically described in the literature.

Static: place the muscle in a lengthened position and hold this position; often held at an uncomfortable but tolerable end range of motion between 10 and 30 seconds.9

Dynamic: utilizes active muscle contraction and momentum to lengthen muscle without holding the end-range position.9 [As an aside, I take issue with dynamic stretching being categorized under the umbrella of “stretching” because it’s simply unloaded movement. Example: performing air squats prior to doing back squats (we will get to performance effect shortly)]

Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF): there are 2 types typically utilized (there are different derivations to these two types and some contention on the definition of PNF), “contract-relax” (CR) and “contract-relax, agonist contract” (CRAC).10

CR: muscle being targeted is brought to end-range where resistance is felt. The person being stretched then actively contracts against resistance (isometrically), and then the targeted muscle is taken into a new position of limitation.

CRAC: same as CR but instead of targeted muscle being contracted, the opposite muscle group is contracted against resistance. Then, the targeted muscle is taken into a new position of limitation.

The usual narratives surrounding the validation of stretching are as follows:

1. Clinically: helps with contractures

2. Make “tight” muscles “loose”

3. Decrease delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS)

4. Increase overall range of motion

5. Improve performance

6. Decrease injury risk (notice this does not say prevent – we can’t prevent anything in regards to athletic based injuries, but we can appropriately hedge our bets to reduce risk). For a more in-depth discussion, see Bahr 2016).11

The overall cost for stretching would be time, effort, and potentially money if we are paying a clinician/coach to complete the intervention passively.

Beginning with contractures allows us to consider complicated medical situations in which ROM is likely clinically reduced and stretching may appear warranted.

Contracture is a shortening and stiffening of muscles that limits joint range of motion, and  typically occurs in patients after stroke, brain/spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy, and in other neurological conditions. They can also occur in certain non-neurological musculoskeletal issues such as rheumatoid arthritis, burns, and post-op situations.

The latest Cochrane review on the topic doesn’t show much supporting evidence for the use of stretching to prevent or treat contractures:

“There was high‐quality evidence that stretch did not have clinically important effects on joint mobility in people with or without neurological conditions if performed for less than seven months.”12

If seven months seems odd as a cutoff point, it’s because none of the included studies examined the topic longer than 7 months … so perhaps the 8 month mark is when the magic happens, but it’s doubtful.

Regarding “tight” muscles and range of motion: stretching is consistently demonstrated to alter perception (i.e., “feeling tight”) or tolerance to a position, but not actually altering tissue structure in a meaningful way. The most recent review by Freitas,Can chronic stretching change the muscle-tendon mechanical properties? A review, found:

“Stretching interventions with 3- to 8-week duration do not seem to change either the muscle or the tendon properties, although it increases the extensibility and tolerance to a greater tensile force. Adaptations to chronic stretching protocols shorter than 8 weeks seem to mostly occur at a sensory level.”13

Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS):

DOMS is interesting and warrants its own future article to sufficiently discuss the nuanced aspects of the topic. With that said, DOMS can be objectively measured (though the validity of these measures is worthy of discussion) but is a subjective experience similar to pain perception. DOMS is something we may perceive post-exercise, and we can alter perception with all sorts of implements. The question becomes: how do we maximize our time with greatest return on investment for improving performance at specific tasks? Over the long term, if an athlete is continuously experiencing DOMS, then we should be assessing relevant performance and recovery variables with research support: training loads & programming variables, sleep, and nutrition. However, competitive athletic events pose scenarios where many are seeking short term gains (feeling of decreased DOMS and improved recovery and fatigue levels). This is a discussion for a later time, but the research on stretching isn’t supportive for improving DOMS.

More to the point; even if you may feel like stretching alters DOMS – the evidence shows otherwise. According to a Cochrane review, Stretching to prevent or reduce muscle soreness after exercise:

“The evidence from randomised studies suggests that muscle stretching, whether conducted before, after, or before and after exercise, does not produce clinically important reductions in delayed‐onset muscle soreness in healthy adults.”14

Improved Performance:

A recent review by Peck covers this topic well. “Performance” is a broad term and needs to be qualified to examine relevant research.15

Peck classifies sport performance into 3 categories:

1. Strength and Power Dominant: “brief and maximal effort” activities (countermovement jump for max height or 1RM in resistance training)

2. Speed and Agility Dominant: “cyclical, short-duration, fast muscular contraction events” (100 m sprint or less and/or repeated, quick, and multidirectional movements).

3. Endurance Dominant: “cyclical, longer-duration” activities (running for 200 m or longer, cycling, or submax muscular endurance  repetitions for resistance exercises).

For static stretching the following conclusions were drawn from the evidence:

1. Strength and Power: Performing static stretching by itself immediately before strength and power activities diminishes performance. If static stretching is performed with sufficient time prior to activity (articles proposes 15 minutes) or is subsequently combined with other types of warm-up, then no effect occurs on strength and power activities. Basically, either no effect or detrimental effect … leading to the conclusion that it is not worth our investment.

2. Speed and Agility – When performed prior to speed and agility activity, static stretching is detrimental to performance. Similarly with strength and power, if a dynamic stretch or general warm-up is completed after static stretching then the detrimental effect may be reversed, but this does not imply an improvement in performance but rather a return to baseline (zero). Peck does go on to say that static stretching may affect speed and agility performance differently based on baseline characteristics of the athlete’s level of flexibility.

3. Endurance: Based on the current available literature, Peck states,

“It is unclear whether static stretching impairs either longer-duration (200 m or greater) cyclic activity or submaximal muscular endurance, but it is notable that no study shows a performance benefit from static stretching performed prior to these activities.”15

Which means, either no benefit or potentially negative effect.

Now, on to effects of dynamic stretching. To reiterate, dynamic stretching appears to be a misnomer because it describes active unloaded movement, rather than holding a particular position at end range statically. For argument’s sake, dynamic stretching will be discussed as unloaded movement for the remainder of this article. With that said, there does appear to be some nuance to the discussion of unloaded movement prior to sport performance.

