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fitness, lose weight, exercise, healthy living, breakfast, habits, eating window, circadian rhythm
Get Fit Quick with These Simple Life Changes
 Get Fit Quick with These Simple Life Changes 960 639 Emilie
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Here at United EVENTures, we highly value an active lifestyle. We believe in getting outside and being active as often as possible. For many of us, however, it is incredibly difficult to lose weight and get as fit as we’d like, despite regular exercise. What happens when you feel like you’ve tried everything, but your exercise doesn’t seem to pay off? Here are three easy and simply changes to lose that weight more easily, without extreme dieting or other major life changes.

Know How to Rev Your Metabolism Early in the Morning

As we all know, one of the most important keys for burning fat is having a fast metabolism. That’s why it’s so important to rev your metabolism early in the morning. By kicking your metabolism into gear early in the AM, this will allow your body to process food better the rest of the day.

We’ve all heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. You may also have heard that you should eat breakfast within an hour of waking up. That’s because breakfast is one of the best ways to rev your metabolism, and eating within the first hour of waking allows you to kickstart it quickly. However, certain breakfast foods will rev your metabolism more than others. According to Prevention.com eating a fiber-rich breakfast can boost your metabolism by 30%. Additionally, meals with protein can boost your metabolism by 35%. Thus, if you’re looking for a good metabolism boosting breakfast, try going for that extra dose of fiber and protein.

So what should you have for breakfast? For some extra protein try: high protein cereals, eggs/vegan eggs, yogurt, sausage/veggie sausage, or high protein oatmeals. For fiber try: bran muffins, fruits and veggies, high fiber cereals, or some oatmeal with almonds. Try mixing and matching to get a metabolism boost from both ends! A good sample breakfast includes eggs and a bran muffin, or some yogurt and fruit. And remember not to skimp on your breakfast, or your metabolism will think it needs to conserve energy instead.

Your ideal breakfast doesn’t end with the foods you eat. Luckily enough, our morning tea or coffee does more than give you energy to start your day. In fact, both do a marvelous job of boosting your metabolism. If you’re running out the door late and don’t have time for a breakfast, do your metabolism a favor and at least remember to grab a cup of joe when you first wake up.

Know How to Burn Fat, Not Just the Carbs 

So you may now be convinced to eat your breakfast within the first hour of waking. However it may be better for you to eat breakfast after you exercise. A recent article by Men’s Fitness called attention to a study in Belgium which analyzed this very question. Because many people understand the benefit of eating breakfast early, they were surprised to find that participants were healthier and gained less weight when they exercised on an empty stomach, and then ate breakfast.

So why did these results occur? It may be because both exercise and eating breakfast effectively jump start your metabolism. However, if you start your morning with a workout, your body has not yet received food that it can use as energy. Thus, during your workout your body will pull energy from fat cells instead of carbohydrates, causing you to burn fat more rapidly.

So what’s the takeaway? When should you exercise and when should you eat breakfast? The most important thing is to somehow boost your metabolism within 30 or 60 minutes of waking. Ideally, this means waking up, starting your day with a workout, followed by breakfast and coffee, and then heading off to work. However, if this does not fit into your schedule, make sure you either workout or eat breakfast first thing in the morning. If you choose to workout before leaving the house, grab a coffee and breakfast on your way to work. If you instead opt to eat breakfast first thing, try working out before lunch or dinner.

Narrow Your Eating Window

Most of us know that late night snacking is bad, but few of us have heard of the “12 hour window.” The New York Times and Peak Fitness recently called attention to several studies which demonstrated the impact of restricted eating times. A restricted eating window refers to the number of hours between the first food you consume to the last. So if you eat breakfast at 7 AM and have your last snack around 9 PM, you have a 14 hour eating window.

These studies showed that when mice were given a 9, 12, 15, or 24 hour eating windows, those with the 9 and 12 hour windows were significantly thinner. Some of the mice that were allowed to eat whenever they wanted (in the 24 hour group) were switched midway to these restricted windows, and actively lost weight following the switch.

So why does sticking to a 12 hour eating window help? There are a couple theories, and it is likely a combination of the two. The first is that when your body is constantly consuming food, it never has to dip into fat stores to fuel its energy needs. So instead, it continues to use energy from the foods you are eating. The second is that by restricting yourself to a shorter eating window, it improves your body’s circadian rhythm. The stronger your body’s natural circadian rhythm, the faster your metabolism.

Believe it or not, the 12 hour window begins and ends the second you consume any food product. That means that the second you have coffee with milk in the morning, your clock starts ticking. Even that evening tea with honey impacts your restricted window. In order to narrow your window, stick to water, or black tea and coffee. Take note of the moment your window starts each day, and make sure you are finished with dinner and all evening snacks by the time your 12 hours have elapsed. I.e. if you start breakfast at 7 AM, you should be done eating for the day at 7 PM.

Take-Home Ideas

Overall, remember these three main ideas. Sometimes we can’t lose weight because we don’t even know what habits we need to fix!

  1. Eat a breakfast rich in protein, fiber, and coffee or tea to get an optimal metabolism boost.
  2. Make the first thing you do each morning either exercise or eating breakfast. If you exercise first, make sure to eat breakfast right after. If you don’t have time to exercise in the morning, try exercising before lunch or dinner when you haven’t eaten very recently.
  3. Narrow your eating window to 12 hours, including snacks and cream or sugar in your coffee.