1. Strength and Power: Improves performance for strength and power dominant activities, but we aren’t sure how it stacks up to just doing lower intensity externally loaded movements or combination of both unloaded and loaded movements. Peck concludes:

“It appears from the preponderance of evidence that dynamic stretching improves strength and power performance when performed immediately prior to the event. Whether a combination of dynamic stretching and heavy-load exercises prior to an activity such as the countermovement jump further improves performance is unclear.”15

1. Speed and Agility: Yes, unloaded movements do appear to be beneficial prior to the performance of speed and agility movements. Which, of course, are also typically unloaded movements. Peck cautions, “However, excessive volume may induce fatigue and affect speed and agility performance adversely.” In other words, don’t drain the energy account too quickly, or you might find yourself in the red and owing an NSF.

2. Endurance: Not enough evidence either way. Probably best to not make bets when we have no evidence for defining our risk.

Regarding PNF, we need more evidence, but it’s not looking good – particularly for strength and power activities.

Decreased Injury Risk:

A 2014 study by Lauersen et al, “The effectiveness of exercise interventions to prevent sports injuries: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials,” found:

“Stretching did not show any protective effect (RR=0.961 (0.836–1.106)), while strength training proved highly significant (RR 0.315 (0.207–0.480)).”16

Imagine that: stretching didn’t affect relative risk for injury, but strength training had a significant protective effect. This would seem to further support the loaded movement argument.

The moral of the investment story here: stretching offers little to no benefit in relation to our required investment of time, effort, and potentially money. We will be discussing other implements such as foam rolling, body-tempering, voodoo flossing, etc in future articles. In the meantime, it is important to:

Arm yourselves against silly BS.

There are a few easy ways to make money in the rehab/fitness world.

1. Use vague statements about a perceived problem (e.g., mobility) to sell a product.

2. Increase buy-in with the following:

   1. Utilize testimonials (preferably pro-athletic teams or well-known athletes for the sports rehab world)

   2. Develop dependency via fear-mongering (if you don’t do this ONE thing, or use “X” tool every day for “X” minutes a day then you will be in pain or your performance will suffer – and your success in the gym/sport depends on this!)

   3. Amass as many followers as possible (charismatic personality helps and giving away free stuff – it also doesn’t hurt to hire attractive people … welcome to marketing).

   4. Stir controversy to obtain increased attention

   5. Consistently pump out new products to solve new perceived problems or invent new problems while developing products to solve them.

   6. Repeat process indefinitely

   7. Don’t forget that past products are able to be rebranded/repackaged to solve forgotten perceived problems.

A few of these points are worth touching on.

Fear-mongering:

We have enough evidence at this point that, as clinicians/coaches, our words matter and affect all sorts of things such as beliefs, expectation, conditioned behaviors, and ultimate treatment outcomes, to name a few.

The narratives surrounding these implements drive beliefs and conditioned behaviors, increasing unnecessary reliance on the part of the users, while the creators and proponents are profiting.

Athletes and patients may find themselves spending hours a week “rolling out” non-existent adhesions or myofascial trigger points (discussed HERE).

Or stretching, because somewhere along the journey some well-meaning person suggested that an individual has a “bad” squat or is experiencing low back pain because they have “tight” hamstrings or psoas muscles. We lack supporting evidence for either of those narratives.17 But we do have evidence showing how the words utilized for these narratives can make matters worse for patients.18,19,20, 21 As clinicians/coaches, our narratives have the potential to build resiliency or instill vulnerability.22

These narratives then get cemented in the person’s mind, leaving them with the idea that they require some implement to “fix” them so they may someday achieve an arbitrary model of movement perfection. In reality, the person probably just needs to spend more time practicing said movement … but this doesn’t get likes on Instagram or Facebook … nor does it sell products.

Imagine a world where everyone has high self-efficacy and doesn’t rely on inappropriate narratives and products to find success, but realizes they have everything they need to be successful … and supple … just imagine.23

In closing:

The term mobility has been manipulated to sell narratives and products. We likely should change our vernacular to just discuss range of motion. The odds are, we have the necessary range of motion to accomplish our desired activities, but we may be unadapted to accessing the desired range of motion and require more time training the particular movement we wish to improve.

Don’t buy into the silly BS.

Stay tuned for future blogs discussing other implements and the miraculous claims accompanying them.

Special thanks to Drs. Austin Baraki and Derek Miles for their help with this article.

https://www.barbellmedicine.com/mobility-explained/

MEAL PREP: Stay on Top of Your 2019 Diet

20 Meal Prep Tips From the Best Preppers We Know

Meal prepping is all the rage of late, and for good reason: It saves time and money, while helping you stick to your clean eating plan and stave off hanger. Yet, if you’ve thought about embracing this healthy eating habit, only to be derailed once you realize the time and effort — not to mention all the plastic containers — involved, we don’t blame you.

Luckily, meal prepping doesn’t have to be a daylong logistical nightmare, full of dirty dishes, spilled quinoa and mismatched food storage containers. (Not to mention less-than-appealing leftovers.) Want to prep like the best of them? Follow these meal prep tips from some of the best think-ahead health gurus we know.

1. Invest in the right containers.

“Proper food storage containers [allow you to] re-heat your meals and eat from them — and they last forever. I purchase glass containers that allow me to portion-size my meals easily. Additionally, I have varying shapes and sizes of containers for salads and snacks like yogurt and fruit, and zip-lock bags for dry snacks.” — Erin Romeo, @foodprepprincess

2. Get in on the mason jar trend.

I’m all about canning jars for meal prepping! They work for salads, soup, oatmeal, smoothies — almost anything. They are dishwasher- and microwave-safe, water-tight and sturdy as can be. I use plastic caps on mine, which are easier to clean and keep track of than the standard two-part preserving lids.” — Cassie Johnston, Back to Her Roots

3. Make sure your lids match.

“Buy the same brand of containers. [It] may seem trivial, but it will save time when trying to package your meals up. Matching lids can be a pain if you have three different types of containers.”— Allie Whitesides, former Daily Burn Fitness/Nutrition Coach4. Nail down a system for collecting new recipes.

4. Nail down a system for collecting new recipes.

“I’ll often screenshot recipes I find online throughout the week on my phone so I have a bunch of healthy recipe ideas saved to my camera roll to choose from when it’s time to sit down and do some meal planning. When I have a little more time, I love sitting down with a few cookbooks and a cup of coffee on Sunday mornings to search for recipe inspiration.” — Julie Fagan, Peanut Butter Fingers

5. Relax

6. Go crazy with the spices.

“[One of my] secrets is to prep things that I like to eat, and add spices and flavors…If you don’t like what you’re eating, your diet plan will not be sustainable.” — Tina Chow, @fitchickscook

7. Make a detailed shopping list.

“I like to keep things simple… I use the “Notes” app on my iPhone to keep a running list of ingredients I need. As soon as I notice I am running out of a staple ingredient like dried rice or chopped garlic, I’ll put it right on the list so that I remember to buy it at next week’s grocery trip…I try to keep my list in order of where I’ll find in in the grocery store — produce, meat, dairy — so that my trip to the store is quick and efficient. ” — Stephanie Troxell, MS, RD, former Daily Burn Fitness/Nutrition Coach

8. Make your kitchen a meal prepping machine.

“I pull in a foldable table, a cart [and] get my second toaster oven and other appliances out from the closet. I get equipped with my apron, I put on my headphones, and I try to…meal prep for the week faster than I did last week. Within four to five hours, I can prepare food for six days… This would be impossible if I didn’t employ the strategy of turning my kitchen into a factory when meal prep time comes around.” — Jon Call, Acrobolix, @jujimufu

9. Stock up on meal prep staples.

“I keep my pantry and freezer stocked with quick go-to items. Here’s what I always try to have on hand. Freezer: frozen fruits and veggies (less expensive and lasts much longer), frozen brown rice or quinoa (quicker cooking and no pan to wash!), frozen shrimp or salmon (defrosts quickly). Pantry: Plain oatmeal, beans, diced tomatoes, salsa, chicken or veggie broth.” — former Allie Whitesides, Daily Burn Fitness/Nutrition Coach

10. Pretty up your meals.

“It’s one thing to have a delicious meal; it’s another to have a ‘good looking,’ delicious meal. Many times people will prepare a meal, or two, or five, but the reality is that by the third day or so that meal might not look that appealing anymore. For me, the kitchen tool that has helped change this is the cast iron grill pan. Whether you’re cooking chicken, steak, burgers, or even a sandwich, pressing it on to that pan to create grill marks makes a world of difference. Best part about it is, it can be used indoors and you’ll still get the beautiful grill marks without having to go outside and turn on the grill when it’s 10 below. Try it!” — Alex Torres, @mealprepmondays

11. Utilize the weekend.

“Get your meal prepping done during the weekend so you’ve got meals for the beginning of [each] week. This has helped me in getting organized!” — Jenny Flake, Picky Palate

12. Set a timer (and stick to it).

“Meal prepping can seem so overwhelming, and if you aren’t careful, you can spend a whole day prepping food. I’m a believer that you should keep your meal-prep sessions short. I set a timer for two hours on Sunday mornings. I get done as much as I can in those two hours, and then I go enjoy my weekend happy that I’ve prepared myself for the upcoming week. You’d be amazed at what you can get done in that time!” — Cassie Johnston, Back to Her Roots

13. Learn to multitask.

“When people are first starting to food prep, they tend to focus on doing one thing at a time, which is fine, but it often takes a lot longer for them to get their food prep done and it can be discouraging. Once you’ve done it a few times and start to get comfortable, using multiple parts of your kitchen at once is a game changer. I almost always have something baking in the oven, something cooking on the stove, something in the crockpot and am working on something at the counter all at the same time. This allows you to get more done in a shorter period of time!” — Lindsay Livingston, RD, The Lean Green Bean

14. Put technology to work for you.

“I use an app such as MyFitnessPal, [which makes] it really easy to record recipes and meals so that I can recall them and reuse them again in future meal preps. I can just [modify] a few ingredients and I have a new recipe with all the macros, etcetera, already calculated.”— Jo, @welovecleanfood

15. Bust out your slow cooker.

“I use my CrockPot a TON! It does the cooking for you. It even cooks while you sleep.” — Allie Whitesides, former Daily Burn Fitness/Nutrition Coach 

16. Implement time-saving strategies.

“I try to keep a few home-made frozen meals on hand at all times in case I’m having a really busy week and won’t have time to cook. Something like soup or vegetable chili will freeze and reheat really well, and saves a lot of time on really busy days.” — Stephanie Troxell, MS, RD, former Daily Burn Fitness/Nutrition Coach

17. Cut corners.

“Buy veggies pre-cut. Even though it costs a bit more at first, you may find you waste less and spend less time in the kitchen.” — Allie Whitesides, Daily Burn Fitness/Nutrition Coach

18. Shake things up.

“Eat different meals at different times every day! Some people get frustrated and think that they have to eat the same thing every day, all day. This is hardly the case! Think outside of the box. Your traditional breakfast or early day meal does NOT always have to be eggs and oatmeal… Plan your meals according to your personal goals.” — Nicole Mcleod, CFT and Ron Sudol, CFT, @Nmcleoddd

19. Savor your kitchen time.

“Like most Americans, I spend most of my work day at my desk. I try to think of my time spent cooking as a way to relax and get out from behind a screen for a bit. I know we’re all busy and have a lot of demands pulling it us in a lot of directions, but I try to enjoy my time spent cooking… it’s my “me time”.” — Stephanie Troxell, MS, RD, former Daily Burn Fitness/Nutrition Coach