Do you have any other ideas or suggestions? Let us know about your experiences in the comments below!

lose weight, cardio, weights, dieting, healthy living, eat right, fitness, exercise
Why You’re Working Out But Not Losing Weight
 Why You’re Working Out But Not Losing Weight 960 639 Emilie
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We all know that exercise is important, and provides a long list of health and medical benefits. But at the end of the day, many of us exercise with one clear goal in mind: to lose weight. How is it possible that we can work out multiple times a week (or even every day!) and still not lose weight?

I know this pain all too well. Most of our bodies have a comfortable size and body shape, and it takes a lot for us to change that size from where our body wants it. I have felt like no matter how active I am, no matter how hard I push myself in my workouts, I see very little change. But believe it or not, there still is hope! Take a look below for common reasons you aren’t losing weight, even though you feel like you should be.

You’re not pushing yourself in your workouts. I talk to a lot of people who are frustrated with weight loss, because they exercise every day and still see no results. You may be frustrated because you are using a workout program that originally helped you lose weight, but is now showing no benefits. The problem is that any time your body becomes used to a workout, it makes it easier for your body to find its way back to it’s desired shape and size, despite your regular workouts.

Let’s take running for example. If you are going for a run every morning, you may not lose any weight because your body is never hitting the fat burning zone. Based on your age and baseline HR, each person has a different “fat burning zone.” That means that unless you are hitting a certain BPM during your workouts, it may be good exercise, but you are less likely to start burning fat. Without hitting this fat burning zone, your body will only chip away at the fat that is easy for it to take away. That means the areas on your body which are already slim may lose weight, but you may not see a difference in your problem areas, like your thighs or tummy.

So how do you fight against this? Of course, many people will say to shake up your workout routines, and this is a great idea. However, even doing different things each day (legs one day, cardio another, etc) is not enough. Instead, every time you do each of these workouts, you should be mixing up your exercises. Personally, this sounds exhausting to me, and if I had to put that much creativity into each workout, I would simply never exercise.

Instead, there are several ways you can accomplish this without having to design creative workouts. The first that I like to suggest is fitness apps. There is a huge slew of free apps which will give you a list of workouts to choose from. This steps you through new workouts each day, without the need to create workouts yourself. The second suggestion I like to give is to push yourself in your current workouts. If you run each day, set goals for yourself to make yourself run faster. If you don’t like setting goals, try doing it only 3 times a week. Just make sure your goal is enough to push yourself: not so low that you continue to see little difference. That being said, don’t make it so high that it’s impossible to reach!

 

Your workouts are one-dimensional. Whether you only weight train or only do cardio, you are creating a recipe for poor weight loss. Let’s start with people who only weight train. By googling “best ab workouts” you will probably find tons of suggestions: from crunches to planking. However, while this will help strengthen your ab muscles, it will do very little to actually burn fat in those areas. That means that while your abs are getting stronger, you will only see so much benefit unless you pair these exercises with cardio, which will burn off that top layer of fat.

However, this does not mean exercising without weight training is effective. Let’s return to my previous example about running. Whenever people only do cardio, your body falls into a comfortable routine, and it becomes a lot more difficult to whittle your middle. Weight lifting is exceedingly important in burning calories, and you will actually end up expending more calories the more muscle you have (which helps you lose weight all day long!). To see even more benefits to weight lifting, check out the article by bodybuilding.com here.

Overall it is very important for both genders to partake in cardio and weightlifting. Just because you haven’t used the big weights at your gym before, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t now! If you feel like you will look foolish, learn how to use weights and various machines a few times with a personal trainer or a gym buddy. Soon, you will be able to apply what you have learned even when you aren’t working out alongside a pro.

Your diet doesn’t reflect your weight loss goals. A lot of us make the mistake of seeing weight loss as a calorie exchange. In other words, if we run 2 mile (losing about 200 calories), we believe that we can have a 100 calories snack throughout the day, and we will still come out ahead (because we burned off 200 calories while running). Technically, this is absolutely true: if the only difference in your diet all day is that 100 calorie snack.

The problem arises because typically the more we exercise, the more we crave heartier, more filling food. That means each time you eat, you might eat a slightly larger meal. You might eat slightly more of the sauce on your plate (adding calories without even realizing it). Whether we want to admit it, it is so easy for us to gain back the calories we have burned just through normal eating throughout the day. That means that each time we choose a small snack (with the idea that it still doesn’t cover our new calorie deficit) we are likely incorrect, because we have already used up part of that deficit through regular eating. Each small snack and meal we choose actually does matter.

The other way this harms us is when we forget how much everything we eat adds up. I fall into this trap a lot: if I am regularly exercising, I believe I should be able to reward myself. That means sometimes you may grab a small latte instead of a black coffee. Or you may choose to split a dessert with someone. Every now and then, this is true. But when “a small reward” becomes our constant mentality, we end up exceeding the number of calories we have burned. Soon, we are back at our normal weight once again.

This may sound depressing, because it feels like you can never indulge yourself. However I am definitely not suggesting something so extreme! Instead, try taking a few days to journal everything you eat (that includes the sauces and items used to cook each food). This will make you far more aware of what you are eating, allowing you to make better, healthier choices with each meal and snack. That way, when you choose to indulge yourself (with some chocolate, an icecream cone, etc) it’s not a big deal because you are eating well throughout the rest of your day.