20. Embrace your freedom.

“Meal prepping isn’t just about eating healthy or improving the look of your body; it’s about freedom. When you meal prep for days in advance, you are free from having to make any sort of decision regarding what to eat for that time. You don’t have to determine where or when you’ll get food, you just have it. This saves psychic resources that can be put towards doing other things that are important to you, like focusing on a relationship, a career, your work or training. You no longer have to make decisions about food or focus on it; it’s been taken care of, now work and play and be free of the burden of hunger and the decision making process that comes with it!” — Jon Call, Acrobolix, @jujimufu

SLEEP 101: The Ultimate Guide on How to Get a Better Night’s Sleep

We do it every night, and over the course of our life we will spend approximately a third of our time doing it: sleep. But what is it? Doctors and scientists are really just beginning to understand all the important ways that sleep affects our health and well-being — and all of the reasons we do it.

According to Rafael Pelayo, MD, clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and a sleep specialist at the Stanford Sleep Medicine Center in Redwood City, California, “Sleep is a natural, restorative, physiological process characterized by a perceptual disengagement [meaning you tune out from whatever’s going on around you], and must be rapidly reversible.”

Sleep experts at Harvard Medical School’s Division of Sleep Medicine use a similar definition for sleep. They say it can be characterized as: (1)

• A period of being less active

• A function of the body typically associated with a lying down posture and closed eyes

• A process whereby you’re less responsive to external stimuli

• A state of consciousness that’s easy to get out of (unlike other states of consciousness, such as hibernation or coma)

• Being associated with certain brain wave activity patterns and certain physiological changes, including a drop in blood pressure and body temperature

Regardless of the words used to describe it, the bottom line is that we need sleep to function, Dr. Pelayo says. It’s a critical process that allows the body to function and stay healthy — and it’s especially important for the brain.

“The entire body takes advantage of sleep,” Pelayo explains. For example, the kidneys slow down production of urine and digestion slows in the gut. (2) “But sleep is really how the brain gets reset for the next day. Sleep restores the brain.”

That means not getting enough sleep or good quality sleep will damage many systems of the body and over time can contribute to risk of chronic disease and health problems, but the most immediate consequences of not sleeping that you’ll notice are those that affect your mind and thinking.

Why Our Bodies Need Sleep — Tonight, and for Good Health Later On

We intuitively know we need sleep. When you don’t get a good night’s sleep, you’ll likely feel dozy, you won’t quite be able to think as clearly as usual, and you might be moody and irritable. That’s because one of the key functions of sleep is to restore the brain.

Why the Brain Needs Sleep

“Sleep is something the brain needs,” Pelayo explains. Our brains run on electricity, which means the chemical energy the brain uses to function has waste products (called metabolites) that need to get cleaned out. That’s what happens during sleep, Pelayo says. The brain flushes out those waste products in the brain and replenishes the energy the brain uses throughout the day (called adenosine-triphosphate, or ATP). (3

You likely won’t be measuring the ATP levels of your brain on a daily basis, but they do affect our functioning in big ways. If you don’t get a good night’s sleep and those chemical process don’t happen, the next day you’ll likely notice:

• It’s tougher to concentrate

• It’s harder to remember things (4)

• You’re moody and irritable (5)

• Your judgment might be skewed (6)

• You have less patience

• You’re more likely to make rash decisions or have a tough time making decisions

• You’re more emotional than usual

• Your hand-eye coordination is a little bit off

There’s also emerging evidence that over time, chronically not getting enough sleep could be linked to the buildup of certain proteins in the brain that are linked to problems like Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological problems. (7)

Why the Body Needs Sleep

Of course, it’s not just our minds that need sleep. Other systems of the body don’t work quite right when they’re too tired, either. Immediately after getting a poor night’s sleep you might notice you’re hungrier and tend to crave and eat more (8), and people are also at higher risk of catching a cold or flu. (9) Researchers think that’s because sleep deprivation has been shown to mess with how our immune systems function. (10)

Over time, chronically not sleeping well has also been shown to be linked to higher risk of chronic problems, including: (11)

• Obesity

• Type 2 diabetes

• Heart disease and hypertension

• Depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders

• Poor immune function

• Earlier death

Circadian Rhythm, Sleep Stages, and Sleep Cycles:
Everything You Need to Know About What Happens When You Sleep

You may not remember everything that happens each night when you’re asleep, but if you’re doing it right, there’s a lot going on in your brain and your body, Pelayo says. “There are differences between sleep and awake for every single body system, but nothing as dramatic as the changes of consciousness during sleep, the brain function,” he explains.

The Different Stages of Sleep

During sleep the brain cycles, repeatedly, through different stages of sleep: (12)

Stage 1 Non-REM (Rapid Eye Movement) Sleep The first stage is when you’re actually falling asleep — stage 1 non-REM. Your heartbeat, breathing, and eye movement start to slow down and your muscles relax. Your brain waves are also slowing down and it’s still very easy to be awoken during this preliminary stage of sleep. (3)

Stage 2 Non-REM Sleep The second stage is when heart rates drops and body temperature falls even more. Eye movement stops completely and brain activity slows way down, other than brief bursts of activity.

Stage 3 Non-REM Sleep Next comes deep sleep. This is the stage of sleep that is heavy and restorative. Your heartbeat and breathing slow down the greatest during this stage of sleep and it is most difficult to be woken up.

REM Sleep Finally comes REM sleep, when your eyes begin to dart quickly back and forth from side to side (even though your eyelids are still closed). Brain activity speeds way up, closer to the amount of activity that happens when you’re awake. And this is the stage of sleep when most of your dreaming happens. Your breathing gets quicker and irregular during REM sleep. Heart rate and blood pressure start to go back up nearer to the speed they function at when you’re awake, though the muscles of your arms and legs become temporarily paralyzed during REM sleep. Sleep experts suspect this paralysis is a mechanism our bodies developed to help protect us from injury or other harm that might otherwise ensue if we were able to “act out” our dreams. (14)

Each cycle of sleep (which consists of all of the stages) usually takes about 90 minutes. And most people tend to spend more time during each cycle in deeper sleep earlier in the night — and more time in REM sleep later on. Each stage of sleep is important and both deep sleep and REM sleep play critical functions in terms of the learning and memory consolidation processes that happen during sleep. (15)

What Drives Sleep

Two internal systems control when we sleep and when we’re awake. First there’s the sleep-wake homeostatic drive. The longer we’re awake, the more our bodies crave sleep — and the longer we’re asleep, the more the body wants to wake up. The homeostatic sleep drive affects how deeply we sleep, too. For instance, if you were to stay awake for 24 or 36 hours instead of the typical amount of time you spend awake during a day, such as 16 or 17 hours, sleep-wake homeostasis is the mechanism that drives you to sleep longer and deeper.

Then there’s our circadian rhythm, our body’s biological clock, which is what helps sync our body functions with environmental cues. These internal clocks are what drive us to feel sleepy at night and more awake in the morning (even, for instance, if you slept poorly the previous night, or even pulled an all-nighter). They’re regulated by hormones, such as the stress hormone cortisol and the sleep hormone melatonin, which get secreted by the brain to send these wake and sleep signals to the body.

“They’re two complementary systems in the brain,” Pelayo says. And when there’s a discrepancy between the homeostatic drive to sleep and the signal to sleep that comes from the circadian system, problems like jet lag and other disordered sleep occurs.

“This is why people who wake up at different times every day may feel tired a lot,” Pelayo says. “The brain doesn’t know how to predict when they should be awake. It’s like being constantly jet-lagged.”

The more sleep researchers learn about these two systems that control sleep, the more it is clear why not only getting enough hours of sleep, but also having good sleep habits (such as going to sleep and waking up at the same time each day) is important.

How Much Sleep You Actually Need

How much sleep you actually need each night varies somewhat for each of us depending on our age (younger people typically need more sleep than adults) and our genes (some people are naturally shorter sleepers than others). But typically the sleep target for adults is between seven and nine hours each night, according to guidelines from the National Sleep Foundation. (16)

That recommendation, along with additional recommended sleep times for younger children, adolescents, and older adults, is based on the amount of sleep associated with the best health outcomes in a number of areas, including things like mood, learning, accidents, hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and pain.

But Pelayo says don’t get too concerned about banking a specific number of hours of sleep each night. “The issue is waking up refreshed,” he says. “You should never wake up tired. If you do wake up feeling tired, something is wrong.”

Waking up sleepy could be an indicator that the quality of your sleep is poor. Maybe you’re spending too much time in light sleep, and not getting enough restorative deep sleep, for example, Pelayo says. If that’s the case, you should ask your doctor about getting checked for a sleep disorder, or see a sleep medicine specialist.

Common Sleep Disorders

Everyone should be able to get a good night’s sleep on a regular basis, Pelayo says. And if you’re not, it’s important to be aware of the several sleep disorders that might be interfering with your rest.

Here are definitions of some of the more common sleep disorders and how to recognize you may have one: (17)

Insomnia Insomnia is characterized by having difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep. Cases can be short term, such as those due to a stressful event, like a job change or jet lag; or long term, meaning the sleep trouble lasts for three months or longer, which is known as chronic insomnia. (18)

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) Obstructive sleep apnea, sometimes also referred to as just “sleep apnea,” is a disorder where someone’s airway becomes partially or completely blocked during sleep, which repeatedly wakes that person up during sleep and stops them from getting the deep, restorative sleep they need. People who are obese, have a small jaw or a large overbite, and use alcohol before bed are all at a higher risk of having sleep apnea.

Snoring and waking up not feeling rested, particularly after spending a full night asleep, are signs you might have sleep apnea and should get checked out by your doctor. Left untreated, sleep apnea can cause big problems, including high blood pressure, heart disease, memory problems, and higher accident risk.

Narcolepsy Narcolepsy is a disorder of the central nervous system that causes the brain to not be able to properly regulate cycles of sleep and being awake. (19) People with the disorder can experience the sudden, sometimes uncontrollable, need to fall asleep throughout the day, as well as trouble staying asleep at night.

Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) RLS is a disorder that causes uncomfortable sensations in the legs and an irresistible urge to move them. (20) Symptoms are most likely to occur when you’re sitting, resting, inactive for a while, or sleeping. The condition is categorized as a neurological sensory disorder because the symptoms come from the brain — though it is also classified as a sleep disorder. It can cause exhaustion and daytime sleepiness that affect mood, concentration, learning, and relationships.

Parasomnias A parasomnia is term used to refer to a number of disorders associated with abnormal behaviors that happen during sleep. Parasomnias include sleepwalking, sleep-related eating disorder, sleep terrors, bedwetting, sexsomnia, and others. In some cases, improving sleep habits can help treat parasomnias and in other cases treatment from a sleep medicine doctor may be needed. You should definitely seek treatment if abnormal behavior associated with sleep is causing harm to yourself or others, or if the behavior is frequent or escalating. (21)

None of these problems should be left unaddressed, Pelayo says. If you suspect you may have one of these conditions it’s important to get it checked out and treated.

How to Actually Sleep Better Tonight

There’s no one foolproof formula for getting a good night’s sleep, but there are several steps you can take that have been associated with better sleep overall if you’re struggling to clock the recommended number of hours of sleep you know you need — or if you wake up feeling less rested than you want to be.

It’s important to check with your doctor or a sleep medicine doctor if you think you do have a more serious problem, or of another medical condition is interfering with your sleep.

But trying these fixes first is a good place to start:

Stick to a consistent sleep-wake schedule. Aim to go to bed at the same time each night and wake up at the same time in the morning, including on the weekends — and try not to vary it more than an hour or so. The times that you regularly go to bed and wake up are the signals you give your body’s natural clock, and when they’re consistent, that clock helps you wake up and fall asleep. If those signals are out of whack, your body clock gets thrown off and you experience the same drowsiness associated with jet lag. You also may struggle to fall asleep at night or wake up when your alarm rings.

Watch caffeine intake. Be especially careful with this later in the afternoon. Pelayo suggests avoiding caffeine within six hours of when you want to sleep.

Exercise regularly. Research shows that regular exercise (at least 150 minutes of activity per week) is associated with better sleep, (22) though it’s worth noting you should try to avoid intense exercise too close to bedtime, as it may make it tougher for some people to fall asleep. That's because a workout sends signals to the body that tend to wake you up, such as your heart rate and body temperature increasing. (23)

Avoid bright lights and bright screens right before bed. Blue light — the kind that comes from fluorescent bulbs, LEDs, and computer and cellphone screens — has been shown to actually send the same signals to the brain as sunlight, and block production of the hormone melatonin that tells the brain to go to sleep. (24)

If you can’t sleep, don’t linger in bed. This means at night if you’re having trouble falling asleep for 20 minutes or longer, get out of bed and do something to make you tired, such as reading or some gentle stretching. Staying in bed makes your body associated in-bed time as awake time, and it will actually be harder to fall asleep.

Don’t linger in bed in the morning either, and don't hit snooze. It can be tempting to wake up slowly, but that drowsy sleep (after you’ve initially woken up) is fragmented, light sleep. If you did get a poor night’s sleep, your best remedy is getting up, going about your day, and hitting your pillow at bedtime that evening, at which point your sleep drive will be strong and you’re more likely to actually reap the benefit of the deep restorative sleep you need.

Via Everyday Health

SQUAT VS. DEADLIFT - WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?

Let’s first review Basic Squat and Basic Deadlift form. Looking at basic form will start to highlight the differences between the two moves.

BASIC SQUAT FORM:

The most basic form of the Squat is the Bodyweight Squat. This move can be regressed by sitting down to a bench or progressed by adding weight.

To do the Bodyweight Squat, stand nice and tall with your feet about hip-width to shoulder-width apart. Your feet should be parallel and pointing straight ahead. You can place your hands across your chest on your shoulders or reach your hands out in front of you.

Then sit your butt back and down, bending at your knees as you keep your chest up. Keep your heels down as you drop your butt as close to the ground as you can.

Do not let your back round or chest fall forward as you squat. Also, make sure to keep your heels down. Only squat as low as your mobility allows.

Then drive through your heels and come back up to standing. Do not come forward onto your toes or lean forward as you stand back up. Squeeze your glutes at the top.

If your back rounds or if you shift your weight to one side or the other as you squat, do not squat as low and work on your mobility before increasing weight.

Also beware of your knees caving in or bowing out. Your hips, knees and ankles should all be in line as you squat.

If you find your squat depth is limited or your form has flaws, you will want to strengthen your glutes and improve your ankle, hip and even thoracic mobility.

BASIC DEADLIFT FORM:

For the Basic Deadlift we will review a Basic Bodyweight Hip Hinge.

To do the Bodyweight Hip Hinge, stand tall with your feet between hip-width and shoulder-width apart. Cross your arms over your chest and place your hands on your shoulders.

Then begin to hinge over at your hips, pushing your butt back toward the wall behind you as you lean forward. Keep your back flat as you hinge over and make sure to sit your butt back as you hinge. Keep your heels down on the ground as you hinge. Then drive up and squeeze your glutes at the top before hinging back over.

Do not let your back round. Make sure to sit your butt back as you hinge over and not simply lean forward. Also, do not be afraid to bend your knees as you hinge over. Your legs do not need to stay straight with the Deadlift or Hip Hinge.

As you hinge over, do not shift your weight to one side or the other. Sit straight back.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE SQUAT AND THE DEADLIFT

Just to be clear, they may both work your legs but they are NOT the same movement. They activate and develop the muscles of our legs, back and core differently.

However, if we are going for the simplest answer about the difference between the two moves it would be – The Squat is a Squat movement and the Deadlift is a Hip Hinge movement.

The Squat focuses on knee bend and dropping your butt toward the ground to work your legs while the Deadilft focuses more on hinging at the hips to load the glutes.

The Deadlift is generally considered to be a more posterior chain focused movement (aka it is focused on working your backside), and, while the Squat will still work your backside, the move generally involves more quad.

More forward lean is also acceptable during the Deadlift as you are hinging at the hips while with the Squat you are trying to sit down while keeping your chest more upright.

There are, however, exceptions to these basic distinctions and even variations of both movements that really combine both and could almost even be labeled either way.

How you load down each of these moves is also generally different.

Generally with a Deadlift you hold a barbell, kettlebell, sandbag or dumbbells in your hands extended down by your sides or in front of your legs. 

Usually with a Squat the weight is placed up near your shoulders. You can load the Squat by placing a barbell on your back behind your shoulders or you can front-load the move with the barbell in your hands at about your collarbone. 

So simply put – the Squat is generally loaded up around your shoulders while the weight for the deadlift is generally picked up off the ground and held down by your sides or down in front.

However, like with everything in health and fitness, nothing is black and white.

There can still be overlap between the two moves. You can hold a kettlebell down in front and Squat.

TO SUMMARIZE:

• The Squat and the Deadlift are different moves. One is a Squat movement where you bend the knees to sink the butt as close to the ground as your mobility allows while the other is a Hip Hinge movement not as focused on knee bend but on hinging at the hips.
• Also, generally, the two moves are loaded different.
• However, there can be some overlap.

SO WHICH IS BETTER? 

Which move is better, the Squat or the Deadlift, depends on your goals. But honestly BOTH should be included in your workout routine if you want a strong core, glutes and legs.

BUT WHAT ABOUT WORKING YOUR GLUTES? WHICH IS BETTER? 

While often the Squat is touted as the best glute move and you see photos of women with great butts all squatting, the Squat is NOT superior to the Deadlift for glute development.

Because the Deadlift is a hip hinge movement, it is better for glute development. 

However, if you want to grow and tone your entire leg, you may want to do the Squat instead of the Deadlift. The Squat will hit the glutes, hamstrings AND quads, especially the quads. While the Deadlift may hit the glute and hamstrings more, it doesn’t work the quads.

You may also determine which move is better based on injuries or even your mobility.

If you have knee pain, a Deadlift Variation, especially a Straight Leg Deadlift, may be better because it will not only build your glutes to help prevent knee pain in the future, but also requires you to bend your knees very little, putting less strain on them.

VIA: CORI LEFKOWITH

HOW TO HIP HINGE PROPERLY

In a proper hip hinge, you brace the spine in neutral so the pelvis tips over the femur bones rather than bending from the lower back. This ensures that your glutes and hamstrings do the heavy lifting.

5 WAYS ALCOHOL HINDERS FAT LOSS!

Alcohol use—as a well-established part of human culture—is something that has become almost as acceptable as eating and breathing. As a social facilitator and feel good drug of choice for many, alcohol is very popular indeed, with consumption at mass levels.

However, alcohols well-documented deleterious effects—diminished performance, mental impairment, possible addiction, diabetes and liver disease to varying degrees in certain individuals—could be seen as a good reason to steer clear of it.

This being said, many people enjoy its sedating influence and it does play a vital role in many of society's traditions and practices. One effect alcohol has, which is not widely discussed, is its impact on body composition. In its purest form, ethyl alcohol, which supplies seven calories per gram, alcohol provides energy, bumping up ones total energy balance whenever it is consumed.

Unlike macronutrients such as carbohydrates, proteins and fats, alcohol supplies what nutritionists often refer to as empty calories: calories without nutrition. To make matters worse, it is the first fuel to be used when combined with carbohydrates, fats and proteins, postponing the fat-burning process and contributing to greater fat storage.

Main concerns are as follows:

1. Alcohol Supplies Almost Twice As Many Calories As Protein And Carbs

At seven calories per gram, alcohol supplies almost twice as many as protein and carbohydrates. In fact, alcohol has only two fewer calories than fat, which has nine per gram. It must also be remembered that the calories in alcohol lack the nutrients beneficial for a healthy metabolism and will therefore hasten fat storage.

The calories found in the average alcoholic drink are quite concentrated compared to many foods, and this actually causes one to inadvertently take in many more calories than would otherwise be consumed. Alcohol is quite deceptive in that it passes through the system rapidly, often before the drinker is aware of the number of drinks they have had.

Alcoholic drinks also contain calories from other sources, which add to overall caloric intake. Certain cocktails, for example, contain fats. Wine and beer both have high carbohydrate content. Although the affects these various calorie types have on the body are different—carbohydrates release insulin, which can hasten fat storage, while fats will be stored directly in the fat cells—the overall result is added body fat.

An example of how many calories can be easily consumed can be seen with a small glass of wine: a 5-ounce glass of wine will typically contain 110 calories, 91 of which come from the alcohol itself (13 grams), with the remaining five grams coming from carbohydrates.

Beer contains more carbohydrates (although many of the "Lite" beers have a carb content similar to a glass of wine) and less alcohol than wine, but is seen as being more fattening, due to its higher energy content.

2. Alcohol Loosens The Inhibitions

While drinking, people usually will not stop to consider the impact alcohol is having on their bodies; such is alcohol's affect on loosening the inhibitions. The result of this relaxed thinking could mean more calories consumed and extra body fat gains. Those drinking might also eat more of the wrong kinds of food, without thinking of the consequences.

Alcohol tends to have an appetite stimulating effect as it provides little in the way of nutrition, leaving a craving for other foods at the time of consumption. Add this to the fact that fatty and salty foods tend to accompany most occasions featuring alcohol (as well as alcohol actually stimulating one's appetite for these kinds of foods), and the general loosening of resolve that goes with an inebriated mindset, and you have a recipe for excess fat gain. Alcohol has also been shown to affect motivation, making a healthy diet harder to stay on while it is being used.

3. Alcohol Can Damage The Stomach, Kidneys, And Liver

Given alcohol is a by-product of yeast digestion; it can have an irritating effect on the lining of the stomach and gradually weaken the kidneys and liver, leading to serious health problems—even death in certain instances. Any weakening of the stomach will lessen the rate and efficiency at which food is digested, which ultimately interferes with a healthy metabolism and the weight loss process.

The liver—which processes toxins and breaks down fats for fuel—is crucial when it comes to maintaining a healthy body composition. Alcohol is at its most destructive during the liver's detoxification process.

4. Alcohol Lowers Testosterone

Testosterone, which has a powerful fat loss effect, is reduced whenever alcohol is consumed, thus halting its full potential as a fat burner. Also, testosterone as an anabolic hormone, contributes to gains in lean muscle mass. Lowered testosterone means fewer muscle gains, and less muscle means a lowered metabolic rate.

A lower metabolic rate will make the job of losing fat all the more harder. This is what governs the way we use energy. Those with a higher metabolic rate will burn more calories at rest. By interfering with testosterone production, alcohol indirectly causes the body to lower its metabolic rate (and thus the rate at which it uses energy) and directly prohibits testosterone from exerting its powerful fat-burning effects.

5. Alcohol Increases Appetite

Touched on briefly in point two, alcohol can increase appetite, making the combination of alcohol and a fattening meal all the more worse. A Canadian study showed that alcohol consumed before a meal increased caloric intake to a far greater extent than did a carbohydrate drink. 

How Is Alcohol Processed In The Body?

To gain an understanding of why alcohol affects us the way it does, it is important to known how it is processed in the body.

After consuming the first alcoholic drink, 25% of this alcohol is absorbed straight from the stomach into the bloodstream, with the remainder taken in through the small bowel. Alcohol is generally absorbed fairly rapidly, but its absorption can be quickened depending on several factors:

1. The amount of food in the stomach (a fuller stomach slows the rate of absorption).
2. Whether the drink is carbonated (champagne is absorbed more quickly than non-sparkling drinks).
3. Alcohol concentration of the drink (higher alcohol drinks are absorbed faster).

Around 98% of alcohol that is consumed is processed in the liver, with the other two to ten percent being expelled through urine, breathing, or sweat. The amount of alcohol in a standard drink will take around 10 hours for the average person to process, which means the more that is consumed at any one point, the greater the rise in blood alcohol content.

Calorie And Nutrient Content Of Popular Alcohol Drinks

The alcohol content of our most popular beverages varies, so it is important to know exactly what percentage of alcohol is in any given drink if one is wanting to limit all the empty calories. The following percentages are usually contained in each standard drink—five ounces of wine, 12 ounces of beer or 1.5 ounces of 80 proof (40% alcohol) distilled liquor.

• Beer: 5% alcohol
• Wine: 12% alcohol
• 100 proof liquor: 50% alcohol
• 80 proof liquor: 40% alcohol

Beer

One Can Of Regular 4-5% Alcohol Beer Contains:

• 14 milligrams of sodium (1%).
• 12.6 grams of carbohydrates (4%).
• 1.6 grams of protein.
• 14.2 milligrams of calcium.
• 96.1 grams of potassium.
• Total Calories: 153 (includes 97 calories from alcohol).

One Can Of Low Alcohol (2.3% Alcohol) Beer Contains:

• 34.7grams of carbohydrates (12%).
• Total Calories: 139.

One Can Of Lite Beer Contains:

• 14 milligrams of sodium.
• 5.9 grams of carbohydrates.
• 0.98 grams of proteins.
• 14.4 milligrams of calcium.
• 75.6 milligrams of potassium.
• Total Calories: 105 (includes 78 calories from alcohol).

Wine

One Glass Of Champagne Contains:

• 2 grams of carbohydrates.
• Total Calories: 85 (includes 77 calories from alcohol).

One Glass Of Red Wine (Claret) Contains:

• 4.4 grams of carbohydrate.
• 0.1 grams of protein.
• Total Calories: 123 (including 105 calories from alcohol).

One Glass Of White Wine (Riesling, Chablis) Contains:

• 5.5 grams of carbohydrate.
• 0.1 grams of protein.
• Total Calories: 120 (including 98 calories from alcohol).

One Glass Of White Sparkling Wine Contains:

• 4 grams of carbohydrates (all of white are sugars).
• Total Calories: 93 (including 77 calories from alcohol)

Liquors

One Ounce Of Gin (40% Alcohol) Contains:

• 0.6 milligrams of potassium.
• Total Calories: 64 from alcohol content.

One Ounce Of Rum (40% Alcohol) Contains:

• 0.6 grams of potassium.
• Total Calories: 64 from alcohol content.

One Ounce Of Vodka (40% Alcohol) Contains:

• 0.6 milligrams of potassium.
• Total Calories: 64 from alcohol content.

One Ounce Of Whiskey (40% Alcohol Contains):

• 0.6 milligrams of potassium.
• Total Calories: 64 from alcohol content.

Liqueurs

One Nip Of Baileys Irish Cream Contains:

• 5.8 grams of fat (3.5 grams of this saturated fat).
• 14 milligrams of cholesterol.
• 33 milligrams of sodium.
• 7.4 grams of carbohydrate.
• 1.2 grams of protein.
• Total Calories: 121 (including 35 from alcohol).

What Are The Best Alcohol Choices

If you really have to drink, what are the best choices? Some lower calorie brands to hit the market are showing promise, as are some of the more traditional alternatives.

As shown above, total caloric content of various alcoholic drinks varies, with beer generally containing the highest number, considering the smaller amount of alcohol found in this drink compared with others. Various spirits (also known as liquor) generally contain around 64 calories per nip, but these do add up depending on the strength of the drink (for example, a double will contain two nips, or 128 calories).

Combine this with one glass of coke (around 180 calories, 95% of these from sugars) and your typical bourbon and coke could supply 308 calories—double the number found in the average can of beer. Wine generally contains around 100 to 125 calories per medium sized glass. It also contains more alcohol than beer given the same volume, making it a better choice calorie-wise, as less would be consumed at any one sitting.

Drink alcohol with a lower caloric value, and a higher alcohol percentage (like wine for example). Less will be consumed, meaning lower overall calorie consumption.

Some more general guidelines follow:

1. Drink alcohol with a lower caloric value, and a higher alcohol percentage (like wine for example). Less will be consumed, meaning lower overall calorie consumption.

2. Avoid high-calorie liqueurs. These are extremely deceptive (they taste so good) and will add enormously to overall caloric content.

3. Keep healthy food on hand when drinking. As mentioned, drinking will relax the inhibitions and cause one to compromise their nutritional habits.

4. If drinking beer, try a lower calorie alternative. Also, drink diet sodas with various spirits to significantly lower the calorie content of these drinks.

5. Drink water between alcoholic drinks. This will increase feelings of fullness and may help to prevent over consumption of alcohol.

Conclusion

So what is one to do? Given alcohol plays a large role in celebration and social cohesion, can one completely refrain from its use? It really depends on the goals a person has. Most could probably consume moderate levels of alcohol (two or three standard drinks three to four times per week) without any problem.

Larger amounts (more than seven drinks at any one time), often described as binge drinking, can cause major problems and probably should not be advocated. Maintaining reasonable levels of health, while enjoying a few drinks—using moderation as the key—should be no problem. However, Alcohol, as shown, will negate any efforts to lose body fat and will alter performance for the worst. The best advice would be to totally abstain until performance and weight loss goals are obtained.

Via: David Robson

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